A disturbing thought I’ve on my mind all day. Consider stochastic terrorism as an increasingly well defined and operationalised concept. Here’s the Wikipedia summary:
Stochastic terrorism is an analytic description used in scholarship and counterterrorism to describe a mass-mediated process in which hostile public rhetoric, repeated and amplified across communication platforms, elevates the statistical risk of ideologically motivated violence by unknown individuals, even without direct coordination or explicit orders
What happens if this violence is orchestrated by agents of the state? Could we imagine a situation in which there is widespread political violence by state actors (such as the Jakarta Method) but with plausible deniability and without the need for explicit orders or coordination? A permission structure enacted through media campaigns which license violence along with organisational imperatives which create situations in which that violence can be exercised.
Mark Carrigan 