Right-wing terrorism: Right-wing response

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Little notice has been taken of the fact that the terrorist attack of Sept. 11 was apparently carried out by right-wing fanatics representing an ultra-conservative, reactionary, and patriarchal ideology. If we are to believe the information that we are receiving from the U.S. government, the attackers were of Muslim background belonging to extremely "fundamentalist" factions with ties to extremist groups in the Islamic world.

If the attackers had been left-wingers that fact would have received great attention in the press. But the right-wing ideology of the terrorists has received little analysis, perhaps because it bears too close a resemblance to some fundamentalist and reactionary movements within the Christian and Jewish (Israeli) worlds; or perhaps because it too closely resembles the ideologies of a number of undemocratic states, which the United States supports (such as Saudi Arabia and other Arabian Gulf kingdoms).

We are told by U.S. agencies that the attackers were connected with Osama bin Laden. Tentatively accepting the U.S. information, what can we say about the character and motivations of the attack-planners? First, it is arguable that they were not very good Muslims. Not only did some of them drink alcohol (we are told) but their murderous attacks upon innocent, non-combatant people would seem to be anti-Islamic. And here I refer not only to 9-11 but also to the terrible record of related groups in Algeria and elsewhere. These right-wingers are notable for the slaughter of innocents as a prime method of destabilizing governments.

It should be noted here that the violent tendencies of these right-wing Muslims is not different from the violence and terrorism favored by U.S. Christian Right groups who supported terrorism against Native peoples in Central America under Reagan and Bush and who strongly support Israeli expansion against Arab Palestinians.

It is also likely that the attackers are not anti-capitalist (another characteristic of Christian rightists in the U.S.). Osama bin Laden seems to be a capitalist of the first order, and a very rich one! He certainly supports no socialist parties. More centrally, it would appear that the control of women (the seclusion and suppression of women) is a central tenet of the attackers, of the Taliban, and of bin Laden. Enough has not been made of this, but certainly one of the key objectives of these "true-believers" is to prevent women from receiving advanced education and from possessing political and other rights equal to men. It is noteworthy that the anti-feminists in U.S. society (those who defeated the equal rights amendment) are also right-wingers or ultra-conservatives, by and large. And let us not forget the terrorist attacks by elements of the Christian Right against abortion-providers, clinics, and clients in the U.S.A.

The control of women is central to reactionary movements generally, but the bin Laden/Taliban types also seek to very much control males. We witnessed this in Iran under Shiite mullahs, as well as in Afghanistan. What, in essence, is implemented is a system of social control which is clerical-fascistic along the lines of Italian and Spanish fascism where church and state are brought together to control behavior and restrict freedom of thought, speech, and action. The wealthy, it would appear, would retain all of their privileges. Again, many "Bible-Belt" areas in the U.S. have sometimes restricted the freedom of non-Christians and attempted to establish an "official" religion built around selected Biblical concepts.

As far as other motivations of the attackers, perhaps it is especially useful to see what terrorism accomplishes generally and then specifically after 9-11. We have to believe, I suggest, that the people behind the attacks knew that terrorism usually erodes freedom and civil liberties in the country attacked. Normally, the government will immediately beef up security in all kinds of ways: police, spies, intellignce, military, paramilitary units etc. Moreover, the police and military will be able to arrest people more easily, they will be allowed to spy on people without limits, and so on. In other words, terrorist attacks upon a state ordinarily stimulate a right-wing, militaristic-like response with a concomitant loss of democratic/civil rights.

Thus the attackers of 9-11, or at least the planners, certainly would have expected a right-wing response in the U.S. That is what they were aiming for, in my opinion. The attack was seemingly designed to manipulate the U.S. government to produce a desired result, namely the victory of conservative and militarist agendas in the United States and the suppression of "unpatriotic" activities, such as dissent and criticism.

Another expectable result would be an assault upon the liberty, dignity, and civil protections of Muslims and Arabs and perhaps other Middle Eastern/South Asian persons. In addition, the attackers might well have foreseen that the liberalization of immigrant rights and many other civil rights/human rights issues would be buried beneath anti-terrorism hysteria, as would be the resolutions of the Durban Conference on Racism, released a few days earlier.

The attackers, then, are pulling the strings while Bush and Congress seem to be puppets doing exactly what would have been predictable to any reasonably informed person. The irony is that much of what the U.S. is doing would have been what Bush and his team would have liked to have done anyway if they had had the political backing prior to 9-11!

[Professor Jack D. Forbes, Powhatan-Delaware, is the author of Red Blood, Africans and Native Americans, Only Approved Indians and other books. He is professor emeritus of Native American Studies, University of California, Davis.]