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.
What is with all of this anti-immigration horseshit cropping up? I know there’s a strong fascist undercurrent in the UK, but it’s even a thing in the US, where fascism doesn’t present nearly as much of a showing (that’s not to say, however, that the American far right is any better, functionally, than fascism).
Some Sort of Username: “Kinda telling how many of those YouTuber posters had 4Chan meme avatars and anime avatars. A friend and I have noticed that people with anime avatars normally seem to white supremacists and/or bigots, somewhat ironically considering the origin of anime. It’s an odd contradiction but one that normally holds up when it comes to reality.”
Haha, holy shit, I also noted that anime avatars are generally disgusting racists, pedophiles, nationalists etc. It really is a thing, isn’t it? Fucking anime.
@weirwoodtreehugger — the entire convo on Dutch side regarding Zwarte Piet is pretty astonishing, and whole lot of facepalming when you prod at it. It is a perfect storm of childhood nostalgia, self-image as a liberated and tolerant country/culture, and conveniently forgotten/nostalgia-gilded memories of former colonizer issues.
I have no problem pointing at one of our now-dying Finnish traditions — a Christmas pageant with Three Wise Men (from 16th century), where Melchior is usually portrayed in blackface mode, and albeit he is wise, equal to other Wise Men, and gets to tell Herodes some rather straightforward words, has most individual lines, plus gets to wield a sword, it is still Problematic As Hell, and I certainly won’t mind if that pageant goes away or gets modified to be more appropriate.
Likewise, I got no problems to tell that if a Finn gets too cocky with pride regarding how “equal” women and men are in our country, I’m gonna go ballistic. Yeah, some things are definitely better. But they’re not the best, and there’s still a lot of stuff to do: the wage gap exists, and some rape trials we’ve had are rankest bullshit of highest order. That usually gets back a whine how “feminists want to dominate men” or some such crap — again, there’s that pesky self-image as amazingly equal and liberated combined with “but isn’t voting enough” blinders.
While most of bigotry in Europe is to flavor of biases against ethnicity (in Finland for example, we have historical and present day bigotry against Finnish Roma, Finnish Sami, etc, and most people abroad would have hard time telling us apart with a single glance, whereas differences would be obvious to us), it still doesn’t mean that we’ve somehow been free from hardcore racism either. Our churches used to do a lot of evangelical work in Africa, and various stereotypes of black people trickled through that lens back to us. Black people as playful, dancing, child-like, carefree, uneducated people with an inborn sense of rhythm and music, who also believe in horrendous pagan deities and terrifying rituals described in almost pornographic degree. Pictures of great apes, right next to a black child in a dictionary. Stylized images of black people used to sell licorice, coffee or chocolate.
And that’s just a start of the whole load of bollocks; the entire racist culture of imagery and words and stereotypes really need to get dissected and put under magnifying glass so people would truly understand why it is such a problem. And how people can work on countering it, and how they can strive to be better in their everyday life.
(Personally, I send people to read http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/ site for further education when it comes to issues black people face, and a good visual record of why it is problematic. It has worked pretty okay so far.)
If humanity as species wants to survive, racism and bigotry must go.
One of the youtube commenters quoted in this post is using the Sweden Democrat logo as their profile picture – the anemone hepatica flower.
@Scribbles:
Ow. I hope my avatar is not confused for that sort of thing. 🙁 I like my Hound of Tindalos piccy.
That said, holy shitballs, there are some amazing racist and sexist issues in anime in overall. No problem to imagine that’s what is drawing some people to it…
I don’t know if it’s anime itself (I like some animes, but am not a fan in general) or if it’s the online culture that’s sprung up around anime (the chans, etc.)
Whenever there’s a group of nerds, the animes are usually the worst. #NotAllAnimes though. I’ve known a few who were educated and chill. I wonder what exactly is tying that shit together.
Feminism-friendly anime list? I’ll grab any opportunity to tell people to watch Utena.
I just want to wish all the Swedish posters and lurkers of WHTM all the best. I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now, though we have had our share of violence here on the other side of the Gulf of Bothnia. Just…stay strong and remember that a single bad guy doesn’t define a culture or a group of people as a whole. I think that it’s important at times like these to focus on our similarities here in the Nordic Countries especially, and also humanity as a whole. I hope all will be better soon, jag hoppas at allt blir bättre snart.
Scribbles, I would argue that Britain maybe right of centre and very conservative but Fascist we are not. We have a long and determed anti fascist history, The battle of Cable Street, the imprisonment of Oswald Mosley, Churchill for all of his authoritarian conservatism, was massively anti Nazi. Even Thatcher for all of her aggressive class bullying, lived in and would never change a parliamentary democracy. Look how we dismissed the laughable Farage.
I personally do not think Totalitarian Authoritarian Nationalism could ever take root.
My previous point is is that the way immigration is being handled at s political and media level in the UK (they are both making it worse than it is for the average person in the street). It may trigger actual Brexit, the UK leaving the EU. The effect of that would send massive financial shockwaves around the globe and trigger an EU collapse.
It’s purely the Chan/Reddit culture, not anime (or MLP, or gaming, or anything else with a lot of fucking disgusting fans). I mean, I can’t say I’m surprised when somebody posts racist murder threats with an anime (or MLP, or video game) avatar, but blame the asshole, not the random unrelated thing the asshole likes. They’d still be an asshole even if they didn’t like it.
@ autosoma & scribbles
I think Orwell put it best when he pointed out fascism could never take hold in Britain because it’s just so silly. The average Briton would just laugh at it.
I don’t think Farage can be dismissed though. UKIP did amazingly well in terms of votes. If we had PR they’d have nearly 90 MPs.
It’s hard to use the outmoded left/right thing to describe British politics.
The mainstream view is probably fiscally conservative, socially liberal with a dollop of socialism when it comes to the NHS.
I’m not saying the country itself is fascist (it’s economically liberal, which is mutually exclusive from fascism), but that there are rather strong fascist fringe currents like the BNP. They don’t retain much, if any, actual power, but they’re there, much like the KKK in the US. The KKK, however, is just lumped in with the Republican Party and doesn’t actually have a true fascist platform within politics (aside from individuals).
So yes, you’re right, but that’s not really what I was saying. There is an uptick in fascism throughout Europe (and the US) and it’s kind of horrifying.
Alan, that’s usually just called third way or neoliberalism. Left/right is still pretty useful, but only within polisci, I suppose. The left doesn’t really exist within modern liberal states. Even the terminology associated with the left has been coopted by the far right.
Left/right isn’t really outmoded at all when talking about political theory and history, it’s just that modern political discourse in “developed” nations just represents various shades of the right.
@ scribbles
The BNP was a thing for a while. But like so many organisations, including the NF from which it derived, it imploded in the usual internecine back stabbing of extremist parties. There’s a thing called the English Defence League that’s trying to fill the gap but not doing so well. There’s also something called Britain First but they seem just to produce Facebook memes.
Immigration is apparently the major political issue that concerns people here, but for the most part it’s based on economic fears rather than race issues.
The attitude is “Well of course I feel sorry for those poor people but we just haven’t the room/resources” rather than the pure racism seen on mainland Europe, especially in the accession states.
The nearest we get to that are issues around integration, mainly in relation to Islam. Ironically that may have helped overall. Islam is the new “other” so every other ethnic group is suddenly regarded as fully integrated in comparison.
We’ve had a Muslim lady win a cake baking competition now though so now people are differentiating between “nice” Muslims and “Islamists”
Yeah, I’m not saying that it wouldn’t cause some short term instability, but if the British want to exit the EU, it would recover okay. Germany leaving might break it, but not Britain leaving!
This is completely random but has anyone seen this? I saw it in the men’s rights sub Reddit and since a few days ago was October 21 2015 which was the time when Marty and dr. Brown traveled in the back to the future part two I thought I might share and I don’t know about all you but I think it’s pretty funny.
http://i.imgur.com/p7k7nT0.jpg
go read the comments you won’t be disappointed except the comment made by August Burns Reddit I agree with what he said except the examples he provided what women never have to go through and men do. F*** this guy.
Does my avatar make me look big and scary?
But on a serious note, I think a big problem with this chan/reddit culture is the sheer lack of realizing that there’s real human beings on the other sides of the screens. Funny enough, what avatars we pick and what shows/movies/games/books/music we like can let others “paint” a picture of us and either use it against us or for us to judge our character. Like when you see me pop up and post something; do you instantly think I’m a hyper-masculine male? A furry freak? What happens when you start to layer the avatar’s imagery with what I type? Do you think I’m confused? Perhaps there might be more than what you see?
Because you and I aren’t in the same room, you can’t really judge my character for what it actually is, but instead rely on entirely subjective visual information that I present and whatever words I say (which may not be sincere in some cases, other times the meaning may be different than what you think it is). Thus, you create a caricature of what you think I am rather than what I am. But it isn’t your fault though; it’s impossible to know every single person who posts in this blog on an individual level.
And with that, you start having serious problems. When people are essentially becoming nothing more than “cartoon characters on a screen” in the internet world, eventually people in general start viewing others who are not within their “monkeysphere” as anything but another human being. Everyone else except you, of course, now suddenly doesn’t live a complicated life like you do and only “exists” when you see them online. They have no depth as far as you’re concerned.
This isn’t to say that truly vile people don’t exist; people do exist that devote their lives to spilling hatred across the world. These people are bad and you can sense it from a mile away, but who’s to say that the guy who accidentally cut you off on the road isn’t someone who has a lot of things to worry about and problems of his own? Who’s saying that the woman in line at the Starbucks who hasn’t figured out what to order hasn’t been trying to juggle the stresses of being an attorney? You can’t just judge the ordinary person by a single action or visual cue alone, but at the same you can’t follow them around and get to know them on a personal level either.
Being a human to other humans is tough, but doing the right thing is always the best thing to do.
In case nobody else pointed it out: that wasn’t a Darth Vader mask, it was an airsoft or paintball mask. Perhaps he tried to channel Vader, especially if he really yelled “I am your father”, but he still didn’t look like him.
I’ve dated a lot of Muslim guys and eventually most of them and their families wanted to convert me and were very aggressive about it. .
“This isn’t a problem with sociopathy, it’s a problem with an online culture and not a few online movements that are encouraging this sort of behavior coupled with the fact that the chan sites make money out of it. The fact that people see it as one or two lone sociopaths, mentally ill people or whatever is why they aren’t taking it seriously as they would if it were members of an online community say, praising Allah, when a mass murder took place.”
I see what you mean Micheal but I’ve always thought sociopathy could be a lot more, I mean waaaaaaay more, prevelant in society than we think it is. So instead of “one or two lone” here and there every once in a while, it could be thousands more, and then a sub-culture that encourages it. I don’t know. Thought experiment.
@skiriki – I have some (very) extended Flemish Belgian family that reconnected via Facebook with we offshoots of their post-WWI migrants.
Last Christmas, they posted some pictures of their small children posing with Zwarte Piet – chubby little blonde cherubs grinning away next to the most intense blackface makeup I’ve ever seen (to include historical footage, previously its main context).
As an American, my initial reaction was, “Holy shit…”, though I did manage, “[Child’s name] looks so happy and adorable!”
The internet has used the “head-in-the-sand” tactic in dealing with 4chan. “It’s too much effort to deal with 4chan’s bullshit, so we’ll just ignore it – after all, what’s the worst that could happen?”
Well, we know now. If we had acted sooner to criticize this behavior when 4chan was first created, this sort of culture might not have been allowed to take form.
Very quickly and with apologies if anyone else mentioned it (waiting for some yeast to prove and am reading this rather than being productive 😉 so I haven’t given these comments the most comprehensive reading), re: killing / ease of killing / braggadaccio vs experience: On Killing by Dave Grossman is a worthwhile read. I wouldn’t take it as a gospel, but it provides some interesting starting points for conversation and continuation of study.
Since i myself live in sweden (in stockholm however, which is pretty far away from Trollhättan) i can tell you that this incident is pretty unnerving. There has been a rise of racist movements starting a few years back, we sadly even have a political party called Sverigedemokraterna, which has roots dating back to neo-nazi movement.
Thankfully, it’s not totally going to shit, we have a lot of people that are against these dicks. One example would be something happened a few months back. It was a protest against immigration, about 3 guys showed up while around a hundred had a protest against the anti-immigration wankers. It was nice to see.
Jag undrar hur det låter när en amerikan försöker uttala Trollhättan…..
@spacelawn
Those numbers sound reassuring after the recent events. Let’s hope that the popularity of the far-right will start to decrease (although for the time being, I would accept the violence and open hatred decreasing).
Det undrar jag också. Namnet är inte lätt att uttala för utlänningar, tycker jag.
Trots att jag gillar ditt vackra språk, anser jag att vi borde kanske skriva på engelska så att David och andra ska förstå vad vi sägar. Det här är ja ganska oartig eller hur?