Symbiosis

If I remember correctly, I was copying a friend’s homework when the Principal made the announcement over the loud speaker. Homeroom was always homework time for school slackers, at least at South Orange Middle School. My teacher’s face froze, her pale cheeks reddened like crushed strawberries over a white canvas; her lips stiffened in fear. One girl, Emily (or maybe her name was Ashley), ran out of class, nearly collapsing with tears flowing like twin waterfalls. That was the only day in my 7^th grade career that Mrs. Appenzoler didn’t take attendance; she was a stickler for those kinds of things. “Airplanes, hit…Twin Towers…Muslim t-t-t-terrorists,” I heard students murmuring. Amidst the chaos, I turned to the freckled-face boy seated next to me and quietly asked, “What is the World Trade Center?”

New York City September 11th, 2001

Officially finished with my internship, I spent my last week here traveling throughout Northern India. Located in the foothills of the Himalayan belt and 120 km from the Pakistani border, Srinagar is a hotspot for both culture and conflict. A tourist’s dream and anti-terrorist’s nightmare, Srinagar is a puzzling mix of political tension and environmental beauty. Its unbelievable ‘floating city’ (some call it the ‘Venice of the East’) and majestic Islamic culture parallels its ubiquitous militarism and heavily policed marketplace. From its food (if you never had Halal go taste and thank me later) to its fabrics, Srinagar is a real life fairy tale. Nevertheless, in light of fairly recent terror attacks, Srinagar can be a real living hell! As I walked the land, spoke with locals, and bargained with peddlers, I noticed two worlds, coexisting. But it was more than that, I think.

Boat ride from the floating hotel to the market

Are the potential terrorist and passing tourist unconscious players on the same team of tragedy? Do terrorism and tourism share a symbiotic relationship? 

Contrary to popularized media images and ideologies, terrorism is not merely a product of physical violence. More than its physical element, terrorism is a perpetuation of fear, hysteria, and conflict—a psychic assault. (And many, if not all the time, the psychic element precedes its physical manifestation). Within this framework, the traditional terroristic identity sinks and new possibilities surface.

Mass media may be the largest, most powerful, and well-financed terrorist organization in the world. After all, it is through its patriarchal, racialized, and religiously intolerant misrepresentations that the masses are conditioned to fear blacks, immigrants, gays, Muslims, Arabs, and social pariahs, but not governmental authorities, police personnel, or corporate plutocrats. The evidence to this point is astronomical. In no other nation is crime more colorized than in America. For centuries, and in many ways still today, the idea of being black was a crime in itself.  And this American ethos affects all political and social vulnerables, especially foreigners and particularly, Arabs and Muslims.

The idea of 'white crime' is nonsensical in this era of mass media and mass incarceration (white collar crime is not synonymous). Television (minstrel) shows like Cops, portray poor urban blacks as the sole proprietors of America’s criminal culture when in fact, statistics suggest that whites and blacks commit crimes at similar rates (see Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow). But perhaps more important is the reality that the government and corporate oligarchs steal and rob, albeit legally, from the public sector more than any street ‘thug’ could in a lifetime. But notice how different groups are labeled and how that labeling is distributed along color lines, i.e. blacks as criminals and politicians, overwhelmingly rich white men, as corrupt. This distinction, seemingly subtle, is profoundly implicating. Who’s the true criminal? And who are the real thugs? In the world of mass media: 1. welfare recipients are disproportionately 'lazy' black single mothers, although whites receive more government aid than any other racial group, 2. the only gangs are street gangs, although state militarism and police ‘squads’ are arguably the biggest and baddest gangs in the world, and 3. terrorists are invariably Arab, Muslim, and you got it, colored…although, between the militarism abroad and police brutality ‘at home,’ more people have been murdered and terrorized by the red, white, and boys in blue than all street gangs and terrorist organizations combined!

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New York City, like Srinagar, is an international hub, filled with tourists and fearful of terror. Ever since 9/11, fear of the Islamic faith and its followers has marginalized a significant population of the world (approximately 25%). This ‘hijabic’ hysteria has hijacked the rights and terrorized the freedom of many Muslims. Despite over 1.5 billion Muslims throughout the world, post 9/11 media focused on the 19 hijackers, Osama Bin Laden, and the Taliban. Misrepresentations like these are media missiles directed at the collective conscious of the masses. And its images act as W.M.D.’s (weapons of mass distortion), destroying our sense of reality. The injuries are ravaging: a diseased imagination, paralyzed immigration system, and broken movement for peace and justice. What a genius way to divert the people’s attention away from America’s state-sanctioned domestic terrorists by focusing on the so-called religious, cultural, and foreign 'enemy.'

If terrorism and tourism share a symbiotic relationship, then mass media is their sex toy, playing with its subscribers until we all climax in catastrophe.