If that is the case than sure. But what if one of the first victims was an actual target and the other bombs are intended as a distraction to motive which makes it harder to nail down a suspect?
Is that what happened? Right now we have no idea. So, he could be a murderer. He could be a terrorist. He could be a religious extremist. So right now bomber is the only moniker we can be sure about. That being the case, I think bomber works just fine.
If it turns out he was blowing things up for religious or political reasons, that’s when we need to start using the terrorist label.
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I thought terrorism was when someone tries to spread terror, like sending bombs to seemingly random people. No attachment of the motivation as a required parameter.
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I’m against acknowledging motives for any of these people. This guy and McVeigh and the 9/11 attackers were all just mass murderers as far as I’m concerned. Ideology is a flag of convenience for them; the killing is the part they care about. You can tell their ideology is only skin-deep by the way they randomly select their targets.
ETA: The saying they always use to justify killing people who are ideologically similar is, “If you want to make an omelette, you have a break a few eggs.” And you can tell that breaking eggs is the part they care about. They don’t mind if the omelette never happens.
Terrorism is usually defined as being violence by the other. So when the US attempts to “shock and awe” a client population it’s not terror, when an occupied population undergoes collective punishment by the occupying army it’s not terror, when (as the battle of Algiers dramatised an Algerian interview) you drop bombs from planes it isn’t but bring them in baskets to the market it is, when white people shoot people up in the US it isn’t but when black people do that it is.
It’s either meaningless or so full of meanings as to be equally useless. My personal stance, having grown up in an environment in which terrorism was a contested term (IRA, UDA, RUC, British Army, INLA, Tory Party, all terrorists as far as I’m concerned) is to allow the term terrorism when anyone else uses it for their other but to insist equally that my other, or that of a people I am in solidarity with, is also terrorist violence.
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Indeed. And at this point, we still have no real clue as to his motivations. I’m sure we’ll learn more over the rest of the week. I’m leaning towards white supremacy/radical neo-con violence, but it could be something else.
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Why publicize his name?
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EXACTLY. Same with the mass-shooters. Just use the name “Some Asshole”. If you need a picture, use a bucket of chum.
(Yes, this is the “Some asshole” initative.)
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And earlier with suicides and “suicide hotspots”, you are right. I’ve posted here before about guidelines for reporting suicides and mass killings and their applicability to terrorism. Prioritising the narrative of the murderer over the murdered is not productive. I haven’t read about those who were killed but rather a lot of speculation about the killer is online.
I don’t need to know why he wants us to think he did it right now.
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Counterpoint: The news media is saturated with photos of brown-skinned people suspected or convicted of terrible deeds. This has a profound impact on our collective perception of who is committing violent crimes. Ask an average American to draw a picture of a “terrorist” and nine out of ten will probably draw a bearded man wearing a turban.
Dealing with terrorism in America means confronting the issue of who is actually carrying out terrorist attacks. Most domestic terrorists don’t look like the people Trump supporters are trying to keep out, they look like Trump supporters.
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Well, this was Cory. Kinda par for the course.
It is called news. That’s why.
Can I just take this opportunity to both agree with you and grind my (only barely tangential) axe and say that every damn time I hear a news source say “Westboro Baptist Church” I blow a gasket that they don’t call it the “Westboro Baptist Cult”. CALL IT WHAT IS IS, DAMMIT!
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He who defines, reigns.
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I’d be okay with Westboro Congregation of Stupid Assholes.
I’m still deliberating whether leaving “Baptist” out or not.
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“It is the outcry of a very challenged young man talking about challenges in his own life,” Manley said of the recording, which authorities declined to release amid the ongoing investigation.
This sound bite I heard on the radio isn’t the analysis I would have come up with.
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The authorities and the media have been putting more time and effort into humanizing the white terrorist than humanizing his black victims.
This is why Emmet Till’s mother insisted on an open casket funeral and allowed the press to photograph her son’s mutilated body.
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Waiting for the conspiracy theories about how this guy was a patsy so The Man silenced him by making him blow himself up (or, better yet, they planted the bomb).
'course while I say that jokingly, it is also while knowing that the Earth First!ers did not bomb themselves.
Yes they should use the word cult for Westboro, and a lot of other ‘churches’.
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WeBoBaps?
Too many good ones to choose.
https://www.google.com/search?q=kevin+smith+anti+westboro+signs&tbm=isch
