this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
618 points (98.9% liked)
A Boring Dystopia
11124 readers
2443 users here now
Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.
Rules (Subject to Change)
--Be a Decent Human Being
--Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article in your post title
--If a picture is just a screenshot of an article, link the article
--If a video's content isn't clear from title, write a short summary so people know what it's about.
--Posts must have something to do with the topic
--Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.
--No NSFW content
--Abide by the rules of lemmy.world
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If that's the definition, then I think it's textbook not at all terrorism. One of the standard definitions of violence, and the one that I agree with, is using force to hurt a person or living being. In other words, you can't use violence against an empty car dealership in the middle of the night. So it's not violent.
The target is the company owned by Elon Musk, and he is a member of the government. In other words, the act of inflammation is a protest against the government, not against civilians.
It depends on the arsonist, but I don't see these acts as ones that are designed to make people fear anything. Rather, they are designed to help people band together and fight against Elon Musk and his evil Nazi ways.
And then you've misidentified the goal. I think one of the goals, other than helping people band together, is to hurt Elon Musk's company economically. Now you might argue that people want to inflict economic costs upon him because of related political goals, but now you're getting into indirect reasoning, which would allow you to argue that anything, any act at all, or not acting in the first place, counts as terrorism.
Assume I somehow manage to blow up that obelisk in Washington DC. Would you consider this terrorism, even if no person got hurt?
The relative risk of trying to do that is such that you are highly likely to injure someone. If no one got hurt in that type of attack, it's by sheer luck.
Also, not a soul thinks people attacking unpurchased vehicles is a threat to escalate to hurting people.
It's a crime, but not everything is 'terrorism'.
What about something different, farther away from civilian population centers being destroyed? Like, I don't know, Mount Rushmore being exploded? Or someone burning down an empty library? Maybe someone gaining access to an airport and throwing a molotov at the turbines of an empty jumbo jet?
These examples are explicitly more severe than damaging Teslas. But only few would argue any of those aren't terrorism, be it perpetrated by anti-imperialist Native Americans (exploding Mount Rushmore), by anti-intellectual fascists (burning down a library) or by environmentalists (molotov @ plane). All of these groups would have political motives which is really all that's needed for damaging property to be terrorism.
Whether terrorism can or cannot ever be justified is a different question. But I'd argue attacking Tesla dealerships through violent means is domestic terrorism - be it shooting them up or setting them on fire.
Enough damage to that dealership costs someone money. That's harm.
Maybe not a lot of harm. But it's harm.
In the U.K. it’s criminal damage, not sure what the USA exact term will be, but it won’t be terrorism.
Still not violence
It is if you're using the definition provided by the person I'm replying to.
Depends on the motives and way it happens. That is a valuable perspective but reality could be grim.