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.

At least take me out to coffee first…

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.

Basically, they reject the transitionary state, and want to speed run right to Communism

2 Manly P. Hall – known for writings on esoteric philosophy.

That picture is actually of Gerald Gardner, the guy who founded (kind of? Its complicated) the religion of Wicca.

That’s literally Gerald’s Wikipedia picture, while Manley Hall kina looks like he’d be a groyper twink if he were alive today

To answer the question though, white Jesus easily has the most toxic fan club, by sheer volume of followers.

Anton LaVey was an edgy fuck though, so he probably gets 2nd place for just being kinda cringe ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Log off and come suck my gock, fuckwad lmao

Get the ever living fuck off Lemmy, we don’t want misogynistic dipshits like you

I don’t really want to argue with a fellow leftist here while there are liberals attacking us all over the place

Me, an ML, defending my anarchist comrades from the liberals o7

Hasan Piker, a left wing political commentator on the internet, who’s popular among the 18-35 set

Somalia is a failed state, not a project built around anarchist organizing principles

How can a territory with borders containing hundreds of thousands of individuals hide?

Real Wakanda EZLN

Always was tbh

Get your ass on Soulseek

forcing many users to consider the unthinkable

… Death???

There are a couple different ways we could look at this.

Institutionally, there has been a general trend towards diffusion of power. Kim Il Sung was President, which like in the US, meant he was head of state, head of government, and commander in chief of the armed forces. After his death, those positions were split between multiple people.

From Wikipedia:

The functions and powers previously belonging to the president were divided between numerous officials:

The premier of North Korea;

the chairman of the Supreme People’s Assembly, chairman of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People’s Assembly;

and the head of the military, the chairman of the National Defence Commission (replaced by State Affairs Commission of North Korea) and supreme commander of the Korean People’s Army.

These positions are currently held by Pak Thae-song, Choe Ryong-hae, and Kim Jong Un respectively.

[Reformatted for better legibility on Lemmy]

On the other hand, I would definitely consider the personality cult around the Kims to be a troublesome aspect of the DPRK’s political culture, and I don’t think there’s really any way around that.

The reason it developed historically, however, is worth exploring. Prior to the Korean war, the Fatherland Front which made up the Revolution post WW2, was incredibly vibrant, with lots of parties and social cleavages outside of the Workers party being represented. After the Korean war, however, election results show a major rallying around the Workers Party, and the sidelining of other parties and organizations in the Fatherland Front.

The Korean war never truly ended, the US bombed the Korean peninsula so much that pilots complained there were no more targets, and people took to living in caves. So it’s understandable why, despite ostensible attempts at diffusing power, that it’s managed to centralize regardless. There’s a historic desire for stability in the face of incredible adversity.

If we want to get really in the weeds about political economy, the DPRK’s economic base is made up primarily of extractive industries, like mining, because the Korean peninsula’s bread basket is in the south, and countries with primarily extractive industries tend to develop noted centralized power structures, compared to countries with more diverse productive industries.

So a Socialist country like Cuba, which has a more agricultural economy, allowed it to develop a more diverse economy, and thus it has a healthier political culture, by contrast.

All of that said, whatever qualms of critiques of the DPRK I may have, they had a Socialist Revolution, and have kept it going, which is more than I can say as a Socialist in the US.

And I think, if we care about the people of the Korean peninsula, we should want a formal end to the Korean war, a dismantling of the DMZ, an end to the US military presence and sanctions, and an internationally mediated set of talks between north and south, about what their future together might look like.

Those things would, I suspect, go a long way in helping establishing a healthier political culture in the DPRK, as well as dignified material benefits to its people, free from arbitrary restrictions

The “Recent Data” in question was largely a piece of satire which claimed that the Grindr CEO called the 2024 RNC, “Grindr’s Super Bowl” this never actually happened.

There were also claims that Grindr crashed during the 2024 RNC:

Over 1,000 users reported a Grindr outage in the Milwaukee area around 4 p.m. on Tuesday, according to Downdetector, a website that collects online service status information.

The Grindr app also allegedly experienced problems in the Cream City on Thursday— the fourth and final day of the RNC — as well as in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. However, Grindr’s official status updates show there hasn’t been an outage since May.

According to Newsweek, those appear to be unsubstantiated.

Further, the majority of the spike in Grindr traffic during the RNC was due to journalists, curious locals, and law enforcement, all of whom got on the app with the intent to monitor the goings on.

And why would all those people want to do that? Because we’ve created this largely fake “gay on gay violence” trope wherein all of the people most opposed to queer rights are secretly queer themselves.

People believe this trope, everyone flocks to Grindr during the RNC to watch. Then the inflated Grindr numbers, of people there to see the supposed flood of secret Gay conservatives, are cited as proof that the flood of secret Gay conservatives is real.

It’s like if I claimed a Rhino was ice skating downtown. The fact that people showed up to see if there was actually an ice skating rhino, is not proof that such a thing ever existed. It’s pointing at shadows cast on the wall, and mistaking them for reality.

Ehh, I know we’re in the shitpost community, but if I can be serious for a moment, this “Homophobes are actually secretly gay” schtick always rubs me the wrong way.

It’s not actually that common of a phenomenon, and the idea absolves straight people of their own culpability in the oppression of queer people, by pinning it on an imagined “Gay on Gay violence”, as opposed to actual systemic factors