The reluctance of Democratic politicians, such as New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, to call terrorist attacks “terrorist attacks” is self-defeating, and not just for the obvious reason that you cannot fight an enemy without acknowledging who he is.
It’s understandable that the mayor would have avoided jumping to conclusions on Saturday night when there was scant information available other than that a bomb had detonated in the Chelsea district of Manhattan. But he was still tiptoeing around the obvious a day later, when evidence of links to other bombs had been released to the public.
“Here is what we know,” said the mayor on Sunday, according to a New York Times report, “It was intentional, it was a violent act, it was certainly a criminal act, it was a bombing.” But he would not go so far as to call it terrorism because he did not know of political motivations or of any connection to an organized group.
There is a point at which a pol starts to look ludicrous in his determination to avoid calling it what it is. A bombing, connected to other attempted or planned bombings, in which the weapons were designed to inflict as much bodily harm as possible to random strangers, is terrorism. It can and should be identified as such before detailed motivation and organizational links are established. This is particularly true in an epoch when self-radicalized jihadis often perpetrate terrorist acts inspired by, but not necessarily under orders from, other terrorists.
So why do politicians avoid using the label “terrorism” until long after it is clear to everyone else that that’s what is being discussed?
The easy but incomplete answer is that politicians, as public figures, need to be more responsible and cautious than private citizens.
But there is probably more to it than that. The suspicion arises that politicians, especially on the left, avoid using the word “terrorism” because they fear that it will stigmatize a minority group, specifically Middle Easterners and Muslims more broadly, and might give rise to allegations of racism.
But consider what this means. If you believe that you are stigmatizing a racial or ethnic minority by using a word like “terrorism” that has no specific racial or ethnic component, then you are yourself making an assumption that forges a link between a group and the heinous concept in question. Even when you don’t name that group, the circumstances of our times make it obvious to ordinary people that that is what you’re straining to avoid. If you cannot call bombings in city centers terrorism because you fear it will taint Muslims, you are making a link that you desperately want others not to make.
There is a parallel with the “soft bigotry of low expectations” against which President George W. Bush railed more than a decade ago. That soft bigotry was having lower standards for what is expected from some minority groups, on the assumption that they cannot meet the standards attained by others. It suggests that a given minority can be categorized not simply by their membership of that minority but also by their inability to do what is expected of others.
Likewise with terrorism. If for fear of stigmatizing a minority you cannot call terrorism terrorism, you are ipso facto bespattering that group with suspicion.
So when de Blasio and, habitually, President Obama decline to speak plainly about something that everyone else can see, they not only seem out of touch, and they not only hamper their ability to deal with the problem they face, but they also draw an implicit connection from an ethnic minority to a malignancy preying on our civilization both from without and from within.
