Regardless of the political leanings of Loughner, who is probably psychotic, virtually all of the commentators that incited him were of the right wing - the Palins, Paladinos, Cantors, Mitchells, Limbaughs,O'Reilly's, Bachmanns, Becks, Robertsons, Grahams etc etc. It goes on and on and on. There is nothing comparable to this amount of irresponsible, lockstep and reckless inciting of violence on the left.
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This may provide some answers as to an underlying cause of violence of this type.
Stochastic terrorism is the use of mass communications to stir up random lone wolves to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.
This is what occurs when Bin Laden releases a video that stirs random extremists halfway around the globe to commit a bombing or shooting.
This is also the term for what Beck, O'Reilly, Hannity, and others do. And this is what led directly and predictably to a number of cases of ideologically-motivated murder similar to the Tucson shootings.
At any given time there are hundreds of thousands of Americans with combinations of personality characteristics (such as emotional instability, a paranoid ideology, and a propensity for violence) that put them at risk of going off the deep end and becoming lone wolves. All it takes is the right push, the right nudge at the right time, to dislodge a few of them and send them on their way to fifteen minutes of fame surrounded by dead bodies.
So let's take Beck, Hannity, and O'Reilly. There is no question that their emotional rhetoric appeals to people who are emotionally unstable. And, since their audiences are tracked and analyzed in detail, there is no question that they know
Somebody sold a gun to this guy?
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