Scattered Attacks – Lone Actor Radicalization as a Collective Phenomenon

Violent attacks perpetrated by so-called “lone actors” are not only a currently relevant security concern, but also a very interesting phenomenon from a social science perspective. Primarily because it is becoming increasingly clear that their pathway of radicalization is in most cases not a solitary one but evolves within the context of political subcultures and radical milieus, in some cases even in militant groups. Thus, the radicalization of lone actor terrorist turns out to be a fundamentally social process. Rather than isolation, specific patterns of lone actor radicalization are marked by the fact that they often remain at the periphery of radical networks, unable, unwilling, or prevented from integrating more closely, or – in cases in which they actually became full members of radical groups – that they at some point before the attack “fall out of” these groups. This paper seeks to embed the phenomenon of Lone Actor Radicalisation explicitly within the bounds of broader collective radicalisation processes. Building on a Large-N of more than 200 cases, along a small-N informed by primary sources including interviews and restricted security documents, the paper identifies five different patterns of lone actor radicalisation. It bridges the conceptual gap from the “most lone” patterns to those which overlap with patterns of dyadic or small-group radicalisation. The paper includes jihadist, far-right and single-issue motivated cases.