What is important to note with this Cole person is 'what he believed'. He believed your government was corrupt and how did he come to believe that. Well, we need to learn more about this through what the courts find out, but research has already been done on stochastic terrorism, and, to me, this is what this incident fits most accurately.
"
Stochastic terrorism is an
analytic description used in scholarship and
counterterrorism to describe a
mass-mediated process in which hostile public
rhetoric, repeated and amplified across
communication platforms, elevates the
statistical risk of
ideologically motivated violence by
unknown individuals, even without direct coordination or explicit orders.[sup]
[1][/sup][sup]
[2]" (Wikipedia)
---------------------
Trump spreading election fraud lies, and subsequent investigations proved them all to be lies.
"[/sup]3. Disinformation, conspiracy theories, and perceived victimhoodDonald Trump entered presidential politics promoting the
racist lie that President Obama was born outside of the United States. After he was elected in 2016, large numbers of Republicans embraced the “
QAnon” conspiracy theory, which suggests (among others things) that the Democratic Party is run by a ring of Satan-worshipping pedophiles. When Trump lost the 2020 election, he and his followers
falsely claimed that the election was fraudulent."
"Of course, it’s not just people with right-wing beliefs who are vulnerable to disinformation, and all people become receptive to violence when they feel threatened or powerless. After the attempt to kill Trump, social media platforms were
flooded with conspiracy theories, suggesting, for example, that the assassination was staged by Trump himself to gain sympathy in the wake of his criminal convictions."
"They found that speeches which preceded violent events tended to express more anger, contempt, and disgust (ANCODI)—but not fear, happiness, sadness, or surprise. These negative emotions tended to target specific outgroups—Jews, in the case of Hitler’s speeches."
(Trump's rhetoric "Fight like hell or we won't have a country any more.")
"When it comes to violence, leadership matters. There are many, many studies—starting with
Stanley Milgram’s classic electric-shock experiments—which show that people are much more likely to inflict pain on others when an authority figure tells them to. When leaders engage in violent rhetoric,
so do their followers; when they urge calm, people do calm down. Research has documented that words do have an impact on both beliefs and behaviors."
"Taken together, these studies suggest that our political leadership—everyone from pundits on cable news to the President of the United States—would do well to avoid promoting the political tribalism that leads people to strongly identify with one group and demonize the other. They could also reduce the use of angry, contemptuous, and disgusted rhetoric to refer to political outgroups. And Americans everywhere could learn to rely less on the echo chambers of social media, where moral convergence and affirmation can fuel violence against people and property. Most importantly, we have to be able to stress civility and humanity toward the other side, even when it’s difficult."
What’s Driving Political Violence in America?
