Double Standard

When a right- wing Christian vigilante kills, millions of fingers pull the trigger. When a left-wing Muslim vigilante kills, he kills alone.

This is the narrative in the Sunday shooting death of late-term abortion provider George Tiller of Kansas and the Monday shootings of two Arkansas military recruiters.

Tiller’s suspected murderer, Scott Roeder, is white, Christian, anti-government and anti-abortion. The alleged gunman in the military recruitment center attack, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, is black, a Muslim convert, anti-military and anti-American.

Both crimes are despicable acts of domestic terrorism. The disparate treatment of the two brutal cases by both the White House and the media is striking.

President Obama issued a statement condemning “heinous acts of violence” within hours of Tiller’s death. The Justice Department issued its own statement and sent federal marshals to protect abortion clinics. News anchors and headline writers abandoned all qualms about labeling the gunman a terrorist.

An almost gleeful excess of mainstream commentary poured forth on the climate of hate and fear created by conservative talk radio, blogs and Fox News in reporting Tiller’s activities.

By contrast, Obama was silent about the attacks that left 24-year-old Pvt. William Long dead and 18-year-old Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula gravely wounded.

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But Obama said nothing. The Justice Department was mum. So were the legions of finger-pointing pundits happily convicting the pro-life movement and every right-leaning writer of contributing to the murder of Tiller. {snip}

Why the silence? Politically and religiously motivated violence, it seems, is only worth lamenting when it demonizes opponents. Which also helps explain why the phrase “lone shooter” is ubiquitous in media coverage of jihadi shooters gone wild–think convicted “Jeep Jihadist” Mohammed Taheri-Azar at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill or Israel-bashing gunman Naveed Haq, who targeted a Seattle Jewish charity, or Los Angeles International Airport shooter Hesham Hedayet, who opened fire at the El Al Israeli airline ticket counter–but not in cases involving rare acts of anti-abortion violence.

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