The Orlando (Florida) massacre on the night of Saturday June 11 to Sunday June 12 is the deadliest in the history of the United States. At least 49 people died (plus the shooter himself) and 53 others were injured at Pulse, an LGBTQ (Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) nightclub, according to a non-final report. The alleged shooter, Omar Mateenhas pledged allegiance to the Islamic State organization.
The main thing to remember
- A heavily armed man opened fire at the Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando;
- The FBI confirmed that it was Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old American citizen, born to Afghan parents;
- He took several people hostage before being shot by special forces;
- 49 people died, 53 were injured;
- The Islamic State organization claimed responsibility for the attack.
Mass shooting, bombing, terrorist attack, homophobic crime… What words should be used to describe this tragedy? While Americans pay tribute to the fallen, for the LGBTQ community, recognizing the victims is also about the choice of words.
Attack or mass shooting?
Here are the definitions of the various terms used to evoke the Orlando massacre:
Shooting. According to the definitions, the shots must be reciprocal or not. In practice, there is widespread use in the media of killings by an active shooter, without an exchange of fire. In addition, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) speaks of mass killing from four victims. We can therefore speak of a “mass shooting” in the case of Orlando, given the seriousness of the balance sheet.
Attack. The Larousse defines it as a “attack on the fundamental interests of the nation”. We find the same notion in Robert, who sees in it a “criminal attempt against a person” or “against something” (a politician, freedom, state security, etc.).
The attack would therefore go beyond the simple notion of murder or criminal act and would rather be characterized by its symbolic significance, even beyond the facts. This opens the door to interpretations. US President Barack Obama contributed to giving this symbolic dimension to the Orlando massacre by evoking “an act of terror and hatred” Sunday June 12. On the subject of Orlando, we can therefore speak of both a shooting and an attack, knowing that the two expressions evoke two different aspects of the drama (the massacre by arms for the first, the horror and its symbolic repercussions for the second).
Terrorism or homophobic crime?
Homophobia. For the Larousse, it is “systematic hostility towards homosexuals”, which can be extended to the entire LGBTQ community. In France, homophobia is also a legal concept: article 132-77 of the penal code provides that the act of committing an offense by reason of “the sexual orientation of the victim” is an aggravating circumstance to several crimes or misdemeanors.
Is the killing a homophobic crime? Besides the fact that it was hard to ignore that the Pulse was a hotspot for Orlando’s gay community, statements to NBC News of Seddique Matteen, the father of the alleged terrorist, Omar Mateen, accredit this hypothesis. According to him, his son had become angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami two months before the tragedy.
Terrorism. When can a killer be called a “terrorist”? The question is debated depending on the situation and the country. In France, the Penal Code defines as acts of terrorism those offenses which are “intentionally in connection with an individual or collective enterprise aimed at seriously disturbing public order by intimidation or terror. » The American Patriot Act also sees it as a “activity intended to intimidate or coerce civilian populations, influence government policy through intimidation or coercion”.
At least three opposing conceptions define the terrorist act:
- we cannot distinguish between mass killing and terrorismwhich therefore automatically makes a murderous shooting like the one in Orlando an act of terrorism;
- it is the motives of the culprit that are taken into account, an “unbalanced” person cannot in particular be considered a “terrorist”;
- it is the claim or not of the facts by a terrorist group that takes precedence.
In the case of Orlando, the debate is therefore whether the claim of the attack by Daesh is enough to speak of “terrorism”, or whether we have to wait for the progress of the investigation into the profile of Omar Mateen and his motivations for speaking out. American justice will also have its say in qualifying the facts on the legal level.
A terrorist and homophobic act?
The difference in meaning between the words “racist and/or homophobic crime” and “terrorist act” has particular meaning for minorities. This was already the case in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015, when white supremacist Dylan Roof opened fire in a church attended by African Americans. If he was finally charged with “racist crime” by federal justice (which requires the death penalty against him), the question arose of qualifying the attack as a “terrorist” act. On the contrary, President Barack Obama had underlined the political dimension of this killing, which recalled “the darkest hours of history”.
In this case, the Orlando shooting can be considered both a terrorist act and a homophobic crime. It remains to be seen which of these two qualifications will be put forward.
For the LGBTQ community, the challenge is to qualify the event as an anti-gay attack, and therefore to include it in the long list of attacks against gay nightclubs since the 1970s:
- in 1973, in New Orleans, the UpStairs Lounge was set on fire, killing 32 people in less than twenty minutes;
- in 1996, Eric Robert Rudolph, the “Olympic Park Bomber”, planted a bomb in the Otherside Lounge, a lesbian nightclub in Atlanta;
- in 2000, Ronald Gay opened fire on the Backstreet Cafe in Roanoke, Virginia, killing one and injuring six;
- in 2013, Musab Mohammed Masmari set fire to Neighbours, a Seattle nightclub, on New Year’s Eve. He explained that he thought gays “must be exterminated”.
These attacks on party venues add to the long list of individualized homophobic attacks and murders.
Already, voices are being raised for protest against the media treatment of the attack at the Pulse, more often described as a terrorist crime than a “hate crime” (“hate crime” in French, implied “homophobic”).
Nicolas Martin’s press review broadcast this morning on France Culture speaks « d’invisibilisation » in the French press, because this information is relegated to the background, according to him. “There isn’t a headline that includes this information, which is not incidental. This disco, this club… it’s a gay club. »