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Comment by lonelappde | Hacker News Reader

Terrorism has been removed of its meaning since 2001. Terrorism means using violence or threat of violence to influence social or political decisions.

Not everything bad is terrorism. A mentally ill person going on a murder-suicide rampage after beijg ignored by a girl is not a terrorist. A person acting in their self-interest in a way that contributes to systemic racism or oppression is not a terrorist. Hunting or threatening people of a certain race or gender or orientation or hobby to scare them and others away is terrorism. Blowing up buildings to pressure decision makers into a policy change is terrorism.

Maybe manipulating a single individual via threats or minor violence could be considered small scale terrorism (but their are better words, like harassment or abuse or stalking or assault).

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> Terrorism means using violence or threat of violence to influence social or political decisions.

So like the shooting of a black church by a white supremacist explicitly for the purposes of espousing white supremacy?

> Hunting or threatening people of a certain race or gender or orientation or hobby to scare them and others away is terrorism.

So like the lgbtq club shooting, or the black church, or the 1989 shooting specifically targeting women?

Yes, clearly.

Or the El Paso shooting targeting Hispanics.

But to stay on topic, reading this article is clearly also terrorism, since only a minority(+) of congress disagrees.

(+) “minority” has apparently been redefined to be 60-66% whenever the goal is to stop congress from doing something reprehensible.

I agree but I’d take it a bit further.

Trying to change the behavior of a group of people by using violence is what I’d consider to be terrorism.

By that definition, some school shooters would qualify as terrorists. When they target a category of people (like athletes) who haven’t bulled them, they’re trying to scare all people away from becoming athletes.

I’d say, if you target specific people who directly hurt you, you’re seeking revenge.

If you target a category of people, you’re saying that those people who haven’t done anything to you are targets and you’re trying to influence their behavior through fear.

Their perception is that everyone in that group did hurt them. School shooters frequently blame everyone in the school for not helping them, and for having a higher social status than they do. I think their motivation is to flip the social hierarchy so they are at the top, and to punish people they think have wronged them (i.e. basically everyone).

The fact that it strikes fear into the rest of the nation is ancillary. They're usually more interested in the notoriety they gain than trying to create some kind of policy change.

When a girl ignores him,he attacked not that girl but a social group out of misogyny or some other socio-political perception of injustice. So it is still terrorism. The point of the attack is to affect political(at the social level) change.

This really is similar to jihadist terrorism,jihadism took away american's privacy and mass shooters with gripes against american socio-politics have americans living in trauma over active shooter drills and gun toting teachers. Not only are they both terrorism, they both won!

Al-qaeda is eradicated but they won, I fear many would credit 9/11 as the begining of the end of america. Much like insurgent warfare,terrorism will be studied as a means of warfare where due to extreme imbalances on weaponry and digital surveillance the only way to fight is by terrorizing your enemy. War is horrible but terrorism is a cancerous form of war where destroying your enemy does not translate to success.

The term terrorism refers to intended effect by the perpetrator. If the goal is to effect change by creating fear, it is terrorism. If the goal is revenge for perceived wrong doing, it is not terrorism.

I would argue most school shootings are also not terrorism. They do create fear, but my impression is that the intended goal is revenge rather than fear. It would be hard to frame them as terrorists; most of them leave behind notes expressing a clear desire for revenge but mentioning no kind of policy changes they want.

I do think most of the race/religion inspired mass shootings were terrorist acts though. Their goal seemed to be spreading fear in those communities.

Won what? As far as I know, they didn't achieve their goal of driving out the Americans out of the Middle East. The loss of privacy and rights is incidental to their goals.

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