Comparative Lone Wolf Terrorism: Toward a Heuristic Definition

Abstract

Lone wolf terrorism has a long and bloody past, even if the motivations and context of this tactic over the last three decades by right-wing extremists and, more recently, jihadi Islamists, have witnessed a noticeable spike with the onset of the Internet Age. By approaching lone wolf terrorism as a generic phenomenon, this article will retrace both the historical trajectory and recent revival of this self-directed recourse to the “terrorist cycle.” This extends to an overview of earlier waves of lone wolf terrorism (notably deriving from anarchist and leftist doctrines), as well as a survey of the surprisingly sparse academic literature on the subject in English. By way of contribution, this review of some key instances and interpretations of lone wolf terrorism pursues two straightforward aims. The first is the identification of a nearly 150-year tradition of lone wolf terrorism now at its most ideologically disparate and potentially destructive, and the second is a heuristic definition and accompanying discussion of pan-ideological, solo-activated terrorism.

Keywords:

• Lone Wolf
• Right-Wing Extremists
• Terrorism

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the Modernism and Christianity Project, University of Bergen, Norway, for a Senior Research Fellowship helping to facilitate the writing of this text. I am also grateful for the reviewers’ feedback and suggestions for improvement on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

1. For four recent, and widely differing, approaches to lone wolf terrorism over the last decade, see Peter J. Phillips, “Lone Wolf Terrorism,” Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy 17, no. 1 (2011): 1–29; Chris Dishman, “The Leaderless Nexus: When Crime and Terror Converge,” in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 28, no. 3 (2005): 237–252; Steven M. Chermak, Joshua D. Freilich, and Joseph Simone, “Surveying American State Policies Agencies About Lone Wolves, Far-Right Criminiality, and Far-Right and Islamic Jihadist Criminal Collaboration,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 33, no. 11 (2010): 1019–1041; and Dennis Pluchinsky, The Global Jihad: Leaderless Terrorism? (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center, 2006).

2. Despite the word being coined over 100 years ago (in 1909), there was virtually nothing written on the subject before 2007; indeed, as Ramón Spaaij noted recently: “Research into lone wolf terrorism remains extremely scarce”; in “The Enigma of Lone Wolf Terrorism: An Assessment,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 33, no. 9 (2010): 855; see also, perhaps, the earliest academic approach to the phenomenon of lone wolf terrorism by Ze'ev Iviansky, “Individual Terror: Concept and Typology,” in The Journal of Contemporary History 12, no. 43 (1977): 10.

3. See the report by the Dutch Instituut voor Veiligheids- en Crisismanagement, Lone Wolf Terrorism (COT Study, published 7/6/2007), 5.

4. Edwin Bakker and Beatrice de Graaf, “Lone Wolves: How to Prevent this Phenomenon?,” in ICCT Expert Meeting Paper (Nov. 2010), 3; see also the American government texts and legal amendment by CRS, “Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004: ‘Lone Wolf’ Amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act” (Dec. 2004); and Patricia L. Bellia's assessment of this bill, “The ‘Lone Wolf’ Amendment and the Future of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Law,” in Villanova Law Review 50 (2005): 425–455.

5. See, for example, John Merriman, “Is This the First Terrorist of the Modern Age?,” BBC Magazine, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8263858.stm (all websites last accessed March 20, 2013).

6. Among many other documents pertaining to Breivik's trial, see “Anders Behring Breivik Court Statement 2012-06-22” on the (admiring) website The Breivik Archive, http://sites.google.com/site/breivikreport/documents/anders-breivik-court-statement-2012-06-22. On the conspiratorial construction of “cultural Marxism” in Breivik's formulation, see Chip Berlet, “Breivik's Core Thesis is White Christian Nationalism v. Multiculturalism,” Talk to Action, www.talk2action.org/story/ 2011/7/25/73510/6015.

7. See David Rapoport, “The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism,” in Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy, eds. Audrey Kurth Cronin and James M. Ludes (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), 46–73; see also the four-volume collection for the Critical Concepts in Political Science series, Terrorism (Vol. 1: The First or Anarchist Wave; Vol. 2: The Second or Anti-colonial wave; Vol. 3: The Third or New Left Wave; Vol. 4: The Fourth or Religious Wave), ed. David Rapoport (London: Routlege, 2006), revealingly containing only two essays dealing with lone wolf terrorism in the final volume. See also Jeffrey Kaplan, “Terrorism's Fifth Wave: A Theory, a Conundrum and a Dilemma,” in Perspectives on Terrorism 2, no. 2 (2008), www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/26/html; and more recently, Kaplan, “The New/Old Terrorism,” in Phi Kappa Phi Forum (Fall 2011), www.phikappaphi.org/forum/fall2011/terrorism/ pkpforum_fall2011_kaplan.pdf.

8. Andrew Macdonald [William Luther Pierce], Hunter (Privately Published, USA: 1989), 178.

9. Louis Beam, “Leaderless Resistance,” The Seditionist 12 (Feb. 1992 [first published 1983]), www.louisbeam.com/leaderless.htm (bold text in original). For an important discussion of this far-right trope, see George Michael, “Leaderless Resistance and the Extreme Right,” in Lone Wolf Terror and the Rise of Leaderless Resistance (Nashville: University of Vanderbilt Press, 2012), ch. 2.

10. Jeffrey Kaplan, “Leaderless Resistance,” Terrorism & Political Violence 9, no. 3 (1997): 87, which continues: “With Beam's formulation, the theory of leaderless resistance was essentially complete. All that remained was to adapt and disseminate it to ever wider constituencies of the far right wing” (89).

11. See, for example, the groundbreaking monograph by Ramón Spaaij, Understanding Lone Wolf Terrorism: Global Patterns, Motivations and Prevention (London: Springer, 2012), 25.

12. See Theodore Kaczynski's letter to the authors, reproduced in Appendix B to Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing (New York: Reagan Books, 2001), 400.

13. For an excellent update on Stormfront and its current “major storm” of financial and logistical difficulties, see Heidi Beirich, “Gathering Storm” in Intelligence Report: The Year in Hate and Extremism, Southern Poverty Law Center 149 (Spring 2013), 63–66.

14. For more on the term groupuscule, see the special issue of Patterns of Prejudice 36, no. 3 (2002); and on the far-right use of the Internet, see, for example, the recent report “Hate 2.0: Online Terror + Hate: The First Decade” (Los Angeles: Simon Weisenthal Center, 2010), www.wiesenthal.com/atf/cf/%7BDFD2AAC1…/IREPORT.PDF. For a general approach to the distinction between the “new far-right” and more familiar manifestations of neo-fascism, see Paul Jackson et al., “The EDL: Britain's New Far-Right Social Movement” (Northampton: RNM Publications, 2011), www.radicalism-new-media.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/The_EDL_Britains_New_Far_Right_Social_Movement.pdf.

15. See Raymond Franklin, The Hate Directory, April 1, 2010, www.hatedirectory.com/hatedir.pdf.

16. Spaaij, Understanding Lone Wolf Terrorism, 31.

17. See, for example, Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Fear (Cambridge: Polity, 2006), ch. 1; and Roger Griffin, Terrorist's Creed: Fanatical Violence and the Human Need for Meaning (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012), ch. 2.

18. Jeffrey D. Simon, Lone Wolf Terrorism: Understanding the Growing Threat (New York: Prometheus Books, 2013), 21.

19. See Matthew Feldman, “Breivik's Three Acts of Terrorism,” Society and Space: Environment and Planning D 30, no. 2 (2012), www.envplan.com/openaccess/ d303.pdf.

20. Contained on the American Nazi Party straw poll, “White Revolution” (2009), www.whitehonor.com/FRAMEPAGE.htm. See also my “Hate Globally, Act Locally: A Case Study of Universal Nazism Online,” in Christian Deitrich and Michael Schüßler, eds., Jenseits der Epoche (Münster: Unrast, 2011), 89–101; and “Broadband Terrorism: A New Face of Fascism?” (Sept. 2009), History & Policy, www.historyandpolicy.org/opinion/opinion_15.html.

21. DHS/I&S, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fuelling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment” (2009), 7; see also Johnston's account of this report and the substantial internal resistance to its findings on right-wing extremism in the American government, Daryl Johnston, Right Wing Resurgence: How a Domestic Terrorism Threat is Being Ignored (London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012). This approach to revolutionary terrorism was expanded to include potential jihadi Islamist lone wolves by CIA Director Leon Panetta, who claimed in a 2010 “terror assessment to Congress”: “It's the lone wolf strategy that I think we have to pay attention to as the main threat to this country”; “Intel Chief: Al-Qaeda Planning Attacks,” http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-02-03-terror-threats-cia_N.htm.

22. Raffaello Pantucci, “A Typology of Lone Wolves: Preliminary Analysis of Lone Islamist Terrorists,” Developments in Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR, March 2011), 25.

23. Simon, Lone Wolf Terrorism: Understanding the Growing Threat, 266.

24. Spaaij, Understanding Lone Wolf Terrorism, 16.

25. See Matthew Feldman, “Slaughter Was the Killer's Appetiser. It Is the Trial That Is His Main Course,” www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/dr-matthew-feldman-slaughter-was-killers-appetiser-it-is-the-trial-that-is-his-main-course-2325910.html.

26. See Donald G. Dutton, “Individual Transitions to Extreme Violence,” in The Psychology of Genocide, Massacres, and Extreme Violence (London: Praeger, 2007), ch. 9.

27. Pantucci, “A Typology of Lone Wolves: Preliminary Analysis of Lone Islamist Terrorists,” 11.

28. As Breivik claimed in his manifesto 2083: A Declaration of European Independence: “The first week of my ‘explosive research phase’ I googled for 200 hours over the course of 2 weeks. I was worried that I had to use obscure search engines if google had banned many search phrases or sources, but to my surprise google seemed to be fully functional in this regard. There are a lot of various explosives forums around (for example: roguesci.org/theforum) which will discuss in depth concerning hundreds of different recipes and methods of manufacture explosives. There are hundreds of various books out there about this subject.”

29. See Joe Mulhall, “Top Individuals,” in The Counter-Jihad Movement: The Global Trend Feeding Anti-Muslim Hatred (London: Searchlight Educational Trust, 2012), 20; and more recently, Matthew Goodwin, The Roots of Extremism: The English Defence League and the Counter-Jihad Challenge, Chatham House Briefing Paper, March 18, 2003, www.extremisproject.org/2013/03/putting-counter-jihad-groups-under-the-microscope.

30. See Gerry Gable and Paul Jackson, Lone Wolves: Myth or Reality?, Searchlight Educational Trust Report (2011), 5.

31. See the COT report, Lone Wolf Terrorism, 6.

32. Lone Wolves: Myth or Reality?, 81. This view is endorsed in the fourth edition of a popular overview; see Frank Bolz, Kenneth J. Dudonis, and David P. Schulz, The Counterterrorism Handbook: Tactics, Procedures and Techniques (London: Routledge, 2011), which argues: “in reality there are whole networks of supporting enablers for these [apparently lone-wolf] operatives, including publicists, counselors, tacticians, and legal advisors who communicate via websites, publication, blogs and other media to encourage and advise,” 197.

33. Pan Pantziarka, Lone Wolf: True Stories of Spree Killers (London: Virgin Books, 2002), 214; for arguments regarding the age range and geographical scope of lone wolf terrorism, see the recent postgraduate thesis by Liesbeth van der Heide, “Individual Terrorism: Indicators of Lone Operators” (University of Utrecht: Unpublished MA Thesis, 2011), which argues that 62.5 percent of lone wolf terrorist attacks took place in Western Europe or the United States (67), and were mostly carried out by men under 40 (61).

34. See, for example, Vic Artiga, “Lone Wolf Terrorism: What We Need to Know and What We Need to Do,” www.takresponse.com/index/homeland-security/lone-wolf_terrorism.html, which argues: “Many lone wolves have difficulty obtaining professional level training in using weapons or explosives, have difficulty translating their rhetoric into action, and often make some sort of key mistake. In addition, lone wolves are still constrained by the terrorist attack cycle and consequently must conduct target surveillance by themselves.”

35. See, for example, Stratfor's “Defining the Terrorist Attack Cycle,’” February 23, 2012, available at (paywall): www.stratfor.com/image/defining-terrorist-attack-cycle.

36. See, for example, the British Home Office's Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism most recent, guidance for countering violent extremism, “The PreventStrategy” (London: Home Office Publications, 2011), 23–25; and more generally with respect to counter-terrorism (the overarching CONTEST strategy), see “What perceptions do the UK public have concerning the impact of counter-terrorism legislation implemented since 2000?,” http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs10/ occ88.pdf.

37. For two recent studies approach to these psychological questions, see Roger Griffin, “Shattering Crystals: The Role of ‘Dream Time’ in Extreme Right-Wing Political Violence,” Terrorism & Political Violence 15, no. 1 (2003): 57–95; and more recently, Sophia Moskalenko and Clark McCauley, “The Psychology of Lone-wolf Terrorism,” in Counselling Psychology Quarterly 24, no. 12 (2011): 115–126.

38. Fred Burton and Scott Stewart, “The ‘Lone Wolf’ Disconnect,” Statfor, January 30, 2008, www.stratfor.com/weekly/lone_wolf_disconnect.

39. This is one of Jeffrey D. Simon's five categories of lone wolf terrorists, in Lone Wolf Terrorism, 43–46; the others are religious, secular, criminal, and “idiosyncratic” (largely mentally ill).

40. Integrated Threat Assessment Center (Unclassified Intelligence Report), “Lone Wolf Attacks: A Developing Islamist Extremist Strategy?,” June 29, 2007.

41. Pantucci, 6; the lone wolf “types” he identifies range from loner (wholly self-radicalizing), lone wolf, lone wolf pack to lone attackers (“with clear command and control links with actual Al Qaeda core or affiliated groups”), 29–30.

42. See Gabriel Weimann, “Lone Wolves in Cyberspace,” Journal of Terrorism Research 3, no. 2 (Autumn 2012): 3.