A study comparing lone wolf terrorism attacks world wide

Abstract

This research analysed the phenomena of lone wolf terrorism attacks worldwide between January 2013 and December 2015. After identifying all the lone actor incidents in the set period it was key to gather all relevant information on all the 77 cases. The gathered information was analysed to create a lone wolf terrorist profile and also to reveal common tendencies that lone wolf terrorist share. The lone wolf terrorist attacks that were researched were first identified in the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) and Terrorism and Extremist Violence in the United States (TEVUS). Once a case was found, more details were found by using open source websites, such as numerous news portal and DocumentCloud. Data on every case was gathered in an excel sheet and subsequently translated into a statistic software called PSPP. The PSPP was necessary to analyse the collected data. A matrix was created to interrelate the data from the respective variables. The analysed data was presented in tables and in bar charts and discussed with the review of literature. The results show that lone wolf actor incidents occurred mainly in the United States (US). The lone actors were; mostly male; aged between 20 and 50 years; self-radicalised; and most were not labelled as terrorists. The results show that the common tendencies are that lone actors do not travel too far to commit their attacks and they prefer armed assaults and firearms. Moreover, lone terrorists between the age of 21 and 30 years did the most dangerous attack in terms of killings, injuries and damage. The most common ideology was Islam extremism. This dissertation concludes with a list of recommendations and suggestions for future studies.