Homegrown. Piotr M. Szpunar
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of asserting control—that even the other must follow protocol.) The implication here being that admitting Muslims into the military provides lone wolves with sheep’s clothing. For many, Hasan’s identity was proof enough that “the western civilized countries of the world … [must take] realistic approaches to the condition of cancer, Muslimism, existing in the world.” Framed as a matter of “self preservation,” at stake is no less than the “future of the republic.”39
* * *
The coding of all three men as terrorists did not go uncontested. In the immediate aftermath of the Fort Hood shooting voices in the media and its readership avidly rejected the application of reductive stereotypes to Hasan. For instance, in response to the reader (quoted above) who suggested that Hasan’s name indicated that he was in fact a terrorist, another retorted, “Does the name Timothy McVeigh give you a clue? Or how about Theodore Kaczynski?” Still another reader pointed out the racialized character of terrorism discourse: “When a white guy shoots up a post office, they call that going postal.… But when a Muslim does it, they call it jihad.”40 Here, Hasan’s “torn psyche” is attributable not to some inherent incompatibility between Islam and serving in the American military, but rather to the racism Hasan experienced while in the service. In efforts to vilify one’s enemy, epithets such as “camel jockey,” “haaji,” and “raghead” had become part of soldiers’ everyday lexicon. Because Hasan experienced this firsthand, some saw the incident as a tragedy remedied only by more inclusivity rather than as a betrayal that warranted a purge.
There were also questions of mental illness, in both the Fort Hood and Sikh temple attacks. In Page’s case, media reports pried into his economic and relationship woes (the latter framed differently than those of Hasan). In the years leading up to his violent attack, his home—already once refinanced—went into foreclosure. After a move to Milwaukee, his girlfriend broke off their relationship. Soon after, Page stopped showing up for work. In the same vein, his violent act was repeatedly and widely referred to as a case of mistaken identity (which, of course, insinuates that violence against Muslims is somehow more understandable). This led those within the white supremacist movement to reject Page as “sick” or an idiot on the fringe of the movement.41 A thread started the day of Page’s rampage on the white supremacist site Stormfront captured the movement’s sentiments:
Let me guess, the story will be that he went to a Sikh temple to get revenge for 9/11, thinking that it was a Mosque.
Just as I thought when I heard the news: some low IQ White who doesn’t know the difference between Sikhs and Muslims.42
Some members even suggested collecting money for the victims. The label that represented his band also distanced itself from Page. Claiming it strove to promote a positive image, it removed his band’s merchandise from its website because it did not want to profit from the tragedy (which suggests that it could readily have done so). Here, either explicitly or otherwise, Page was placed on the fringe, either mentally ill or deficient.
The morning after the Fort Hood shooting, the New York Times’ Bob Herbert penned an op-ed, “Stress Beyond Belief,” in which he argued that breakdowns like Hasan’s were a sign of an overstretched and overworked military, with some troops serving multiple tours and little being done to address the resulting psychological effects.43 Despite the fact that Hasan had not yet been deployed, it was thought that his imminent deployment terrified him, particularly after counseling so many others who returned with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other afflictions. Readers commented that Hasan’s break was a sign of the unsustainability of US neo-imperialism, a foreign policy structured around natural resources and the greed of the military-industrial complex. The racism Hasan experienced in the military also contributed to his deteriorated mental health. In response, the New York Times’ David Brooks claimed that arguments about mental health were driven by “political correctness” and prematurely ruled out the “possibility of evil.”44 One of Brooks’s readers reiterated his dismissal of any explanation for Hasan’s violence outside of the clash of civilizations narrative more succinctly: “Calling guys like Nidal Hasan ‘nuts’ is like calling a member of the Nazi party a nut—its simplistic and overlooks the actual problem which is Islamic political ideology.”45
The invocation of the brown-Arab-Muslim-other is evident not only in efforts to code actors as terrorists, or to reject other plausible explanations of violence, but also in attempts to deflect the application of the label of terrorism. This line of articulation is evident throughout the documentary If a Tree Falls. The film catches up with McGowan on the anniversary of 9/11, walking the streets of New York City:
Of course I am going to get off of house arrest on this day, of all days, it’ll be today, you know? It’s really sad for me to have all these feelings about my home being attacked, my city being attacked. I mean, when I tell people that I’m accused of being a terrorist, whether it’s “eco” or “domestic” in front of it or if it’s just straight terrorist, it’s ludicrous to me, it’s surreal and, most people that know me are, like, “what?” No one’s accused in my case of flying planes, bombing things, trying to hurt people, none of these things, no one’s accused of that.
Earlier in the film, McGowan refers to terrorism as a “bogeyman word” that is applied to those with whom one disagrees. Yet, in the passage above he reverts to a seemingly obvious distinction, one predicated on unspoken cultural and racial stereotypes. A New York Times reader echoed this sentiment by stating that “labeling of ecologically motivated monkey-wrenchers as ‘terrorists’ … is disrespectful to the memories of those who perished at the hands of real terrorists on Sept. 11.”46 While McGowan and company at times invoke right-wing extremists as terrorists, often the “real terrorist” is embodied in a racial/ethnic/religious/cultural other. Either way, the argument is that to put radical environmentalists in the same “category as Osama bin Laden and Timothy McVeigh … weakens the word terrorist.”47
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