The Growing Concern Over Older Far-Right Terrorists: Data from the United Kingdom.

• Author: Wells, David

As 2022 came to a close, a series of attacks and arrests in Europe appeared to hint at the emergence of a possible new trend: older (and even geriatric) farright terrorists (a).In mid-October, a 75-year-old woman was one of five arrested in Germany for plotting to kidnap the country's health minister and bring down its power grid. (1) Two weeks later, a 66-year-old U.K. man firebombed a migrant center in Dover, (2) and in early December, those arrested for plotting to overthrow the German government included several individuals over the age of 60. (3) Finally, on December 23, a 69-year-old man attacked a Kurdish cultural center in Paris, killing three. (4) Although terrorism is typically seen as the preserve of the young, terrorist attackers over the age of 45 are not a new phenomenon in either the Islamist or far-right context, (5) with the oldest known attacker an 88-year-old white supremacist who attacked the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., in 2009. (6) In November 2022, the United Kingdom's Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation noted that "the most recent completed extreme right-wing terrorist... attacks [had] all [been] carried out by older men," (7) with the last attack by anyone younger than 47 in 2015.

Despite this reality, U.K. authorities--and others facing a far-right terrorism problem (8)--have characterized the threat as originating from a "technologically aware demographic of predominantly young men, many of them still in their teens," (9) with disrupted plots since 2017 featuring two individuals in their late teens and one in their early 20s. (b) Given this discrepancy between the age of the primary source of the extreme far-right threat identified by U.K. authorities and the age of those successfully conducting farright terrorist attacks, this article will use the United Kingdom as a case study to better understand the terrorist threat posed by older individuals motivated by extreme far-right ideology.

This article starts with a comparative analysis of the backgrounds of and methodologies used by the recent U.K. attackers, seeking to identify any key commonalities and inconsistencies. It then explores U. K. government data to help understand whether these attacks are reflective of any change in the threat posed by older extreme farright individuals in the United Kingdom. Finally, it identifies some implications from this analysis for policymakers and responses to far-right terrorism in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

U.K. Case Study: Recent Attacks and Attackers

There were five completed far-right terrorist attacks perpetrated in the United Kingdom since 2015. The following short case studies examine each of the perpetrators. (c)

Case 1: Thomas Mair

Fifty-two-year-old Thomas Mair, who killed Jo Cox MP in June 2016, was described as a recluse and a 'loner in the truest sense of the word" who had never had a job or a girlfriend, had no friends, and had lived alone since 1996. (10) Mair had a long-standing interest in the extreme far-right, sharing his hope that "the white race would prevail" in a letter to the editor of a South African far-right magazine in 1991. (11) Following a series of far-right bombings in London in 1999, Mair purchased extreme far-right instructional material and subscribed to a variety of American neo-Nazi magazines. (12)

Although there is limited data on Mair's activities until 2016, police found newspaper clippings related to Anders Breivik's 2011 attack in Norway in Mair's home. His online research into previous attacks against politicians and his target indicates that the febrile nature of the Brexit referendum campaign finally prompted Mair into action. Of the five attacks, his was the only one in which a firearm was used. (13) Mair was jailed for life in November 2016, having been found guilty of murdering of Jo Cox, two weapons offenses, and stabbing a bystander who tried to intervene. (14)

Case 2: Darren Osborne

On June 19, 2017, 47-year-old Darren Osborne drove a rented van into worshippers outside Finsbury Park Mosque in London, causing the death of one person. He is now serving life in prison for what the judge sentencing him described as a "terrorist attack." (15) Like Mair, Osborne was long-term unemployed and described as a loner, although he had a long-term partner and four children. Osborne, who had a history of substance abuse and had recently threatened suicide, also had a 30-year criminal record, including for theft, burglary, and assault. (16)

In contrast to Mair, Osborne's radicalization was rapid, driven by his disgust at a May 2017 BBC drama-documentary about the sexual abuse of children by a group of British-Pakistani men. He joined Twitter in early June 2017, following far-right accounts including that of Tommy Robinson (d) and Britain First (e) and engaging with material from those "determined to spread hatred of Muslims." (17)

Osborne had initially sought to conduct a mass-casualty attack against the annual Al-Quds Day march in central London, targeting both Muslims and senior Labour Party politicians who he believed would be in attendance. (18) Having driven from Wales that morning (June 18, 2017), Osborne failed to get close to the march and subsequently drove for hours before finding the mosque in the early hours of June 19- Despite his chaotic targeting approach, the attack was not entirely spontaneous, with Osborne having inquired about renting the van on June 16. The following day, he was evicted from a pub for ranting about "killing Muslims." (19)

Case 3: Tristan Morgan

On July 21, 2018, Tristan Morgan, a 51-year-old X-ray technician, set fire to a synagogue in Exeter on the Jewish holiday of Tisha B'Av. (20) Morgan also set himself on fire and was quickly arrested after police identified his van using the synagogue's CCTV. Morgan was described as having a "deep-rooted anti-Semitic belief, embodied in a desire to do harm to the Jewish community." He was convicted of arson and two terrorism-related offenses for possessing "The White Resistance" manual and publishing a song encouraging terrorism. Morgan, who had no history of violence, was reportedly "psychotic" during the attack and was handed an indefinite hospital order. (21)

Case 4: Vincent Fuller

On March 16, 2019, 50-year-old father of four Vincent Fuller threatened passers-by near his home in Surrey with a baseball bat, shouting "All Muslims must die. White Supremacists rule." When Fuller broke the bat damaging a vehicle, he took a knife from his home and...