Stochastic terrorism- something we never worried about before 45 soiled the White House
We could talk about decency, honesty, and honor...but why waste the effort on someone who utterly lacks any of it?
You're just another American who is willfully ignorant of the big red, white, and blue dick being shoved up your asshole every day... The owners of this country know the truth... it's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it!
George Carlin
Before The Former Guy (TFG) slalomed into our collective consciousness in 2015, I’d wager few Americans had ever heard the phrase “stochastic terrorism.” I’m a pretty smart guy, and not only had I never heard the phrase, I had NO idea what it meant.
Sadly, we’ve been bathing in it for the past eight years, many without even realizing it:
I could regale you with examples of how TFG’s hateful, overcooked rhetoric has led to violence for which he can claim plausible deniability. Then again, I don’t need to. Y’all are smart enough to know what I’m referring to. The only example I’ll offer is January 6th, when we came damned close- TOO close- to losing our democracy.
But, if you’re uncomfortable with the definition of stochastic terrorism, now would be an excellent time to become more comfortable- because the problem will only grow as TFG’s legal issues increasingly close in on him.
Stochastic terrorism is defined by conflict and law enforcement experts as the demonization of a foe so that he, she, or they might become targets of violence. Scientific American recently put it this way:
Dehumanizing and vilifying a person or group of people can provoke what scholars and law enforcement officials call stochastic terrorism, in which ideologically driven hate speech increases the likelihood that people will violently and unpredictably attack the targets of vicious claims. At its core, stochastic terrorism exploits one of our strongest and most complicated emotions: disgust.
In addition to disgust, fear and hatred can work, the point being to depict a person or set of people as a loathsome other undeserving of respect or acceptance, and a dangerous threat. Establishing such a framework boosts the odds that a lone individual or group will violently assault the deprecated.
TFG doesn’t have to raise an army to be effective; sometimes, his veiled threats can lead to the actions of an army of one, a lone wolf sufficiently tuned to his frequency that such a person will feel compelled to take action.
That action could be violent and/or deadly, and even if the person responsible feels they’re acting on “instructions” or “commands” from TFG, there’s no direct chain of command. Therefore, there’s plausible deniability and, at least in TFG’s mind, no direct responsibility that can be traced back to him.
That despite rhetoric like this:
Evidently, Jesus Christ is also being tried with TFG in New York City, and TFG isn’t afraid to let his army of mouth-breathers and inbreds know it.
Being an atheist, I wasn’t aware that the Southern District of New York could sue someone who doesn’t even exist… I’m talking about the Prince of Peace, not the Tangerine Shitgibbon.
And the threat hasn’t been ginned up by Left-wing loonies to make TFG seem even more of a threat than he is. It’s real, it’s out there, and it can erupt at any time from any direction:
Last year, after the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Florida residence, in search of stolen classified documents, an Ohio Trump devotee named Ricky Shiffer, wearing tactical gear and armed with an AR-15, tried to breach the FBI field office in Cincinnati. He failed and fled, and later died in a shootout with law enforcement. Noting that far-right Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), a leading election denialist, after the raid, had declared, “We must destroy the FBI,” my colleague Mark Follman wrote:
Was Shiffer spurred to attack the FBI by the statements from Trump and Gosar? It’s hard to know, and that’s no accident. Shiffer’s actions point to a rhetorical method experts call “stochastic terrorism,” whereby a leader vilifies a person or group in ways likely to instigate random supporters to attack those targets, while the instigator maintains a veneer of plausible deniability. Trump made this form of incitement a hallmark of his presidency, galvanizing extremists by railing against and dehumanizing his “enemies.” The country saw the devastating consequences when his supporters stormed Congress to obstruct certification of the presidential election.
When TFG’s defenders in Congress (and Rep. Gosar is a hateful, barely lucid, toxic shell of a humanoid) defend those who attack the government, wir sind SEHR gefickt.
It’s easy to think that TFG is a man out of time and missed his true calling. Maybe he would’ve been a better fit in the latter and most bitter stages of crumbling Weimar Germany in the late 1920s or early 1930s. His tactics and rhetorical overkill could easily be compared to (and I hate to do this because someone will accuse me of violating Godwin’s Law) one Adolf Hitler.
[T]here have long been many instances of Trump encouraging political violence. Axios has compiled a list. As has ABC News. And Vox. And the New York Times. Often, it’s been tough-guy bluster, with Trump telling law officers to handle suspects roughly, pledging to shoot looters, or saying to attendees at his rally that it’s okay to beat up protestors. Stochastic terrorism is more indirect and perhaps more effective: It’s pinning a bull’s-eye on the back of an opponent in a volatile situation—perhaps suggesting the world would be safer without this supposed threat—knowing this could lead to violence against that target. It’s indirect incitement, inspiring someone else to do the dirty work.
Trump is a master of this. After all, he got thousands of his cultists to storm the Capitol and try to prevent the congressional certification of his loss to Joe Biden. In recent days, he has fired up his stochastic terrorism machine. For a Rosh Hashanah messaged posted on social media earlier this month, Trump railed against “liberal Jews”: “Just a quick reminder for liberal Jews who voted to destroy America & Israel because you believed in false narratives! Let’s hope you learned from your mistake & make better choices moving forward!”
A peculiar invocation from someone for whom (and this was also true of his father) anti-Semitism is a way of life. Then again, TFG will use anyone until he no longer needs them, at which point he’ll throw them under the bus.
Prior to that, however, he’ll demand absolute, unfailing loyalty from them (a one-way show of devotion, to be sure). Anything less than the unyielding obedience of a well-trained lapdog will be accepted or tolerated. One has only to observe how TFG has turned on people who once served him. Those, like former Attorney General William Barr, former Chief of Staff John Kelly, and former Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, who incurred his wrath, are now dead to him. And he’d no doubt like to see them dead, period.
Everything and everyone in TFG’s orbit is transactional: “What’s in it for me?” “What can you do for me?” Not, “What can we do for each other?” Or, “What can I do for you?” For TFG, there is no consideration of the wants or needs of others; that’s not what a Narcissistic Sociopath does. I capitalize those terms because TFG is the poster boy and definition of both.
Trump was far more explicit in a recent post on Army Gen. Mark Milley, who is about to step down as chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He denounced Milley for the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan (an action that Trump had set in motion) and called him a “Woke train wreck.” Trump assailed Milley for talking to his Chinese counterpart in the final turbulent weeks of the Trump presidency (which Milley said he did in coordination with other senior defense officials to assure China that Trump was not planning a surprise attack on China).
Trump called this a “treasonous” step and “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!” Once more, it is not difficult to envision a Trump fanatic seeing this as a call to assassinate Milley. He might as well have exclaimed, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent Milley?” And with Milley a possible witness against Trump in the stolen documents case, this post might also have been an attempt at witness intimidation. (Gosar also implied Milley should be put to death, writing in his weekly newsletter, “In a better society, quislings like the strange sodomy-promoting General Milley would be hung.”
Days later, Trump condemned NBC News and MSNBC—and their corporate owner, Comcast—for committing “Country Threatening Treason” with their critical and “vicious” coverage of him. He threatened to investigate them should he regain the White House. I assume NBC News and MSNBC reviewed their security procedures after this.
When a person accuses another of treason, it’s a declaration that the person in question deserves to be executed since that’s the punishment. Never mind that TFG could reasonably be accused of treason for his dealings with Russia and possibly for other episodes during his Reign of Error ©. He never sees his own egregious faults; he focuses on what he perceives as the “faults” of others like a laser beam…albeit a poorly focused and aimed weapon.
The not-so-subtle messages (TFG isn’t nearly clever enough to camouflage his message or intent) behind his diatribes can and, in some cases, should be interpreted as coded messages to his more unhinged and dimwitted followers to take action. In the case of his denunciation of Gen. Milley and his condemnation of Comcast, this is no small thing. There are those out there ready, willing, and capable of taking action on TFG’s behalf.
Would that happen? There’s no way to know, of course. Could it happen? Absolutely. The attack on Paul Pelosi demonstrates that no one and nothing on the Left should be considered safe.
It’s patently disgusting that a decent society has to put up with trash former Presidents issuing trash denunciations like “In a better society, quislings like the strange sodomy-promoting General Milley would be hung.”
No, in a “better” society, stochastic terrorists like TFG would be held responsible for their vile, reprehensible libel of an honorable man who did his job under almost impossible circumstances. But we live in a country that values freedom of (even contemptible, despicable, and patently offensive) speech, so this sort of verbal vomit is tolerated.
In a “better” society, Gen. Milley would sue TFG for libel, but that’s precisely what TFG and his fellow thugs want. Instead, Gen. Milley is modeling almost unimaginable class and dignity by ignoring the Sturm und Drang and letting TFG piss into the wind.
And we all know how that inevitably turns out.
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I prefer the more general term "fascism" (of which Nazism was a specific variety.) Fascism is:
"... a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."
-- Robert O. Paxton, 'Anatomy of Fascism' [4267] Kindle edition.
Paxton adds these supplementary points on Fascism, and what he calls its “mobilizing passions:”
-- A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions.
-- The primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it.
-- The belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external.
-- Dread of the group's decline under the effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences.
-- The need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary.
-- The need for natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group's historical destiny.
-- The superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason.
-- The beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success.
-- The right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group's prowess within a Darwinian struggle.