Terrorism, its causes, incidents, etc.
Thread from the old Forum:
Dylann Roof has received the death sentence.
Not my preferred form of punishment, but I can’t say that if you are going to have the death penalty he is a prime candidate for it.
Counterpoint: he appears to have a schizoid disorder of some kind. He’s a fine line edge case.
I oppose the death penalty with the sole exception of “crimes against humanity.”
I feel the death penalty debate requires it’s own thread, rather than to hijack the terrorism in the modern world thread. I say this because I have no strong opinion on the matter. It’s fundamentally a question of whether or not it is “just” for society to kill one of its own under any circumstance, and if so, when? If you look at it that way you have to define society and then we’re just out into the weeds.
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I always liked this line from Deus Ex
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3aiKuzNeno
“If there wasn’t organized oppression, there wouldn’t be organized resistance, and what you call terrorism would not exist”
Is this because I made a joke about your username in the other thread? Because it’s unwise to give me that much power, really, I tend to use it to make really dumb jokes.
I wasn’t sure if I should post it, but that dumb joke pushed me over the edge.
On Monday a nutcase drove a van into pedestrians in Toronto, killing 10. The man in question, Alek Minassian, has now been caught. Apparently he posted to Facebook that he was going after “Chads” and “Stacys” and dedicating the deed to Elliot Rodger. Rodger killed 6 and injured 14 more in an attack in Isla Vista, California in 2014. Rodger’s manifesto became popular with the Incel (short for “involuntary celibate”) community of shithead mysoginists who blame anybody but themselves for their inability to get laid. Apparently Minassian was an Incel himself, with “Chad” and “Stacy” being derogatory terms for normal people of respective genders.
Normally, I don’t start calling someone a “terrorist,” no matter the color of their skin, religion, etc., until some notion of their motivation becomes public. In other words, someone who went on a shooting spree because his dog told him that all those people were actually lizard people trying to take over the world is not a terrorist whereas someone who went on a shooting spree because he’s declared allegiance to a ruthless, terrorist organization determined to rule the world is a terrorist.
While I purposefully picked two extremes of the spectrum between random nutjob and terrorist, I realize that the real world isn’t as black and white. For example, until I hear otherwise, I think the Waffle House shooter isn’t a terrorist as I haven’t yet heard anything in the news concerning his motivation to see if it’s in line with “terrorism.” This is, of course, subject to change as more news comes out. For that matter, I feel the same about the (coincidentally Muslim) San Bernadino shooters from a couple years ago – their case is much more akin to a wacko going postal at work than actual terrorism. However, Dylan Roof most absolutely is a terrorist.
Now, concerning this guy in Toronto, he’s definitely a terrorist given how he has this misogynistic streak and his rampage was certainly part of sending a message about said streak.
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I hear where you’re coming from and agree with a lot of the sentiment. At the same time, the sense I get is that the modern understanding of terrorism and usage of the word (similarly to modern understanding of racism) is evolving to encompass more subtle/insidious forms that aren’t so blatant, but still fit into a larger/growing pattern and so are not mere isolated anomalies.
Well, it comes down to “is the perpetrator attempting to say some sort of political/social message via his violent act?”. If so, then it’s a terrorist act. Examples of this would be things like:
- I hate LGBTQ people
- I hate people outside my own race/ethnicity
- I hate people that don’t follow my religion
- I hate people who disagree with my political ideology
- I hate women
- etc.
Examples of motivations for a violent act that would not be terrorism but instead would be the act of a disturbed individual would be:
- I hate my co-workers because they make fun of me
- I hate my classmates because they make fun of me
- My dog told me to do it
- My god told me do it… as in he told me directly, via voices in my head, not via some holy book or religious leader (where it may start to overlap with terrorism)
- I did it for the lulz
- Aliens
- etc.
These are just rough categories and individual cases may vary, of course, but I think this sums up how I break down terrorist vs. nutjob.
The thing is, we don’t want to dilute the term terrorist, and by calling every random wacko a terrorist, we could potentially open up a whole can of worms that we don’t want to. For better or worse, terrorism crimes tend to have different procedures and penalties for handling them, often harsher, vs. non-terrorism crimes.
A couple of hours ago a coordinated attack on multiple mosques in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, occurred. One of the perpetrators posted a manifesto to 8chan and live-streamed the massacre. Be on the lookout to not share this filth.
Apparently in the Manifesto he cites multiple american right-wing personalities such as Candace Owens as inspiration. He also yelled “Subscribed to pewdiepie” before opening fire. Hopefully the world finally wakes up that “ironic internet nazism” was only ever a ploy for radicalization.
I fucking hate this world.
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He also specifically called out Australian Senator Fraser Anning, one of the most racist motherfuckers ever to hold a seat. And yeah, I mean that going back all the way to the country’s founding.
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And just as it happens, that racist fuckwit who I only learned about today has blamed Muslims for the attack as in “that’s what a country gets when it lets muslims move in”. JFC I could puke.
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Motherfucker did it for Pewdiepie, incels, and literal nazis. He appears to have had several accomplices.
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I didn’t hear about these accomplices. I assume the NZ govt. is going to take them down?
Apparently they had four people in custody but had let one person go.
They seem to have helped spread the manifesto. Probably “friends” from 8chan.
Maybe it is me completely oblivous, but how have I never heard that one of the Columbine shooters was a goddamn Neo-nazi? I mean, I guess I was 13 when that even went down, but I still remember a lot of hubbub and blame going around, from video games to Marilyn Manson to whatever. Yet I don’t remember it being a big deal that one of the shooters repeatedly performed Nazi salutes on campus and praised the Nazis’ ethnic cleansing of disabled people in his journal? How the fuck did I only learn about this today, almost 20 years after the thing went down?
The media really downplayed that aspect of their attack as “kids being kids” =(