Can The Truckers Be Called Terrorists?

How long before truckers are labeled terrorists? Homeland security could make this determination, couldn't they? Trucks themselves are massive weapons of destruction are they not? If they wanted to ram barricades they could...if they wanted to rig them with explosives they could...fertilizer trucks...gas trucks...oil trucks...oxygen carriers...it would take military action to stop them.

Protests and strikes are only effective if they are capable of lasting...this is not pre-9/11...laws were enacted to make this sort of thing very difficult.

I think protesting is fine as long as you are not preventing law abiding citizens from achieving their specified goals. Truckers have families too, they have the same reasons we all do of trying to live a normal life. There is a fine line though...I read where they have been blocking traffic lanes on the highway...curious to know how they would feel if someone in a truckers family died because they were blocking an emergency vehicle from responding to an accident they created or a fire that raged out of control.

Have your protest, refuse to deliver goods, but have the sense to not create life threatening situations or the life you lose could be one(s) you love.

It will only take one simple phone call from POTUS to enact a martial law scenario and bring in the National Guard or Armed forces along with DHS to change this to a terrorist act of treason and start arresting any truckers that are deemed violent or a danger to society and off they go to Guantanamo Bay.

reply to post by soulpowertothendegree


At the risk of stating the obvious. Truckers can be labeled in an infinite number of ways. For instance, I might label them "nationwide distributors of bottled urine in public places".

It seems you have a point, so you might want to sharpen up the question.

For instance; What would a group of truckers need to do before the DHS and FBI got involved? May I make a suggestion? They could threaten to drive trucks to block Wall Street. That should do it.

If they can be considered terrorists today then they can be considered terrorist on any other day also.They aren`t doing anything different today then they do every other day.
Trucks travel the roads of america every day and every night hauling and delivering cargo, sometimes they travel alone, sometimes they travel in small groups and sometimes they travel in large groups.

labeling them as terrorist would just be pure insane melodrama.

There is a big problem on ATS with members understanding of what terrorism even is and what a terrorist is.

the confusion seems to be that people have a very black and white view of terrorism and struggle to differentiate between a possible terrorist and a actual terrorist.

As it is in America under the PATRIOT Act terrorist is defined as this.

"activities that (A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the U.S. or of any state, that (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 U.S."

So a person is a terrorist if they commit a crime of terrorism that falls into this definition.

A trucker going about his day to day life is not doing anything that falls under this definition, so he is not a terrorist and so long as this definition remains unchanged will never be a terrorist.

However what constitutes a "potential" terrorist is much more complex, we are all potential terrorists to a greater or lesser extent. A trucker could be seen as being a larger terrorist thread for the reasons the OP outlined compared to say a kindergarten teacher, however that does not make the trucker a terrorist.

Truckers are no more potential terrorists than they are potential murderers

Additionally there are many more potential terrorists who are quite apparently much more of a terrorist threat threat than truckers and it is those individuals that the government is really worried about. Those are the people who are heading out to Pakistan for trips tribal area's and spend hours reading up on violent ismaist ideologies visiting radical mosques and buying up fertilizer in bulk or who are actively researching ways to commit a crime of terrorism.

Members on ATS would have you believe that the government thinks everyone is a terrorist that is just not true, it cant be true. What is true is that the government recognizes that everyone is a potential terrorist, some more than others and yes those who are the biggest potential terrorists probably do receive some extra attention form alphabet agencies.

Not terrorists, but in the hypothetical situation where someone in a medical emergency can't get to a hospital in time due crap load of truckers purposefully block traffic like a-holes, then I would sincerely hope that each and every one of those truckers were tried civilly for as much monetary award as could be awarded, and possibly even criminally.

There are plenty of ways to protest, but purposefully blocking traffic is a pretty damn sorry and selfish way to to it.

reply to post by soulpowertothendegree


The question is ambiguous.

By that I mean, that the real question is do you mean morally, or legally? Morally speaking, these truckers are just doing what they can to prevent their nation collapsing around their ears, the devastation of all they love. Legally speaking however, they may well find themselves in breach of anti terror laws.

However, that says more about the state of the law than it does about the actions of these truckers. One could argue that if these fellows could be charged with terror offences, then by the same token, congress and the government of the US should be arrested and tried for terrorism and even treason in some cases.

But that's the trouble with the law. It costs money, and the people with the biggest purses own it.