Eric Raymond makes a distinction that should be pretty obvious.
A lone wacko is a tragedy but almost never a disaster; a terror network can scale up violence to much greater levels by deploying multiple soldiers, and is far more likely to have expertise in bomb-making, airplane hijackings, and other means that can inflict casualties well above the level of a rampage shooting with personal firearms.
One of his more tendentious claims is that many on the left go out of their way to misclassify these two types, because
the left end of the American political spectrum is heavily invested in the belief that “right-wing terrorism” is prevalent in the U.S. and a greater danger than either left terrorism or Islamism.
From the oppressor-oppressed axis point of view, you want to lean in the direction of treating a lone wacko who attacks a Planned Parenthood facility as a terror soldier, and you want to lean in the direction of treating an Islamist terror soldier who attacks an American military base as a lone wacko.
Raymond’s sensible analysis leads to sensible conclusions.
Rampage killings are a public health problem – police may be the first responders to an incident, but the effective interventions to prevent them them are mainly medical, not criminological.
On the other hand, what terror soldiers do is best thought of as a kind of distributed irregular warfare, intended like all warfare to break the enemy’s will to resist. Criminal enforcement can typically do little or nothing about their networks. Instead, the normal counter to irregular warfare applies; you want to bait them into concentrating so they can be confronted and destroyed by regular forces.
That was the French strategy in what was then Indochina in 1954, when they deliberately set up their base in a valley in order to lure the opposing general into concentrating his forces nearby. The resulting battle and its outcome are historically significant.
By the way, this is part of the big problem with commentators mocking people for ‘exaggerating’ the risk of Muslim terrorism by citing some currently low statistical likelihood.
The human instinct behind these fears – worth taking deadly seriously – is that a definable sub-population which may today have no real ‘fifth-column’ identity could easily, with just enough provocation or change in circumstances, coalesce around some adversarial principle and very quickly generate huge numbers of ‘terror soldiers’ if coming together as actual soldiers is otherwise infeasible or a worse alternative strategy.
This has actually happened so many times in history that it’s either very ignorant or naive to imagine it couldn’t happen again. There may be some noble-lie statesmanship in suppressing awareness and consciousness of this real possibility, in the hope of keeping the current social equilibrium going with some tolerant coexistence, but that must be combined with the other component of wise statesmanship which is to ensure that the peaceful time is spent nudging things towards assimilation and that oppositional pespectives on personal identity are suppressed. Unfortunately, we are currently encouraging those perspectives.
“This has actually happened so many times in history that it’s either very ignorant or naive to imagine it couldn’t happen again.”
What are some examples of this, just out of curiosity? I’m having trouble thinking of any that are really analogous to what you’re describing.
The radicalization of the civilian Muslim population of Algeria over the course the Algerian War (1954–1962) and their increasing support of the guerrilla FLN could be one example. It’s not exactly a “fifth-column” scenario, since the relevant population were a clear majority.
Another almost-example might be Turkish violence against Greeks and Armenians in Smyrna in 1922. (I’m referring to the actions of the civilian population, not the military.) But the Turks engaged in rioting rather than terrorism, and like in Algeria constituted the majority.
I cannot think of better examples off the top of my head. I’d be curious to learn them, too.
Of course the right wing is heavily invested in discounting right wing terrorism as lone wolfs, but while there are true lone wolfs (going postal is largely that), there are also those motivated by common beliefs (abortion, religion, racism, conspiracies, anti government), forming support networks (cults, churches, groups, militias, organizations). Just because an individual does it, does not mean they are lone wolfs, even if support and encouragement are more oblique rather than direct.
“Just because an individual does it, does not mean they are lone wolf”
Yes it does. This thinking is what justifies more and more and more surveillance (but clearly not why they actually want total surveillance). And even when they get total surveillance it will never ever ever stop such attacks.
Yeah, well, this is exactly the trouble, isn’t it?
“Our killers? Lone wackos pushed over the edge by real injustice. Let’s not do guilt by association. Their Killers? Terror Soldiers, obviously.”