Hells Angels Research Articles

EXTORTION RACKET SYSTEMS AS TARGETS FOR AGENT-BASED SIMULATION MODELS. COMPARING COMPETING SIMULATION MODELS AND EMPRICAL DATA

Extortion racketeering is an industry not only practiced by mafia, but also in groups such as hells angels. It occurs in a complex setting of criminals, victims, police and society, and its framework is set up by legal norms as well as informal norms of the actor groups involved. The paper presents two agent-based simulation models which differ with respect to the decision making mode, which is either stochastical with fixed probabilities or deliberative where decisions depend on utility considerations and norms learned during the process. The central research questions of the paper — beside the question how extortion racket system can be appropriately modeled — concern the divergence of the results of the two model versions, the comparison of the input parameter combinations, the motivations of input parameters and the validation of the results by comparing them to available empirical data.

Limits to Corporate Social Responsibility: The Case of Gjensidige Insurance Company and Hells Angels Motorcycle Club

The purpose of this paper is to explore the limits to corporate social responsibility (CSR) by presenting and discussing the case of Gjensidige Insurance Company and its efforts to contribute to organized crime prevention. On the basis of a stage model for CSR, this paper argues that the Gjensidige case might be found at the most advanced maturity level, which is the contribution stage of proactive involvement in society. At this final maturity level, corporate executives as well as all other organizational members perceive their business as part of a greater course in society. They take on a comprehensive and active responsibility in the local as well as global society, and they look for opportunities in society where the company can make a difference.

Violence, organized crime, and illicit drug markets: a Canadian case study

This article tests two inter-related theories on the situational causes of violence in illicit drug markets: (i) drug markets that are unstable are more prone to violence and (ii) there is a higher risk of instability, and hence conflict and violence, in drugmarkets characterized by pure competition. These theories are applied to the violence that occurred between the Hells Angels and its rivals over dominance in Quebec's lucrative cocaine market during the 1990s. The theory that violence stemsfrom instability in an illicit market is applicable to this case study. However, Quebec's cocaine marketwas characterized by oligopolistic conditions and the ensuing violence stemmed from the Hells Angels' efforts to maintain hegemony in that market. This paper argues that oligopolistic and monopolistic conditions in illicit drug markets may heighten the risk of conflict and violence because such conditions inhibit competition.

Responding to Organized Crime in Australia and New Zealand

On 22 March 2009 a brawl erupted at Sydney domestic airline terminal between two outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMCGs), the Hells Angels and Comancheros, during which a participant was stabbed and bludgeoned to death with a metal bollard in front of travelers. A few days later his brother, a Hells Angel who had also participated in the melee, was shot and seriously wounded outside his home. The extraordinary open violence at the airport was the subject of intense media attention already attracted by longstanding tensions between the Hells Angels and Comancheros and incidents of armed conflict between rival OMCGs the Bandidos and Notorious. The public spectacle of this murder constituted a turning point in Australia’s approach to OMCGs. It was the trigger for changing a measured inquiry into controversial new laws on serious and organized crime passed in South Australia in 2008 into the rapid adoption of laws similar to those in South Australia in three other Australian jurisdictions, with others foreshadowing such laws. The Premier of New South Wales reflected public alarm when he announced new legislative measures to address the OMCG problem the following day: I was sickened by this brazen attack. Violence of this nature particularly in front of families and children is nothing short of disgusting (Welch 2009). Although the additional police powers (discussed below) were widely criticized, bi-partisan political support enabled them to be rushed into law. It was also a catalyst for a wider debate about organized crime in Australia, and hastened the adoption of a nationally coordinated approach between each of Australia’s nine jurisdictions (comprised of six states, two territories and the federal jurisdiction) to combat organized crime.

The Enemy Within: The Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Moral Panic

When there is a period devoid of sensationalistic biker news, the public’s concern about outlaw bikers can be quite low. All it takes is one overt act of violence to heighten the public’s fear of Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs are the most current “dangerous class” which have been the subject of a moral panic in Canada. Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs as organized crime bodies are deemed to be the single most serious threat to the country—the enemy within. The gang war in British Columbia is fuelled by drugs supplied by the Hells Angels and there is a wide spread fear that these evildoers are trying to harm and tear apart the fabric of our society. This article provides a critical in-depth analysis of the construction of an Outlaw Motorcycle Gang moral panic with the focus on Canada. The roles played by the media, politicians, and the public in using isolated, violent incidents to support their interests will be examined along with the interactions between these groups and the resultant punitive actions directed toward members of Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs.

American Based Biker Gangs: International Organized Crime

Many American based motorcycle clubs have evolved into biker gangs involved in organized crime nationally and internationally. Using the information contained on the national websites of seven biker gangs—Hells Angels, Outlaws, Bandidos, Mongols, Warlocks, Sons of Silence and the Vagos, this article provides a listing of the gangs by chapter in the United States and internationally. These gangs have exported organized crime to the world as they have formed criminal networks with new chapters established outside the Continental United States.

Assessing Vulnerable and Strategic Positions in a Criminal Network

This study focuses on individual positioning within an illegal drug distribution network surrounding a reputed criminal organization (the Quebec Hells Angels). The aim is to distinguish between participants who were positioned vulnerably and/or strategically during a period when the network was targeted by an intensive law-enforcement investigation. Two centrality measures are used throughout the analysis. Degree centrality accounts for the number of direct contacts surrounding a participant. Betweenness centrality accounts for a participant’s brokerage leverage by measuring the scope of indirect relationships that s/he mediates. The final results reveal how differential positions in the network influence the judicial outcomes (arrests) within the case. Participants with high degree centrality were more likely to be arrested. Participants with high betweenness centrality were less likely to be arrested. Most importantly for law-enforcement concerns, those participants with high brokerage level were less likely to be members of the Hells Angels, thus suggesting that targeting strategies must take consider the patterns that represent an offender’s network at any given time, rather than simply focusing on an offender’s status and reputation within a criminal organization.

Stephen R. Schneider, Iced: the story of organized crime in Canada

The author is an associate professor of sociology and criminology at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Canada. His book seeks to dispel the myth of Canada as a law-abiding society devoid of the criminal violence associated with the country's southern neighbor. He certainly achieves this goal although, as he notes, Canada's violent entrepreneurs often have important connections, if not deep roots, in the United States: The Cotroni/Rizzuto "mafia" in Quebec is part of New York's Bonanno Family and the Hell's Angels, which has chapters throughout Canada, originated in California.Iced examines more than 400 years of criminal organizations ranging from Atlantic coast pirates and privateers (the distinction is often nonexistent), to the outlaws, bank robbers, and horse thieves of Canada's wild west, to modern organized crime. He provides a fascinating look at the connection between Canada's liquor industry and U.S. crime groups during the era of Prohibition. While information in the book is... Language: en

Mount Rushmore and the Hells Angels

9 Mount Rushmore and the Hells Angels dorianne laux 9 We felt out of place, standing there in our Bermudas among the leathered others, the men’s spiderweb beards, the women’s leatherette vests crushing their breasts, tattoos inked on biceps bronzed by the Dakota sun. And yet, like us, they were families, babies pinking in strollers outfitted with mag wheels, dressed in Grateful Dead T-shirts with rolled sleeves, tiny biker boots, frilled bonnets cross-stitched with skulls and bones. And they looked up, like we did, to the massive carved faces, one hand on the handlebar of a tricked-out bike, an American flag flipping from a thin rod in the desolate wind, the other cupping the shoulder of a lover, the mother or father of their child, like the parents who once loved them, held them high and threw them up, up into the bright summer air, the faces below looming large as heroes’ as they came down—tired, hungry, wailing. ...

Hells Angels in springtime

This article presents a case study of the criminal market activities surrounding the Quebec Hells Angels between 1997 and 2001. The popular and law-enforcement depiction of the Hells Angels, and most notably its Nomad chapter, follows the stereotypical image of traditional organized crime (e.g., monopoly control of the criminal market; a clear hierarchical organization; strict control of the organization’s members and associates). This general claim is tested in this article. The counter argument emphasizes that whereas the Hells Angels organization is a hierarchical structure with clear and explicit rules laid out for its members, there is no clear indication that this formal organziational structure is relevant when studying the criminal activities of members and associates. Quite differently, when it comes to participation in criminal markets, flexibility offers a better fit than the rigid confines of a formal organization. Data for the study was obtained from law-enforcement files that followed an important crackdown on the motorcycle club in Quebec during March 2001—this crackdown and the ensemble of investigations leading up to it have been commonly referred to as Operation Springtime. Through the use of electronic and physical surveilllance transcripts that recorded a high volume of communications between members and associates who were targeted by law-enforcement investigators over a five-year period, a representation of the criminal network surrounding the Hells Angels in their criminal market activities was constructed and analyzed. The main objective of the analyses was to assess the extent to which the Hells Angels hierarchy fits the criminal market activities that were targeted. The working hypotheses guiding these analyses follow that if Nomad members were indeed domineering criminal market participants, we would expect them to be relatively high in degree centrality (hands-on participants) and/or high in betweenness centrality (strategic brokers). Findings indicate that while the Nomads were, on average, higher in brokerage capital when compared with other members within the organization, Nomads were not the most central participants in the overall network. Instead, network participants who were highest in degree centrality were amongst the mid and lower-level members of the Hells Angels organization (suggesting a vulnerable/visible position), while those with the highest brokerage capital participants who held no biker or gang status (suggesting that the strengths of the network lay beyond the formal organization). In sum, the case study highlights the necessary nuances that are needed when approaching organized crime from a scholarly and policy outlook.

Crimes of the Big Four motorcycle gangs

Motorcycle clubs (MCs) can be divided into conventional and deviant clubs. The most deviant clubs are those known as 1 percent or outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMGs). The Big Four OMGs are the Hells Angels MC, the Outlaws MC, the Bandidos MC, and the Pagans MC. The first three, although American based, have international chapters and are the largest motorcycle gangs in the world. All four are known for their criminal activity and violence toward each other. There has been little scholarly research on these secret and dangerous motorcycle clubs. This research, utilizing a LexisNexis newspaper search classified the criminal activity of each of the Big Four gangs using a biker criminality typology developed by Quinn and Koch. The study found that the members of the Big Four gangs are involved in a wide range of criminal activities with the most common being ongoing enterprises/organized crime such as drugs and weapons trafficking. There were also numerous instances of spontaneous and planned violent acts against rivals and others. The study added to the limited body of knowledge on these deviant groups and suggests further areas of research.

The size and influence of a criminal organization: a criminal achievement perspective

It is difficult to measure the size, influence and growth patterns of criminal organizations embedded in illegal markets. In this paper, we argue that measuring the influence of a criminal organization by its size (in number of employees, or ‘members’) may under- or overestimate its sphere of influence in illegal markets. Self-report survey and size of population methodologies are combined to assess the regional economic influence of a criminal organization (Hells Angels) in three illegal drug markets (the cocaine trade, the cannabis trade and the cannabis cultivation industry) in the province of Québec. Findings suggest that a relatively small organization by conventional standards can nonetheless achieve a large influence on criminal markets. We then analyse how factors other than violence play a role in explaining differences in achieving economic influence across criminal organizations. Finally, we suggest that turning our attention to measuring economic influence provides some insights into the duration and intensity of the violent conflicts occurring in these markets.

Information and Emotion: On the Ambitions of Contemporary Fiction

Information has become new character. James Wood, Hysterical Realism Critic James Wood, in review of Zadie Smith's novel White Teeth, objects to such features as a terrorist Islamic group based in North London with silly acronym (KEVIN) ... woman born during an earthquake in Kingston, Jamaica in 1907, group of Jehovah's Witnesses who think that world is ending on December 31, 1992, and twins, one in Bangladesh and one in London, who both break their noses at about same time. These are among signs, he says, that a genre is hardening, genre of the big ambitious novel. I quote: A parody would go like this. If character is introduced in London (call him Toby Aknotuby, i.e. be or not to be--ha!), then we will swiftly be told that Toby has twin in Delhi (called Boyt: an anagram of Toby, of course) who, like Toby, has very same curious genital deformation, and that their mother belongs to religious cult based, oddly enough, in Orkney Islands, and that their father (who was born at exact second that bomb was dropped on Hiroshima) has been Hell's Angel for last thirteen years (but very curious Hell's Angels group, devoted to fanatical study of very late Wordsworth), and that their mad left-wing aunt, Delilah, was curiously struck dumb when Mrs Thatcher was elected prime minister in 1979, and has not spoken word since. He then asks: this caricature, really? It is quite good caricature, I think--so good that I would like to claim it as piece of perhaps unintended intertextuality, in other words as an application for membership in genre it caricatures. (This is hardly an outlandish claim given that Wood names as parent of this genre and adds that Dickens makes caricature respectable in an age in which, for various reasons, it has become hard to create character. In other words, Wood knows that in offering caricature he himself is doing what he accuses genre of doing.) When Wood complains that this kind of writing is incompatible with tragedy or anguish, that it does not do scenes, that it is awkward in its representation of character, that its stories are inhuman stories, one feels certain formal and moral banality in criticism, and one might be tempted to dismiss it as banal anti-modernism that has not been new or enlightening since it first scoffed at Woolf and Joyce. What distinguishes it, and provokes me to think of Wood as keeping company with his targets, is common ground of realism. It is within what he calls the conventions of that Wood places his targets, whom he accuses not of abolishing those conventions but merely of overworking them. And it's within conventions of realism that we would have to place his own criteria. Wood is not merely ranting in familiar way about modernism or postmodernism; he is talking about requirements of realism to novelists who clearly intend to do realism. As he notes, these realists are trying to do something that is usually considered morally impeccable: trying to follow Forster's dictum only connect. For Wood, it just doesn't work. To summarize long argument: we get information about how we are all connected, but we don't get to feel those connections. Is it simply too ambitious to aim at investing reader's feelings in connections between people who are separated by half planet? Is this an ambition that novelists should renounce as beyond their technical means? The same argument is of course made not just about novel but about cosmopolitanism itself, which is judged to be an impossible and misguided ideal. It is difficult enough to function as citizen of given nation, it is often repeated; no one can be citizen of world. The feeling of connectedness will not stretch so far. And yet it is unclear that one can be even half-decent citizen of nation like United States if one does not make some effort to be more than US citizen. …

Encyclopedia of gangs

In light of Los Angeles' gang state of emergency, ethnic and minority gangs are arguably more high profile now than at any other time in our history. News media typically focus on the crime and violence associated with gangs, but not much else. This encyclopedia seeks to illuminate the world of gangs, including gang formations, routine gang activities, aberrations and current developments. One hundred essay entries related to gangs in the United States and worldwide provide a diffuse overview of the gang phenomenon. Each entry defines and explains the term, provides an historical overview, and explains its significance today. As the following entries demonstrate, gangs are part of the fabric of American society. They are not only in our communities but also our schools and other social institutions. Understanding the world of gangs is therefore needed to understand American society. Entries include: Bikers, Bloods, Cholas, Crips, gang mythology, gang warfare, graffiti, Hell's Angels, Hong Kong Triads, Latin Kings, law enforcement, occultic gangs, mafia, media, prison gangs, rites, Skinheads, Streetgang Terrorism Omnibus Prevention Act, tattoos, trafficking, Wanna-bes, West Side Story, Witness Protection programs, and youth gangs.

Hell's Angels and the Illusion of the Counterculture

L'A. soutient que l'association entre la contre culture americaine des annees 1960-70 (culture hippie, etc.) et le mouvement des Hell's Angel - association soutenue et mise en scene par la culture pop des les annees 1950 et de facon generale par la culture populaire de certains films et de la chanson - fut largement une illusion. Un apercu de l'histoire des Hell's Angels montre que les Angels, a l'exception de la periode des debuts du mouvement, partagaient et continuent de partager la plupart des caracteristiques de la technocratie, et non de la contre culture. Comme la technocratie, les Angels etaient obsedes par l'ordre, et la structure de leur organisation en temoigne. En fait, a l'epoque de la contre culture, les Hell's Angels mimaient la societe americaine dominante que la contre culture combattait energiquement et esperait eliminer. Ils ne partageaint pas la quete du mysticisme et de la spiritualite par la drogue pratiquee par la contre culture. Finalement, ils n'etaient pas des adeptes de l'individualisme - la raison principale de l'alliance initiale entre contre culture et Hell's Angels -, au contraire ils placaient le groupe au-dessus de l'individu.

Cracker Culture (review)

Book Reviews McWhiney, Grady. Cracker Culture. University of Alabama Press, 1988. Cracker Culture is Grady McWhiney 's latest effort to correct the ethnic and cultural history of the South, heretofore mispresented as the "AngloSaxon " south by some. Earlier, Professor McWhiney was the coauthor (with Perry D. Jamieson) of Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage, a work in which he accounts for the South's defeat in the Civil War by the Southern commanders' commitment to offensive warfare, which commitment was in turn attributed to the fiery Celtic heritage of the South. The present work, happily, is not burdened with such an explicit (and simplistic) thesis. Cracker Culture is essentially an ethnographic study, and in it Professor McWhiney maintains that the South was settled to a great extent by Celts (Scots, Irish, Welsh, and "Scotch-Irish") and it is to this element in its population that most of the distinctive characteristics of Southern culture can be traced. ComSared to the more straitlaced English few Englanders, McWhiney portrays southerners as easygoing, bibulous, convivial , and hospitable. They also prefer corn, in both the liquid and granular state, to potatoes. The oook is not a simple eulogy, however, for the author dutifully cites some of the shortcomings of the Celto-Southerns, but his estimation is clearly favorable to the Celts over all. The book is well-written and advances its theses persuasivley, although occasionally a leap of faith is required. In particular, I found the concept of happygo -lucky Presbyterians a difficult one to sustain. Celts have not always fared so well at the hands of other writers. A few years ago the Gonzo-journalist Hunter Thompson accounted for the viciousness of the "Hell's Angels" motorcylce gang and their being of Appalachian ScotchIrish descent with the natural depravity of the breed. In Guy Chapman's memoir of World War I trench warfare, note is taken of the spirit of Scots' regiments in the attack, and equal spirit in the retreat. "They run like hell both ways," said Chapman. In recent years we have also occasionally been exposed to the malignity of the Reverend Ian Paisley of Belfast , and this has done nothing to advance the status of the Scotch-Irish. As a child I would sometimes ask my father what we were, and he would always answer "Scotch-Irish," and when I would ask "what are Scotch-Irish?" he would usually say something deprecatory . My father, it turns out, was probably wrong on both counts. We were not Scotch-Irish and Scotch-Irish is not a synonym for "White Trash." Cracker Culture is a fine corrective to many such mistaken ideas. Well-written and wellresearched , and though its thesis may not be conclusively proved, it may serve as a restraint of rampant Anglo-Saxonism. -Walter M. Odum 59 ...

Alterations in Human Bones and Teeth as a Result of Restricted Sun Exposure and Contact with Corrosive Agents

Skeletal remains were discovered in an unused cistern near the Omaha, Nebraska airport and were positively identified through comparison of antemortem and postmortem dental radiographs. Although nearly nine years had elapsed between death and discovery, the bones and teeth revealed evidence of the application of a corrosive substance at or about the time of death, as well as an unusual restricted response to sun exposure, that contributed to the prosecution and murder conviction of a member of Hell's Angels in the Omaha area.

Feasts in Time of the Plague: Polish Theatre and Drama, Post–Solidarity

The classics are back and East European theatres are feasting on them. It is that time again when the winds of resistance die down and the ominous calm spreads across the theatre community. It has happened before, each time signaled by the censorship of Adam Mickiewicz's Dziady (Forefather's Eve), a nineteenth–century classic that straightforwardly excoriates the old Russian regime. Unfortunately, things have not changed much and Mickiewicz's diatribes against the Russians translate fortuitously into criticism of the Soviets. The present state of theatrical ennui in Poland, however, was precipitated not by Mickiewicz's poetic abuse, but rather by General Jaruzelski' s prosaic convening of ZOMO — the Polish equivalent of Hell's Angels. Polish actors, directors and producers responded with their own convocation — a total boycott of television (one channel continues to drone on, attempting to give a semblance of normality to a catastrophic cultural situation).

Feasts in Time of the Plague: Polish Theatre and Drama, Post-Solidarity

Feasts in Time of the Plague: Polish Theatre and Drama, Post-Solidarity E.J. CZERWINSKI The classics are back and East European theatres are feasting on them. It is that time again when the winds ofresistance die down and the ominous calm spreads across the theatre community. It has happened before, each time signaled by the censorship of Adam Mickiewicz's Dziady (Forefather's Eve), a nineteenthcentury class.ic· that straightforwardly excoriates the old Russian regime. Unfortunately, things have not changed much and Mickiewicz's diatribes against the Russians translate fortuitously into criticism of the Soviets. The present state of theatrical ennui in Poland, however, was precipitated not by Mickiewicz's poetic abuse, but rather by General Jaruzelski's prosaic convening of ZOMO - the Polish equivalent of Hell's Angels. Polish actors, directors and producers responded with their own convocation - a total boycott of television (one channel continues to drone on, attempting to give a semblance of normality to a catastrophic cultural situation). The television boycott has had its reverberations in Poland's theatres. When Jan Pawel Gawlik was appointed director of Warsaw's Dramatyczny Teatr (Dramatic Theatre), the actors and staff, led by the actor Gustaw Holoubek, resigned their positions. J6zef Szajna took an early retirement, resigning from his post as director of Teatr Studio, rather than compromise the dictates of his conscience. Adam Hanuszkiewicz is no longer director of Teatr Narodowy (The National Theatre). Of the respected figures in the theatre, only Kazimierz Dejmek created a controversy within the theatrical community when he assumed the directorship of Warsaw's Polski Theatre. By comparison, it came as no surprise that Jerzy Krassowski and Krystyna Skuszanka, the husbandwife team of Nowa Huta fame (in the fifties and early sixties Szajna was their scene designer), quickly stepped in to fill the void created by Hanuszkiewicz's resignation from The National Theatre. As a result of the theatre boycott and the actors' insurgency, the government quickly abolished all unions and called upon the aging former president of 42 E.1. CZERWINSKI SPATIF/ZASP (Union of Polish Artists), Henryk Sletynski, to form a new "house union." The effort, of course, was unsuccessful: actors, artists and professionals - as if answering in perfect hannony -:- refused to join any governmentsponsored organization. Ifone group in Eastern Europe is following the spirit of Solidarity, it is those whose moral duty is to create a country's culture. The best artists have proved to be the finest citizens. On 4 May 1983 Andrzej Wajda was dismissed as head of Group x, the movie production unit. His activities as spokesman for Polish artists during Solidarity's too brief halcyon days and his film Man of Iron, which won the Golden Palm Award of the Cannes Film Festival, stressed too blatantly the cynical shifts in Polish politics. Wajda remains in France, where he is completing work on Danton's Affair, based on the Polish play by Stanislawa Przybyszewska. During the same period Poland's finest actor, Daniel Olbrychski, star of several international productions including Giinter Grass's The Tin Drum, was requested to leave the country because of his criticism of the tactics employed by the government. Other artists have been directed - ordered - to conform, to create for a dubious posterity "sermons in stones." Some have succumbed; the majority, despite insidious harassment, continues to hold on to what one director has referred to as "a still and quiet conscience."I I The plethora of classics, whether by design or not, has turned into swan songs for various directors. Jozef Szajna retired, leaving behind him three productions which will continue in Teatr Studio's repertory: Replika (1973), Dante (1974), and Cervantes (1976). His premature retirement (he now devotes his time to painting) startled the professional community. Vibrant and filled with a lust for life, despite the fact that he spent his youth (from age seventeen to twenty-two) in several death camps, Szajna has always been proud ofhis role as Poland's Hound of Heaven. For this reason one takes his alleged retirement with a grain of salt. In contrast, Jerzy Grotowski's exit from the theatre, especially with the recent abolishment of his Laboratory Theatre in Wrodaw, has an air of...

The motivation for violence among adolescents

Mobb ing is not, of course, a modern phenomenon. In one form or another it has been manifest throughout history. It also occurs in nature. Small birds will mob an owl as a defence of themselves or their young; wart-hogs will set upon a leopard that has been foolish enough to get itself surrounded while hunting. Many other examples could be given of the weak uniting against the strong in vicious communal attacks. Another kind of mobbing is found in both animal and human societies. This takes the form of turning upon a crippled or weakly member of the species. We might call this domination mobbing. A specifically human mode of mobbing derives from h a t r e d lynching. Mussolini ended strung up head downwards, and small mercy is shown to the members of a secret police once the power collapses that brought them into being. Mobbing among adolescents mainly takes the form of domination mobbing or hatred mobbing, which includes, of course, hatred arising from envy. Mobbing is liable to occur in all classes of society when circumstances encourage it. In medieval times apprentices on the rampage would sometimes turn on some hapless old woman. For hundreds of years, established members of a public school were liable to gang up against the new boys and torment them without mercy as a sort of initiation. Unpopular students at university were under risk of being hunted and debagged. In 18th century London, according to Burke, 1 mobs of wealthy young bucks turned on anyone weaker than themselves: Nobody who was alone was safe from their cowardly assaults. They attacked at random any unarmed person who was out after dark. They assaulted unprotected women; they drove their swords through the sides of sedan chairs; they pulled men from coaches and slit their noses with razors, stabbed them with penknives, ripped the coaches to pieces and, in some cases, killed. Today, Hell's Angels, mostly young men of working class origin, will half-kill one of their members who fails to show what is regarded as proper loyalty. A similar pattern of anti-social thuggery runs through all these instances. We may notice that this insensitive, brutal mauling of the weak and solitary by the gang is predominantly a masculine behaviour. This is still true of the mindless mobbing of our times, even though a few girls are now mimicking the bullying ways of some boys. If we are successfully to deal with bullying/mobbing in its various manifestations, we have to enquire into its motivation. Why does society produce bullies and mobbers? This leads us to two questions in particular. (a) What is the origin of the impulse to attack the weak? (b) What are the sources of fear and hatred that provoke such attacks? I have always found Alfred Adler to be the most useful psychologist when we seek for the roots of anti-social violence among adolescents. Adler 2 believed that, as we are all born, small and weak, into a powerful adult world, one of our first impressions of ourselves is of inadequacy. But, almost from the start of life, a child sets out to overcome this sense of inferiority by striving to make his, or her, mark in life, which involves challenging others.