No, it isn’t. We have all the facts necessary to know for certain that this is racism. Therefore anyone who fails to condemn explicitly is waffling. This is almost certainly due to racism, or a desire to appeal to racists.
QED. If it works for Republicans, it works for you.
Regards,
Shodan
He’s racist. I don’t think there is any room for doubt on the point.
I am talking about people who do things like actively hedging and offering alternative explanations. Not a failure to do, an actual doing. I am not in this thread doing the thing I’m discussing that others have done. Moreover, even if I were, that would just mean I myself am one of the people I’m asking about. It is not unusual, and is often a sign of wisdom, for a person to ask others why he himself does the things he does. If you think I’m doing the very thing I’m asking about, and you have a hypothesis about my behavior which you think applies to the general case, offer the hypothesis and further the discussion. If not, then you are not participating in the conversation you are pretending to participate in.
I wonder if any of these same people were complaining that Obama didn’t say “Terrorist attack” fast enough after Benghazi?
Anyone who has any doubts that a handful of politicians are trying to distance themself from calling this outright racism should check the link.
Use empathy and see it from their side. You know who blames everything on racism? PC liberals. No benefit to helping out the other side or flying their flag. There’s also some cultural tribalism re: “Southern pride.” No reason to tar and feather your own people.
If you’re not Muslim I think the only way to be called a terrorist is if you use a bomb.
I’m still not seeing anyone saying that they doubted it was racism. Can someone quote who is saying that?
If you want to complain that they are not using the word “racism”, that’s one thing. But it seems to me it’s as silly a complaint as when the Republicans go all ape-shit if “terrorism” isn’t explicitly called out.
I think this is a perfect case of sticking to your talking points even if you secretly believe otherwise. I doubt any of the politicians in the link above have any doubt whatsoever that the cause was racism, they are just reluctant due to political pressure to admit racism happens.
But let’s turn it on the other side of the coin. Suppose in one particular government housing project there was a group of people teaching other residents to “scam” the government and get more benefits than they actually needed. Suppose it was at the community center adjacent to housing project. Just how harsh, exactly, do you think liberal politicians would be when they found out this large scale fraud was being perpetuated?
Rick Perry says it was an “accident”, and that Roof must have been on drugs.
So, you know.
He did not say the killer must* have been on drugs, but thanks for making me defend an idiot like Perry.
But he did say it was “a crime of hate.”
*He said he “may” have been on drugs.
That makes a lot of sense to me (which is probably a bad sign for you).
Did you put me on ignore all of a sudden or something?
I’ve clarified that you may consider the question instead to be a related but technically different one, as follows: “I am asking why there is any felt need at all to say anything other than ‘yup, guy’s a racist’ when asked ‘was this guy acting on racist motivations.’”
And were the comments in question said before or after that piece of news came out ?
I’ll grant you, he’s such an incoherent speaker that his point is almost entirely opaque. Just before that he’s talking about how more people were killed in Paris than here, and just after that he’s talking about the VA giving opioids to veterans. And the word “accident” is so appallingly stupid that I’m pretty sure he meant “incident”, because that at least would just be a shitty slip-up.
I do think there’s a significant difference between cases like this and the Norwegian mass-killer, on the one hand, and Al Qaeda on the other. Both can fall under the “terrorist” label, but the former killers appear by all signs to be operating alone, certainly influenced by some other nasty motherfuckers but not actually working with them. Al Qaeda has training camps, websites, magazines, PR officials. Al Qaeda has infrastructure.
I don’t know if the proper distinction is to call the latter “terrorists” and the former something else. Certainly both have similar abhorrent ideologies and methods. But it’s not inappropriate to talk about their differences as well.
I can agree with what you are saying. Both sides parse their language to suit their own agenda.
Once again, the usual suspects show up in a thread and compete for the title of most willfully obtuse.
Some were before and some were after. Jeb Bush’s comments were after.
The right-wing narrative seems to be that it was an anti-Christian hate crime, so calling it a hate crime in the abstract does not tell you whether a particular person is following that narrative or not.
I’m puzzled by the need to label anything a terrorist attack. As I recall Fort Hood, the chorus from the right was that Obama was negligent in not calling it terrorism. I’m not sure how things are magically made better by calling it that but apparently the president’s job whenever multiple people are killed is to sprint to a microphone and utter the word terrorism.