Domestic Extremism in Europe - Athena Institute

THE MYTH OF THE LONE WOLF
As it has been seen in the previous chapters, formal ex-
tremist groups rarely attack civilians, members of minor-
ity communities or people in general with intent to kill.
Most groups use symbolic violence - i.e. verbal violence,
inciting racial/ethnic hatred and intimidating their tar-
gets. There are only a few extremist groups that actually
attack groups of people whom they consider as being a
threat and even fewer that attack such groups of people
with murderous intent.
However, there is one more aspect of extremist activity
that has to be scrutinized since it has proven to be a seri-
ous phenomenon – offline and online radicalization. Sev-
eral murderous attacks have been carried out in the past
couple of years in different countries that have shown
Europe that extremism is a danger to be reckoned with.
These attacks were not carried out by actual extremist
groups that have a clear online and offline presence in
society, but so-called lone wolves who did not belong
formally to any known extremist organization.
Domestic Extremism in Europe - Threat Landscape 65