By Lawrence Doe
The first seven years of my life were spent living in the underfunded, unfinished basement belonging to my parents with six children. There was not enough food and no books in the house. That changed when Dad got a better job, providing us with a modest three-bed room, one bath home and resources for enough food and to accumulate books. The first books were old ones we collected from my mother’s farmstead. She shopped for groceries at a store offering an encyclopedia subscription, which added a new volume each week. They were full of pictures that caught my attention. When the entire set was complete, Mom started a dictionary in the same installment system. That finished dictionary was the size of an eight-inch-thick notebook. Reading it was how I became interest ed in the origins of language. Yes, that was unusual for an elementary school child. By middle school, I was asking questions. Whenever my parents told me I was “too young to understand” the answer to my inquiry, that dictionary was my go-to source. I would try sounding out the word until I got the spelling right. I loved that book!
As a young man, it was poet John Ciardi doing a five-minute National Public Radio commentary on word origins that taught me the word and discipline of “etymology”. Etymology comes from the Greek word “etymon,” meaning “the literal meaning of a word according to its origins.” Etymon comes from the Greek etymos meaning “true,” the true meaning of a word. Remember this “true” part as I write about the following words and concepts that were new to me.
Malignant narcissist is a mouthful of “What?”. Narcissism is based on the Greek mythological character Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection. He forsook all others and eventually died of unrequited love. Extreme and damaging self-love has been studied for over a hundred years. Identifiable characteristics include a sense of entitlement, grandiosity, lack of empathy, need for admiration, hypersensitivity to criticism, arrogance, and manipulation. Extreme cases are diagnosed as Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
The word malignant comes from the Latin malignus, a combination of mal- (meaning “badly” or “evil”) and -gnus (meaning “born”). Malignus’ literal translation means “evil by nature”. Later forms of the word translated into “acting from mal ice” and “deep desire to do harm”. The malignant component added to narcissism results in these characteristics: disregard for the rights of others, aggression and violence, lack of remorse, lying, breaking laws, chronic irresponsibility and impulsiveness, reckless behavior, and revenge. Chaos, trauma, and death result when the characteristics of these two words, malignant and narcissist, are combined in one person, especially if they have pow er beyond their immediate circle.
Another mouthful of sounds is “stochastic terrorism”. The term is used by counter-terrorism officials and scholars to define a little-studied but increasing threat to public safety. The word terrorism is widely used these days, evoking policy development, action, and fear. Terrorism comes from the Latin verb “terrere,” meaning “to frighten”. But the word terror comes directly from the Latin “terror” meaning “great fear” or “dread”. We are experiencing these same effects produced in the modern world, just as in the ancient times that originated these words. However, tagging the word “stochastic” to terrorism is a very new word-usage. Stochastic is defined as randomly determined and involving chance or probability.
The Max Planck Institute (for the Study of Crime, Security, and Law) published a report entitled “Philosophical and Public Security Law Implications of ‘Stochastic Terrorism’.” It defines this kind of terrorism as “the use of mass media to provoke random acts of ideologically motivated violence that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable”. Additionally, “Such speech is plausibly related to violent outcomes, and yet falls outside direct forms of incitement”. This aspect of stochastic terrorism leads to what the legal system calls “plausible deniability,” making prosecution of the speaker very difficult. The speech is typically incendiary language directed at groups and individuals hated by the speaker, who leverages a broad reach to provoke a unique type of lone-actor violence.
The broad reach can take the form of celebrities and politicians with constant news coverage of their actions and speech. The internet and social media greatly increase the number of people influenced by individuals espousing hatred and violence. The sheer number of in cited people increases the probability that an individual or small group will hear the call to violent action.
There are many examples of stochastic terrorism in recent times. The multiple 2011 attacks in Nor way by a single professed fascist and the Christchurch, New Zealand. mosque attack in 2019 were defined in stochastic terms. The plot to kid nap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer (2020) and the Jan. 6 US Capitol attack were well covered by news media and defined by experts as stochastic in origin. The Minnesota assassination of Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, as well as the serious wounding of Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette in their homes by a lone gunman in 2025, are painful and frightening examples of this new threat to our security.
These terms are used in new ways to reflect our language, trying to identify evolving violent events in these uncertain times. I find it in formative to put words with their true meaning (etymos) to what is happening in our world. At 75, I am way past “too young to understand”. When I read about malignant narcissism, I finally understood the dynamics of a past relationship. When I read about stochastic terrorism, I realized the incomplete explanations of mental illness and lone wolf actors only add to the plausible deniability, shielding the root cause of emerging violent threats to our civil society.
“Knowledge is power” is a quote often attributed to Frances Bacon in 1597. More recent thought adds “action” to the concept. Knowledge leading to action is power. Mark Twain said, “The mere knowledge of a fact is pale; but when you come to realize your fact, it takes on col or.” Of the eligible voters in our last presidential election, approximately 32% voted for the current president, 31% against, and 36% didn’t vote at all. The 36% that cast no vote seems like a “pale” fact of our democratic constitutional responsibility to vote. “Realizing” the true facts of malignant narcissism, arming stochastic terrorism should add some color to our next elections.
