Serious thread all got off-topic ranty in no time flat.

The question put to me was whether or not I consider Dylann Roof a terrorist. He does not fit the definition of terrorist, because his aims were not political. There is no political mindset behind wanting to kill people of a specific race, or cause a race war. That is a purely racist mindset. It is apolitical, and does not care about the politics of it's victims. Terrorism has a political aim.

Now regarding the modern day KKK and it's goals to establish an Ethnostate, that is certainly political, and certainly racist. However, given the fact that it is not being backed by any violence, it would not be considered terrorism either. It's simply an idiotic attempt at a political move that will never happen. But when you say an ethnostate is violent by nature, I can only agree with you if you are using the law to make it happen. Laws are violence-enforced. However, people simply talking nonsense about how they want an ethnostate? There's no violence there. Just words.

People can have wrong opinions. People can have racist opinions. People can say bad things. That's not terrorism. Nor is it violence. Violence requires action. And in the US, which this topic is about, people have a Constitutionally protected right to speak their mind.

War is political by its nature, a race war is therefore political, terrorism is violence in pursuit of a political goal, therefore violence to encite a race war is a terrorist act.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Mar 7 2019 09:26am

War is not political by nature. I'm sorry, but it's not. You're attempting to attach something to a word that does not exist in it's definition.

I appreciate that you adhere to the Clausewitz theory of war, and that's fine. That, however, does not make an apolitical act of pure racism terrorism.

How do you define "politics"?

I operate under the definition that goes something like
"The study of actions, history, and other things in regard to the distribution of power in a group"

The google definition is
"the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power."
roughly mirrors this


What definition are you using? Because if a race war is political relies on what definition of politics you use.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Mar 7 2019 09:54am

The google definition works just fine. And a race war sparked by a mass murderer does not fit into that definition. Roof's issue was not about gaining or achieving power, or even removing anyone from power. It had nothing to do with power whatsoever. It had to do with not liking black people, and wanting all black people dead. As I said, apolitical, purely based on race.

You've ran near perfect circles around everyone in this thread that's going back and forth with you. I can't give you enough +1's,

Masterful.

Yeah thing is you're going to have a really hard time convincing me that wanting a group of people dead and taking action towards that goal doesn't relate to the distribution of power. It seems like it would be taking violent action towards the removal of power from that group, and therefore be political.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Mar 7 2019 10:34am

I fail to see how you need convincing. You're attempting to redefine racism as terrorism, is the basic thing here. And that's a fallacy. Terrorism is used to achieve an end, and that is to get your way. To take some old school home grown terrorists as examples:

The mafia used to bomb each other, and legal authorities as well. All was in pursuit of power. Why did they do it, when you can't control dead people? It wasn't about the dead people. That was not the route to power. It was to cause fear in the living, so they would stop interferring in that particular family's affairs. They had business interests which gave them a huge amount of wealth, and they did NOT tolerate any form of interference, be it from other families, or the police. So they would murder the people of other families, and police, judges, district attorneys, whatever was required, until out of fear of their violence, everyone would stop interferring in what they considered their territories.

Now, what you see here is textbook terrorism. They're using violence and intimidation in order to gain and keep their wealth and power.

Now, when you look at Roof, he gained absolutely nothing from his mass murder. No group or party received anything from his mass murder. There is no benefit to anyone whatsoever of his mass murder. If every racist in the nation had risen up that day and started attempting to murder whatever race they hated, even still there would have been no benefit, no power gained. The only possible result would have been dead people. Do you understand the difference? Killing people simply for the sake of killing people is not political. It's simply evil. Hoping that others will follow your example of killing people for the sake of killing people is not political either. Again, it's simply evil.

Dylann Roof was a racist. He killed 9 people because he was a racist. Dylann Roof is evil. He killed people for no other reason than to kill people. He believed and believes that certain people are not people at all, and have no right to exist. Textbook racism, active racism, evil. NOT terrorist. And he currently sits on death row thanks to his brand of evil.

Gonna just stop here because this sentence fundamentally misrepresents my position, so there's not any point in going further.

I am not trying to define racism as terrorism. I'm categorizing a race war as a political event. A race war involves the redistribution of power in society, and therefore it is political. Therefore violence taken towards the goal of starting a race war is violence in pursuit of a political goal, and is therefore terrorism.