<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1">
<title></title>
</head>
<body text="#000099" bgcolor="#66cccc">
<font face="Comic Sans MS"><br>
</font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 35.45pt; line-height: 200%;"><b
style=""><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 20pt; line-height: 200%;"> Terrorism,
sexism, racism and other
lethal –isms.</span></b><span lang="EN-US"
style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 35.45pt; line-height: 200%;"><span
lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 35.45pt; line-height: 200%;"><i
style=""><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 200%;">
<b>Teun A. van Dijk</b><br>
<small> Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona</small><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 35.45pt; line-height: 200%;"><span
lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 35.45pt; line-height: 200%;"><span
lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 35.45pt; line-height: 200%;"><span
lang="EN-US">There are many deadly –isms that continue to afflict
humanity. The
oldest, most pernicious and deadliest of all is sexism: Many thousands
of women
are killed <i style="">each year</i> by their male (ex)
partners, and millions of women are <i style="">daily</i>
harassed, beaten or discriminated against by their husbands, friends,
bosses or
simply by male dominated society at large. Whatever other dangerous
–isms we
discuss, we should always be keenly aware that undoubtedly the worst
enemy of
humankind in general, and of women in particular, is the kind of
masculinity
that is the cause of this kind of daily repression and killings. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 35.45pt; line-height: 200%;"><span
lang="EN-US">Closely related to this form of male dominance is the
–ism that also
has plagued humanity for millennia and that is the cause of arms,
armies, wars
and repression until today: militarism. When we sometimes have the
illusion to
live in a post-modern world, the reality of primitive male power abuse,
combined in lethal militarism and vicious sexism, should perhaps remind
us of
the fact that we are still living in pre-modernism. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 35.45pt; line-height: 200%;"><span
lang="EN-US">Perhaps less obviously and openly a threat to humankind
is the kind
of –ism that has become the dominant ideology of our time:
neoliberalism: What
is defended as the unlimited freedom and the blessings of the ‘market’
in fact is
causing the misery, the poverty and death due to starvation and
avoidable
diseases of millions of women, men and children all over the world.
Some would
argue that also socially insensitive neoliberalism has been especially
promoted
by men, and that competition at any price is another form of aggressive
masculinity. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 35.45pt; line-height: 200%;"><span
lang="EN-US">On a less extensive scale, but sometimes no less deadly
when engaged
in by extremists, we witness the aggression and the killings by
militant groups
of nationalists around the globe, and not only in Northern Ireland,
Spain or
Kashmir. What may be rooted in legitimate claims for autonomy or
independence
may thus be distorted by those few (again, mostly men) who have the
illusion
they can realize their aims by violence that cannot be excused as a
form of
legitimate defense.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 35.45pt; line-height: 200%;"><span
lang="EN-US">That aggressive extremism is lethal has become most
spectacularly
evident on </span><st1:date month="9" day="11" year="1991"><span
lang="EN-US">September 11, 1991</span></st1:date><span lang="EN-US">,
and </span><st1:date month="3" day="11" year="2004"><span lang="EN-US">March
11, 2004</span></st1:date><span lang="EN-US">, in the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span
lang="EN-US">USA</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
lang="EN-US"> and </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span
lang="EN-US">Spain</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
lang="EN-US">, respectively, as well as in many other cities of the
world. Much
more than any of the other deadly –isms mentioned above, it is
terrorism that has
provoked the most hostile reaction from those in power, also because
they are
the ones who are politically targeted or held ransom, even when mostly
innocent
people are killed in terrorist attacks. We also have witnessed that
upon the
instigation of the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span
lang="EN-US">USA</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
lang="EN-US"> the prevailing response to terrorism has been
counter-terrorism and
militarism, thus leading to a spiral of killings or other ‘collateral
damage’
with no end in sight. Again, some would again suggest that even when
women may
be involved in such nationalist or religious extremism, the related
forms of
terrorism, counter-terrorism and militarism are largely part of the
same major
problem: masculine aggression.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 35.45pt; line-height: 200%;"><span
lang="EN-US">Watching the horrible scenes of death and mutilation in </span><st1:State><st1:place><span
lang="EN-US">New York</span></st1:place></st1:State><span lang="EN-US">
and </span><st1:State><st1:place><span lang="EN-US">Madrid</span></st1:place></st1:State><span
lang="EN-US">, it is hard
not to declare terrorism the Nr. 1 problem of the world, and agree with
Bush
& Co that the only good terrorist is a dead or detained terrorist.
And one can
only agree with all those politicians, journalists, writers and other
symbolic
elites that shape our opinions, largely through the mass media, that
there is
no legitimate excuse for terrorist violence. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 35.45pt; line-height: 200%;"><span
lang="EN-US">Only these politicians would be much more credible in
their
antiterrorist zeal if they would similarly combat the other forms of
extremist
and violent –isms mentioned above, beginning with sexist and militarist
aggression.
And we should all join the antiterrorist struggle as soon as it is
conducted
within an explanatory, political and ideological framework that
establishes
relationships between the different kinds of violent extremism
mentioned above.
In such a framework it is not so much the ‘terrorist’ who is the
world’s Nr. 1
villain, but rather the violent men who, inspired by any –ism, feel
licensed to
kill, whether dressed as a possessive and sexist husband, a radical
nationalist, a fundamentalist believer, a ruthless businessman or as a
soldier.
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 35.45pt; line-height: 200%;"><span
lang="EN-US">Instead of developing such an explanatory framework that
would force
many men to closely look into the mirror, or at least to critically
reflect
upon the dominant ideologies and practices of many other men they do
not seem
to worry about so much, alternative explanations have been formulated
within
the framework of another kind of deadly –ism that has dominated
especially the
Western World for centuries: racism and ethnicism. In this perspective
terrorism is not dealt with as a problem of ‘Us, men’, or of ‘Us, men
of
violence’, but attributed to the Others, such as Arabs or Muslims, or
whomever
else may function as Others elsewhere, such as Kashmir, Rwanda,
Northern
Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo, Basque country, and so on. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 35.45pt; line-height: 200%;"><span
lang="EN-US">At the moment most prevalent among western politicians
and media,
however, is the close association between terrorism, Arabs and Islam.
This
amalgamation perfectly fits the age-old polarization, studied by the
late
Edward Said and many others, between Us in the West and Them in the
(Middle)
East, between Occidentalism and Orientalism, between Christendom and
Islam.
Whatever disclaimers Bush & Co may repeat about not blaming all
Arabs and
Muslims, the more radical right wing media and advisors that support
them and
keep them in power are less subtle, and transmit the message loud and
clear
about who is to blame for terrorism. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 35.45pt; line-height: 200%;"><span
lang="EN-US">Even a good newspaper such as <i style="">El
País</i> in Spain may thus openly wonder (e.g., on Sunday March 28,
barely two
weeks after the terrorist attacks in Madrid) about how to describe and
identify
the terrorists if not as ‘Moroccan’, ‘Arab’, ‘Islamic’, ‘Islamist’,
‘Muslims’,
‘fundamentalist’, and so on, where all specialists concur that <i
style="">any</i> of the above is a generalization and
bound to lead to more stereotypes, prejudice, racism and ethnicism.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 35.45pt; line-height: 200%;"><span
lang="EN-US">Besides all the forms of sexism and militarism mentioned
above, the
most ignored and denied form of –ism today is racism. Thus, whereas
sexism
especially addresses <i style="">Us</i> all as men,
racism addresses <i style="">Us </i>all as white,
western, European people – and since few of us feel guilty or
responsible,
racism is as much denied and ignored as is sexism. And yet, much of the
contemporary problem of the many forms of closely related terrorisms
and
counterterrorisms is rooted in racism and ethnicism. When the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span
lang="EN-US">USA</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
lang="EN-US"> (and
others) support or condone Israeli occupation and aggression against
Palestinians, many Arabs will experience this (also) as a form of
anti-Arab
racism. When fundamentalist Islam is blamed for terrorism if not for
many other
ills of the Middle East, North Africa or South Asia, but not the
fundamentalist
Christian coalition that brought Bush, Rumsfeld and other hawks to
power in the
USA, and hence over the rest of the world, then it should not surprise
us that
many Muslims, as well as others, can only interpret this as another
form of
ethnicism. The logic of ethnicism and racism is as straightforward as
any form
of –ism: <i style="">We</i> are good and <i style="">They</i> are
evil, and our wrongs are
ignored and theirs magnified.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 35.45pt; line-height: 200%;"><span
lang="EN-US">In sum, if our response to the terrible reality of
terrorism
continues to be a combination of ‘male’, militarist counter-terrorism,
and
‘western’ racism and ethnicism, which simply target and blame the
convenient
Others, instead of examining and dealing with the deeper causes of
terrorism, then
we may be sure that terrorism will not be vanquished, but only
exacerbated.<br>
</span></p>
<i>Barcelona, March 2004</i><br>
<br>
<i>Teun A. van Dijk is professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra,
Barcelona. His latest books are <b>Discourse Studies, 2 vols. </b>(ed.,
1997), <b>Ideology </b>(1998), <b>Racism at the Top </b>(with Ruth
Wodak, Eds., 2000); <b>Ideología y Discurso </b>(2003); <b>Dominación
étnica y racismo discursivo en España y América Latina </b>(2003;
English version to appear in 2005). Teun van Dijk is founder and editor
of <b>Discourse & Society </b>and <b>Discourse Studies. </b>He
is now preparing a book on Context. <br>
<b><br>
Homepage and e-mail: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.discourse-in-society.org">www.discourse-in-society.org</a><br>
<br>
<br>
</b></i>
</body>
</html>