Stochastic Terrorism

Today, Anders Behring Breivik the Norwegian far-right extremist, has been sentenced to at least 21 years in prison after a court declared he was sane throughout his murderous rampage last year that killed 77 people and wounded 242.
The Oslo district court declared its verdict that the 33-year-old was not psychotic while carrying out the twin attacks, including the shooting of dozens of teenagers attending a political camp.
The court's decision will have delighted Breivik, who had hoped to avoid what he called the humiliation of being dismissed as a madman.
The mass killer had desperately hoped the court would find him criminally culpable for the killings, claiming they were "cruel and necessary" to protect Norway from becoming overrun by Muslims.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/24/breivik-verdict-sane-21-years

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.

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

Thom Hartmann explains it here:


In the vid above he references a report from advocacy group People for the American Way entitled
The Right Wing Playbook on Anti-Muslim Extremism:

Under the guise of defending freedom and American values, right-wing anti-Muslim activists are campaigning to prevent Muslim-Americans from freely worshiping and practicing their religion, curtail their political rights, and even compel their deportation. A growing faction in the American Right claims that Muslim-Americans, who comprise just 1% of the population, are subverting the Constitution and taking over the country. These accusations have helped to foster anti-Muslim hostility, reflected in the rise of anti-Muslim prejudice and increased attacks on Muslim-Americans and houses of worship. Tied in with hatred of President Obama, fear of religious diversity and hostility toward immigrants and gays, anti-Muslim rhetoric and paranoia has become a mainstream if not ubiquitous part of the conservative movement and the Republican Party.

As Rep. Peter King (R-NY) holds a third round of polarizing hearings targeting American Muslims, expect the Right Wing to ratchet up its anti-Muslim rhetoric, misrepresenting the Muslim faith and denigrating the Muslim-American community. King and his allies claim that Muslim-Americans are using both peaceful and violent means to destroy America and curtail the nation’s freedoms, and argue that Americans must curtail Muslims’ liberties and freedoms in order to stop them.

Frame Muslim-Americans as dangerous to America

The anti-Muslim paranoia that has swept the conservative movement rests on the claim that Muslim-Americans represent a “fifth column” working to bring about America’s downfall. With sweeping and cutting rhetoric, anti-Muslim activists claim that all or nearly all Muslim-Americans support terrorism, violence, the abuse of women and the abrogation of American law and ideals. As in previous generations when minority religious, ethnic and political groups were demonized, the end goal of vilification is to sanction and encourage persecution – while scoring political points for those peddling irrational fears.

Anti-Muslim activists vigorously work to define Muslim-Americans as an internal threat that must be stopped in order to prevent America’s destruction. David Yerushalmi, one of the country’s leading anti-Muslim propagandists and general counsel of the far-right Center for Security Policy, claims, “Muslim civilization is at war with Judeo-Christian civilization…The Muslim peoples, those committed to Islam as we know it today, are our enemies.” According to Yerushalmi, the only way to defeat “our enemies” is to make it a crime to be Muslim. He proposes that:

- It shall be a felony punishable by 20 years in prison to knowingly act in furtherance of, or to support the, adherence to Islam.
- The Congress of the United States of America shall declare the US at war with the Muslim Nation or Umma.
- The President of the United States of America shall immediately declare that all non-US citizen Muslims are Alien Enemies under Chapter 3 of Title 50 of the US Code and shall be subject to immediate deportation.
- No Muslim shall be granted an entry visa into the United States of America.

Twist statistics and use fake research to “prove” the Muslim threat

Anti-Muslim activists try to give themselves credibility by bolstering their frenzied rhetoric with studies and investigations that purport to show the immense threat posed by Muslim-Americans. Sarah Posner of Religion Dispatches refers to the numerous activists, organizations and media personalities that either started or reenergized their careers by attacking Muslims as the “Sharia conspiracy theory industry” for its insidious, and lucrative, nature.

Invent the danger of “creeping Sharia”

One of the more absurd claims employed by anti-Muslim activists is that American judges are being compelled to follow Sharia law (or Islamic law) and that Muslims are advocating the creation of Sharia courts in America. Despite the lack of any evidence to back up these claims, anti-Sharia paranoia is spreading. Oklahoma passed an anti-Sharia law by popular referendum in 2010, and numerous other state legislatures are poised to pass similar legislation.

“Defend liberty” by taking freedoms away from Muslims

With unintentional irony, anti-Muslim activists demand the country strip Muslims of their freedoms in order to defend freedom for all. Criticizing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for pledging “a return to robust civil rights enforcement and outreach in defending religious freedoms,” Gaffney argued that “radical Muslims have proved adept at using such rights to thwart legitimate surveillance and other countermeasures by law enforcement,” and therefore those rights should be dispensed with.

Rep. Gohmert wants to end birthright citizenship for all children born on U.S. soil, claiming that Muslim immigrants come to the U.S. to give birth so their children can have citizenship and return later to commit acts of terrorism. Republican Reps. Ed Royce and Gary Miller of California attended ACT! for America’s notorious anti-Muslim demonstration in Orange County, California, framed as a “pro-America rally,” where hecklers harassed, jeered, and yelled at Muslim families and children attending a charity dinner. ,

Geller of Stop Islamization of America claimed that if Muslims are allowed the same rights as all Americans, they will “impose Islam” on the country and take away everyone else’s rights through “Islamic supremacism.” “I am telling you, your basic freedoms are under attack,” Geller said.

Claim that Islam is not a religion

Anti-Muslim activists must somehow reconcile their claim that they are actually protecting freedom in America with their efforts to restrict religious freedom for Muslim-Americans. Their audacious solution: to claim that Islam is not a religion, but a deadly political ideology.

Rep. West alleges that Islam is “not a religion” but a “theo-political belief system and construct” that must be destroyed. Similarly, Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition defended the King hearings by insisting that “Islam is a geo-political military system wrapped in a cloak of religious belief.”

Maintain that Muslims have no First Amendment rights under the Constitution

Anti-Muslim activists argue that because Islam is not a religion, Muslim-Americans are not protected by the First Amendment’s religious liberty provisions. In the worldview of anti-Muslim activists, American Muslims intend to use, or abuse, America’s freedoms to empower their own “totalitarian” ideology. Gaffney writes: “Our enemies are using our tolerance of religion to create an infrastructure of mosques here that incubate the Islamic holy war called jihad” as part of a “stealthy ‘civilization jihad’ in this country.”

Full report here: http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/the-right-wing-playbook-anti-muslim-extremism