Hatred of the System: Menacing Loners and Autonomous Cells in the Netherlands

In this article, the violent threat emerging from “menacing loners” and autonomous cells in The Netherlands is being historicized and contextualized by providing quantitative and qualitative insight into this threat and illuminating some of the most dramatic incidents. Although beyond the core purpose of this mainly empirical article, some tentative remarks will be presented as possible explanation for both continuity and change. We argue that the shift from political violence originating from groups and networks to political violence perpetrated by individuals, and the shift from ideologically motivated violence to performative violence, are both shifts within a continuum, not radical breaks with the past. It is a difference in degree. Further, we argue that these gradual shifts in types of violence can only be understood as dependent on parallel manifestations of counter-policies, technological developments, and broader trends within society, rather than as attributable to indigenous terrorist developments as such. We postulate a shift from ideologically motivated to performative violence, resulting to a large extent from the possibilities offered by the Internet and social media, and from a broader cultural trend defined as the emergence of the “casting society.”