Reframing lone-actor terrorism: ideological embedding, symbolic violence and transnational resonance in the Hanau case

On 19 February 2020, nine people with migration backgrounds were murdered in Hanau within six minutes, marking a paradigmatic case of far-right terrorism in Germany. This article reconstructs the enemy image articulated in the perpetrator Tobias Rathjen’s manifesto through objective hermeneutics. The analysis reveals latent meaning structures that connect Rathjen’s worldview to the religious right, particularly his ideological proximity to the Christian Templars in the United States. These transatlantic entanglements reinforce his anti-Muslim and racist convictions and provide a religiously framed legitimation of violence against the Muslim Other. Situating Rathjen’s manifesto within broader debates on far-right terrorism, religion, and symbolic violence, the study argues that the Hanau attack cannot be reduced to psychopathology or lone-actor frameworks. Instead, it exemplifies the enduring circulation of conspiratorial medievalist imaginaries within contemporary far-right worldviews. At the same time, it points to the role of security discourses articulated by the religious right, through which these imaginaries are mobilised and stabilised across transnational infrastructures of far-right violence.