Riding the Waves: Reimagining Rapoport’s Thesis with Stochastic Terrorist Actors

Inspired by David Rapoport’s seminal four waves thesis, terrorism researchers have long posited the existence of a fifth wave. Arguments about what constitutes this wave range from it being comprised of far-right actors to failed states. As early as 2010, Kaplan argued that terrorist and insurgent movements used similar tactics, comparable strategic visions, and the desire to radically reshape their world hearkening back to a “Golden Age.” More recently, scholars have argued a new wave either consisted of terrorist semi-states or based on a state of perpetual grievances. The global surge in far-right authoritarian politics has also been posited to be an emerging (far right) wave. Despite these previous frameworks, we propose the existence of an emerging fifth wave in which diverse terrorist groups that vary along the political spectrum converge on their targeting specific communities and mimic one another’s tactics. In this new wave, we chart how groups as different as Jihadi, Far Right, and Incels can share common targets, such as the LGBTQ+ and Jewish communities, while these diverse ideological groups correspondingly mimic each other’s innovations, making their tactics and attacks appear to be stochastic.