Missing the Point

Over at Five Thirty Eight, where myopically examining data is increasingly their brand, Maggie Koerth-Baker concludes that there are no "lone wolf" terrorists, because they are all tied into the white supremacist community.

This misses the point: Random, but statistically predictable, acts of terrorism are actually a part of a deliberate strategy.

The right wing in general, and white supremacists in particular, knows that there will be a baseline level of random violence against their targets as a result of their social structure and rhetoric, and they plan on this.

This has been true since pseudo-random terrorists started fire-bombing abortion clinics in the 1980s.

I am not alone in this, the very first comment on this article use3 the term, "Stochastic Terrorism."

Terror with plausible deniability is a conscious goal.