14 ms·

Pretty sickening news, but I'm glad the writer used the term 'terrorist', something the MSM tend to shy away from when the perp is white. edit: Definiton of t

• mordant 10y ago
  Assuming the facts of the case are as reported, this looks like simple second-degree murder to me. Why do you think it's 'terrorism'? Why does the race of the parties involved matter to you?
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • mozumder 10y ago
    > Why do you think it's 'terrorism'? Because it was a politically motivated attack on civilians, the standard the FBI uses to determine terrorism.
    • mordant 10y ago
      Nothing that's been reported conclusively demonstrates this at all. For all we know, there was some prior history between the suspect and the victims.
      • mozumder 10y ago
        > For all we know Then you should attempt to know more before commenting, such as reading the article, or any of the other articles about this incident, where the gunman literally stated what his motives were. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/02/kansas-city-shooting-investigated-hate-crime-170224063319878.html http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/02/kansas-city-shooting-i...
    • 2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
      My one google didn't find the definition on the FBI website. But there is a description from the Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/fbi-definition-of-terrorism/418722/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/fbi-def... “Domestic terrorism” means activities with the following three characteristics: Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law; Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S. If this is correct, then no, this was not terrorism. Edit:formatting
      • hd4 10y ago
        >(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
      • mozumder 10y ago
        what? - Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law; Check. - (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; Check. - Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S. Check. Why are there so many people defending terrorism in this thread? White males are committing terrorist acts.. own it. From there we can figure out how to solve the problem of white-males committing terrorist acts.. how would you solve the problem of white males committing terrorist acts?
        • mikeash 10y ago
          Because a remarkable number of people are racist, even here.
          • breatheoften 10y ago
            I got into a argument with my German girlfriend last night that involved calling her a racist. We were discussing where to travel for our next holiday -- and it came to light that she would not go to France because she was afraid and said she would be uncomfortable there. She also told me that she is uncomfortable on the train when there are young muslim males on board. I tried to argue the statistics of risk with her and said that we should've also avoiding traveling to the US based on her risk assessment given the risk of being killed by mentally ill people with guns or white supremacist terrorists. Ultimately, in my opinion, she is just more comfortable with risk if it comes from white people than from brown -- I choose to call her a racist to try and demonstrate just how wrong I perceive her thinking to be. Its very depressing to watch the reasonableness and kindness of Germans that I used to perceive to be common and widespread so in decline... Racists really do seem like they are everywhere these days ...
  • nabeelkhalid 10y ago
    They killed him to send a message to immigrants. Leave or die. They sent this message using murder, so yes they 'terrorised' a migrant to stop them coming over.
    • mordant 10y ago
      Unless you know the state of mind of the shooter, I'm pretty sure you can't really say that, one thing or another. Nothing that it was reported that the suspect said points to anything other than animus against the particular victims.
      • nabeelkhalid 10y ago
        the title of the article “Get out of my Country!” White Terrorist Shoots Asian-American Engineers in Wake of Trump Visa Ban"
  • linuxkerneldev 10y ago
    > Assuming the facts of the case are as reported, simple second-degree murder to me Second degree murder is: 1) an intentional killing that is not premeditated or planned, nor committed in a reasonable "heat of passion"; or 2) a killing caused by dangerous conduct and the offender's obvious lack of concern for human life. Most articles state the equivalent of the following, I'm using the one from The Verge: " Purinton has been charged with one count of premeditated first degree murder, and two counts of attempted premeditated first degree murder. " > Why does the race of the parties involved matter to you? " A witness said he yelled “get out of my country” to two of the victims, reportedly saying the men, believed to originally be from India, were “Middle Eastern.” " That's the description of a hate-crime as he had no prior interaction with the victims. He picked on them precisely because of his perception of their skin color and mistakenly assuming they were his intended target out-group.
  • DanBC 10y ago
    > Why does the race of the parties involved matter to you? Because it mattered to the murderer. EDIT: For clarity, it can be both a hate crime and terrorism.
    • jaxn 10y ago
      Not sure why that was downvoted. That is a pretty simple litmus test for a hate-crime.
      • hd4 10y ago
        I think what is really objectionable about making this into purely a hate crime is that you are effectively saying because it's a hate crime, it can't also be politically-motivated i.e. terrorism. Much of the anger here is coming from this undeniable attempt to deflect what this really is. Like that other guy said, own it.
        • jaxn 10y ago
          I guess I don't understand the distinction of a hate crime vs terrorism. I would think hate crimes are a subset of terrorism and not a lessor charge.
          • saalweachter 10y ago
            Practically they are, but in the US you aren't supposed to say it out loud.
          • deleted 10y ago
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          • throwaway729 10y ago
            In theory, it's possible for hate crimes to not be terrorism. Kill someone because they are a certain color, but have no intent for any end goal beyond killing that one person. In practice, that probably never happens. Hate crimes almost always coincide with the intent to terrorize the target population.
  • hd4 10y ago
    Well, let's see. >the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims I think the very clear and undisguised political aim here is to stop non-whites from feeling welcome or safe to live and work in America.
  • hd4 10y ago
    Also, why are you so insistently trying to make this into something other than terrorism, which is clearly is, even by your own definition?
• jlebrech 10y ago
  when the perp is in the "in group" he's a lone wolf, when he's not he's a terrorist. simple really.
  • mozumder 10y ago
    The FBI definition of terrorism doesn't require it to be a group activity.
    • jaxn 10y ago
      In-group is a sociology term. He is saying it is bigger/different from whether or not the individual is white, but whether they are a member of the in-group.
    • k-mcgrady 10y ago
      I don't think the parent means a group of people committing a crime - they mean 'in group' as in US citizen/not the enemy.
      • creshal 10y ago
        That still doesn't make sense. Domestic terrorism is a thing and has been for decades.
    • jlebrech 10y ago
      it also have to be politically motivated too, but conducted by someone alienated by the populace (i.e war doesn't count) and white lunatic doesn't count as a terrorist, but dylan roof or eliot rogers does.
    • jdeee 10y ago
      I think you may have misunderstood the comment you are commenting on. I believe they were saying that members of the socially dominate group who perform crimes are seen as outliers while members of minority groups are seen as reflecting the values of the group.
  • makomk 10y ago
• Udik 10y ago
  In order to be a terrorist I think you need a political purpose, an ideology and a plan of some kind. From what I read in this case, this seems more like a deranged person. Instead of trying to apply the thought-blocking "terrorist" label to more people, I'd work to apply it to less people. Terrorist is often a very convenient way of referring to our enemies- when they start to hit back.
  • snsr 10y ago
    > In order to be a terrorist I think you need a political purpose, an ideology and a plan of some kind. Not in the US, where this cowardly, racist attack took place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_terrorism#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_terrorism#Unite...
  • mikeash 10y ago
    Political purpose: get rid of immigrants (of certain colors). Ideology: right-wing extremism. Plan: shoot some people in the group you want to leave, striking fear into the rest. Seems fitting to me.
    • Klockan 10y ago
      > Plan: shoot some people in the group you want to leave, striking fear into the rest. A person who shoots two people and then immediately goes to another bar to brag about it probably lacks the mental faculties to come up with such an elaborate plan.
      • nkrisc 10y ago
        What exactly is elaborate about a plan to shoot people?
        • Klockan 10y ago
          It isn't, but people accuse him of shooting people to scare away others which requires more thought. The murder is obviously premeditated, I am not arguing about that, I just argue that he probably didn't do it for any higher purpose than wanting them dead.
• DanielBMarkham 10y ago
  I'm sorry. I do not care about dictionaries. Words gain and lose meaning by connotation, not by dictionaries. Good working definitions increase our ability to solve problems. Poor working definitions decrease them. In this case the proposed definition is a poor one. If this is terrorism, there are dozens of terrorists acts every day. Hate crime? Sure. Drunken armed fool on his way to jail and a couple of guys just in the wrong place at the wrong time? Absolutely. Terrorism. Screw that. The word doesn't describe what happened. The western world is not in a war to stop armed stupid drunken men. Perhaps that's a great idea, but even then it wouldn't be terrorism. My working definition of terrorism, which has served me well over the years, is "the use of stealth to deliberately target civilians in order to effect political change"
  • roninb 10y ago
    By that definition, our own government is committing terroristic acts constantly. Hell, Facebook and Google are terrorists by that definition as well. I don't necessarily agree nor disagree with the particular event at hand being labeled as a terror attack, but I'd implore you to analyze your homebrew definition. What's added? What's left out? Why should the "mainstream" definition be changed? Is it not specific enough for the people you think we should target with that term? Is it too specifically targeting people you don't think we should care about?
  • barrkel 10y ago
    You have it backwards with that war; it's the "war on terror" that is a conceptual absurdity, it does not serve to prop up your definition of terror. Stealth - what does this mean? The people committing the acts need to be creeping around beforehand? Or that they need to not announce what they're going to do before they do it (not the case for Northern Ireland terrorism, where warning phone calls were all part of the terror tactic - get everyone evacuated). Further, in Northern Irish terrorism, civilians weren't deliberately targeted; in fact, many plots were modified to reduce the risk of injury to civilian bystanders. Disruption to civilians, sure, but the targets were more usually economic or governmental than civilian per se. "Effecting political change with violence committed by non-state civilian actors" might be a working definition. And I think right-wing nutjobs killing specifically targeted ethnicities counts, just as much in the US as it did in 1930s Germany.
• justin66 10y ago
  In the nineties the FBI categorized things like church burnings as acts of terrorism, understandably so. (and that's an important example, as there are depressingly many church burnings every year) I'm pretty sure those sorts of crimes still fall under the FBI's terrorism label but their political masters don't really play that up. "Violent crimes committed by people who are not like you who we'd like you to hate" is as accurate a definition of terrorism as anything at the political level, nowadays.
• ninv 10y ago
  It was not a planned attack. I would call it a hate crime instead of a terrorist attack.
  • jadell 10y ago
    Why should it not be both? "I hate non-white immigrants and I want them to get out of my country, and will use deadly force on a random subset of them in order to scare the others into leaving or not coming here" is both a racist and a political statement.
• geodel 10y ago
  > I'm glad the writer used the term 'terrorist', something the MSM tend to shy away from when the perp is white I think in this case it is easy one. Left wing white would still be outside terrorist category.