At first glance the term “Lone Wolf Terrorists” looks like something from a Tom Clancy novel. Alas! These people are for real and they walk amongst us.
Lone Wolf terrorists are people who work to further a cause but do so not as part of the group. They act alone, outside the group’s direction. The lone wolf concept became popular in the sixties when White Supremacist, Tom Metzger, urged solitary and small-cell underground groups to work for White Supremacist causes by covert attacks on government and corporate structures rather than the overt, in-your-face projects White Supremacists leaders were pushing for.
Lone Wolf terrorists have been acting out for nearly a century. Lone Wolf terrorist acts include: the 1920 first vehicle bombing; the 1955 midair plane bombing; the 1961 hijacking; 1982 product tampering and the anthrax letter attacks in 2001.
Recent lone-wolf attacks have focused on both politics and religion. Anti-Islamic lone wolf, Anders Breivik, set off a car bomb in Oslo. Next, he went to an island summer camp where he killed seventy-seven people. Islamic extremist, Maj. Nidal Maljik Hasan, shot fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has encouraged Lone Wolf attacks on the military. Other lone-wolf attackers have included: neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, and extremists who object to a variety of hot-button issues.
It was predictable that terrorist groups would seize mobile and social media resources to further their cause. In its March, 2015 newsletter The Louisiana State Fusion Center noted that terrorists are making strategic use of social media including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, ask.fm, Instagram, and Surespot, as well as publications like: Inspire Magazine, Dabiq, and Resurgence to provide easy access to anyone who wishes to learn how to work for the cause of terrorism in America.
With the increase in mobile transmission and use of social media for communication the Lone Wolf has become an increasingly worrisome concern not just for the US but for all Western nations. Thanks to social media and the Internet Lone Wolf terrorists need no training. All they need is the Internet.
Two things make lone wolf terrorists particularly dangerous. Because they operate alone, there is no group pressure or decision-making process that might mitigate their extreme behavior. The violence of lone wolves knows no bound. Acting alone, they are unconcerned with government and law-enforcement crackdowns. Following an attack, Lone Wolves simply disappear. Only to pop up somewhere else like the famous Unabomber who wreaked havoc for seventeen years before being apprehended.
Oh for a return to a simpler pre-nine-eleven time when we barely knew the term terrorism let alone that it applied to our country! Protecting yourself and your business requires the assistance of those that have proven themselves in the security industry.
Jeffrey H. James,
Founder and Chairman of Five Star Detective Agency, Inc. and Homeland Security Consultants.
Certified in Homeland Security Level V
Fellow status
A State of Illinois Licensed Private Detective 115-001564
A State of Illinois Licensed Private Security Contractor 119-000989
Holds the CBRNE certification (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Explosives)
Past Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Associated Detectives and Security Agencies of Illinois
American Board Cert Jeff James