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From violent lone-actor types to lone-actor grievance-fueled violence: The Aarhus University shooting as an example of multi-facetted offender motivations and context-sensitive boundaries between violent lone-actor categories

Over the last decade, western societies have experienced an increase in acts of mass violence carried out by lone actors. While this concept is mostly associated with lone-actor terrorists, it also involves the actions of other single perpetrators, e.g., school shooters, workplace attackers, rampage...

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Autores principales: Ebbrecht, Christopher Kehlet, Lindekilde, Lasse
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9888427/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36733860
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.995818
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author Ebbrecht, Christopher Kehlet
Lindekilde, Lasse
author_facet Ebbrecht, Christopher Kehlet
Lindekilde, Lasse
author_sort Ebbrecht, Christopher Kehlet
collection PubMed
description Over the last decade, western societies have experienced an increase in acts of mass violence carried out by lone actors. While this concept is mostly associated with lone-actor terrorists, it also involves the actions of other single perpetrators, e.g., school shooters, workplace attackers, rampage shooters, and some forms of incel violence. In this article, we argue in favor of moving away from such categorization of violent lone-actor types and toward the unifying concept of lone-actor grievance-fueled violence. We illustrate the analytical benefits gained from such a conceptual shift by analyzing the Danish Aarhus University Shooting in 1994, where a single offender killed two students. While this attack is widely accepted as the only Danish school shooting in history, we identify signs of an extremist misogynist worldview held by what we today would call incels. This case serves as an illustration of the blurred and context-sensitive boundaries between violent lone-actor types and how nuances in offender motivation can be lost when lone-actor attacks are classified within a typological framework. Rather than simply recasting the Aarhus University Shooting as an incel attack considering the recent development of this category, we argue for the need to embrace the conceptualization of lone-actor grievance-fueled violence, which points toward the common genesis of lone-actor violence and allows for multi-faceted offender motivations. Using the Aarhus University shooting as a steppingstone, we discuss the pitfalls of lone-actor violence typologies and the advantages of the unifying lone-actor grievance-fueled violence conceptualization for both academia and practice.
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spelling pubmed-98884272023-02-01 From violent lone-actor types to lone-actor grievance-fueled violence: The Aarhus University shooting as an example of multi-facetted offender motivations and context-sensitive boundaries between violent lone-actor categories Ebbrecht, Christopher Kehlet Lindekilde, Lasse Front Psychol Psychology Over the last decade, western societies have experienced an increase in acts of mass violence carried out by lone actors. While this concept is mostly associated with lone-actor terrorists, it also involves the actions of other single perpetrators, e.g., school shooters, workplace attackers, rampage shooters, and some forms of incel violence. In this article, we argue in favor of moving away from such categorization of violent lone-actor types and toward the unifying concept of lone-actor grievance-fueled violence. We illustrate the analytical benefits gained from such a conceptual shift by analyzing the Danish Aarhus University Shooting in 1994, where a single offender killed two students. While this attack is widely accepted as the only Danish school shooting in history, we identify signs of an extremist misogynist worldview held by what we today would call incels. This case serves as an illustration of the blurred and context-sensitive boundaries between violent lone-actor types and how nuances in offender motivation can be lost when lone-actor attacks are classified within a typological framework. Rather than simply recasting the Aarhus University Shooting as an incel attack considering the recent development of this category, we argue for the need to embrace the conceptualization of lone-actor grievance-fueled violence, which points toward the common genesis of lone-actor violence and allows for multi-faceted offender motivations. Using the Aarhus University shooting as a steppingstone, we discuss the pitfalls of lone-actor violence typologies and the advantages of the unifying lone-actor grievance-fueled violence conceptualization for both academia and practice. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-01-17 /pmc/articles/PMC9888427/ /pubmed/36733860 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.995818 Text en Copyright © 2023 Ebbrecht and Lindekilde. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Ebbrecht, Christopher Kehlet
Lindekilde, Lasse
From violent lone-actor types to lone-actor grievance-fueled violence: The Aarhus University shooting as an example of multi-facetted offender motivations and context-sensitive boundaries between violent lone-actor categories
title From violent lone-actor types to lone-actor grievance-fueled violence: The Aarhus University shooting as an example of multi-facetted offender motivations and context-sensitive boundaries between violent lone-actor categories
title_full From violent lone-actor types to lone-actor grievance-fueled violence: The Aarhus University shooting as an example of multi-facetted offender motivations and context-sensitive boundaries between violent lone-actor categories
title_fullStr From violent lone-actor types to lone-actor grievance-fueled violence: The Aarhus University shooting as an example of multi-facetted offender motivations and context-sensitive boundaries between violent lone-actor categories
title_full_unstemmed From violent lone-actor types to lone-actor grievance-fueled violence: The Aarhus University shooting as an example of multi-facetted offender motivations and context-sensitive boundaries between violent lone-actor categories
title_short From violent lone-actor types to lone-actor grievance-fueled violence: The Aarhus University shooting as an example of multi-facetted offender motivations and context-sensitive boundaries between violent lone-actor categories
title_sort from violent lone-actor types to lone-actor grievance-fueled violence: the aarhus university shooting as an example of multi-facetted offender motivations and context-sensitive boundaries between violent lone-actor categories
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9888427/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36733860
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.995818
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