Flaws in the ‘Lone Wolf’ Analysis

by A.J. Caschetta (August 2016)

Introduction

Beginning in the late twentieth century, the West became enthralled by the term “lone wolf” and began using it to denote perpetrators of particularly heinous crimes who act without the assistance of other criminals. The term has become practically ubiquitous with journalists, analysts and politicians now instinctively applying it not only to psychopaths like Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooter James Holmes and Newtown, Connecticut child-killer Adam Lanza, but also to jihadists, even when they attack in pairs, like roommates Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev or husband and wife Syed Rizwan Farooq and Tashfeen Malik. Rarely has a term so frequently used been so inconsistently applied.  more>>>