He succeeded in being considered totally uninteresting.

March 30, 2017 4:55 AM

Any terrorist, however socially or physically isolated, is still part of a broader movement.
The myth of the ‘lone wolf’ terrorist.
posted by adamvasco (14 comments total)

The author has created their own definition of lone wolves that excludes pretty much everyone:

Even Breivik himself, who has been called “the deadliest lone-wolf attacker in [Europe’s] history”, was not a true lone wolf. Prior to his arrest, Breivik had long been in contact with far-right organisations.
...
Few extremists remain without human contact, even if that contact is only found online.

I take 'lone wolf' to mean they planned and executed their attack themselves, not that they've never talked to others or so much as posted on a web forum.

There is a much broader point here. Any terrorist, however socially or physically isolated, is still part of a broader movement. The lengthy manifesto that Breivik published hours before he started killing drew heavily on a dense ecosystem of far-right blogs, websites and writers.

By that definition, even the Unabomber wouldn't count as a lone wolf.
posted by kersplunk at 5:29 AM on March 30, 2017 [12 favorites]

I think the article raises an interesting question but draws the wrong conclusion. As far as I know, a "lone wolf" has always been someone capable of planning and executing an attack without external help. If now it's easier to radicalize or be radicalized is a different question, but having read extremist literature and maybe having a facebook chat with the authors of that lit, the people that propagate it, or even someone who is actually on a terror group who says that "something should be done wink wink" doesn't make that person part of that group, or that attack was part of some sort of masterplan instead of being just a completely random incident because someone was willing to carry it to the end.
The author pretty much changes the meaning of "lone wolf" to anything in the area of "boy literally raised by wolves attacks rural village". It's like saying, dunno, this goal was not an individual effort because there were other players on the field, and one the them actually passed the ball (before midfield).
posted by lmfsilva at 6:52 AM on March 30, 2017 [2 favorites]

In the U.S., anyway, if you're brown-skinned and/or Muslim, it's going to be assumed that you're part of a larger group. If you're a white Christian, people will argue with their last breath that you acted completely alone and didn't get any part of your ideas from any source outside your own brain, whatsoever.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:56 AM on March 30, 2017 [38 favorites]

As far as I know, a "lone wolf" has always been someone capable of planning and executing an attack without external help...The author pretty much changes the meaning of "lone wolf" to anything in the area of "boy literally raised by wolves attacks rural village".

I think you are right about the typical meaning of lone wolf, but I am also convinced that by habitually referring to white terrorists as "lone wolves," the media reinforce the impression that when a white man attacks, he had no external support at all, and was influenced by no ideology. He's just insane. The terminology reinforces the myth that white supremacy is over in America, that violent racist ideology is a thing of the past. White America desperately wants the rest of the country to believe that there is no such thing as an influential network of white racist radicals, in spite of hundreds of years of slavery, a war intended to establish a white supremacist nation, a century of lynchings, and the assassination of Martin Luther King. The most obvious fact of American history is that white racism is terrifying and pervasive, but that is also the fact that our culture tries hardest to obscure. Whatever "lone wolf" might mean to you or me, there are many people who read it as reinforcement that there are no ideological cancers in white society, only an occasional light-skinned person who goes off the rails.

If you're a dark-skinned terrorist, though, you've been corrupted by your pathological culture, and everyone who looks like you is suspect, forever.

Being careful of the implications of our words is especially important at a time when Trump is systematically scapegoating minority groups and installing white supremacists in positions of power.

[On preview, what The Underpants Monster said.]
posted by Pater Aletheias at 7:13 AM on March 30, 2017 [27 favorites]

I too get the feeling that the author seems to be arguing with a straw man.

It's sort of an interesting question, here in 2017. Before the Internet, the transmission of the terrorist skill set, the knowledge base, to say nothing of the indoctrination, required physical presence and therefore more organisation and structure. You had go somewhere IRL and meet with fellow extremists on the reg in order to become radicalised. Now it is possible to do this entirely from the comfort of your own basement. The cult can come to you.

So then maybe what's happening in the recruit's brain isn't really any different from what happened when Sergei Nechayev first gathered the boys round and explained the concept of the cell. But there's less physical evidence, less presence, for law enforcement to pick up on. Harder to tell who's talking shit and who's really committed.

At the same time, though, the article also blows past a rather telling detail early on: That right wing groups first developed the "lone wolf" model b/c they felt too much law enforcement pressure to gather the reseources and organise themselves for large scale action. An attack by a single person is much, much more difficult to prevent. But it's also far less likely to be effective on a military or political level, destabilising governments, wrecking economies. Not impossible, of course, far from that. The manhunt for the marathon bombers shut down Boston for a day, though many have argued that was an overreaction. But that was pretty exceptional. For one person to kill a bunch of people in a public place is always going to be possible, provided we still have public places and they don't mind dying in the attempt. But a terrorist movement which is limited to that, which has no ambitions of attracting sufficient recruits to seize political power, is one which is failing.
posted by Diablevert at 7:37 AM on March 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

And, just to bring things full circle, I think the point is that the definition of "lone wolf" was already corrupted by our refusal to apply it to Islamic terrorists to whom it clearly applies.

Like, if a white guy watches "Planned Parenthood Sells Baby Parts" or Pizzagate videos all day long, then goes and shoots up a PP clinic or pizza place, he's a "lone wolf". If an Islamic guy watches a bunch of ISIS propaganda, then drives a truck into a crowd of people in a public place, he's not a "lone wolf".

In both cases above, you had individuals who were inspired by a larger community of extremists into committing an act of terrorism that they nonetheless planned and perpetrated without any direct assistance from that community. If we're being consistent, either both of them are lone wolves or neither is. But, in practice, one of them gets to be a "lone wolf" while the other doesn't.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:39 AM on March 30, 2017 [23 favorites]

The term 'lone wolf' in its strictest application means 'operator who receives no material or logistical support from others'. However the *implication* is also 'operator who receives so philosophical or social support from others', and that part is both completely false 99% of the time, and is what right wingers desperately cling to the most to avoid implicating themselves in the natural consequence of their constant hate-and-fearmongering. "Aw jeeze, only a *crazy person* would listen to the things we say constantly and think that our perpetual enraged death threats should be acted upon!"
posted by FatherDagon at 8:24 AM on March 30, 2017 [12 favorites]

It gets awkward when you realise the Anwar Al Awlaki of white nationalists is Donald Trump.
posted by Artw at 8:24 AM on March 30, 2017 [5 favorites]

And, just to bring things full circle, I think the point is that the definition of "lone wolf" was already corrupted by our refusal to apply it to Islamic terrorists to whom it clearly applies.

Did anyone in this thread bother to read the actual article?

By around 2006, a small number of analysts had begun to refer to lone-wolf attacks in the context of Islamic militancy, and Israeli officials were using the term to describe attacks by apparently solitary Palestinian attackers....As successive jihadi plots were uncovered that did not appear to be linked to al-Qaida or other such groups, the term became more common. Between 2009 and 2012 it appears in around 300 articles in major English-language news publications each year, according the professional cuttings search engine Lexis Nexis. Since then, the term has become ubiquitous. In the 12 months before the London attack last week, the number of references to “lone wolves” exceeded the total of those over the previous three years, topping 1,000.

The article specifically discusses, with ample supporting evidence, how the term "lone wolf" was invented by right wing terrorists to describe themselves in the late 1990s, adopted by law enforcement, and only gained ubiquity in the past five years as it began to be broadly applied to the phenomenon of Islamist terrorism, both in the United States and Europe. It is simply not the case that the mainstream media refuses to refer to Islamist as "lone wolves;" they have literally done so more than 1,000 times in the past 12 months. It is also simply not the case that the media invented the term "lone wolf" to describe white, right-wing terrorists. Self-proclaimed Aryan Resistance fighters were using it as part of their internal propaganda in the 1990s, in response to the fact that they themselves recognized their ideas were too unpopular to attract widespread support.
posted by Diablevert at 2:05 PM on March 30, 2017 [3 favorites]

Clearly the security services need to start paying more attention to suspiciously uninteresting individuals.
posted by acb at 2:54 PM on March 30, 2017

Domestic violence is apparently the biggest indicator for both shooters and terrorists, but gets largely ignored in these discussions.
posted by Artw at 2:55 PM on March 30, 2017 [6 favorites]

In the U.S., anyway, if you're brown-skinned and/or Muslim, it's going to be assumed that you're part of a larger group. If you're a white Christian, people will argue with their last breath that you acted completely alone and didn't get any part of your ideas from any source outside your own brain, whatsoever.

You can find "people" who will argue anything; the question is, in what number? Leaving that aside, there's one big difference between the two categories you identify here.

For would-be terrorists in Category A, there are at least two large global organizations of defiantly religious folk that murder civilians on a daily basis and are eager to provide moral support, material support, and promises of a ticket to heaven for those who sign up, or go lone wolf.

Category B?

For Wade M. Page (assuming he was Christian), there is no equivalent Lutheran Isis/Al Queda crew aiding or encouraging or promising a ticket to paradise.

For Dylan Roof (assuming he is Christian), there is no equivalent Baptist Isis/Al Queda crew aiding or encouraging or promising a ticket to paradise.

For Timothy McVeigh (assuming he was Christian), there is no equivalent Methodist Isis/Al Queda crew aiding or encouraging or promising a ticket to paradise.

At most, you might find a small handful of cranks and crackpots lifting a brew after the fact (atheist Gore Vidal, of all people, tried to rationalize McVeigh), but you don't find official press releases from large organizations saying He's Our Boy!, nor double digit approval ratings in opinion polls.

The argument for equivalency just doesn’t hold water

Domestic violence is apparently the biggest indicator for both shooters and terrorists, but gets largely ignored in these discussions.

I would ad prescription pharmaceuticals.
posted by IndigoJones at 5:50 AM on March 31, 2017

I would ad prescription pharmaceuticals

Huh?
posted by PMdixon at 6:50 AM on March 31, 2017 [1 favorite]

For would-be terrorists in Category A, there are at least two large global organizations of defiantly religious folk...

For Wade M. Page (assuming he was Christian), there is no equivalent Lutheran...

Your willingness to slice Page and Roof and McVeigh down to Lutheran/Methodist/Baptist while simultaneously assigning all of Islam into people who are theologically identical to "Isis/Al Queda" comes off as intentionally brushing aside the religious origins of the Ku Klux Klan, Westboro Baptist Church, and many other ostentatiously Christian hate groups.
posted by Etrigan at 7:08 AM on March 31, 2017 [8 favorites]