reservations
Another school shooting, another scapegoat. It looks like today's tragedy in Minnesota is likely to be blamed on the shooter's participation in neonazi online communities. Well, I won't be shedding any tears over any heat that the "Libertarian National Socialist Green Party" takes for this, but it seems likely be just as non-constructive as blaming videogames was at Columbine.
Obviously, hate groups are awful and worthy of censure, but it seems plausible to say that their work takes root most easily in the world's worst, most hopeless places. Many modern indian reservations would have to count among those places. And yeah, today's shooting took place on one.
I'm writing about this because it reminded me of a story I know. My mom has a friend who's active in native american advocacy -- if not always sufficiently detached from the underlying issues to do much good. She visits a reservation in the southwest for several months most years. At the end of her last visit, she brought a teenage boy back with her. She did this because he'd threatened to kill himself if she didn't. She believed him because his older brother had followed through on the same threat the year before. Well, things went predictably badly with the boy -- stealing, violence, drinking. He had to go, although I'm not sure if he went home or ran off. I hope it makes a difference, but I'm not sure -- just being born into that place might have ruined him.
So I'm disappointed to see the copy on this WaPo story change from its first draft, with an emphasis of the conditions on the reservation, to its updated form, in which the emphasis is clearly on the hate groups with which the shooter was involved. But I guess it's easier to come to grips with the existence of a Nazi website than it is to wrap your head around the fact that thousands of Americans are trapped in a cycle of substance abuse, poverty and violence.
Sorry to jump from harmless snarkiness to wearying depression so quickly, but it's a shame to see the implications of a tragedy like this one avoided for the sake of moral and journalistic tidyness.
Comments
Interesting. I read a bunch of articles and I didn't iterpret them as blaming the hate groups for what happened. The articles I read seemed to be playing up the 'this kid was a weirdo that admired Hitler' angle. It seemed like the blame was being placed firmly on the boy who snapped. Although, I did notice that the articles were light on discussing the harsh realities of life on a reservation. And I've noticed them playing up the sensationalism with articles about how he smiled as he shot.
If it bleeds it leads...
well, you raise a good point -- 16's old enough that mostly it'll primarily be the kid getting villainized. If the pattern follows Columbine folks will briefly try to figure out what made him snap, conclude mostly that he was just innately evil, and then the remaining balance up to external factor X -- in Colorado is was videogames, but here it's shaping up to be neonazi websites.
I can't say anything insightful about the idea of people being innately good or evil -- we've all got our own intuitions about that. But I suspect that if Jeff Weise had been born somewhere different he wouldn't have visited those websites or picked up that gun.
I'm sure the reservation is shitty to live on, but there are so many people in this world living in worse circumstances that don't do this kind of thing. Plus the kids from Columbine didn't live on a reservation.
I think it has a lot to do with the obsession with fame that people in this country have. If this kid's life just sucked he would have just killed himself. But he went to the school to copy cat the Columbine murders. The whole time smiling and waving.
He wanted the fame. He lacked the imagination and courage to chase it on his own. So he went with the tried and true formula of shooting up his school.
The kid's father had already offed himself if that's any indication of how shitty the kid's upbringing was. I think the online stuff is a symptom of the problem, not the cause.
Here's a link to a short flash animation he did:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/graphics/movies/target.swf
I think the fame obsession in America is a very real problem that helps things like this happen. It seems everyone is obsessed with achieving notoriety as opposed to finding a way to live and be happy. An 'ends to a means' culture.
Any recent books or papers on the topic that you guys know of?
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