Let's Talk About Stochastic Terrorism

A new video from Media Matters shows how the right participates in it.

Hey all, Parker here.

Let’s talk about stochastic terrorism.

---

But first, here’s the part of the newsletter where I ask you to consider signing up for the free version if you’re new here and ask existing free subscribers to consider upgrading to the paid version.

---

Last week, Media Matters published a video about conservative influencers’ obsession with violence.

Specifically, the video focuses on the concept of stochastic terrorism and The Daily Wire, which has spent recent years calling for things like the execution of doctors who treat trans teens and celebrating the idea of public executions, generally.

The video is worth watching, and it deals with the technique right-wing groups have been using for decades of trying to justify their belief that it should be illegal to be gay or, say, “transgenderism should be eradicated,” by trying to link being LGBTQ to criminals. See, they’re aware that it’d be too extreme to just outright say that LGBTQ people should be punished simply for existing, so they invent a pretext. In the case of baseless accusations that LGBTQ people are “grooming” children, the point is to paint these adults as pedophiles and, therefore, worthy of punishment. From the video:

The conservative playbook against LGBTQ people. Via Media Matters for America/YouTube

This helps explain why people on the right have been so desperate to associate trans people with mass shootings.

Back in May 2022, I wrote about the right-wing tendency to falsely claim that violent criminals are trans. In that piece, I highlighted the 2015 shooting at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood location. Despite the fact that the shooter, Robert Lewis Dear, had apparently been yelling, “No more baby parts!” on-site, mirroring a Republican-spread conspiracy theory at the time, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) tried to claim that Dear was perhaps a “transgendered leftist activist.” He was not.

The reason I wrote about that at the time was because the right tried to use that same exact line of attack in the immediate aftermath of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Conservative commentators baselessly claimed that the shooter, Salvador Rolando Ramos, was trans. He was not.

Since then, this tactic has been rolled out repeatedly in an effort to get people to believe there is an “epidemic of trans violence,” as Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichik and others on the right have tried to argue.

As Ari Drennen over at Media Matters wrote regarding the most recent attempt to smear trans people as potential mass shooters:

Apparently drawing from police reports, MSNBC reported just after noon Monday that the shooter was transgender, with the chyron adding that the suspect “identified as a woman.” MSNBC again identified the shooter as a “Hispanic transgender woman” in the next hour. Right-wing and anti-trans influencers also picked up the story, and Fox News soon followed, reporting that “the shooter identifies as a woman. … She was born a man.”

However, initial police reports about the shooter’s identity appear to be inaccurate. Police now say while the suspect has used “both male and female names” as part of her criminal history of forgery, she “has been identified this entire time as female.” Local reporting indicates her “antisemitic writings and conflicts with her ex-husband are being investigated as possible motives for the shooting,” and the suspect was able to legally acquire an AR-15 despite previously being placed under an emergency detention order by Houston police. Anti-trans writers hungry for negative press have mocked further updates as an “investigation to determine preferred pronouns of the shooter.”

Fox News altered the story on their website as more reporting emerged, changing their headline and removing language claiming that the suspect had been “born as a man.” On air, Fox News quickly pivoted to suggesting that the suspect instead “identified as both genders” and was “a biological woman who sometimes identified as a man named Jeffrey.” 

This is not the first time that right-wing media have pushed hoaxes around trans people and mass shootings. Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik, who used the Lakewood church shooting to spread fears of a so-called “epidemic of trans violence,” previously accused an innocent and unrelated trans woman of carrying out the deadly mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022. Media Matters has confirmed at least 35 instances where targets of Libs of TikTok posts later received threats or harassment. Daily Wire personality Candace Owens and InfoWars founder Alex Jones also spread the Uvalde hoax, which originated on the messaging board 4chan. Raichik’s false claim about the Uvalde shooter has remained on her timeline on X (formerly Twitter) for over a month.

Transgender people are actually statistically underrepresented among mass shooters. In other words, trans people are less likely than other members of the public to be mass shooters. The goal of creating the idea that there’s some “epidemic” of trans people going around shooting people (by highlighting the few instances where a trans person has been involved and by falsely associating other shootings with trans people) is to give the impression that trans people are uniquely prone to violence and therefore a group that something should be done about.

It’s a sick game, and I’m glad to see Media Matters call it out. I hope others catch on.

What’s the end goal of this? Well, we know the end result can be violence against LGBTQ people.