New York terror attack: Eight dead as pedestrians and cyclists deliberately hit by truck

[Simon_Jester]

The scary bent of this is that this is another "self-inspired" terror attack, at least if I read these facts right: this guy just watched videos and wasn't actually contacted by ISIS. ISIS did nothing but upload the videos. It did nothing to make this happen or spend much non-renewable resources. This guy decided to do this on his own. How the hell do they get an average guy to start thinking "killing as much as possible random strangers is a good thing!"?

You let your videos be seen by one of the few dozen most batshit insane people in a country of three hundred million people.

The kind of person who is "radicalized" into a mass murder by a bunch of videos isn't 'an average guy.' He's a self-selecting lunatic, and if it hadn't been ISIL, it would likely have been some other cause, some other day.

[ray245]

The scary bent of this is that this is another "self-inspired" terror attack, at least if I read these facts right: this guy just watched videos and wasn't actually contacted by ISIS. ISIS did nothing but upload the videos. It did nothing to make this happen or spend much non-renewable resources. This guy decided to do this on his own. How the hell do they get an average guy to start thinking "killing as much as possible random strangers is a good thing!"?

You let your videos be seen by one of the few dozen most batshit insane people in a country of three hundred million people.

The kind of person who is "radicalized" into a mass murder by a bunch of videos isn't 'an average guy.' He's a self-selecting lunatic, and if it hadn't been ISIL, it would likely have been some other cause, some other day.

Other kinds of ideologies probably won't have an impact on an entire group of people belonging to a religion.

[Simon_Jester]

A hundred years ago, anarchists had bomb-throwers and assassination squads. Eighty years ago, fascists did. Fifty years ago, most of the world had right-wing goon squads, left-wing goon squads, or both.

Political violence is not unusual, and radical Islam isn't causing significantly more of it than past ideologies.

[K. A. Pital]

The above were collective actions of political violence, though. People interacted with each other directly. More or less random "lone wolf" attacks without even a clear goal are perhaps a bit different in nature to past acts, if not in scale.

[Simon_Jester]

Firstly, they're not always so different in nature; there were lone assassins in those days. I cannot say with certainty that there were lone bombers, but I'd be amazed if there weren't.

But even if we stipulate that you are correct... They're different in nature, but you'd inevitably expect some differences in the exact details of how political violence is organized by technology, and the specific ideology that motivates it.

The lesson isn't "the more things change, the more they stay the same." The lesson is "things are changing, but they aren't automatically super-bad or automatically getting worse, just because we're biased to think yesterday's terrorist attack is more important, destructive, and unique than a similar attack that occurred fifty or a hundred years ago."

[K. A. Pital]

I think that it is symptomatic of something. If society itself is becoming more atomized (collectives are being dismantled at many levels by capitalism), then it logically follows that terrorism can also become more atomized, and less collective.

[Broomstick]

It's too simplistic to just blame capitalism. There is also the divide-and-conquer strategies of the oligarchs who seek to keep the majority as powerless as possible, and also technology, which enables a single individual to be more destructive than in the past.

[K. A. Pital]

True. I'm not "blaming" capitalism as much as trying to understand the difference between yesterday and today. Technology - especially newer mass media - does amplify terror, I guess.

[ray245]

It's too simplistic to just blame capitalism. There is also the divide-and-conquer strategies of the oligarchs who seek to keep the majority as powerless as possible, and also technology, which enables a single individual to be more destructive than in the past.

And the lack of any viable counter-measures to stop such attacks is sadly going to send politicians into enacting anti-tolerant policies.

One guy of a certain ethnicity/religion doing such an act that is near impossible to stop? They will end up wanting to punish the entire community.

[Master of Ossus]

Could somebody with a better understanding of US law explain the original charges, 'destruction of a motor vehicle and providing material support for a terrorist organization.' the second is fairly understandable but the wording of the first seems odd. Is this just an odd way of saying death by dangerous driving? Or is it actually a crime to destroy a car?

It's a statute which prohibits making and using car bombs. Here, it's being applied because the prosecutors believe he intentionally used a vehicle in a way which was likely to kill or injure.

There doesn't seem to be any actual charge of murder or attempted murder, is this normal or does it in some way get folded into the material support of a terrorist organization charge?

That has to do with the US system of dual sovereignty.

The two crimes he's been charged with are both Federal offenses. Murder, attempted murder, and the various merging crimes like assault and battery, are all state crimes. Here, the state prosecutors are unlikely to charge him until the federal prosecution has run its course. This is for both administrative reasons whereby it's difficult and likely redundant to schedule separate proceedings against the same defendant at the same time in different court systems, and for practical reasons (i.e., if the federal prosecutors really screw up and he gets off for some procedural technicality, then the state prosecutors can press charges as a back-up for precisely the types of crimes that you have identified).

[Broomstick]

The other thing is that the state of New York has no death penalty - no matter how many people he kills he will get no more than life without parole. On the other hand, the Federal government does have the death penalty, so if that is the desired outcome (little doubt that it is with the current administration) it makes sense to prosecute on a Federal level first.