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The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism
The lethality of lone-wolf terrorism has reached an all-time high in the United States. Isolated individuals using firearms with high-capacity magazines are committing brutally efficient killings with the aim of terrorizing others, yet there is little consensus on what connects these crimes and the motivations behind them. In The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism, the terrorism experts Mark S. Hamm and Ram?n Spaaij combine criminological theory with empirical and ethnographic research to map the pathways of lone-wolf radicalization, helping with the identification of suspected individuals and recognizing patterns of indoctrination. Reviewing comprehensive data on these actors, including more than 200 terrorist incidents, Hamm and Spaaij find that a combination of personal and political grievances lead lone wolves to befriend online sympathizers--whether jihadists, white supremacists, or other antigovernment extremists--and then announce their intent to commit terror when triggered. Hamm and Spaaij carefully distinguish between lone wolves and individuals radicalized within a group dynamic. This important difference is what makes this book such a significant manual for professionals seeking richer insight into the transformation of alienated individuals into armed warriors. Hamm and Spaaij conclude with an analysis of recent FBI sting operations designed to prevent lone-wolf terrorism in the United States, describing who gets targeted, strategies for luring suspects, and the ethics of arresting and prosecuting citizens.
- GenresNonfictionTerrorism
336 pages, Hardcover
Published May 9, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 9, 2017
Got an advanced self-destruct-in-x-days e-copy via NetGalley.
This is a well-researched, informative resource book on maladjusted, alienated, angry lone men who take up guns or bombs to settle some kind of imaginary twisted political score against a person or persons unrelated to them. Unlike most university-press publications, this one goes beyond a rehash of already-public information. It lays out cases, either briefly or in detail, from 1940 to mid-2016. The need to stick to a compact definition of lone wolf kicks out perpetrators of Columbine school shooting, Oklahoma Bombing, Boston marathon bombing and San Bernardino attack, though each is important in showing threat assessment, security weaknesses and societal blind spots. They are not included in the database that the authors prepared for National Institute of Justice, a research that sets the tone for the book. But the book does discuss these cases, amongst others. The result is need for gun control, stronger mental health initiatives and stricter surveillance (without carrot-candy traps). This will make the book unappealing to rightwing racists, black militants, islamic extremists, anti-abortion activists, wannabe warriors and trigger-happy fame-mongers.
The ease with which people (even those with bipolar disorder) can grab an AK-47, a 9mm Glock semi automatic, a .223 with telescopic vision (!) from a local store is unsettling. I don’t know how many people in U.S. own a semi-automatic but it’s a dangerous cocktail when seemingly random events exist at the same time in the same person to create a particular effect.
Not all crazy people are terrorists, grab guns or kill others but most of those given in the book have some kind of diagnosed severe mental disorder (bipolar, schizophrenia) and that unnerved me too. It exposes a fault line in healthcare and criminal justice system. Is this guy radicalized because he’s crazy (mentally deficient and hence less culpable) or crazy because he’s radicalized?
Everyone may not know everything but someone somewhere does know when a person is actively pursuing a murderous agenda against a person or community - the need to cooperate with law enforcement agencies (or just the local police!) is tantamount to curtailing wannabe assassins. There simply is no other way to stop them.
Gabrielle Giffords family history, attack, case, aftermath is unnecessarily focussed on for 15-long pages.
James Holmes (Aurora Theatre shooting) is not mentioned at all - though he is a lone wolf, crazy, single, maladjusted, white, semi-educated, urban, his deadly attack was not politically or religiously motivated.
Not much is made of Muslim men (and in the case of San Bernardino couple, woman) who are from well-to-do respected families, highly educated, with jobs, first or second generation Americans (whose parents are from war-torn or under-developed Muslim countries) who have never been in a war, who have everything to look forward to in life, who throw it all away (e.g. Faisal Shehzad). This is a phenomena that will remain under scrutiny for decades to come and I wish the authors had been bold enough to go beyond the surface. Why do boys/men from educated, economically secure urban Muslim-American class become lone/twosome-terrorists in U.S.?
In a world where most of the scientifically detailed thought evolution is taking place in only one part of it - as opposed to the fractured, haphazard one in the other part - it is inevitable that a people, country or event gets labeled and defined in colors of one choosing, like picking cherries. Denying, refuting or challenging the definition and label is tedious because it makes you look like one of the bad guys, the uncouth ignorant louts, nuisance of beings, apologizing, justifying or ignoring the uncomfortable truth (another label?): you’re part of the problem and there’s nothing you can do about it. Get used to it already! Hence, I am not going to question the authors take on Syrian war and ISIS (‘Western-backed Free Syrian Army battling brutal military government’; ‘ISIS is an immediate threat’) - even though to the best of my knowledge Syria was fine before U.S. and Saudi Arabia got it in their heads to mess with it. I don’t know of any Americans or Russians dying in the conflict but loads of Syrians have (allegedly few Pakistanis are fighting on both sides too!), millions displaced and all for what? Some kind of regional hedonistic one-upmanship, massive business for arms and phama industries and a whole ‘rehabilitation plan’ (expect beautiful stories on restored limbs and female empowerment when the dust settles). As for ISIS, that innovation would not exist without the mess of Iraq War, pitting Sunnis and Shias against each other to gain ground during post-9/11 Iraq War. Before this war, there was another one and another one. Afghanistan wasn’t so bad before or during communist regime. It certainly wasn’t what it has been for the last 35-years! Hate begets hate and injustice breeds injustice but a virus only works on the weak. The more things change, the more they remain the same and all one can do is watch the world burn.
Some memorable words and sentences:
Butcher’s Bill (i.e. number of killed and injured).
Lone wolf/ lone rat / freelance terrorism / lone avenger terrorism.
‘Lone wolf terrorism’: the term was coined by FBI administration during Reagan era.
(Lone wolf terrorism phenomena) is more prevalent in U.S. than other countries.
(In the post-9/11 period) single-attack lone wolves are more as opposed to multiple-attack lone wolves.
(In the post-9/11 period) there have been more lone wolf attacks during Obama presidency of 2009-2015.
“Human time bombs with their fuses set across the information super highway,” (said the presiding judge in Baumhammer trial of 2000, i.e. internet spawned the lone gunman)
There is no single ‘conveyor belt’ for radicalization.
Jihobbiyist (Pantucci’s phrase on jihadi lobbyist)
(Lone gunmen exhibit) self-taught ideology, leaderless resistance.
And when Martin Luther King died at the hands of James Earl Ray in Memphis on April 4, 1968, part of the nation’s conscience died with him.
‘White Crackers’; ‘United Snakes of America’; The Turner Diaries; Waco Code 4-1-9-9-3.
‘Aggrieved Entitlement’.
“I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that there would have been no crime here except the government instigated it, planned it and brought it to fruition.” (U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon on the Newburgh Four)
The DNA of Sharia.
An average of four new books on terrorism is published each day; one book appears every six hours. Still, it is estimated that only one percent of these works have included direct contact with terrorists. This book is part of the 1%.
Military, prisons and internet have radicalizing potential.
(Sami Hassoun) Not a saint, but not a terrorist either.
Alex Jones, ‘the most prolific conspiracy theorists in contemporary America’.
Government and big business have colluded to create a new world order through manufactured economic crises, sophisticated surveillance technology and inside-job terrorist attacks that deliberately fuel public hysteria. (again Alex Jones)
The dustbin of history.
“Terrorism is not an activity that attracts the well-adjusted.” (Terrorism researcher, Brian Jenkins, testifying before Senate Homeland Security Committee in aftermath of Fort Hood massacre, when asked if Maj. Nidal Hasan was a terrorist or a deeply troubled man).
(APAQ) Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s English-language online magazine ‘Inspire’.
“My husband was not a terrorist, he was just hopeless.” (Empire State Bldg. shooter, Ali Abu Kamal’s wife, 1997)
This is a well-researched, informative resource book on maladjusted, alienated, angry lone men who take up guns or bombs to settle some kind of imaginary twisted political score against a person or persons unrelated to them. Unlike most university-press publications, this one goes beyond a rehash of already-public information. It lays out cases, either briefly or in detail, from 1940 to mid-2016. The need to stick to a compact definition of lone wolf kicks out perpetrators of Columbine school shooting, Oklahoma Bombing, Boston marathon bombing and San Bernardino attack, though each is important in showing threat assessment, security weaknesses and societal blind spots. They are not included in the database that the authors prepared for National Institute of Justice, a research that sets the tone for the book. But the book does discuss these cases, amongst others. The result is need for gun control, stronger mental health initiatives and stricter surveillance (without carrot-candy traps). This will make the book unappealing to rightwing racists, black militants, islamic extremists, anti-abortion activists, wannabe warriors and trigger-happy fame-mongers.
The ease with which people (even those with bipolar disorder) can grab an AK-47, a 9mm Glock semi automatic, a .223 with telescopic vision (!) from a local store is unsettling. I don’t know how many people in U.S. own a semi-automatic but it’s a dangerous cocktail when seemingly random events exist at the same time in the same person to create a particular effect.
Not all crazy people are terrorists, grab guns or kill others but most of those given in the book have some kind of diagnosed severe mental disorder (bipolar, schizophrenia) and that unnerved me too. It exposes a fault line in healthcare and criminal justice system. Is this guy radicalized because he’s crazy (mentally deficient and hence less culpable) or crazy because he’s radicalized?
Everyone may not know everything but someone somewhere does know when a person is actively pursuing a murderous agenda against a person or community - the need to cooperate with law enforcement agencies (or just the local police!) is tantamount to curtailing wannabe assassins. There simply is no other way to stop them.
Gabrielle Giffords family history, attack, case, aftermath is unnecessarily focussed on for 15-long pages.
James Holmes (Aurora Theatre shooting) is not mentioned at all - though he is a lone wolf, crazy, single, maladjusted, white, semi-educated, urban, his deadly attack was not politically or religiously motivated.
Not much is made of Muslim men (and in the case of San Bernardino couple, woman) who are from well-to-do respected families, highly educated, with jobs, first or second generation Americans (whose parents are from war-torn or under-developed Muslim countries) who have never been in a war, who have everything to look forward to in life, who throw it all away (e.g. Faisal Shehzad). This is a phenomena that will remain under scrutiny for decades to come and I wish the authors had been bold enough to go beyond the surface. Why do boys/men from educated, economically secure urban Muslim-American class become lone/twosome-terrorists in U.S.?
In a world where most of the scientifically detailed thought evolution is taking place in only one part of it - as opposed to the fractured, haphazard one in the other part - it is inevitable that a people, country or event gets labeled and defined in colors of one choosing, like picking cherries. Denying, refuting or challenging the definition and label is tedious because it makes you look like one of the bad guys, the uncouth ignorant louts, nuisance of beings, apologizing, justifying or ignoring the uncomfortable truth (another label?): you’re part of the problem and there’s nothing you can do about it. Get used to it already! Hence, I am not going to question the authors take on Syrian war and ISIS (‘Western-backed Free Syrian Army battling brutal military government’; ‘ISIS is an immediate threat’) - even though to the best of my knowledge Syria was fine before U.S. and Saudi Arabia got it in their heads to mess with it. I don’t know of any Americans or Russians dying in the conflict but loads of Syrians have (allegedly few Pakistanis are fighting on both sides too!), millions displaced and all for what? Some kind of regional hedonistic one-upmanship, massive business for arms and phama industries and a whole ‘rehabilitation plan’ (expect beautiful stories on restored limbs and female empowerment when the dust settles). As for ISIS, that innovation would not exist without the mess of Iraq War, pitting Sunnis and Shias against each other to gain ground during post-9/11 Iraq War. Before this war, there was another one and another one. Afghanistan wasn’t so bad before or during communist regime. It certainly wasn’t what it has been for the last 35-years! Hate begets hate and injustice breeds injustice but a virus only works on the weak. The more things change, the more they remain the same and all one can do is watch the world burn.
Some memorable words and sentences:
Butcher’s Bill (i.e. number of killed and injured).
Lone wolf/ lone rat / freelance terrorism / lone avenger terrorism.
‘Lone wolf terrorism’: the term was coined by FBI administration during Reagan era.
(Lone wolf terrorism phenomena) is more prevalent in U.S. than other countries.
(In the post-9/11 period) single-attack lone wolves are more as opposed to multiple-attack lone wolves.
(In the post-9/11 period) there have been more lone wolf attacks during Obama presidency of 2009-2015.
“Human time bombs with their fuses set across the information super highway,” (said the presiding judge in Baumhammer trial of 2000, i.e. internet spawned the lone gunman)
There is no single ‘conveyor belt’ for radicalization.
Jihobbiyist (Pantucci’s phrase on jihadi lobbyist)
(Lone gunmen exhibit) self-taught ideology, leaderless resistance.
And when Martin Luther King died at the hands of James Earl Ray in Memphis on April 4, 1968, part of the nation’s conscience died with him.
‘White Crackers’; ‘United Snakes of America’; The Turner Diaries; Waco Code 4-1-9-9-3.
‘Aggrieved Entitlement’.
“I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that there would have been no crime here except the government instigated it, planned it and brought it to fruition.” (U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon on the Newburgh Four)
The DNA of Sharia.
An average of four new books on terrorism is published each day; one book appears every six hours. Still, it is estimated that only one percent of these works have included direct contact with terrorists. This book is part of the 1%.
Military, prisons and internet have radicalizing potential.
(Sami Hassoun) Not a saint, but not a terrorist either.
Alex Jones, ‘the most prolific conspiracy theorists in contemporary America’.
Government and big business have colluded to create a new world order through manufactured economic crises, sophisticated surveillance technology and inside-job terrorist attacks that deliberately fuel public hysteria. (again Alex Jones)
The dustbin of history.
“Terrorism is not an activity that attracts the well-adjusted.” (Terrorism researcher, Brian Jenkins, testifying before Senate Homeland Security Committee in aftermath of Fort Hood massacre, when asked if Maj. Nidal Hasan was a terrorist or a deeply troubled man).
(APAQ) Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s English-language online magazine ‘Inspire’.
“My husband was not a terrorist, he was just hopeless.” (Empire State Bldg. shooter, Ali Abu Kamal’s wife, 1997)
May 25, 2019
Oh, the shock! This uniquely 21st century phenomenon, and it's an age, meaning it might take even 3-4 years till a new fad will capture the imagination of "the sky is falling" crowd.
May 15, 2021
Excellent book one the phenomenon of lone wolf terrorism. The concept and term itself are controversial, but the authors define it precisely and convincingly. Then the analyses of the phenomenon with case studies and theories is impressive. The writing style is engaging and exiting. And there are citations!
The only problem with this book is its focus almost solely on US. The authors justify it citing that most lone wolf terrorists and terrorist attacks occur in the US.
Still a great book that has some incredible sad stories. Most lone wolf terrorist are lonely, uneducated, poor and depressed white men. They are in popular terms "loosers". But a combination of factors makes a minority of these pathetic people to try to "redeem" themselves in a bloody terrorist attack, in name of "US patriotism" or global Jihad. Reading the case studies you can almost understand why they became terrorists. When there is no personal motive to live, why not go in a "blaze of glory"?
The only problem with this book is its focus almost solely on US. The authors justify it citing that most lone wolf terrorists and terrorist attacks occur in the US.
Still a great book that has some incredible sad stories. Most lone wolf terrorist are lonely, uneducated, poor and depressed white men. They are in popular terms "loosers". But a combination of factors makes a minority of these pathetic people to try to "redeem" themselves in a bloody terrorist attack, in name of "US patriotism" or global Jihad. Reading the case studies you can almost understand why they became terrorists. When there is no personal motive to live, why not go in a "blaze of glory"?
July 2, 2017
2.5 stars.
The Good:
- working definition of "lone wolf terrorist"
-case analysis of those cases that fit the definition
-historical overview that covers more than 70 years
-pointing out there are limits to their work
The Bad
- the working definition is just that: working
-problems with methodology
-the blatant bias, especially political bias
- the language used. I felt the authors wrote a fictional thriller about lone wolf terrorists rather than a scholarly work. Words matter.
-the fact that is an academic work that ignores reality and seems poorly researched (or not researched at all in some cases) in some areas and overly focused in others
The Good:
- working definition of "lone wolf terrorist"
-case analysis of those cases that fit the definition
-historical overview that covers more than 70 years
-pointing out there are limits to their work
The Bad
- the working definition is just that: working
-problems with methodology
-the blatant bias, especially political bias
- the language used. I felt the authors wrote a fictional thriller about lone wolf terrorists rather than a scholarly work. Words matter.
-the fact that is an academic work that ignores reality and seems poorly researched (or not researched at all in some cases) in some areas and overly focused in others
May 3, 2022
super useful
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews