2019: Looking back: Terrorism 3. The Emergence of Lone-Wolf Terrorism
Recent years saw the emergence of different foreign and now domestic extremist movements — whether motivated by Jihadi preaching or white nationalism — which have adopted and actively advocated via social media a strategy which encourages “lone wolves” to engage in individual acts of violence against a large number of designated enemies.
Recent years saw the emergence of different foreign, and now domestic, extremist movements — whether motivated by Jihadi preaching or white nationalism — which have adopted and actively advocated via social media a strategy which encourages “lone wolves” to engage in individual acts of violence against a large number of designated enemies. The problem, one terrorism expert writes, is that this type of motivated adversary is a more recent and distinctly different kind of terrorist from more “traditional” terrorists, and as a result, traditional organizational constructs, procedures, and definitions do not neatly or readily apply.
What we see emerging is a terrorism which is carried out by individuals who are ideologically motivated, inspired, and animated by a movement, a leader, or an eclectic group of ideological mentors — but who do not necessarily formally belong to a specific, identifiable, hierarchical terrorist group, and who do not directly follow orders or instructions issued by the groups’ leaderships.
In the past there were isolated, spasmodic outbursts of violence – for example, the anarchist-inspired acts of terrorism in Europe and the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — but today the internet and social media are bringing together disparate, disgruntled, and confused individuals into an ideologically more cohesive and “nurturing” echo-chamber which serves as a vehicle to radicalize, inspire, motivate, and ultimately lead to the perpetration of acts of violence as we have in the past two years.
