I am a survivor of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. The perpetrators, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan, planted two bombs on Boylston Street, killing three people and wounding more than 260 others. Days later, the Tsarnaev brothers killed an MIT police officer and, almost a year later, a Boston police officer died of the injuries he suffered in a shootout with the brothers.
On the day of the bombings, I was 21. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was 19. We both went to school in Massachusetts, dealt in sarcasm and corny jokes, and hated flip-top desks because they’re too small to sleep on. We like burritos, hate mosquitoes, and procrastinate too much.
Advertisement
We really aren’t so different.
Five years ago, I told a courtroom of strangers that I still hear sirens. I spoke of my injuries, the PTSD I suffer having witnessed the aftermath of the bombings, how I wake up screaming at night, and how I can’t listen to children laugh without my heart lodging in my throat. I said the Tsarnaev brothers taught me the meaning of fear. I meant it.
Then Tsarnaev apologized, and I forgave him.
After I recovered, I went on to study terrorism and trauma literature. I look for patterns in the writing of mass-casualty events. What I’ve found is a dichotomy: us versus them.
John Powell, director of the Othering & Belonging Institute at Berkeley Law, refers to this dichotomy as “othering.” We might recognize the concept from the spike in Islamophobic incidents after 9/11, or the rise of white nationalist rhetoric under the Trump administration. It’s the perpetuation of the false narrative that they threaten us. Powell warns that othering leads to “exclusion and dehumanization.”
We see this after every mass-casualty event: The media underscore the perpetrator’s anomalies. A New York Times article identified Timothy McVeigh’s “stunted personality.” The Unabomber struggled with gender identity. The Sandy Hook shooter was diagnosed with multiple mental health disorders. Part of the FBI‘s profile of a mass killer — “withdrawn, from a family with problems, strong feelings of inadequacy from early in life” — describes me, my siblings, and many of my friends.
Advertisement
Tsarnaev’s “anomaly” is that he calls his god “Allah.” This, it seems, is what folks latch onto. Would we have criticized him if he cited Jesus Christ?
When we dehumanize a perpetrator, we pretend we aren’t capable of violence. There is something wrong with him, not us. We absolve ourselves of culpability and wash our hands of the need for preventive action. These are the same fallacies we utter when shooters storm our offices and theaters and churches: We thought it couldn’t happen here. We never saw this coming. There was nothing we could do. This is why we claim gun control won’t prevent another Pulse or Las Vegas or Stoneman Douglas: If these perpetrators are mentally ill or extremists, we are not to blame.
We highlight differences so we don’t have to admit we perpetuate the problem.
Tsarnaev made clear why he detonated those bombs: “The US government is killing our innocent civilians. . . . We Muslims are one body, you hurt one you hurt us all.” Those of us who are not Muslim can use that statement to demonize Tsarnaev’s religion and all who practice it. Or we can concede fault.
Advertisement
Brown University’s Costs of War Project conservatively estimates that the United States was responsible for the deaths of nearly a quarter of a million innocent people in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan between 2001 and 2018. Are Americans not accountable for these lives? At the very least, we must recognize the pain the United States has caused. We cannot condemn Tsarnaev and, in the same breath, permit ourselves to commit similar acts. This is a horrific double standard.
To be clear, I am not advocating for exoneration. I do not need to be reminded of the destruction Tsarnaev caused; I was there. He hurt me. I am his collateral damage.
But Tsarnaev is a fully-fledged human. He was a college student who listened to hip-hop and watched “Game of Thrones” with his friends. He stayed up too late and hated doing laundry. He was a teenager who, like me, made stupid decisions. And, most importantly, he has taken accountability for his mistakes.
Acknowledging his humanity is the first step toward forgiveness.
Admitting our own failures is how we prevent this from happening again.
K. Mikey Borgard is a PhD student at the University of Missouri.