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.
@David
Thankye’!
@Otherwise
Oh God, Zwarte Piet grosses me out. I’ve heard every excuse from “He’s Spanish!” (wut) to “He’s covered in coal!” (double wut)… At that point, you might as well just give up before you run out of shit to pull out of your ass and start tugging on intestines.
*continues ranting*
Seriously, I understand tradition and all, but tradition isn’t set in stone. For a recent example, here in Aus, we’ve been (slowly) phasing out the Easter Bunny in favour of the Easter Bilby since the ’90s, because feral rabbits’ utter destruction of most of the outback made the whole concept of
edible idols of the fucking Antichristchocolate bunnies kinda tasteless. It’s taking a while, mostly due to the ubiquity of international TV, but I’d say we’re at the 50-50 point at the moment.If we can phase out the Easter Bunny, they can phase out a walking 1940s cartoon character.
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs — Easter Kangaroo would be friggin’ awesome, but I suspect that Easter Wombat would have more chocolate-to-shape, which is always desirable trait in anything made out of choccy.
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
The Easter Bilby?
Wikipedia explained it all.
I’m stunned. And it sounds like a good idea, given that the bilby is endangered. What I also discovered: “The Bilby in a Trilby,” available from Amazon.
Five minutes ago, I had never heard of a bilby.
What about an Easter Qokka? (sp)
I’ve seen piccies of them and they’re farking adorable.
@scented Fucking Hard Chairs what’s the thread of weirdness? I want to read it :p
I’m afraid I either missed it or only saw a little part of it 🙁
@Alan,
A glance at Wikipedia appears to confirm my recollection about spain — in 2011 they threw out their center-left government and gave the center-right coalition its largest majority ever.
In Greece, the last few years have been good for socialists, but also good for fascists. In 2012, their fascist party (Golden Dawn) jumped from 0 seats in the legislature to holding 7%. Greece elected a socialist government in 2015, but the fascists basically held onto their 7%. The socialist left grew by pushing our liberal conservatives and moderate social democrats.
“Virtually: I think it extends beyond the Internet and subculture. Internet culture and these toxic subcultures of hate appear to be informed by real-world mainstream culture, directly. When people look at these kids and yell “sociopath” I think they’re missing the culture of antisocial individualism and fuck-you-got-mine staring them right in the face every moment of their lives.”
Agreed. I use sociopathic in place of antisocial. Apathy to social/society is same as antisocial, no? And by “subculture” I didn’t mean some specific group but rather more like this pervasie undercurrent running through the entire culture. It does seem the internet exposes us to it more than before, though.
I’m still a bit new to paganism, so forgive me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the rabbit an adopted symbol from paganism? I do seem to recall that rabbits and eggs are symbols of fertility for those who worship The God and Goddess, and that’s all part of Beltane (which I recently learned through some boredom recipe searching you can make bread shaped like a big dick for because it’s a fertility festival, so all the food’s supposed to be phallic. Also, I learned that having a wedding on Beltane (May 1st), is bad because it’s upstaging The God and Goddess, because that’s when they renew their vows or something like that).
I seem to recall that the Easter Bunny was a bit of the ol’ Borrowing from The Pagans to Make Them More Comfortable with Converting tactic.
“Apathy to social/society is same as antisocial, no?”
Not really, I think antisocial is the word you’re going for actually. The definition is sorta “is harmful to society” and “doesn’t give a shit about society”, the latter has given rise to “avoids dealing with people” but is more “doesn’t care who they hurt” — which is what you’re after I think.
So I guess apathy, but not in the introvert sense, but in the “does what pleases them, fuck whether anyone gets hurt” sense.
@Alan
Hungary has been having a quasi-fascist government for quite some time now, Orban is just milking the migrant crisis for sweet publicity.
In other news: teh wimmins don’t understand sciency stuff.
Women oppose fracking because they ‘don’t understand’ – scientist
https://www.rt.com/uk/319502-women-fracking-support-instinct/
Women are more likely to oppose drilling for shale gas because they “don’t understand” and will follow their emotional instincts, a top scientist has claimed.
Chairwoman of UK Onshore Oil and Gas Averil Macdonald told the Times that a lack of scientific understanding often means women, who generally express a deep interest in the sustainability of fracking, will oppose the measures.
@Hipsterminator:
This is particularly puzzling because Professor Macdonald looks like this:
http://editoreye-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/1430393/macdonald_10_web_phixr.jpg
I wanna comment this because you all sons of bitches are brainwashed. I’m not a racist but I wanna speak out.
So.. Listen all you Mother fuckers. How can you guys even open your flimsy trouths and say this son of a bitch ( Anton) did a good thing?
I really hoped the boys who died was your Sister/brother/cousin or any relatives family to all of you who thinks the fuckface Anton did a good thing, becauae if it was any relevant family to you, then you would feel the pain inside you, specially if you saw something like this in social media, people who thinks your Sister/brother/cousins murderer did a good thing. The boys who died are humans like much as you fucknuts are. In my eyes he’ s a hero becauae he had the gots to go face the murderer and try to stop him.
@Orion:
I think part of the problem is that the EU is, by design, a transnational body which grew out of the horrors of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 to create a system in which the people of various nations would not be set against one another. The problem is that it worked very well: it’s almost unthinkable, outside perfidious Albion, that any European state would now try to better the lot of its populace by dumping on another European state. The EU has succeeded massively in that regard.
The problem comes from the fact that in any given population, there are a large number of people who would quite like to dump on their neighbours. Since the centre-right parties are caught in the European framework and thus won’t openly engage in the baiting of other European nations, those people have to go to the extremes to find their red meat.
I think part of the reason why Britain hasn’t had the same rise in fascism as the other European states is because we’ve managed to keep those sorts of urges within the mainstream parties. The Conservative Party is vastly more nationalistic and pro-exploitation than the centre-Right parties one finds elsewhere, meaning that the fascists have less incentive to radicalise. To this must be added the social acceptability of hating, harming and exploiting Britain’s own disadvantaged: someone who wants to find a group to Other and oppress doesn’t have to beat up gypsies, they can simply become a bailiff or a buy-to-let landlord.
As you point out, the financial crisis has exacerbated this issue. One of the basic laws of political science is that “action moves away from the centre”: that is, that people on the Left respond to big issues by becoming more Left-wing, while people on the Right respond by becoming more Right-wing. Normally we would see the political parties respond to this by moving away from the centre to reflect their electorates, but the European system makes that difficult (by design) and therefore encourages voters to look for alternatives.
So… What if I vehemently oppose fracking not because I don’t understand how rocks work, but because it’s my fuckspleening job to understand how rocks work? Does it still count as silly emotional ladybrainz then? *annoyed palaeontologist noises*
Seriously, the known side effects of fracking look like an everyone-dies disaster movie. Forget climate change, we’re talking about everything from radioactive groundwater to earthquakes here.
(Also, I just noticed a comment on that article where some dipshit spends an entire paragraph railing on about the “Zio-Illuminati.” Wut.)
M, your posts make me happy consistently more than a control group does. Please never change.
@EJ (The Other One)
…how is her appearance relevant to her arguments and their credibility? You are not someone I would have expected to make a comment like that so I’m assuming there is something I have missed.
@Verily:
I was pointing out for people who missed it that Professor Macdonald is female, and therefore her “silly ladybrainz can’t science” comment must be read differently from if a man said it. This isn’t simply a patronising, patriarchal old man talking down to women like we sadly get a lot of in science; this is something worse.
Thank you for the implied compliment.
@ Paradoxy
The Easter Bunny concept as in a rabbit delivering eggs is very much a Christian idea, particularly associated with European protestantism.
Of course the whole concept of Easter borrows a lot from pre Christian ideas anyway. Hares, and later rabbits have long been associated with fertility, for obvious reasons.
Foe Christians rabbits are seen as a symbol of the Virgin Mary because, being hermaphrodites, like her they have virgin births. (They’re not actively hermaphrodites, but that was the belief)
To get back to the point about the tension between old beliefs and modern sensibilities that was almost an issue here. In Cornwall, and other parts of England, we have mummers and they paint their faces black. A few outsiders (white of course) tried to create a fuss but nobody bit. It was recognised that it had no more racial connotations than any other form of ritualistic face marking.
We do have a thing called “darkie day” though that’s been seen as more problematic, mainly because of the name, but again the fuss seems to have died down as people were educated as to its ancient roots.
@EJ (The Other One)
Thank you for the clarification – that clears things up. I agree that in this case her gender is relevant to how the statement should be read. In my opinion Hipsterminator’s quote made it clear that she is a woman so the idea that you were only emphasizing her gender and not making a more malicious quip honestly never occurred to me. Which is why I had to check your username several times to verify that it was indeed you, since I thought it would have been a very out of character comment for you.
I’m sorry if my previous comment reads as curt: in retrospect, I should have softened it.
@Verily Baroque:
Thank you for calling me out on it, and given how my comment read to you I can’t blame you for taking a curt tone. I am very glad whenever people take the time to correct me since that helps me learn to be a better feminist.
One of the things that gets me is how thoroughly the teachers’ hands are now bound re: student assessment – it’s all so data-driven.
When I was in elementary school, I was honestly a a pretty terrible student (at least judged by today’s standards). I would get my in-class work done in about half the time as the rest and then read age-inappropriate books, at least until a few teachers figured out that I could be set to work to help other students or sent to the library.
I very rarely turned in homework except for reports and projects – most of it was terribly boring – but I always got high marks on my tests. My teachers were able to say, “She obviously knows the material,” and grade me accordingly.
Now everything’s documented, everything’s assessed, everything’s standardized to the point that teachers have little to no latitude to address different students’ learning styles and personalities and students / student learning are products valued by how well the outputs match the inputs.
I get why the situation’s arisen – in an attempt to ensure that all students have access to as fair a shake as can be given – but there’s now even less room in most public schools for the intuition, insight, and serendipitous discovery that make education enjoyable, lasting, and worthwhile.
/rant
@EJ
Really? I would have said that Germany has tried for a decade now to better the lot of its populace by dumping on the EU in general and the PIGS in particular.