#stochastic terrorism

[existennialmemes]

Charles Manson never killed a single person with his own hands. He was still held accountable for the murders his rhetoric led others to commit.

Thinking about this for absolutely no reason.

[antifainternational]

“Members of Charlie Kirk’s organization spent two years aggressively stalking me, harassing and threatening me and my family, spreading lies about me, wasting my time and energy with a bogus lawsuit, attempting to end my academic career, and attempting to incite violence against me. They did similar things to hundreds of other academics who they saw as easy targets or obstructions to far-right goals. Kirk was not simply a guy with different views who liked to debate. He actively worked to try to destroy the lives of people like me. He lied to donors to keep the money flowing to his organization and he filled its leadership ranks with racists, misogynists, Islamophobes, and anti-LGBTQ extremists. He encouraged his young and impressionable followers to be cruel to vulnerable people. He taught young people that empathy is weakness and that laughing at people facing hardship and exclusion is cool. He treated the young murderer Kyle Rittenhouse as a hero and a celebrity that other young people should emulate. He supported racial profiling and the persecution of working-class migrants. He raised money for and publicized the most fascistic politicians pushing the most authoritarian policies. He added nothing of value to society. The world is worse for having had him in it.” - an academic targeted by Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA.

[secularsasquatch]

[rejectingrepublicans]

[socialjusticeinamerica]

This son-of-a-bitch is going to be doing color commentary while we are publicly executed at Madison Square Garden if we don’t get our acts together and fight back hard. And by we I mean every marginalized person, democratic voter, educated person, and union member. Virtually everyone who doesn’t support MAGA will be a target of opportunity on the streets of America.

[unsolicited-opinions]

If BDS is literally making maps to target Jewish/Jew-owned businesses, could they be considered a terrorist organization? I doubt it is that simple, but how else to describe such a malicious organization? I don't THINK they do the attacks themselves but it feels like they're encouraging it by basically giving a map publicly to their already violently antisemitic audience.

[We're talking about this post]

Who drew this map? What are we talking about?

The Mapping Project launched in June 2022 courtesy of anonymous organizers, but it was promoted repeatedly by the douchebags at BDS Boston, a regional chapter.

No evidence has emerged tying BDS Boston to its creation, but it's hard to imagine they weren't in the room.

The people behind The Mapping Project published an article in Mondoweiss laying out their goal:

We have shown physical addresses, named officers and leaders, and mapped connections. These entities exist in the physical world and can be disrupted in the physical world. We hope people will use our map to help figure out how to push back effectively.

The map named most of Boston's Jewish-affiliated institutions, staff and board members included, and drew lines to local police, universities, and corporations tied to Israel. It listed Zionism itself as a "harm." Its own slogan: "Every entity has an address, every network can be disrupted."

Hold onto that phrasing - Everyone who touched this project understood exactly what it was and exactly how far they could push it.

The BDS National Committee publicly distanced itself.

General Coordinator Mahmoud Nawajaa sent BDS Boston a letter ordering them to take the map down or "remove the BDS acronym from your name."

If you read the letter, you'll notice a total absence of moral horror.

Nawajaa's problem wasn't that the map was vile, he just thought it was unstrategic and likely to get everyone subpoenaed - and the FBI did start tracking the project after 37 members of Congress demanded a federal investigation.

This disavowal from Nawajaa was PR damage control, not conscience or decency.

The people who built the site had run the same calculation - and that's why no one was charged.

Terrorism is the word everyone reaches for here. It's the wrong one because the federal terrorism statutes are narrow and the mappers knew just how wide their project could be.

Incitement loses First Amendment protection only under conditions set by Brandenburg v. Ohio, which requires that speech be both aimed at producing imminent lawless action and likely to produce it.

"We hope this helps people figure out how to push back" is vague and future-tense on purpose. It was written specifically to fail that test.

True threats fall under Counterman v. Colorado, which asks whether a statement reads as serious intent to commit violence. "Every entity has an address, every network can be disrupted" gets close.

The congressional letter called the map a potential roadmap for violent attacks by foreign terrorist organizations and domestic extremists, but warning that strangers might misuse your map is not the same as threatening anyone yourself, and the law holds that line even when it feels like a technicality.

Material support for terrorism (18 U.S.C. § 2339B) is the last reach, and it requires coordination with or benefit to a specific designated terrorist organization. A public map that any Jew-hater with a grudge and a car could act on doesn't qualify. The statute targets funding real networks and wasn't built for stochastic terrorism.

So nothing stuck. Authorities didn't decide the map was fine, but the people who made it framed it as "research and political organizing" and stopped one careful inch short of the intent and imminence the law recognizes as incitement.

Nawajaa knew. BDS Boston knew. The mappers knew. The only thing nobody could prove is the one thing everybody understood.

So it isn't legally a terrorist organization, Anon.

They don't do the attacks, they just pick the targets, publish them to an audience they know is violent, and frame it carefully enough to call it research. That's what stochastic terrorism is, your instinct to call it terrorism makes sense, and the reason it isn't a chargeable crime is the same reason it works.

The map does the targeting. The crowd does the rest. Nobody has to give an order- and that was the entire point of drawing the map this way.

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

FauxKing monster.

[unaffiliatedpangolin]

We need to actually do something about the fact that the Leftwing in this country has a significant number of terrorists among them.

The Left isn’t shy about celebrating the terrorism. The Democrat party refuses to distance themselves from the terrorists in their own party, in fact they use this element as a tool for their political agenda.

They celebrated when Trump had assassination attempts against him.

The celebrated gleefully when Charlie Kirk was assassinated. And then blamed the Right for the assassination.

They celebrated when the United Healthcare CEO was assassinated.

The love when mobs of people show up at the homes of conservative TV hosts, or online personalities.

They openly call for cops to be murdered.

The attorney general of Virginia said he fantasized about murdering the children of conservatives. The Dem gubernatorial candidate didn’t condemn that. They both were elected.

They talk openly about mass incarceration of their political opponents. Literally talking about reeducation camps.

Dem politicians are in the group chats organizing the mobs of people in Minneapolis right now.

Anyone on the Left is complicit in the terrorism. They vote for it, they support it, and even if they don’t participate themselves if they aren’t condemning it or leaving then they’re still standing next to the terrorists ideologically.

These aren’t people we can coexist with. This isn’t just a difference of opinion on taxes or education. This rest of the country has to fully acknowledge that the Left has literal terrorists among their number, and they harbor them and approve of the violence and constant threat of violence.