Talking Points Memo reported yesterday on a series of bomb threats delivered to Tufts University. Tufts–which occupies the border region between Somerville and Medford, west and north of Cambridge and Boston, had, it seemed committed the sin of teaching about race and the concept and history of whiteness in the US.
The first threat came last Wednesday, following the Tuft’s Diversity and Inclusion department hosting “Unpacking Whiteness” — part of a series of programs focused on addressing “the experience of those who have racial privilege and who would like to find support in understanding how to practice anti-racism in their daily lives.”
The bomb threat, emailed to the Diversity and Inclusion department, said it was a response to the event.
“Tufts university continues to fuel anti white racism in this country by having bullshit courses like ‘unpack whiteness’ which is anti white propaganda,” the email read. “We are a multiracial group who doesn’t want white people to be treated like shit… We placed several bombs in Tufts university, we don’t want anyone to die, we are just here to send a message.”
This was followed by renewed threats on Thursday, Friday, Monday, Tuesday and yesterday. They seem all to have been hoaxes, though the group escalated this week by adding the Boston office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to their target list. That will, I think, prove to be a notable mistake. Whatever the feds may feel about university DEIJ efforts, they do not take kindly to threats against themselves.
Tufts has moved its finals online, which seems to me to be prudent.
But that’s already a minor win for the terrorists behind these threats. As Adam has written many, many times, the American radical right wants to destroy civic space, the places where we encounter each other, experience things together, talk and learn. That space at Tufts has been narrowed this week.
The only other comment I have is that the GOP is to the people behind this as pre-1933 Nazi members of the Reichstag were to the Brown Shirts: the “polite” wing of a movement explicitly aiming to seize power by any means available to them.
But we knew that.
Happy holidays, I guess…and open thread.
Image: Albert Anker, The School Examination, 1862.
Betty Cracker
You’re right Tom — we did know that, but it’s important to point it out frequently and put it in context as you’ve done here. FL Gov. Ron DeSantis has explicitly outlawed classes like that for the same reason the bomb-threatener cites. I wish we lived in less interesting times!
Qrop Non Sequitur
Boston Childrens’ Hospital received similar threats not long ago for providing gender affirming care.
These moral panics are always justified on the grounds of child safety, dignity, and maintaining some generalized notion of innocence.
How does this further any of that?
Gravenstone
“We don’t want to kill anybody, but are prepared to turn anyone who disagrees with us into a bloody pulp for hurting our feelings”.
Ksmiami
@Gravenstone: Make them pay.
schrodingers_cat
I love how when white people (mostly men) are the suspected perpetrators, terrorist activities get the label stochastic which means random in plain English. When it was Al-Q it was just plain old terrorism.
Dorothy A. Winsor
A friend’s grandson was in the middle of his finals at Tufts when they were cancelled and the students sent home because of the bomb threats. Supposedly they’ll figure out what to do about the unfinished exams later
Lapassionara
“We are a multiracial group who doesn’t want white people to be treated like shit… We placed several bombs in Tufts university, . . ..”
I’ll be interested to see how multiracial the group really is, once they are under arrest.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@schrodingers_cat: Isn’t stochastic something a little beyond random? Like conditions exist to promote the phenomenon and we know it will happen, just not where or when?
(Wh)Right wing terrorism is cultivated here.
Another Scott
It’s kinda hard for me to believe that they haven’t yet made an arrest since these threats have been going on for 8 days. As you say, since the feds have been threatened now, maybe law enforcement action will happen soon.
One would like to think that it’s just one noisy crank, but we can’t think that any more… :-(
I donated to the GoFundMe for the Boston Schools Fund, mentioned in today’s Boston.com story.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Bill Arnold
@schrodingers_cat:
Stochastic terrorism is committed by the propagandists/agitators who incite mobs with the intent that 1 or more mob (or audience) members will randomly commit terrorist acts.
Hard to prove, at least in American courts, particularly when there is a time delay.
The actual acts are simple terrorist acts. The inciters are the ones who are using probabilistic means to cause terrorist acts to be committed.
Hildebrand
@Lapassionara: Probably Irish and German descendants – maybe even someone with a bit of Scots in their long forgotten past. You know, multiracial.
scav
That sort of real life demonstration will no doubt teach everyone at Tufts, in or out of the single course in question, that it’s a) not only a real social phenomena, but b) an on-going and violent expression of power. Brilliant of them to volunteer as lab assistants to drive that point home to a larger audience.
kindness
I’ve been calling the MAGA crowd Brownshirts for a while. Early on I was told I was exaggerating. I don’t hear that so much now days. Imagine that.
Qrop Non Sequitur
Brings me back to my (first) Freshman year, one September 11. Mercifully, I had no good information and all the TVs were out so I had a pleasant day roaming Southie.
We have orcs, trolls, fecal gnomes, and the ghost of Herman Cain…
schrodingers_cat
@Bill Arnold: I know the definition but just noting that when the suspected perps and instigators where Muslim this descriptor was nowhere to be found
But when the instigators are Rs or members of their media ecosystem suddenly we have this qualifier.
schrodingers_cat
@Qrop Non Sequitur: Stochastic is a fancy way of saying random in academic literature. I used to study stochastic spin systems using Monte-Carlo simulations.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@schrodingers_cat: Every time you say “terrorism” but don’t precede it by “Radical Islamist,” a tower falls somewhere in America. /LessonsInRepublicanIncantation
Bill Arnold
@schrodingers_cat:
Many people are confused by the term, agreed. Probably, it should have been mainstreamed as incitement/agitation/recruitment to commit random terrorist acts. Somebody wanted a new term, and similar terms such as stochastic optimization (e.g. simulated annealing) are used in other fields.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@schrodingers_cat: I see. What I posted was how I had it explained to me; here, I believe.
I thought there was a nuance separating the words, but far be it from me to challenge someone who has studied stochastic phenomena.
Nancy
Well said, Tom Levinson.
I’m feeling less than empathic toward these fucking douch nozzles* who want freedom of speech when it comes to threatening innocent people.
How soon will they escalate to actual unimagined violence?
* a useless item and . . . (insert your favorite insult here)
pluky
There is always Wikipedia, especially for math nerds like me!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic
Go to the end for a specific discussion of stochastic terrorism.
Another Scott
OpenThread:
ICYMI, the Senate passed the FY23 omnibus and it’s going to the House.
GovExec:
As always, it’s a compromise budget. It’s much, much better than a full-year CR and that was the only reasonable alternative (another short-term CR would have given the monsters more opportunity to make things much worse).
Cheers,
Scott.
CaseyL
That this social-atomization-by-terrorism is happening at the same time as social-atomization-by-pandemic is awful. But I also think it’s significant, beyond the obvious reasons.
Besides the obvious political forces and effects behind the escalation by terrorist groups, I do wonder at the longer range anthropologic effects. It seems a lot of things are happening around the world to dismantle human shared spaces, the concept of shared society.
Change – basic, socio-evolutionary change – happens slowly and non-obviously. And what’s driving it isn’t always clear, precisely because it’s slow and non-obvious (until it isn’t).
I keep coming back to climate change. Humankind isn’t going to do enough to ameliorate that, and we’re already seeing the effects of a baked-in 2º C rise in global temperature. That’s going to accelerate, and we’re going to see real wars fought over essential resources like food and water… which is to say, over arable land and fresh water.
Even people who refuse to accept that, or refuse to say they do, must know it, deep in their hindbrain. The knowledge may be driving them – unconsciously, subconsciously – to turn away from the concept of community back towards a very insular concept of tribe.
I remember, when first learning about ancient Greece and the intra-city wars that were so frequent, hearing that Greeks at the time believed “your neighbor is your enemy” far more than a stranger being an enemy. The reason, we were told, is that Greece is actually a pretty awful place for agriculture. Too many rocks, mountains, not enough fresh water, wrong kind of soil. It was the people closest to you who were the real threat, because they competed against you directly for those threadbare resources.
We are re-creating that situation on a global scale, and the impact on the global human culture is rarely if ever studied. But this atomization may be part of it.
hervevillechaizelounge
Boston’s having a hell of a week.
[POSSIBLE TRIGGER WARNING]
Personally, I’m obsessed with the insurrectionist gynecologist from Brigham & Women’s.
Film pitch: it’s 2021 and Hillary Clinton is visiting MA when emergency gynecological issues arise—she visits Brigham and Women’s and is randomly assigned an appointment with Dr. Jacqueline Starer.
POV shot of the crazy gyno with her face framed by Hillary’s legs in the stirrups. Dr. Starer robotically winches open the speculum while intoning: “The emails, are they safe? The emails, are they safe? The emails, are they safe?”
Just like Marathon Man, but with extra cervix. Jennifer Lawrence can do a cameo as Ashli Babbitt during the insurrection flashback scene.
Hope this isn’t too spicy for the dinner hour!
Will
I think it will be interesting to see how far down the rabbit hole this goes with classes like this one. They are going to provoke a lot of shit.
There is fear out there and it is growing. For example, I’m a middle aged white man. I’m going bald. My head is a mess because the best thing for me would be to shave my head but I don’t. My Indian wife however is worried what people will think of me if they see me with a shaved head. She’s going out of her way to dive into crazy hair growth ads to try and grow my hair back cause she is so worried.
hervevillechaizelounge
@Lapassionara:
I’m getting some real Jonbenet Small Foreign Faction vibes.
UncleEbeneezer
I swear, some days this shithole country gets on the last of my g-damn nerves.
Narrator: EVERY day!
Qrop Non Sequitur
@hervevillechaizelounge: I thought dinner time was 11. There’s too much to do, how can anyone get it in sooner?
schrodingers_cat
@pluky: Using the mathematical definition of stochastic, no terrorism cannot be called stochastic as it is impossible to describe it using a probably distribution.
Uncertainty and randomness (stochasticity) are two different concepts mathematically speaking.
Sorry for being a pedant. But I find this jargon sloppy.
Qrop Non Sequitur
There’s always rejuvenative jargon surgery. Or kegels.
Chyron HR
“We got both races, Anglo AND Saxon.”
Delk
Fucking snowflakes ❄️ and I do not mean the current weather situation.
UncleEbeneezer
@Chyron HR: Southern AND Baptist!
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Delk: Raining in Boston right now. Warmest day I recall for weeks.
Omnes Omnibus
@pluky: Wait, terms may be used differently in different academic fields? Well, honk my hooter!
Anoniminous
Boston has a history and culture of racism with the police and, almost the same thing, South Boston Irish working class leading the way. Example, Dr Henry Lewis Gates, Jr, distinguished Harvard professor, was arrested for breaking and entering his own house.
One day, maybe, us whites will start to acknowledge the fact the US of A is a deeply racist and bigoted society.
Not holding my breath, tho’
Citizen Alan
@Will: I had either a beard or a goatee for nearly 30 years. I shaved it down to a moustache while I was in Queens because on Reddit, a goatee is considered a tribal marker for MAGAts and I refused to be identified with them. Bad enough I’m fat and Southern.
JMG
The threats to Boston Children’s Hospital have resulted in one arrest so far, a woman from central Mass. She’s in the jailhouse now, facing serious federal charges. I suspect the one-person group calling into Tufts will find a similar fate before too long.
scav
@Omnes Omnibus: Horrors! I hear tell there’s been some inappropriate — if not damning — uses of the incorrect shade of blue as well!
UncleEbeneezer
@Anoniminous: More white people are interested in acknowledging America’s racism and actively doing something about it, than probably any time in our history. The event that Tufts was hosting and the incredible popularity of 1619 Project and books like Ibram X Kendi’s How To Be Aniracist show that. And the Democratic Party (imperfect as it may be) has incorporated numerous anti-racist policies/goals into its’ platform and Biden is happy to sign them into law. Garland’s DOJ has also been doing great work suing aggressively on Voting Rights, instructing prosecutors to end the crack/cocaine sentencing disparities and in general centering Social/Racial Justice during his tenure. California and other states are actively researching realistic plans to give Reparations to Black Americans. All of this together, is precisely what scares the Nazis and is causing them to go to such extreme measures.
ortolan
Keep using the term “stochastic” because it makes them have to weasel out of their terrorism being described as such. There is no reason we should have to defend the asinine wannabe epithet of “woke”. Put the shoe on the other foot with a term they cannot avoid in substance or random unforeseen deed. Look at Christopher Rufo’s (pre-Club Q massacre) attempt to get in front of the label “stochastic terrorism”.
https://christopherrufo.com/the-stochastic-terror-lie/
The Moar You Know
Christ, that was stupid. Cops hate colleges and college people and they would have let this go on forever. Not now. ATF is pretty enthusiastic about what they do and have an earned reputation for shooting the survivors.
mrmoshpotato
@Omnes Omnibus:
We want nothing to do with your manboobs.
mrmoshpotato
@Delk: 6°
Omnes Omnibus
@mrmoshpotato: It was allegorical.
mrmoshpotato
@Omnes Omnibus: How do you have alligators up in Wisconsin at this time of year?
sab
@Omnes Omnibus: I remember telling my art historian sister that some word was a “term of art” and she burst out laughing. ” You lawyers have a jargon word for jargon words?”
HumboldtBlue
This is absolutely hilarious. A news station in Waterloo, Iowa sent a sportscaster out to cover the impending winter storm. Disgruntled is an apt word.
Torrey
@Hildebrand:
So apparently, there’s a MacDonald AND a Campbell in the group?
Geminid
@ortolan: Calling these acts “domestic terrorism” would accomplish the same end, and regular people would understand what the hell is being talked about. I think of “stochastic terrorism” as a technical term that will not make it into general usage no matter how hard people try.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@HumboldtBlue: That’s where I lived in Iowa! That poor guy
Tom Levenson
@Geminid: I’m happy with either term, and use both.
I used stochastic here because a) I like the word; and b) I wanted to emphasize that the actual terrorist instigators are the GOP. They create the circumstances in which some random guy feels empowered or obliged to do this kind of shit and worse. To me “stochastic” requires we look not just at the act itself but who’s also to blame, beyond the scumbag on the phone.
ortolan
@Geminid: I get that. I do. But “stochastic” puts them in the bind of having to explain themselves. “Domestic” is a familiar gimme and will be ignored just like all the other atrocities they render temporary thoughts and prayers for whilst stoking the stochastic nature of their intentional rhetoric.
HumboldtBlue
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
At least he made the best of it.
Steeplejack
@Citizen Alan:
Similar here. I shaved my goatee off (kept the mustache) some years ago because I feared that I had, or would be perceived to have, resting MAGA face by clerks, cashiers and service people. But maybe they were just wary of non-political “crabby geezer” syndrome.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@ortolan: I’m inclined to agree. I had become accustomed to domestic early on to describe this terror.
WaterGirl
@HumboldtBlue: That sports guy is awesome.
different-church-lady
@Anoniminous: Okay, the funny thing about the Gates incident is that it wasn’t Boston: it was the People’s Republic if Cambridge, supposedly the most woke place in the universe.
Geminid
@Geminid: Speaking of domestic terrorism, I looked up “Moore County power grid attacks” to see if anything was shaking in that case but there was no fresh news. It will be three weeks this Saturday night since an unknown person or persons shot up one electrical substation in Moore County, North Carolina and then shot up a second one twenty minutes later. 48,000 people lost power, some for five days.
In the aftermath of these attacks a Homeland Security Department bulletin was released to media site NewsNation. It described six similar attacks in the Pacific Northwest. E&E News has a good article that covers these attacks and two other ones in North and South Carolina.
The County Sheriff’s Department is on the case Moore County case, but the FBI and state Bureau of Investigation are likely taking the lead. A $75,000 reward for information leading to an arrest is also on the table.
mrmoshpotato
@HumboldtBlue: I feel bad for the guy.
Bill Arnold
@Geminid:
The acts are domestic terrorism. They are not “stochastic terrorism” and those who call them that are incorrect.
The deliberate incitement of a large population to encourage them towards such domestic terrorism acts is “stochastic terrorism”, if they are targeting a large population of susceptible minds. Also, it is incitement of acts of domestic terrorism.
Rufo is a murderer. Hard and perhaps impossible to prove in a USA courtroom, but he is, IMO, guilty of premeditated murder.
Bill Arnold
@Geminid:
They should consider doubling the reward every two weeks.
UncleEbeneezer
@different-church-lady: The other “funny” thing (sad, actually) is that Gates himself also probably opposes workshops like the one that Tufts was planning. Gates was on the Marc Maron podcast recently and disclosed that:
• He thinks Cancel Culture™ is out of control and just as much a threat to free speech as Book Bans
• He believes it’s unfair to label Trump voters as “racist” and we should stay friends with them, as he does
• He actively avoided heavily Black circles and classes in college because he didn’t want to become “an ideological bully.”
I’m sure he would condemn these terrorist threats, but he’s nowhere near as supportive of anti-racism work as I had assumed.
Geminid
@Geminid:
@Tom Levenson: You and others might be interested in a couple resources I found while researching the Moore County attacks. They are a blog and a Twitter account maintained by local public education advocate Cheryl Christy-Bowman.
Ms. Christy-Bowman has been reporting on local politics as a citizen journalist for several years, and she started her blog moorevoices.net in summer, 2018. She’s not reporting on terrorism per se but rather the radicalization of the local Republican party and its impact on public education and civic life. She believes this hurtful dynamic is being repeated in rural counties around the nation and I think she is right.
The recent substation attacks prompted Christy-Bowman to start a five part series tracing political developments in her county over the last 8 years, up to and including the power grid attacks and their aftermath. She dropped Part One last week. It covers the period 2014-2018 with a terse, efficient timeline.
I think this series will be a valuable work of citizen journalism. I found it through the writer’s Twitter account, @moorevoicesnc.
mrmoshpotato
@Geminid: Whatever happened with the investigation into that van that exploded on an empty city street a few years ago? I don’t remember what city it was, but it was snowing and caught on several security cameras.
ETA – Nashville, Christmas 2020
Geminid
@Bill Arnold: One wild card in this affair was the discovery of a deceased person in a powerless house in the community of Southern Pines, four days after the attacks. TV station WRAL (Raleigh) reported that while a federal statute makes an attacker who causes more than a certain amount of damage subject to up to 20 years in prison, an attacker who causes someone’s death can face life in prison.
The autopsy report has not yet been released, but if the death is attributed to the power outage- and a law proffesor explained to WRAL that there is a fairly broad definition here- the pressure on anyone who knows who the perpetrator is will intensify. I think there is also a fairly broad definition for being an accessory after the fact, and the state might bring a murder charge.
Geminid
@mrmoshpotato: I think that turned out to have been a spectacular suicide, by what appeared to me to be a very depressed man.
phdesmond
@Bill Arnold:
@Geminid:
We could call it “stoked terrorism” — sort of an echo of “woke.”
Jay
@Will:I have been close cropped with a goatee since the early 90’s .
Only had a few instance’s, despite also dressing to match, baseball cap, no logo, Carharts,nothing a smile and a greeting couldn’t reassure.
evodevo
@different-church-lady: Yeah…I never could understand how it happened…in the older academic residential neighborhoods we have here in Lexington, KY everybody knows everyone else, and I couldn’t understand why the neighbors weren’t helping out, unless Gates is an asshole in real life…