The enigma of lone wolf terrorism: An assessment

Studies in Conflict and Terrorism

Volumn 33, Issue 9, 2010, Pages 854-870

  Spaaij, Ramón ^a,b  

^a LA TROBE UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

^b UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77955721113     PISSN: 1057610X     EISSN: 15210731     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/1057610X.2010.501426     Document Type: Article

References (85)

1. For example Robert S. Mueller III, "War on Terrorism." Testimony before the Select Committee on Intelligence of the United States Senate, Washington, DC, 11 February 2003.
2. David Johnston and James Risen, "Lone TerroristsMay Strike in the U.S., AgenciesWarn," The New York Times, 23 February 2003.
3. Mueller III, "War on Terrorism."
4. Elizabeth Bazan, Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004: "Lone Wolf" Amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2004).
5. James Forest (ed.), The Making of a Terrorist: Recruitment, Training, and Root Causes. Three Volumes (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006)
6. John Horgan, The Psychology of Terrorism (London: Routledge, 2005)
7. Rex Hudson, The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism:Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why? (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1999)
8. Sam Mullins, "Parallels Between Crime and Terrorism: A Social Psychological Perspective," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 32(9) (2009), pp. 811-830.
9. FathaliMoghaddam, "The Staircase to Terrorism: A Psychological Exploration," American Psychologist 60 (2005), p. 166.
10. Bruce Hoffman, Al Qaeda, Trends in Terrorism, and Future Potentialities: An Assessment (Santa Monica: RAND, 2003), pp. 16-17.
11. Council of the European Union, Council Framework Decision of 13 June 2002 on Combating Terrorism (Brussels: Council of the European Union, 2002), p. 3.
12. HaroldKushner, Encyclopedia of Terrorism (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003), pp. 224-226, 269-271
13. See also Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God. The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), pp. 127-128.
14. Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, p. 11.
15. Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), p. 4.
16. Chris Quillen, "A Historical Analysis of Mass Casualty Bombers," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 25 (2002), p. 287.
17. Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (New York: Harper-Collins, 2003), p. 181.
18. Scott Shane and David Johnston, "Questions, Not Alarms,Met ExchangesWith Cleric," The New York Times, 11 November 2009
19. Liz Robbins and Scott Shane, "Suspect in Ft. Hood Shootings to Remain in Hospital," The New York Times, 22 November 2009.
20. The RAND-MIPT database is used instead of the ITERATE database because the latter focuses exclusively on incidents of international terrorism. Another database, the Global Terrorist Database, was not fully available to external researchers at the time of the study.
21. International terrorism is defined as "incidents in which terrorists go abroad to strike their targets, select domestic targets associated with a foreign state, or create an international incident by attacking airline passengers, personnel or equipment." Domestic terrorism comprises "incidents perpetrated by local nationals against a purely domestic target." The methodology and definitions of the RAND-MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base can be found at http://www.tkb.org/RandSummary.jsp?page= method
22. For example Tara Branum, Aviation Security in the New Century (Washington, DC: Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, 2001)
23. Edward Mickolus, Transnational Terrorism: A Chronology of Events, 1968-79 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1980)
24. Christopher Hewitt, Political Violence and Terrorism in Modern America (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005).
25. There is no necessary association between anarchism and terrorism since many anarchists reject violence of any form. The association between the two seems to owe principally to a series of historical events in Russia and Eastern Europe rather than to some necessary feature of anarchist philosophy. See Max Taylor, The Terrorist (London: Brassey's, 1988), pp. 102-103
26. D. Novak, "Anarchism and Individual Terrorism," The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 20 (1954), pp. 176-184.
27. Kushner, Encyclopedia of Terrorism, pp. 28-31.
28. Novak, "Anarchism and Individual Terrorism," p. 176.
29. Jeffrey Kaplan, "Leaderless Resistance," Terrorism and Political Violence 9 (1997), p. 80.
30. Louis Beam, "Leaderless Resistance," Seditionist, 12 (1992).
31. Alexandra Marks, "'Lone Wolves' Pose Explosive Terror Threat," The Christian Science Monitor, 27May 2003
32. Johnston and Risen, "Lone TerroristsMay Strike in theU.S., AgenciesWarn"
33. Jo Thomas, "New Face of Terror Crimes," The New York Times, 16 August 1999.
34. Christopher Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism in America. From the Klan to al Qaeda (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 79.
35. Ibid., p. 78.
36. Lone wolves active in multiple decades have been counted for each decade in which they were active.
37. Although the so-called Italian Unabomber appears to have been active since the mid-1990s, no incidents were registered in the RAND-MIPT database prior to 2000, probably due to the database's exclusive focus on international terrorism prior to 1998. This case was therefore counted only for the 2000s.
38. Stern, Terror in the Name of God, p. 172.
39. Theodore Kaczynski, "Industrial Society and Its Future," 1995. Available at http://reactorcore.org/unabomber-manifesto.html (accessed 1 May 2007).
40. Ibid. Kaczynski regularly referred to "we" or to a group called "FC" in his writings but he acted alone.
41. Howard Kurtz, "Unabomber Manifesto is Published," The Washington Post, 19 September 1995.
42. NeilMacFarquhar, "A Luddite's High-Tech Plea," The New York Times, 15 December 1996.
43. Ron Arnold, Ecoterror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature. The World of the Unabomber (Washington: Free Enterprise Press, 1997)
44. Chase, however, argues that Kaczynski was not an environmentalist and was only pretending to be one in order to recruit environmentalists into his campaign. Alston Chase, Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003).
45. Kushner, Encyclopedia of Terrorism, p. 379.
46. Sally Johnson, Psychological Evaluation of Theodore John Kaczynski (Butner, North Carolina: Federal Correctional Institution Butner, 1998).
47. Anthony Lewis, "On God's Orders," The New York Times, 6 November 1995.
48. Ehud Sprinzak, Brother Against Brother. Violence and Extremism in Israeli Politics from Altalena to the Rabin Assassination (New York: The Free Press, 1999)
49. John Kifner, "Belief to Blood: TheMaking of Rabin's Killer," The New York Times, 19 November 1995
50. Thomas L. Friedman, "Land or Life?," The New York Times, 19 November 1995.
51. Sprinzak, Brother Against Brother, p. 280.
52. Serge Schmemann, "Rabin is Laid to Rest, Mourned by Israel and the World," The New York Times, 7 November 1995.
53. Joel Greenberg, "Rabin's Killer Says He Acted for Past Generations of Jews," The New York Times, 21 November 1995.
54. Jerrold Post, "Terrorist Psycho-Logic: Terrorist Behavior as a Product of Psychological Forces," in Walter Reich, ed., Origins of Terrorism (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1998), pp. 25-41
55. Horgan, The Psychology of Terrorism.
56. Martha Crenshaw, "The Causes of Terrorism," Comparative Politics 13 (1981), p. 390.
57. Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism in America, p. 80.
58. Copeland and Kaczynski were also diagnosed with schizophrenia, although this diagnosis is contested.
59. Charles Arthur, "Terrorist's Cook Book," The Independent (London), 1 July 2000
60. Jeevan Vasagar, "Deadly Net Terror Websites Easy to Access," The Guardian, 1 July 2000.
61. Clive Walker, "Cyber-Terrorism: Legal Principle and Law in the United Kingdom," Penn State Law Review 110 (2006), p. 645.
62. Andrew Buncombe, "Bombings 'Inspired by Attack on Olympics,"' The Independent, 6 June 2000.
63. Sue Clough, "Soho Nail Bomber Told Police it was his Destiny to Cause Death," The Daily Telegraph (UK), 7 June 2000.
64. Sue Clough, "Bomber 'Thought He was God's Prophet,"' The Daily Telegraph (UK), 15 June 2000.
65. Sue Clough, "Bomber 'Yearned to be a Mass Killer,"' The Daily Telegraph (UK), 13 June 2000.
66. Andrew Buncombe, "Nail Bomber is 'Bad in the Old-fashioned Way, not Ill,"' The Independent, 29 June 2000.
67. Chase, Harvard and the Unabomber.
68. Post, "Terrorist Psycho-Logic."
69. Compare Mullins, "Parallels Between Crime and Terrorism," p. 820.
70. The latter finding should be qualified on the point that the hijacking category may be over-represented due to the methodology of the RAND-MIPT database. Aircraft hijackings are comparatively often classified as acts of international terrorism. Since the database exclusively recorded international incidents prior to 1998, this category may well be over-represented in comparison with other types of weapons.
71. Clive Williams, Terrorism Explained (Sydney: New Holland, 2004), p. 48, 55.
72. Some lone wolves have used multiple types of weapons, all of which have been included.
73. Jeffrey Simon, "The Alphabet Bomber," in John Tucker, ed., Toxic Terror: Assessing Terrorist Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000), p. 87.
74. Walter Laqueur, The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms ofMass Destruction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 269.
75. Williams, Terrorism Explained, p. 49.
76. Some lone wolves have attacked multiple targets, all of which have been included.
77. For exampleWalter Enders and Todd Sandler, "After 9/11: Is It AllDifferent Now?," Journal of Conflict Resolution 49 (2005), pp. 259-277.
78. Gisela Friedrichsen, "Nur irgendein Kasperl?," Der Spiegel, 22 February 1999.
79. Thomas Müller, Beestmensen: Vermomming, leugens en strategie van seriemoordenaars (Amsterdam: Mets & Schilt, 2006).
80. Stern, Terror in the Name of God, p. 172.
81. Compare Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism in America, p. 80.
82. See also Stern, Terror in the Name of God, p. 173
83. Henry Schuster and Charles Stone, Hunting Eric Rudolph (New York: Berkley Books, 2005), p. 362.
84. Christian Christensen, "Political Victims and Media Focus: The Killings of Laurent Kabila, Zoran Djindjic, Anna Lindh and Pim Fortuyn," Journal for Crime, Conflict and Media 1(1) (2004), p. 23.
85. TTSRL, Radicalisation, Recruitment and the EUCounter-radicalisation Strategy (Brussels: European Commission Sixth Framework Program, 2008), p. 80.