Thank you for your perspective!

I think countries with strong labor movements overcame that in a few different ways:

• in The United States the labor movement was so violent (e.g. The Coal Wars) that the capitalist class found it beneficial to allow limited unionization to prevent further violence and thus harm to their profits.

• In Cuba, China, etc. They had a Socialist Revolution and either liquidated or subordinated their capitalist class to the rule of the workers

• European countries developed strong domestic labor movements and welfare states so neighboring Socialist Countries didn’t look like an appealing alternative.

The global south struggles to overcome what you’re describing because They’re developed enough to have a class consciousness proletariat, so you can’t as easily stoke a precarious peasantry to Revolution. And they’re under the thumb, but only of domestic capital, but also international capital, so resistingbecomes much more difficult. Surveillance tech and weapons used on people in the imperial core are essentially tested on hyper exploited workers in the global south

Look, you’re the one who called me a “fucking moron” unprompted. If you had a question or disagreement with the way I used the term, we could have a nice conversation about it, but you seem content being a smug cunt about shit you clearly don’t understand.

You gave a lot of examples of bad things, but none of them were examples of Terrorism. Terrorism Is a very specific category of violent behavior carried out with specific Intent. Words mean things.

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.

That’s just a fancier version of the thing that I said. I know full well what it means, and it’s what I described, and what your definition here states:

That Stochastic terrorism is when acts of terroristic violence, carried out by individuals, become more likely in certain social or media environments.

Racists egging each other on in an 8chan thread might or might not lead to a specific individual shooting up a Walmart, but that environment produces an elevated risk of someone doing that, when they otherwise wouldn’t have.

how can you insist that the public dissemination of bigotry against minorities through social media and AI is NOT stochastic when it is in the literal definition?

Because that’s not what Stochastic means.

In statistics, Stochastic is a word which describes a kind of randomness. There’s a slight technical distinction between something being Stochastic vs random, in stats. But the way that it’s used in Political Science and Terrorism Studies, they’re synonymous.

The thing in Stochastic Terrorism which is Stochastic, or random, is the acts of terrorism themselves, not the media environment which produces them. You seem to be confusing the casual mechanism (media environment) as the thing that’s Stochastic, when it’s actually the effect (the terrorism), which is what’s random.

Is dissemination of bigotry via social media Stochastic? I mean… Maybe? These things are often carried out in a very intentional way. A lot of online and IRL transphobia, for example, is carried out by people who are a part of distinct groups, with goals, hierarchies, and people who hand down orders. Which isn’t Stochastic. So that’s not inherently the case.

Now, if someone on Lemmy calls me a tr*nny unprompted, then yeah, that would be an example of stochastic behavior. Maybe that guy comes from an instance which doesn’t moderate transphobia, Incentivizing transphobes to gather there, that can lead to a higher statistical likelihood of slur throwing on Lemmy.

But that’s Stochastic behavior, not Stochastic terrorism. Terrorism is a morally neutral description of something very specific: acts of violence carried out with the intent to spark fear or panic in a population.

Sam Altman or Elon Musk making yes-man robots that sometimes talk people into acts of violence is bad, and morally reprehensible …but it’s not terrorism.

If the robot talks a guy into killing his family in the name of Donald Trump, that’s not terrorism.

If the robot talks someone into blowing up a bank because it fed him antisemitic conspiracies, then that would be terrorism, because he’s trying to terrorize the cabal of Jewish bankers that he believes exists.

But the act of making the robot, or profiting off of it, or whatever, isn’t itself terrorism. You’ve just made a petri dish more efficient than 8chan.

Rich people like Sam Altman using organs of the state to terrorize the working class? Also not Stochastic.

it literally is, i shouldnt have to spell it out for you. also thomson ran one of the largest networks created to siphon money from the population, leading to thousands of preventable deaths a year in order to line his pockets?

No Patrick, Those things aren’t stochastic terrorism either. Yes, that guy did bad things and should be punished for them. Yes it resulted in deaths. But he didn’t do it specifically to kill people, or terrorize them for a political purpose. Those are externalities. He did it to make more money. And he did it with, as you said, a giant network… Which even if it somehow counted as terrorism (which it doesn’t), would make it traditional terrorism, not Stochastic.

zuckerberg has also made billions off of blatant dissemination of propaganda on his platform that literally led to Trump being elected, which (surprise!!) has led to destruction of human rights on a global scale.

I agree that this is also bad, but it’s neither Stochastic, nor Terrorism. Outside of Burgerland, in the decade preceding Trump, Facebook helped create a media environment in Myanmar, which spurred on a mix of Stochastic and traditional terrorism, in addition to state violence, against the Rohingya people. That’s awful and I think Zuckerberg should be tried for his role in the facilitation of genocide. But the act of poorly and irresponsibly moderating Facebook is not Terrorism.

Jesus Christ, you’re really coming out swinging with the insults.

Sam Altman and co suck shit. I’m not denying that, or defending them, so idk why you’re crawling up my ass about it.

But you’re not the first person in this thread to have some real piss on the poor reading comprehension around the phrase “Stochastic Terrorism”. All that phrase means, is that acts of terror are statistically more likely to occur due to the circumstances of a social, political, or media environment that encourages it. So someone who finds themselves in an environment where people say “Mass shootings are cool” isn’t garunteed to go do one, but they are more likely to. We just can’t predict who or when exactly someone will do a mass shooting about it.

Stochastic terrorism is in contrast to traditional terrorism, where actors engage in acts of terrorism which are organized, planned, and carried out, under orders from a political organization with an explicit structure. So someone in a cell gets orders from his superiors to blow up a guy’s car next Sunday, wouldn’t be Stochastic terrorism, because it’s not a random individual carrying it out.

So, someone burning down a warehouse and saying “They should pay us more” is Stochastic.

A cell of a Basque nationalist organization carrying out an assassination of fascist Spain’s Second in Command by blowing his car up, is not Stochastic.

Some workers in 1910 doing a propaganda of the deed where they randomly kill their boss? Stochastic.

The IRA setting off carbombs? Not Stochastic.

Rich people like Sam Altman using organs of the state to terrorize the working class? Also not Stochastic.

So, that’s not a foregone conclusion, and even if it was, that’s not an excuse to not try.

People used to get killed in the United States (and still do in the global south) for trying to unionize. I think you can take on some lighter risks than that

There have been a number of warehouse fires, but not all of them are purposeful acts of arson by disgruntled proles.

One of them definitely is, that’s the one at a paper warehouse, where the arsonist filmed himself saying “You should’ve paid your employees enough to live” while filming the blaze.

A couple others seem like they might be copycats but currently remain unconfirmed, and the rest were clearly accidents.

So, there isn’t exactly a huge wave of Stochastic, proletarian arsons going on across America. But there clearly is a hunger for a kind of revenge against the wealthy, and this overhyped news cycle is a part of that.

Actual instances of Stochastic terrorism, like the killing of healthcare CEO Brian Thomson, or the recent attacks on the home of Sam Altman, in addition to the one confirmed warehouse arson, are also a part of that hunger for revenge.

That said, instead of doing an individual act of terrorism… Go organize your workplace, join an org, help out your neighbors, and do something more productive. Its not as sexy, but it is more useful.

Who names an airplane “warthog”? pigs can’t fly and neither can the pig-pilots inside them

Tbh I’m more offended that the US names its helicopters after indigenous people groups it’s genocided

This fucking rips

Turkey loves to talk big about standing up to Zionism, but at the end of the day, it’s still an Imperialist NATO outpost built on genocide and ethnic supremacy, and as such could never meaningfully oppose Zionism without first resolving its own National Questions.

How do you know they’re not doing those things?

Because I’m active in my local organizing circles, and I see this stuff.

The No Kings folks aren’t doing that. Folks in various socialist orgs like DSA and PSL are doing that work. Folks in the unions, especially folks just starting unions, or are in reform movements within larger unions, like the UFCW or the Teamsters, are doing that work. Hell, the punk kids in our local Food not Bombs chapter always show up to pickets with food.

The folks organizing the No Kings protests themselves are not doing this kind of nitty gritty organizing work. They’re in a wildly different sphere. And my friends across the country mostly echo this.

That’s not to say they’re useless, or that people shouldn’t go, they should. But what I am saying is that the real, long term work, that sustains movements, is being done elsewhere. The more serious organizing that is happening at No Kings, happens not because of the No Kings folks themselves, but because more established, more radical groups are going and doing entryism and political agitation.

I don’t mind a big protest march, I’ve helped organize a couple (much smaller obviously lol) protests myself. But you also need to build power and leverage beyond that too. That could be through labor organizing, mutual aid, etc. But you gotta do more than “Raise your fists and March around, but don’t take what you need” as the Rage Against The Machine song says.

So I’m Wiccan, and while if pulls from things, and arises out of an occult millieu much older than it, Wicca is essentially a modern religion. The Wheel of The Year, the Wiccan liturgical calendar, is newer than the labor movement’s establishment of May 1st as Intl. Worker’s Day.

Beltane, was originally a Gaelic holiday Marking the midway point between the Spring Equinox and the summer solstice (and its not even what the Holiday was originally called in Wicca btw).

It makes sense that a general spirit of resistance would come from working class Irish and Scottish who sat on the periphery of English Industrializations benefits, and were more easily exploited as cheap labor. And it makes sense that they might latch onto an existing springtime festival as a date for a radical workers holiday. Spring means new birth, perhaps even of a world beyond Capitalism.

Also some important labor movement events happened around that time of year, most famously the Haymarket Affair, Which had a huge impact on the son selection of May 1st.

So I don’t think it’s at all bad that international Workers day, the culture of a historically colonized people, and pagan springtime holidays, both ancient and modern, all coincide and intersect. In fact I think it’s a beautiful thing.

It’s like looking at Pride month, and Juneteenth in the US, and asking why gay people stole June from black people. They didn’t. Two oppressed people groups in the US experienced seismic events in the history of their liberation during that month. And that’s sick as hell!

Tl;dr - yeah, mentioning may 1st as also being a pagan spring festival is cool too

How is that not “giving people direction beyond the protest”?

Its definitely a good step in the right direction, don’t get me wrong.

But it’s not like the No Kings organizers are seeding Amazon warehouses, embedding themselves into the existing labor movement, mobilizing the people going to these protests to join, start, or get active in their own unions. They’re not training disciplined activist cadre.

All things which would bolster the goal of a general strike, and allow something like that to be sustained for a longer period of time.

Without that stuff, it’s just turning the masses out for a big one day March around the block. Which is fine, and I’m not ragging on it, but there needs to be more, and I just think that more is going to come from the more radical groups attending these protests who have deeper organizational ties and skills, as opposed go the No Kings organizers themselves.

The Houthis are a large group controlling a big area of Yemen, but not the official government of Yemen

They’re not the de jure government, that is, the one with international recognition, but they are essentially the de-facto government. They control the capital, and the most populous half of the Country.

Ml user here, I think it’s rad. Gonna radicalize the libs at my local protest with May Day history ¯_( ツ)_/¯

Like, I think the No Kings protests, for instance, while great at getting people out, struggle to give those people direction, beyond the big protest.

But any good Socialist, Communist, Anarchist, [insert preferred flavour of leftist] will know that you go where the masses are. And if the masses are at a big protest, then you go to the big protest to recruit, educate, and even just network with cool people and orgs.

Not to mention, Afghanistan and Pakistan are at war with each other too 🙃

And apparently U-hauls

Pretty sure there’s a chunk of the NeoNazi set who think they should all move to Idaho and turn it into a fascist ethnostate. So, sadly, this isn’t surprising

Pete Buttigeig screaming, crying, and throwing up rn

In past times, enslaving the populations of entire conquered nations or villages was common. Bringing slaves back to Rome was a regular part of an Army’s return. Enslaving one’s neighbors has been extremely common across the globe, since the beginning of humanity.

This is true, but not all Slavery is equivalent. All of it is obviously awful, but in the ancient world, conquering your neighbors provided an easy way to acquire more land and agricultural labor to feed a growing population of citizens. Enslaved people were not enslaved forever, and it was more akin to indentured servitude than chattel slavery. Rather, enslaved people would eventually be free, and become citizens of Rome, for instance, with more or less the same rights as any other citizen.

Chattel slavery, on the other hand, was inedibly unique, as far as historic slavery is concerned. People were now being enslaved, for life, based on the color of their skin, shipped off across a continent, and their descendants were also slaves upon birth, and those descendants were bought and sold as commodities on an open market.

Chattel slavery required the invention of modern notions of race to be invented, in order to justify it, which has had ongoing social impacts that extend far beyond the relations of production which birthed it.

Honestly, based. Philippine Communists, more than anyone, are right to have a skeptical posture towards China. But recognizing that the native aspects of that relationship are primarily due to the way the domestic Phillipines bourgeoisie warps Chinese relations for their own ends, is the correct take, I think.