The FBI's definition of "terrorist" has been criticized by academics in the past. For example, attacks on property and attacks on humans have been grouped toget

The FBI's definition of "terrorist" has been criticized by academics in the past. For example, attacks on property and attacks on humans have been grouped together leading to stuff like "vegan extremists free help some factory farm pigs escape" and "rightwing extremist shoots up a hospital that provides abortion access" (a shockingly common event tbh) both bring grouped under the same label. Whatever you think of vegans or factory farming, I think most people would agree these are pretty different categories. In a past review the FBI analyzed their data by grouping it into "leftwing", "rightwing", and "salafi-jihadist" categories of domestic terrorism. Leftwing violence was still the smallest out of these (and with the exception of 2001, rightwing violence led), but not by much given that the vast majority events under that category were "ecoterrorism" And that's just domestically. Internationally most countries know the label is a joke and purely a political tool used against anyone the US doesn't like. The "ecoterrorist" label is particularly brutal as it's been used to justify the state's murder of many indigenous activists, particularly in the Amazon tl:dr; "terrorist" is a political term