stochastic terrorism
noun
- the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted:
Holding people hostage on a mass scale is only terrorism if it was terrifying people, which this isn’t, because he’s not holding people hostage - he’s threatening their employment and financial security. This is a dick move that makes people unhappy and makes them scared about their futures, but that’s a qualitatively different kind of fear from the kind of terror actual terrorism inspires.
I will happily agree that Trump is engaging in extortion and that he’s deliberately holding these people’s wages hostage in order to do that, but even in my cheerful willingness to characterize his assholery as not being “just politics like usual” I’m not going to play along with the notion that this is anything even close to terrorism.