A 'Lone-Wolf' Shooter Has an Online Pack
A ‘Lone-Wolf’ Shooter Has an Online Pack
Even when a shooter acts alone, their ideology is often shared.
By Juliette Kayyem
Payton S. Gendron is accused of killing at least 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket. (Mark Mulville / The Buffalo News / AP)
MAY 15, 2022, 11:01 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/lone-wolf-shooters-ideology/629871/
"SNIP.......
Wolves are not a particularly special species. They are not as menacing nor as powerful as mountain lions. They are not as big as many other predators, nor as strong, nor terribly wise, nor do they have sophisticated tools or genetic dispositions that make them individually dangerous in the animal kingdom. Their ability to capture prey worthier than themselves results from collaboration—from the pack.
Once prey is targeted, the pack first disperses, then surrounds the victim—some wolves from the front, others from the back. The wolf pack’s defining feared feature is that it does not work alone. The lone wolf, in the animal kingdom, is not powerful; it is weak. The wolf, acting alone, is not something to fear. Lone wolves do not massacre because they can’t.
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But that lone wolf language fails us in an era when hate and radicalization now serve as a proxy for the collaborative herd, for the co-conspirators and colluders. Gendron wasn’t alone. His mission was effective because he was supported by an apparatus that provided the ideology and means for the hunt. Based on evidence from a manifesto that he reportedly posted Thursday night, Gendron did not perceive himself as being alone: He had his people; they were there for him.
As if to make that clear, he livestreamed some of his actions yesterday, a performative gesture for an audience that already existed. To emphasize that his victims were targeted and not at all random, Gendron wrote that he chose the specific Tops supermarket because it was in a demographic area that, according to public data, is only 1 percent white. And lest there be any doubt, he wrote the N-word on the tip of his gun, a word perfectly visible from his videotape of the rampage.
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