Terrorist or Disturbed Loner? The Contentious Politics of a Label
Though leaders like Mr. Bush were careful to distinguish extremist groups from mainstream Islam, some rights groups warned
that the political climate contributed to anti-Muslim violence.
According to British law, an attack is deemed terrorism when it seeks "to influence the government" or "intimidate the public" with the aim of "advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause." Louise Richardson, an Irish political scientist, has posed a similar definition: "Terrorism simply means deliberately
and violently targeting civilians for political purposes." Islamist attacks often seem to meet this standard more easily.
Though Monday’s attack appears to fit scholarly and legal definitions for terrorism, past incidents have
been called hate crimes or attributed to disturbed loners with far-right leanings but no real agenda.
When far-right violence is described as a hate crime or the act of a disturbed loner, even if
that is true, it can exacerbate a sense among targeted communities that they matter less.
The debate is less about legalistic definitions than a way to examine which groups society
is willing to protect, and what kind of violence it is willing to tolerate.
It seemed to confirm that the government took violence against black people less seriously and would refuse to fully tackle far-right extremism.
