Lone wolves, as the perpetrators who organize and carry out violent attacks individually are called, tend to have mental health problems, but the situation does not lead to their crimes, as do the policies.
Analysis by the FBI (Federal Department of Investigation), in the United States, a body with extensive experience in combating domestic abuse, and by researchers dedicated to the topic indicate that psychiatric disorders are risk factors for lone wolf attacks, but they occur simultaneously with those of the perpetrators.
Since the night of Wednesday (13), when the locksmith Francisco Wanderley Luiz, 59, (Federal Supreme Court) in , the former president () and his allies have been looking for this, perpetrated by someone who had mental disorders.
“It’s a lifeline for Bolsonaro and Bolsonarism, which project a dimension that I call pathologizing, removing the political dimension of the act”, says Odilon Caldeira Neto, coordinator of the Observatory of the Far Right and professor at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (MG).
He says that the content that Wanderley disseminated on social media, as well as the choice of target, make clear the .
Before Wednesday’s attack, the locksmith published a series of messages about the attack, mixing political and religious statements, with criticisms of , institutional policy.
Wanderley, who also cited the former North American president, alluded to the widely used term “storm”, and mentioned the children of Marajó Island, on the agenda.
“We see a connection with a harsher conspiracism, which to some extent can go beyond the Bolsonarist scenario. [Wanderley] it deals with electronic voting machines, anti-communism, and takes the anti-institutional route through an anti-system discourse”, says Caldeira Neto.
“The basis of intellectual formation denotes, in addition to psychic issues, which can indeed be part of it, that there is a sense of community. That he was formed politically in certain environments and that he acted politically. He was present in moments of [de 2022] and he himself launched himself as a councilor in his city.”
Wanderley’s ex-wife told the Federal Police that his plan was Alexandre de Moraes and that he was searching on Google to facilitate the crime. According to her, her ex-husband after Bolsonaro’s defeat.
One of 52 lone wolf attacks since 1972 indicates the simultaneity between psychic problems and political motivations. According to the analysis, 25% of the perpetrators had already been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder before the attack, and 13% were diagnosed after. In another 38% of cases, people close to the offender suspected that he was facing a mental health problem.
At the same time, the agency’s report identified that the authors had become radicalized, accepting the use of in favor of some ideology. The most common, corresponding to 25% of the cases studied, was anti-government violent extremism.
Offenders in this group adhered to a series of ideas, such as the conception that the government of the time was corrupt. Some, for example, believed in a global conspiracy that stripped citizens of their rights.
The most common type of attack (17% of cases) targeted federal government facilities or employees, and 73% of lone wolves chose the target because it was central to their goal or ideology. Weapons (67%) and explosives (27%) were the most used means of attack.
Published in 2015, financed by the US government, by professors Mark Hamm and Ramón Spaaij, experts in terrorism, it focused on 98 lone wolf attacks in the country between 1940 and 2013.
“For both lone wolves and organized terrorists, violence is considered the only alternative to an unjust system,” they wrote.
They concluded that there was a pattern to this type of attack. The radicalization of the authors began with complaints of a personal and political nature (in 80% of cases), which fueled affinity with an extremist group — a process facilitated in recent decades by the internet and social networks.
Then someone would appear to act as a facilitator, whether direct (someone who helped him plan the attack) or indirect (who served as inspiration for the act). Then, before the attack, it was common for the offender to publicly communicate his intentions (this was the case in 76% of cases after 2001).
In messages published before the event, Wanderley mentioned bombs that the Federal Police would need to disarm and said that he “set off some rockets to celebrate the 13th”.
The FBI places the actions of lone wolves within the scope of , defined by the United States Department of Homeland Security as an act that is dangerous to human life or has the potential to destroy infrastructure or fundamental resources.
The apparent purpose of this type of attack is to coerce civilians, influence a government’s policy through intimidation, or affect its conduct through mass destruction, murder, or kidnapping.
The explosions perpetrated by Wanderley are being investigated by the Federal Police as an act of terrorism. , however, sanctioned in 2016 by former president Dilma Rousseff (PT), from the list of motivations that define this crime.
This is because, at the time, left-wing congressmen and activists agreed so that the proposal did not include the term, out of fear that the legislation could be used to criminalize legitimate protests by social movements.
