Let’s call it what it is: Stochastic terrorism,
I am still in awe of the fact that someone can continuously cause government officials, judges, and regular citizens to receive death threats and constant harrassment and still be free. Sure, he can argue that he never explicitly told anybody to do those things, but that argument loses credibility after 4 years of him seeing the effects of those public attacks.
Have you ever thought about why people are willing to go to those lengths for Donald Trump, when any other person in the public eye could be charged with crimes or lose an election without their fans terrorizing anyone? I have. It takes someone with emotional or mental issues to be brainwashed with election lies and see Donald Trump as the only person in the world that tells the truth. The same way only someone who is unstable will threaten and harrass people in the disgusting ways his supporters do.
I hope that this is a step too far and something is finally done to stop him, because lets be real here. Not that long ago, if you had a decal like this on your truck—of the President of the United States—you would be shunned and the FBI would be knockin’,
Donald Trump’s attacks on President Joe Biden have become familiar, but on Friday they reached a new level of terrifying. The former president posted a video on his Truth Social platform featuring a truck with an image of President Biden hog-tied on the tailgate, as if he’d just been kidnapped.
This type of messaging is part of a specific routine for Trump—one that we’ve been reporting on for years. It’s called “stochastic terrorism,” a type of rhetoric from a leader that smears another person or group so that they are more likely to be attacked by the leader’s supporters, while the leader is able to deny any involvement. My colleague Mark Follman reported on Trump’s use of stochastic terrorism—and how it’s spread through the GOP—in 2022:
Trump made this form of incitement a hallmark of his presidency, galvanizing extremists by railing against and dehumanizing his “enemies.” The country saw the devastating consequences when his supporters stormed Congress to obstruct certification of the presidential election. And now a growing number of Republicans are emulating Trump’s technique.
“While these attacks may defy specific predictability,” threat assessment experts Molly Amman and Reid Meloy wrote in a 2021 study in the journal Perspectives on Terrorism, “their likelihood is greatly increased by the public demonization process.” Repetition and saturation through social media and news coverage further amplifies the effect, they observed.
Ruth Murai is the research editor at Mother Jones.
