In “Norway shooter a Darwin terrorist” (July 24, 2011), we said the unsayable: Darwin was one of mass murderer Breivik’s influences.
Everyone who plays by Darwin’s rules knew we had committed a serious sin:
You never acknowledge the social harms caused by Darwinism, no matter how obvious.
But we do not play by Darwin’s rules. So we consider all plausible motives.
Now here, former spook Kathleen Puckett offers some thoughts on identifying dangerous loners like Breivik, principally this observation about lone wolf tendencies:
This sets them apart from the thousands of radicals who are members of extremist groups and who never commit serious acts of violence. For such people, simply belonging to an organisation appears to satisfy their need to express their views. Kaczynski, McVeigh and Rudolph, on the other hand, were all repeatedly unable to connect socially to the groups whose ideology they shared. Instead, they resorted to carnage on a wide scale to grab the attention they craved.
– “Beware the lone wolf radicals” (New Scientist, 04 September 2011)
Interesting. Back in the 1970s, for example, many radical groups in Toronto, Canada, expressed decidedly non-mainstream opinions – dangerous if taken seriously – but with little or no violence. They were highly cohesive, and what they mainly sought was a social circle in which their anger was accepted.
They ranted revolution, but their idea of revolution was a meat-free barbecue or a grape throw in the supermarket, about fruit from California (non-unionized then).
Yuh. Puckett’s idea of paying more attention to the loners sounds right.
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