Terrorism and Hate Crimes: So Similar but the reaction by the right wing is so different

When you do a side by side comparison of terrorism and hate crimes, you come up with:

Well, I’ll be. Just like hate crimes, the only thing that elevates garden variety criminal acts to terrorism is . . . the intention, or motive, behind the act. You take any act that’s “dangerous to human life” and “is a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any State,” and you add in the intent to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or to “influence . . . policy . . . by intimidation or coercion” or to “affect the conduct of a government” . . . and, voila! You’ve got yourself an act of terrorism.

So, it seems as though our conservative friends are okay with “thought crimes” when those thoughts involve, for example, malice, in the case of ordinary criminal conduct, or a desire to intimidate civilian populations or governments, in the case of terrorism, but not when those thoughts involve racism, misogyny, religious or ethnic bias, homophobia . . .

I guess some thoughts are more equal than others.

http://thisweekinblackness.com/2013/04/17/terrorism-hate-crimes-theyre-not-that-different/