Arrest All Stochastic Terrorists In Trump Assassination Attempt & Civilian Murder & Shootings

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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