Stochastic Terrorism:  Triggering the shooters.

by G2geek

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/01/10/934890/-Stochastic-Terrorism-160-Triggering-the-shooters

Stochastic terrorism is 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.

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.

Update: the mechanism spelled out.

(This update is to resolve some ambiguity.)

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.

Here's the mechanism spelled out concisely:

The stochastic terrorist is the person who uses mass
media to broadcast memes that incite unstable people to
commit violent acts.

One or more unstable people responds to the incitement
by becoming a lone wolf and committing a violent act.  
While their action may have been statistically
predictable (e.g. "given the provocation, someone will
probably do such-and-such"), the specific person and
the specific act are not predictable (yet).

The stochastic terrorist then has plausible
deniability: "Oh, it was just a lone nut, nobody could
have predicted he would do that, and I'm not
responsible for what people in my audience do."

The lone wolf who was the "missile" gets captured and
sentenced to life in prison, while the stochastic
terrorist keeps his prime time slot and goes on to
incite more lone wolves.

Further, the stochastic terrorist may be acting either
negligently or deliberately, or may be in complete
denial of their impact, just like a drunk driver who
runs over a pedestrian without even realizing it.

Finally, there is no conspiracy here: merely the
twisted acts of individuals who are promoting
extremism, who get access to national media in which to
do it, and the rest follows naturally just as an
increase in violent storms follows from an increase in
average global temperature.

And now we return to the rest of the original diary...
. . The lone wolves.

The term "lone wolf" is used in law enforcement and
intel to refer to an individual who is emotionally
unstable, who lacks obvious ties to known criminal
gangs or terrorist groups, and who pops up seemingly
out of nowhere to commit a violent or terrorist act.

The three-letter agencies can keep an eye on organized
groups, and do a damn good job at stopping violent
actors associated with those groups.  At least three
intended car bombings were stopped last year by the FBI
intercepting the bombers and substituting fake
explosives in time to save hundreds of lives and arrest
the would-be bombers.

Lone wolves don't have obvious connections through
which they can be discovered.  They don't communicate
much if at all about their intentions.  They keep their
plans to themselves.  And then, apparently at random,
they pop up from obscurity and commit murder.  They are
law enforcement's and intel's worst nightmare, and on
Saturday one of them became America's nightmare. . .
Stirring the pot.

At any given time there are hundreds of thousands of
Americans with combinations of personality
characteristics (such as emotional instability, a
paranoid ideology, and a propensity for violence) that
put them at risk of going off the deep end and becoming
lone wolves.  All it takes is the right push, the right
nudge at the right time, to dislodge a few of them and
send them on their way to fifteen minutes of fame
surrounded by dead bodies.

There's nothing mysterious about this process.  It is
not much different to other instances where a person is
almost ready to make a decision, and the right
combination of inputs makes them act.  For example you
have an old car and it begins to break down more often:
now you're thinking about replacing it, and you might
be swayed by something in an automobile advertisement. 
Anyone who is familiar with marketing and advertising
knows how this works, and advertisers often target
their messages to people who are "ready to buy" and
just need a little persuading.  Political candidates
often target their ads to the undecideds, hoping that a
little nudge will win them some votes.  This is
perfectly normal and hardly insidious.

It becomes insidious when these practices are used in
such a manner as to deliberately or negligently stir up
lone wolf violence.

So let's take Beck, Hannity, and O'Reilly.  There is no
question that their emotional rhetoric appeals to
people who are emotionally unstable.  And, since their
audiences are tracked and analyzed in detail, there is
no question that they know it.

When they go on TV and shout and sputter, rant and
rave, and weep and wail, they are not expecting to
persuade liberals or even undecideds to change their
votes.  They are "playing to their base," that they
know includes people who are emotionally unstable.  In
short they are "stirring the pot."  And if you turn up
the temperature and keep stirring, you know that the
pot will boil.  Little bubbles will come up from the
depths and pop. . . Pop go the lone wolves.

Some lone wolves have no provable connection to the
hate-talkers and pot-stirrers, other than memes in
common.  One example of this type is James Wenneker von
Brunn who shot and killed security guard Stephen Tyrone
Johns at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.  Another is
Andrew Joseph Stack III, who flew a Piper Dakota into
the Austin Texas field office of the Internal Revenue
Service, killing IRS manager Vernon Hunter and himself,
and injuring thirteen others.  At this point it appears
as if Jared Loughner is one of these: all-over-the-map
crazy, with an incoherent ideology that is mostly
rightwing but difficult to trace to specific sources.

(UPDATE: to be very clear about this: at this point I
am not aware of any evidence to suggest that Loughner
falls under the definition of stochastic terrorism,
because there is nothing yet to link him to being a fan
of one of the mass media hate-talkers.  However there
are enough other cases out there to make this issue
topical and relevant right now.)

On the other hand...

On 27 July 2008, lone wolf shooter Jim David Adkisson
walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist
Church and shot nine people, killing two and wounding
seven.  Adkisson said he was motivated by hatred of
"Democrats, liberals, n-----s, and faggots."  A police
search of his home found books by Michael Savage, Sean
Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly.

On 4 February 2009, he accepted a plea bargain: guilty
on two counts of murder, in exchange for a life
sentence w/o possibility of parole (LWOP).

On 4 April 2009, Richard Poplawski shot five Pittsburgh
PA police officers, leaving three dead and two
seriously wounded.

According to people who knew him, he was a birther and
white supremacist, was paranoid that Obama was going to
take away his guns, and was consumed with anti-semitic
conspiracy theories.  A police search of his computer
found links to various groups and to a YouTube video of
Glenn Beck talking about FEMA concentration camps.

Poplawski's trial has been delayed until 25 April 2011,
where it is possible he will face the death penalty for
the murder of police officers.

On 31 May 2009, lone wolf Scott Roeder shot and killed
gynecologist Dr. George Tiller while Tiller was
attending church services.  At first it appeared that
he acted alone, but research by some fellow Kossaks and
I uncovered evidence that he had at least one
accomplice.  That issue is presently being investigated
by a federal grand jury.

In the months leading up to the assassination, Bill
O'Reilly had waged a "relentless campaign" against
Tiller, a campaign of exactly the type that would be
expected to stir up violence against the doctor.  The
details can be found here:  http://www.salon.com/...

In January 2010 Roeder was convicted of first-degree
murder and sentenced to life without parole.  At
present his accomplices and enablers have not yet been
indicted and charged.

On 18 July 2010, Byron Williams set out from his
mother's home in Groveland CA, heading for San
Francisco to shoot up the Tides Foundation and the
ACLU, with the intention of "starting a revolution."

Williams, a convicted felon (two bank robberies), was
stopped by the CHP (California Highway Patrol) for
weaving in and out of traffic at high speed.  When
stopped, he immediately opened fire on the CHP
officers, wounding two.  They returned fire, wounding
him in the leg, and then took him into custody.  At
first they thought they were dealing with a
garden-variety cop shooter.  Then they found the
notebook in his car, with the details of his plans.

Quoting the Wikipedia article on Williams: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/...

Quote:  Williams has identified Glenn Beck as his
primary motivation for the shootings.  According to
Williams, Beck is "like a schoolteacher on TV... he's
been breaking open some of the most hideous
corruption."  Continuing: "Beck would never say
anything about a conspiracy, would never advocate
violence. He'll never do anything ... of this nature.
But he'll give you every ounce of evidence that you
could possibly need."  End quote.

Prior to Williams' planned attack, Beck had mentioned
the obscure Tides Foundation 29 times on his program. 
He had drawn numerous charts on his infamous
blackboard, showing how Tides is the funding source
behind much of the "liberal conspiracy."  He had stoked
and fueled, turned up the heat on the pot, and stirred
it real good.  He devoted two of his broadcasts to
Tides in the very week preceding the shooting.

Quoting the Washington Post article: 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Quote: Beck has at times spoken against violence, but
he more often forecasts it, warning that "it is only a
matter of time before an actual crazy person really
does something stupid." Most every broadcast has some
violent imagery: "The clock is ticking. . . . The war
is just beginning. . . . Shoot me in the head if you
try to change our government. . . . You have to be
prepared to take rocks to the head. . . . The other
side is attacking. . . . There is a coup going on. . .
. Grab a torch! . . . Drive a stake through the heart
of the bloodsuckers. . . . They are taking you to a
place to be slaughtered. . . . They are putting a gun
to America's head. . . . Hold these people
responsible."  Unquote. . . Every ounce of evidence you
could possibly need.

One dead doctor.

Two dead churchgoers.

Seven wounded churchgoers.

Three dead police officers.

Four wounded police officers.

How many more that I couldn't remember while writing
this?

Meanwhile the jury is still out on whether Loughner's
victims belong on the list of people who "got Becked."

As someone on dKos wrote in a comment about this a few
months ago, there was a saying among his buddies in the
Air Force:  "Once is a tragedy, twice is a terrible
coincidence, three times is enemy action."

If you were a media personality known for rants & raves
on the air, and it came out that some random killer had
possibly been influenced by you or one of your
colleagues, what would you do?  Would you apologize? 
Would you tone it down?

If it happened again, what would you do?  And if it
happened yet again after that?  What would you do?

It takes more than just a special type of sociopath to
fail to be moved by the murders of doctors,
churchgoers, and police officers in the line of duty,
and the could-have-been-murders of more.

I submit to you that it takes something between callous
disregard and deliberate intent. . . Pulling the
trigger by remote control.

If you wanted certain people dead, but you wanted
plausible deniability, you would have someone else do
the deed for you at a distance, the greater the
distance the better.

One way to do it would be to use your position on radio
or TV to hurl emotional rhetoric that is calculated to
appeal to people who are psychologically unstable. 
Some of them will go out and vote, some will go forth
and spread your rant-memes, some will get into bar-room
brawls over one issue or another.

But a few, who have already demonstrated a lack of
respect for the law, will do more than that.  Maybe
they'll assault someone on the street who is black or
gay or speaking Spanish in public or wearing
traditional Islamic garb.  Maybe they'll make a bomb
and put it in the mail or plant it at a women's clinic.

Maybe they'll go out and shoot someone.  Maybe they'll
shoot someone who, in your heart of hearts, you want
dead.  If you have a list of targets in mind, such as
Operation Rescue's website with crosshairs on doctors,
or Palin's crosshairs on elected officials, it won't
matter who gets killed first and who gets killed later:
any hit will do.

This is stochastic terrorism:  you heat up the waters
and stir the pot, knowing full well that sooner or
later a lone wolf will pop up and do the deed.  The
fact that it will happen is as predictable as the fact
that a heated pot of water will eventually boil.  But
the exact time and place of each incident will remain
as random as the appearance of the first bubbles in the
boiling pot.

And so the unstable shooter, the sick kid or crazy
grownup, will be taken into custody where they will
rant a disconnected version of your own rants.  The
fact that they are clearly nuts will enable shifting
the public discussion away from your hateful rhetoric
and toward the overt insanity of the shooter or bomber.

After that, you get to go on the air and tut-tut along
with everyone else, and say Oh So Sad, and all that
crap.  But behind the scenes you drink a toast and
cheer: one down, a bunch more to go.

Or perhaps you're just crazy enough to truly believe
that you really don't have anything to do with it.  You
collect your media star paycheck and tootle along to
the next day in front of cameras and microphones, ready
to do it again, as oblivious as the drunk driver who
runs over a flock of schoolchildren and keeps driving,
and then when the cops pull him over, says "Who, me??"
. . The guilty-knowledge test.

Someone needs to corral Beck, Hannity, O'Reilly,
Savage, and the rest of them, in front of a microphone
and camera that are not of their own choosing.

For example think of Sixty Minutes and their famed
unannounced appearances at the offices and even homes
of various wrongdoers over the years.  Or think of
press conferences or other scheduled appearances, where
someone pops up and asks the inconvenient question or
two, and the question captures the headlines.

And someone needs to ask them:  In light of this latest
in a series of ideologically-motivated murders, are you
willing to tone down your rhetoric even a little?

Listen very closely to their answers.  They will duck
and weave, evade and deny, or at most give the standard
reply of "lone nuts, oh so sad."  But they may also let
slip a subtle hint of guilty knowledge.

The author of the aforementioned WaPo article says in
passing, "It's not fair to blame Beck for violence
committed by people who watch his show."

I say it damn well is fair to blame them when it
happens again and again and predictably again.

Once is a tragedy, twice is a coincidence, three times
is enemy action.

And now we know how it's done: stir the pot and wait
for the inevitable, and then deny it and do it again. 
That's stochastic terrorism as surely as when Bin Laden
does it.  And Beck and his fellow hate-mongers are
terrorists by remote control. Originally posted to
G2geek on Mon Jan 10, 2011 at 05:37 PM PST.

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