Should Robert Bowers, the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting suspect, be called a terrorist?

In other words, his actions were motivated by an extreme ideology, one of the criteria often used in definitions of terrorism (see the FBI terrorism definition, here). Georgetown professor Daniel Byman argues that it is “probably right” to call Bowers a terrorist, but notes that public officials and the media often do not know what to call acts of violence by domestic extremists. Many observers voiced similar ambivalence about what to call Dylann Roof, the self-declared white supremacist who killed nine African American worshipers at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina in 2015.

But what if Bowers was an Islamic Islamist militant instead of an alleged white supremacist? Would the terrorism label be readily used? In a forthcoming article with my colleague Vito D’Orazio, we find that the answer is likely “yes.”

[What political science can tell us about mass shootings]

Here’s how we did our research

We recruited 1,198 U.S.-based participants in April of 2016 through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service, and conducted an experiment in which we presented subjects with a (fictional) news story describing a foiled shooting attempt. Participants were asked to describe the details of the story and label the type of violence reported from options that included “terrorism” and “mass shooting,” along with other labels such as individual homicide, gang violence, and “unknown.” (Amazon chief executive, Jeffrey T. Bezos, owns The Washington Post.)

We divided participants into six groups of roughly 200 participants, each of which received slightly different stories. In the control group, we do not mention the suspect’s name or ethnicity. In another group, we describe the failed shooter as being “white,” while a third group is told he’s “Arab-American.” A fourth group was told that the white shooter belongs to a white supremacist group; a fifth that the Arab American shooter belongs to an Islamic extremist group; and a sixth that a person of unidentified ethnicity belongs to an unspecified extremist organization.

The results are statistically significant and striking. Relative to the control, the Arab suspect was 18 percentage points more likely to be called a terrorist. Conversely, there was no statistical difference between how participants labeled the white suspect and the control group’s unidentified suspect.

While belonging to any militant organization raises the odds of labeling an act of violence as terrorism, the ideology of the group matters a lot. Only 9.5 percent of respondents called the white supremacist a terrorist, while 58 percent did so for the Islamic extremist. Indeed, compared with those told that the suspect “has ties to an [unspecified] extremist group,” participants who were told the suspect belonged to a white supremacist organization actually reduced the odds that they called the incident “terrorism.”

Americans are quick to label Muslim shooters “terrorists” and white shooters “mentally ill” 

What we found is consistent with what Connor Huff and Joshua Kertzer found in a similar study, strengthening the idea that Americans are more likely to call Muslim perpetrators terrorists than they are to use that label for white perpetrators. This adds confidence that our results are not an artifact of our research method.

[If the gunman was Muslim, would we be talking about Las Vegas ‘terrorism’?]

We ran a second wave of our study, this time with 450 participants, shortly after the Orlando nightclub shooting in 2016, in which Omar Mateen, who was Muslim, killed 49 people, to see if the results grew stronger in the aftermath of a high-profile incident. The nightclub shooting had no effect on our results; the link between religion/ethnicity and the terrorism label seems to be quite stable.

Participants in both rounds of our experiment also were more likely to tell us that the white shooter was mentally ill, while the Arab American shooter was thought to be motivated by political or religious ideology — even though the story did not mention motive.

Apparently, Americans view violent acts very differently depending on the ethnicity of the perpetrator. Whites and self-declared white supremacists are rarely called terrorists, while people of Middle East descent are quickly given that label.

What we label violence has important consequences 

Does it matter? Yes. Calling an act of violence “terrorism” has legal, political and psychological implications. Mass shootings provoke policy debates about gun control and appropriate mental health screening, which we also address in our study. Most of the time, such incidents prompt little meaningful legislation. The term “terrorism” is arguably more pejorative and threatening than “mass shooting” or “hate crime.” Terrorist incidents have pushed the United States to fight wars, change airport screening regulations, and restrict immigration, among other responses. But these labels are applied inconsistently, depending on who is responsible for the violence.

[Americans who live closer to a mass shooting are more likely to support gun regulation]

Over the last decade, self-identified white supremacists have killed more Americans than Islamist militants. Yet, a recent paper reveals that these attacks receive far less media attention than attacks by Muslims, contributing to the notion that Islamic terrorism is an existential threat while racist violence is a rare aberration. Some political leaders have fueled this narrative as well, by focusing on threats from foreigners rather than domestic extremists.

Calling people who commit hate crimes, including self-declared white supremacists, terrorists would draw attention and, potentially, resources, to racist violence carried out in the name of an extremist ideology against groups such as Jews, African Americans, Sikhs, Muslims, immigrants, members of the LGBTQ+ community and others. Self-declared white supremacists want to turn the United States into a culturally exclusive society. In that way, they resemble groups like the Islamic State, which wants to construct a “pure” religious community, expelling or subjugating those who think or pray differently.

Terrorism can be considered not just an objective fact but also a socially constructed reality, defined by the language and connotations embedded in the words used. White supremacy has a long and ugly history in the United States. Its extremist worldview also has the potential to inspire more attacks on large numbers of unarmed people.

Idean Salehyan is a professor of political science at the University of North Texas.