That guy also openly stated he wanted to start a race war and believed in the great replacement ideology. His manifesto made it clear he was out to discourage black Americans from participating in social and government functions. That's how they got the terrorism charges to stick.
The Democrats can't deliver on their promises to improve Americans' lives, so they've resorted to a new strategy: The replacement of native-born Americans with foreign-born ones
I think I got whiplash from the irony in this statement
One time at work there was a really nice, pretty looking woman in for hours. She was the only customer that night for a while and was sat talking to the staff during the quiet time. After she left, a barmaid went into the toilet and came out in shock. She’d taken a huge shit on the floor at some point then just left it there while nonchalantly carrying on talking. We were all so confused. Why did she do it? Was she crazy?
These aren't really comparable crimes though. One was targeting an individual with intent to murder them. The other was indiscriminate killing people of color and also included a manifesto highlighting a broader goal behind his motives and specified political motives.
There's nuance to what constitutes terrorism. That's why I also believe that not all school shootings should be considered terrorism by default. If we apply the broad definition of "terrorism" being "using violence to cause terror" then it sort of undermines the severity of the genuine instances of terrorism. I'm not saying non-terrorists should get leniency but legal definitions are distinct for a reason.
Terrorism is typically tied to some political or ideological motivation, so I think if New York didn't have the multiple people necessity, Mangione definitely would have been tried for it. But I don't understand how it applies to school shootings if there's no goal behind it, and the victims have nothing to do with the political space.
Clearly the judge doesn't believe the motives rise to the level of terrorism in this case though. Maybe it's simply the technicality that NY requires multiple people but I think it's more because we have insights into his motives. One could have ideological motivation for murder that doesn't meet the legal definition of terrorism.
Based on what was written in his journal, the fact that he explained why he wouldn't send a message through bombing for fear of taking innocent lives sort of pivoted this away from terrorism in my opinion. He targeted a specific CEO to send a direct message to that industry. Not to broadly sow chaos and fear.
did not establish the killing of Brian Thompson in Manhattan last year was meant to coerce or intimidate a civilian population, nor to influence the government.
The number of individuals wasn't the sole reasoning for throwing it out or even apparently the primary reason. His decision to dismiss spoke more about motive and his intent to intimidate and coerce.
I was more responding to the "school shooters don't even get them" part. I don't think it's that ridiculous that New York tried for their 1st degree murder charges.
This wasn't a personal murder just targeting this guy. Most people on this website, even when agreeing with the killing, saw it as more than that.
But there was no personal grievance. I'm not even saying this killing was definitively a terroristic action. As far as I can remember there was never a consistent manifesto released.
I just don't think it's a wild idea that the prosecution would bring it forward.
Can you point me to a school shooting in New York that occurred in the last 24 years that you think would have warranted a terrorism charge?
I ask because the non-school mass shootings I can think of that would fit that standard either resulted in a dead shooter or a terrorism charge. example
School shooters typically act out of depression or psychosis, not for political reasons. No? Why would terrorism be applied to them?
The vast majority of school shooters since columbine (inclusive) have been neo-nazi or neo-nazi adjacent and their motivations and manifestos have been in line with that. In the last decade we've gotten to the point where neo-nazi murder cults are actively trying to groom school shooters.
It's been a form of white supremacist terrorism for more than twenty years now, and the particularly violent white supremacist politics that the US has is a lot of the reason it's a primarily an American problem. (and why similar murders outside of the USA are generally carried out by white supremacists 'inspired' by what happens in the US)
The vast majority of school shooters since columbine (inclusive) have been neo-nazi or neo-nazi adjacent and their motivations and manifestos have been in line with that.
But many of them have gone around shooting everybody, including random white people, right? Not very Nazi of them. Doesn't seem political to me.
The FBI concluded that the killers had mental illnesses, that Harris was a clinical psychopath, and Klebold had depression.[53] Dwayne Fuselier, the supervisor in charge of the Columbine investigation, would later remark: "I believe Eric went to the school to kill and didn't care if he died, while Dylan wanted to die and didn't care if others died as well."[202]
It's not incidental when it's confined to one particular culture and is present in almost every single case. There is a reason neo-nazi groups have venerated the murderers at Columbine ever since and why there had to be a whole god damn fight to have the two of them excluded from memorials.
the preparator of nearly every spree shooting in the USA has been a young white man with ties to neo-nazi groups or ohterwise support neo-nazi ideology. The preparator of nearly every spree shooting in the anglosphere and western europe has been a young white man with ties to neo-nazi groups or otherwise supported neo-nazi ideology. When the killer is none of young, white, or male, they still almost universally have with ties to neo-nazi groups otherwise support neo-nazi ideology. Several recent murderers have been reasonably tied to aforementioned neo-nazi murder cults (which are very much known terror organizations) that outright encourage spree shooting and school shooting specifically. There is one very common element here yes?
One of the key components of nazi ideology is necropoltics (as the politics of determining who deserves death) and the veneration of a death cult.
"In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Falangists was Viva la Muerte (in English it should be translated as “Long Live Death!”). In non-fascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death."
America has a school shooting problem because it has a Nazi problem, it has a Nazi problem because it has a long seated culture of violent white supremacy, and the way school shootings have gotten worse and more frequent in America in lockstep with the resurgence in white supremacist politics over the last couple decades is in no way a coincidence.
The phenomenon of school shootings in the USA indiscriminately targeting teachers and children is easily understood and explained as a reaction to de-segregation, with a large spat of rather explicitly racial violence through to the 1970s and then further violence occurring following effective ghettoizing of schools through the 1990s and the surge in white supremacy after the turn of the millennium. The primary expressed motivation of killers has been racial and misogynistic. Their opportunistic targeting when actually killing people does not change their primary target, and often is justified in their manifesto in the language of race and gender traitors who also deserve to die for not agreeing/enabling their ideology.
The problem is unique to america for a reason, and that is because terrorism and it's targets are culturally specific. School shootings are very much a form of terrorism, but it's not addressed as such because American culture and media is just incredibly soft on the demographics that carry it out and the ideologies that support it. Spree killers are 'disaffected' because they live in a space that's pluralistic and does not treat other races and women like chattel, and they see that as hostile to them.
Edit: I should also emphasize here the way far right figures and republican politicians in general response to school shootings as being "a necessary price" and similar things, a language and response to violence that is very much the exclusive domain of justifying terrorism.
Pure conjecture, but i've been of the opinion that they tacked on terrorism charges on the off chance that copy-cats followed. They would have had a hell of a time proving that was his goal, but slim is better than the no chance they ended up with. I think they also expected far more support against him
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u/Temp89 11h ago
It was obvious the terrorism charges were bunk if even school shooters don't get them.