Loners, Colleagues, or Peers? Assessing the Social Organization of Radicalization Thomas J. Holt 1 & Joshua D. Freilich 2 & Steven M. Chermak 1 & Colleen Mills 2 & Jason Silva 2 Received: 28 December 2017 /Accepted: 27 March 2018 # Southern Criminal Justice Association 2018 Abstract This study explores the utility of a sociological model of social organization developed by Best and Luckenbill (1994) to classify the radicalization processes of terrorists (i.e., extremist perpetrators who engaged in ideologically motivated acts of violence) who are usually categorized as loner or lone wolf attackers. There are several organizational frameworks used to define or classify violent acts performed by indi- viduals who may or may not have ties to extremist groups, but these studies largely ignore the role of social relationships in radicalization and the extent to which they inform our knowledge of terror. To address this gap, we apply the Best and Luckenbill model of social organization using a qualitative analysis of three case studies of four lone actor or small cell terrorists. The findings demonstrate lone actors are not always true loners in the context of radicalization, and highlights the ways that the Internet and social ties foster the radicalization processes of terror. Keywords Social organization . Radicalization loners . Lone wolf . Terror . Extremism Scholarly efforts to better understand terrorism have increased since the attacks on September 11th, 2001 (Silke, 2008). Terrorism research taking a criminological per- spective has substantially increased, as these acts primarily involve the unlawful use of force or violence against civilian populations (Freilich, Chermak, & Caspi, 2009; Schmid & Jongman, 2005) and are usually prosecuted under existing criminal codes (LaFree, Dugan, & Miller, 2015). Most studies examine foreground and situational dynamics that may predict individual involvement in acts of violence in support of an Am J Crim Just https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-018-9439-5 * Thomas J. Holt holtt@Msu.edu 1 School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University, 655 Auditorium Road, 434 Baker Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA 2 John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, USA