9/11 and the Politics of Fear.

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” -H.P. Lovecraft

This article was originally posted on the Spectacular Substack. Feel free to join the newsletter to keep in touch with articles and podcasts done by me through the hyperlink.

Everyone remembers where they were.

The planes hitting the towers and them collapsing are permanently etched into people’s minds, the dust filling the streets of New York, the confused screams that echoed as the second plane hit the south tower.

9/11 was the event that put fear into the hearts of millions, it signified the start of a brand new millennium, besides the y2k chaos, and marked the end of normalcy.

These images would haunt us for years to come, now, 20 years later, the towers still signify one of the worst (and only) attacks to happen against the US mainland.

The United States has just finished with their war on communism, and a couple war crimes in Iraq and Yugoslavia. And now it was time for a fresh new enemy. Terrorism.

The War on Terror was launched back during the Reagan years but with the events that took place on September 11, 2001, then president George W. Bush revived it.

Though ‘terrorism’ is a term that still doesn’t have a solid definition. It could always be used as a mirror to point back at the person/entity using it.
*Ahem* CIA *cough* *cough*.

We now have a new enemy. One that we’re still fighting, and trying to define, to this day.

We’re somewhat smarter now than back in 2001 with how we went about dealing with our fears. People were quick to use violence after the attacks.

Four days after the attacks in New York, Frank Roque, a fear driven crazed gunman out of Arizona, shot and killed Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh man who owned a Chevron gas station. Roque went on to shoot at and miss a Lebanese Mobil station clerk, and fired shots into the home of a family of Afghan descent. Luckily no one was hit.

Roque was charged with one count of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted murder and three counts of drive-by shooting. He was heard shouting “I stand for America all the way,” as he was being handcuffed.

Hogs like Roque weren’t rare in this time after 9/11. If anyone fit a vague description of what was thought to be a Muslim, they had a target on their back.

And with newspapers pumping out pieces about how Islam can’t escape blame for Sept. 11, this is a target that’s stuck and is still felt, all these years later.

Suddenly, Muslims and all who fit a stereotype were deemed terrorists. Rana Sodhi, the brother of Roque’s first victim, Balbir Singh Sodhi, explained it perfectly, after the twin towers collapsed and Bin Laden was put on TV, “people saw only a turban and a beard.”

We were thrown into multiple seemingly endless wars where hundreds of thousands paid the ultimate price of something they had no control over.

Americans went back to Afghanistan and Iraq, scorched earth policy put them years behind most of the world. The same could be said about Syria, Yemen, and others.

The people of these nations, majority of whom had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or any terrorist group, were gunned down and bombed for nothing more than the fact that they happened to live where they did.

The children of Fallujah Iraq are still being born with birth defects due to the radiation exposure by the hands of the Americans.

Afghanistan is now finally free from Americans, but are now back under Taliban rule, showing how effective the war on terror really was.

9/11 showed how easy it was to control people after a tragedy. Thousands went to war for the sake of protecting the nation. Not knowing that this nation sent them to fight on a hunch.

The realm of “maybe” is where America lies. We need TSA because maybe there could be an airport terrorist attack. The NSA needs to tap into your phone because maybe you’re plotting violence against Americans. And so on, and so forth.

Our fears were used to our own disadvantage. Wondering when things would go back to normal until this just became normal. Most of us can’t remember a time before TSA, when boarding a plane didn’t require as much mental energy as it does now.

Heaven forbid you fit a Muslim stereotype or else you’ll get profiled to hell at public places like train stations, concerts, airports, etc. I’ve been personally searched for a suicide vest in an Italian airport at 18 and anyone who fits the stereotype more than likely has their own story similar to this.

Fear works, and policymakers know it. A nation plagued by fear will do whatever they’re told in the name of self defence. Regardless if it’s true or not.

Terrorists are whomever the Americans deem them to be. Not only will those individuals have to pay, but the nation as a whole is now a terrorist hub. Iran is the main target in the Middle East now, but if one were to look at a map we can see that Iran is surrounded by US bases.

So, who’s the real threat to who in this situation?

America has meddled in no less than 80 countries since the end of the second world war. Across from Indochina to Africa, from the Middle East to central and South America, the US bombed, looted, propped up puppet governments, etc. an attack on American soil was bound to happen and should’ve been expected.

As for terrorism, an American is more likely to get killed by a toddler than by a terrorist attack, so where’s our war on pampers?