NPR Erases Domestic Terrorism

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National Public Radio (NPR) broadcast a story on May 9 by Dina Temple-Raston titled Terrorism in the U.S. Takes on a U.K. Pattern that started out with the following flawed premise:

For years, the U.S. seemed largely immune to homegrown terrorism, but experts think the recent attack [in Times Square] is more proof that has changed.

Raston then proceeded to discuss "home grown terrorists" only in the context of Pakistani-Americans, Afghan-Americans, South Asian Americans and others originally from outside the country who became citizens and then somehow became "radicalized."

The story completely ignored the fact that the United States has a long history of domestic terrorism committed by home-grown, home-radicalized terrorists. If, as Raston claimed, the U.S. does "seem largely immune to homegrown terrorism," then what, exactly, were the Ku Klux Klan, the assassinations of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the Symbionese Liberation Army (which committed robberies, murder, kidnapping and extortion), Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Oklahoma Federal Building, the murder of Dr. Bernard Slepian in his home by anti-abortionists, the bombing of the Olympics in Centennial park (the first of four bombings by anti-abortionist Eric Rudolph), the Columbine High School massacre, the murder of Dr. George Tiller in his church by another anti-abortion religious fanatic, the 2001 anthrax letter attacks, the airplane intentionally flown into the Internal Revenue Service building in Austin, Texas, the Hutaree Militia and...? Need I go on?

NPR's story about domestic terrorism proceeded as if these incidents never happened. In doing so, NPR continued to feed the illusion that the U.S. does not have a problem with domestic terrorism. The fact is, we do.

Either NPR made an error by omitting the truth about home-grown domestic terrorism, or didn't feel that it was important enough to acknowledge for this story. Or maybe NPR is joining society in a general state of denial over the fact that home-grown domestic terrorism exists -- or maybe all three. After all, if we acknowledge it, we'll have to find a way to deal with it.