More on law-enforcement and the Nashvile Christmas Day not-a-suicide-bomber who deliberately killed himself during a bombing

The story of the guy who blew himself up in his RV in downtown Nashvile in from of an AT&T building with bombs he'd been building in his back yard for apparently at least a year is emerging in more detail. We're not even a week out from the Christmas Day explosion in which the bomber killed himself that the press is so reluctant to call either a suicide bombing or a terrorist act.

The Nashville police are scrambling to explain why nobody made any mistakes when the guy's girlfriend and former lawyer gave them what turned out to be an accurate report about Mr. Not-A-Suicide-Bomber building a bunch of bombs in his RV. If they get enough heat, they'll probably find some civilian in their communications department whose boss doesn't especially like them anyway, fire him or her, then tell the public they fired someone responsible but can't say anything about it because it's a personnel matter. (Natalie Allison and Mariah Timms, Did Nashville police do enough to try to search bomber's home in 2019? Experts weigh in Nashville Tennessean 12/30/2020)

NBC News is reporting on one aspect of the investigation into the non-terrorism-non-suicide-bombing bombing. (Tom Winter et al, Feds probing whether Nashville bomber believed in lizard people conspiracy 12/30/2020)

It's important to remember it normally takes a while for incidents like this to be clarified, that we may never have explicit documentation of the not-a-suicide-bomber's motives, and the coulda-shoulda questions always involved some judgment. But this story is a reminder of an important point about US law enforcement's general neglect of the real danger of far-right terrorism from white guys:

[I]nvestigators are looking into the suspect’s previous trips to an undisclosed location in Tennessee where he would camp out in his recreational vehicle and, according to the suspect’s statements to others, hunt possible aliens, the officials said.

In addition, investigators are aware of statements the suspect made about an internet conspiracy that powerful politicians and Hollywood figures are actually lizards or other reptiles who have extraterrestrial origins and are taking over society, the officials said.

Which makes this story is a reminder of what "hate crimes" laws are actually designed to do, a large part of which is to educate local law enforcement to know what it is they are seeing and hearing.

The lizard-people-from-outer-space thing is something that has been promoted by Alex Jones, a popular broadcaster among the lunatic right. (Bob Cesca, Alex Jones Pretends to Be a Lizard Man from Space In Epic Display of Insanity Daily Banter 02/17/2016)

If the Nashville cops had taken the bomb report in 2019 seriously enough to actually find a way to talk to the guy - cops can usually do that if they want to - he might have told them he was worried because the world is being taken over by Demucrat lizard-people space-alien commonists. And if they had known that such talk particularly appeals to people in the violent white supremacist scene, they *might* have done a bit more checking. But he was some white guy with an Amurcan-sounding name, so maybe not.

Allison and Timms also report this statement by Memphis FBI spokesperson Joel Siskovic:

"The FBI does not make a practice of investigating and looking into individuals absent criminal charges, criminal allegations," Siskovic said. "So, I can't get too far into how our system works, but basically if there had been any reason to believe that there was a crime, specifically a federal crime, then we would have taken further steps."

So, is the FBI saying it's not a federal crime to build bombs in your RV in your back yard? Or that it's not a crime for white guys to do it? The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) seems to think it is, according to their official Fact Sheet-Illegal Explosive Devices dated May 2019: "Under federal explosives law, it is illegal to engage in the business of manufacturing explosives without a license; to improperly store explosives; to sell or distribute explosives to any person who does not hold an ATF license or permit."

A final thought on what we call terrorism. The definition does change over time. It does make some sense to take motives into account. But legal and popular understandings may diverge. A gang shooting with multiple casualties or family murder-suicides are horrible and tragic and deadly. But those aren't typically treated as terrorism in the press, nor do I think they should be. In the case of the Nashville bomber, that looks to me like an act of terror, i.e., an act meant to terrorize a lot of people, including the targeting of an important local communications center.

In any case, police and law enforcement should not be "blind in the right eye" when it comes to politically or religiously based terrorism. Including screening out cops who are found to support far-right violence-oriented groups.