That movement goes beyond aggressive vandalism: there were literal murders (and attempted murders) going back to the eighties and mostly during the nineties. So it’s absolutely not true to say no one was hurt by those acts. Likewise, the bombings and arson that were inflicted were indeed meant to cause terror on a large scale, and was specifically targeting medical infrastructure, which is war crime level bad. So yeah: terrorism.
If it was only the vandalism, or walking around with dumb signs…then it’s more arguable, even though I’m vehemently against them. IMHO violence against people is what crosses the line. Likewise, when anti-abortion groups are bombing literal medical clinics - that definitely goes beyond vandalism and into territory that causes harm to folks, even in the cases they didn’t kill people directly with the bombs. Blocking people from entering clinics - trying to intimidate workers and patients…also more “grey”, but can arguably cause direct harm/violence.
So to the case from the OP, IMHO vandalizing teslas isn’t harming civilian infrastructure, or otherwise harming people directly, so…I don’t think it crosses the line. Until it does, I think at best it’s reaching to call it domestic terrorism, and at worst - it’s just being bandied about to justify locking up political enemies and chill protests. I fully acknowledge it’s a fairly morally grey area to be discussing, so thank you for a good exchange.
I think that undersells how uninformed most folks are, and how weak critical thinking skills are, on average. Too many people were credulous when trump said he didn’t know anything about project 2025, and many people currently getting deported believed they’d only deport “hardened criminals”. So I don’t think it’s even being fine with these terrible policies, I think a lot of people were simply ignorant.
The ignorance is by design of course, so I’m not trying to pin the blame solely on individuals: the disinformation landscape is a huge boost for right wing extremism, and of course the Democrats themselves just constantly shit the bed. The Dems aren’t Left enough to galvanize support from people who want real change in the system (so they say “fuck it” and either sit out, or become accelerationists), and even the policies they do tout that would help at the margins don’t get any attention - in part because they’re consistently bad at messaging, but also because nuanced, calm reasoning isn’t as attention grabbing as hate and fear.