Yesterday morning, a man wearing a military helmet and a Darth Vader mask entered a school in Trollhattan, Sweden, carrying a sword. After posing for a picture with two students who thought his outfit was a Halloween costume, he stabbed a teacher with his sword and began attacking other students. He killed two and seriously injured several others before being shot by police.
Those looking for a conventional answer as to why he did it don’t have to look too far: The killer, identified in the media as 21-year-old Anton Lundin-Pettersson, seems pretty clearly to have been motivated by racist and religious hatred towards Muslim immigrants. The school he picked for his violent rampage is overwhelmingly populated by immigrants; surveillance footage of his rampage reportedly shows that he deliberately targeted people of color.
A suicide note he left behind reportedly railed against immigrants. He was apparently also a supporter of a proposed anti-immigrant referendum, and a YouTube account identified as his followed several YouTubers known for railing against Muslims, including Howard Bloom, an eccentric author whose latest book, the self-published “The Mohammed Code,” purports to show how Mohammed sought to use violence to take over “the entire world.”
But Lundin-Pettersson’s rampage, while clearly driven by hate, was hardly a conventional hate crime. There is his bizarre outfit: in addition to wearing a Darth Vader mask (and a Nazi-era German army helmet) he reportedly shouted out Vader’s famous line “I am your father” as he launched his attack. And he apparently provided his own soundtrack for the rampage, playing what one witness described as “terrifying” Halloween music as he stalked the halls of the school, as if he were re-enacting a favorite scene from a movie or a hack-and-slash video game.
He may also have announced his planned rampage on 4chan the day before, in the creepy tradition of the Umpqua Community College less than a month ago. According to a screenshot now circulating on the internet — I haven’t been able to confirm it — he warned the denizens of 4chan’s r9k forum, in a post deliberately echoing the words of the earlier killer, to skip “school tomorrow if you live in Sweden,” adding a Trollface graphic along with his note and telling his readers that “my image will be of relevance.”
If the 4chan screenshot is real, it suggests that the Trollhattan killer was deeply enmeshed in “troll culture” online, a world in which violence and even mass murder can be reduced to an assortment of memes, where someone like mass murderer Elliot Rodger can be hailed, only partly ironically, as the “supreme gentleman” he famously declared himself to be.
Invariably, when people on 4chan or YouTube — or some other cesspit of the internet — start making jokes about mass killers, or even hailing them as heroes of sorts, we’re told that none of their comments really count; they’re just trolls, doing what trolls do.
But scratch a troll posting racist memes, and you will almost certainly find a real racist; scratch a troll posting misogynistic attacks on Anita Sarkeesian, and you will find a real misogynist. When trolls send rape and death threats to those they genuinely hate, their recipients need to take them as seriously as more obviously “serious” threats.
The world of the trolls is a nasty, hateful world, and those who soak in it too long may end up lashing out at the world in violent ways.
Indeed, it’s telling that the Trollhattan killer’s favorite YouTuber (if the account attributed to him is really his) was the noxious rager who calls himself TheAmazingAtheist. Lundin-Pettersson subscribed not only to TAA’s main channel but to his personal channel as well, and he favorited dozens if not hundreds of TAA’s videos (I stopped counting). Unlike some atheist activists, TAA doesn’t devote much time to trashing Islam; he’s far more interested in bashing Anita Sarkeesian and other supposed SJWs.
But TAA affects a hyperbolic “mad as hell” persona that, despite its obvious theatricality, seems to be rooted in a good deal of real anger. I can barely make it through a single video of his, and can only imagine the corrosive effect that watching dozens of his rage-filled videos would have on someone’s soul.
Naturally, YouTube comments being the cesspool that they are, the Trollhattan killer is receiving a good deal of posthumous support from racists, trolls, and racist trolls. An assortment:
There are critics, of course. And a few commenters who feel that he hadn’t killed enough people to deserve all this adulation.
A reminder: these are from YouTube, not 4chan; I honestly don’t have the stomach to wade into the assorted 4chan threads devoted to the killer.
At this point, I think it’s become clear that websites that permit the posting of this sort of unregulated hate speech — from 4chan to Reddit to YouTube — are enabling the hateful troll culture that seems to have turned Lundin-Pettersson into the monstrous “troll” murderer who took two lives yesterday.
@contra
… Huh. I actually meant the rape post, the TP post wasn’t even there when I posted. o_O That’s what I get for being too lazy to blockquote. =P
@Robjec
I enjoy anime, but it can be a struggle to find series that have a positive feminist portrayal of women, even with shows that have a majority of female characters.
@Tabby Lavalamp:
Yeah, and when you go from shōjo to shōnen, things get really ridiculous.
Exhibit A:
http://i.imgur.com/LmwcFVC.gif
Exhibit B:
http://i.imgur.com/p0qA0Ae.gif
Exhibit C:
http://i.imgur.com/9Y6Tu6K.gif
Holy gainaxing, Batwoman! (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Gainaxing)
And I do dare say it has gotten worse as years go by. Ugh. (Curiously, I’ve seen modern hentai where the idea of “enthusiastic consent” is really in play and women know what they want for their own pleasure, not just for the guy’s. At this point it is good to remember that a lot of hentai is made specifically for non-Japanese audience, though, so…)
I…I…
…the first thing that those GIFs bring to mind:
http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/487/827/ea8.gif
It’s amazing how well Exhibit B syncs up with Yakety Sax.
So.
Much.
Gainaxing.
http://imgur.com/gallery/T0qj3
http://i.imgur.com/x5ImnEh.gif
http://i.imgur.com/mrMeqFq.gif
http://i.imgur.com/IlM1j.gif
@Skiriki
And many anime fans wounder why non-fans think of us as being a bunch of perverts.
@Fabe — yeah… I am an anime fan, but that doesn’t mean I must shut my brain and eyes for its problems. 🙁 ‘Cuz, damn.
I’m at the point where I just roll my eyes and think to my self “Really? you had to go there?” Example; in one series I’m watching called ‘gate’ has a goth Lolita demigodess character who follows a god of death and war. OK not really that big of a deal, then during one episode we she her become sexually stimulated as the souls of dying warriors pass though her body on the way to the after life. definitely a eye roll moment there.
@Robjec thats more to do with the fact so many GGs are anime fans. Look I like anime but the fanbase is terrible. The Mal forums are basically 4chan-lite.
@Tabby Lavalamp
I generally think this is a problem in anime that could be fixed incredibly easily. There are so many great shojo manga written for women by women with great female characters that just need an adaptation. Alot of Ghibli films though have great female protagonists.
@skiriki
I always find that weird given Gainax made EVA which I always thought was incredibly critical of the way anime fans viewed women. Then again the did made Gurren Lagann.
@justlikeheaven — I know, but don’t worry, fanservice moments are in rebuild series of EVA. /s
Oh geez eva is always one of the shows I think of a worst towards women.
And I mean I know it has problems, but there are a lot of good things to it to, and I just feel like the movement in general attacks it without really understanding it, but rather just having been shown some of the worst offenders. At least this is how it feels, not so much here, although I thought the comments about the avatars was weird, but in general feminist blogs and stuff.
See, shit like this is why I put more and more distance between myself and internet culture. It’s further proof that concepts like “free speech” lose their value every single time some shithead goes out of their way to defend it as “just jokes” or whatever convenient excuse they have in their rhetorical arsenal. They seem unable to comprehend the idea that not every form of speech is worth being protected tooth and nail by everyone else, when it comes to public discourse, and that discouraging them doesn’t instantly equate to “censorship.”
Re: South Park
Matt Stone and Trey Parker can go fuck themselves. So can their cultish sycophants who, unable to have opinions of their own, treat the show as if it were their version of the Holy Bible. It makes for damning proof that Libertarianism is just a secular religion wherein God is replaced with “The Market” and certain entities – like, say, CEOs and the companies they run – are immune from judgment regardless of how hypocritical their behavior might be.
What I hate the most is the whole “equal opportunity offender” identity is treated like a badge of honor than a mark of shame. It’s the kind of all-or-nothing mentality you see in privileged white cis-hetero men where apparently any degree of complexity is treated as either hypocritical or “inconsistent.” As if all issues concerning racism and sexism could easily be fixed with this one-size-fits-all solution that ignores inconvenient truths about just how much the system is stacked in the favor of white males, to the detriment of everyone else.
It’s why, whenever the issue of domestic abuse comes up, you see these MRAs and their allies argue that women abusing men is the same as women abusing men – that we have to consider everything equitable in those two instances. But, of course, they aren’t. Men being in a relationship with an abusive woman, which is still terrible, is nowhere near as prevalent as how many women are in relationships with abusive men.
It’s not ignoring one for the sake of the other at all but, because these people can’t accept complexity, anything other than false equivalence is seen as dismissive.
Re: Anime
I’m rather picky as far as anime these days go. I still consider films like Princess Mononoke and Perfect Blue to be two of the best films, live-action or otherwise, I’ve seen thought. Those two, however, are examples where there are well-realized female characters as well as being anti-sexism. One of the best things about Perfect Blue (other than accurately predicting the internet would just become a giant harassment machine to be used against public female figures) is how much it mocks popular culture for its overuse of rape in storytelling and, worst of all, sometimes making it out as titillating.
So much anime these days seem to negatively portray female characters as nags or buzz-kills or castrating she-beasts – alternatively, when portrayed “positively”, it is because they are motherly or virginal. I have a hard time coming across a lot of female characters in anime who are both sexually active and not portrayed as broken or a whore incapable of forgiveness.
@Nick
Holy crap, another person who’s heard of Perfect Blue? One of my all-time favourite movies, that. You have good taste. *fistbump*
It certainly doesn’t help that, as the GIF above shows, they regularly sexualize underage teen girls. It’s definitely worse in the reimagined films – given a new character (also the one in the GIF) seems to be there specifically because of her big, floppy breasts and little else. She’s barely even characterized past making a comment about how form-fitting her suit is…for her breasts.
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs:
*Fist-bumps back*
I’m a big fan of Satoshi Kon and he’s a big creative influence of mine – I’d even go as far to say he’s my favorite filmmaker, live-action or otherwise.
@skiriki
Yeah the rebuilds kinda seem to be going for the fanservice angle at times. At times it feels like an attempt to cash in on some of the EVA brand (though i do like the rebuilds)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAMAwErYRpQ
This video by Folding Ideas has a pretty interesting interpretation about End of EVA being sort of a takedown of entitlement among fans and how Otaku view women. In a follow up video he even touches on the idea of Shinji being a “Nice Guy”
As a big breasted woman, I just hate how female characters with large breasts are portrayed. That is, big boobs are their entire personality. A woman can’t be taken seriously as someone intelligent nor can she even be a love interest. A sex object, sure. But not a girlfriend or wife. It’s so gross. My breasts are just a body part. They don’t have the power to drain brain cells or have anything to do with my ability to be a good employee, student, partner or friend.
Not that I’ve seen this anime people are talking about, just kind of generally ranting about the subject.
@justlikeheaven — yeah, I’ve read the Fan Entitlement theory of End of Evangelion, and considering how some of the texts that buzz across the screen in one segment are hatemail they got, it is pretty telling. And that was when the internet was still in its public infancy… so those were mostly hand-written letters. Ditto for Otaku-see-women-as-fanservice-wank-material (LITERALLY here, srsly) and Shinji being a “Nice Guy”. All of it… makes sense. Terrifying amounts of sense.
Sometimes I think that Serial Experiments Lain also makes terrifying amounts of sense. And then I just hit my head until the feeling goes away.
@skiriki
And you’ve heard of
The Matrix On DrugsLain? Bloody hell. You get a fistbump too.(Everybody is discussing misogyny in anime and I’m just sitting here fangirling over Perfect Blue and Lain.)
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs — Fistbump accepted. 😀
However, if there’s something that makes even less than zero amount of sense (basically, seeing it drains your mind), it is bronies being anti-feminist. Like wot. (Once again, there’s this awkward feeling of I-don’t-want-to-share-fandom-with-you-assholes.)
@skiriki
Yeah the whole Brony vs. Feminism thing was weird. To the best of my knowledge it all stemmed from this whole debacle with a blog lovingly titled “Princess Molestia”.
Im fine with Bronies but I find people taking a thing aimed for kids and making pornography and such out of it disgusting.
The brony stuff is just bizarre. Going back to avatars, like I said before, I’m never surprised to see a sexist (or violent, or racist, or ableist, or homophobic, or transphobic, or full-on VOTE TRUMP HEIL HITLER) post with a pony avatar… But I’m always confused as hell. Have they ever watched the fucking show? How is it possible to miss the point that hard without imploding into a pulsar of sheer weapons-grade wut?