White Terrorism

I'm not terribly sure why the FBI has decided that the latest Charleston S.C. attack by a White Supremacist on a historically black church is not an act of terrorism, but I suspect it has to do with a reticence to label white people as terrorists at this point in time.  In the past it was quite fine to use the term "Terrorist attack" for high profile events perpetrated by white folks.  But since 9-11, there seems to be a lot less enthusiasm for doing so.  It wasn't an immediate thing.  White militia types had been targeted as terrorists by the Feds, and been investigated, but I don't recall any prosecutions sticking since then.  I suspect this has to do with the problems the FBI had with prosecuting the Hutaree after they rather loudly proclaimed they had infiltrated and broken up a militia group that was planning terrorist attacks.  Their case was so bad that it was thrown out by the Judge presiding over it, and it really looked like the Feds were trumping things up.

Now for the record, I am against the legal repercussions that affect how an act is prosecuted, so hate crimes and terrorist crimes get enhanced penalties because of the reason for the actions.  The subjectivity of those definitions makes the system seem biased, which it is doing here.  To be fair, Hate Crime designations often do not appear to get applied to minorities when the attack seems to be racially motivated when the victims are white.  To me it seems that while the motivation for a crime can make a difference when evaluating how to punish, or even rehabilitate the individuals that committed the crime, the base level should be set at a particular bar, and can only be moved down from that.  Instead, we have a system where the base level is set by the prosecutor when they choose to make a charge and put enhancements on it.

Putting that aside though, seeing as we do have a system where a crime can be categorized as a hate crime or a terrorist act, the 2015 S.C. church shooting where 9 died seems to be clearly a terrorist attack.  It was murder.  It was pre-meditated.  It had a political motivation, which was the intent to incite an insurrection which would lead to a race war.  Now this may not be a particularly rational political motivation, but then it's hard to see the idea of an Islamic army overthrowing the United States as particularly rational either.  However, an investigation of a person with the agenda of a race war in the United States is pretty darn likely to wind up with an investigation of a lot of white people, and could very likely wind up connecting to law enforcement agents and political representatives.  If the South Carolina shooter is found to be a devotee of someone like David Duke, a self avowed member and former leader of the KKK, how far can the FBI take their investigation, and how willing are they to do so.  The trail for Islamic terrorists on the other hand isn't likely to lead to many high profile white folks, and will be far less likely to get much sympathy from any politicians in power, much less find any that share their views.  (If there are any openly Islamic Caliphate supporting elected leaders, or even candidates, I am unaware of them).

I don't know exactly how an investigation into a terrorist crime is done, but I would think that it means that the FBI has to go and look at all the contacts and associates, even online ones (and probably in particular online ones for someone that may not have many face to face associates that share their particular brand of hate), and in South Carolina, a state that has a state level law to keep the Confederate Battle Flag flying in front of the Capital building, that could wind up with the FBI investigating a lot of people that are in positions of authority throughout the state, and that would not be very politically positive.  And the FBI is not above politics.