What's Going on in Austin?

That’s doesn’t follow.

“The government stole my land, so it’s a personal motive. Not terrorism!”

“Those People stole jobs I should have gotten, so not terrorism!”

“They refused to accept my beliefs. Not terrorism!”

In all those cases, we’d still label that “terrorism” - well, we would if the perpetrator was a Muslim, anyway. If it was some white guy, we would instead decide to make an effort to see how “challenged” he was.

In fact, the word “terrorism” has basically nothing to do with the perpetrator or his motives at all. It has everything to do with us.

People who go on a killing spree and then kill themselves are by and large quite similar. They are all not right in the head at the time they commit their actions. And they all think they’re making a grand statement with their killings they want the world to see - otherwise they’d just commit suicide and be done with it.

We use the word “terrorism” not to understand the perpetrators of these acts but rather to make the world easy to understand for ourselves. Did the perpetrator belong to some strange, other culture we don’t know very much about? Well, who knows why those people do anything, and that’s scary - they must be part of some organized agenda to destroy our culture. So, “terrorism.”

Did they belong to our own culture instead? Hmmm, that’s harder to figure our. Our culture is awesome, why would anyone who’s part of it want to destroy it? Can’t be “terrorism” then. They must be “troubled” or “challenged.”

In both cases we get to throw the perps’s motives into one of two handy boxes without having to think about the actual specifics. Which is the irony of it all. Nobody ever pays attention to the perp’s actual grand statement. By the time it comes out, we’ve already substituted our own.

Yes. He was from the wacko Texas Christian fundamentalist culture where they homeschool their kids. That’s why you’re reacting the way that you are.

… And how is that, pray tell?

Calling them all terrorists is just an attempt to politicize that which in many cases isn’t political.

Those are all political things and would probably be considered terrorism.

If it was “Jeff made fun of me in math class and Jerry stole my girlfriend,” it’s not really terrorism most of the time. If his List was just people he wanted to get even with it’s seen differently than if his list is say “SJWs” or minorities targeted just because they’re minorities.

I mean if a Muslim dude robs a 7-11 it’s “terrorism” to a lot of people. Doesn’t make those people right.

No need to argue about this, our friends at FOX News have a handy chart to let us know who’s a terrorist and who isn’t.

But what if it’s, “The rich kids are arrogant assholes who make fun of me and the poor kids frighten me and I think they’re gonna beat me up and that girl won’t go out with me because I’m the wrong religion and this other girl won’t go out with me because I have the wrong number of vowels in my name and my dad keeps laying all this weird family crap on me because of our ‘heritage’ and will. not. shut. up. about. it.”

There’s a whole lot of “political” stuff inherently wrapped up in being a high school teenager that many adults forget because they’ve bubbled themselves up in a world where they don’t actually have to deal with people of other backgrounds much of the time.

True, but hating the rich kids for picking on you isn’t because of some socio-economic ideology. It’s because they’re assholes.

Again, impossible to really say without knowing exactly what was in his confession. Plus he’s a white dude so he could literally blow up a Mosque while screaming “Seig Heil” and they probably wouldn’t call it terrorism.

He was a religiously motivated terrorist, just like ISIS.

The religious angle doesn’t really work here, at least not this directly. You’d have to believe that he somehow never left any trace of his fanaticism except a really tame blog post opposing gay marriage. Then the Austin police get his confession and lie about it for some reason.

When I hear that he was motivated by “challenges in his personal life” that sounds more like an incel to me. The homeschooling and wacko upbringing may have contributed to him ending up that way, but it’s not like he just blew a bunch of people up because his church told him to.

I don’t think anyone is saying this. But could his church upbringing have affected his thinking?

We’re discussing semantics here. The fucker was messed up, the things he did to others was horrible. You can’t argue someone is NOT messed up that intends to blow up other people with bombs. You might not know their motivations, but, “messed up kid,” or, “troubled,” or, “not an angel,” are not terms we should be using.

NPR wrote a summary during the Las Vegas event. Terrorist isn’t something that is easily defined and even more, not good to throw in the mix when we have other charges that work. If Timothy McVeigh wasn’t a domestic terrorist, neither was this current asshole.

But McVeigh was considered a terrorist. At the time.

Absolutely. McVeigh and company were motivated by The Turner Diaries, Ruby Ridge and Waco. There was clearly a political purpose to the Oklahoma City Bombing.
With this current guy, I don’t know. I think the traditional definition of terrorism includes an ideological (including religious) or political component.
The church Bible study group murderer (Dylan Roof) clearly qualifies, for instance. They found all kinds of neo-Nazi shit in his internet footprint and personal effects, right? Plus he pretty much told the victims that his racial hatred/ideas were why he was shooting them, IIRC.

I don’t doubt that this bomber’s having been home schooled had the effect of stunting his socialization and making it so he couldn’t deal with college later, though, and that frustrated him to an unreasonable degree. He was a criminal (obviously), but terrorist? Not unless the means he employed automatically qualify, or they end up finding screeds or manifestos of his motivations eventually.

He was. But he was not tried for anything related to terrorism. That label as a charge stems from the Patriot Act, post 9-11. @ShivaX already posted the gist of the law as passed in its explanation of terrorism, which is to say, it’s pretty defined and the recent bomber was not easily fit into that definition.

Post-Waco, sure, we could define McVeigh within that, but there was nothing like that then. In both cases, there are already plenty of of charges that they fall under.

Thank you. Why is it so fucking hard to say?

Targeting people to terrorize them seems like terrorism to me. You know, like when black people did it…

“All seven justices agreed that Mr. Muhammad’s conviction under a previously untested terrorism law was appropriate. The law dispenses with the triggerman requirement in cases where the killing was “pursuant to the direction or order” of someone engaged in an act of terrorism.”

Let alone when you are specifically targeting a certain race like the Austin scumbag did.

I could be wrong but from what I have heard while the first two targets were black I don’t think all his targets were.

His other targets were in fairly affluent black neighborhoods, I think but with the tripwire one, he couldn’t know who was gonna actually set it off.

Fair enough. The point stands even without my last sentence. The guy ran bombing campaign against innocent people. I mean, thats terrorism any way you cut it.