Terrorism is defined as inciting terror, however it has more recently come to be defined as "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims." (one of three Dictionary.com definitions vs. the Oxford Dictionary definition)
This is sort of U.S. specific, but based on how you view/define terrorism, would you count last week's school shooting in Florida as an act of terrorism? It was the eighteenth school shooting in the United States this year and I've seen a lot of articles and social media posts debating whether or not it should be considered terrorism (and if whether or not that distinction is based on the race of the perpetrator, especially when covered by major media outlets). I personally am still debating this with myself and am not sure, but it's an interesting thought-- what do you guys think?
It's the 18th school shooting but don't worry, it's the 30th mass shooting since Feb 14th, so we're on target to hit just an unreasonable amount of mass shootings. Mass shootings are defined as having 4 or more people shot and killed, and we have so many that they're only notable at this point when either 1. kids are involved or 2. they get a whole lot of people, especially people we tend to value.
This is a terrorist attack. At least in my eyes. The reason I feel it's important to label it as such is it's a matter of how we represent violence. And it's important that we try to stop glorifying these events.
I'm not the type of person who complains about representation in media. I'm latino, and I love Peter Parker as Spiderman, and I hate Miguel O'Hara as Spiderman 2099 because it's a garbage character and it's an obvious rip off of Batman Beyond and I just hate him so much. With that being said, I do think representation shapes how people see what they can become.
When you only show white people pictures of vaguely middle eastern looking people as terrorists, they assume only those types of people can become terrorists. It prevents them from assuming that they could ever be like that, because they aren't shown that they can be. Which is why it's important to label this as terrorism and put these people of different colors than the normal idea of terrorist on the same level as those people. That way, it helps people of different colors realize that not only can they be great, through positive representation in media, but they also realize that they're not invincible, and people like them can also become horrible monsters. It's an important balance to strike, but if we don't call this obvious attempt to use violence to terrorize our nation terrorism, then we will continue to fail to strike it. The reason bigotry occurs is people want an easy target they think they can never be. People hate people of another gender because they know they'll never be like them, so no matter what happens, in their minds, they have someone to be superior to. Once people realize that they are not above others, and are not exempt from evil, they can better prepare themselves to face that evil that is within them.
It's important to remember "Hitler" wasn't a bad word to Hitler. He never thought what he did was wrong. He wasn't shown how evil men like him could become. If he had known that he too, had such evil in him, maybe he'd just be a pretty mediocre art student. So I think if we can have everyone see the good and the bad inside them, it makes it easier for them to choose good. As opposed to always believing they're good, because they couldn't possibly be doing the alternative.
To close on somewhat of a tangent, while it's important to keep showing these tragedies to hopefully shame those in power into trying to stop this, it's a fine line, as this only creates publicity. These people want that. What makes them so dangerous is they realize that this is becoming normalized. So they know that if they want to make the nightly news (which is really all they want once they start firing) they have to do something newsworthy. And when shooting 3 people isn't newsworthy you shoot hundreds and kill 58, like in LA. And when normal people aren't special anymore, they shoot children, like in Newtown or this most recent tragedy. And they want it to be a good story, so they do things like shoot up the Dark Knight Rises, because they think that's a more entertaining event that will capture the public's imagination more.
This creates competition, and as any Econ 101 student will snobbishly tell you, competition breeds "improvement". This means these killers are each going to try to upstage the other. When it's no longer hundreds of people one day someone is going to try and shoot a thousand. When attacking middle schools is no longer newsworth they'll attack elementary, or kindergarten schools. It's not going to get better if we keep giving them what they want. And yet we are forced to, because we must hold onto the hope that if the public sees one more dead body, or one more now crippled child, something will change that has not already changed.