In light of John Kasich’s pledge to keep refugees out of Ohio, columnist Daniel Kington argues our response to the attacks in Paris should not be to bar refugees or revamp the war on terror, but to fight back against the systems he claims are responsible for terrorism.
On Nov. 16, John Kasich’s administration announced that the governor is asking President Obama to stop resettling refugees in Ohio and is looking into “additional steps Ohio can take to stop resettlement of these refugees” (i.e. policies that will make it difficult for refugees to enter Ohio even if the governor’s mission is not supported at a federal level). This comes amid a slew of other Western nations closing their borders to refugees — an absolutely senseless and racist act.
Refugees are already the most vetted population of any group that arrives in the US. Furthermore, many of those refugees are fleeing the violence of ISIS. To deny those refugees their safety can only be motivated by either pure stupidity or pure hatred and racism. ISIS wants to deepen the racial and cultural conflict between the Middle East and the West in order to draw more people into their camp, and through the current rhetoric of the Western right, they are succeeding.
As stated in ISIS’s English language publication, Dabiq, “The blessed operations of September 11th ... manifested two camps before the world for mankind to choose between, a camp of Islam ... and a camp of kufr [unbelief].” To see the success of terrorism’s racial divisiveness, we need look no further than the words of George W. Bush who, in the aftermath of 9/11, boldly proclaimed that “you’re either with us or against us.” We need look no further than the recent pledge of the Kasich administration to close Ohio’s borders to refugees.
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This racially based divisiveness encouraged by so many Western political leaders is based out of an ethno-centric idea of what terrorism is and where it comes from. For instance, any Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation is deemed terrorism while Israel’s violence against the Palestinian people is not. In the case of ISIS, the West continues to wage its endless war against terror, dropping bombs that frequently kill civilians and barring refugees even though terrorism is itself (albeit indirectly) incited by the global power dynamics of Western imperialism, and more directly reinforced through the wars of the West and its racist policies.
I know there are many people out there who would, in reaction to the argument I’m setting forth in this column, say that I am trying to make tragedy into politics and ignore the reality of the violence in Paris. However, the idea that this sort of violence is not inherently political is completely flawed. The Paris attacks are already having concrete impacts on Western political policy, which will kill or hurt many more people than even the Paris attacks themselves.
I would argue, in fact, that any solidarity with Paris simply cannot be apolitical. Even the act of changing your profile picture to a French flag has political undertones which are, in fact, extremely counter-productive. Small as it may seem, this act contributes wider demonstrations of Western nationalism, such as the closing of our borders. As many internet activists are currently proclaiming, nobody made their profile picture into a Lebanese flag following the attack in Beirut. That we do so now, for Paris, is only because we implicitly support the mission of the West and Western nationalism as well. Fueling the fires of French nationalism at this moment will make it all the easier for France to enact even more racist and xenophobic policies than it already has.
Instead of supporting nationalist imperialism by changing our profile pictures or supporting policies that bar refugees and encourage more war, we need to put an end to the West’s role in all this violence by fighting to end Western imperialism. We cannot end terror by inflicting more terror upon the world. This is circular and endless. It only encourages those we hope to fight against.
Right now, as a society, we should be seriously reflecting upon the exploitative role we’ve taken in the world. We should ask how such hatred, embodied in ISIS and the powers of the IMF and the World Bank alike, has come to exist. And this is where the attack in Paris should cause us to turn our energy — not against terror itself (since this only feeds into the agenda of the terrorists) or against non-Western peoples generally, but against the global powers that bred the attack.
Daniel Kington is a sophomore studying English and a Student Union organizer. He is also an officer of the Sierra Student Coalition. What do you think about refugees resettling in Ohio? Email him at dk982513@ohio.edu.
