If You’re Going To Condemn Terrorism—Please Condemn All Of It
Originally published on johnpavlovitz.com
I despise bullies. I always have.
As a young boy, when I scanned the hallways at school, my eyes instinctively sought out the underdog and the marginalized. I pushed back against those who brokered in intimidation.
Into adulthood, I’ve retained the same burden for those who are being victimized by individuals and groups and structures and systems, and I’ve tried to speak boldly into those places of injustice.
That’s why I hate terrorism.
Terrorists are simply bullies with more experience, bigger weapons, and a greater capacity to damage. Wherever and whenever they surface, the terrorists’ M.O. is always the same: inject fear into the hearts of their victims with a swift and brutal violence designed to disrupt their routines, alter their behavior, and wound their psyches. The terrorist purposefully creates chaos and then exploits the confusion in its unsuspecting targets caught in the middle.
Yes, what we’ve witnessed in the streets of Paris certainly qualifies as terrorism, and we as a global community are quite right to be fully horrified and to condemn it. Coming against it with every resource at our disposal and showing solidarity for the victims there is a good and right thing.
We are surely correct in our shared outrage at what Parisians are enduring, but let’s not pretend that this act of terrorism is an isolated one.
Terrorists are prolific and powerful and at work in this very moment around the world and right in your backyard, and sometimes they use more subtle means than vest bombs and Kalashnikovs.
For decades, the LGBTQ community has been continually and violently attacked by a Conservative Evangelical Church that has vilified, bullied and dehumanized them; literally forcing them from their faith communities with little regard to the collateral damage of their incendiary rhetoric. The gay community is regularly the target of church-birthed, religion-fueled, theologically-justified hatred.
Sometimes the terrorists stand behind pulpits.
In our American inner cities and suburbs, young people of color have been routinely brutalized by corrupt segments of law enforcement; some of the very men and women charged with protecting and serving them. Emboldened by a sense of privilege and blinded by inherited, institutional bigotry, they exploit their power and position, bringing an ambush of fear and violence where it should least be expected.
Sometimes the terrorists wear badges.
The United States has the highest gun ownership rate in the world and the highest per capita rate of firearm-related murders of all developed countries; making mass shootings, accidental gun deaths, and domestic killings a daily occurrence, yet the NRA continues to use its influence to squash any efforts to stop the bleeding in homes and schools and movie theaters and shopping malls, instead choosing to glorify the gun.
Sometimes the terrorists have lobbyists.
Tens of millions of children are sold off into the commercial sex trade each year; losing their innocence in order to line the pockets and feed the perversions of men who view them as little more than disposable sex toys. These are often people of great influence, financial means, and political position who abuse each to broker in boys and girls.
Sometimes the terrorists own businesses.
Every day, women are brutalized by boyfriends and husbands who deem them as property; subjecting them to all manner of violence and intimidation and feeling quite justified in doing so, buoyed by a misogynistic sense of privilege and entitlement in a culture that so often reinforces both.
Sometimes the terrorists wear wedding bands.
Countless children live each day in homes marked by threat and fear, with parents whose contempt for them (and themselves) manifests itself in verbal assaults, physical abuse, emotional violence, and neglect; acts of domestic terrorism whose damage is inflicted at point-blank range.
Sometimes the terrorists share your table.
The bullies are everywhere and they all thrive on silence. As you read these very words, far too many people find themselves on the receiving end of violence that seeks to place terror in their hearts and it is working. The question becomes, are we willing to see it all?
The face of terrorism is tragically diverse, and if we are to fully condemn it, we need to be consistent in calling out all of it or we become complicit. In the face of hatred in the world, we cannot afford to be selectively outraged, or to have our hearts broken only for that which feels convenient or familiar or obvious. We cannot identify evil simply when it fits our politics or preferences or the stark black and white narrative we most desire to be true about the Good and Bad Guys.
If the circle of our compassion only extends to those who look and talk and worship the way we do, we aid and abet the many offenders who count on such apathetic head-turning, whether it be individual, organizational, or cultural.
When it comes to the terrorism in this world in any form, silence is participation.
So today, we who seek goodness and who affirm the value of all life, should stand as one and condemn the terrorists in Paris and Kenya and Beirut and Syria and Missouri and Charleston and across the planet; whether they brandish bombs or wear badges or stand behind pulpits or run universities or wear hoods or protest funerals or shoot up schools or work alongside us.
We should call out hate groups and political powers and religious institutions and social constructs which nurture and incubate violence, whether they are half a world away or in the very places we live and study and worship.
We should continually scan the landscape of our world for those who are daily victimized by fear; those who feel helpless and powerless in the face of evil and be compelled to stand with them, even if the perpetrators look a whole lot like us—or the victims very little.
Yes, let us get about the business of exposing and condemning and dismantling all bullies regardless of where they do what bullies do.
All terrorism threatens all of us.
All terrorism targets Humanity.
May we defend all Humanity.
Note: You do not need to agree with all of the areas I have defined as terrorism here (and there are certainly others which you may be aware of or sensitive to). That terrorism exists in many less obvious environments and forms is the heart of this. I encourage you to look for it and combat it where you see it.
About author
You might also like
UNFAITHFUL 1: IT’S ALL ABOUT SEX
A fucking gay-me We’ve heard it a million times. It’s the very first line spoken in the series “Queer as Folk”. It’s all about sex! Gays can’t keep their dicks
MY HOMOSEXUAL JOURNEY
I was your typical born-again teenager. Pious looking. Academic. I didn’t speak to girls if I could help it. I simply loved the Lord! I went to a Christian secondary
The Piece About Olumide Makanjuola’s LGBT Activism in Nigeria
Originally published on ynaija.com “Why would anyone choose to be gay in a heteronormative society like ours? Do you think if gay people had a choice, they will not change
16 Comments
Dennis Macaulay
November 21, 06:02Let me sit this one out!
I’d comment after my third mug of coffee
Mandy
November 21, 06:03This John Pavlovitz speaks such startling truth. Being a pastor, he must have a bunch of enemies in the American christendom.
ambivalentone
November 21, 07:07The really funny thing is some of the terrorized get to be terrorists where they are given a little power or authority continuing the vicious cycle. Ask the doll of the child who is abused. I’ll bet it’d av A LOT to tell u about being abused or as we know how some of us can like to terrorize others (barring stupidity of course)
Mandy
November 21, 07:14Case in point, a select crop of KDians, yes? 🙂
ambivalentone
November 21, 07:24Biko, I had a rough night. Lets not compound my headache with meanings within meanings abeg. Awa t’oro ba wi, a mo ara wa.
Chizzie
November 21, 08:33I think this is by far one of the most foolish things I’ve read. Should this even be allowed?Comparing something as serious to bullying? The fact is, bullying is part of life and an encounter everyone will have, even those that bully have been bullied before. Bullying also exists in the animal kingdom and is even more savage. An eaglet will bully, starve and ultimately push its younger and weaker sibling off the nest, killing it while its mother sits back and watches. That way nature ensures that only the strongest stock survive. And its probably why eagles are so majestic. In essence, bullying is part of the universe, so please deal with it.
What is utterly uncalled for and unjustifiable is senseless, unprovoked acts of violence, terror and mass hysteria all for the sake of religion. We are seeing each day thanks to our Muslim brothers and sisters how terrorism continues to defy all manner of logic and is incomparable.
So for this bitch to have coolly compared it to bullying? I mean the nerve! I hope he/she doesn’t get to experience real terrorism.
Pink Panther
November 21, 08:36The undersecretary of Worldwide Bullies Association doth speaketh in all her furious glory.
Handle
November 21, 09:09The ability to voice our opinions and shape our environment is what makes us different from Eagles (animals). We just don’t sit there and let one eaglet bully, starve and push us out of a nest. Survival of the fittest isn’t bullying.
Terror is terror, regardless of who or where it’s coming from. Bullies terrorize their victims. Whether using bombs, verbal abuse, knives or guns. The goal is to drive fear. Still the same. When people you know get beaten up, stabbed and abused bcos they re different, you don’t have the luxury to select which you want to view as terrorism.
Bullying isn’t part of life. Bullying is our uncanny ability to destroy ourselves.
Marc Francis of Chelsea
November 21, 15:25Absolutely no difference between his comment and “being gay is unnatural because there are no gay animals.” Ever guns blazing and unwise. I wish everyone would just stop paying his hate-filled rants any mind so he’ll just keep ranting to himself like the mentally disturbed person his is. But one can only dream.
ambivalentone
November 21, 11:03Well said @Handle
@Chizzie All the ‘bullying’ of eagles you’ve quoted was only just enough to make them an endangered species requiring intervention to not go extinct. You’d do well to remember that. Bullying, in any form, destroys no-one but urself. Don’t make it so u become an object of pity in the end. Have a pleasant saturday
Chizzie
November 21, 12:46Lol what? Eagles an endangered species? First of all, there are so many species of eagles, the vast majority of which are well above the endangered list.
And second, even if there were endangered, habitat loss, deforestation and pesticide abuse would be the leading cause as in most cases with endangered birds, all caused by humans.
Please next time, maybe more Nat Geo Wild and less Africa Magic Yoruba
ambivalentone
November 21, 13:37again, d gist of matters in the analogy is lost to you. Not surprising. Settle back, meditate and pray for wisdom. You just might see.
ronniephoenix
November 21, 14:43I knew chizzie would not take it lightly with this post at all.
But the truth still stands, bullys are terrorists.
*walks away*
Chizzie
November 21, 15:47Bullies*
Is it that this post is too traumatic for you bullied people that you cannot type proper grammar again?
King_in_the_south
August 07, 14:251. Glorifies bullying
2. Calls a writer he feels is “misguided” in his article a bitch and feels he needs no justification
3. Justifies bullying because of it’s ubiquity in one single species of the animal kingdom. Ever heard of AD populum fallacies. If it were a race/tribe you made reference to, More sense would have been made
4. does not think twice about calling hateful words while advocating for a decrease in the terrorism and hate.
I could go on but you get the point. It’s easy to confuse what is, with what ought to be, especially when what is has worked in your favour. Before you hurl insults and whatnot. Check yourself. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. I usually don’t comment but your incendiary rhetoric got to me.
Delle
November 21, 10:23Truth be told, this entry about terrorism is actually too vital as to compare it with bullying. Every bully has a weakness turned into hatred, but do terrorists have that?
And this guy was just calling places (Paris, Kenya, Beirut, Syria and Missouri) please o, where is Nigeria? Or are we not under terrorist attacks as well? Does it have to be ISIS before it’s acknowledged terrorism?
In as much as I commiserate with Paris and the likes, the continuous marginalisation of Nigeria by the outside world is so off-putting, I’d call that Bullying also. Lol
Oya Kdians, you all have heard abi? It’s time to erect an NGO facility…LGBT bullying in schools, homes, churches must stop!