Comment by toomuchtodo
9 years ago
> How would you describe those?
Premeditated violent acts designed to strike fear into the local populace. Far different then an angry protestor getting in his car to hit other protestors. I would even go so far as to say that most people will continue to think they're safe as long as they're not at a protest (whereas Islamic terrorists in Europe want everyone to feel unsafe everywhere, all the time).
The act in question was rage plain and simple, not an act designed to spread fear. Terrorism, by definition, is a violent act designed to express and spread terror in a populace, therefore I don't believe it warrants that definition.
If you really insist on continuing to want to split this hair consider the possibility that the act of driving that car into a crowd of protestors was to send a message of what could happen to people that take part in counter protests to Neo Nazis. There, that fits your description of terrorism.
Now of course we can't know if that's true but at the same time your 'roadrage' argument is ridiculous. Roadrage had less to do with this than it has to do with terrorism.
In all fairness, somebody has to split that hair in order to charge him with murder. Looks like prosecutors have decided on second degree for now.
Sure. Note that in many countries acts of terrorism are also simply classed as murder or whatever the end result of the act of terrorism was, there is no specific 'terrorism' section in many bodies of law.
And I personally prefer it that way.
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That is possible, but far from known. toomuchtodo is trying to make the most accurate assessment possible based from apparent facts.
> That is possible, but far from known.
Agreed.
> toomuchtodo is trying to make the most accurate assessment possible based from apparent facts.
No, he's trying to reclass a murder as an incident of roadrage. When you drive a car into a crowd at high speed that transcends mere anger, that's murder and in this particular case the perpetrator is someone who deliberately came to a protest of a lot of people who are on the record as wanting to engage in acts of violence. So when they then do engage in those acts it is no longer simple anger.
Simple anger would be if a visitor to a bar would do something like this after being thrown out of a bar. Trying to recast this whole thing as a simple case of an angry protestor at some otherwise peaceful protest is significantly changing the story.
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What evidence are you using to infer the motive?