For what its worth, I haven't heard this guy described as anything but a terrorist. I don't think anyone is whitewashing his actions or excusing them. But I think you can perform a heinous act that inspires terror without being a terrorist.
It depends on how broadly you construe the word "terrorist." On one level, anyone who inspires fear is a terrorist. Under that definition every thug who mugs you for your wallet or any bully who chivvies you out of your lunch money is a terrorist. In regular warfare, the inspiration of terror in the enemy is always a laudable goal, just ask Gen. Sherman. I'm not sure that is what we mean when we say "terrorist", though. In the West we have long associated "terrorism" with political radicalism. From the Sans Culottes to the KKK to the IRA to Baader-Meinhof, the Red Brigades, FLAN, PLO, al Qaeda, ISIS, the list is depressingly long, the word "terrorist" was inextricably wedded to an ideology and the expression of that ideology in violence directed against people who would not ordinarily be targets of violence. So, the Haganah blowing up a British Army transport isn't terrorism, it's warfare, albeit irregular. The Irgun blowing up the King David Hotel and killing a bunch of civilians along with a few British officers, that is terrorism.
Unless we see a semi-coherent ideology at the root of this last attack, or, God forbid, a repetition of the attack by other people citing broadly similar motivations, I'd be inclined to say that an angry, violent man snapped and lashed out at people who he imagined were his enemies,
Now, an interesting question would be to ask whether James Hodgkinson should be considered a terrorist. He isn't around anymore to interview, but his motivations seem clearly political, his agenda was fairly transparent and his targets were not random but rather carefully chosen.
It depends on how broadly you construe the word "terrorist." On one level, anyone who inspires fear is a terrorist. Under that definition every thug who mugs you for your wallet or any bully who chivvies you out of your lunch money is a terrorist. In regular warfare, the inspiration of terror in the enemy is always a laudable goal, just ask Gen. Sherman. I'm not sure that is what we mean when we say "terrorist", though. In the West we have long associated "terrorism" with political radicalism. From the Sans Culottes to the KKK to the IRA to Baader-Meinhof, the Red Brigades, FLAN, PLO, al Qaeda, ISIS, the list is depressingly long, the word "terrorist" was inextricably wedded to an ideology and the expression of that ideology in violence directed against people who would not ordinarily be targets of violence. So, the Haganah blowing up a British Army transport isn't terrorism, it's warfare, albeit irregular. The Irgun blowing up the King David Hotel and killing a bunch of civilians along with a few British officers, that is terrorism.
Unless we see a semi-coherent ideology at the root of this last attack, or, God forbid, a repetition of the attack by other people citing broadly similar motivations, I'd be inclined to say that an angry, violent man snapped and lashed out at people who he imagined were his enemies,
Now, an interesting question would be to ask whether James Hodgkinson should be considered a terrorist. He isn't around anymore to interview, but his motivations seem clearly political, his agenda was fairly transparent and his targets were not random but rather carefully chosen.
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