Class will be delayed one day, until tomorrow.
Academics at universities, which are the best kind of academics, invented the idea of stochastic terrorism. According to academic James Angove (who with the others cited below may appreciate emails of congratulation on their prescience), in the peer-reviewed paper “Stochastic terrorism: critical reflections on an emerging concept“, stochastic terrorism is
broadly, the idea that influential individuals may demonise target groups or individuals, inspiring unknown actors to take up terroristic violence against them…I understand the phenomenon to be specifically authoritarian in nature, which not only demonises but dehumanises its targets.
In the Drexel Law Review, Liam Pagan writes about ending the “reign of stochastic terror”. “Often, ‘political commentary’,” he writes, the scare quotes being his, “is not political commentary at all, but vilification of political targets. This vilification often results in stochastic terrorism…” The full title of Pagan’s article is, “Ending the right’s reign of stochastic terror: replacing Brandenburg to modernize the First Amendment.” Pagan wants to restrict the First Amendment because “there must be accountability for demagogues who incite violence against political targets.”
I agree. Here is two such incidents demonizing and inciting violence against a political target:
Academics Molly Amman and J. Reid Meloy would nod their heads, particularly with these examples, as they open their peer-reviewed paper “Stochastic Terrorism: A Linguistic and Psychological Analysis” with these words:
“Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” These infamous words, attributed to Henry II of England, ominously preceded the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Beckett’s murder in 1170. To be clear, the king neither participated in, nor ordered, the notorious assassination, yet he is widely accepted as being largely responsible for it.
There must therefore be accountability for those acts of stochastic terrorism.
Here is another incident from last week, demonizing the same target, this one from a propagandist:
This propagandist later tried to hide this attempt, crying out in pain that he was the real victim in the assassination attempt he called for.
Here at this link is a video with a collection of propagandists and politicians, the PPs, working their stochastic terrorism hard. It is one of many, many, many, many, many. Indeed, there are so many that they have become commonplace.
It is not only academics, but academic adjacents, by which I mean Experts of all stripe, who sound the alarm on stochastic terrorism.
One is Mark Follman, who was informed by, he says, “veteran national security experts” about stochastic terrorism. One of these is
Juliette Kayyem, a national security expert and former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security. It’s a method of political incitement that provokes random acts of extremist violence, in which the instigator uses rhetoric ambiguous enough to give himself and his allies plausible deniability for any resulting bloodshed. Violent threats or attacks linked to the rhetoric usually generate muted denials and equivocal denunciations, or claims to have been “joking,”
This was Aaronovitch’s ploy, to claim that he was joking.
I’ll be you didn’t know there was Extremist Experts, but there are (there are for everything). Here’s one of them:
Stochastic terrorism is a specific type of extremist violence that occurs when an environment has “othered” a population or individual to a significant enough extent that results in subsequent violence against them, Eric K. Ward, senior advisor to the Western States Center, told Insider.
Another is academic “Ramon Spaaij, a sociology professor who specializes in the study of violent extremism and terrorism.”
“These are individual attacks, but actually there are patterns in the sense that if you create a polarized-enough environment with hate speech and conspiracy theories that pits particular groups against each other, that really starts undermining the legitimacy of democratic institutions and people’s trust,” Spaaij told Insider.
The ongoing delegitimization of such institutions — as well as the people who operate within those institutions — creates an environment that then lowers the threshold for and legitimizes violence as a result, according to Spaaij, who wrote about stochastic terrorism in his 2017 book “The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism.“…
“It’s quite mainstream,” Spaaij said, of stochastic terrorism. Access to inciting ideas is no longer available only in obscure, radical pamphlets and materials. “It’s actually right out there and it really infiltrates mainstream political discourse,” he added…
The individual perpetrator of a violent attack can obviously be held to account. But trying to point the finger at the politician or public figure that fueled the flames that ultimately inspired said individual to act is much more challenging.
“It’s very easy to deny any accountability around that,” Spaaij said. “It’s more indirect, not causal.”
But without any accountability, a vicious cycle materializes and these environments of hate are able to flourish, ensuring further displays of violence, experts said.
There must be accountability. Arresting all perpetrators of stochastic terrorism would not be too extreme, as these academics and Experts would surely agree.
If there is not held accountable, they will strike again. And indeed they did! Immediately after the murder, woundings, and attempted assassination, I wondered, “How long before they form around the line ‘It was only a matter of time, Bob, given his inflammatory language and history of lies’?” Mere moments after that, propagandists posted this story:
Perhaps fearful of being held to account for this fresh attack, the propagandists deleted the tweet (but it was screenshotted for posterity).
These Sky propagandists were laggards compared to their American cousins in chance crime. Even as the shootings were happening, they were attempted to dismiss the event, possibly so that they could pretend they had no part in it. My favorite, and maybe yours, too, was when the propagandists at CNN posted, “Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after he falls at rally.” That was only one of many such thrusts, all useless in the age of eyewitnesses instantly posting their experiences.
Be sure not to miss those same stochastic terrorists trying an on-the-spot gaslighting. “Donald Trump and the people around him perceive themselves to be under threat — and that’s all that matters — That is not legitimate. That is wrong.” She said this over a camera revealing one man laying dead and two others bleeding out. In a way, that kind of brazenness is awe inspiring.
Many tried to warn us about the rising stochastic terrorism. One was Tucker Carlson, who spoke what many of us were thinking, that we were “speeding towards” an assassination of Trump. Propagandists and Experts widely and wildly ridiculed Carlson (the best is here) for openly stating the obvious. Was this because of their latent feelings of guilt?
I know you will join me in reaching out to stochastic terrorism academics and Experts (they are not hard to find: here and here). Being honest and full of integrity, they will surely join the call to hold these stochastic terrorists to account. We await their papers and articles on this with eager anticipation.
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amazing what joining the dots reveals.
Thanks William
That’s a powerful piece and deserves to be widely read.
“Being honest and full of integrity, they will surely join the call to hold these stochastic terrorists to account.”
They won’t because they believe they are the Holy Victims, without sin, unjustly set upon by vicious beasts who need to be put down. Donning the mask of innocent victimhood excuses any moral horror the “victim” may want to inflict on his enemies, real or imagined. A common human failing, and certainly not limited to “the left”. In WWII we went and incinerated entire cities of civilians because we were the Holy Victims and those dirty dogs had it coming. Victim mindset is a seductive and destructive human failing. I think it comes from the devil, who whispers its seductive refrain in our ears hoping to set man against man, to the loss of both, and only to the devil’s profit.
hey doc..
I fully share your anger and frustration. However, hoping for accountability isn’t going to achieve anything – maybe try understanding what’s happening?
At its root what’s going on with the progressive left today is that they’re “jonestowning”. It’s a cult based on a mistake and when cults collide with reality some part of their membership will prefer wholesale slaughter to changing their opinions – in Jonestown (and Mao’s China, Stalin’s soviet union, Pol pot’s … etc etc) mothers killed their own children to avoid facing reality and I fully expect that some part of today’s American progressive movement will do the same.
Fixing this requires a long term solution. The most deeply committed today cannot be saved, but future generations can be if we understand and illuminate the mistake underlying their belief system – and that mistake, of course, is rooted in the belief that human economic interaction is about resources. It isn’t – and that’s why every policy these people try fails. see telearb.net .
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
Hanlon’s razor. I’ve invoked it a thousand times. But man, this time is really, really testing me.
What’s the stupidity in this case? DIE seems likeliest. Seems that the USSS has been horribly infested with DIE-hards, which actually came as a surprise to me, since it seems so unlike politicians to leave their posteriors exposed to the commoners. The ill effects of DIE are supposed to impact the hoi polloi and not them, for heaven’s sake!
I’ll only delve into one conspiratorial aspect here, the video of the sniper that killed the assassin; specifically, the sniper’s movements immediately before his kill shot. It looks for all the world like he is intently trained on the sniper, but he doesn’t fire until after the sniper has fired at least three shots at Trump. The sniper doesn’t even have to swing his rifle left or right, he is already line up on the assassin. Extremely suspicious.
But then I read interviews with former snipers, and they say that the sniper would have been focused on possible threats much further out, in the range of 1000 yards or so. Re-watching the video with this new info, it does indeed appear that the sniper has to quickly lower his aim to make an unexpectedly close-in shot.
But there are plenty of other hard-to-fathom aspects to this, so I’m not ready to apply Hanlon’s razor just yet.
Nobody, at least on the Allied side in WWII, incinerated cities because “they had it coming”. Cities were bombed in an attempt to stop Germany and Japan from continuing to prosecute the war they started. It worked, and many lives, on both sides, were spared from the threat of ongoing fighting.
No Milton Hathaway, never attribute that to stupidity which is adequately explained by malice.
That which is genuinely attributable to stupidity has random outcomes. They do not end in outcomes that consistently favor one side. That’s called a “pattern”
This is the iron law of progressivism, projection! Whatever they are accusing us of doing they are already doing on planing on doing. A favorite recent example is when Trump was being accused of planning to use the justice department to go after his enemies.
So I guess the rule of thumb is not to say or post anything you are not ready to defend. Is it a ‘hill you want to die on?’ Freedom of speech is fine, but freedom after speech is even better.
Fortunately I learned this the hard way when I made a jocular comment that was perceived as dismissive of the efforts of a humanitarian worker, nothing to do with violence. As my priest said at confession, always think and think before you post.
Recently, four years after my debacle, I entered my name into one of those people-research sites. My ‘reputation’ score which had usually scored as 4.5 or 5 on a scale of five now showed 2.5. Good thing I’m not Chinese.
Milton:
Better check again. As I interpret the video, both men are scanning for longer range trouble, somebody ( radio? spotter? ) says something; shooter looks, has a “holy shit!” moment, then does his job. Good for him: fast, decisive, and effective.
Stochastic terrorism is just a ways down the same road as hate crime. What a ridiculous appeal to experts. I despise pizza with pinapple on it. If any of you guys attack your local pizza man, I guess it’ll have been my fault.
Did DIE mess up?
Did DIE forget to secure the very obvious building?
Did DIE forget their binoculars?
Was DIE understaffed?
Was DIE denied more resources?
Did DIE ignore the obvious?
Did DIE brush off the warnings from the people nearby seeing the obvious?
Was DIE out of sunglasses?
Was DIE confused?
Was DIE buying time?
Was DIE forgetting protocol?
Was DIE ignoring protocol?
Did DIE set up the big American Flag to indicate wind direction?
Did DIE put the explosives in the car?
Did DIE set up the 20ft. ladder to the roof?
Was DIE across the grassy knoll?
Was DIE in on it?
What a glorious age for THE SCIENCE ™! THE PAPERS (c)! THE NEWS ™! The celebrities!
We know that the young shooter used an AR-style weapon. Do we know his motive? Was this a suicidal attempt? It’s possible the shooter hated Trump. What were his sources of information? Twitter?
One case alone can hardly be used to draw a general conclusion. I look forward to see the evidence supporting the statement that. Millions of people had heard hateful speeches, lies, and gossip from both the left and right. So, what frequency of such unfortunate events would be deemed as ‘often’?
He did it for love, JH.
Well done Briggs; the Democrat’s midden heap of noxious effluence has caught up with them. They’ve crossed the line and
any of them espousing violent rhetoric belongs in jail. Anyone subverting the life trajectory of a child or chopping off their
genitalia deserves all the hell on earth we can provision them with.
Mr. Briggs, you might be right. You might be right. After all, John Hinckley did it because of his love for Jodie Foster. Love can kill.
Feast of Our Lady of Fatima
Sgt. Briggs On the Nose.
May I suggest criminal prosecution for hate speech inciting violence and racially motivated (orange man bad). Any daring State prosecutors out there? Nothing doing federally with the vegetable in the White House.
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