The weeks after the Boston bombings have been quite distressing not only because of the violence of the act itself, but also because of the ‘political violence’ embraced by subsequent media coverage and given credence by our elected officials’ behavior. Perhaps we have to rethink what constitutes as violence and even terror.

Traditionally, an act constitutes terror if it was ideologically motivated to terrorize. Thus, random shootings — such as those in Aurora and Sandy Hook, which are psychological or sociopathic events, do not constitute terror because they are not motivated by any particular ideology.  But there are serious flaws with this type of logic.

If we explore the aftermath of the tragedy in Boston more deeply, we can see that the Tsarnaev brothers were not the only agents responsible for spreading terror. Numerous politicians and corporate media entities raised Islamophobia so that all Muslims were the enemy. However, in reality the suspects’ actual time spent in the north Caucasus was relatively brief.  This Islamophobia perpetrated by the media may not have been intentional. Nevertheless, it became an alternative form of terror because it targeted and terrorized Muslims simply for being Muslims.

The actual lockdown of Boston created terror as well. Disregarding the debate about whether the lockdown was justified, one can still say that the image of an elite and militarized police force with heavily armored tanks patrolling the streets produced terror. More alarming is the fact that police forces were being steadily transformed into de facto military units even before the Boston bombings.

Now, some elected officials are discussing ways to create ever-stricter policing policies in response to the Boston events.  For example, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg went so far as to say that traditional interpretations of the U.S. Constitution must be loosened to allow government to implement greater security measures. I wonder what greater security measures Bloomberg wants to institute, since he already boasted about heading the 7^th largest army in the world – the NYC police. The role of the police should be to protect us, but instead we fear them. And isn’t this the ultimate goal of terror — to atomize the society by instilling fear?

Perhaps inflicting violence is one distinct form of terror, something entirely different from merely inciting fear of violence from others. But the long term consequences of inciting fear can be equally dangerous, used to justify U.S. imperialism.

If agents such as states can unintentionally produce various forms of terror, how can we have a stable mechanism to define terrorism? Attempting to codify a definition for terror neglects the ways in which our society enables — though not directly causes — events such as the Boston bombings to happen in the first place, i.e. US imperialism. Arguably, the U.S. Government incites terror as much, if not more, than foreign powers. This happens both domestically, but also in other countries, e.g., drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

By seeking to codify and stabilize the definition, we disregard the possibilities of state violence from conceptualizations of terrorism.

Correction: An earlier version of this article included text that was not intended for publication.

A version of this article appeared in the Wednesday, May 1 edition. Edward Radzivilovskiy is deputy opinion editor. Email him at [email protected].