Beyond the Lone Wolf: New Research on Right-Wing Radicalisation and Lone-Actor Violence TERRORISM & POLITICAL VIOLENCE NEXT GENERATION NETWORK

Imagined Extremist Communities: The Paradox of the Community-Driven Lone-Actor Terrorist
Izzie Storm Sandboe, University of Oxford

This paper introduces the concept of “imagined extremist communities,” a term that encapsulates the unique social landscape where right-wing lone actors, despite not being affiliated with organised groups, partake in a form of communal interaction. By examining the cases of Anders Behring Breivik, Brenton Harrison Tarrant, and Philip Manshaus, this paper illuminates how group-based and lone actors are more alike than what is conventionally expressed in existing research. Although lone actors are not subject to an external command like group-based actors are, the imagined extremist community functions as a “group” for lone actors and is, for all practical purposes, a corresponding alternative to a terror cell. During the radicalisation process, these individuals seek and turn to the imagined extremist community, enabling them to form a sense of belonging and identification and underscoring that these actors, although conventionally labelled as “lone,” are immersed in an alternative culture that nurtures their ideas and sustains their extremist ideology. This becomes particularly evident through their cognitive radicalisation, a process amplified by their psychological predispositions. The concept of the imagined extremist community elucidates how lone actors, especially those embracing right-wing ideologies, are subject to radical influences. Their conservative traits and psychological dispositions make them particularly receptive to the appeal of such communities.

Read Me When I'm Dead: Manifestos and the Gendered Rage Behind Lone-Actor Attacks
Karmvir K. Padda, University of Waterloo

Violent extremist manifestos are recognized as critical infrastructure of lone-actor violence, yet most research examines them through single-case studies or narrow ideological subsets. This study analyzes 100 manifestos authored by lone-actor attackers between 1966 and 2025, integrating BERTopic computational topic modeling with qualitative discourse analysis. The analysis reveals that misogyny operates as the structural base layer of hybrid extremism. In 40 percent of manifestos, gender-based hatred functioned as a primary or secondary motivation, and gendered keywords systematically co-occurred with ethnonationalist and conspiratorial lexicons even in manifestos not primarily classified as gender-driven. Misogyny provides the emotional and explanatory coherence through which racism, antisemitism, and anti-government conspiracism a