Here’s how far-right Christians incited stochastic terrorism at a Colorado Springs PP

On November 27, a mass shooting left three dead and nine wounded at a Planned Parenthood clinic just miles from the headquarters of the Religious Right flagship, Focus on the Family. Was the shooting exactly what conservative Christian presidential candidates and members of congress wanted? Maybe, maybe not. But it is what they asked for. Republican members of the Religious Right incited violence as predictably as if they had issued a call for Christian abortion foes to take up arms. Inciting violence this way is called stochastic terrorism....

Here’s how far-right Christians incited stochastic terrorism at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood

This was a new term for me even though it's been around...and it does seem like a concept some have been attempting to define over the past few days.

“Stochastic terrorism is the use of mass communications to incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable. In short, remote-control murder by lone wolf.”

Looks like the gloves are off and this thing is really heating up.

An ATS thread from 2011.

Stochastic terrorism is not a fringe concept. It is a known terrorist modality that has been described at length by analysts. It produces terrorism patterns that are known to any member of Congress or any presidential candidate who has ever thought deeply about national or domestic security issues . [Source]

[Video] "The person who actually plants the bomb or assassinates the public official is not the stochastic terrorist, they are the "missile" set in motion by the stochastic terrorist. The stochastic terrorist is the person who uses mass media as their means of setting those "missiles" in motion."

Anyway, just though some might be interested in adding thoughts to this.

For the record and as a request, just because this example uses current events and examples from one side does not precluded this being used by others, such as the video points out where bin Laden used it to trigger events and set the "missiles' in motion.

edit on 12/1/2015 by ~Lucidity because: (no reason given)

Haven't we had enough of these threads? Yours in now the second one today.

I will refer you back to powerline and Jim Geraughty to show that the left is just as culpable. If mass communication incites "violence by remote control" then they are guilty of their own brand. Heck, if Climate Change causes ISIS terror, then look to Paris right now.

Let me get this straight. In the eyes of the Left… ….criticism of Planned Parenthood means something like the shooting in Colorado “was bound to happen”…

…but chants where people describe police as ‘pigs’ and call for them to be ‘fried like bacon’ doesn’t lead to attacks on police…

…when an event by Pamela Geller is targeted by an Islamist shooter, it is “not really about free speech; it was an exercise in bigotry and hatred” and the attempt to kill her means she has “achieved her provocative goal”…

… while at the same time, investigators contend we may never know what motivated a 24-year-old Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez to kill four Marines and a sailor in an attack on Chattanooga’s U.S. Naval and Marine Reserve Center last July…

… a shooting by a diagnosed schizophrenic, who believed that grammar was part of a vast, government-directed mind control effort, is characterized by the Southern Poverty law Center as having views that are the “hallmark of the far right and the militia movement” …

… while the shooter who opened fire in the lobby of the Family Research Council in downtown Washington in 2012, who planned to target the Traditional Values Coalition next, does not spur any need for a broader discussion or societal lessons about the demonization of political opponents…

… a California killer, who was treated by multiple therapists and already had police checking on him after posting disturbing YouTube videos, is a reflection of “sexist society” …

…but there’s little reason to ask whether the Oregon shooter’s decision to target Christians reflects a broader, societal hostility to Christians, or whether it reflects his personal allegiance to demons…

… When white supremacist Dylann Roof committed an act of mass murder in an African-American church, Salon declares “White America is complicit” and the Washington Post runs a column declaring, “99 percent of southern whites will never go into a church, sit down with people and then massacre them. But that 99 percent is responsible for the one who does”…

… but the Roanoke shooter’s endless sense of grievance and perceptions of racism and homophobia in all of his coworkers represents him and him alone…

Do I have all that right? And does that make sense to anyone?

This is the meat of the link and there are embedded links in the material I quoted.

Basically, this is nothing more or less than an attempt to silence those who hold opinions counter to your own by claiming our opinions cause violence. You are using to justify every nasty thing you want to believe about your ideological opponents among that we aren't just wrong, but evil, and sooner or later, if you continue down this line of thought, you will use it to justify all kinds of things, including suppression of or even outright oppression of your political and ideological opponents on the grounds that you are purging the evil from the world.

Careful lest you become the monsters you are afraid you see everywhere else.

a reply to: ~Lucidity

It's not like it's the first shooting reaction to abortion and, in this case, the sale of body parts.

Frankly, I'm surprised at the overall restraint shown by those that hold these acts as amoral.

Restraint. This is the exception that proves the rule, IMO.

Well done.

They explain it very well.

This thread is about the concept of stochastic terrorism as it relates to current events.

In addition, you appear to have missed my ETA request.

If you do not wish to participate, you are free to exit the thread.

a reply to: ~Lucidity

Great . . . more posts from alternet.

You do realize her explanation of how the violence is incited is the same verbiage used by Loughner about the government using words to control people.

another article from this source

The formula is perversely brilliant:

1. A public figure with access to the airwaves or pulpit demonizes a person or group of persons.
With repetition, the targeted person or group is gradually dehumanized, depicted as loathsome and dangerous—arousing a combustible combination of fear and moral disgust.

2. Violent images and metaphors, jokes about violence, analogies to past “purges” against reviled groups, use of righteous religious language—all of these typically stop just short of an explicit call to arms.

3. When violence erupts, the public figure who have incited the violence condemn it, claiming no one could possibly have foreseen the “tragedy.”

Also interesting is that Alternet, your source, uses the same tactics to push their political message.

wikipedia

The director of research on hate groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center noted that Loughner's political positions were a "hallmark of the far right and the militia movement." [43] In the aftermath of the shooting, the Anti-Defamation League reviewed messages by Loughner, and concluded that there was a "disjointed theme that runs through Loughner's writings", which was a "distrust for and dislike of the government." It "manifested itself in various ways" – for instance, in the belief that the government used the control of language and grammar to brainwash people , the notion that the government was creating "infinite currency" without the backing of gold and silver, or the assertion that NASA was faking spaceflights.[44]

It is irresponsible to suggest that this is how one political body acts when in reality it is how they ALL act.

-FBB

//edit

More on the author for anyone interested in the topic:

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington and the founder of Wisdom Commons. She is the author of "Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light" and "Deas and Other Imaginings." Her articles can be found at Awaypoint.Wordpress.com.

Wisdom Commons

So x y z says something and that makes someone to kill a bunch of people. Ummm is there evidence The killer listen to x y z in the first place?

I think rambles of morons are not really the determinant factor that trigger the scum, something while they where raise is really the cause of that.

New term to me as well..

So all the Isis propaganda videos could be considered stochastic terrorism? Considering they are a mass communication that try to instill a violent action/motive/idea?

Just trying to find a definitive baseline definition/example for this term. Anyone less ignorant than I, please acknowledge haha.

originally posted by: seaswine
New term to me as well..

So all the Isis propaganda videos could be considered stochastic terrorism? Considering they are a mass communication that try to instill a violent action/motive/idea?

Just trying to find a definitive baseline definition/example for this term. Anyone less ignorant than I, please acknowledge haha.

Yes it can apply to ISIS, very much so, as the video somewhat showed in its example of bin Laden. I hope/think I grabbed the right video.

Here is an interesting article on using counter-terrorism analysis tools to try to predict attacks. [Link]

originally posted by: seaswine
New term to me as well..

So all the Isis propaganda videos could be considered stochastic terrorism? Considering they are a mass communication that try to instill a violent action/motive/idea?

Just trying to find a definitive baseline definition/example for this term. Anyone less ignorant than I, please acknowledge haha.

Well yes, this is the way most all ideological violence is instigated. From the enlightenment to ISIS to what is happening with PP.

The author merely chooses to identify it as a "far-right."

This is the same methodology which led to much of the Seattle riots at the WTO and the Environmental Militant Killed by Police at Discovery Channel Headquarters.

Nothing new.

-FBB

Could persistence in insinuating there is an extremist Christian movement afoot be, in itself, considered "stochastic terrorism"?

I mean, what if all this rhetoric incites violence against Christians? We know the Atheists are prone to dim wits and short tempers. What if one of them went nuts one day and decided to go Rambo on the fundies?

You know, for America and everything. Because Christian terrorism is a much greater threat than other kinds.

At least, that's what "they" are saying. Gotta defend the homeland, you know?

a reply to: ~Lucidity

Gotcha. Thanks, wanted to make sure I was on the right page with the term.

a reply to: NthOther

You mean like the guy who shot people at the Community College in Oregon? But of course, everyone likes to deny he was motivated by anti-Christian sentiment.

It is ironic that a political group that focuses on "personal responsibility" is so willfully blind to the realities that their brand of political rhetoric creates.

Yet, in the tradition of Charles Manson, some Christians are more than happy to have others "do their dirty work" for them.

Good thread, Lucidity! I look forward to its evolution.

a reply to: FriedBabelBroccoli

Again your attempt at diversion sucks!

Pointing out the declared beliefs of these reich wing nuts is not the same as repetitively demonizing a group as evil.

Acknowledging the fact that there is an entrenched group within American society bent on theocratic domination does not equal calling the murder of doctors as doing gods work.

Stop with your pathetic attempts of equivalence between the rhetoric.
You don't see people of the "left" calling for the justified killing of priests for preaching fear & ignorance like you do from those on the "right" doing just that when it come to oh say "abortion providers, gays, godless secular humanists" & all the other ignorant crap these religulous reich wing morans(sic) spout.

K~

originally posted by: NthOther
We know the Atheists are prone to dim wits and short tempers.

What an utterly pointless, hypocritical, and inane statement!

Yet, you will whine and cry about some Christians being categorized as backward, ignorant, and cruel.

The apologist double-standard is in full display here.

The only group fomenting violence against Christians are radicalized Christians, constantly crying "Wolf"!

I guess all of the BLM rhetoric about how bad cops are, is also directly responsible for every cop who has been murdered recently.