Within a day of the fatal shooting of six people at a Quebec City mosque, Canadian public safety minister Ralph Goodale had described the suspect, 27-year-old Alexandre Bissonnette, as a “lone wolf”.
Although the term ostensibly refers to an individual acting without help from a group, it is now often used to downplay acts of terrorism committed by white, non-Muslim perpetrators. Anders Breivik, the Norwegian right-wing white supremacist who killed 77 people in 2011, was consistently referred to as a “lone wolf” in the media. Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, the Tunisian who killed 86 people when he drove a truck into a crowd in Nice last July, was not.
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