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ABSTRACT
This article contributes to the growing body of knowledge on lone-actor terrorism with the incorporation of closed-source data. The analyses presented investigate the antecedent behaviors of U.K.-based lone-actor terrorists leading up to their planning or conducting a terrorist event. The results suggest that prior to their attack or arrest the vast majority of lone-actor terrorists each demonstrated elements concerning (a) their grievance, (b) an escalation in their intent to act, (c) gaining capability—both psychologically and technically and (d) attack planning. The results also disaggregate our understanding of lone-actor terrorists in two ways. First, we compare the behaviors of the jihadist actors to those of the extreme-right. Second, we visualize Borum’s (2012) continuums of loneness, direction, and motivation. Collectively the results provide insight into the threat assessment and management of potential lone actors.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Bart Schuurman, “Research on Terrorism, 2007–2016: A Review of Data, Methods, and Authorship,” Terrorism and Political Violence (2018): 1–16.
2 For a full literature review on the topic: see N. Bouhana, S. Malthaner, B. Schuurman, L. Lindekilde, A. Thornton, and Gill, P. “Lone-Actor Terrorism: Radicalisation, Attack Planning and Execution,” in The Routledge Handbook of Terrorism and Counterterrorism, edited by A. Silke (London: Routledge, 2018), 138–150.
3 Lars Erik Berntzen, and Sveinung Sandberg, “The Collective Nature of Lone Wolf Terrorism: Anders Behring Breivik and the Anti-Islamic Social Movement,” Terrorism and Political Violence 26, no. 5 (2014): 759–779; Clark McCauley and Sophia Moskalenko, “Toward a Profile of Lone Wolf Terrorists: What Moves an Individual From Radical Opinion to Radical Action,” Terrorism and Political Violence 26, no. 1 (2014): 69–85.
4 Paul Gill and Emily Corner, “Lone‐Actor Terrorist Target Choice,” Behavioral Sciences & The Law 34, no. 5 (2016): 693–705; Paul Gill, Emily Corner, Maura Conway, Amy Thornton, Mia Bloom, and John Horgan, “Terrorist Use of the Internet by the Numbers: Quantifying Behaviors, Patterns, and Processes,” Criminology & Public Policy 16, no. 1 (2017): 99–117; Gary A. Ackerman and Lauren E. Pinson, “An Army of One: Assessing CBRN Pursuit and Use by Lone Wolves and Autonomous Cells,” Terrorism and Political Violence 26, no. 1 (2014), 226–245; Jeffrey D. Simon, Lone Wolf Terrorism: Understanding the Growing Threat (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2013); Clare Ellis, Raffaello Pantucci, Jeanine de Roy van Zuijdewijn, Edwin Bakker, Benoît Gomis, Simon Palombi, and Melanie Smith, Lone-actor Terrorism, Final Report (London, UK: Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, 2016).
5 Paul Gill, James Silver, John Horgan, and Emily Corner, “Shooting Alone: The Pre‐Attack Experiences and Behaviors of US Solo Mass Murderers,” Journal of Forensic Sciences 62, no. 3 (2017): 710–714; Edwin Bakker and Beatrice De Graaf, “Preventing Lone Wolf Terrorism: Some CT Approaches Addressed,” Perspectives on Terrorism 5, no. 5/6 (2011): 43–50; Mark S. Hamm and Ramón Spaaij, Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2017).
6 Ramon Spaaij, Understanding Lone Wolf Terrorism: Global Patterns, Motivations and Prevention (Springer Science & Business Media, 2011); Paul Gill, John Horgan, and Paige Deckert, “Bombing Alone: Tracing the Motivations and Antecedent Behaviors of Lone‐Actor Terrorists,” Journal of Forensic Sciences 59, no. 2 (2014): 425–435; Paul Gill, Lone-Actor Terrorists: A Behavioural Analysis (Routledge, 2015).
7 Bart Schuurman, Edwin Bakker, Paul Gill, and Noémie Bouhana, “Lone Actor Terrorist Attack Planning and Preparation: A Data‐Driven Analysis,” Journal of Forensic Sciences 63, no. 4 (2018): 1191–1200 ; Simon Perry, Badi Hasisi, and Gali Perry, “Who is the Lone Terrorist? A Study of Vehicle-Borne Attackers in Israel and the West Bank,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 41, no. 11 (2018): 899–913.
8 Emily Corner, and Paul Gill, “A False Dichotomy? Mental Illness and Lone-Actor Terrorism,” Law and Human Behavior 39, no. 1 (2015): 23; Emily Corner, Paul Gill, and Oliver Mason, “Mental Health Disorders and the Terrorist: A Research Note Probing Selection Effects and Disorder Prevalence,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 39, no. 6 (2016): 560–568.
9 Nils Böckler, Jens Hoffmann, and Andreas Zick, “The Frankfurt Airport Attack: A Case Study on the Radicalization of a Lone-Actor Terrorist,” Journal of Threat Assessment and Management 2, no. 3–4 (2015): 153; N. Böckler, J. Hoffmann, and J. R. Meloy, “‘Jihad Against the Enemies of Allah’: The Berlin Christmas Market Attack from a Threat Assessment Perspective,” Violence and Gender, 4, no. 3 (2017): 73–80; Å. Erlandsson and J. Reid Meloy, “The Swedish School Attack in Trollhättan,” Journal of Forensic Sciences 63, no. 6 (2018): 1917–1927.
10 Marc Sageman, “The Stagnation in Terrorism Research,” Terrorism and Political Violence 26, no. 4 (2014): 565–580. Pp570.
11 Gill et al., “Bombing Alone.”
12 Randy Borum, Robert Fein, and Bryan Vossekuil, “A Dimensional Approach to Analyzing Lone Offender Terrorism,” Aggression and Violent Behavior 17, no. 5 (2012): 389–396.
13 Berntzen and Sandberg, “The Collective Nature of Lone Wolf Terrorism”; Böckler et al., “The Frankfurt Airport Attack”; Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, “Lone Wolf Islamic Terrorism: Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad (Carlos Bledsoe) Case Study,” Terrorism and Political Violence 26, no. 1 (2014): 110–128; McCauley and Moskalenko, “Toward a Profile of Lone Wolf Terrorists”; Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing (New York, NY: BookBaby, 2015); Raffaello Pantucci, “A Typology of Lone Wolves: Preliminary Analysis of Lone Islamist Terrorists” (London, UK: International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, 2011): 19–22; J. Reid Meloy, Elmar Habermeyer, and Angela Guldimann, “The Warning Behaviors of Anders Breivik,” Journal of Threat Assessment and Management 2, no. 3–4 (2015): 164; J. Van Buuren and B. De Graaf, “Hatred of the System: Menacing Loners and Autonomous Cells in the Netherlands,” Terrorism and Political Violence 26, no. 1 (2014): 156–184; Chris Waits and Dave Shors, Unabomber: The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski-His 25 Years in Montana (New York, NY: Farcountry Press, 2014); David Willman, The Mirage Man: Bruce Ivins, the Anthrax Attacks, and America’s Rush to War (New York, NY: Bantam, 2011); J. Reid Meloy and Jacqueline Genzman, “The Clinical Threat Assessment of the Lone-Actor Terrorist,” Psychiatric Clinics 39, no. 4 (2016): 649–662; J. Reid Meloy, and Jeffrey W. Pollard. “Lone‐Actor Terrorism and Impulsivity.” Journal of Forensic Sciences 62, no. 6 (2017): 1643–1646; Matthew Feldman, “Terrorist ‘Radicalising Networks’: A Qualitative Case Study on Radical Right Lone-Wolf Terrorism,” In Kristian Steiner, Andreas Önnerfors, Expressions of Radicalization, pp. 39–60. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2018; Lasse Lindekilde, Francis O’Connor, and Bart Schuurman, “Radicalization Patterns and Modes of Attack Planning and Preparation Among Lone-Actor Terrorists: An Exploratory Analysis,” Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression 11, no. 2 (2019): 113–133; Lasse Lindekilde, Stefan Malthaner, and Francis O’Connor, “Peripheral and Embedded: Relational Patterns of Lone-Actor Terrorist Radicalization,” Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict 12, no. 1 (2019): 20–41; David C. Hofmann, “How “Alone” are Lone-Actors? Exploring the Ideological, Signaling, and Support Networks of Lone-Actor Terrorists,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (2018): 1–22; Steve Hewitt, “‘Happy-Go-Lucky Fellow’: Lone-Actor Terrorism, Masculinity, and the 1966 Bombing on Parliament Hill in Ottawa,” Canadian Historical Review 100, no. 1 (2019): 46–68.
14 Jeffrey Kaplan, “Leaderless Resistance” Terrorism and Political Violence 9, no. 3 (1997): 80–95.
15 Donald Holbrook, “The Terrorism Information Environment: Analysing Terrorists’ Selection of Ideological and Facilitative Media,” Terrorism and Political Violence (2019): 1–23; Donald Holbrook, and Max Taylor, “Terrorism as Process Narratives: A Study of Pre-Arrest Media Usage and the Emergence of pathways to Engagement,” Terrorism and Political Violence (2017): 1–20; Donald Holbrook, “What Types of Media to Terrorists Collect?: An Analysis of Religious, Political and Ideological Publications Found in Terrorism Investigations in the UK,” ICCT Research Paper (2017).
16 Stephane J. Baele, “Lone‐Actor Terrorists’ Emotions and Cognition: An Evaluation Beyond Stereotypes,” Political Psychology 38, no. 3 (2017): 449–468; Lisa Kaati, Amendra Shrestha, and Tony Sardella. “Identifying Warning Behaviors of Violent Lone Offenders in Written Communication,” (paper presented at IEEE 16th International Conference on Data Mining Workshops, Barcelona, Spain, December, 12-15th, 2016), 1053–1060 ; Lisa Kaati, Amendra Shrestha, and Katie Cohen. “Linguistic Analysis of Lone Offender Manifestos,” In 2016 IEEE International Conference on Cybercrime and Computer Forensic (ICCCF) (IEEE, 2016), 1–8; Nazar Akrami, Amendra Shrestha, Lisa Kaati, Katie Cohen, Mathias Berggren, and Milan Obaidi, “Assessment of Risk in Written Communication: Introducing the Profile Risk Assessment Tool (PRAT)” (paper presented at 2nd European Counter-Terrorism Centre Advisory Group Conference, The Hague, Netherlands, April 17-18, 2018); Yair Neuman, Yochai Cohen, and Yiftach Neuman. “How to (better) Find a Perpetrator in a Haystack,” Journal of Big Data 6, no. 1 (2019): 9.
17 Gill et al., See Note 10; M. S. Hamm and R. Spaaij, The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism (New York, New York: Columbia University Press, 2017).
18 Paul Gill, “Toward a Scientific Approach to Identifying and Understanding Indicators of Radicalization and Terrorist Intent: Eight Key Problems,” Journal of Threat Assessment and Management 2, no. 3–4: 187, 2015.
19 J. Reid Meloy, “The Operational Development and Empirical Testing of the Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol (TRAP–18),” Journal of Personality Assessment 100, no. 5 (2018): 483–492.
20 Michele T. Pathé, Debbie J. Haworth, Terri-ann Goodwin, Amanda G. Holman, Stephen J. Amos, Paul Winterbourne, and Leanne Day, “Establishing a Joint Agency Response to the Threat of Lone-Actor Grievance-Fuelled Violence,” The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology 29, no. 1 (2018): 37–52.
21 Bart Schuurman, Edwin Bakker, Paul Gill, and Noémie Bouhana, “Lone Actor Terrorist Attack Planning and Preparation: A Data‐Driven Analysis,” Journal of Forensic Sciences 63, no. 4 (2018): 1191–1200.
22 Zoe Marchment, Noémie Bouhana, and Paul Gill, “Lone Actor Terrorists: A Residence-to-Crime Approach,” Terrorism and Political Violence (2018): 1–26.
23 Gill et al., “Terrorist Use of the Internet by the Numbers.”
24 Emily Corner, Noémie Bouhana, and Paul Gill, “The Multifinality of Vulnerability Indicators in Lone-Actor Terrorism,” Psychology, Crime & Law 25, no. 2 (2019): 111–132; Corner et al., “Mental Health Disorders and the Terrorist”; Paul Gill and Emily Corner, “There and Back Again: The Study of Mental Disorder and Terrorist Involvement,” American Psychologist 72, no. 3 (2017): 231; Corner and Gill, “A False Dichotomy?.”
25 Noémie Bouhana, Emily Corner, Paul Gill, and Bart Schuurman. “Background and Preparatory Behaviours of Right-Wing Extremist Lone Actors: A Comparative Study,” Perspectives on Terrorism 12, no. 6 (2018): 150–163; J. Reid Meloy and Paul Gill, “The Lone-Actor Terrorist and the TRAP-18,” Journal of Threat Assessment and Management 3, no. 1 (2016): 37.
26 Lindekilde et al. “Peripheral and Embedded.”
27 Gill et al. “Shooting Alone”; James Silver, John Horgan, and Paul Gill, “Foreshadowing Targeted Violence: Assessing Leakage of Intent by Public Mass Murderers,” Aggression and Violent Behavior 38 (2018): 94–100.
28 Gill and Corner, “Lone‐actor Terrorist Target Choice”; Jeff Gruenewald, Steven Chermak, and Joshua D. Freilich, “Distinguishing ‘Loner’ Attacks from Other Domestic Extremist Violence,” Criminology & Public Policy 12, no. 1 (2013): 65–91; Spaaij, Understanding Lone Wolf Terrorism; Brian J. Phillips “Deadlier in the US? On Lone Wolves, Terrorist Groups, and Attack Lethality,” Terrorism and Political Violence 29, no. 3 (2017): 533–549.
29 Gill et al, See Note 10 pp. 434.
30 Spaaij, Understanding Lone Wolf Terrorism.
31 Gill et al., See Footnote 10.
32 Gabriel Weimann, “Lone Wolves in Cyberspace,” Journal of Terrorism Research 3, no. 2 (2012): 75–90; Lindekilde et al., “Radicalization Patterns and Modes.”
33 Paul Gill, Zoe Marchment, Emily Corner, and Noémie Bouhana, “Terrorist Decision Making in the Context Of Risk, Attack Planning, and Attack Commission,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (2018): 1–16.
34 For the purposes of this research note, we define terrorism as the use or threat of action where the use or threat is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public and/or the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause. Terrorism can involve violence against a person, damage to property, endangering a person’s life other than that of the person committing the action, creating a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or facilitating any of the above actions.
35 Gill, Lone-Actor Terrorists.
36 Gill et al., See Note 10.
37 Gill et al. “Bombing Alone”; Reid Meloy, J., and Jessica Yakeley. “The Violent True Believer as a ‘Lone Wolf’–Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Terrorism,” Behavioral Sciences & the Law 32, no. 3 (2014): 347–365; Hewitt, Christopher Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism in America (London, UK: Routledge, 2003); Matthew Feldman, “Comparative Lone Wolf Terrorism: Toward a Heuristic Definition.” Democracy and Security 9, no. 3 (2013): 270–286.
38 Although not technically “lone” actors, we decided to include these cases for a number of reasons. First, a key component of this project focuses upon the network qualities of terrorists who are not members of terrorist groups. Second, an initial review of our cases showed that isolated dyads often formed when one individual recruited the other specifically for the terrorist attack. The formation of a dyad, in some cases, may be a function of the type of terrorist attack planned. Finally, by including these cases, it added to our sample, making the types of inferential statistics used later more applicable.
39 Gill, Lone-Actor Terrorists.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 Rajan Basra and Peter R. Neumann, “Criminal Pasts, Terrorist Futures: European Jihadists and the New Crime-Terror Nexus,” Perspectives on Terrorism 10, no. 6 (2016): 25–40.
43 Corner and Gill, “A False Dichotomy?”
44 Borum et al., See Note 12.
45 Randy Borum, “Informing Lone‐Offender Investigations,” Criminology & Public Policy 12, no. 1 (2013): 103–112. Pp104.
46 Gill et al., “Bombing Alone”.
47 Ibid.