Dr. Anthony Foushee is at least partially blaming Fox News host Tucker Carlson's comments
about him for the threats that he and his family have been receiving.
And this is another really great opportunity to revisit the concept of stochastic terrorism,
which sadly, shockingly, is quite prevalent during the Trump administration.
Now, you might recall that we learned a few weeks months ago about threats against Dr.
Anthony Foushee, which is crazy. Usually we listen to doctors during pandemics in the
United States. They need security. And the threats have, in fact, gotten so bad that
even Dr. Fouche, his family, including his daughters, are needing security. Now, I talked
about that last week or the week before. Well, Tucker Carlson has been saying anti foushee
things for some time, saying that Dr. Foushee is, quote, an oily politician on an ego trip.
Tucker claimed masks don't do anything. Tucker is against shut downs. Trucker hat Tucker
trucker Tucker has claimed he should be a trucker rather than Fox News host. I think
we'd get actually a lot more value given the importance of trucking. Rather than him ceding
the country with bad information, he could be participating and delivering key supplies.
But no, I meant Tucker, not trucker, claiming Dr. Foushee has been, quote, enjoying himself
during the pandemic and on and on and on. Carlson also claimed that the policy's Dr.
Foushee was recommending were national suicide. It's a very long list. Dr. Foushee was asked
about it. He was interviewed by The Washington Post recently. And Dr. Foushee said, quote,
I'm not concerned about what he Carlson says. I think you could say that when he does that,
meaning talk about Foushee, it triggers some of the crazies in society to start threatening
me, actually threatening, which actually happens. Who would have thought when I was in medical
school doing things to save people's lives, I'd have to be going around with a security
detail? That's really ridiculous. Yeah, it does trigger people. When Tucker Carlson makes
Dr. Anthony Foushee the target of his attacks and the relevant term is one I've used before.
It's stochastic terrorism. People often ask, how do you spell it? That's s t o c h stochastic
terrorism. This type of rhetoric on Fox News can have a real world impact. We we already
see the real world impact in that. Dr. Foushee and his family now need security. But it could
lead to an actual acute incident. If you understand what I'm saying now, of course, of course,
Tucker Carlson wouldn't be legally liable even if it was proven that someone attacked
Foushee and got the idea from watching Tucker Carlson. Why? Well, number one, Tucker isn't
saying go attack Dr. Foushee. But number two, when we say stochastic terrorism, we're talking
about the idea that given a large enough audience, it starts to become mathematically likely
that someone will be moved to action by the things that you say on the show. Right. So
let's take something very benign. If I on the show every day say it's really important
that people vote this election no matter what. If my audience is 10 people, it's not super
likely someone is going to go and vote who otherwise wouldn't have because of me. My
audience is one hundred people. It starts to become more likely I will have influenced
someone to go and to vote who otherwise wouldn't. My audience is a hundred thousand. It's now
mathematically very likely that by suggesting people vote, I will have influenced someone.
So let's apply it to these situations. Imagine that there is a really small chance that Tucker
would be able to get an individual viewer in his audience to go and try to kill Dr.
Foushee. Imagine that the possibility of that is zero point zero zero zero zero one percent
or something like that. If Tucker's audience is ten people, it's extremely unlikely with
such a small percentage that anybody is going to hear Tucker and go and attack Dr. Foushee
when the audience is a hundred or a thousand or a million millions of views on YouTube.
It's still not going to be many people. But the probability that one person goes and tries
to harm Dr. Foushee based on what they heard on Tucker Carlson show, starts to become greater
than one like it, it's likely to actually affect at least one person. And as you can
see, once the audience is big enough, the irresponsible suggestion that I could make
or that Tucker Carlson could make or whatever starts to be likely to have a real world impact.
We saw it with Glenn Beck and the Tides Foundation years ago. Where Glenn Beck was ranting and
raving, I think at the time he was on Fox News about the Tides Foundation and a guy,
an armed guy was actually pulled over, I believe it was on the count California Highway on
his way to attack or bomb or do something to the Tides Foundation. Now, of course, Glenn
Beck was not legally liable, but the guy said, I got the idea that the Tides Foundation needs
to be dealt with from Glenn Beck. Is it easy to say? Well, that's clearly somebody who
who's mentally disturbed. Normal people wouldn't do that. Sure. But the point is, this stuff
really matters. And for everybody who says merely free speech and freedom of the press
and all of that. Yeah, that's right. No one's denying Tucker has the right to say things
about Dr. Foushee. The same way that I have the right to say people should go and vote.
What I'm saying is you have to use your speech responsibly and you have to understand that
when you start throwing violent attention on a doctor trying to deal with the pandemic,
you place a target on that individual. You're throwing gasoline on the fire, quite simply.
And it's not about limiting speech. That's not at all what this is about. It's about
recognizing that we have to use our platforms responsibly. And of course, it's not just
Tucker. Right. I mean, if the country were more educated, if the country less easily
fell for anti science nonsense, Tucker would be yelling into an empty well. But unfortunately,
the American right is a particularly receptive audience for anti science nonsense.