Mass shooting at Church in US
- Thread starter pauldyson1uk
- Start date
-
In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
9 dead apparently.
Just heard this when I got up. Sounds dreadful. 
Horrific. Reading that it's a hate crime
Might want to consider a sub-forum just on senseless US aggression, killing & violence - plenty of material
Terrible - the killer is still at large the last I read.
It's sad how it seems as though every year there's a tragedy like this and it's usually in America.
It's sad how it seems as though every year there's a tragedy like this and it's usually in America.
People on twitter seem to be getting incredibly irate that a) this isn't getting much coverage and b) the perpetrator isn't being called a terrorist.
Do they have a point?
Do they have a point?
Yes, they probably do. It's an horrific thing to do, shooting people at prayer. Same would apply if the victims had been praying in a synagogue or mosque.
a) absolutely
b) depends on the motivation of the shooter
Fecking hell.
a) Is it really not getting much coverage? Seems to be headline news in every broadsheet in the UK. Are some of the US networks not covering it?
b) Police are describing it as a "hate crime". Terrorist seems to be an incredibly emotive word in the US. I don't really see why anyone would care about the difference between a terrorist act and a hate crime. They're both as bad as each other IMO.
What is the difference between a 'hate crime' and 'terrorism' anyway?
Haven't we done this to death in other threads?
Feck knows but a lot of Americans seem to care deeply about it.
Maybe? I haven't really followed that many threads on these shootings.
I think some people really went into it in a thread about the killings of a muslim family a few months back. Seems to me to be a massively tedious and superfluous discussion to get into but by all means have at it.
a) I'll be honest I just assumed from the comment that it wasn't getting much and was more saying if that's accurate then they're right to be unhappy about it.
b) they're definitely as bad as each other, but there is a difference. There seems to be a trend recently where every time a white guy commits murder there's people asking why he's not being called a terrorist, with the implicit suggestion being that if a Muslim did the same thing they're no doubt be labeled as such.
The difference is in the motivation; if you shoot someone because they're gay (for example) and you just hate gay people, that's a hate crime. If you shoot someone for not believing in the same fictional overlord as you and you're trying to make the whole world believe the same as you that's terrorism.
I think.
Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. Some people seem desperate to label white mass murderers as terrorists, to provide some kind of balance. Which doesn't really make sense unless - as you say - they're killing because of some sort of political agenda. As far as this shooting is concerned, there doesn't seem to be near enough evidence to label him as anything other than a despicable person.
I dunno. I'm probably over-sensitive to over-sensitive people on twitter (ironically enough!) There's a cohort of well-meaning, liberals who seem determined to take offence at the way the media handle every type of crime, be it white on white, black on black, white on black, or black on white crime. As a dyed in the wool, leftie liberal I'm naturally inclined to want to see their point of view but I'm getting a bit jaded by it all.
Skin colour and or religion.
Plenty of white members of ISIS being discussed in the news in recent weeks.
Does anyone even know the religion of the shooter today? He was killing Christians, that's for sure.
Oh behave...
Killing someone for their skin colour or religion (whatever your skin colour or religion) is a hate crime. Killing someone to promote a belief, or attempt to influence policy or coerce behaviour through your actions, is terrorism. IMO.
Yep, the same thing happened with the airline pilot who crashed on purpose with loads of people getting annoyed that he wasn't being labelled a terrorist and saying it's because he wasn't Muslim.
It's just a complete nonsensical argument.
Exactly.
I'd agree with that Mockney, hate crimes are committed because of the killers own prejudices or phobias, terrorism has to have a social or political goal.
It's impossible to judge whether this killer is a terrorist until his motivations are known. A terrorist by definition is looking to change government or society through violence or the threat of violence with a set of political goals. The only area of confusion with the term terrorist is that it tends to only be used to describe those who oppose our perspective and political viewpoint "one man's terrorist is another mans freedom fighter", Bin Laden was a freedom fighter in the West when his gun was pointed at our political rivals and a terrorist when he turned round which indicates more than a little hypocrisy in those who trained and armed him and sent him on his merry way. But then to the Romans, Jesus would have been seen as a terrorist and crucified him to make that point to his followers, even in his own words he was hardly a harbinger of peace “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth: it is not peace I have come to bring, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter in law against her mother in law. A man’s enemies will be those of his own household. Anyone who prefers father or mother to me is not worthy of me. Anyone who prefers son or daughter to me is not worthy of me. Anyone who does not take his cross and follow in my footsteps is not worthy of me. Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:34-39 NJB).
It's impossible to judge whether this killer is a terrorist until his motivations are known. A terrorist by definition is looking to change government or society through violence or the threat of violence with a set of political goals. The only area of confusion with the term terrorist is that it tends to only be used to describe those who oppose our perspective and political viewpoint "one man's terrorist is another mans freedom fighter", Bin Laden was a freedom fighter in the West when his gun was pointed at our political rivals and a terrorist when he turned round which indicates more than a little hypocrisy in those who trained and armed him and sent him on his merry way. But then to the Romans, Jesus would have been seen as a terrorist and crucified him to make that point to his followers, even in his own words he was hardly a harbinger of peace “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth: it is not peace I have come to bring, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter in law against her mother in law. A man’s enemies will be those of his own household. Anyone who prefers father or mother to me is not worthy of me. Anyone who prefers son or daughter to me is not worthy of me. Anyone who does not take his cross and follow in my footsteps is not worthy of me. Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:34-39 NJB).
Didn't say I agreed with it, nor am I calling this person a terrorist.
But that's the underlying tone behind why a large amount of people feel aggrieved as to why he isn't being called a terrorist.
I personally don't think this is a terrorist attack
Yes. Totally agree.
However (pedantic cnut alert), people don't wait for the facts to start putting incidents in separate bins, and the bins that people are placed in is largely dependent on... Race and/or religion. Media is guilty of this, and we discussing such issues are to an extent. That pilot would have been labeled as a terrorist prematurely if he was Muslim and Turkish.
Another thing that grates people's gears is that there is a tendency for white criminals to be contextualized. Let's assume the suspect is caught. You can expect tons of articles on his horrible upbringing in a household rife with child abuse. Depression. How the system failed him. Pictures of him at his baptism, baseball game, with kids...
With minority suspects? Mugshot. Extensive pull of crime records. No attempt to "humanize". Oh, and tendency of minority populations to turn to violence.
I'm not concerned about any of that in this situation. What happened here is terrible, but you can expect the hubba on twitter and other social networks to revolve around those 2 points as time goes on.
There's often a lot of overlap though, one's hatreds will surely inform his/her politics and general view of the world to a huge degree. In this case, hating black people could lead the shooter to conclude that society is better off with less black people, etc.
The real problem is the term 'terrorism' itself, which tells us very little if anything about the motivations of any given individual who has had the label applied to him/her.
I thought he was referring to the skin colour and religion of whoever perpetrated the act. It's a bit like how Anders Behring Breivik quickly became a "gunman" instead of a terrorist, particularly in foreign media.
Bingo.
Also, his mental stability will be questioned and how this may be linked to mental illness.
The land of the free.........
So Breivik's a terrorist?
What else would he be?
Not sure about this. A quick Google search of 'French gunmen' leads to scores of reports referencing, what you imply would be 'terrorists', in 'foreign media' for the recent attacks in France.
As for Breivik, do you really feel that the 'foreign' press sought to empathise with him in some way? To me he was always portrayed as a deranged psychopath and a bit of a sad act.
@adexkola
To reference the recent shootings in France, surely there was much Western media digging into their motivations and what might have caused that from their past?
I would be surprised if the British press, at least, tried to frame this gunman as a victim.
It wasn't done in a bid to sympathize with him (I hope!), but there was definitely a noticeable shift in how he was talked about once it became clear he was a white, Christian ("culturally", if you believe him) Norwegian. Gunman or mass-murderer were both frequently used. That doesn't mean everyone did it, but I don't think people would use those words to that degree if the guys who took credit right away actually did it.
Totally. And I've absolutely no issue with the media being brought to task for that. They should be. There'll still be a decent amount of people demanding terrorism be applied wrongly in the name of fairness though, which shouldn't just go unremarked upon.
If this guy is found to have a racist manifesto written in his own poop that claims he wants to bring back segregation, or force black people out of the neighbourhood in a campaign of terror, he should be a terrorist. If he doesn't, and his motivations can't be specifically identified as political, it's tough to justify calling him one.
At the moment we don't know enough to claim anything tbf. We can speculate. But any speculation is bound to have some form of bias, as we'll be doing it through the prism of other events.
True. War is the obvious problem, as all wars are fought to coerce a political aim. The interesting one for me is Elliot Rodger. He had a manifesto, and a social aim, but most (probably even me) wouldn't naturally consider him a terrorist. My Mrs thinks this is because gender terrorism isn't considered as serious. I've struggled to come up with a water tight argument against this so far.
Yes. Of course.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik
As is Tim McVeigh.
Last edited:
you'd think this is simple enough for people to understand.
I do think it's a fair observation to point out that if he'd been a bearded arab dude, he'd have instantly been labelled a terrorist by the US media (probably the UK media too).
In a way, that's justified, because there does seem to be a far greater amount of terrorist atrocities committed by bearded arab dudes than there is by fair-skinned white men. Which is not to say that a lot of bad stuff isn't carried out by white-skinned men, the difference being that it tends to happen with the endorsement of their government and the UN.
The Tim McVeigh's and Anders Breiviks of this world are so few and far between it's reasonable to assume that any mass killing done by a white bloke is unlikely to have such a clear political agenda.
In a way, that's justified, because there does seem to be a far greater amount of terrorist atrocities committed by bearded arab dudes than there is by fair-skinned white men. Which is not to say that a lot of bad stuff isn't carried out by white-skinned men, the difference being that it tends to happen with the endorsement of their government and the UN.
The Tim McVeigh's and Anders Breiviks of this world are so few and far between it's reasonable to assume that any mass killing done by a white bloke is unlikely to have such a clear political agenda.
@Pogue Mahone It's essentially an argument about profiling is it? And how fair/justified it is. You're never going to stop people speculating, and everyone's will be biased to some degree depending on what we associate with these acts. There'd have been a time post-Columbine and pre-9/11 where a mass shooting would've instantly been associated with pale white gothy kids rather than beardy Muslim men.
What it should really be about is media responsibility to not speculate without the facts. Though that's becoming harder and harder in the 24hour news age where TV is already lagging behind the internet in INSTANT!! content.
What it should really be about is media responsibility to not speculate without the facts. Though that's becoming harder and harder in the 24hour news age where TV is already lagging behind the internet in INSTANT!! content.
Last edited:
Yes, I agree with all of that.
A combination of knee-jerk reporting by the media and the hysteria that has become associated with the word "terrorist" in the post 9-11 era. I mean, when you think about it, a terrorist is arguably more thoughtful and less malicious than someone who kills randomly out of hate. They could at least argue they are killing for the greater good.
However, we've ended up in a situation where being labelled a terrorist is basically saying you're the devil incarnate and people who kill indiscriminately, purely out of hate, without any kind of agenda to change the world for the better (in their own opinion anyway) are the lesser of two evils. Which is kind of fecked.