Media critic Dan Froomkin: “Stochastic terrorism…means that when Trump or his allies encourage violence…it is not just possible that someone at some point will do something about it, it’s damn near inevitable.”
Washington, DC – After a week of escalating rhetoric from Republicans and right-wing media following the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago to recover classified documents from the former President, a man whom it appears heard the rhetoric as a call-to-arms attempted to attack an FBI field office in Cincinnati. The tragic and fatal incident in Cincinnati is part of a disturbing but clear pattern of a radicalized Republican Party employing dehumanizing and war-like rhetoric that some of their supporters are responding to in a predictable fashion. This trend is not an idle threat: over the weekend, the FBI and DHS sent out a bulletin warning of the increase in violent threats posted online.
Earlier in the week, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote a prescient piece that focused on the larger Republican “hysteria” and “invitation to violence” following the raid on Mar-a-Lago:
“We know that violent speech, particularly when so many are already feeling desperate and on edge, leads to violent acts. We have been here before … These are open invitations to the violent and the unstable to take matters into their own hands.”
Over the weekend, Alan Feuer published a report in the New York Times that widened the scope of the GOP’s dehumanizing and apocalyptic language and the increase in violence that has followed, writing:
“In the year and a half since a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, threats of political violence and actual attacks have become a steady reality of American life, affecting school board officials, election workers, flight attendants, librarians and even members of Congress, often with few headlines and little reaction from politicians…
Experts note that rhetoric does not have to directly reference violence to contribute to threats. Dehumanizing language also plays a role. They point to efforts to label immigrants as invaders and people who support teaching about transgender and gay rights as ‘groomers.’”
The America’s Voice ad tracking project has been closely monitoring the increase in the dehumanizing rhetoric coming from Republicans’ campaigns. A recent report found over 500 pieces of political messaging from the GOP this cycle that promotes “migrant invasion” & “white replacement” conspiracy theories. These racist ideas have been cited as inspiration for multiple terrorist attacks over the last few years, most recently in Buffalo, New York. But Republicans have continued to push the dehumanizing “invasion” conspiracy theory. Just this past Friday, the Texas Republican Party sent out fundraising texts promoting the “invasion” lies.
Media critic Dan Froomkin is pushing reporters to more accurately label Republicans’ rhetoric as “stochastic terrorism,” defining the term and its importance in combating a key source of the problem:
“Stochastic terrorism means terrorism that’s statistically predictable but individually unpredictable. In simpler language, it means that when Trump or his allies encourage violence — when they say the kind of stuff they say all the time now — it is not just possible that someone at some point will do something about it, it’s damn near inevitable. Calling certain forms of violent rhetoric stochastic terrorism is essential to holding the perpetrators accountable for the tragic consequences…
…The key, going forward at least, is to identify, call out, and condemn stochastic terrorism by name, and explain the likely consequences, in real time — not just when the inevitable violence takes place.”
According to Zachary Mueller, America’s Voice Political Director:
“Republicans have repeatedly demonstrated they will not moderate their dehumanizing rhetoric even as violent threats increase and real-world violent attacks continue throughout the country. They know they are inspiring more political violence from their supporters, and Republicans still continue to escalate their rhetoric.
We have seen this growing problem in the immigration space and warned of this threat as Republicans’ dehumanizing political attacks on immigrants have continued to escalate over the last several years. Despite inspiring multiple mass murdering terrorists, Republicans continue to promote the white nationalist “invasion” conspiracy as a core plank of their political message. Even as the Buffalo shooter echoed these same racist lies, leading Republicans either doubled down or refused to condemn the rhetoric of their colleagues.
Republicans’ rhetoric will continue to inspire more political violence from their supporters and put us all at risk. The violence they inspire does not only target immigrants, as the Buffalo murders show. And the violence alone will not force Republicans to change their message; only when they see steep political consequences for their actions are we likely to hear a different tune.”
