The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism
BY MARK S. HAMM AND RAMON SPAAIJ
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 2017
The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism (Columbia University Press, 2017), by Mark S. Hamm and Ramon Spaaij, identifies patterns among individuals that commit acts of terror outside of a group or network. Hamm and Spaaij follow these individuals, commonly called lone wolf terrorists, through multiple data points to inform a model of radicalization. The trends and changes in lone wolf terrorists, targets of violence, and radicalization pathways over time provides valuable insights for counterterrorism efforts. Finally, Hamm and Spaaij examine FBI sting operations that aim to prevent terrorist attacks.
Transcript
Beth Windisch
Hello and welcome back to New Books in National Security. I'm Beth Windisch, your host. And today we will be talking with Mark Hamm and Ramon Spaaij about their new book, The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism. Mark and Ramon, welcome to the show.
Mark Hamm
Thank you
Ramon Spaaij
Pleasure
Beth Windisch
Mark, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Mark Hamm
I'm a professor of criminology at Indiana State University and have been in the field of terrorism research since the late 80s when I started to look at the rise of these skinhead groups across the country. And from there I went into the militia movement and I wrote two books on the Oklahoma City bombing. And all of this happened before 9/11. So then since 9/11, my scope has broadened to include, you know, jihadi terrorism and then eventually into the move with Ramon on lone wolf terrorism. So that's sort of a snapshot of my career.
Beth Windisch
Great, Ramon, could you tell us a little bit about your background?
Ramon Spaaij
Yes, sure. Quite a different career trajectory in some respects. I'm currently a professor of sociology at Victoria University in Australia and the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. And I kind of came to have a number of sort of areas of research. But one of the problems ones is studying terrorism, violent extremism, and particularly from sort of the mid 2000s, late stage commencing research, particularly for a major project funded by the European Commission.
And one particular component of that study related to this notion of lone wolf terrorism. And that sort of initially triggered my interest. And it's basically from there where I wrote a report that was reasonably well-received that I sort of started working on some further project in this area, which culminated in my 2012 book and subsequently, as Mark mentioned, our collaboration on this recent project.
Beth Windisch
Great. Could you tell us about how this book came into being?
Mark Hamm
Yeah, I can address that. It was 2011. The National Institute of Justice in the U.S. Department of Justice issued a call for grants, a call for proposals for a series of projects on domestic radicalization. And I had been since the very beginning in the late 70s. I come to the conclusion in one book that Timothy McVeigh was a lone wolf. And I began to doubt that almost immediately after the book was published, I began to look deeper into the Oklahoma City bombing and determined that, you know, that was really a stretch, that McVeigh was assisted by at least Terry Nichols and perhaps others, and that this was a broader conspiracy, which, you know, sort of brought me full circle.
The question, well, then, what is a lone wolf terrorist and you and you search the Internet for on this topic this one report kept coming up and it came out of the Netherlands. But there is there was no name attached to it. But it was a fascinating report. And I said, well, I'm going to use this report as the basis for the Institute of Justice Project. But I got to find out who authored this report.
And so I kept digging and digging. And finally, I found that it was Ramon and we'd never met. And so I said, you know what attracted me to Ramone's work was his clarity of thinking that here was somebody who wasn't trying to impress you with his theoretical knowledge or impress you with all sort of Whiz-Bang statistics. But what he was doing was he was being very methodical in his use of terms. And I was very impressed with that clarity of thinking.
And so I contacted Ramon. I said I am typically a lone wolf myself. I hardly ever collaborate with somebody. But Ramon had done such a fine job with that. I said, you know, I'm going to throw in with this guy if he wants to. And thankfully, he was interested in doing that. And so we put together this project for the National Institute of Justice and we were funded for it. And then so that was 2011, 2012, all the way through 2015 when we completed that project.
And then from there, we took off and we summarized everything in this book that became The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism. So that is how the collaboration came about. To this day, there are only a handful maybe five, you can count on one hand, the number of academic books that have been written on this topic. And so, you know that to the extent what our contribution, I think, is that we come up here with this clearly identified pathway or model for understanding the radicalization of individuals who end up committing terrorism on their own.
Beth Windisch
So from time to time, we see some disagreement about the term lone wolf come up in articles and journals. Can you talk about what the term means and how you use it?
Ramon Spaaij
Sure. Now, you're absolutely right. So it's quite a contested term, not just amongst sort of scholars, but also, for example, in law enforcement community. Right.
So one of the criticisms of it might be that if, for example, glamorized this type of criminal activity and also one might say, well, how useful is a metaphor like that when we're looking at, for example, wolf biology and when we compare that to human behavior? So there's a number of these critiques which we Mark and I've discussed at length and I think the way we use in this book. So let me start by just explaining how we apply is to really focus on so it kind of more practical level at this in the sense of operational independence, so that these are individuals that are not acting as part of its members or being directed by an extremist group or cell or network.
And in that sense, they kind of choose their own targets. They don't radicalize in isolation. So explain that in a minute what I mean by that. But basically, they kind of operate their own and in a way so they can see themselves as such. So as soldiers, as warriors for a particular cause. And they're in that process. They seek to become historical figures and work through their violent acts actually individuals who potentially change the course of history.
So this is a quite sort of strong sense of individual sort of honor, purpose, meaning involved in that what we see in the process, obviously, that that's one of the critiques saying, well, you know, and Mark raised this in this example of Timothy McVeigh, how alone how many of these individuals? Well, indeed, a lone wolf doesn't operate in a social-political vacuum. Right. So and we'll talk about that later. But in the book, we make a big case for we need to still look at how these individuals interact with their broader social environments to really understand how this example this radicalization process works.
And so also, when we think about prevention strategies, we still need to think about, for example, about the fact that many of these lone wolves actually love to talk and they probably talk too much because they want to seek renown for their cases and they like to communicate their violent intentions to the outside world. Otherwise the act, in a sense, meaningless. And so I take those critiques so personally. I understand where they're coming from. But I would say there's actually no empirical evidence that this terminology is ever glamorized any of these actors and Mark can talk about this later when we talk about our direct contact with these individuals that didn't even necessarily frame themselves in terms of this lone wolf using that exact terminology at all. And also that there are actually some interesting parallels, for example, with lone wolves, how they operate sort of thing in nature, and particularly how many of these individuals over time have sought to belong to a group, either a physical group or a virtual community online, for example.
And often they are sort of drifters. So that sort of sense of belonging in groups. But I've never quite found it.
They never really fit kind of socially or in a group or they felt the group was not extreme enough with a lot of talk, but no action. So for a number or the group felt that these were undisciplined characters who were kind of a liability. So for a number of reasons, we see kind of dynamics that we actually also see in in in fact, in lone wolves who seek to belong to packs, but for a variety of reasons, may drift in and out of packs over time, but also always looking for that sense of belonging and purpose.
So, Mark might want to add to that, but this is sort of my thinking around this kind of question.
Mark Hamm
Yeah, I would only add one thing is that you're right in identifying these critiques of the term lone wolf terrorism. But many times what the critics overlook there is that it was us, it wasn't academics who designed who initiated the use of this term, it was indeed the FBI and the FBI drew that term from a small group of white supremacists operating during the Reagan administration. And they use that term to identify the standalone terrorist, this lone actor terrorist, and they continue to use that term up to today. President Obama used that term repeatedly. So this is not a pie in the sky theoretical academic term indeed is just the opposite, is seen as a valid analytical tool by practitioners.
And so the critics must first deal with that issue when they begin to attack the those of those of us who use this term.
Beth Windisch
Great. Thank you. So the book and Ramon, you hinted to this a little bit, some of the themes the book lays out the model of radicalization and the different stages. Could you walk us through the radicalization model of lone wolf terrorism?
Mark Hamm
OK, I'll take that first, and Ramon can add to it. All right. There are five phases to this model, and I'll go through them one at a time. The first is that the lone wolf. First of all, let me tell you how we got to this. We got to this, this is empirically based. In other words, we identified 123 lone wolf terrorists between 1940 and mid-2016. And we analyzed these 123 lone wolves across 21 different variables.
So we're coming up within the neighborhood of 2500 original data points. Now, I say all that to make the point is that this is not a theoretical model. It is not abstract. It has been empirically verified. And so let me now state what the five steps are. One, the lone wolves tend to mix of personal vendettas with a political grievance. All right, so they have a personal frustration and a political frustration that tend to get melded together. Two, is that these individuals tend to have some affinity with either an extremist group or an online sympathizer.
Now, what affinity means is that there is some sort of nuanced liking of these other groups in they find something in these groups that they want to model themselves after or they find something appealing about these groups. Now that in that typically in the post 9/11 era, does not mean face to face contact. So. Right. So this is very important. So they are being influenced through the Internet, through virtual means. So, therefore, this is a fundamental change in the way radicalization occurred as opposed to the pre-Internet era.
The third is a third step in. The model is an enabler. Now, this is an individual who has attracted widespread media attention because of his or her typically is his political violence. His terrorism- his extreme beliefs. And people, lone wolves tend to have a great deal of empathy for these people and look upon them as role models of a sort. And they typically are people who are no longer living. And I'll just name probably from a white supremacist.
To this day around the world, 60 years after his death, Adolf Hitler is still such an influential figure, iconic figure that he inspires through his example acts of terrorism by neo-Nazis. On the other side of the jihadist side of the column, both Anwar al-Awlaki and Osama bin Laden, both dead for a number of years now. They continue to inspire jihadists. So these are enablers. These are people inspired by example. The fourth step is a broadcasting of intent.
Ramon mentioned these people. They seek renown for their beliefs. They talk too much about their beliefs. And matter of fact, we use the term in the book oversharing, that these guys tend to they want to be known for their beliefs. And many times they want people to know that what they're going to do. So this is a deep psychological process, dealing with identity and dealing with a sense of renown for for their beliefs. The final the fifth is a triggering event. These triggering events can either be personal, political or some combination of the two. We find this is the political are just as important as the personal the political events tend to be. For example, when the when ISIS released a video recording calling for acts of violence against the West during Ramadan 2016, this became an event that that that triggered Omar Mateen's assault on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Mateen was a lone wolf in waiting. He and but he did something to spark the catalyst to set it off.
And so that was what the triggering event was for Mateen. So in other words, in all one hundred twenty-three of these cases, we see every element there that I've mentioned showing up in the majority of cases and then the final. And then this leads to terrorism. Now, in about 30 percent of the cases, we see a copycat effect. So that whole cycle begins all over again. Two other comments about the model one, it's not necessarily linear.
In other words, there's not a lock step model where people have to go through each successive phase to become a terrorist. It is more of a heuristic or learning device so that people can begin to understand, get an appreciation for the specific behavior. And this is the keyword in our approach. These are behavioral indicators, something you can witness, something you can see. We are not all apathetic bystanders watching these things go by. And so you can see these things and you can act on them.
And we provide some examples in the book where lone wolf attacks have indeed been stopped because of bystanders, parents, teachers, gun store clerks have reacted to some of these characteristics. So I think that's I'll leave it at that. That that's a summary of the what we call the radicalization model of lone wolf terrorism.
Beth Windisch
Thank you. The data that you use to form the model is frequently grouped by pre 9/11 and post 9/11 events. How did dividing the data inform your analysis?
Ramon Spaaij
I think that I think a key point there is, as Mark mentioned, right.
So we're covering a very large period, 1940 to 2016. And so with what we what we were interested in and what are some of the developments, both continuities and changes over time, what are some of the patterns? Where do we see changes? And one of the prominent changes, for example, is with regard to targets and particularly the increasing targeting of military personnel and and law enforcement, but also look at some sort of continuity. And so, obviously, there's different ways to do it.
So we're looking in book in a number of instances. We do that more, for example, by decade or we do it by looking at some of the critical case studies really well, what we call the paradigmatic case studies that is really exemplify sometimes a shift or discontinuity in some of the key trends.
But what we also found is, is to be quite useful is to to look sort of at pre and post 9/11 and look at what are some of the key features, similarities, patterns of lone wolf terrorism before and after. And I think there are strengths and weaknesses to that. And I think it helps us to actually make visible some of the more the more subtle changes that have occurred over time. Yet mostly those changes don't necessarily always neatly align with the pre and post 9/11.
So, for example, I'm thinking and we do this explicitly in the book, we also highlight some other dates, such as particularly, for example, the election of former President Barack Obama as a key point, particularly in where we start seeing some shifts in patterns of global extremism and, for example, anti-government right-wing extremists. So I think it's always useful to look at particular dates, times, time periods in order to be able to identify continuities and changes.
But at the same time, I think that there are there are more than just the pre and post 9/11. Mark, you want to add to that?
Mark Hamm
We could do a whole hour on this on a methodological level demarcation in order to determine whether things have changed longitudinally over time, you need some demarcation. You know, in experimental research terms, you need a pre and post test, if you will. And so by splitting the data between a pre and post 9/11 era, we have effectively provided the demarcation so that we can make comparisons. In other words, you can't say that lone wolf terrorism is changing in any substantive way without having such a timeline.
And so strictly on a methodological level, a science, social, scientific level, it makes a lot of sense to do that. This allows you to make discoveries. For example, we you know, we found five women of the pre 9/11 era who were lone wolf terrorists. All of them were assassins. We have seen none in the post 9/11. Why are there no women assassins anymore who come out of this lone wolf terrorism? Why? Why is that?
This is an interesting question. Sociologically, criminologically an issue for women's studies. So this is just one finding that we were able to discover by making that demarcation, by making that drawing that line in the sand and say, OK, what have what has happened over time?
Beth Windisch
Yeah, another finding with that demarcation came up in the radicalization chapter and let's just say, the bar graph is very telling about the rise of the Internet and its impact. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Mark Hamm
Yes. Well, the you know, I mean I mean, this is you don't get tautological here with the fact that the Internet wasn't around prior to 9/11 so that there were other ways, other methods by which these individuals developed affinity for extremist causes. And they typically did that through in the earlier years through. They either belong to an extremist group like the Ku Klux Klan and oftentimes didn't find the Klan violent enough or extreme enough. And so they like a like a wolf does, a lone wolf does.
He splits from the pack and goes out on his own and becomes an independent operator. Now along comes the Internet and the rise of chat rooms and the rise of propaganda online bomb-making material online, purchasing firearms online, the whole bit and the face of radicalization begins to change. And so after 9/11, the majority of the radicalization, the locus or place of radicalization, was no longer the extremist group, but was now online. And this radicalization came through through an affinity between anonymous online sympathizers.
Now we've got people here who were radicalized to go off to Syria to fight with ISIS in their jihad. And they had done so through communicating online with people who had never set foot in Syria. All they were doing was they were confirming in pushing and inspiring and promoting this jihad, even though they had no direct experience with it. So that's an important post 9/11 development that every I mean, every think tank on terrorism, every domestic terrorism, international terrorism bureaucracy in Washington has dealt with and continues to deal with millions of dollars been spent on trying to figure out how to do counter radicalization online.
Matter of fact, it's sort of a cottage growth industry.
Beth Windisch
The book makes a point of highlighting your direct correspondence and interviews with convicted terrorists. What did you gain from those experiences that added context beyond the data you gathered through more indirect sources?
Mark Hamm
Now, the first thing you gain is a lot of frustration. The this is in universities of any of your listeners who do research in and through the university. You know that you have to get human subjects approval through an institutional review board. An IRB. Traditionally doing first primary research on criminals of any sort is a lengthy process. To do it on imprisoned terrorists is outright torturous. You have to go through IRB processes. You have to get permission from the Bureau of Prisons, the FBI, Homeland Security, CIA.
If the inmate is a foreign national, then you need permission from the inmate, his lawyers and the warden of the prison. And it took us two years to get IRB permissions on the just the handful of inmates that we had direct contact with. Now, having said that, once you get this, this is you're provided with a bound with some rich data that nobody has ever seen in open sources, even the even law enforcement.
You know, we believe we can find ourselves with people that the FBI has investigated, that we are able to find out things about because we don't we don't present any sort of the of law enforcement hammer. You know, we don't. And so, you know, we're not intimidating. People were there is social scientists to try to figure out what caused these people to behave the way they have. And so through this particularly the prison interview and split those interviews up into two days.
And so, you know, you're looking at four to five hours per day. And so at the end of that two day session, and these are all just one on one or small small places where we're doing these never two inmates. And these inmates are usually accompanied by a warden because they're high profile inmates. And so but through that through that interaction, again, you know, you kind of start slow with questions the inmate is comfortable in asking.
And over time, you develop a rapport with this inmate. And so he begins to trust you. And after he trusts you, then you move very incrementally to the larger issues of radicalization. And finally, the last place you go is, you go to the act of terrorism yourself. You simply don't walk in and boom, ask the guy, why did you do it? This is stupid. You have to you have to understand and be respectful of this person you're interviewing and know that this took a lot of this person was willing to risk his life, gamble and throw away his life in order to commit this act of violence.
Now, to get to there, to get to that position where he wants to tell you about that demands a lot of confidence in interpersonal confidence and in rapport building. And so, you know, this comes through letter writing at the front end of this and then speaking to the guards and counselors and people. I've also interviewed the family members and gone to the neighborhoods where they committed these acts of terrorism. And so, you know, then, you know, the layout of the land.
And so by the time you get to the prison to interview these people, you know things about them, you know, you know, you might walk in to see you had a birthday a week ago. They brighten up. So this guy is taking the time to know me or I walk through your neighborhood and I see where your sister lives. She's still there. Everything's OK. And so this is rapport building. So you're treating these people not as human subjects, but as actual really human beings.
And so the long and short of it is that it is very difficult. It is torture. It's time consuming. It is frustrating in the extreme. That's the negative part of it. The positive part of it is you you reap a bounty that is that is very unusual and in a very deep and, you know, it sort of provides the a whole new way of looking at this phenomenon of terrorism.
Beth Windisch
I found it interesting that you identified previous criminal activity and in particular instances of domestic violence as a strong commonality in lone wolf terrorists. What does this information tell us about these actors?
Ramon Spaaij
I think that was one of the maybe not so much surprising but very interesting findings that I think so definitely criminal activity, histories of criminal activity in general, but also particularly the domestic violence is something that I'm particularly and Mark we had many discussions also about in terms of what this means, particularly also in terms of that Mark referred earlier to there being so few and particularly none in the post 9/11 era, female lone wolves. What does this mean also between the link between, say, masculinity and violence as a means of the performance of masculinity, for example?
And so what we found since a number of things, so that in the post 9/11 era, particularly, we saw that interpersonal conflicts of these male lone wolves with women, for example, their girlfriends or wives, quite often featured as some sort of triggering events, particularly, for example, when these women announced their intention to leave an abusive relationship, for example. And that actually became a point at which they either get threatened or or assaulted and so are specific acts of very serious domestic violence.
The other thing we saw in that process is that almost in some cases, the home, the home environment became almost sort of a training ground where these male lone wolves could sort of rehearse and perfect the use of violence against their own families and almost as sort of a stepping stone towards future attacks.
So even in terms of the the socialization into the use of violence. Right. And in gaining some sort of confidence in the use of violence, we found that sort of the home environment in a few of these cases, particularly in the post 9/11 era, play quite a significant role. So that for me personally, that was well, maybe not surprising was one is very, very interesting, I think an eye opening finding. And therefore, we again, we're seeing links between this particular form of crime and other forms of of of criminal activity and, well, illegal behaviors.
So, Mark, you might want to add to that.
Mark Hamm
Yeah, I mean, I admit that this is a very intriguing finding, and I thought a lot about it. And I don't have a complete answer to this. The question is, why do the lone wolves increasingly attack women? There's a lot more to do in that area and revolving around issues of masculinity issues, obviously chauvinistic beliefs, misogyny, one of the interesting things that you find is that none of these guys in the post 9/11 era were in the military and fought in in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We found a number of guys pre 9/11 who were World War Two vets and Korea, Korea, Vietnam vet. None of these guys post 9/11 fought in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet some of those guys were, you know, took high velocity firearms and went killed groups of women. Now, there's a story in there and there's a shift in there. There's a there's a trance formation going on there with regard to this particular type of criminality. That is that is very interesting, very troubling.
I think one of the most harrowing stories we tell in the book is the is the assassination attempt of Representative Gabrielle Giffords by mentally ill young man Jared Loughner in Tucson in 2011. That was a particularly brutal crime and as Ramon was mentioning these guys see themselves as often historical figures. There is some chance that Gabby Giffords was on her way to a splendid career in politics. I mean, you know, she had a very bright future that was snuffed out in one instant and is another example of how these people are very dangerous.
And in a very brazen walk right up to that woman, shot her point blank in the forehead was horrible. Now, why a woman? There are other politicians around. You know, why her what was it that moved him to hate this woman so much? So these are part of deep psychological issues going on here. What we did, we didn't go into this looking for that. This is not a deductive process. It was all inferential.
Oh, my God. You know, once we got done, we looked back at the data. We saw this there's this pattern going on. And this is what the true social science hopes to achieve is not to go into it with any predetermined notions, but let the data speak to you. And this was one of the most compelling findings we made this issue about women.
Beth Windisch
Yeah, I wanted to just say that I found that section on the on the Gabby Giffords assassination attempt to be just really detailed. And I'll note that the book has several of these kind of examples throughout it that provide a lot of detail and context to these different attacks and a lot of background that give you a holistic overview of all the different pieces. I also just wanted to touch upon that you towards the end of the book and even in other places, you talk about the FBI sting operations and the role of those sting operations and counterterrorism efforts. Could you talk a little bit about those and what you found?
Mark Hamm
The FBI sting operations against lone, typically lone Muslim males is the the federal government's most ambitious attempt to control this problem of lone wolf terrorism. And what this amounts to is sending an undercover informant. That's a redundancy. All informants are undercover by by definition, sending typically these are these are criminals. Somebody has been caught and busted for a crime. And the FBI notices that these people have a potential to become a confidential informant.
And so what they'll do is they'll flip them, you know, say, all right, you know, you're going away to prison for life or we're making another deal. You go out here and such and such a community and find someone who is has a proclivity. That's the legal term, a proclivity for committing an act of terrorism. And oh, and you begin to ensnare you begin to encourage this person to commit an act of terrorism. Operating through the FBI they begin to encourage these people to join a conspiracy to commit terrorism. Over time, FBI undercover FBI agents then are added to the mix. And after six, eight months, what you've got is a full blown what looks to be a terrorist conspiracy. What this is, is an attempt. And here is this is the contentious term entrap, entrap these people into an act of terrorism. Now, what our argument is and when we look at the interview, these guys and look at their backgrounds, they were not and they didn't have the criminal skills to commit an act of terrorism, a bombing, let's say, by themselves. They didn't have the resources, the money, the vehicles, the know how to commit these acts of terrorism, only when the FBI intervened and radicalized these people were they able to go down this road eventually toward a terrorist event. Now, none of them are terrorist actions because at the last minute, the FBI intervenes and arrests this person and it usually gets reported as is supporting, providing material support or attempted bombing.
But this is the sting, you know, the FBI used stings in white collar crime cases, mafia cases. And since 9/11, they've begun to apply it more and more. It happened before 9/11, too, but they've since 9/11, they've upped the ante and they have doubled on their efforts to try to initiate these things in Muslim communities across the country. There are when we look there were at least there was one, according to James Comey, before he left office.
He said there were FBI investigations going on and terrorism investigations in all 50 states. What he was talking about, these were sting operations that were going on. And so these are multi, probably billion dollar operations. And their intent is not really to stop an act of terrorism, but it is to demonstrate to the public that the FBI is indeed doing something about terrorism. And so what they need to be spectacular tales of a foiled plot.
And then the media trots these people out and said, well, you know, we stopped another one. Well, they weren't really stopped. We're arguing is that there's a better way to do this. You don't have to. Then you say these guys go to prison for 30 years to life. There's a different way to do this. You don't have to encourage somebody to bomb other Americans. You can provide them with an off ramp to the radicalization.
Many of these guys are mentally ill, drug addicted. We found one guy was so mentally ill during this thing, he actually circumcised himself on the streets of Harlem. Now, there's a guy who you could probably do something different with rather than encourage him to bomb a subway. And there are there are other cases, many that this scenario follows. These are marginalized people with drug and alcohol problems and mental illness problems on the margins of society. And the FBI is exploiting them for their own reputation and to demonstrate that they're winning the domestic war on terrorism.
These are highly controversial operations. When you speak about, Ramon can probably confirm this, when you explain these FBI terrorism stings to European audiences, they are appalled. Nothing like this happens in Europe. Nothing like this happens in the U.K. These are a unique product of the FBI. And they have some roots back in the legacy of J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO and these programs to stop dissidents during the late forties up through the two to the early 70s.
Ramon Spaaij
That's a good point, Mark. And just to add to that, you're absolutely right. So, for example, the European context, they recognize this idea of, hey, you might have alternatives when one of these individuals comes on your radar. Right? You have some choices of which path you follow, which the sting operation is one. In Europe, for example, they are working particularly hard also to enhance the access of these individuals, then to decent support, so say mental health care, etc, to actually ensure that this person doesn't follow that path either to violence or to jail and actually is offered opportunities to find, you know, well, "A" improve health, but also "B" to find meaningful opportunities in society. So it was actually, for example, in the European Union context that the ongoing talks and programs about those kinds of issues.
So there's the awareness indeed of how this presents us with decisions we need to make. But I think generally the consensus is that this is not the way we want to go. We actually want to see what we can do. More on the preventative side, actually preventing these individuals from radicalizing and actually gaining some meaningful opportunities to to have a sense of sort of belonging and inclusion in society. So this is quite a different approach indeed.
Beth Windisch
Well, thank you both. I really enjoyed reading the book. And I will say, while it is very rich in data and sources, it's also an extremely accessible read. Before we let you go, would you mind telling us what you are both working on now?
Mark Hamm
Well, not much. You know, I'm just I'm basically, I guess in the last eight months or so, have been reacting to invitations, you know, I wrote a book chapter on protest music and why it matters in the Trump era where we're seeing protest music. It ain't what it used to be. And it's but we haven't seen marches like we have during Donald Trump's presidency. And so I'm asking the question in an article about, you know, what was what role does music protest music is?
Is there any way like through rap you can somehow replicate what Pete Seeger or Dylan or Woody Guthrie did in earlier eras? You know, that seems does Eminem or, you know, Chance the Rapper or Lil Wayne or can that be expressed through rap music? That's intriguing me. I've also done a piece on appearance in prime appearance and terrorism, and I've written another piece on ethnography, you know, sort of the trials and tribulations of doing ethnography.
And that's about it.
Ramon Spaaij
I'm working on a few different projects.
One is related to the end of our discussion around sting operations, particularly also the mental health, so a project around the role of mental health, mental illness, but also particularly the other way. And mental health care can actually be a sort of a protective factor in radicalization or deradicalization processes and also a project where we look, particularly at the point of transition from sort of a sympathizer to someone to take up arms. And so we come to violent extremism. And so what is it in that transition?
And I think that that builds quite naturally on the work that Mark and I have done. Other than that, I'm also trying to enjoy this achievement. It's a book I'm very proud of, and I really enjoyed the collaboration with Mark. So I think it's time also to just sit back and think, oh, what a great book we've written. So I think it's that we don't often do that enough. Even the academics, we just go on to the next projects without actually celebrating our little successes along the way.
So I'm actually trying to do that a little bit more at the moment.
Mark Hamm
Yeah, that's a good point.
Beth Windisch
Well, thank you both for being on the show today.
Mark Hamm
OK, thanks for having us.
Ramon Spaaij
Pleasure
Beth Windisch
The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism by Mark Hamm and Ramon Spaiij is available now from Columbia University Press.