Michael Collins
“The stochastic terrorist is the person who uses mass media to broadcast memes that incite unstable people to commit violent acts.” G2geek, January 10, 2011
Daily Kos diarist G2geek published an essay on January 10 that deserves attention and further analysis. He argued that rash media figures activate lone wolf types through “emotional rhetoric.” When the lone wolves commit an assassination, bombing, etc., the emotional rhetoric of media personalities makes them stochastic terrorists. Why? The volume and intensity of their rhetoric will inevitably launch a lone wolf terrorist on the unsuspecting target for assassination. G2geek says that the theory does not yet apply to the Giffords assassination due to limited information on the assassin. However, the author provides examples of previous political murders used to support his argument and theory.
Definition: Stochastic: 1) RANDOM, specifically: involving a random variable; 2) involving chance or probability; PROBABILISTIC. Miriam Webster
The theory (heuristic, at this point) is worth considering on its own merits. In addition, it is important to examine the author’s link between the claimed stochastic terrorism of bin Laden and the domestic process that he describes. (“That’s stochastic terrorism as surely as when Bin Laden does it.”)
“The stochastic terrorist is the person who uses mass media to broadcast memes that incite unstable people to commit violent acts.”
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