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"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?!" Medieval Period (~1000 AD) (media.piefed.social)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/historymemes@piefed.social
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[–] 20 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Also potentially the first documented case of (quasi? proto?) stochastic terrorism.

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  • [–] 14 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I dunno, I think a key part of stochastic terrorism is that the victim(s) are somewhat random too. You just rile up a bunch of hatred against a group and feign ignorance when members of that group start dying. Whereas, I don't think anyone would argue that Henry wasn't referring to Thomas Becket here, it was just a case of needlessly ambiguous terms being used.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago

    Is the target's randomness actually part of stochastic terrorism as a definition?

    I think it would be the other way around - that the event/terrorist itself is random, and only statistically predictable, without there being a call for it.

    For example, the whole Paul Pelosi attack was an instance of stochastic terrorism - right wing pundits have been painting a target on her back for years, one of their followers decided to act on those veiled calls to violence, and the only reason why Nancy wasn't hurt was because she wasn't home. The culprit even admitted that he wanted to torture her and that attacking the husband was just collateral damage.

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    It's not stochastic if you can predict the outcome (which, depending on what you think about Henry II, he likely did).

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  • [–] 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    You've got the definition wrong.

    Stochastic terrorism is when the attack outcome is predictable statistically, but not individually. In this case, the sentence would've resulted in the murder of the archbishop, but you couldn't pinpoint who and when would commit it.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Ah, my mistake. I thought it meant that the victims were not individually predictable, like "won't someone rid me of these meddling Anglicans" and then a bunch of random Anglicans get killed, but as you suggest, Wikipedia says " Stochastic terrorism...describe[s] 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. "

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    I mean that interpretation isn't inherently wrong, and in today's views makes sense.

    And the term doesn't apply directly to this case (hence my "(quasi? proto?)" remarks), but has enough similarities to be related more than just tangentially.

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