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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsStochastic terrorism
I first posted this on another thread but decided to make it an OP in order to increase public awareness of the concept. Anyone who does Facebook or Twitter might want to help spread it.
This is what occurs when Bin Laden releases a video that stirs random extremists halfway around the globe to commit a bombing or shooting.
This is also the term for what Beck, O'Reilly, Hannity, and others do. And this is what led directly and predictably to a number of cases of ideologically-motivated murder similar to the Tucson shootings. As of this writing, there is no evidence to link Jared Loughner to a specific source of incitement; but some of the other cases can be clearly linked.
The stochastic terrorist is the person who is responsible for the incitement. For example they go on radio or television and stir up hatred toward a particular person or group.
The random actor, or "lone wolf" as the term is used in law enforcement and intel, is the person who responds to the incitement by carrying out the violent or terrorist act against the target person or group. For example they shoot someone or detonate a bomb. While their action may have been statistically predictable (e.g. "given sufficient provocation, someone will probably do such-and-such" , the specific person and the specific act are not yet predictable.
http://stochasticterrorism.blogspot.com
Hekate
(90,189 posts)Response to Jackpine Radical (Original post)
Adam051188 This message was self-deleted by its author.
Response to Adam051188 (Reply #2)
Adam051188 This message was self-deleted by its author.
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)Jaysus H.
Response to JackRiddler (Reply #16)
Adam051188 This message was self-deleted by its author.
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)should decide who qualifies as stupid and unworthy of their rights, no? How about unworthy of life?
Because when a minority defining itself as the elite with superior qualities decides the majority are too stupid or otherwise unqualified for rights, the resulting rule is always wise and just, and not at all self-interested.
It's worked out wonderfully throughout history, no?
Honestly, I think your post is, indeed, evidence of IQ rates falling... somewhere, anyway.
Tangential, but just to highlight the awesome ignorance of what you wrote:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/10/26/1245231/are-we-getting-smarter-rising-iq-scores-in-the-twenty-first-century
(IQ rates basically measure not intelligence but conformity to organized education and have been rising constantly, but anyway... intelligence, whatever that is, remains pretty much where it has always been, the species being biologically the same through the millennia...)
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Who is to decide which commentators are stochastic terrorists?
That involves a political judgment.
Is it OK for the government to rile people up to fight a war?
How far do you go with prohibiting speech?
What the OP describes is not the equivalent of someone yelling fire in a theater.
What the OP refers to as stochastic speech can be silenced only when the voices of people who advocate for peace are stronger than those who advocate for arms and extremist views. You really can't silence voices through police action or taking them off the radio.
DesertDiamond
(1,616 posts)incite hatred to get us to agree to war, and 2) There are indeed radio commentators who have advocated violence against specific people or groups of people, and that should be most definitely taken off the air.
But yes, ultimately laws and police action cannot solve the root problem. The root problem is the fundamental darkness we all have, and which is beginning to take over in some of us. That is our true battle.
Response to DesertDiamond (Reply #7)
Adam051188 This message was self-deleted by its author.
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)and media empire.
That's where the imbalance in free speech lies.
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)That doesn't mean it doesn't effectively exist.
Brickbat
(19,339 posts)scary, sad shit sometimes." The idea of inciting people who are mentally unstable in order to wreak some sort of unspecified havoc seems like a mighty big reach to me.
ColesCountyDem
(6,943 posts)DesertDiamond
(1,616 posts)cause harm to others is also a slippery slope, and we're going down that particular slope right now.
ColesCountyDem
(6,943 posts)These folks are not yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, and until they do, I'm not in favor of censoring them.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)ColesCountyDem
(6,943 posts)Yelling "FIRE" in a crowded theater is yelling fire in a crowded theater.
I'm curious about what other types of speech you 'know' when you see or hear them? Pornography, maybe?
Response to ColesCountyDem (Reply #15)
Post removed
NYC Liberal
(20,132 posts)Hasn't been in a very long time, since that case was overturned. The current standard for "censoring" speech is that it must pose a direct threat of "imminent lawless action".
ColesCountyDem
(6,943 posts)Response to DesertDiamond (Reply #9)
Adam051188 This message was self-deleted by its author.
DesertDiamond
(1,616 posts)reddread
(6,896 posts)Perhaps free speech is just too costly for some folks?
And that purchased megaphone the corporations use to spread their manure accomplishes more damage than any loonie with a gun.
I think the concerns being raised are much larger than any particular example or situation.
I'll keep free speech as an inalienable right.
until you can pry my cold dead hands off of it.
LWolf
(46,179 posts)even with the vilification of wolves without a pack.
Those of us who have been around since the rise of this kind of talk media have seen people around us get more conditioned, more reactive. The worst part, imo, is that the stochastic terrorist can't be held accountable for causing the act of terror.
maindawg
(1,151 posts)The American public owns the airwaves. We used to have good laws.The fairness doctrine assured the American public that all side of an issue got equal time. It was a good law. Reagon destroyed it. A ban on assault weapons was good law. W destroyed it.
All media was once locally owned by law. A good law. Reagon again destroyed good law.
we must work to restore these laws.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)leaped to the assumption that I was proposing some sort of solution, more specifically a solution that involves curtailing the First Amendment, and then went chasing after that like a pack of hounds on the trail of Harvey the Invisible Rabbit.
Note that I did not propose a solution, involving the First Amendment or otherwise.
In fact, I think the problem is more one of a culture gone crazy than one requiring some draconian Constitutional surgery. We need--somehow--to become the sort of people to whom this sort of incitement is culturally unacceptable. There is nothing in the Constitution that protects people from the consequences of their speech when those consequences involve public opprobrium. That process has to start through increasing awareness of the problem, which was the point of my OP.
discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,470 posts)...are not negotiable. Those principles are the basis for respect among people. Allowing others their own decisions on what is responsible to say, write and do are part of acknowledging what it means to be one of a free people.
The selective censoring of certain speech is known as prior restraint. Not that a crime can't be committed through expression, but the prohibition of expression is a higher crime and an infringement on basic liberty.
"It must never be forgotten...that the liberties of the people are not so safe under the gracious manner of government as by the limitation of power." - Richard Henry Lee
My wife taught me that there is no greater sign of respect than to listen.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)One can choose not to listen to a fat wingnut bloviator on the radio. One can contact advertisers. One can do many things that express one's outrage at a given type of message, with none of those actions infringing on anyone's Constitutional rights. As a case in point, overt racist language is not forbidden, but has become quite unpopular in the dominant culture--to the point that the racists need to conceal their meaning in various code phrases. I seek to establish a change in cultural values, a shift toward peace and mutual respect, not a limitation on free speech.
discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,470 posts)Uncle Joe
(58,111 posts)Thanks for the thread, Jackpine Radical.
indepat
(20,899 posts)street, both joys of living in a right-wing soused society in which public policy is largely controlled by right-wing elements in government, the media, et al.
Shankapotomus
(4,840 posts)Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, etc, blame all the ills of society on Liberals and reduce them to "sub-human" like status in the eyes of their listeners. I've heard Mark Levin call us vermin.
Livingtree
(1 post)There already exists a law which makes this kind of activity punishable.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_negligence
All it takes is someone willing to make a case. It would be so damn easy in virtually every mass homicide case, I find it heartbreaking that no member of any victims' families or employers has bothered to do it yet.
You know if the situation were reversed, if it was a liberal unstable mind that pulled the trigger on a christian/white/conservative target, some well-funded "family-values" organization would be footing the legal bill for this charge.