The article strongly implies it was domestic terrorists.
Where does politics come into this? Are terrorists not your enemies?
Where does politics come into this? Are terrorists not your enemies?
Whatever you think of vegans or factory farming, I think most people would agree these are pretty different categories. In a past review the FBI analyzed their data by grouping it into "leftwing", "rightwing", and "salafi-jihadist" categories of domestic terrorism. Leftwing violence was still the smallest out of these (and with the exception of 2001, rightwing violence led), but not by much given that the vast majority events under that category were "ecoterrorism"
And that's just domestically. Internationally most countries know the label is a joke and purely a political tool used against anyone the US doesn't like. The "ecoterrorist" label is particularly brutal as it's been used to justify the state's murder of many indigenous activists, particularly in the Amazon
tl:dr; "terrorist" is a political term
That’s where politics comes in: instant outrage at beyond-unproven, unfounded speculation.
Whoever did this were assholes. What their political leanings were is not yet discovered.
This report[0] on domestic violent terrorism came out in 2022 before the NC attack and talks about how rapidly far-right terrorism has grown in the past decades
> Salafi-jihadist and white supremacist attack planners attempted to target different critical infrastructure sectors, with the former focusing on the commercial facilities, government facilities, and emergency services sectors, and the latter predominantly focusing on the energy sector.
> Since 2019, white supremacist attacks plots against critical infrastructure systems have distinctly increased.
> Between 2016 and 2022, white supremacist plots targeting energy systems dramatically increased in frequency. 13 individuals associated with the movement were arrested and charged in federal court with planning attacks on the energy sector; 11 of these attack planners were charged after 2020.
[0]: https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs2191/f/Critica...
Either law-enforcement investigations happened vastly faster on that particular day than ever before, or people were leaping to and sharing outraged conclusions. You’re right that I can’t prove law enforcement hadn’t solved the case that quickly that day.
As for unprompted, the post above mine directly asked “where does politics come into this?”
Conservatives, currently, have a significant problem with folks doing violence and domestic terrorism. Left wing had it in the 1970s (although to be fair the data has shown the right tends to kills more folks even going back to then).