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Terror and Trickster ABSTRACT TERROR AND TRICKSTER One of the ways in which rhetors stabilize the meaning of terrorism is through the vilification process. Two sets of artifacts were analyzed to explore the rhetorical mechanisms of and alternatives to radical vilification. The first set of artifacts demonstrates how Orthodox Terrorism Studies (OTS) scholars vilify and exclude Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) scholars and their ideas. I argue OTS scholars perform rhetorical exclusion (Sanchez, Stuckey, & Morris, 1999) through naming, shifting the burden of proof, and strategic silence (Endres, 2009) to vilify CTS scholars. The second set of artifacts focuses on President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry’s rhetoric about ISIL from the first time they mentioned ISIL up to the execution of James Foley, a journalist. I analyze the speeches for vilification through rhetorical exclusion (naming and strategic silence), metaphors, and the Manichean dichotomy of Good vs. Evil. Finally, an alternative framework is offered to replace radical vilification. The alternative is the Trickster, an archetypal figure common to Native American and other indigenous discourse. Farrokh Eizadiboroujeni August 2016 i ii TERROR AND TRICKSTER by Farrokh Eizadiboroujeni A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Communication in the College of Arts and Humanities California State University, Fresno August 2016 APPROVED For the Department of Communication: We, the undersigned, certify that the thesis of the following student meets the required standards of scholarship, format, and style of the university and the student's graduate degree program for the awarding of the master's degree. Farrokh Eizadiboroujeni Thesis Author Kevin Ayotte (Chair) Communication Douglas Fraleigh Communication Hillary Jones Communication For the University Graduate Committee: Dean, Division of Graduate Studies AUTHORIZATION FOR REPRODUCTION OF MASTER’S THESIS X I grant permission for the reproduction of this thesis in part or in its entirety without further authorization from me, on the condition that the person or agency requesting reproduction absorbs the cost and provides proper acknowledgment of authorship. Permission to reproduce this thesis in part or in its entirety must be obtained from me. Signature of thesis author: v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I dedicate this thesis to Rochelle who was my support throughout graduate school. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................ 1 Mixed Feelings: A Reflection ........................................................................... 1 Justification for the Study ................................................................................. 5 ISIL’s Inception and Growth .......................................................................... 10 Preview ............................................................................................................ 18 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL GROUNDING ............................................................................................. 20 Previous Research ........................................................................................... 20 Rhetoric, Ontology, and Epistemology ........................................................... 26 Vilification ...................................................................................................... 32 Method and Artifacts ....................................................................................... 39 CHAPTER 3: VILIFICATION AND RHETORICAL EXCLUSION IN TERRORISM STUDIES ............................................................................. 42 Tension in Terrorism Studies .......................................................................... 43 Vilification through Rhetorical Exclusion ...................................................... 45 Implications ..................................................................................................... 58 CHAPTER 4: VILIFICATION IN THE U.S. GOVERNMENT’S RHETORIC ON ISIL ....................................................................................................... 60 Rhetorical Exclusion of ISIL .......................................................................... 60 Metaphors ........................................................................................................ 68 Manichean Dichotomy .................................................................................... 78 CHAPTER 5: THE TRICKSTER .......................................................................... 84 The Trickster ................................................................................................... 84 The Trickster in Action ................................................................................... 89 REFERENCES ....................................................................................................... 95 APPENDIX .......................................................................................................... 116 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Mixed Feelings: A Reflection It is hard for those of us who lived through September 11, 2001 (9/11) to forget those moments. In 2001, I was living in Greece. However, in September, I was visiting my family in Iran, my home country. I stood in the middle of our living room watching the news coverage. I was transfixed by the TV for 45 minutes. It looked like a movie. Then I heard the reports about people jumping out of the buildings to escape the fire. My palms were sweaty. A film of sweat covered my body. I recall thinking, “this is going to be big”; however, I could not fathom the scale of the impact that event would have on the world. I remember the candlelight vigils held the next night for the victims as we drove around in the city. The vast majority of Iranians, from people in the street to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, condemned the terrorist attack. In the following months, as I traveled back to Greece and then to Italy, the political pundits, politicians, experts, and ordinary people repeatedly used the word “terrorism” without defining it. “Terrorism” became synonymous with 9/11, death, and barbaric Muslims living in caves. It seemed as though terrorism did not exist before 9/11. In October of that same year, the United States invaded Afghanistan in response to 9/11. I was excited. Finally, someone was going to take care of those cave-dwelling savages who perpetrated 9/11! A couple of years passed. By that point, a day did not go by without someone talking about terrorism. However, the conversation surrounding Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi President, and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) intensified as United Nations (UN) inspectors visited Iraq repeatedly to determine if he had WMD. In February 2003, I was in Syria to apply for a visa to come to the United 2 2 States. I remember watching Colin Powell, Secretary of State for President George W. Bush, deliver his famous speech to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) asserting that Saddam Hussein had, and was actively producing, chemical and biological weapons. Powell also alleged that Hussein had assisted al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. Among other evidence, Powell showed satellite images of bunkers where Hussein stored the weapons, graphics of the sophisticated mobile production facilities, and video of jets spraying biological agents to support his case to the UNSC. For me, it was an open and shut case, especially because George Tenet, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), sat behind Colin Powell as he delivered the speech. I perceived Tenet’s presence as a stamp of approval from the CIA, the strongest intelligence agency in the world, on Powell’s evidence and analysis. Shortly after Powell’s speech, the United States attacked Iraq. I was even more excited this time. Most Iranians deeply disliked Saddam Hussein because of the antagonism between Persians, Iran’s largest ethnic group (Amanolahi, 2005), and Arabs, Iraq’s largest ethnic group (Middle East: Iraq, 2016), and because Hussein had invaded Iran in 1980, inciting a deadly and costly eight-year war between the two countries (Doucet, 2015). Finally, someone would take care of the genocidal dictator who had caused so much harm and pain to his neighbors! On March 19, 2003, the U.S. military operation began in Iraq (Torreon, 2015). I recall watching CNN as U.S. troops toppled Hussein’s statute in Baghdad’s Firdos square on April 9, 2003. Saddam Hussein had been dethroned. It was over, and Iraqis could now govern themselves. Immediately after the U.S. invasion, however, a wave of insurgency emerged and plunged Iraq into a brutal civil war. The situation was not much better in Afghanistan. A question lingered in my mind. Why was the strongest 3 3 military in the world unable to defeat a bunch of crazy people with AK-47s? In the course of casually investigating this question, I came across stories about how ordinary people were becoming “terrorists.” I wondered, what would I do if U.S. forces dragged my father out of our house in the middle of the night and took him to Abu Ghraib prison for a year because someone in the neighborhood reported him as a terrorist? What would I do if U.S. forces bombed my sister into pieces while she picked okra in a field in Afghanistan? Would I join the insurgency or a terrorist organization to expel the foreign occupation from the
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