2. A lot of the discussion of Trump's authoritarianism has the model of 20th century dictatorships: armed agents of the state rounding up people. And that's happened to immigrants under Trump. But there's also the more modern innovation of stochastic terrorism.
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3. The stochastic terrorism model works particularly well if you're a reality show president governing a country where there are many heavily armed individuals. You can stir up hatred of your foes and know that this is likely to increase the odds they will get hurt.
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4. The beauty of stochastic terrorism is that you have plausible deniability. "Sure, I said somebody should do something about Schiff but I didn't order him beaten up." And it has effect.https://twitter.com/MiamiHerald/status/1225094158492348418 …
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5. Also, stochastic terrorism works because there is a media culture invested in translating Trump's threatening language into something normal.
@Lollardfish illustrates how it is done: https://twitter.com/Lollardfish/status/1220794708261253121 …This Tweet is unavailable.Show this thread
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ALL fascist movements are cult movements.pic.twitter.com/i706dX8MeK
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These people are amateurs, playing with language that destroys countries and spills beyond borders. They think they can control what they are unleashing. They terrify me.
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That's a fair point, although terrorism is when a person or group uses terror to assault political foes. Judging by the harassment that people who are on the receiving end of trump tweets report, it seems fair to say that this is what changed.
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Oh yes. WE'RE the terrorists. https://twitter.com/ShaineScalph/status/1225231414729302018 …
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