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Newsweek has this article on America's skewed definition of terrorism:
What is terrorism? According to the FBI, animal activists who stole two piglets from a farm were terrorists. As of now, Stephen Paddock, who killed 58 people at a country music concert in Las Vegas two weeks ago, has not been labeled a terrorist by the federal security organization.
In a viral story posted on The Intercept, journalist Glenn Greenwald details an account of federal agents investigating animal activists and scouring farm-animal sanctuaries to find two missing piglets that allegedly had been stolen from a farm. The FBI devoted such resources to finding these two piglets because their alleged theft and the capturing of undercover videos of the farm's conditions count as terrorism.
Why is the piglet theft classified as terrorism, but not the Las Vegas shooting? The distinction is rooted in the definition of the term. In spite of the emotions the word "terrorist" might elicit, the definition is not "mass killer" or "Muslim extremist" or "very bad person." The legal definition of terrorism is "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property in order to coerce or intimidate a government or the civilian population in furtherance of political or social objectives."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 12 2017, @08:45AM
I agree with not labeling the nutcase a terrorist.
Here are examples of terrorist stuff:
--- Northern Ireland bombings. "let us go free or we kill people, here's the proof that we mean it".
--- WTC 2001: "get out of the middle East or we kill people, here's the proof that we mean it".
For the Las Vegas shooter, there has been absolutely no message, no request that we know of.
As far as we know, he did not intend to terrorize people into giving him something he wanted, therefore he is not a terrorist.
He just wanted to kill people.
It's true that people were/are terrorized, but his intention was not to use terror in order to obtain something well-defined.
If you want to change the legal definition of "terrorist", you need to follow a more elaborate legal process, it's not enough to say "I was scared so please call the person scaring me a terrorist".
As far as the piglet people are concerned, it may be true that they are not terrorists in the sense that kamikaze bombers are terrorists.
But the comparison with the Las Vegas shooter is not at all relevant.