Summary
The NYPD warns US healthcare executives about an online hitlist following the assassination of the UnitedHealthcare CEO.
The threat has led to increased security measures and concerns about copycat killings inspired by social media posts celebrating the murder.
The NYPD bulletin highlights the need for heightened protection due to the potential inspiration from the suspect’s notebook and online reactions justifying the shooting.
If using violence to create fear to affect political change makes someone a terrorist, and we wish to apply that definition here, then there must first be examples made of the authority that wishes to impose such judgment. Authority without competence and oversight is just tyranny. The British called the minutemen barbarians, The United States calls its secret police undercover officers or plain clothes detectives. Word games like this start to fall apart when they face any serious scrutiny.
Either that definition of terrorism is overly broad and would include everything from the police in the United States to our “shock and awe” campaigns abroad. Either that or the difference is not that he “used violence to create fear to affect political change” but that his violence did not come as the official order of a government that is allowed to use violence to create fear to affect political change.
If they try this guy like a terrorist then the country should rightfully riot. The appropriate response would be rebellion on a grand scale.