Progressives can’t give themselves a pass for behavior they’d deem beyond the pale if it came from a conservative.
Progressives can’t give themselves a pass for behavior they’d deem beyond the pale if it came from a conservative.
I n the Washington Post, Perry Bacon Jr. offers up a novel solution to the national crisis that has been created by our having a majority on the United States Supreme Court that is both able and willing to read the law. “In the short term,” Bacon writes, “there is only one real option” available to those who wish to convince the Court to will the statutes he prefers into existence: “Shame.”
Specifically, Bacon believes that “Democratic politicians, left-leaning activist groups, newspaper editorial boards and other influential people and institutions need to start relentlessly blasting Republican-appointed judges.” Among the verbs that Bacon uses to describe his ideal course of action are “attack,” “slam,” “blast,” and “condemn.”
I have a question: Is this that “stochastic terrorism” I keep hearing so much about?
I don’t ask because I think that “stochastic terrorism” is a useful or meaningful idea. On the contrary: In my estimation, “stochastic terrorism” is merely the latest faux-academic ruse to have polluted our national conversation and made us all a bit dumber. No, I ask because, if “stochastic terrorism” is to be treated seriously — if, in other words, “stochastic terrorism” is to be regarded as a worthwhile concept, instead of yet another way for progressives to insist that conservatives must shut up — Bacon’s idea must surely be quite problematic.
In Vox last year, Kurt Braddock summarized the concept:
The example that I always give is, if you’re sitting on your front porch, and you see dark storm clouds rolling in toward your neighborhood, you can be pretty confident that lightning is going to strike at some time in the next half hour, but you can never really predict when and where that’s going to happen. Stochastic terrorism is the same kind of idea, whereby an individual who you designate a stochastic terrorist, makes statements that seem to implicitly advocate the use of violence without actually directing it. It’s the kind of rhetoric that justifies or advocates the use of violence without directing it. The speaker gets this level of plausible deniability, where if somebody does carry out an attack, then they can say, “Well, I never actually directed them to do something.”
The stochastic element relates to the use of a mass mediated channel to broadcast these kinds of messages. Terrorism is a very low base rate phenomenon — typically a person’s likelihood of engaging in terrorism is a fraction of a fraction of one percent. But when you’re reaching millions and millions of people, you start to approach complete likelihood that at least one person will interpret what that person said as a call to violence.
Elsewhere, in 2019, the Post’s Juliette Kayyem described “stochastic terrorism” as “the demonization of groups through mass media and other propaganda that can result in a violent act because listeners interpret it as promoting targeted violence — terrorism.” In the New York Times last year, Max Fisher cast “stochastic terrorism” as “violence committed by an attacker who, though acting on personal volition, is inspired by language demonizing the target.” Dictionary.com, meanwhile, explains that “stochastic terrorism” is “the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted.”
So, let’s see. Bacon is arguing that “Democratic politicians, left-leaning activist groups, newspaper editorial boards and other influential people and institutions need to start relentlessly blasting Republican-appointed judges,” and, in particular, he’s hoping that those figures and organizations will accuse the judges he disdains of helping “the bigoted,” of “hurting working-class people, women, and minorities,” of keeping “Black and Latino students” out of universities, and of putting the victims of “domestic violence” in danger.
Does that count as “stochastic terrorism” under the definitions above? And if not, why not?
As if anticipating the charge, Bacon writes that “there will be arguments that such high-profile criticism would put judges in physical danger.” But he swiftly concludes that these arguments are wrong. “I obviously oppose violence,” he writes. “But judges are powerful figures setting policy — they should get as much scrutiny as elected officials.” For example: “No one argues that Biden is imperiling the life of Florida Republican Rick Scott, even though the president has repeatedly named Scott while criticizing the senator’s Social Security proposals.”
That lattermost line is true, of course. But the only reason it’s true is that Rick Scott is a Republican. In other circumstances — in circumstances, that is, where the target of the opprobrium is a progressive — such claims are immediate, unsparing, and widespread. Just last month, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested that, by removing Representative Ilhan Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Republicans were engaged in “stochastic terrorism.” Last year, when Paul Pelosi was attacked in San Francisco with a hammer, the idea was omnipresent in the coverage of the story, featuring in sympathetic write-ups in Reuters, the New York Times, Mother Jones, New York magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Scientific American, Politico, MSNBC, and other outlets. And, of course, we hear the phrase whenever a mass killer and his victims line up in a politically advantageous manner for left-wingers (although not, notably, when they do not).
If one were so minded, one could even say that the Court’s conservative justices would be highly likely to face the threat of violence if they were publicly lambasted as Bacon wishes. Last year, during the fierce debate provoked by the leaking of the draft opinion in Dobbs, a politicized lunatic flew from California to Washington, D.C., with the express intention of killing Justice Brett Kavanaugh to “remove some people from the supreme court” and “stop roe v wade from being overturned.”
Knowing this, ought we to assume that Perry Bacon is trying to get more justices killed? Personally, I would prefer that we not. I would prefer that we debate freely and argue openly and “attack,” “slam,” “blast,” and “condemn” whomever we deem worthy of the treatment. But for that to work, the same set of rules has to apply to everyone. Progressives can’t give themselves a pass for behavior they’d deem beyond the pale if it came from a conservative.