‘I did my bit’: terrorism, Tarde, and the vehicle ramming attack

This paper looks at the phenomenon of 'vehicle ramming attacks' and their rise in recent years though the lens of Gabriel Tarde's concept of 'imitation' or 'mimetic encounter'. Using historical data, it tracks the rise of such attacks in recent years, particularly in terms of their geographical spread and temporal clustering, and suggests that, unlike many 'waves' of terrorism, this one has spread across ideological and ethic divides to include Islamic terrorists, the mentally ill, and far-right activists. It suggests that the idiosyncrasies of this phenomenon fit well with Tarde's notion of 'imitation' and the 'monadic subject', and that ultimately, one needs to consider the power of the act itself as a causal factor in such actions, as opposed to merely focussing on structural, ideological or psychological causes.