Domestic Terrorism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Domestic Terrorism - Essay Example The burning of churches, houses, and farms, and animals and property, as well as the lynching of human beings is without question cowardly and sociopathic, but had these acts been committed by individuals living in a jurisdiction in which their crimes were not just excused by the highest echelons of local jurisprudence, but actually extolled as a method of preserving the fabric of society and the foundation of liberty and democracy, those actions would lost their truly tragic dimension. That tragic dimension is expressed in the concept of a continuing pattern that would never have been stopped without the intervention of outside forces. Part of the tragedy engendered by the Klan’s willingness to murder, burn, and intimidate is expressed in the movie: the passage of ignorance and fear from generation to generation. That the violent activities engaged in by the Ku Klux Klan qualify as terrorism is without question. The Klan burns down a farm purely for the purpose of intimidation. The fact that the fire kills valuable horses as well as other property and that no money or items are stolen indicates the motivation. Terrorism is defined by nothing else more than motivation. If terrorism can be defined as acts of violence intended to maintain or change a system of social order, then clearly the murders, fires and collusion of protection offered by the sheriff’s department and the local judge indicates that terrorism is exactly what is taking place in among the white residents of the Mississippi town that is the setting of the film. If it can be determined that the specific actions of lynching, beating, and destruction of property were committed to ensure that black residents could not exercise their right to vote because the implicit assumption would be that they would cast their vote in an effort to change the social order of a segregated