Terrorism in Mississauga

[MalevolentPixy]

What else to call it. 15 injured with an IED, masked men who fled the scene…

Canada restaurant blast 'caused by bomb'

[GulliverFoyle]

@MalevolentPixy

What else to call it.

Spidey sense says terrorism. Perhaps white nationalists?

[Mindysan33]

@GulliverFoyle

Perhaps white nationalists?

I"m guessing probably.

[IronEdithKidd]

Oh, Canada, I am disappoint in thee.

[TobinL]

Goddamn it. This is not supposed to happen in Canada. Then again racism isn’t a special murrican thing.

Is it bad of me to feel relieved nobody died?

[Melz2]

I was just about to type;

Oh, Canada; you have my sympathy.

The US isn’t the only place with inhumane fucktards bent on making things worse…

[IronEdithKidd]

@Melz2

The US isn’t the only place with inhumane fucktards bent on making things worse…

Truer words are rarely spoken. Even though an IED that doesn’t kill anyone is a heckofa lot better than an AR that kills most of the people shot at, it’s still disappointing to see the worst of the US being emulated in Canadia.

[orenwolf]

@MalevolentPixy

What else to call it.

We don’t know the motivation yet (or didn’t when I was reading about this in the morning). This is where the definition of terrorism gets murky - I mean, of course it caused terror (and mass injury), but it’s just as possible someone had a beef with the owner and tried to blow up their restaurant or something. In that case, is it “terrorism”?

We can surely universally agree that it’s a vile, cowardly, inhumane thing to do regardless.

[MalevolentPixy]

@orenwolf

but it’s just as possible someone had a beef with the owner and tried to blow up their restaurant or something. In that case, is it “terrorism”?

I thought about this last night before I posted. Even if this is a private beef, the method (and timing) chosen are about terror and uncertainty.

They deliberately attacked a public place in a non-discriminatory way. Unfortunately, we have too bad a habit of calling such acts anything but terrorism when performed by those who are “fair skinned”. I don’t care if it’s a biker war: tossing a bomb into a restaurant during business hours is an act calculated to make people afraid. Not just an individual.

[Missy_Pants]

I’m with you.
Its terrorism. It may be personal, it may be racial, but tossing a bomb into a crowd of people is an act meant to instil terror, regardless if there was a single target or many. Its terrorism.

Also, I am beyond livid that this happened here. (not that it should happen anywhere… but Mississauga? Like really? WTF?)

[orenwolf]

@MalevolentPixy

Unfortunately, we have too bad a habit of calling such acts anything but terrorism when performed by those who are “fair skinned"

Right, and I completely agree there. if the bomb was set off with an intent to cause terror, it’s a terrorist act, full stop. Doesn’t matter who it was or other motivations.

At the same time, words like “terrorism” have implications and are often used to fill agendas (see the misuse of the patriot act in the US for example), so it’s not as simple as saying “any attack that’s public and causes terror is terrorism”, otherwise we risk fostering a narrative where those in power can declare nearly anything “terrorism” and make use of the rights we’ve given to suspend due process and so on with impunity.

The problem isn’t so much what we classify it, as the fact that we’ve decided to classify a specific group of crimes as worthy of reduced oversight in our legal system, and we need to take care to make sure the narrative doesn’t become “Terrorism is whatever the authorities need it to be so they can circumvent rights when the need arises”. That becomes much easier if we, the public, just start declaring every public crime that hurts people “terrorism”.

Because it’ll be those same “fair skinned” folk who get a pass, while ever more crimes committed by “others” somehow make it into that classification, as history has shown us.

[kermujin]

@orenwolf

Unfortunately, we have too bad a habit of calling such acts anything but terrorism when performed by those who are “fair skinned"

I’m a bit torn here - on one hand, immediately dismissing ‘terrorism’ as a cause (since Southern Canadians in US-dominated TV-viewing range generally equate ‘terrorism’ with ‘muslim’), along with pointing out carefully that the suspects are unlikely POC, in a city that’s roughly half POC and half ethnic white, is probably a good idea, to stop bullshit (racist) hypotheses from getting loose, and keep attention from being focussed on a no-doubt-robust rumour mill…

[GulliverFoyle]

@orenwolf

The problem isn’t so much what we classify it, as the fact that we’ve decided to classify a specific group of crimes as worthy of reduced oversight in our legal system, and we need to take care to make sure the narrative doesn’t become “Terrorism is whatever the authorities need it to be so they can circumvent rights when the need arises”. That becomes much easier if we, the public, just start declaring every public crime that hurts people “terrorism”.

Totally agree. The problem is that the media will generally agree with this only when the perpetrators and white and the victims POC, because POC, and especially Muslim POC, are automatically terrorists in the public eye.

[Wanderfound]

@orenwolf

Right, and I completely agree there. if the bomb was set off with an intent to cause terror, it’s a terrorist act, full stop. Doesn’t matter who it was or other motivations.

That’s a definition that includes most bombings by the military, BTW.

[Wanderfound]

@Wanderfound

That’s a definition that includes most bombings by the military, BTW.

Coincidentally, I just watched a video that included these two frames:

[GulliverFoyle]

That reminds me of the Blitzkrieg strategy…

Who Invented the Blitzkrieg War Strategy? | Synonym

Or in modern American military rebranding, Shock & Awe.