I’m not sure either, considering I’m not justifying anything whatsoever as less. What on Earth gave you the idea that there’s some ladder with being murdered because of terrorism is somehow worse than being murdered because the man (and I use the term loosely) killing you is a hate-filled snake?
Terrorism is a very specific thing and this, I believe, doesn’t fit. It resembles a school shooting a lot more. The fact that I don’t think it is terrorism, however, absolutely does not mean I think it is one iota less important. If you convinced me that it was terrorism through an argument of some sort I’d change my opinion but I wouldn’t think it was any worse than what I think now because it’s already maximally terrible.
Plausible projection of force. If a KKK member kills someone and is a member of the KKK and this is known, then you can feel terror that some other member of the KKK might kill you. This bastard is never tasting free air again and good riddance and, thus, is done being a threat.
Now you may suggest that this is a part of a pattern of killings that are done from a place of a common fascist ideology and thus while he has no organizaiton we can assume there will be more like him. To this I reply that this is likely a good argument—the best I can think of, certainly—but what makes me wary of it is that it cannot discriminate between those who are part of this distributed conspiracy and those who frame their own hollow evil in terms that they believe will glamorize them.
It absolutely is.
I just feel given his behavior that the racist, fascist murderer is also lying and didn’t do this to precipitate ethnic cleansing or even to kill the poor fellow he did end up killing. I think what he says and what he does are in service of self-aggrandizement. I mean, goodness knows, I’m no psychiatrist but it is a very common pathology. Killers get to be famous. Killers get to be on TV. Killers get to be someone. This particular nobody just happened to be also a racist piece of shit. Not a uncommon state of affairs in America, I’m given to understand.
I’m going to repeat what I wrote above: I don’t think calling this terrorism makes the death any more tragic or the murder any more unforgivable. I don’t think it makes the investigation and swift trial of the scumbag perpetrator any more urgent. If it turns out that me saying it is terrorism will somehow make it be taken more seriously, I’ll gladly say it. But I just don’t think it is, is all.
