International Journal on Criminology Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2015 | Page 63

At the Risk of Repeating Myself, Lumpenterrorism is Now with Us
Spaaij also differentiates the “lone wolf ” from the “lone madman,” whose aims are
intrinsically idiosyncratic (a word defined by Webster’s Unabridged as “peculiar to
the individual”), completely self-centered, and deeply personal.
Thus, to take the most coherent examples of this, we might look at those lone
wolves who have their own ideology, expressed and generally made known in the
form of a work of reference, who have or make their own arsenal of weapons, and who
carry out their activity completely alone: Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the Unabomber,
active in the United States from 1975 to 1996; David Copeland, a nail-bomb specialist
in London, in 1999; and Anders Breivik in Norway, in 2011. To these can be added the
known assassins of public figures such as Robert Kennedy and Pim Fortuyn, who are
believed to have had individual motives and operational methods that allow them to
be classified in this group.
In all the other cases, we do see lone operators, but they are lone operators
who maintain strong links to structured groups, and have regular, direct, and indirect
contact with preachers, or with the leaders of terrorist groups; this leads us to classify
them with autonomous, but nonindependent groups. A newspaper’s special envoy is
not a “lone journalist;” he or she is simply working at a distance from the editorial
board.
Similarly, especially at the present time, there are the lone madmen, whose
problems are recognized and clearly identified, but generally underestimated. We
have moved, in the space of a few years, from hyperterrorism to gangsterrorism, and
on to lumpenterrorism. Each wave leaves behind its dregs, who survive somewhere,
perhaps within some group that manages to outlive the others.
Despite being less effective and less spectacular than the large-scale attacks
of the period from 1996 to 2004, the nature of these microattacks—little more than
gnat bites—is such that they impact very noticeably on everyday life, especially if each
microevent, however dramatic, is presented in a way that makes it sound like another
9/11.
The paradox of what we are seeing at present is that it seems more like a series
of death spasms than the arrival of a new wave or a new generation; the latter seem to
prefer to engage out on the ground, as in Chechnya, Kosovo, Libya, Syria, Iraq, and
elsewhere.
Paradoxically, beyond the horrific facts and the suffering of the victims and
those close to them, it all looks more like the death throes of a cycle that began with
the 1996 Declaration of War against America, rather than any process of renewal.
A new and different phase has begun, based around known and recognized causes.
But we must never lose sight of the essential issue, lying beyond even the tension
surrounding the Palestinian question. What we are now seeing is, above all, a problem
arising out of the relationships between the Sunni monarchies and their Western
allies, who are increasingly clearly being seen as “hypocrites,” a particularly insulting
term in the language of Arab diplomacy. After 1979, the United States abandoned
all its historic allies, and then belatedly changed its mind again. The appearance of
ISIL, a powerfully equipped and barbarous mercenary army, seems the clearest Sunni
response to the United States over the thaw in its relations with a nuclear Iran. The
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