Stochastic terrorism
Stochastic terrorism is political violence that has been instigated by hostile public rhetoric which is directed at a group or an individual. Unlike incitement to terrorism, stochastic terrorism is accomplished by using indirect, vague, or coded language that allows the instigator to plausibly disclaim responsibility for the resulting violence.[1] A key element is the use of social media and other distributed forms of communications where the person who carries out the violence has no direct connection to the users of violent rhetoric.[2]
Defining features
[edit]Although stochastic terrorism is considered an academic term without a formal legal definition,[1] it is differentiated from other forms of terrorism due to its public, indirect, and seemingly random nature.
- Speech: A public figure or group disseminates violent, inflammatory rhetoric via mass-media, directed at people or groups of people, sometimes suggesting or legitimizing the use of violence.[1] This speech tends to be protected due to the use of ambiguous coded language, dog whistles, jokes, hints, and other subtext in statements that fall short of a criminal threshold for causation.[3][4][1] Other themes identified include black and white good vs. evil narratives[5] as well as painting an enemy as a mortal threat, which have been compared to the radicalization techniques used by terrorist groups.[6][7] These attacks are often repeated and amplified inside a media echo chamber.[8][9]
- Speaker(s): Typically the speaker is an influential political or media figure, who is referred to as the "stochastic terrorist" for his or her alleged indirect culpability for the attack.[10][9][1] The instigator(s) or "stochastic terrorist(s)" may or may not knowingly use this technique to attack and intimidate enemies, nonetheless, the effect remains the same. The public figure can plausibly disclaim any subsequent attack, as their words were not an explicit call for violence, and because of the lack of a direct organizational link between the instigator and perpetrator of the attack.[11][1] The public figure cannot be prosecuted for his or her statements so long as they do not meet the legal definition of incitement. This is the key distinction between stochastic terrorism and other forms of terrorism. In the U.S., the 1969 Supreme Court case Brandenburg v. Ohio held that violent, inflammatory speech cannot be criminalized unless it is intended to, and likely to, result in imminent lawless action.[3] However, Kurt Braddock warns that speech can be quite dangerous even if legal.[10]
- Inspiration: An individual or group, without any ties to known terrorist groups, hears the speech and becomes motivated to commit violence against the target of the speech, believing it will further a political or ideological goal.[3][12]
- Attack: An attacker commits an act of terrorism that could include physical violence, threats, or other acts meant to harm, instill fear, intimidate.[10] The victims may receive or fear physical attacks, (online) harassment, and death threats.[13] This can have a chilling effect, as many victims do not have the resources for adequate security.[14]
- Probability: While difficult to predict each individual act of violence due to the disconnected chain of causality, the speech makes threats and terror attacks more likely. These attacks observed as a collection have a statistically valid relationship, even if individual attacks are too random (stochastic) to predict precisely.[15]
Origin and popularization of the term
[edit]In 2002, the term was first used by Gordon Woo to describe a process to quantify risk of a terrorist attack.[1][16][17][18]
Credit for defining the term has also been given to the blogger, G2geek, on the Daily Kos platform in 2011, when defining it as "the use of mass communications to stir up random lone wolves to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable", with plausible deniability for those creating media messaging.[1][19][20] The article covered the 2011 Tucson shooting.[10]
As of 2016, "stochastic terrorism" was an "obscure" academic term according to professor David S. Cohen.[21] During an August 9, 2016 campaign rally, then-candidate Donald Trump remarked "If [Hillary Clinton] gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. I don't know." These comments were widely condemned as instigating violence, and described by Cohen as "stochastic terrorism", further popularizing the term.[22][21][10] Trump has continued to be criticized as inspiring violence.[23][24][25][26]
Counter measures
[edit]Counterterrorism techniques such as attitudinal inoculation can help explain to a broad audience how radicalization and manipulation works, helping to blunt the impact of messages that increase violent tendencies.[10][7] Seth Jones argues that labeling domestic terrorist groups, similar to labeling of international groups, would be helpful, although he acknowledges that most right-wing violence is perpetrated by lone wolves.[27] Rachel Kleinfeld advocates for increasing the penalties of violent actions or threats against elected officials, election workers, and other essential personnel for the functioning of a democracy to a specially-protected class similar to how hate crimes are classified.[28]
Alleged incidents
[edit]The 2009 murder of George Tiller has been described as an example of stochastic terrorism, as many conservative news opinion shows and talk radio shows repeatedly demonized him for his administration of post-viability abortions.[22][29][21]
The 2011 Tucson shooting where US Rep Gabby Giffords was shot has also been cited as a prominent example.[30][31][32]
Al Qaeda and ISIS used this tactic, which has been cited as the mechanism that inspired attacks including Boston Marathon bombing and Fort Hood.[2]
The 2015 murder of Jo Cox MP by white supremacist Thomas Mair ahead of the Brexit referendum has been described as stochastic terrorism.[33] It has been noted that the views held by Mair - including anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiment - are part of mainstream British political discourse. By describing the murder in the context of Nazism, the presiding judge separated the sentiments from modern political discourse rather than drawing attention to contemporary extremist groups and figures whose rhetoric were likely to have influenced Mair.[34]
In their 2017 book Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism, criminologist Mark S. Hamm and sociologist Ramón Spaaij describe ISIS,[1] Anwar al-Awlaki, and Alex Jones as guilty of stochastic terrorism.[20]: 157 In the 2010 Oakland freeway shootout, Byron Williams was said to be en route to offices of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Tides Foundation, planning to commit mass murder, "indirectly enabled by the conspiracy theories" of Glenn Beck and Alex Jones.[20] They also cite the 2012 shooting at the Family Research Council.[20]
The 2017 congressional baseball shooting has been described as an act of stochastic terrorism.[35][30]
The 2018 mail bombings were also attributed by Barbara MacQuade,[2] Medhi Hasan[36] and Jonathon Keats[31] as stochastic terrorism indirectly inspired by the rhetoric of Donald Trump.
The Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot in 2020 has been described by Molly Amman and Reid Meloy as an example of stochastic terrorism.[3][1][7][37]
In the wake of escalating attacks on the LGBT community in the early 2020s, including bomb threats on children's hospitals and the Colorado Springs nightclub shooting, right-wing activists such as Matt Walsh and Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok have been accused of stochastic terrorism by commentators Kristofer Goldsmith,[38] Helen Santoro[39] and Juliette Kayyem.[40][41]
The January 6 attack on the Capitol has also been described as stochastic terrorism.[2][42][43][35]
The May 2022 Buffalo shooting[12][44][45] and the August 2022 Cincinnati FBI field office attack have been cited as examples of stochastic terrorism.[46][47][48][49][50]
Max Fisher suggested that in India, the links between the rhetoric of the BJP and violence against India's muslim minority represents an example of stochastic terrorism.[51]
The perpetrator of the October 2022 attack on Paul Pelosi stated he was looking for Nancy Pelosi and hoping to intimidate other Democratic lawmakers, actions that have been described by some commentators and academics as stochastic terrorism.[52][53][35][54]
In June 2024, two racially motivated stabbing incidents happened in Oulu, Finland.[55] Green Sisu described the attacks as stochastic terrorism and being predated by years of hostile rhetoric from far-right politicians in Finland, most notably from the Finns Party.[56][57]
Following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in July 2024, several commentators criticized the concept of stochastic terrorism.[58][59][60] Mark Follman disagreed, arguing that threat of stochastic terrorism has risen as a result of some of the responses to the shooting that claim, without evidence, that the attempt was politically motivated.[61]
Following the July 2024 Southport stabbing, inflammatory remarks and sharing of disinformation by public figures were linked to subsequent rioting. The Reform UK leader Nigel Farage was accused by former counter-terrorism Police chief Neil Basu of inciting violence and creating conspiracy theories.[62][63][64] Islamophobic and racially-motivated disorder, including a stabbing,[65] were linked to the English Defence League and British Movement, following social media posts by right-wing extremists.[66][67][improper synthesis?]
See also
[edit]- Association fallacy – Informal inductive fallacy
- Conspiracy theory – Attributing events to less-probable plots
- Demonization – Characterization of individuals, groups, or political bodies as evil
- Diffusion of responsibility – Sociopsychological phenomenon
- False accusation – Claim or allegation of wrongdoing that is untrue
- Genocide justification – Attempts to claim genocide is a moral action
- Hate speech – Speech that expresses hatred towards individuals or groups
- Little Eichmanns – Small actions leading to complicity in evil
- Moral panic – Fear that some evil threatens society
- Online hate speech – Speech published online that expresses hatred towards individuals or groups
- Political violence – Violence conducted with political goals
- Radicalization – Social process by which people arrive at extreme views
- Scapegoating – Practice of singling out any party for unmerited negative treatment or blame
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Amman, Molly; Meloy, J. Reid (2021). "Stochastic Terrorism: A Linguistic and Psychological Analysis" (PDF). Perspectives on Terrorism. 15 (5): 2–13. ISSN 2334-3745. JSTOR 27073433. Retrieved October 5, 2023.
- ^ a b c d McQuade, Barbara (2024). "Chapter 7". Attack from within: how disinformation is sabotaging America. New York: Seven Stories Press. ISBN 978-1-64421-363-6.
- ^ a b c d Amman, Molly; Meloy, Reid (October 2021). "Incitement to Violence and Stochastic Terrorism: Legal, Academic, and Practical Parameters for Researchers and Investigators". Terrorism and Political Violence. 15 (5). Terrorism Research Initiative: 2–13. doi:10.1080/09546553.2022.2143352. ISSN 0954-6553. S2CID 254907232 – via JSTOR.
- ^ Follman, Mark (December 17, 2020). "National security experts warn Trump 'is promoting terrorism' against Americans". Mother Jones. Retrieved August 11, 2023.
- ^ Snodgrass, Erin (November 8, 2022). "Stochastic terrorism appears to be on the rise globally. Extremism experts explain how this form of violence has gone mainstream". Business Insider. Retrieved September 26, 2023.
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- ^ a b Hutterer, Michaela (June 2, 2023). "From Sparks To Fire" (PDF). Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law. Retrieved October 3, 2023.
- ^ Mathis-Lilley, Ben (June 23, 2022). "The Poll Workers Targeted by Trump". Slate (Interview). Interviewed by Mary Harris. Retrieved October 3, 2023.
- ^ Kleinfeld, Rachel (October 2021). "The Rise of Political Violence in the United States". Journal of Democracy. 32 (4): 160–76. doi:10.1353/jod.2021.0059. S2CID 239879073. Retrieved October 3, 2023.
- ^ "What Is 'Stochastic Terrorism,' And Why Is It Trending?". Dictionary.com. August 8, 2019. Retrieved August 19, 2023.
- ^ Munn, Luke (June 2019). "Alt-Right pipeline: Individual Journeys to extremism online". First Monday. 26 (6). doi:10.5210/fm.v24i6.10108. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
- ^ Woo, Gordon (April 1, 2002). "Quantitative Terrorism Risk Assessment". The Journal of Risk Finance. 4 (1): 7–14. doi:10.1108/eb022949. ISSN 1526-5943. Retrieved October 5, 2023.
- ^ Woo, Gordon (December 2003). "Insuring Against Al-Quaeda" (PDF). Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved March 26, 2024.
- ^ G2geek (January 11, 2011). "Stochastic Terrorism: Triggering the shooters". Daily Kos. Retrieved September 2, 2023.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ a b c d Hamm, Mark S.; Spaaij, Ramón; Cottee, Simon (2017). The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism. Studies in transgression. New York City: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-54377-4.
- ^ a b c Cohen, David S. (August 9, 2016). "Trump's Assassination Dog Whistle Was Even Scarier Than You Think". Rolling Stone. Retrieved August 11, 2023.
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- ^ Timmons, Heather (October 26, 2018). "Stochastic terror and the cycle of hate that pushes unstable Americans to violence". Quartz. Retrieved June 19, 2024.
- ^ Kayyem, Juliette (December 6, 2023). "The Proud Boys Love a Winner". The Atlantic. ISSN 2151-9463. Retrieved June 19, 2024.
- ^ Jones, Seth G. (2018). The Rise of Far-Right Extremism in the United States (Report). Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Retrieved October 3, 2023.
- ^ Kleinfeld, Rachel (March 31, 2022). "The Rise in Political Violence in the United States and Damage to Our Democracy". Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Retrieved October 3, 2023.
- ^ Rawwas, Mohammed (April 1, 2019). "Opinion: On Christchurch & stochastic terrorism". The Northern Iowan. Retrieved August 11, 2023.
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Further reading
[edit]- Stochastic terrorism by Encyclopedia Britannica
- Taylor, Matthew D. (Sept 24, 2024) The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy Broadleaf Books.