Considered opinion: Far-right terrorismBack to the future: The return of violent far-right terrorism in the age of lone wolves
Five years ago, when U.S. law enforcement agencies were asked to identify the most serious violent extremist threats they faced in their respective jurisdictions, they cited far-right, anti-government extremists; followed by Salafi-Jihadi inspired extremist violence; radical environmentalists; and, racist, violent extremism. Terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman writes that “given the rise of violent white nationalism and far-right extremism, and the power of twenty-first-century communications platforms, the threat is evolving rapidly.”
“He is a terrorist.” New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s description of the person responsible for the attacks on Muslim worshippers in her country captured the changing nature of political violence in the twenty-first century. Bruce Hoffman writers in War on the Rocks that in the past, a terrorist was mostly recognizable as someone committing violence at the direct behest or on behalf of some existent organizational entity or movement which had an identifiable chain of command. This criterion, as Ardern’s statement suggests, has outlived its usefulness.
Hoffman continues:
In recent years, a variety of both foreign and now domestic extremist movements have adopted and vigorously advocated via social media a strategy that encourages “lone wolves” to engage in individual acts of violence against a broad array of designated enemies. This breed of inspired adversary is a more recent and distinctly different kind of terrorist — to which traditional organizational constructs and definitions do not neatly apply. Terrorism today is thus also populated by individuals who are ideologically motivated, inspired, and animated by a movement, a leader, or a mélange of ideological mentors but who neither necessarily formally belong to a specific, identifiable terrorist group nor directly follow orders issued by its leadership.
This is a structure and approach that has been most closely associated with the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the militant Salafi-jihadi, Islamist militant organization, whose governance over parts of Syria and Iraq has been systemically eroded since 2014 by the global coalition of seventy-nine countries mobilized to defeat it. In response to this historically unprecedented onslaught, the Islamic State actively embraced the lone wolf strategy to retain an operational capability and also ensure its survival. Thus, far from the battlefields in Mosul and Raqqa, Islamic State disciples have independently carried out vehicular, stabbing, and shooting attacks in France, Finland, England, Australia, the United States, and Canada, among other countries.
