Boston and the Ghost of Terrorism
The ghost of terrorism in the US seems to have the face of two young men of Chechen origins and Islamic faith, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, killed today during a gunfight with the police in Watertown, and his brother, Dzhorak Tsarnaev, who is currently still wanted.
The nature of the two brothers’ actions is still unclear. It is controversial whether the terrorist act can be ascribed to the circuit of international terrorism or if it is an isolated gesture of loose cannons.
As of this morning, those were the two most accredited hypotheses about the terrorist act that resulted in the death of three people and hurt over 170 during the marathon in Boston. The first hypothesis would attribute the episode to Al–Quaeda, the international terrorist organization responsible for the attack to the World Trade Center; the second theory would connect the tragedy with the national terrorism that has arisen out of resentment toward the current government and the malevolence toward the fight for more stringent gun control and represents an extreme right–wing fringe group that is hostile toward reforms, taxes and topics of immigration, same sex marriage and abortion.
Immediately, the reaction of the White House was to mobilize a national security team to protect people of Boston, investigate and respond to the attack.
President Obama, who today visited the city of Boston and participated in an interfaith ceremony dedicated to the victims, restated tha «the Americans refuse to be terrorized». Obama’s words in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross were: «Every one of us has been touched by this attack on your beloved city. Every one of us stands with you». He reaffirmed that the spirit of this city is undaunted, and the spirit of this country shall remain undimmed. Remembering his past as a young law student at Harvard, Obama said he’s sure that the city «will run again» because «if they sought to intimidate us, to terrorize us, to shake us from those values that Deval described, (Governor of Massachusetts, editor’s note), the values that make us who we are as Americans – well, it should be pretty clear by now that they picked the wrong city to do it. […] We summon the strength that maybe we didn’t even know we had and we carry on. We finish the race».
Boston‘s wound is even deeper if we think of what the capital represents, its proud past, independent spirit and democratic heritage. It is one of the oldest cities in the US and an unlimited source of inspiration for cinema and literature. David Foster Wallace set Infinite Jest, a profoundly metaphorical novel of the American society, in a futuristic Boston. In the novel, one of its characters says, «See yourself in your opponents. They will bring you to understand the Game. To accept the fact that the Game is about managed fear».