The Power of Words

Let me present you with a hypothetical. Senator Robert Kelly holds a campaign rally. During the rally he states that the greatest threat to the United States is mutants. He goes on about how they are ruining America and cheating hard working people out of their jobs. He derides them as untrustworthy and criminal in nature. A week later a man from that rally kills a mutant that he believes took his job. When asked about it, Senator Kelly condemns the man and any form of violence.

He then goes on the campaign trail, still making caustic remarks about mutants. He accuses them of being rapists and murders. A month later a man opens fire at a mutant support group. Senator Kelly declares on TV that there is no room for violence. At his next rally he introduces the Mutant Registration Act to protect Americans from criminal mutants.

Any outside observer would be pretty skeptical of the senator’s condemnations of violence. There is a pretty clear line from what he is saying to what happens. Sure, he never tells anyone to go kill or terrorize mutants, but that is definitely the message they are taking away from it. Even the ones who are not “extremists” still foster an atmosphere of fear and hostility towards the mutant community.

The term for this is stochastic terrorism. Stochastic: having a random probability distribution or pattern that may be analyzed statistically but may not be predicted precisely. In other words, something where you can predict the outcome, just not exactly when it will happen. These terrorist use words to get other people to set the bombs, either intentionally or with reckless indifference. They use derogatory language, dog whistles, conspiracy theories, and other attacks to stir up anger, while maintaining plausible deniability.

The problem with this hypothetical…it isn’t hypothetical. Just replace mutants with immigrants, trans, black, etc..

“The Mexican government is forcing their most unwanted people into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc.”

“In Springfield, they are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there."

“And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now. Then you had 425,000 people come into our country that shouldn’t be here that are criminals.”

"They're poisoning the blood of our country."

-Donald Trump


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