Summary
A suspect vandalized and set fire to Teslas at a Las Vegas Collision Center early Tuesday in what police call a “targeted attack.”
The assailant, dressed in black, shot at five vehicles, torched two, and left an undetonated Molotov cocktail. They also spray-painted “Resist” on the building.
Authorities have not confirmed a political motive but noted Elon Musk’s ties to Trump. The FBI is investigating, warning that such acts are federal crimes.
Tesla has faced backlash amid Musk’s government role and far-right politics.
The most fucked up part of this is the fact that the FBI is involved. I’m old enough to remember a time when someone vandalizing a few cars in a lot at 3 in the morning when nobody was around would be a local PD issue, and not the fucking FBI. Seems like it was only a couple of months ago… man, time flies.
Seriously, though - in a normal world, this would be far below the payroll of FBI agents. They would spend their time investigating terrorist organizations or child traffickers and bounce this shit back to LVMPD and tell Tesla to file an insurance claim. Instead, the head of the FBI is the lackey of the president, who owes his position to the billionaire that owns Tesla, and so now the FBI is serving as Elon Musk’s personal private investigators. It’s disgusting.
Well they don’t have to spend their issues on child trafficking anymore because the president supports it and has made extensive use of trafficked children.
And almost all of the domestic terrorist organizations support the government now, magically.
They just need something to do now singer crime is “solved” 🙃
This is being coordinated and cheered on by users on enormous online platforms. If there was one or two fires in a single city or even state then I’d agree the FBI probably wouldn’t even take a look.
However given the very public and national nature of these targeted events, they’re going to have a plausible excuse to investigate this as domestic terrorism.
I’m not endorsing the FBI, or calling this terrorism, just stating how it’s being handled by law enforcement.
That said, folks should know that even a small platform like Lemmy is crawling with glowies, be careful.
Those times were 30 years ago as of tomorrow. Since Oklahoma, the FBI has been very interested in domestic political violence and terror.
Not super interested in the right wingers most of the time though
Some of those that work forces something something.
Actually 30 years ago as of a month and a day from now (April 19th, 1995). Still, there’s a huge fucking difference between a little light arson and parking a van packed full of explosives in front of a federal building. This is property damage, not terrorism.
It’s politically motivated property damage, which is terrorism. It starts with light arson, and when that doesn’t bring down the government, it escalates and before too long there’s a truckload of fertiliser outside the White House because someone doesn’t know when to stop.
By that metric, you could also claim that defacing a political sign during election season is terrorism. Some terrorist drew a mustache on a billboard of one of the candidates in my district. Should the FBI investigate that, too?
The problem with your slippery slope argument is that it’s fucking stupid. You have to draw the line somewhere. If the FBI is going to investigate every time someone decides to huck a molotov cocktail at a nazimobile, they’re going to have their hands way too full to track down real crimes.
Property damage can sometimes be considered terrorism, depending on the intent, scale, and impact of the act. Many legal definitions of terrorism include serious destruction of property if it is intended to:
Tesla dealerships are not critical infrastructure, government buildings or essential services.
It’s really a stretch to call this terrorism.
I wish we had someone who could look at government to cut waste, fraud and abuse, get those guys back on serious crime
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Trump isn’t happy unless he’s fucking someone over. Should people debase themselves to his level?
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Property damage is not terrorism holy shit you’re actually putting material things on the same level as human lives.
Terrorism as defined by the FBI clearly defines property damage as terrorism.
Just because one can make up their own definitions of things, doesn’t obligate everyone else to subscribe to it.
The FBI’s long-standing definition of terrorism includes property damage.
Is blowing a railway bridge not terrorism? It’s just property. As is a water treatment plant. As is a nuclear power station.
The path of escalation to extremism is well attested to in history. For example, in Britain, the Suffragettes began by marching. Then chaining themselves to railings and slashing paintings. Then they threatened Jewish politicians as “enemies of the state”. Then they blew up mail boxes. Then they left bombs on trains. Then they tried to blow up dams to flood cities. Then they set a crowded theatre on fire to try to kill the Prime Minister, and to blow up a mail sorting office with the 200 employees in it. Many of the leaders of the WSPU later became high-ranking members of the British fascist movement, and some were detained for attempting to assist the Third Reich in infiltrating Britain.
The point is, where does the law step in to stop it? Since Oklahoma and certainly 9/11, the American doctrine has been to catch it early and prevent the higher cost attacks.
And it takes one attack that crosses the line to hand Trump his Reichstag Fire moment just like Bush had.
I dunno I just see highly motivated consumers that want to kick the tires and light the fires on these bad boys before signing on the dotted line. It’s similar to how those patriotic tourists toured the capital on January 6th, 2021.
Because someone doesn’t know when to stop? I believe you stop when the government works for the people again, right? Just because you like what’s happening doesn’t mean the patriotic shouldn’t revolt.
They should keep the FBI busy then…
Well. Using feds for vandalization is not a scalable solution