The Power of Literature to Decipher the Archetype of Lone-Wolf: A Critical Analysis

Introduction

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, on September 11 of 2001, accelerated dramatic changes in the American lifestyle, as well as in the international geopolitics. The West faces a climate of political instability, fear and mistrust which crystallizes in a much deeper securitization process whilst closing the borders and tightening the surveillance at airports and transport hubs. As a foundational event, 9/11 substantially changes the check and balance forces of American democracy (Altheide 2006; Skoll 2010; Chomsky 2015). What seems to be equally important, terrorism introduces a culture of fear which divides academicians into two clear-cut poles. Whilst some voices hold the thesis that terrorism comes from the lack of democracy, which leads to “failed states” or the political instability culturally enrooted in the Third World (Huntington, 2000; Keohane & Zeckhauser, 2003; Mintz & Brule, 2009), others alert on terrorism as an ideological construction manipulated by the neoliberal agenda to impose economic policies otherwise would be overtly rejected by lay-citizens (Altheide 2006; Skoll 2010; Skoll & Korstanje 2013; Korstanje 2018). Beyond the polemics –as Jean Baudrillard puts it- terrorism not only humiliated the most powerful nation of the world but weaponized four commercial aeroplanes against the hallmarks of global capitalism (Coulter 2005). Having said this, terrorism inscribes in a tensional logic where spectatorship feels captivated but at the same time terrorized by the Spectacle of fear. Culturally domesticated to consume terrorism as a form of entertainment, the Western audience seems to be certainly immersed in a phenomenology of terror where radicalized groups give a semiotic message, they do not want a lot of people dying, they want a lot of people watching! The Oculacentrism, adjoined to the priorities of media to package and disseminate terrorism-related news makes a difficult symbiosis between terrorism and witnesses. After all, terrorists are celebrities in quest of fame and mass-recognition for their political causes (Howie 2010; 2012).

Recently, the problem of lone-wolf terrorism has captivated the attention of Western social imaginary resulting in the multiplication of novels, movies, countless cultural entertainment products. However, less attention has been paid to the process of radicalization a lone-wolf terrorist faces. In an operational meaning, we define the lone-wolf terrorist as someone who plans and prepares a terrorist attack or commits acts of violence beyond the structure of any organized cell or structure (Phillips, 2011; Spaaij, 2010). For social scientists, the problem of lone-wolf terrorism exhibits serious methodological limitations simply because this illegal activity is heavily punished as a serious crime for the government. Having said this, fieldworkers who successfully infiltrate terrorist cells are pressed to reveal their key informants´ identities and further information sources. As L. Howie suggests, a social scientist may very well study terrorism by its causes or effects in the capitalist society.