There are some of you who will read this headline and
immediately think of airplanes flying into the World Trade Towers on September
11, 2001, or the more recent attacks in Paris. But terrorism, according to the
Miriam-Webster website, is defined as “the use of violent acts to frighten the
people in an area as a way of trying to achieve a political goal”.
Although, in recent years terrorism has been applied
mainly to Muslim extremists, according to several sources, including the FBI,
terrorism is not defined by an individual’s political or religious beliefs but
it is the tactic of using violence to scare people into doing what you want
them to do. Therefore, the United States Airforce, dropping atom bombs on
Nagasaki and Hiroshima in an attempt to coerce Japan into surrendering was an
act of terror.
The Amritsar massacre, in which British troops fired on unarmed
Indian civilians to discourage the Indian Independence movement was an act of
terror. And therein lies the problem, the world economy, the governments of
powerful nations, where forged by acts of terror. The use of the word terror
when describing the actions of Islamic radicals is simply the big army pointing
their finger at the little army and saying; “It’s okay for us to control the
world through the threat of violence, but it isn’t okay when you do it.” The
bottom line is that we are being hypocrites when we use the word “terrorist”.
This is not to say I condone the acts of a handful of
violent men who happen to be Muslim. The reason why I say “handful” is because,
praise be to Allah, the majority of Muslims on this planet prefer to live in
peace with the rest of us. So it is only small group of angry individuals that
make me think twice about booking a flight to Paris or New York or Mumbai.
Given
the choice I would prefer to live in a peaceful world in which I don’t have to
worry about being strip searched because of my physical appearance. Let’s be
honest, most people from Southern Europe, Latin America, North Africa and
Central Asia could easily be mistaken for a “Middle Easterner” and I would
rather not have to deal with the prospect of airport security having the right
to confiscate my belongings as part of the “Patriot” Act.
So how do we put an end to the violence? The solution is
simple, we stop teaching our children that violence is an acceptable way to
solve problems. What do I mean by this?
Let’s look at “America’s War on Drugs”.
There was an epidemic of drug abuse in the United States, some might say there
still is. Instead of focusing on helping
drug addicts overcome their addiction, the U.S. Government sprayed poisonous
chemicals on the rain forests of South America then proceeded to initiate a war
in the cities of Colombia to kill the “evil" drug dealers. The DEA
eventually helped the Colombian police to track down and execute the Colombian
drug lord Pablo Escobar, but has this stopped the Gringos from getting high?
If a man gets drunk and drives into a school bus
resulting in the deaths of several children, should we drop bombs on the Napa
Valley Vineyards?
Of course not, but we teach our children to be hypocrites
when we use our military to solve our dependency on cocaine, heroine and
petroleum. We also teach our children to be hypocrites when we allow them to be
entertained by violent video games and movies. I know a lot of people who would
never allow their child to watch the kind of violence portrayed in a movie like
Reservoir Dogs but they have no problems with allowing their children to watch
Pirates of the Caribbean.
From a moral point of view, this couldn’t be more
backwards. The violence portrayed in Reservoir Dogs is less harmful because it
comes across as ugly, unpleasant and, because of some brilliant acting, very
painful. In the movie “Born on the Fourth of July” a single bullet cripples a
young man and ruins his life, but in Pirates of the Caribbean canons are fired,
muskets are discharged, swords are brandished and the pretty heroic characters,
the characters that we are intended to identify with, emerge from the battle unscathed.
This is dangerous because it teaches children that only the “bad guys” get hurt
when nations go to war, and what child raised in a self righteous God fearing
all American home thinks of himself as being the “bad guy”?
In our minds we are the heroes of the movie. Ironically,
the members of Al Qaeda and ISIS are no different. They believe what they are
doing is God’s will. We see them as brainwashed fools, but are we any less
foolish?
It is easy to be manipulated by the media. Hollywood
movie producers are experts at understanding how images, music and stories
affect us emotionally and psychologically. Most adults are swept into a
suspension of disbelief as soon as the lights dim and the music swells, so what
chance do impressionable young children have?
The answer is they don’t have any chance at escaping the
propaganda, and so they grow up to become adults who spend their time and money
creating pirate sims where they can role play and fantasize about being rapists
and murderers. Because this is what the pirates were, they were terrorists, who
used violence to take control of the Caribbean then imported slaves from Africa
to work on tobacco and sugar cane fields in Jamaica and Haiti.
Now I realize that most of you, when you role play as
swashbucklers and buccaneers, don’t think of yourselves as being rapists,
terrorists or slave owners but that’s what the pirates were. Of course there is
the argument; “It’s just a game. I’m not actually hurting anyone.” But what you
are doing is propagating the belief that, the way the Pirates behaved was not
only acceptable, it was also heroic. And it is that belief that causes young
men to join the military and travel to across the world to drop bombs on babies
in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. And, in some extreme cases, it is the belief
that violence is heroic, that causes some young men to show up at their high
school with an assault rifle.
We have to stop thinking of terrorists as being alien
beings from another world. The terrorists are members of our global village,
they are our children and we have taught them, by the way we do business, the
way we govern and the way we entertain ourselves, that violence is noble.
So, unless you think it’s okay for someone to start up a
Second Life sim where people can role play as hijackers and suicide bombers,
maybe you should think twice about the games you’re playing.
What are your thoughts? Use the comment box below.
*this article is the opinion of the writer.
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