Legacy media pushing narrative that race, and not motive, are determining factors in whether acts of mass murder are “terrorism”

In the wake of the horrific mass murder committed in Las Vegas Sunday night, not a few legacy media outlets have begun exploring the “connection” between rising violence and so-called “hate speech” that is permissible under our constitutional republic.

The problem is that such “speech” can lead to violence, and violence is really domestic terrorism when it is carried out in the name of achieving a predetermined political objective.

In this the mainstream media is correct: Using violence for political ends is terrorism. But is that any different than domestic terrorism?

According to The Associated Press, yes it is. Oh, and it’s possibly racism. Or, rather, race-related. Or something like that. And because it is race-related mass homicide, there’s disagreement over what we should call it.

The AP reported:

The mass shooting in Las Vegas is the deadliest in modern U.S. history, but is it terrorism?

While much will hinge on the motives of a white gunman attacking a mostly-white country music crowd, that uncomfortable question also hits at some of America’s most divisive issues: race, religion and politics. …

The story goes on to mention Timothy McVeigh, a right-winger who was convicted and put to death for bombing the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in the mid-1990s, who was not convicted of terrorism but, instead, of using a weapon of mass destruction. Meanwhile, the AP contrasted that attack with another act of mass murder committed by Omar Mateen, 29, the Orlando nightclub shooter; Mateen’s act was called terrorism because of his Middle Eastern descent. And of course now, we’re not quite sure what to call Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock — a terrorist or a mass murderer, the AP intimates, because he’s white.

Huh?

Nowhere in the AP’s story is any mention of the recently-disclosed fact that the Obama administration had positively identified members of one group responsible for the lion’s share of political violence of late — the Alt-Left anarchist group Antifa — which is curious, indeed, since many of them are white. (Related: Antifa should be declared a domestic terrorism organization.)

How can any discussion of “domestic terrorism” take place moving forward if the media fail to inform readers and viewers of the Obama-era designation regarding Antifa? Because failure to mention the group and the designation smacks not only of bias but of an attitude that the violence they commit — which is directed at supporters of President Donald J. Trump and conservatives in general — is okay, but violence, even politically-motivated violence, committed by anyone else isn’t alright and is, in fact, domestic terrorism.

Perhaps there is no special designation for “domestic” terrorism because acts of political violence are acts of political violence; that they are committed “domestically” is beside the point, right?

This may seem like an insignificant, unimportant clarification but it’s not: If we allow the mainstream media to redefine this horrific act as something other than what it was (which we don’t yet know because we don’t yet, as of this writing, know the shooter’s motivations), then we once again allow them to rewrite history and redirect the argument and the issue at hand to a place where it doesn’t need to go (in this case “gun control” and new ‘special’ laws against “domestic terrorism”).

The AP, and the experts its reporters spoke to, want to claim “racism!” in the different designations of various criminal acts that were recently committed by criminals of diverse ethnic backgrounds. But it’s not “racist” to assign the terrorism label to a man of Middle Eastern descent who claimed to be acting in the name of ISIS — or it shouldn’t be.

Authorities are not yet “officially” calling Paddock’s murders an act of terrorism because we don’t yet know his motives. For all we know, he could’ve just “lost it,” which would make it a horrific case of murder, not “terrorism,” domestic or otherwise. His being white has nothing to do with anything; his motives will determine how we should describe what he did.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources include:

TheNationalSentinel.com

WBT.com