Terror

[fanw]

There's lots of discussion these days about terrorism, and for good reason. Violence seems to be in the air. I too am horrified by the events in Paris and other places. However, I'm not quite as convinced of need to call all acts of violence terrorist acts. For example, the abhorrent attack on Planned Parenthood just doesn't sit quite right with

Comments

[lillibet]

I would argue that hate crimes are a special case of terrorism, rather than a separate category altogether.

[aroraborealis]

This is what I clicked through to say.

[ceelove]

What you're calling hate crimes still seem intended to instill terror to me, just to a smaller subsection of people than the broadly-directed hate of terrorism. Put another way, terrorism is a hate crime on a large scale.

Unfortunately, what society calls terrorism are generally the hate crimes perpetrated by those with brown skin, while what are deemed hate crimes are generally perpetrated by those with white skin, so it suggests a racist distinction to me.

[jason237]

I agree: all are terrorism, the difference is just in the size of the target audience.

[bluepapercup]

I agree with most of the above commenters. It is a hate crime, but hate crimes are a subset of terrorism. In this case, the terrorist just happened to live in Colorado, so that is the clinic he chose to target. But it could be any clinic, in any state, with any number of innocent victims involved. It's functionally random - and abortion and women's health providers live in genuine fear for their lives all over the country. To me, that makes it terrorism.