Categories
First Amendment rights ideological culture Internet controversy

The Random Malefactor

I’m pretty sure I’d never heard the term “stochastic terrorism” until last week; now it’s everywhere.

What does it mean?

It sounds redundant, as if the first word didn’t modify the second so much as define it, but I could be wrong, so I … freespoke … it.

Freespoke is the new search engine I’m trying out, now that all the old ones seem compromised in weird ways.

Matt Walsh, of his Daily Wire podcast and his documentary film What Is a Woman?, appears to be one of the term’s current honorees. He is said to commit “stochastic terrorism” by calling attention (in one case) to the child abuse going on in hospitals in the form of “gender affirmation” treatments and surgeries. Merely by identifying something that is actually happening and judging it as bad qualifies because it has some unmeasurable likelihood of eliciting violence against those who are thus fingered — not ineluctably or directly or certainly or anything like that. 

Just randomly. 

Stochastic means random.

Of course, the charge against Walsh (or say, Trump, or anyone else) is that by identifying specific people in specific institutions he’s inviting random followers to engage in violence. But what Walsh is doing specifically is inviting his followers to protest and take political action against the malefactors he identifies. 

In familiar terminology, Walsh’s naming of names is similar to doxxing, and can be judged on that basis.

Yet, that hardly justifies calling non-​violent speech “violence.”

Furthermore, back to my opening concern, isn’t all terrorism random? Terroristic acts differ from insurrection and assassination in their randomness, the better to elicit a culture of fear in the populace. The randomness in “stochastic terrorism” is not in the targets but the terrorists.

In a heavily polarized political climate, all specific charges by one side against specific people on the other side could be seen as “stochastic terrorism.”

Better to tread carefully. And drop the term.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
Internet controversy media and media people social media

TikTok Dox War

Merriam-​Webster says that to “dox” is “to publicly identify or publish private information about (someone) especially as a form of punishment or revenge.”

Here is a sentence to illustrate the usage: The person behind the popular Twitter account “Libs of TikTok” — featuring video clips of left-​wingers talking about their crazy agendas, thereby confirming the crazy left-​wing agendas that mainstream media often pretend don’t exist — has been doxxed by the Washington Post.

Well, the doxxer, Taylor Lorenz — the notorious and teary-​eyed reporter on the social media beat — did not act alone. At least one Post editor must have okayed her action.

Not so long ago, Lorenz claimed to oppose online “harassment” (criticism), lamenting that she was a victim of it in consequence of her brave work as a left-​wing smear artist. But then, in a smear-​laden Post column, she revealed the identity of the hitherto anonymous publisher of Libs of Tik Tok, even including a link to private information about her day job.

The link has since been deleted.

For now, Libs of Tik Tok, bane of progressives for heretically showcasing their very own words, is still on Twitter. (Although the publisher suspects that it’s “a matter of time before I get suspended.”)

The other good news is that even if the LoTT creator loses her nine-​to-​five job as a result of being Post-doxxed, she’s now got another remunerative position. Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon says he’s made a deal with her “that will turn her heroic, high-​risk work into a career.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
general freedom ideological culture

Twitter Gulag?

An old Soviet-​phrase — “ne chital, no osuzhdayu” (“didn’t read, but disapprove”) — seems as apt now as ever. Why? Because Americans today have revived the “Soviet mentality,” according to Izabella Tabarovsky, writing at Tablet

Ms. Tabarovsky, a researcher with the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, explains that “[c]ollective demonizations of prominent cultural figures were an integral part of the Soviet culture of denunciation that pervaded every workplace and apartment building.”

Jobs lost, careers ruined, people socially disgraced — for “social media gaffes or old teenage behavior” — this is not just a Soviet mania, for Twitter mobs are on the rampage against those they deem “to be deplorable and unforgivable.” 

The difference between current mobbing and Soviet experience, though, is stark: the government does not seem to be in charge, and there are no real gulags to be sent to — as of yet.

Today’s mobbing behavior, on and off Twitter, appears spontaneous and “systemic,” not organizational — more Crucible-like than 1984-ish. 

Nevertheless, this is dangerous stuff. “The practice of collective condemnation feels like an assertion of a culture that ultimately tramples on the individual and creates an oppressive society,” Tabarovsky concludes, insisting that “the failure of institutions and individuals to stand up to mob rule is no longer an option we can afford.”

She’s right. Twitter-​mobbing may be ugly, but it is more than that: it is obviously backed by force — witness the current riots; look at the policy agendas of the “politically correct” — and, unless stopped culturally it will have to be stopped in the realm of (ugh) politics and government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
Accountability general freedom ideological culture media and media people

Transcendent Gray Lady

How far are we away from a completely vindictive, murderous madness like The Terror of revolutionary France?

I know, almost no one is talking of guillotines. 

But a lot of people seem determined to destroy others’ lives publicly. We are all too familiar with Twitterstorms where worked-​up outrage forces someone out of a job or a deal  — usually for making jokes.

But it’s not just jokes. Not long ago an actor got in trouble for Tweeting that commentator and Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro seems a nice, honest person on the right that a leftist might listen to. The actor was forced to recant, and then Shapiro himself publicly recanted from some past putatively “dumb” things he “did” or “said.” Or something.

Since we’re talking about Mr. Shapiro, his commentary on the Sarah Jeong case is not irrelevant. The New York Times hired Ms. Jeong despite her past racist tweets. 

Well, racist-​against-​whites. 

“By the rules of the left,” says Shapiro, “this person should now be excised from polite society.”

But the Times is keeping her.

Shapiro finds this “indicative” of more than just the Times. The left at large seems OK with anti-​white racism but not anti-any-other-race.

It’s indicative of a lot more, though, not just racism and anti-​racism and anti-​anti-​racism. 

Outrage and the Twittermob may be fun. But it’s time to stop.

Is the Times leading the way?

Only when the decrepit old rag defends someone not on its own ideological side. Transcending partisan mob mania means first transcending partisanship. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 


PDF for printing

 

Categories
crime and punishment folly general freedom nannyism privacy property rights responsibility

The New Ortho-Doxing

“What a nice Halloween,” my wife remarked as we turned out the lights. 

Well, not in nearby Oakton, Virginia, where Jamie Stevenson walked past her neighbor’s home last Saturday and saw “a racist display.”

“She knew it was a Halloween decoration,” the Washington Post reported.

Heedless, she contacted her homeowners association, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the perpetrator: “What you appear to be displaying is an effigy of a black person being lynched. As your neighbor and a person of color [Stevenson is Asian], I find this racist … deeply offensive. I’m sure this is not your intent.”

“It is not my intent to offend anyone,” was her neighbor’s immediate and predictable response to her email. Shockingly, he had never noticed that his “Monster in the tree had darker skin.” 

So, on a rainy Sunday, he took it down.

One might think that, with Stevenson’s sensitivity, she wouldn’t perform her own social media lynching — or doxing — against her neighbor. But on Monday, acknowledging that no offense had been intended and with the offending display removed, Stevenson still posted “a flier” on Facebook with a photo of an actual 1889 lynching next to the picture she had snapped of her neighbor’s Halloween display, declaring: “RACISM and HATE have no place in our neighborhood.” 

She called for a boycott of her neighbor’s free Halloween candy … and handily provided his home address. 

“[W]hen you point out racism, people have a choice to make,” she insisted. “They either acknowledge it and have to do something about it, or they deny it and are complicit in it.”

Or then again, neighbor, maybe you’ve got racism on the noggin and folks are only complicit in sharing a traditional joy with the neighborhood kids.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing