the term “stochastic terrorism”
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I’ll preface with: Stochastic terrorism is vague enough that people don’t even know it’s really a thing, or just an attempt on creating a causal nexus between an actor and the consequences of a terrorist act.
That’s because stochastic terrorism is by definition when someone doesn’t incite terrorism, maintains plausible deniability, and never directly become involved.
Imagine you’re a public figure, you keep drumming it up that group X or person Y is awful, that they cause harm, that they are making secret plots and that they are trying to destroy everything good in this world.
Sure, you’re being negative against them, sometimes you might even hint that the world would be better without them, but at no point you tell someone to go there and kill them. You never tell someone to plant a bomb in their car. You did nothing, yet one of your followers, completely on their own accord did just that.
Since you didn’t do anything yourself, you’ll defend yourself by saying “I have nothing to do with it, I cannot control the actions of others”. This outcome benefits you, and likely was caused because you kept beating the drums against group x or person Y, but you at no point did anything directly.
So, are you inciting stochastic terrorism? Can your activism be liked to the actions of the terrorist?
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