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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