Against "Stochastic Terrorism" - by Scott Alexander

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Against "Stochastic Terrorism"<br>...

Scott Alexander<br>Jul 16, 2026

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“Stochastic terrorism” is the idea that if you spread fear and mistrust against a target, then eventually people will commit violence against that target, and it will be your fault, even if you never specifically said the words “you should commit violence”.

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry@pegobry_en

Again, creating a spreadsheet to accuse someone of killing others is a self-evidently absurd exercise, whose only possible motive is to be used to incite political violence. This is stochastic terrorism, and nothing else.

Jerusalem @JerusalemDemsas

Elon Musk bragged about feeding USAID into the "wood chipper" but now he pretends that whatever happens as a result isn't his fault.

If DOGE had saved the federal government billions of dollars, you can be sure he would be taking credit for that.

But somehow he's not

4:18 PM · Jun 26, 2026 · 128K Views

87 Replies · 17 Reposts · 188 Likes

Some other popular examples of the concept:<br>Nativists spread fear and mistrust about Muslim immigrants, and then racists go on shooting sprees in mosques.

The #Resistance insists that Donald Trump would destroy democracy, and then various people try to assassinate Donald Trump.

Conservatives spread fear and mistrust about transgender people, and then bigots commit hate crimes against transgender people.

Woke people say the police are racist and brutal, and then other woke people murder police officers.

Socialists call health insurance companies greedy and accuse them of blocking life-saving treatment, and then Luigi Mangione murdered a health insurance CEO.

AI safety activists say that Sam Altman’s AI could destroy humanity, and then a guy threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s house.

Liberals said that Charlie Kirk was a hatemonger who was driving Americans apart, and then an assassin murdered Charlie Kirk.

The pro-life movement describes abortion as murder, and then pro-life activists assassinated abortion doctors and pro-choice politicians.

The “stochastic terrorism” concept is near-unique in how effectively it can be discredited merely by listing many examples of its use together in the same place. Almost no one supports a blanket prohibition on criticizing of all of these different groups of people. “Stochastic terrorism” mostly gets deployed opportunistically, by people who either are too blinkered to realize that the same argument could be leveraged against their own speech, or who hope you’re too blinkered to realize that.<br>(in fact, one could argue that accusing someone of stochastic terrorism is itself stochastic terrorism! Here in America, we consider it justified to kill terrorists before they can threaten us further. Reclassifying criticism as terrorism implies it is potentially legitimate to apply the same norm to any especially harsh critics!)<br>Still, a sliver of concept-users make some fig-leaf argument that the cases they approve of are different than the cases they disapprove of. Some proposed principles:<br>You’re allowed to criticize these groups, but not to criticize them harshly . Again, I challenge anyone to fully own up to the implications of this. You’re not allowed to criticize Donald Trump or police brutality harshly? You’re not allowed to criticize abortion doctors or Muslim immigration harshly? Even if you bite all of these bullets, I still think you disagree with the general case. Tomorrow, some lunatic could shoot up a KKK meeting, and then you wouldn’t be allowed to criticize the KKK harshly.<br>You’re allowed to criticize these groups harshly, but not using special emotional or dehumanizing words. Maybe there are some things you shouldn’t say even about the KKK - “they are Satanic cockroaches unworthy of life” might cross that line. But this is a motte-and-bailey: most claimed examples of ‘stochastic terrorism’ don’t come close to that bar. Nor does this match what really leads to violence: Luigi Mangione didn’t kill an insurance executive because he heard the word “cockroach” too many times. He killed an insurance executive because he had strong opinions about what insurance executives do wrong, and these opinions didn’t hinge on slight changes in the emotional resonance of the words being used.<br>You’re allowed to criticize policies, but not individuals. Okay, so somebody says that allowing immigration from the Middle East is destroying America, but avoids saying the specific words “and I hate individual Muslims”. Then someone else listens to their message and shoots up a mosque. Or somebody says abortion is murder, but avoids criticizing individual abortion doctors, but someone else listens to them and kills an abortion doctor. How has this made things any better? It totally misses the point of what the phrase “stochastic terrorism” is intended to describe and why it’s bad. Also, I want to criticize individuals! I don’t like...