18 U. S. Code § 2331 - Definitions (of Terrorism) by Adam L. Silverman

The US definition of terrorism in the criminal code is found in 18 U.S. Code § 2331. 18 USC § 2331 states:

(1) the term “international terrorism” means activities that—

(A) involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State;

(B) appear to be intended—

(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or

(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and

(C) occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum;

(2) the term “national of the United States” has the meaning given such term in section 101(a)(22) of the Immigration and Nationality Act;

(3) the term “person” means any individual or entity capable of holding a legal or beneficial interest in property;

(4) the term “act of war” means any act occurring in the course of—

(A) declared war;

(B) armed conflict, whether or not war has been declared, between two or more nations; or

(C) armed conflict between military forces of any origin; and

(5) the term “domestic terrorism” means activities that—

(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;

(B) appear to be intended—

(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or

(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and

(C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.

 

Comments

[AEL]

Thank you for posting this. I think that the facts clearly indicate domestic terrorism.

[LeaNder]

"what I'm saying is that there is a set of ideas that are toxic out there that are beginning to create real problems for us as a society. I am not saying that simply having them means you should be punished - this isn't thought crime stuff. You want to be a white supremacist - and the you here is not cville, its a generic you - you've got every right to hold those beliefs. I personally think they're wrong, but you get to believe what you want to believe."

Thanks for your comments on Pat's former contribution too and the terrorism code.

This time I won't waste one single minute on watching the mindset bubble up web-wise. Neither in its more gross nor its more subtle ways.

According to SPLC--I do appreciate their work-- hate groups have gone down slightly during the last two years, although they are still at "high levels":

"Since 2000, we've seen an increase in the number of hate groups in our country — groups that vilify others on the basis of characteristics such as race or ethnicity. Though the numbers have gone down somewhat in the last two years, they are still at historically high levels. The increase has been driven by a backlash to the country's increasing racial diversity, an increase symbolized, for many, by the presence of an African American in the White House."

But after all they are only one aspect of the larger symptom.

[Tyler]

LeaNder,

The SPLC makes money ginning up the idea that scary hate groups are about to turn every football stadium into a Nuremberg rally unless you send them a hundred bucks.

Basically if you disagree with the current secular dogma you are a hate group to them.

[AEL]

Please provide evidence to sustain your rather sweeping assertions.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Dr. Silvermant:

What is the referent of "State" in this code?

A state of the Union or a sovereign country?

[J]

Tyler,

I concur with your assessment of the SPLC. They meet the gate - keeper criteria.

[cville reader]

The SPLC was recently involved in litigation that prevented a religious group (I think it was Jewish) in NJ from offering voluntary conversion therapy for gay people. They managed to get the therapy outlawed as a hate activity.

That pretty much tells me what I need to know about the SPLC. Anyone who doesn't agree with their world view is a hate group.

[LeaNder]

judging from context, I would assume any state except for the US. And it may obey an American grammatical rule in this context.

[Tyler]

AEL,

Lol, challenge the Caitlyn Jenner-holy status of SPLC and you've got some guy too lazy to do a google search demanding evidence.

Here you go.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/03/26/fbi-dumps-southern-poverty-law-center/

"Signed by fourteen other conservative and Christian leaders, the letter calls SPLC “a heavily politicized organization producing inaccurate and biased data on ‘hate groups’ – not hate crimes.” It accuses the SPLC of “providing findings that are not consistent with trends found in the FBI statistics.” Where the FBI has found hate crimes and hate groups declining significantly in the past ten years, SPLC claims hate groups have increased 67.3% since 2000.Where once SPLC’s hate list was reserved for groups like the Aryan Nation and the KKK, in 2010 SPLC started citing as hate groups those Christian groups that oppose same-sex marriage or believe homosexuality is not inborn, or are otherwise critical of homosexuality. Among the Christian groups targeted by SPLC was FRC."

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/343115/splc-and-slant-patrick-brennan

In fact, it turns out, the SPLC’s “Year in Hate and Extremism” probably seriously overstates the presence of hate groups and dangerous domestic groups. Berger explains why, specifically, the SPLC hugely inflates their headline numbers with a bizarre counting system. Only on the site where you find the raw data, and in none of their media releases, do they make it clear that the “1,007 hate groups” number counts individual chapters of national or regional groups. For instance, “the American Nazi Party is listed six times, and the Council of Conservative Citizens is listed 37 times. There are many more. When you filter the list for organizations with identical names, the list of 1,007 becomes a list of 358.” Or look at “‘Georgia Militia,’ which is listed 14 times. One listing has a county as its location, another says ’statewide,’ and the remaining 12 list no location and contain no links to additional information.”

http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/03/academic-study-splc-hatewatch-biased/

In the academic study “Watching the Watchers: The Neglect of Academic Analysis of Progressive Groups,” published in the January 2014 issue of Academic Questions, Professor John Yancey finds that Southern Poverty Law Center provides a concrete example of “irrational shortcomings” regarding the publishing of its “Hatewatch” list.

The academic paper was reported by Napp Nazworth at the Christian Post

The “Hatewatch” list is, in actual fact, a list of Southern Poverty Law Center’s enemies–oftentimes Christian groups, for example. In August 2012, a man carrying a copy of that Hatewatch list started shooting in the lobby of the Family Research Council building in Washington, DC. Southern Poverty Law Center had placed the pro-Christian Family Research Council on its “Hatewatch.”

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/05/05/not-really-set-up-to-cover-the-extreme-left-southern-poverty-law-center-explains-why-it-doesnt-track-occupy-as-a-hate-group/

“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “We blogged it right away when it happened.” I asked him why he thought this deserved only a blog post, and he explained that the SPLC only deals with “hatred of people based on class characteristics,” which a little more pushing revealed meant “immutable characteristics such as a person’s eye or skin color.” “So,” I asked, “Occupy doesn’t count because it doesn’t hate people based on their innate characteristics?” He assented, but didn’t explain adequately why SPLC is vocal on “Islamophobia,” for example — whatever Islam is, it is not an “immutable” characteristic — and why it concerns itself with matters of traditionalist Catholic theology.

[Tyler]

CR,

After some initial dislike, I'm glad more and more to see you posting around here.

[LeaNder]

we all have our "ideological limits"? Haven't we?

Judging on the basis of my experience with gay friend's, they would prefer to leave their religious community before they would allow anyone to treat them as ill or insane.

But ironically enough their resistance to surrender to the group's dictates wouldn't--to the extend I understand--according to Jewish law stop them from remaining Jews after they stepped outside this specific community.

[LeaNder]

Tyler, without looking into your extensive evidence in support of your claim:

I am not and never was politically aligned and I understand that "anti-anti" may occasionally cause unexpected problems.

But tell me, why the US would be a better place, if people averse to fast knitted collective images of the enemy (melting pot?), and willing to do the little they can to change perception may be dangerous to the US?

Because they ignore much more important religious laws, versus secular ones, that is?

[Valissa]

Tyler, thanks for the links!

Some years ago we used to donate to SPLC. But when I started studying propaganda I became more sensitized to how non-profit groups like SPLC use propaganda methods to increase fundraising. As I became more aware of the consequences of their partisan bias (having become politically agnostic/independent) and started to wonder how truthful they were being about the hate groups they were "at war" with, SPLC started to "smell fishy" to me (though I still admired their stated goal of decreasing hate). At that point we stopped donating to SPLC and a few other non-profits. But I admit I did that on primarily on intuition. It's nice to have some real information to back up my gut feeling.

[Valissa]

For those of you who might find criticism of SPLC from the left more credible, I just found this post by Alexander Cockburn...

King of the Hate Business http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/05/15/king-of-the-hate-business/

At the end of the article he suggests other charities more worthy of donation dollars.

[cville reader]

I don't fit neatly into readily available categories:)

But I think the wrong issue is being addressed on this thread.

I am not so much interested in what the defintion of domestic terrorism is, but what additional perogatives such a defintion gives to federal and local law enforcement. On this issue, I have a very strong libertarian streak.

Why is it that there are so many published demands to call this domestic terrorism?

[Will Reks]

AEL,

I think SPLC operates very similarly to orgs like Jihad Watch in that there's a specific agenda they promote and they simply shoehorn in whatever fits into that agenda. I'm not saying there's no value to what either of those orgs provide but there are flaws in their approach.

Tyler's sources are great. This guy calls out people for linking to lefty sites like the huffington post and here he is linking to breitbart and glenn beck's site. Just for the record.

[Will Reks]

"I am not so much interested in what the defintion of domestic terrorism is, but what additional perogatives such a defintion gives to federal and local law enforcement. On this issue, I have a very strong libertarian streak."

Yeah, I agree that the implications are the real story. If we make a parallel to Islamic terrorism then you'll note that law enforcement has aggressively gone after charities and the like that they have accused of providing material support (fund-raising) to groups like Hamas. The FBI has adopted an entrapment strategy in which they encourage and provide the means for sympathizers of low intelligence to carry out acts of terrorism.

I don't see this quite happening with "domestic terrorism" as these cases typically involve loners. I don't think we need to focus the surveillance state on someone who has a Sons of Confederate Veterans bumper sticker or puts up a Confederate flag for whatever reason.

[cville reader]

I can't speak for the Jewish faith, but no one forced the people in question to take the therapy. It was voluntary.

You had better get used to the idea that some religions will always consider homosexual activity (not orientation) a sin. How do you propose we deal with that conundrum in the US?

[scott s.]

The definition of "domestic terrorism" seems to me another manifestation of the tendency to federalize criminal/penal jurisdiction in this country. I don't think that was ever the founders' intent, and if it considered necessary now, or at least expedient I would think there would be more forthright discussion and debate of it.

[Tyler]

Tony,

Please don't hit me with your purse.

[no one]

cville reader, Perhaps because, if it is "terrorism", then many individuals and groups with un-PC ideas - such as those referenced by Roof - could be punished/arrested/silenced as supporters of terrorism.

Remember, the Constitution is outdated. Not only could the framers not have imagined the type of fire power available here in the 21st century when they wrote the 2A, but they couldn't have imagined the immense communication networks available today either; networks that serve as conduits for wrong ideas. The 1A also must be re-worked.

[Gordon Wilson]

I have spent the last three days reading over simplified analyses of the Roof incident which is one of the greatest shortcomings of the web, as millions of people pour out their grief and outrage with accusations and over simplified solutions that vary according to whatever over simplified political and ideological tenets we align ourselves with and within, all to no avail except to reaffirm our inability to express complex feelings and thoughts in twenty thousand words or less, as required by the limitations of the WWW.

If we are to find the catalyst at work within the mass murders, we are on a fools errand, I think, for we cannot reduce any human being down to this level of simplification so as to actually define the problem which we are seeking to resolve without robbing them of their humanity, and perhaps ourselves in the process.

So I will start with Amos 3:6 Shall the trumpet be blown in a city, and the people not be afraid? shall evil befall a city, and Jehovah hath not done it?

I am of the mind that the victims of the Charleston shootings are martyrs of the Lord, for they were doing that which is fine in the eyes of God, studying the Scriptures, and welcoming their murderer into their midsts as the Lord has commanded them to do, doing so for the edification of the entire Christian community, to call us all to our senses and the greater obligation of fealty to the teachings handed down to us by the Apostles and Prophets in regard to matters of the faith.

It is a failure of Christian love, and a categorical rejection of the politics of hate. We may disagree politically, or ideologically, but we cannot, as the Apostle John wrote in his epistles, hate, for to hate is to reject the Lord, and the One who sent him.

So I encourage one and all to reexamine their own standing with the Lord, not with a view to superiority or reaffirmation of one's own good standing with the Lord, but as a means of becoming more acceptable to Lord, with fine works that display our shared faith in the Lord, the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

I see no other simple, or simpler solution to our current dilemma as human beings, Americans, or Christians within our nation, than a recommitment to our Lord and ourselves, than that we should have love amongst ourselves, first, but also for all those made in the image of a Living God.

We cannot cure the ills and evils of the world, but we can work on curing the lack of love within ourselves, which is an evil closer at hand. If we are to reduce events to their simplest terms, then let us love so long as it is up to us to do so. But let us not pretend that God is acting in a vacuum here. We are being put to the test by the blood of the martyrs, and we most certainly will fail if we presume we have already passed the test. It is not without reason that the Scripture informs us not to be putting on our armor for battle as though we are returning from it.

[cville reader]

What can the federal government do with regard to domestic terrorism under the Patriot Act? This ACLU site has some interesting information, although it is most concerned with leftist organizations that could be threatened.

https://www.aclu.org/how-usa-patriot-act-redefines-domestic-terrorism

One of the most interesting aspects is the potential for seizure of assets.

[Farooq]

Are you talking about this therapy related verdict?

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/nj-lawsuit-alleges-jonah-gay-conversion-therapy-fraud/story?id=17814302

These "therapists" were charging up to 10K a year and were sued under state's consumer protection laws by four patients who realized they were not getting anything out of it. From what i read in this article and others, the suit alleges fraud and not "hate activity"

"Two of the men's mothers, Jo Bruck and Bella Levin, who paid for therapy sessions that could cost up to $10,000 a year, were also plaintiffs.
One of the plaintiffs alleges that therapy sessions that involved a virtual "strip tease" in front of an older male counselor, as well as reliving abuse and homophobia were "humiliating.""

.....

"The lawsuit alleges that some of the methods used included: telling boys to beat a pillow, the "effigy of the client's mother," with a tennis racket; encouraging "cuddling" between younger clients and older male counselors; and even instructing attendees to remove their clothing and hold their penis in front of Downing.

Attendees were also subjected to ridicule as "faggots" and "homos" in mock locker room and gym class role playing, according to the lawsuit."

.....

"According to the lawsuit, JONAH cites the "scientific" work of Joseph Nicolosi, one of the primary proponents of conversion therapy and Richard A. Cohen, who was permanently expelled from the American Counseling Association in 2002 for "multiple ethical violations.""

.....

"Cohen uses a technique called "bioenergetics" that includes having male patients beat a pillow, which represents their mother, as a way of stopping same-sex attraction, according to the lawsuit.

"