As context, Raichik does not live in Oklahoma and has no background in education, so the Oklahoma superintendent's solicitation of her opinions about what books belong in Oklahoma school libraries should itself raise an eyebrow.
Having noted that, I'll make a more focused response to a couple sentences you wrote. You wrote that Raichik had “done some advising on what she regarded as age-appropriate material for the school’s libraries. This seems to have prompted Vishal Singh [to] look for media narratives that could be used to situate her as a ‘terrorist’.” I'd argue against this connection. Raichik's involvement with Oklahoma schools (regardless of her qualifications to do so) are not why she's been accused of stochastic terrorism.
Additionally, you point to Vishal Singh's Feb 19 Daily Kos story, followed by a discourse emerging from an "LGBT wind tunnel," then Singh's March 14 tweet, suggesting that everyone's criticism of Raichik was plucked very recently out of thin air — but the actual ongoing allegations against Raichik and her followers are omitted from your narrative here.
On February 7, NBC said they'd found "33 instances, starting in November 2020, when people or institutions singled out by Libs of TikTok [Chaya Raichik] later reported bomb threats or other violent intimidation" against "schools, libraries, hospitals, small businesses and elected officials...Twenty-one of the 33 threats were bomb threats, which most commonly targeted schools and were made via email."
In other words, Chaya Raichik's closed-door conversations with school administrators are not what's being referred to as stochastic terrorism. After all, the Religious Right has fretted about school libraries for decades, and they are not all labeled terrorists; there's more going on with Raichik.
Rather, here is the concern about Raichik specifically: She publicly tweets about a school or hospital, and then her followers send bomb threats to that institution. As this has happened 33 times over three years, if she did not intend these consequences, she would just—stop tweeting. But as she continues to make inflammatory public statements, knowing that violent threats against her chosen targets are a likely consequence, we can all feel confident that her behavior is intentional. At the very least, she does not care if her followers send violent threats to institutions she's named. That's what people have described as stochastic terrorism.
Nex Benedict was still alive on Feb 7 when the NBC story was published, which explains why Benedict's death in Owasso, Oklahoma is not mentioned in the article. (Benedict was assaulted later that day and died the next day.) People discussing Nex Benedict's death are observing that Raichik was already linked to Oklahoma schools and had previously called out the Owasso district specifically. Essentially—to continue with the framework that NBC used—Benedict's death was a 34th incident where Raichik was an anti-LGBTQ influence.
For more context, in a Dec 27, 2022 interview, Raichik plainly stated: "the LGBTQ community has become this cult...it doesn’t make any sense. And I think, I think they’re just— I think they’re evil....I think sometimes, like, the simplest answer is: They’re just evil. They’re bad people. They’re just evil people, and they want to— And they want to groom kids. They’re recruiting."
https://news.yahoo.com/libs-tiktoks-chaya-raichik-spews-180500208.html
Every human being may receive some benefit of the doubt, but in varying degrees. Not everyone behaves innocently and therefore not everyone should be treated with all the innocence of a newborn baby. Some people are professional bullies, and we have to be smart and neither enable nor tolerate their bullying behavior. Raichik openly refers to all LGBTQ people as an evil cult, and she persists in behavior that produces violence. She's a ringleader, and she, of all people, doesn't merit much benefit of our doubt.
