According to a new poll by the Washington Post and ABC News, about 88% of US adults from across the political spectrum are concerned about political violence around the midterm elections. Of the 1,005 people surveyed, 63 percent said they were very concerned about politically motivated violence — not surprising given the rise in public anti-Semitic speech, a failed plot to attack synagogues in New Jersey and a physical attack to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, last week. Pelosi’s alleged assailant apparently wrote hundreds of blog posts with far-right messages and memes containing conspiracy theories about Jews, blacks and Democrats, the Post reported last week. Threats against New Jersey synagogues after celebrities Kanye West (now known as Ye) and basketball player Kyrie Irving espouse anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and hate speech have added to a general atmosphere of fear and concern. Although incidents of direct, specific violence are rare, the risk appears to be increasing. But another critical element creating an environment of fear and paranoia is the slanted, veiled threats or condonation of violence made by public figures, including former President Donald Trump, against their opponents. Thoughtful terror — the idea that even if people in power don’t specifically call their followers to violence, entertaining it as a legitimate tactic or demonizing a political enemy on a platform capable of reaching millions of people, one of those millions will be inspired by violent action — provides a framework for understanding the current moment. But it is impossible to know who will commit this violent act, where and how they will strike, or even who or what the target might be. To explain the concept of reflective horror, Vox spoke to Kurt Braddock, an assistant professor at American University’s school of communication. Braddock’s research focuses on how communication techniques influence social behavior, particularly in relation to violence. His book, Weaponized Words: The Strategic Role of Persuasion in Violent Radicalization and Counter-Radicalization, explores the methods of communication that contribute to radicalization, as well as techniques to combat radicalization and counter-terrorism. Our conversation below has been edited for length and clarity.
Helen Ioannis:
Can you define political violence?
Kurt Braddock:
Political violence is a broad category — researchers define it as any violence that is politically motivated, but does not include things like large-scale warfare. Often, when we talk about political violence, we use it as a blanket term, usually meaning terrorism — violence against non-combatants, with the purpose of furthering a political goal or an ideological goal. This could be something religious, it could be something purely political, it could be something related to a conspiracy theory, but usually we’re talking about violence or the threat of violence against non-combatants to achieve some kind of ideological goal.
Helen Ioannis:
Is contemplative horror a uniquely American phenomenon?
Kurt Braddock:
Thoughtful terrorism is not uniquely American. There have been cases abroad where similar situations have occurred. In one example, Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch shooter, appears to have been motivated (in part) by fringe media figures who espoused ideas consistent with the ‘Great Replacement’.
Helen Ioannis:
Part of this phenomenon is the atmosphere of violence — the feeling that we don’t know what might happen at any given moment. What is the theory behind contemplative horror, why is it effective, and why does it need its own definition?
Kurt Braddock:
Thoughtful terrorism, or thoughtful horror, is a unique kind of phenomenon that we’ve only really seen emerge in recent years. Stochastic is a statistics-related term intended to define processes that, individually, are completely impossible to predict when and where something will happen. The example I always give is that if you’re sitting on your front porch and you see dark storm clouds rolling into your neighborhood, you can be pretty sure that lightning is going to strike sometime in the next half hour. but you can never really predict when and where that will happen. Thoughtful terrorism is the same kind of idea, whereby a person you define as a thoughtful terrorist makes statements that seem to implicitly support the use of violence without actually directing it. It is the kind of rhetoric that justifies or supports the use of violence without directing it. The speaker acquires this level of plausible deniability, where if someone makes an attack, then he can say, “Well, I never led him to do anything.” The thoughtful element is related to the use of a mass mediating channel to convey these kinds of messages. Terrorism is a very low base rate phenomenon — typically a person’s chance of engaging in terrorism is a fraction of one percent. But when you reach millions and millions of people, you start approaching the absolute possibility that at least one person will interpret what that person said as a call for violence. We get people to act on behalf of some of these ideas, although they are not directly motivated by actual legal standards for incitement, they are motivated by language. There have been several instances where people have mentioned some of the statements that have been made by people like former President Donald Trump. It is important to note that speculative terrorism, this indirect incitement, is not illegal. It is protected by the First Amendment because the legal bar for inciting violence is so high. There is a case, Brandenburg v. Ohio, where the Supreme Court held that for something to be incitement, there must be direction and the incident must occur immediately after the direction. And thoughtful terrorism achieves neither. So even though the language doesn’t meet the legal threshold for incitement, it still incites people to actually engage in violence.
Helen Ioannis:
To what extent does misinformation play a role, apart from the big platform?
Kurt Braddock:
I think most of what we call thoughtful terrorism has been started or fueled by deliberately disseminated misinformation – that demonizes others, that marks other people, usually political opponents, as mortal threats. And if you look at most models of violent radicalization or radicalization in terrorism, one of the steps in those processes usually involves perceiving the intended target as an immediate mortal threat to a person’s survival. So the kinds of disinformation that are peddled about specific targets, such as those threats to the United States, electoral processes, political parties, by spinning them as death threats, the person exposed to the message is much more likely to perceive that person as a threat and worthy of violence against them.
Helen Ioannis:
This is an environment that also allows threats against election workers and others, where people pick up the phone or go on their Twitter account and make vile, disturbing threats and disrupt people’s lives. So how does this action play into thoughtful horror?
Kurt Braddock:
The definitions of mobilized terrorism, this kinetic terrorism, do not only include the performance of violence — it is also the threat of violence against certain targets for political reasons. Thus, when a person has political enemies, whom he pegs as demons and as viable targets of aggression, this will instill fear in those populations. So if we look at the standard definitions for terrorism, we can consider it almost a form of terrorism. Now, the part that people have a hard time reconciling, and I think rightfully so because I think the First Amendment is sacred, is that language is actually protected. But just because language is protected by the First Amendment doesn’t mean it doesn’t have negative effects and doesn’t cause real harm to people. It is important not to confuse something being legal with not being harmful.
Helen Ioannis:
This phenomenon has had, I think, a demonstrably chilling effect on our political environment.
Kurt Braddock:
I think a lot of times, that’s the goal – that by inciting people, even indirectly, against the kinds of ideas that thoughtful terrorists see as divergent from their own, they’re trying to keep people quiet, because if they talk too much, then the person who has the platform of millions and millions of people has only to say some indirect word or whistle some dog, and then he will have people at his doorstep.
Helen Ioannis:
Are there effective interventions or is this the way the world is now?
Kurt Braddock:
That’s the way the world is, but I think we have the tools to deal with it. Something I’ve studied, even outside the realm of speculative terrorism, is something called behavioral inoculation — giving people information about a persuasive effort they’re about to face. So in the case of thoughtful terrorism, what I might do is go to somebody and say, “Listen, I know you’re not violent, I know you don’t intend to be violent. But there are these actors out there who are going to make certain statements that will justify violence against others and they’re trying to make you think that you might be involved in violence.” Then provide the target with different…
