Lone Wolf Terrorism

by Jeffrey D. Simon

  The role of the lone wolf as an assassin has, of course, been well documented.7 The list of lone wolf assassins, both those who succeeded in killing their target(s) and those who did not, is long, with motivations ranging from political, religious, and ethnic-nationalist causes to personal and pathological reasons.8

  THE FIVE BASIC CATEGORIES OF LONE WOLF TERRORISM

  In order to better understand who the lone wolves are and what makes them tick, it would be useful to design a simple typology that can account for the basic differences among lone wolves as well as for the differences between lone wolves and terrorist organizations. Any categorization scheme is, of course, open to debate. One may not agree with the choice of categories, their definitions, or the placement of various lone wolves into specific categories. But a typology can nevertheless help organize and clarify our thoughts and assumptions regarding lone wolf behavior.

  There are five basic types of lone wolf terrorists. Three of these categories are similar to the categories for terrorist organizations, while two are unique to lone wolves. The first type is the secular lone wolf who, like secular terrorist groups, is committing violent attacks for political, ethnic-nationalist, or separatist causes. This is the most diverse category of lone wolf terrorism, since it covers a wide range of issues, such as terrorism related to protests against government policies or attacks due to desires for a homeland, separate state, and so forth. While secular lone wolves may have personality and psychological issues that affect their decision to commit terrorist attacks (just like members of a terrorist group could have personality and psychological issues that led them to join the group in the first place), their main motivation is the same as that of secular terrorist organizations—namely, to further a political or ethnic-nationalist cause. Secular lone wolves can also use the Internet to learn about various secular extremist movements and subsequently become committed to their ideologies and objectives.

  The second type of lone wolf terrorist is the religious lone wolf. Just like a terrorist group, this type of individual perpetrates terrorist attacks in the name of some religion, whether Islam, Christianity, Judaism, or another religious belief system. Islamic extremists and white supremacists have been among the most active religious lone wolves in recent years. White supremacists and neo-Nazis can be classified as religious terrorists because many are adherents to, or are at least influenced by, the Christian Identity movement and use its racist and anti-Semitic ideology as a religious justification for their violence.9 Just like secular lone wolves, religious lone wolves can also find inspiration for their violence on the Internet, through various chat rooms, websites, and Facebook pages of religious extremist movements.

  The third type of lone wolf terrorist is the single-issue lone wolf, who perpetrates attacks in the name of specific issues, such as abortion, animal rights, or the environment. These lone wolves also resemble their counterparts in single-issue terrorist groups. In fact, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and Animal Liberation Front (ALF) are basically loose affiliations of individual militants without leaders or formal organizational structures. One of the FBI's most wanted terrorists is an individual with ties to animal rights extremist groups. Daniel Andreas is wanted for involvement in the 2003 bombings of two office buildings in northern California.

  While secular, religious, and single-issue lone wolves have, in many ways, the same objectives and motivations as their counterparts who are members of terrorist organizations, the fourth type of lone wolf is more unique. The criminal lone wolf is motivated mainly by the desire for financial gain. While some terrorist groups may also have money in mind when they commit a particular attack, their main motivation is not financial. The secular or religious (or on rare occasions, the single-issue) terrorist group that kidnaps or takes hostage an individual for ransom is still driven by the ultimate goal of a change in government policy, a revolution, a separate state, and so forth. Not so for the criminal lone wolf, who has no political, social, religious, or ethnic-nationalist goal in mind. As noted earlier (and in the appendix), I consider acts of violence committed by criminals to be terrorism when the tactics used and the effects upon government and society are the same as if the act(s) had been committed by a “terrorist.”

  The fifth type of lone wolf terrorist is the idiosyncratic lone wolf. This category of lone wolves is also unique, since, with the exception of cults that commit terrorist acts, there are really no idiosyncratic terrorist groups in operation. Although the idiosyncratic lone wolf may commit attacks in the name of some cause, it is the severe personality and psychological problems that mainly drive these individuals to violence. Their causes are usually irrational, and they are often diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenics.

  As with any typology, there is some overlap among the categories described above. For example, special-interest lone wolves such as antiabortion militants have a religious theme connected to their violence (i.e., the belief that human life begins at conception), while animal rights and environmental terrorists have a left-wing, antibusiness, and antigovernment theme attached to their attacks. White supremacists and neo-Nazis, while placed in the religious category above due to their adherence to the Christian Identity movement, tend to hold extreme right-wing, antigovernment views. But even though the category boundaries are not ironclad, a typology can still be useful for providing insight into the lone wolf phenomenon. Further insight can be gained by examining in detail some of the more intriguing cases of secular, religious, single-issue, criminal, and idiosyncratic lone wolf terrorism.

  SECULAR LONE WOLVES: TIMOTHY McVEIGH AND ANDERS BREIVIK

  One individual perpetrated an act of terrorism that claimed more lives than any other terrorist event on US soil, with the exception of the September 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks. The fact that he was a homegrown terrorist surprised and shocked most people. Another homegrown terrorist committed the worst mass shooting in Norway's history. Both cases illustrate the impact that a secular, antigovernment extremist can have upon a nation.

  Timothy McVeigh

  For most Americans, the first image of Timothy McVeigh on television and in newspapers was shocking. Clad in an orange prison-issue jumpsuit as he was taken into federal custody two days after the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people, including fifteen children, people saw an all-American boy with a crew cut. This was not the portrait of a terrorist most Americans had come to expect. With the 1993 World Trade Center bombing still fresh in the public's memory, Islamic extremists were the poster boys for terrorism, not clean-cut American youths. Yet McVeigh demonstrated how a secular lone wolf with fervent antigovernment sentiments could inflict horrific damage upon a community and, by extension, the country as a whole.

  On the morning of April 19, McVeigh parked a rental truck packed with almost five thousand pounds of explosives in front of the federal building and then left the scene before the bomb exploded. He had some help from Terry Nichols, who assisted McVeigh in mixing a deadly combination of ammonium-nitrate fertilizer, diesel fuel, and other explosives used in the bombing. Nichols was convicted of his crime in December 1997 and later sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, while McVeigh was found guilty in June 1997 and executed for his crime in June 2001.

  The Oklahoma City bombing caused more casualties than any other act of terrorism in the United States until the 9/11 attacks. It led to a focus on right-wing militias as the new terrorist threat in the country, since McVeigh (and Nichols) had attended meetings of a militia group in Michigan. McVeigh was upset with the 1993 government raid on the Branch Davidian cult's compound in Waco, Texas, in which more than eighty cult members died when the compound burst into flames during the raid, which took place after a fifty-one-day standoff. Federal authorities had claimed that the cult members possessed large numbers of illegal weapons. The Oklahoma City bombing occurred on the second anniversary of the government's raid.

  For McVeigh, like othe
rs who belonged to or were sympathetic to the militia movement, the raid symbolized the government's intent to confiscate all citizens’ weapons, thereby abrogating the Second Amendment's guarantee of the right of all citizens to keep and bear arms. “Waco started this war, hopefully Oklahoma would end it,” McVeigh said in an interview in prison. “The only way they're going to feel something, the only way they're going to get the message is quote, with a body count.”10 McVeigh further explained his kinship with the victims of the Waco raid: “You feel a bond with this community. The bond is that they're fellow gun owners and believe in gun rights and survivalists and freedom lovers.”11 McVeigh's sister recalled his anger over Waco as they watched a documentary together about the government raid on the compound. “He was very angry,” Jennifer McVeigh testified during her brother's trial. “I think he thought the government murdered the people there, basically gassed and burned them.” She also said that McVeigh felt that “somebody should be held accountable” for the deaths of the people inside the compound.12

  Two other events contributed to McVeigh's path to becoming a terrorist. One was the 1992 government siege at white separatist Randy Weaver's cabin in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. Weaver had failed to appear in court on weapons charges, and when FBI agents came to arrest him, an eleven-day siege ensued. Weaver's wife and son and a deputy marshal were killed before Weaver and an associate surrendered. McVeigh, like many others in the militia movement, felt that the government had been intrusive and used excessive force. “What the U.S. government did at Waco and Ruby Ridge was dirty,” McVeigh said. “And I gave dirty back to them in Oklahoma City.”13 McVeigh's experience as a solider in Iraq during the Persian Gulf War in 1991 also shaped his fervent antigovernment feelings. He believed that the US government made him kill innocent people. “My overall experience in the Gulf War taught me that these people were just that—they were people, human beings. Then I had to reconcile that with the fact that I killed them.”14

  McVeigh had originally considered other targets, including assassinating elected officials, but chose to bomb the federal building instead because a bombing would have a better visual impact for the television cameras. There would also be several federal agents inside the building.15 The fact that he originally considered assassination as a tactic reveals that, at one point in his planning for a terrorist operation, large numbers of casualties were not necessarily a prime objective. He even claimed that he did not know there was a daycare center inside the building, and had he known, “it might have given me pause to switch targets. That's a large amount of collateral damage.”16 That assertion, however, was dismissed by the lead FBI investigator, Danny Defenbaugh, who said there was enough evidence just by glancing at the building from the outside that there was a daycare center inside, including “little [paper] cut-out hands, all the little apples and flowers showing that there's a kindergarten there, that there are children in that building.”17

  The Oklahoma City bombing had a profound effect on the United States. Americans discovered that homegrown terrorists could be just as lethal as those who come from foreign shores. McVeigh had single-handedly changed the perception of the terrorist threat in this country away from Islamic militants and toward right-wing, antigovernment extremists. The bombing led to renewed efforts to combat terrorism in the United States, including heightened security measures across the country, the creation of a Domestic Counterterrorism Center headed by the FBI, and the hiring of a thousand new federal officials by the administration of President Bill Clinton to deal with terrorism. McVeigh demonstrated how a lone wolf extremist could be as deadly and effective as larger terrorist groups. Until the 9/11 attacks occurred more than six years later, Oklahoma City remained the tragic symbol of America's vulnerability to terrorism. As McVeigh said, “The truth is, I blew up the Murrah Building. And isn't it kind of scary that one man could reap this kind of hell?”18

  Anders Breivik

  The same could be said for Anders Breivik, a thirty-two-year-old Norwegian man, who, in a couple of hours of violence, put his country through a “kind of hell” people there never imagined could happen. Norway, for the most part, had been spared the endless terrorism that for decades plagued many other countries around the world. Between 1970 and 2010, there were only fifteen terrorist attacks in Norway, with only one person killed and thirteen wounded in those incidents.19 Yet on July 22, 2011, Breivik launched a twin terrorist assault that resulted in seventy-seven deaths and changed his country forever. “I think what we have seen,” said Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, “is that there is going to be one Norway before and one Norway after July 22.”20

  After setting off a car bomb that killed eight people in Oslo near government offices (including the prime minister's), Breivik traveled by boat to Utoya Island, approximately twenty miles to the northwest, where a summer camp attended by the youth wing of the ruling Labor Party was in its third day. Wearing a policeman's uniform, Breivik told camp officials he was there to protect the campers, who had already heard the news about the Oslo bombing. Breivik then walked to the area where the campers’ tents were located and began shooting whoever he could find. Some of the campers fled to the shore and jumped into the water in an attempt to swim away, but Breivik began shooting them, too. At one point during the massacre, four campers ran toward Breivik, thinking he was a real policeman who could protect them from the gunman on the island. Breivik shot all four dead. When Norwegian police finally arrived—they were delayed for more than an hour due to several problems, including a stalled engine on the first boat they tried to use to reach the island—Breivik surrendered. He had killed sixty-nine people, mostly youths, during the rampage.21

  Breivik was not in the Norwegian police's database of right-wing extremists.22 “He just came out of nowhere,” a police official said after the carnage was over.23 Indeed, one of the advantages lone wolves have over terrorist groups is that they are often not on anybody's radar, as they quietly plot their attacks with minimal or no communication with others. Breivik was, however, put on a Norwegian security-service watch list in March 2011, after buying large amounts of ammonium nitrate fertilizer from an online store in Poland. The fertilizer was used to construct the car bomb that Breivik set off in Oslo. He was soon taken off the list because Norwegian authorities decided that the purchases were for use on a farm that Breivik had rented.24 Breivik was careful not to raise any alarm bells as he planned his attacks. Janne Kristianse, the director of the Norwegian Police Security Service, said that Breivik “had been extremely law-abiding” and that there were “no warning lights” that he was a terrorist. “He has also deliberately failed to be violent in statements online, not been a part of any extremist network and had registered guns, but was a member of a gun club,” the director said.25

  Breivik, though, advocated violence in passages he wrote in a fifteen-hundred-page manifesto that he posted online shortly before the attacks. “Once you decide to strike,” he wrote, “it is better to kill too many than not enough, or you risk reducing the desired ideological impact of the strike.”26 Breivik called for an end to “the Islamic colonisation and Islamisation of Western Europe” and the “rise of cultural Marxism/multiculturalism,” blaming Norwegian politicians for allowing that to happen.27 The Labor Party had long been in favor of immigration.28 More than 12 percent of Norway's population of five million consists of immigrants or children of immigrants, with half coming from Asia, Africa, or Latin America.29 Breivik wrote the following chilling warning in the manifesto:

  We, the free indigenous peoples of Europe, hereby declare a preemptive war on all cultural Marxism/multiculturalist elites of Western Europe…. We know who you are, where you live and we are coming for you. We are in the process of flagging every single multiculturalist traitor in Western Europe. You will be punished for your treasonous acts.30

  Breivik's path to violence does not appear to stem from his upbringing. Although his parents divorced when he was one year old and he eventually became estranged from his
father, he wrote that he had a happy childhood. He attended an elite high school, where he joined the youth wing of the Progressive Party, which had an anti-immigration platform. He soon became angered by reports that immigrant gangs were attacking ethnic Norwegians. He was also incensed by the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, which he perceived as an attack on Christians for the sake of Muslims.31

  Although Breivik was described after the attacks by some observers as a religious extremist—the New York Times carried a headline portraying Breivik as a “Christian extremist”32—he fits more into the category of a secular lone wolf terrorist than a religious one. He attacked symbols of the ruling Labor Party—government offices and a government-run youth camp—during his rampage, rather than mosques or other Muslim targets. He even tried to spare one person, whom he thought was not a leftist, when he began his shooting rampage at the camp. “Certain people look more leftist than others,” Breivik said during his trial in April 2012. “This person…appeared right-wing, that was his appearance. That's the reason I didn't fire any shots at him.”33 In his manifesto, which he said took three years to complete, Breivik warned against targeting Muslims, since it would likely elicit sympathy for them.34 He also wrote, “As for the Church and science, it is essential that science takes an undisputed precedence over biblical teachings.”35 Religious extremists, whether Christian, Muslim, or Jewish, are likely to view their religion's holy books as the guiding force in their lives.