A provocation succeeds only when its target responds with aggression. [causal]
But that is precisely what he wanted. His performance would only be successful if it prompted the aggression and anger he conspired to incite from me. The very aggression and anger he conflated with Islam, which, in his mind, would conjure up the threat of violence on that stage, for everybody in the audience to behold.
Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamopho…, loc. 373