Stochastic Terrorism

Stochastic terrorism is a form of political violence instigated by hostile public rhetoric directed at a group or an individual. Unlike incitement to terrorism, stochastic terrorism is accomplished with indirect, vague or coded language, which grants the instigator plausible deniability for any associated violence. A key element of stochastic terrorism is the use of media for propagation, where the person carrying out the violence may not have direct connection to any other users of violent rhetoric.

Defining features

Although stochastic terrorism is considered an academic term without a formal legal definition, 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. 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. The 'it was just a joke' defense has been linked to early days of Nazism. Other themes identified include black and white good vs. evil narratives as well as painting an enemy as a mortal threat, which have been compared to the radicalization techniques used by terrorist groups. These attacks are often repeated and amplified inside a media echo chamber.
# 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. 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. 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. However, Kurt Braddock warns that speech can be quite dangerous even if legal.
# 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. Annalee Newitz points to social media and other types propaganda that demonizes groups as a common modern source of inspiration.
# Attack: An attacker commits an act of terrorism that could include physical violence, threats, or other acts meant to harm, instill fear, intimidate. The victims may receive or fear physical attacks, (online) harassment, and death threats. This can have a chilling effect, as many victims do not have the resources for adequate security.
# 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.

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.

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. The article covered the 2011 Tucson shooting.

As of 2016, "stochastic terrorism" was an "obscure" academic term according to professor David S. Cohen. During an August 9, 2016 campaign rally, then-candidate Donald Trump remarked "If illary Clintongets 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. Trump has continued to be criticized as inspiring violence.

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. 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. 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.

While U.S. jurisprudence narrowly defines the crime of incitement, conduct that incites ethnic or racial hatred is illegal in many other jurisdictions. In Germany, for instance, is speech that "denigrates an individual or a group based on their ethnicity or religion," or "tries to rouse hatred or promotes violence against such a group or an individual" and is punishable by up to five years in prison.

Alleged 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.

The 2011 Tucson shooting in which U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords was shot has also been cited as a prominent example.

Al-Qaeda and ISIS used this tactic, which has been cited as the mechanism that inspired attacks including Boston Marathon bombing and Fort Hood.

The 2016 murder of British Member of Parliament Jo Cox by white supremacist Thomas Mair ahead of the Brexit referendum has been described as stochastic terrorism. It has been noted that the views held by Mairincluding anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentimentare 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.

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

The 2017 congressional baseball shooting has been described as an act of stochastic terrorism.

The 2018 United States mail bombing attempts were also attributed by Barbara MacQuade, Medhi Hasan and Jonathon Keats 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.

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, Helen Santoro and Juliette Kayyem.

The January 6 United States Capitol attack has also been described as stochastic terrorism.

The 2022 Buffalo shooting and the August 2022 Cincinnati FBI field office attack have been cited as examples of stochastic terrorism.

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.

In June 2024, two racially motivated stabbing incidents happened in Oulu, Finland. 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.

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. Islamophobic and racially-motivated disorder, including a stabbing, were linked to the English Defence League and British Movement, following social media posts by right-wing extremists.

Starting in September 2024, false claims and rumors spread that in Springfield, Ohio, Haitian immigrants were stealing pets and eating them. These claims were amplified by prominent figures in the American right, most notably Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance. In the following days, the city of Springfield received dozens of bomb threats leading multiple commentators and a sitting senator, Brian Schatz, as well as Elie Mystal and school administrators in Springfield to suggest Trump and JD Vance were engaging in stochastic terrorism.

See also

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* Volksverhetzung – modern German legal principle against hate speech

References

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Further reading

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.

Accountability
Hate speech
Political extremism
Political terminology
Political violence
Radicalization
Terrorism by method
2002 neologisms
Inchoate offenses