Rising Danger

Stochastic Terrorism
n.  Acts of violence by random extremists, triggered by political demagoguery.
When President Trump tweeted a video of himself body-slamming the CNN logo in 2017, most ­people took it as a stupid joke.  For Cesar Sayoc, it may have been a call to arms:  Last October the avowed Trump fan allegedly mailed a pipe bomb to CNN headquarters.
No one told Sayoc to do it, but the fact that it happened was really no surprise.  In 2011, after the shooting of US representative Gabby Giffords, a Daily Kos blog warned of a new threat the writer called stochastic terrorism:  the use of mass media to incite attacks by random nut jobs — acts that are “statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.”  The writer had in mind right-wing radio and TV agitators, but in 2016, Rolling Stone accused then-candidate Trump of using the same playbook when he joked that “Second Amendment people” might “do” something if Hillary Clinton won the election.
Of course, Trump’s people later said he meant they might … “vote.”  That’s how it works:  Stochastic terrorism lets bullies operate in the open with full deniability, since the random element erases any provable causation.
Tellingly, the word stochastic comes from the Greek stochastikos, meaning “proceeding by guesswork” and “skillful in aiming.”  Both are apt here.  It takes a master demagogue to weaponize unstable individuals and aim them at political enemies.
—    Jonathon Keats
From his article:  “Jargon Watch: The Rising Danger of Stochastic Terrorism“
Appearing in:  Wired Magazine; dtd:  Feb. 2019
The article also appears online at:  https://www.wired.com/story/jargon-watch-rising-danger-stochastic-terrorism/
.
On This Day In:
2019	Never Let ‘Em See You Sweat
2018	Just Two?
2017	Living Without Love
	Good News!
2016	At This Moment
2015	Still Dreaming
2014	Good Wins
2013	Before
2012	Look To This Day
2011	One View Of Man