President Joe Biden is not responsible for the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. Neither could one fairly pin blame on the New Republic, nor any of the liberals who have spent eight years — and particularly the last few months — demonizing Trump.
But these demonizers of Trump, who cry that Trump would be a dictator who would spell the end of democracy, would count as terrorists if the Left applied its authoritarian rules to itself.
“Stochastic terrorism” is the key phrase here. It’s an idea that is equal parts stupid and evil, but it sounds kind of academic and it justifies censoring conservatives, so the idea became popular among liberals in the past year or so.
After the 2016 election, liberals branded speech they disliked as “misinformation,” which was an effort to strip it of free speech protections. Misinformation is supposedly dangerous and intentionally deceptive speech, but in practice, facts and opinions that were unpleasant for Democrats were labeled “misinformation” and censored by Big Tech and big media.
The “misinformation” craze has flamed out a bit over the past couple of years as it’s been exposed as an embarrassing farce. “Stochastic terrorism” is the new wonky-sounding term used to censor conservative opinions and facts liberals dislike.
The whole schtick goes like this:
- Conservatives say things that “demonize” individuals or groups that liberals like.
- The “bad” speech isn’t incitement to violence by any normal understanding of the word, but it sort of sends out bad vibes.
- Someone commits an act of violence against the targeted group or individual. There is zero evidence to tie that act of violence to the “bad” speech by conservatives, and so the liberals blame the vibes created by conservatives.
- To make it not sound like “vibes” talk, the liberals trot out “experts” who use big words and concepts that sound like math. They say that bad speech increased the odds of some random act of violence against the people they like.
It is crucial to understand three things here:
- This allows them to blame conservatives for violence with zero evidence of any connection.
- The point of this argument is to brand all conservative speech as incitement and thus not protected by the First Amendment.
- This argument is only used against conservatives. In fact, when conservatives use it against liberals, the “experts” decry that as some sort of evil tactic.
Liberal journalist David Corn called Trump a “stochastic terrorist” because Trump “demonizes” his political foes, making them likely targets of political violence.
Does calling Trump a terrorist count as “demonizing” him? Is it demonizing to say he’ll be a dictator and that his election would end democracy? We accept the fact it would have been OK to kill Hitler before he rose to power, and then we say that Trump is literally Hitler. That’s not direct incitement, but it seems to meet the “official” “expert” definition of stochastic terrorism.
To see how low the bar is for “demonizing” speech, consider the New York Times editorial on stochastic terrorism. This is one example:
“Marco Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida, released a TV ad recently in which he said: ‘The radical left will destroy America if we don’t stop them. They indoctrinate children and try to turn boys into girls.’”
This is a normal, if impolitely phrased, opinion. Calling this “stochastic terrorism” is an attempt to brand off-limits any criticism of gender ideology.
The average Democrat says worse stuff about Trump every day. The average news reporter says parallel things about conservative Catholics.
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Today, in the shadow of this assassination attempt on Trump, the commentariat is pointing out — correctly — how most political violence is random and the result of individuals’ mental illness rather than ideology.
Hopefully this means that the Left is done calling us terrorists for expressing opinions they dislike.
