this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
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"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?!" (media.piefed.social)
submitted 4 months ago by PugJesus@piefed.social to c/historymemes@piefed.social
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[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 44 points 4 months ago (1 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_turbulent_priest

"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" (spoken aloudⓘ; also expressed as "troublesome priest" or "meddlesome priest") is a quote attributed to Henry II of England preceding the death of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170. While the quote was not expressed as an order, it prompted four knights to travel from Normandy to Canterbury, where they killed Becket due to an ongoing dispute between crown and church. The phrase is commonly used in modern-day contexts to express that a ruler's wish may be interpreted as a command by their subordinates. It is also commonly understood as shorthand for any rhetorical device allowing leaders to covertly order or exhort violence among their followers, while still being able to claim plausible deniability for political, legal, or other reasons.

[–] fonix232@fedia.io 21 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Also potentially the first documented case of (quasi? proto?) stochastic terrorism.

[–] gnutrino@programming.dev 16 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I dunno, I think a key part of stochastic terrorism is that the victim(s) are somewhat random too. You just rile up a bunch of hatred against a group and feign ignorance when members of that group start dying. Whereas, I don't think anyone would argue that Henry wasn't referring to Thomas Becket here, it was just a case of needlessly ambiguous terms being used.

[–] fonix232@fedia.io 9 points 4 months ago

Is the target's randomness actually part of stochastic terrorism as a definition?

I think it would be the other way around - that the event/terrorist itself is random, and only statistically predictable, without there being a call for it.

For example, the whole Paul Pelosi attack was an instance of stochastic terrorism - right wing pundits have been painting a target on her back for years, one of their followers decided to act on those veiled calls to violence, and the only reason why Nancy wasn't hurt was because she wasn't home. The culprit even admitted that he wanted to torture her and that attacking the husband was just collateral damage.

[–] artifex@piefed.social 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's not stochastic if you can predict the outcome (which, depending on what you think about Henry II, he likely did).

[–] fonix232@fedia.io 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You've got the definition wrong.

Stochastic terrorism is when the attack outcome is predictable statistically, but not individually. In this case, the sentence would've resulted in the murder of the archbishop, but you couldn't pinpoint who and when would commit it.

[–] artifex@piefed.social 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Ah, my mistake. I thought it meant that the victims were not individually predictable, like "won't someone rid me of these meddling Anglicans" and then a bunch of random Anglicans get killed, but as you suggest, Wikipedia says " Stochastic terrorism...describe[s] 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. "

[–] fonix232@fedia.io 2 points 4 months ago

I mean that interpretation isn't inherently wrong, and in today's views makes sense.

And the term doesn't apply directly to this case (hence my "(quasi? proto?)" remarks), but has enough similarities to be related more than just tangentially.

[–] Anbalsilfer@lemmy.ml 8 points 4 months ago

TFW you just unintentionally invented stochastic murder

[–] ohulancutash@feddit.uk 3 points 4 months ago

Government has never been this efficient since.