Stochastic terrorism

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Stochastic terrorism initially referred to a method of mathematically predicting overall risk of a terrorist attack by using various indicators such as inciteful speech by pundits, politicians, or various leaders. A later use of the term is the accusation of a political or media figure publicly demonizing a person or group in such a way that it inspires supporters of the figures to commit a violent act against the target of the speech. Unlike incitement to terrorism, this is accomplished by using indirect, vague, or coded language that allows the instigator to plausibly disclaim responsibility for the resulting violence. 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.

Contents

Stochastic describes something random, involving chance or probability. [1] [2]

Terrorism involves an unlawful use of violence or intimidation to further political, social, or ideological goals. [3]

Defining features

Although stochastic terrorism is considered an academic term without a formal legal definition, [4] it is differentiated from other forms of terrorism due to its public, indirect, and seemingly random nature.

  1. 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. [4] 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. [5] [6] [4] Other themes identified include black and white good vs. evil narratives [7] as well as painting an enemy as a mortal threat, which have been compared to the radicalization techniques used by terrorist groups. [8] [9] These attacks are often repeated and amplified inside a media echo chamber. [10] [11]
  2. 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. [12] [11] [4] 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. [13] [4] 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. [5] However, Kurt Braddock warns that speech can be quite dangerous even if legal. [12]
  3. 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. [5] [14]
  4. Attack: An attacker commits an act of terrorism that could include physical violence, threats, or other acts meant to harm, instill fear, intimidate. [12] The victims may receive or fear physical attacks, (online) harassment, and death threats. [15] This can have a chilling effect, as many victims do not have the resources for adequate security. [16]
  5. 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. [17]

Origin and popularization of the term

In 2002, the term was first used by Gordon Woo to describe a process to quantify risk of a terrorist attack. [4] [18] [19] [20]

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. [4] [21] [22] The article covered the 2011 Tucson shooting. [12]

As of 2016, "stochastic terrorism" was an "obscure" academic term according to professor David S. Cohen. [23] 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. [24] [23] [12]

Counter measures

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. [12] [9] 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. [25] 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. [26]

Incidents

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. [24] [27] [23]

In their 2017 book Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism, criminologist Mark S. Hamm and sociologist Ramón Spaaij describe ISIS, [4] Anwar al-Awlaki, and Alex Jones as guilty of stochastic terrorism. [22] : 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. [22] They also cite the 2012 shooting at the Family Research Council. [22]

The Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot in 2020 has been described as an example of stochastic terrorism. [5] [9] [4]

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 Chaiya Raichik of Libs of TikTok have been accused of stochastic terrorism. [28] [29] [30] [31]

The May 2022 Buffalo shooting [14] [32] [33] and the August 2022 Cincinnati FBI field office attack have been cited as examples of stochastic terrorism. [34] [35] [36] [37] [38]

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 as stochastic terrorism. [9] [7] [39]

See also

Related Research Articles

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References

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  2. ↑ "stochastic". Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary . August 16, 2023. Retrieved August 16, 2023.
  3. ↑ "Terrorism Definition & Meaning". Dictionary.com . Retrieved August 19, 2023.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 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.
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  6. ↑ Follman, Mark (December 17, 2020). "National security experts warn Trump 'is promoting terrorism' against Americans". Mother Jones . Retrieved August 11, 2023.
  7. 1 2 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.
  8. ↑ Ioanes, Ellen (November 5, 2022). "An atmosphere of violence: Stochastic terror in American politics". Vox . Retrieved September 28, 2023.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Nelson, Bryn (November 5, 2022). "Opinion: How Stochastic Terrorism Uses Disgust to Incite Violence". Scientific American . Retrieved October 3, 2023.
  10. ↑ DeVega, Chauncey (June 30, 2021). "Tucker Carlson prepares white nationalists for war: Don't ignore the power of his rhetoric". Salon.com . Retrieved October 3, 2023.
  11. 1 2 Bensinger, Ken; Frenkel, Sheera (October 5, 2022). "After Mar-a-Lago Search, Talk of 'Civil War' Is Flaring Online". The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved September 28, 2023.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Keats, Jonathon (January 21, 2019). "How Stochastic Terrorism Lets Bullies Operate in Plain Sight". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved August 11, 2023.
  13. ↑ Forno, Richard (November 7, 2022). "Political violence in America isn't going away anytime soon". University of Maryland, Baltimore County . Retrieved October 3, 2023.
  14. 1 2 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.
  15. ↑ Mathis-Lilley, Ben (June 23, 2022). "The Poll Workers Targeted by Trump". Slate (Interview). Interviewed by Mary Harris. Retrieved October 3, 2023.
  16. ↑ 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.
  17. ↑ "What Is 'Stochastic Terrorism,' And Why Is It Trending?". Dictionary.com. August 8, 2019. Retrieved August 19, 2023.
  18. ↑ 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.
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  20. ↑ Munn, Luke (June 2019). "Alt-Right pipeline: Individual Journa". First Monday. 26 (6). doi: 10.5210/fm.v24i6.10108 . Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  21. ↑ G2geek (January 11, 2011). "Stochastic Terrorism: Triggering the shooters". Daily Kos. Retrieved September 2, 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  22. 1 2 3 4 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.
  23. 1 2 3 Cohen, David S. (August 9, 2016). "Trump's Assassination Dog Whistle Was Even Scarier Than You Think". Rolling Stone . Retrieved August 11, 2023.
  24. 1 2 Crockett, Emily (August 10, 2016). "Trump's 2nd Amendment comment wasn't a joke. It was 'stochastic terrorism.'". Vox.com . Retrieved October 4, 2023.
  25. ↑ 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.
  26. ↑ 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.
  27. ↑ Rawwas, Mohammed (April 1, 2019). "Opinion: On Christchurch & stochastic terrorism". The Northern Iowan . Retrieved August 11, 2023.
  28. ↑ Halon, Yael (December 12, 2022). "MSNBC guest accuses Musk and Libs of TikTok of promoting 'stochastic terrorism' on Twitter". Fox News . Retrieved August 11, 2023.
  29. ↑ Ali, Wajahat (November 23, 2022). "Don't Act Surprised, We Knew the Right Was Stoking Violence". The Daily Beast . Retrieved August 11, 2023.
  30. ↑ Santoro, Helen (December 12, 2022). "How Anti-LGBTQ+ Rhetoric Fuels Violence". Scientific American . Retrieved August 11, 2023.
  31. ↑ Wilson, Jason (November 22, 2022). "Colorado Springs: Far-Right Influencers Made LGBTQ People Into Targets". Southern Poverty Law Center . Retrieved August 11, 2023.
  32. ↑ Lavin, Talia (May 15, 2022). "The Buffalo Shooter Isn't a 'Lone Wolf.' He's a Mainstream Republican". Rolling Stone . Retrieved October 5, 2023.
  33. ↑ Dinki, Tom (June 24, 2022). "Extremism in WNY: How to combat extremism here and elsewhere". WBFO . Retrieved October 3, 2023.
  34. ↑ Follman, Mark (September 2022). "How Trump spread incitement of violence throughout the GOP". Mother Jones . Retrieved September 26, 2023.
  35. ↑ Hurley, Bevan (August 17, 2022). "How Trump-loving Ohio FBI shooter became the right's new Ashli Babbitt". Independent.co.uk . Retrieved September 26, 2023.
  36. ↑ Zavarise, Isabella (August 14, 2022). "Extremism researcher says death of gunman who tried to breach Ohio FBI office is 'a really good example' of how far-right conspiracies can get followers killed". Business Insider . Retrieved September 26, 2023.
  37. ↑ Timmons, Heather (October 29, 2022). "Hate speech, online extremism fed Pelosi attack, terror experts believe". Reuters. Retrieved September 26, 2023.
  38. ↑ Froomkin, Dan (August 12, 2022). "The phrase you're looking for is 'stochastic terrorism'". Press Watch . Retrieved September 26, 2023.
  39. ↑ Fisher, Max (November 3, 2022). "Troubled Loner? Political Terrorist? Both? It's Often Hard to Say". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved April 18, 2024.
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