As to (1), I believe that is a question of what his motives were. Given he’s apparently left a video explaining them, we ought to be able to get an answer. I believe it was “terrorism”, as his motives appear to be, from early reports, to spread terror in the service of an ideology.
Whether he was or wasn’t mentally disturbed isn’t really a factor in this definitional question.
As to (2), I’m inclined think we should tread warily and not over-react by enacting laws that impact on our civil liberties.
I think Justin and Barrack were right. This isn’t ‘terrorism’.
These were a couple of loonies that self allied with the Barbarians. It’s not like they ever heard of him, or had any hand in his actions. Or even knew he was allied with them either.
But there’s a significant difference between terrorism where one person is shot by a single madman, and terrorism where three thousand people are murdered. The fact is that both are acts of terrorism, but scale matters. They cannot be treated the same way, just as one does not treat a kid shoplifting a chocolate bar the way we treat someone robbing a bank.
I say they are not mutually exclusive; it was both. International agreements such as the Geneva Conventions dealing with partisans can offer protections to those that violate domestic laws because they are recognized as combatants. Largely what we call terrorist groups don’t operate within the restrictions placed on partisans anyway.
This individual seemed to commit crimes motivated by creating fear for political reasons (at least in his mind at the time.) That’s terrorism. The easiest way to proceed, since there’s a whole legal framework, is to proceed with a criminal trial. For incidents where the crime committed to support terror is conducted under the jurisdiction of in force domestic law it is IMO always best to proceed with normal criminal proceedings.
It gets more problematic in cases where what we would normally consider accomplices fall outside the jurisdiction of those domestic laws. That can easily happen when we are looking at transnational terror groups although it didn’t apparently happen in this case.
He was a criminal who’s motivation, however irrational, was terrorism. The question is moot really because he didn’t survive and has no apparent accomplices.
Sorry, I’m not buying it. Just because you go off the rocker and self align with some distant barbarians, doesn’t make you part of their movement.
Those actual terrorists didn’t even know of either of these self declared terrorists. Are they happy with the death and mayhem these two nut jobs created? I’m gonna go ahead and guess yes, but that still doesn’t make these two terrorists.
If they had self declared themselves to be Mormons, or Jews, would it make them such? I don’t think so. Just because the world has gone paranoid doesn’t mean that either of these nutcases were in fact actually terrorists.
Are their people with agendas that have a vested interest in having them so labelled? Yes. Those who want any excuse to increase spending, lockdown public buildings and create a more Americanish terrorist paranoid environment.
I, for one am not interested in importing American style knee jerking and playing to the paranoids! I don’t think that’s who Canadians are, to be honest.
Why does Terrorist A have to be part of Terrorist B’s movement to be a terrorist? The guy committed an act of terrorism. It doesn’t matter if he was a terrorist group of one. “Terrorism” isn’t a club.
If you want to say he wasn’t part of ISIL or al-Qaida, sure, that’s true. Those groups are not the authorities on who is or is not a terrorist.
No, because “Mormon” and “Jew” don’t mean “a person who commits an act of violence with the intent of making a political statement or altering government policy through the installation of fear.” That is, however, what a “terrorist” is." What he is is defined by his actions. A terrorist is a person who commits an act of terrorism.
Acknowledging that something is factually true is hardly “knee jerking.” The guy was a pathetic terrorist, sure, but that’s what he was.
Labelling him a terrorist erroneously implies he’s part of a larger movement, when he’s pretty clearly a lone gunman.
Any act of violence could be interpreted at terrorizing, ergo a terrorist action. But labelling someone a terrorist implies something altogether different, in today’s political climate. I think it’s disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
The people who brought us 9/11 were terrorists. People kidnapping schools full of children are terrorists. These were a couple of lunatic terrorist wannabes at best. Lumping them together serves no useful purpose to my mind!
Calling this guy a “terrorist” is simply, IMO, a comment on his motives - what he set out to accomplish. Which, allegedly, was to terrorize people in service to a particular ideology.
On the other hand - just because this guy is a “terrorist” does not mean we have to go hog-wild, erasing civil liberties and erecting ‘security theatre’, and I hope we don’t.
But no valid policy purpose is advanced by deliberately not calling a spade a spade.
Then everyone who ever commits an act of violence that effectively ‘terrorizes’ someone is a terrorist?
A guy who kidnaps his wife and kids and holds them hostage, after a bad day at the track, is, in fact terrorizing them. So is he a terrorist? If he claims to be a ISIS member, is he now a terrorist? Pretty soon the word terrorist loses all meaning.
To pretend that the word terrorist isn’t being used for political reasons is kinda lame, in my opinion.
I think the average Canadian is both too smart and too circumspect to fall into that kind of thinking.
The part you are missing is the motivation for committing the violence.
“A guy who kidnaps his wife and kids and holds them hostage after a bad day at the track” is not a terrorist, because his motive is not to use terror as the ‘propaganda of the deed’ in support of some ideology. This guy apparently was a terrorist, because his violence was supposedly in service of his ideology. So he is unlike the guy who kidnaps his wife after a bad day at the track, right?
Whether ideologues are interested in throwing around the ‘terrorist’ label is irrelevant. Your point appears to be that we should deliberately ignore the actual facts, because admitting the actual facts will serve ideologues you disagree with!
To my mind, a POV that requires selectively ignoring facts will not work well - and I hope as much as you do to avoid over-reaction to this incident.
Was Justin Bourque a terrorist? He had half formed and partially addled ideas about authority figures and “freedom!”. He killed 3 RCMP officers.
So terrorist, or murderer?
Everyone has a point of view, most are half formed but if we plan to change our laws then terrorism needs to a better working example than “fuck man, jihad is cool! I’m shooting people”.
I’d say not a terrorist, because he was not killing people to spread terror in the name of an ideology - which, if you will recall, seems to be the basic definition of the term.
In contrast, the current fellow left a video apparently calmly and rationally (according to the RCMP) explaining his ideological motives. While they have not released the tape, I see no reason to disbelieve them (it will inevitably come out anyway). Not sure why it is so important to ignore actual facts here.
I think those are very good points. The rhetorical question I would ask is whether the difference between the random act of a deranged lunatic and an “act of terrorism” is essentially defined by whether it occurred before or after September 11, 2001. Because if that’s the case, it’s not just unfortunate, but chilling in its implications. I know that this guy was supposed to have left some sort of video, but many of these lunatics have, and before the age of videos, they’d leave various kinds of “manifestos”. Mostly the only thing these sorts of missives demonstrate is that their authors were insane.
The implications being that we may be in an era much like that of 1950s McCarthyist paranoia about communism, where everyone and their dog was under suspicion of possibly being a communist (your dog had better not get too friendly with a Siberian Husky or a Black Russian Terrier if he knew what was good for him!). As much as we need to be cautious of the small number of actual terrorist sympathizers in the population that we know about, there are also object lessons from the hysteria of the McCarthy era.
I think even before September 11, 2001, a guy who murdered a soldier and attempted to storm Parliament in the name of a particular ideology would have been labelled a ‘terrorist’.
I see a slight difference, in that under McCarthyism, ‘everyone and his dog’ was not shooting soldiers and attempting to murder parliamentarians.
I’m not exactly seeing any signs of “hysteria” among the population.
Was Timothy McVeigh a terrorist? He wasn’t quite alone, but he wasn’t really part of a larger movement.
“Terrorist” does not mean “part of a specific card-carrying club of terrorists.” It means committing acts of violence with a political agenda to change a society’s behaviour. That’s what the guy did, however psychologically troubled he might have been.
In any event, I don’t see any particular magic in the term. Call him “not a terrorist” if you will, it changes nothing.
Fact is that a certain number of disaffected people are carrying out these attacks - whether because they are motivelessly insane, or because of their stated ideology, your pick.
My point is that we should neither underestimate nor overestimate the threat they pose - certainly be wary of the government cracking down on our liberties.
