Terrorist or Disturbed Loner? The Contentious Politics of a Label<br />Though leaders like Mr. Bush were careful to distinguish extremist groups from mainstream Islam, some rights groups warned<br />that the political climate contributed to anti-Muslim violence.<br />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<br />and violently targeting civilians for political purposes." Islamist attacks often seem to meet this standard more easily.<br />Though Monday’s attack appears to fit scholarly and legal definitions for terrorism, past incidents have<br />been called hate crimes or attributed to disturbed loners with far-right leanings but no real agenda.<br />When far-right violence is described as a hate crime or the act of a disturbed loner, even if<br />that is true, it can exacerbate a sense among targeted communities that they matter less.<br />The debate is less about legalistic definitions than a way to examine which groups society<br />is willing to protect, and what kind of violence it is willing to tolerate.<br />It seemed to confirm that the government took violence against black people less seriously and would refuse to fully tackle far-right extremism.
