Was Lynching Terrorism?

[classical_hero]

I am wondering how many people are going to call Nelson Mandela a terrorist, if they are going to call the lynchings terror? While he was the head of the ANC he was allowing members of his organisation to necklace blacks who didn't support his ideology.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Couldn't he have been a terrorist and then changed his thinking and ways?

 

[Agent327]

He could and he did. Apparently this has gone by some folks on Earth.

 

[Hygro]

How and why is Nelson Mandela relevant?

We're discussing definitions of social phenomena in the USA.

 

[Agent327]

I wouldn't go so far as to describe lynching as a 'social phenomenon'. Unless as a feature of mob behaviour, possibly.

 

[Borachio]

Well, it's exactly that, isn't it?

Of course, "lynching" just refers to hanging someone by the neck, thereby killing them, without following due process. (Isn't that the correct definition?)

But Lynching, with a capital "L", refers to the lynching of black people in the south of America in the late C19th and early C20th, following on from the Civil War and subsequent economic difficulties of the South.

How is that not a social phenomenon?

(And I'd have thought "lynching" was a social phenomenon in any case, just a more general one than "Lynching".)

 

[Farm Boy]

Lynching is the lynching of a wide variety of people, though predominately black, the south of America mostly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the rest of the stuff.

The southern region had the most, but the northern doesn't deserve the pass.

 

[Borachio]

Being lynched can't have been pleasant.

Imagine that moment coming when you realize these people don't have your best interests at heart, and you feel the urge to ask "Was it something I said?"

(And when I can remember the name of the guy I've borrowed the idea from, I'll tell you.)

 

[Pangur Bán]

I'd say no. Firstly, it is not because it is not called that. Secondly, and more abstractly, no because lynching didn't attack or challenge the dominant political or social order. It didn't matter to such groups whether or not a black person was lynched, or if it did it was only because lynching could compete with official forms of 'justice'. Terrorism is violence that is DEVIANT and has a POLITICAL goal that is contrary to the ideology or interests of people and polities who are dominant.

 

[Borachio]

I'm not quite sure why you think it must be DEVIANT, but other than that I can't see much to argue with you about.

Except that I don't see why we can't apply terms retrospectively. The language, and terminology, develops. It doesn't seem all that remarkable.

Following your logic we couldn't use genocide to refer to anything that happened before the word was first used in the (when was it?) C19th? Seems a bit unnecessarily restrictive, imo.

 

[Pangur Bán]

Yes, it must be deviant. You must have a 'mainstream', i.e. a dominant group, that carries out violence in another way (and, usually, that it has the power to monopolize), and which uses its 'mainstreamness' to marginalize opposition without the same access to that type of violence.

 

[Flying Pig]

So 'state terrorism' is a contradiction?

 

[Borachio]

I don't think it is.

Terrorism is just anything designed to terrorize people for a political aim. Or a religious, or ideological aim.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism

States don't describe themselves as terrorist organizations. But then no one describes themselves as a terrorist either.

One could, or course, insist that terrorism has to be a DEVIANT act. But that's not how the term is used by most people necessarily. Though I suppose that state-sponsored terrorism is not the norm.

 

[Pangur Bán]

No, because the state is deviant. I.e. if Iran kills a bunch of people that would be 'state terrorism' but if the US does it that wouldn't be. A George Galloway or Noam Chomsky type might say it was, but these people themselves are deviants and their claims wouldn't be generally accepted.

 

[Borachio]

Well...

You've got a point there, I'll admit.

I can't help but feel it's a bit contrived, though.

 

[Pangur Bán]

I think that's how the word actually works; if an alien socio-linguistic analyzed the word and explained it to other aliens, they'd explain it like that.

 

[Flying Pig]

No, because the state is deviant. I.e. if Iran kills a bunch of people that would be 'state terrorism' but if the US does it that wouldn't be. A George Galloway or Noam Chomsky type might say it was, but these people themselves are deviants and their claims wouldn't be generally accepted.

Well...

You've got a point there, I'll admit.

I can't help but feel it's a bit contrived, though.

I think you're right if you're talking about how people actually end up using the word. 'Legitimate' military forces use many of the same methods - shock and awe being a fantastic example - as terrorist groups to intimidate people. If you fire a mortar at a military base in Hampshire, you're a terrorist, but if you fire one at a Taliban base in Helmand you're taking part in legitimate warfare. However I can't help but see circularity in arguing that anyone who uses the words otherwise is definitionally a 'deviant' and not listened to. After all, certain groups officially categorised as 'terrorists' still have some level of support, and some (eg. the ANC until recently) have a popular image totally at odds with that of the government. So I don't think it's too much of a stretch to imagine people generally agreeing that a certain military or police action was terrorism.

 

[Pangur Bán]

It is circular. Attacking or trying to radically undermine a norm-deviance distinction is itself deviant from the point-of-view of the norm, it can't be otherwise. Norms and deviance don't exist without each other, just like terrorism and legitimate warfare don't exist without each other.

 

[Flying Pig]

Absolutely - I suppose my objection is with the assumption that everyone naturally subscribes unthinkingly to the 'norms' in all respects, and that the norms are not subject to change.

 

[Gori the Grey]

no because lynching didn't attack or challenge the dominant political or social order. It didn't matter to such groups whether or not a black person was lynched, or if it did it was only because lynching could compete with official forms of 'justice'. Terrorism is violence that is DEVIANT and has a POLITICAL goal that is contrary to the ideology or interests of people and polities who are dominant.

This might in fact be grounds for labeling lynching as terrorism. To do so, one would have to take the "dominant political and social order" as the North's insistence (imposed by military victory) that black-skinned people are equally human and equally deserving of protection under the law. Southern lynch mob, in this view, would be working to subvert that "ideology of people who are dominant."

Pangur has a point, though. The word is only ever employed by members of the dominant ideology, of those who threaten it.

Still, from the Olympian heights of CFC, we can ask more dispassionately and objectively whether it applies in any particular case. And it does here.