ABSTRACT
Lone wolf and autonomous cell violence is as old as time itself. Phineas, the biblical figure who might well be considered the archetypical Lone Wolf (Numbers 25:1-9) is credited with averting the wrath of God from the Hebrews by taking it upon himself to murder an Israelite man and a Midianite woman whose miscegenatistic coupling threatened the survival of the Hebrew people. Phineas’ act was cited by the Sicarii, a radical offshoot of the 1st-century Zealots, as the inspiration for the doomed uprising against Roman rule, which ultimately led to the expulsion of the Jewish people from the Holy Land. In recent years, Phineas inspired eponymous organizations or networks in the American Racist Right and the Israeli Radical Right.2 The ‘‘Lone Avenger’’ motif has appeared in every era and in virtually every culture in the world.
As evidenced by the quotation by President Obama which precedes this introduction, ‘‘lone wolves’’ have become a term of art which is found in government and security circles no less than in the popular media. Even if lone wolves have always existed, it is commonly believed that it is a phenomenon distinct to our times that reflects many
general trends in terrorism, conflicts, and societies in general.3 The Internet and social media are among major recent developments that have enabled communication in ways and in scope that was not possible before. More generally, in today’s globalized world, the power of an individual to do good or bad is believed to have increased greatly. Lone wolf terrorists are essentially an extreme manifestation of the feared ‘‘super-empowered angry men’’4 who are believed to be next-to-impossible to detect in advance, but capable of major destruction.
