Lone Wolf Terrorism: Understanding the Nature, History, and Extent of the Problem

Domestic Violence
Lone Wolf

Nature of Problem
‘Lone wolf’ is a person who plans and commits violent acts and is an independently
operating individual.
Such violent acts are organized by them without material assistance from any group.
Lone Actors are also known as lone operator terrorists ,lone wolves, individual
terror cells, etc.
This term was coined by the media and by radical political actors (Spaaij & Hamm,
2015).
Lone Actors can be viewed as a part of larger group of terrorists . However, it is difficult to
establish difference among their criminal intention, terrorist ideology, & personal stimulus

History of problem
Supremacists Alex Curtis and Tom Metzger made the term ‘lone
wolf’ popular in 1990s.
They believed individual or small-cell secretive activity predicting
combatants who used to act alone or in small groups and attacked
the government and other targets in anonymous acts (Beydoun,
2018) .
According to terrorism expert Brian Michael Jenkins of RAND
Corporation, most of the individuals involved in such attacks appear
to be acting alone but they are often linked with terrorist
organizations (Weimann, 2012).