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Isn't the relevant question here whether the shooter considers Mormons Christians and attacked them as such?
It's sort of like the cases of Sikhs or Hindus getting the shit beat out of them by guys shouting about Muslim terrorism, that's still an anti-Muslim crime even if the victims aren't Muslims.
If the shooter intended to kill Christians, and perceived Mormons as indistinguishably Christian vis a vis Catholics or Evangelicals, then it was an anti-Christian attack.
Sure, but that seems terribly unlikely to me.
But really I don't think Trump thought this through, he wouldn't know Christianity (or the LDS flavor of it, for that matter) if a Bible smacked him in the head. This was pattern-matched without evidence to other recent attacks that could plausibly said to be related to anti-Christian animus and became the subject of an immediate Trump tweet. I thought it was frustrating when I initially heard it because it immediately politicized a brutal attack that seemed to have very murky and mostly clinically insane motivations. Both sides of our politics have a pretty bad time diagnosing the actual motivations behind mass violence, even if they're obvious.
The interesting, albeit strangely impassioned, arguments we've had recently about Christian creeds and the LDS faith has really just been a sidequest; not the sort of thing I'd bring up outside of the Autistically Debate Nuances of Ideas Free Speech Zone that is the Motte. People were lit on fire, I'm not sure it matters in the first 24 hours whether the guy who did it did it because he thought Mormons were Christians or Mormons were the anti-Christians, though that might eventually become important. Does the LDS church commemorate martyrs?
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All right, fair point. If a person intends to attack Christians, and attacks a group based on his perception that that group is Christian, then it is an anti-Christian attack regardless of whether or not the group is actually Christian.
I suppose a more obvious example of that principle is when people attack Sikhs in the mistaken belief that they are Muslims.
Yeah but it's a bit all over the place. I'm not claiming that the Moonies are a conventional Christian denomination but they do profess some interest in JC and Shinzo Abe's assassination was largely due to his affiliation with the group. Was it an anti-Christian assassination or an anti-cultist assassination?
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Very much agreed. An attack on Mormons qua Christians by someone who thinks Mormons are Christians (which, AFAIK, the vast majority of lefty American anti-Christians do) is an attack on Christianity, regardless of whether or not Mormons are really Christians. An attack on Mormons qua Mormons is not an attack on Christianity, particularly if the attacker doesn't think Mormons are Christians.
Based on what has come out so far, this attacker is a mentally ill (80% certainty) Trump-supporting (80%) Red Triber (95%) with a personal beef against specific Mormon individuals (60%). That is not someone who would attack Mormons qua Christians, but is very likely to attack Mormons qua Mormons. So Trump's statement is misleading.
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