In a hat tip to Jeff Foxworthy’s “You Might be a Redneck” shtick, the Department of Homeland Security has instituted a “You Might be a Terrorist” campaign. It goes something like this: “If you are white, male (maybe female), and middle-aged…you might be a terrorist!”
The DHS has released yet another public service announcement-style video to push its If You See Something, Say Something campaign to encourage public vigilance in the War on Terror. The problem is, like previous PSA videos, the only way DHS can portray terrorists is as white men or women.
Now, I’m not saying it’s impossible for white, middle-aged American men and women to be terrorists, but the odds suggest otherwise. Over the last two years, 126 people have been indicted on terrorism-related charges, and all have been Muslim. According to Attorney General Eric Holder, only 50 of the 126 were Americans, but how many of these Americans were white men or white women has not been released.
This latest Janet Napolitano “Big Sis” production comes on the heels of a July 2011 PSA video which also characterized white Americans as likely terrorists.
When Infowars broke the story about this first PSA, it theorized why DHS took this unique approach to portray who might bear watching:
“Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the DHS’ own internal documents list predominantly white conservative groups as the most likely terrorists, such as Ron Paul supporters, gun owners, gold bullion enthusiasts, and a myriad of other comparatively banal political interests that are largely the domain of white middle class Americans.”
I think the motive lies somewhere between the tyrannical (as the above quote suggests) and the politically correct.
We’ve certainly seen how the left wants to disparage patriotic Americans, especially the Tea Party. Whether Vice President Joe Biden did or did not call Tea Partiers terrorists recently may never be proven, but it seems the sentiment is there, so I lean toward believing he did. It’s the same kind of disdain we see in the DHS 2009 report about right-wing extremism. Are the DHS PSA videos an attempt to create a perception of danger about a group of people who have not demonstrated any violence?
A large component of the DHS’s careful selection of actors in its PSA videos seems to be PC-based. Although the average terrorist who has attacked/attempted to attack American interests in recent years has been a young Middle-Eastern Muslim male, DHS could not bring itself to use that accurate depiction. It might offend the people who are actually trying to harm us! It’s the same mentality that causes DHS-owned TSA agents to frisk toddlers and senior citizens with great zeal. Profiling would be offensive, even when the data suggests a certain profile to watch for.
Something like $10M of taxpayer money was poured into the creation of these worthless videos…government silliness at its worst. If the DHS was motivated by a streak of tyranny, then we have much more to fear as citizens than just these videos. If they were created because the PC crowd on the left feared being offensive to Muslims, then the irony is in how offensive the videos are to white, non-Muslim Americans. Either way, or somewhere in between, we need to shake up the makeup in Washington, DC. The inmates are running the asylum, and it’s time for some adult leadership in government.
Mike Angley
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