The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism

335 Pages·2017·6.048 MB·English

by  Mark S. Hamm and Ramón Spaaij

THE AGE OF LONE WOLF TERRORISM

Studies in Transgression
STUDIES IN TRANSGRESSION
Editor: David Brotherton
Founding Editor: Jock Young
The Studies in Transgression series w ill prese nt a range of exciting new crime-r elated
titles that off er an alternative to the mainstream, mostly positivistic approaches to
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The Age of Lone
Wolf Terrorism
Mark S. Hamm and Ramón Spaaij
Columbia University Press

New York
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup . columbia .e du
Copyright © 2017 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Names: Hamm, Mark S., author. | Spaaij, R. F. J. (Ramón F. J.), author.
Title: The age of lone wolf terrorism / Mark S. Hamm and Ramón Spaaij.
Description: New York: Columbia University Press, [2017] | Series: Studies in
transgression | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2016050672| ISBN 9780231181747 (cloth: alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780231543774 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Terrorists—P syc hol ogy. | Radicalization. | Terrorism—P revention.
Classifi cation: LCC HV6431.H3456 2017 | DDC 363.325—d c23
LC reco rd available at https:// lccn. loc . gov /2 016050672
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-f ree paper.
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca
Cover design: Faceout Studio
Contents
Foreword vii
Introduction: The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism 1
1 Identifying Commonalities Among Lone
Wolf Terrorists 13
2 Old Wine in New Skin: Reimagining Lone
Wolf Terrorism 23
3 The American Lone Wolf Terrorist: Trends, Modus Operandi,
and Background F actors 35
4 The Roots of Radicalization 59
5 The Enablers 81
6 Broadcasting Intent: The Key to Preventing Lone
Wolf Terrorism 91
7 Triggering Events 122
8 The Radicalization Model of Lone Wolf Terrorism 150
9 The L ittle Rock Military Shooting 174
10 The Pittsburgh Police Shooting 192
11 Lone Wolf Sting Operations 206
12 Lone Wolf Terrorism and FBI Mythmaking 235
Conclusion: Countering Lone Wolf Terrorism 261
Appendix: List of Cases 267
Notes 273
Index 307

[ vi ] Contents
Foreword
Simon Cottee
The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism— a massive study of lone-a ctor terrorism in
the United States—is the product of years of patient and dogged empirical
investigation. It is also the culmination of a lot of hard thinking about the
interior world and entanglements of that most quintessentially Ameri-
can iteration of cont emporary terrorism: the atomized and anomic loner
who kills for po litic al purposes. Just what is it about these individuals that
so captivates the authors of this book? Hamm and Spaaij, for their part, off er
few clues; they are far too interested in their subject matter to indulge in
any emoting about their own subjectivity. Nonetheless, it is not hard to
intuit the rudiments of an answer to this question: lone actor terrorists
pres ent a conundrum, an endlessly fascinating perplexity. They were not
born terrorists, and there was nothing inevitable about their trajectory
toward terrorism. So how did they become transformed, or transform
themselves, into terrorists? This remains an underexplored and dimly un-
derstood question, even in the fi eld of terrorism studies, where the focus is
almost exclusively on collective pol itic al viol ence. The enduring merit of
The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism is that it provides an empirically robust and
theoretically nuanced framework for addressing how ordinary individuals
can become the agents of extraordinary vio lence and destruction.

[ vii ]
A common complaint leveled at scholarly work on terrorism is that it
lacks a fi rm grounding in empirical research on a ctual terrorists and ter-
rorist groups. “The study of terrorism,” Martha Crenshaw wrote in 2000,
“still lacks the foundation of extensive primary data based on interviews
and life histories of individuals engaged in terrorism.” T here is some justice
to the complaint. But it is not one that can reasonably be targeted at The
Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism. Quite the contrary: drawing on an extensive
database of all known cases of lone wolf terrorism in the U.S. between 1940
and mid-2016 (123 cases in total), The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism provides a
model for empirically driven research on terrorism, using rich case-s tudies,
fi rst- hand interviews with lone wolf terrorists (“T oday,” the authors dryly
comment, “it may be easier for a convict to escape from an American prison
than it is for a criminologist to enter one”) and other ethnographic docu-
ments, to illustrate and support broader theorization about the social and
psychological proc esses involved in lone actor terrorism.
There is a minor cottage industry of research on defi nitional issues related
to terrorism. Hamm and Spaaij, thankfully, do not engage in any tortuous
semantic exercises; they defi ne lone wolf terrorism, commonsensically
enough, as “po litic al viol ence perpetrated by individuals who act alone;
who do not belong to an org a nized terrorist group or network; who act
without the direct infl uence of a leader or hierarchy; and whose tactics and
methods are directed by the individual without any direct outside command
or direction.”
What will you learn about lone wolves from reading this book? You
will learn, variously:
• that since 9/11 high-v elocity fi rearms have displaced bombs as the fa-
vored weaponry of lone wolves;
• that over the same period the target of lone wolf attacks has switched
from civilians to law enforcement and military personnel;
• that a third of lone wolves, as if reading from a Quentin Tarantino
movie script, reference and copy the example of earlier lone wolves;
• that lone wolves are becoming younger (the average age of the pre-9/11
lone wolf at the time of their attack was 38, compared to 31 for their
post-9/11 counterp arts);
• that, typically, lone wolves are white, unemployed, single men from an
urban area and with a prior criminal rap-s heet;

[ viii ] foreword
• that lone wolf terrorism is largely male: t here have been no women lone
wolf terrorists in the U.S. since 1993, and only fi ve out of the pre-9/11
sample were w omen;
• that lone wolf terrorism and cloudless m ental health don’t tend to go
together: approximately 40 p ercent of the lone wolves in Hamm and
Spaaij’s database suff ered from mental illness;
• that lone wolves are motivated by a combination of personal and pol iti-
cal grievances;
• that lone wolves are “enabled” by o thers, in terms of both ideological
inspiration and direct unwitting assistance;
• that an active engagement with, and immersion in, a “warrior subculture”
is a crucial elem ent in the moral c areer of becoming a lone wolf terrorist;
• that lone wolves nearly always broadcast their intent to commit terror-
ism; and
• that acts of lone wolf terrorism are often catalyzed by a “triggering
event.”
The last fi ve data points form the basis of what Hamm and Spaaij call
“the radicalization model of lone wolf terrorism,” according to which lone
wolf terrorism is the culmination of a cumulative “proc ess of h uman change
and transformation.” Although this suggests a certain neatness to the rad-
icalization proc ess, Hamm and Spaaij make it clear that their model i sn’t
necessarily linear, insisting that the distinct and fateful phases they iden-
tify in the life-h istories of lone actor terrorists—g rievances, affi nity with
an extremist group and enablers, behavioral cuing of intent to do harm,
and triggering events—v ary in the order in which they materialize.
“He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach,” writes the narrator
of Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, “that it makes no sense.” American Pastoral
is a murder mystery in which the focal point of contention is not the who,
but the why. The book’s central protagonist, Seymour Levov, is a success-
ful businessman whose sixteen- year- old d aughter Meredith (“Merry”)
blows up a post offi ce to protest the Vietnam War, killing a bystander. All
Seymour can think about is why Merry did it. She was an adored only
child who grew up in a privileged and decent family in the idyllic hamlet
of Old Rimrock, New Jersey. Seymour is desperate to locate “the wound”
that caused Merry’s viol ence. But t here was no wound, and as the novel
progresses, what Seymour learns is that his daughter is “unknowable,” and

foreword [ ix ]