By Manleen Bawa
A man ruthlessly guns down 59 humans and injures close to 500 people in Las Vegas, terrorising millions in the process. However, it is not deemed as a “terrorist” act, not labelled as a “societal” problem, rather, it becomes the case of a “sick” man.
There are a number of problems with this attribution of causes.
The Orient and the occident
A deep-rooted oriental outlook becomes obvious when approaching such international issues. A clear dichotomy between the treatment of attacks based on the targeted region and the origin of the attacker stands out. When a white man decides to fire at a concert gathering, the public is at a loss of a rational explanation. Yet, there has to be a logical explanation. Why else would a man just suddenly open fire on innocent people? Isn’t a countryman wreaking havoc upon his own people unfathomable?
It is appalling to see when such a treatment of excessively violent acts seems to disappear from discourse when it comes to attacks by an outfit or an individual not belonging to the same country, religion or race. Avoiding a detailed study of the causes as against responding with the stereotypical reason attribution to hate towards the West is evidently a manifestation of the well-established structure of Orientalism. The instant the attackers are identified as Muslim, all investigation of causality and motive is tossed aside to give way to a narrative of terror.
Logical motive v/s irrational carnage
Without wasting any time after a “terror attack” by a Muslim outfit, the media is quick to taint an entire religion as responsible for the inhumanity perpetrated by some. The spontaneous association of religion with its individual members, the fixation with the “others” religious identity as the motive for all violence is a frequent reference when the source of savagery is located outside. When a white man unleashes terrifying brutality upon fellow humans, the need to find a rational motivation is felt. However, when the attackers are identified as Muslim, the quest to look for sanity vanishes almost immediately. It must be another case of senseless violence in the name of God, what else? Any attempt to historicise the act is completely absent.
Mental health as an explanation
Calling Stephen Paddock a “very, very sick individual” or a “demented man” is easy when no logical explanation seems to put things into perspective. Simply brandishing his actions by questioning his mental health is a cowardly act. Contrary to popular belief, studies have shown that people suffering from “mental illnesses” are at a greater risk of being victims in a violent act rather than becoming an attacker themselves. What led him to carry out a mass execution of innocents may be unknown, but it is unfair to take recourse to laying the blame on an individuals mental health when no other explanation is visible.
His anti-social demeanour and resentment towards the government as possible causes of the attack are readily ignored.
The Las Vegas shooting from the Mandalay Bay hotel is one of the many examples of the principle of isolation at work. The course of action seems to be placing the individual outside his socio-political context and focussing on the individual alone to look for possible explanations to make sense of a crime against humanity, but only if he is white.
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