A lone wolf attack, or lone actor attack, is a particular kind of
mass murder, committed in a public setting by an individual who plans and commits the act on their own. In the United States, such attacks are usually committed
with firearms. In other countries, knives are sometimes used to commit
mass stabbings. Although definitions vary, most databases require a minimum of four victims (including injured) for the event to be considered a mass murder.
Lone actor attacks have become the subject of academic research. Studies have found that some lone actor attacks are committed because of personal grievances and a desire for revenge, while others are acts of
terrorism
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
, intended to induce fear and influence the way people think.
The academic definition of lone actor mass shootings means they occur in a public setting and excludes the killing of multiple people if those deaths occur during the commission of other crimes, such as
bank robberies
Bank robbery is the criminal act of stealing from a bank, specifically while bank employees and customers are subjected to force, violence, or a threat of violence. This refers to robbery of a bank branch or teller, as opposed to other bank- ...
or during
gang warfare
A gang is a group or society of associates, friends or members of a family with a defined leadership and internal organization that identifies with or claims control over territory in a community and engages, either individually or collectivel ...
. The definition also excludes killings such as
familicide, where the perpetrator kills the rest of their family in a private setting.
Criminologist
Grant Duwe identified 845
mass shootings in the United States
Mass shootings are incidents involving multiple victims of firearm-related violence. Definitions vary, with no single, broadly accepted definition. One definition is an act of public firearm violence—excluding gang killings, domestic violen ...
between 1976 and 2018. However, only 158 of these met the criteria for a lone actor shooting which occurred in a public setting.
The descriptor 'lone wolf' is derived from the notion of a lone wolf, a
pack animal
A pack animal, also known as a sumpter animal or beast of burden, is an individual or type of working animal used by humans as means of transporting materials by attaching them so their weight bears on the animal's back, in contrast to draft ani ...
that has left or been excluded from its pack. This particular term is more likely to be used by American law enforcement than by academics who study this phenomenon.
Definition
The term lone actor or lone wolf is not a legal term or a social science concept.
It is an ill-defined and academically contested construct, manufactured by the media and by radical political actors. For academics, the definition requires that:
* the perpetrator acts alone without direction from an outside group. In some cases such as the
Columbine High School massacre, two students shot and killed 12 students and one teacher. This still meets the academic definition of lone actor shooting, because the perpetrators carried out the killings without direction from anyone else
* the shootings occurred in a public situation. Mass murders such as
familicides where one member of a family kills all other members in the family home are not considered as lone actor shootings.
* the murders were not committed as part of some other criminal act such as a robbery or as part of gang conflict in which multiple individuals are shot.
Minimum number of victims
In the United States in particular, lone actor attacks are associated with
mass shootings
There is a lack of consensus on how to define a mass shooting. Most terms define a minimum of three or four victims of gun violence (not including the shooter or in an inner city) in a short period of time, although an Australian study from 20 ...
in which multiple people are shot – although the definition of a mass shooting is also contested. Different sources describe the minimum number of victims as between three and five, with most authorities describing four as the minimum. Some sources include injured victims in the total while other definitions specify the victims must be dead in order to be counted.
Motives
Academic studies tend to distinguish between grievance driven lone actors and lone actor terrorists.
Ideological (terrorist)
Lone actor terrorists are ideologically driven, with political or religious motives, and are intended to create fear and influence public opinion.
Lone wolf terrorists may sympathize with and consider themselves part of larger groups, but they are usually not active participants. The links between lone wolves and actual terrorist groups tend to be informal and conducted online. These individuals tend to become radicalized online and through media outlets.
There have been cases of terrorist attacks conducted by individuals which were later found to have been directed remotely by terrorist organisations. Thus they were technically not lone wolves.
Non-ideological (grievance driven)
Most lone actor shootings are committed by individuals with a grievance against an institution, such as their former school or workplace, with no ideological motivation.
In the United States, the perpetrators generally use guns, whereas in other countries where the public have less access to guns (such as China), knives may be used to commit mass stabbings.
History
Historian Richard Jenson says the years 1878–1934 were the era of anarchist terrorism and should be considered the classic age of ‘‘lone wolf’’ or leaderless terrorism. Anarchists rejected authoritarian, centralized control over acts of planned violence as well as over anything else. Jenson says there were hundreds of violent anarchist incidents during this period most of which were committed by lone individuals or very small groups without command structures or leaders.
Since 1940, there have been around 100 successful lone wolf attacks in the United States.
The number of attacks is increasing, however, and has grown each year since 2000. As compared to those on the far right, lone wolf attackers who become inspired by al-Qaeda and ISIS tend to be younger and better educated. According to studies, lone wolves have more in common with
mass murderers than they do with members of the organized terrorist groups that often inspire them. The
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...
and
San Diego Police
The San Diego Police Department (SDPD) is the primary law enforcement agency for the city of San Diego, California. The department was officially established on May 16, 1889.
History
Prior to the establishment of the San Diego Police Departme ...
's investigation into the activities of a self-professed white supremacist, Alex Curtis, was named
Operation Lone Wolf,
"largely due to Curtis' encouragement of other white supremacists to follow what Curtis refers to as 'lone wolf' activism".
While the lone wolf acts to advance the ideological or philosophical beliefs of an extremist group, they act on their own, without any outside command or direction. The lone wolf's tactics and methods are conceived and directed solely on their own; in many cases, such as the tactics described by Curtis, the lone wolf never has personal contact with the group they identify with. As such, it is considerably more difficult for
counter-terrorism
Counterterrorism (also spelled counter-terrorism), also known as anti-terrorism, incorporates the practices, military tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, law enforcement, business, and intelligence agencies use to combat or ...
officials to gather intelligence on lone wolves, since they may not come into contact with routine counter-terrorist surveillance.
A 2013 analysis by Sarah Teich, a research assistant at the
International Institute for Counter-Terrorism
The International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) is a conservative Israeli think tank founded in 1996 and located at Reichman University, in Herzliya, Israel.
Activities
According to ''Foreign Affairs'', ICT presents a conservative Israeli ...
, found five emerging trends in Islamist lone wolf terrorism in North America and western Europe between 1990 and 2013:
*An increase in the number of countries targeted by lone wolves from the 1990s to the 2000s.
*An increase in the number of people injured and killed by lone wolves.
*Increased effectiveness of law enforcement and counter-terrorism.
*Consistency in the distribution of attacks by "actor types" (loners, lone wolves, and lone wolf packs).
*An increase in the number of attacks against military personnel.
In the United States, lone wolves may present a greater threat than organized groups.
According to the ''
Financial Times
The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Ni ...
'', counter-terrorism officials refer to "lone individuals known to authorities but not considered important enough to escalate investigations" as "known wolves".
Some groups actively advocate lone wolf actions. Anti-abortion
militant terrorist group the
Army of God uses "
leaderless resistance" as its organizing principle.
According to ''The New York Times'', in news analysis of the
Boston Marathon bombing
The Boston Marathon bombing was a domestic terrorist attack that took place during the annual Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. Two terrorists, brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, planted two homemade pressure cooker bombs, w ...
, the Al-Qaeda activist
Samir Khan
Samir ibn Zafar Khan (December 25, 1985 – September 30, 2011) was a Saudi Arabian naturalized U.S. citizen, terrorist, and the editor and publisher of ''Inspire'' magazine, an English-language online magazine reported to be published by the Isl ...
, publishing in ''
Inspire
The following is a thematic list of European Union directives:
For a date based list, see the :European Union directives by number
Numbering
From 1 January 1992 to 31 December 2014, numbers assigned by the General Secretariat of the Council ...
'', advocated individual terrorist actions directed at Americans and published detailed recipes online.
Mental health factors
Compared to the general population, lone wolf terrorists are significantly more likely to have been diagnosed with a
mental illness, although it is not an accurate
profiler. Studies have found that roughly a third of lone wolf terrorists have been diagnosed at some point in their life with a mental illness. This puts lone wolves as being 13.5 times more likely to suffer from a mental illness than a member of an organized terrorist group, such as al-Qaeda or ISIS. Environmental factors such as relationships with those belonging to a terrorist group, social isolation, and various
stressor
A stressor is a chemical or biological agent, environmental condition, external stimulus or an event seen as causing stress to an organism. Psychologically speaking, a stressor can be events or environments that individuals might consider demandin ...
s
mediate the relationship between mental illness and lone wolf terrorism.
Mental health challenges are thought to make some individuals among the many who suffer from certain "psychological disturbances", vulnerable to being inspired by extremist ideologies to commit acts of lone wolf terrorism.
An alternative explanation is that terrorist groups reject those with mental illnesses as they pose a security risk, creating a
selection bias.
Forms of indirect incitement
Narratives of insecurity
Professor
Abdelwahab El-Affendi has developed a theory that suggests lone wolf attacks and similar mass violence events occur as a result of "narratives of insecurity", where the aggressor(s) are motivated out of a sense of cataclysmic impending danger to their culture, race, religion, or way of life.
[El-Affendi, Abdelwahab (14 Aug 2019)]
Killer narratives: The real culprit of mass shootings in the US
''Al Jazeera''. Retrieved 1 September 2021.
Scripted violence
The phrase "scripted violence" has been used in social science since at least 2002.
Author David Neiwert, who wrote the book ''
Alt-America'', notes:
Stochastic terrorism
Since 2018, the term "stochastic terrorism" has become a popular term used when discussing lone wolf attacks.
While the exact definition has morphed over time, it has commonly come to refer to a concept whereby consistently
demonizing or dehumanizing a targeted group or individual results in violence that is statistically likely, but cannot be easily accurately predicted.
The term was initially used to suggest that a quantifiable relationship may exist between seemingly random acts of terror and their intended goal of "perpetuating a reign of fear" via a manipulation of mass media and its capacity for "instant global news communication". For example, careful timing and placement of just a few moderately explosive devices could have the same intended effect as numerous random attacks or the use of more powerful explosives if they were shrewdly devised to elicit the maximum response from media organizations. It was theorized by Gordon Woo in a 2002 paper that "the absolute number of attacks within a year, i.e. the rhythm of terror, might ultimately be determined as much by publicity goals and the political anniversary calendar as by the size of the terrorist ranks".
A variation of this stochastic terrorism model was later adapted by an anonymous blogger posting on ''
Daily Kos
Daily Kos ( ) is a group blog and internet forum focused on the U.S. Democratic Party and liberal American politics. The site includes glossaries and other content. It is sometimes considered an example of " netroots" activism.
Daily Kos was ...
'' in 2011 to describe public speech that can be expected to incite terrorism without a direct organizational link between the inciter and the perpetrator.
The term "
stochastic" is used in this instance to describe the random, probabilistic nature of its effect; whether or not an attack actually takes place.
The stochastic terrorist in this context does not direct the actions of any particular individual or members of a group. Rather, the stochastic terrorist gives voice to a specific ideology via mass media with the aim of optimizing its dissemination.
It is in this manner that the stochastic terrorist is thought to randomly incite individuals predisposed to acts of violence. Because stochastic terrorists do not target and incite individual perpetrators of terror with their message, the perpetrator may be labeled a lone wolf by law enforcement, while the inciters avoid legal culpability and public scrutiny.
In their 2017 book ''
Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism'',
criminologist Mark S. Hamm and sociologist Ramón Spaaij discuss stochastic terrorism as a form of "indirect enabling" of terrorists. They write that "stochastic terrorism is the method of international recruitment used by
ISIS
Isis (; ''Ēse''; ; Meroitic: ''Wos'' 'a''or ''Wusa''; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎, romanized: ʾs) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kin ...
", and they refer to
Anwar al-Awlaki
Anwar Nasser al-Awlaki (also spelled al-Aulaqi, al-Awlaqi; ar, أنور العولقي, Anwar al-‘Awlaqī; April 21 or 22, 1971 – September 30, 2011) was an American imam who was killed in 2011 in Yemen by a U.S. government drone strik ...
and
Alex Jones
Alexander Emerick Jones (born February 11, 1974) is an American far-right and alt-right radio show host and prominent conspiracy theorist. He hosts ''The Alex Jones Show'' from Austin, Texas, which the Genesis Communications Network broadcas ...
as stochastic terrorists.
Hamm and Spaaij discuss two instances of violence. In the
2010 Oakland freeway shootout, Byron Williams was said to be en route to offices of the
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...
and the
Tides Foundation
Tides Foundation is an American public charity and fiscal sponsor working to advance progressive causes and policy initiatives in areas such as the environment, health care, labor issues, immigrant rights, LGBTQ+ rights, women's rights and human ...
, planning to commit mass murder, "indirectly enabled by the conspiracy theories" of
Glenn Beck and Alex Jones. As a left-wing example, they cite the
2012 shooting incident at the headquarters of the
Family Research Council
The Family Research Council (FRC) is an American evangelical activist group and think-tank with an affiliated lobbying organization. FRC promotes what it considers to be family values. It opposes and lobbies against: access to pornography, emb ...
.
Some also describe the 2009
murder of George Tiller to be an example of stochastic terrorism, as many conservative news opinion shows and talk radio shows repeatedly demonized him for his administration of
postviability abortions. For example,
Fox News
The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...
host
Bill O'Reilly, during his evening opinion show ''
The O'Reilly Factor
''The O'Reilly Factor'' (originally titled ''The O'Reilly Report'' and also known as ''The Factor'') is an American cable television news and talk show. ''The O'Reilly Factor'' first aired in the United States on Fox News Channel on October 7 ...
'' referred to Dr. Tiller as "Tiller the Baby Killer" on various occasions.
See also
*
List of lone wolf terrorist attacks
This article lists lone wolf terrorist attacks.
Africa, the Middle East and Asia
* On 15 November 1988, Barend Strydom, a Christian Afrikaner, shot and killed seven people, and wounded 15 more, in and around Strijdom Square, Pretoria, South ...
*
Radicalization
Radicalization (or radicalisation) is the process by which an individual or a group comes to adopt increasingly views in opposition to a political, social, or religious status quo. The ideas of society at large shape the outcomes of radicalizat ...
*
Sleeper cell
A clandestine cell system is a method for organizing a group of people (such as resistance fighters, sleeper agents, mobsters, or terrorists) such that such people can more effectively resist penetration by an opposing organization (such as ...
*
Hate speech
*
Psychohistory (fictional)
Psychohistory is a fictional science in Isaac Asimov's ''Foundation'' universe which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people, such as the Galac ...
*
Mens rea
*
Clandestine cell system
*
Leaderless resistance
References
External links
"Operation Lone Wolf"FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...
Trends and Developments in Lone Wolf Terrorism in the Western WorldA Typology of Lone WolvesAn Introduction to Terrorist Organisational StructuresLone-Wolf terrorism, a case study by the European research consortium Transnational Terrorism, Security and the Rule of Law'Lone Wolf' Attackersa New York Security Concern
The Problem of the Lone-Wolf TerroristIntelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004:"Lone Wolf" Amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
Further reading
* Mark Hamm and Ramon Spaaij,
Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism (Columbia University Press, 2017)
''Lone Wolves: How to Prevent this Phenomenon'' (International Centre for Counter-Terrorism - The Hague, 2014)*
* Florian Hartleb: Lone Wolves: The New Terrorism of Right-Wing Single Actors. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2020, , S. 39–45
{{Terrorism topics
Terrorism by method
Terrorism tactics
Violent crime
War on terror
Metaphors referring to wolves