NO ‘LONE WOLVES’

THE GUNMAN ACCUSED OF MURDERING 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket seemed to fit a familiar pattern. Isolated and bored during the pandemic, he had become radicalized by consuming white-supremacist content online. He had previously threatened to commit violence at his high school and been sent for a mental-health evaluation, according to authorities. After he allegedly carried out the violent solo massacre, targeting Black shoppers, police said they believed he acted alone. So it’s no surprise that Payton Gendron, 18, was widely portrayed as a “lone wolf” attacker, like many white-supremacist terrorists before him.

But the gunman did not act in a vacuum. He saw himself