Tuesday 30 October 2018

stochastic terrorism

Before virtue signalling, red-pills and dog-whistles, someone formulated the title term, borrowing from the discipline of mathematics and control theory that describes something randomly determined, to define the use of mass-communication as a means of rabble-rousing and provoking violence that fall within the statistical tolerances of what we’ve come to accept as unsurprising but each incident is in isolation itself unpredictable and unexpected.
We know the drill.  We know that the words of demagogues have the power to agitate, and we deputise and acknowledge that tragic outcomes—though avoidable—are inevitable.  We are then left to deal with the consequences of those emboldened and benighted whose cult-leaders by this act of tribute are kept beyond reproach and responsibility.