Columbine was not the first
The incident at the American Columbine School was not the first shooting in history. Violence and manifestations of cruelty were before that. For example, in 1979, 16-year-old Brenda Spencer fired 30 rounds from a semi-automatic rifle inside the walls of Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego. She killed the director and injured many people, including children. Cause? Brenda just didn't like Mondays.
Brenda Spencer
school student
Another case. In 1989, Patrick Edward Petri armed himself with an AK-47 and entered the Cleveland school, but already in the city of Stockton. There, he shot more than a hundred times at children and teachers. As a result, five children died and 29 were injured. It is noted that the victims were predominantly from Southeast Asia. Having finished the massacre, Petri fired a bullet into himself. Familiar killers noted that he had a psychiatric disorder, "hatred of everything", as well as racist views regarding Vietnamese immigrants.
In general, before "Columbine" there were more than ten bloody shootings in American schools, but for some reason, teenagers around the world began to copy Harris and Klebold, and not Petri or Spencer.
Bowling for Columbine
In April 1999, American society split into "before" and "after". The watershed was the same massacre that would later become the most famous case of shooting in history. Two teenagers entered the Columbine School cafeteria, planted explosives, and then began to pour lead on everyone they see. During the fatal incident, 13 people died and 24 were injured. Not the bloodiest numbers, but it was the April events that later formed the basis of many films, books and songs: from Roger Moore's documentary to Eminem's lines in I'M Back and Rap God.
Eric Harris
student of the school
Because the shooting of Harris and Klebold is not just the behavior of two demented teenagers. They have a whole ideology behind them. Judging by the diaries they both kept, the criminals differed in character. Harris dreamed of militarism, the ideas of natural selection and hard sex with classmates. Klebold drew flowers in his diary, sighed about unrequited love and thought a lot about death. In general, these guys personified the two main teen psychologies: all-consuming hatred and languid torment. There is nothing surprising in the fact that after so many years, today's teenagers see kindred spirits in the killers - the essence of youthful suffering never changes.
Dylan Klebold
student of the school
The imitators also liked the "cloak mafia" aesthetic, which was ridiculed by the killers' classmates. A long raincoat over a thin body, army boots, hard rock from speakers, complete nihilism and a powerful interest in the orders of Nazi Germany. Dangerous mix landmarks, making his admirer "not like everyone else" - perhaps perfect recipe for the teenage outsider. Shots where cinematic - what is there - guys with weapons in their hands are smashing the cafeteria, even now they are walking in the public social network VKontakte. When Gus Van Sant filmed his "Elephant", he didn't have to think of anything - he just dressed the teenagers in black clothes and it was a blast.
In itself, the idea that this world of popular and beautiful schoolchildren can be attacked by the revenge of an outsider dressed in a black hoodie will resonate at any time. As long as there are outsiders, there are black hoodies and there are weapons from which revenge can be carried. The students from Columbine could not fail to have followers.
Shooting around the world
One of the bloodiest shootings in the US happened in 2007 - eight years after Columbine. A Virginia Tech student named Cho Seung Hee entered the campus with a weapon at the ready. There he killed 32 people and injured 25 more. The student then committed suicide. Cho Seung Hee had mental disorder- The killer was prone to outbursts of aggression.
Another bloody tragedy occurred five years ago at Sandy Hook School, Connecticut. Adam Lanza stepped over adolescence - he was 20, but he performed the entire "procedure" according to his own "Columbine" canons. First, Adam shot his mother, then he looked into the elementary school - there Lanza killed 20 small children and six adults. The director of the school was also hit by bullets. Of course, it soon became clear that the killer had mental problems: at the age of 13, Adam was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome.
It is a mistake to think that shootings happen only in the USA. Yes, there are all the conditions for a mass execution in schools - the free distribution of weapons, but a ban on carrying them on the territory public institutions. However, the bloody fashion has long spilled out of the States.
Back in 2002, a resident of the German town of Erfurt entered the building of the local gymnasium, where he used to study until he was expelled due to a false certificate of illness. The expulsion put an end to the future career of the guy, so he decided to take revenge. The killer shot 16 people until he stumbled upon a former teacher - after talking with the teacher, the teenager shot himself.
In Sweden, there was a similar case, multiplied by racial intolerance. 21-year-old Anton Lundin-Pettersson was fond of Nazism, hated immigrants and liked pictures about Adolf Hitler on Facebook. In October 2015, he opened the doors of the Kronan Public School. Anton chose the school not by chance: about 90% of "newcomers", mainly from Somalia, studied there. Before entering the building, the killer put on a black cloak and mask (to look like), and also armed himself with a sword. In total, he brought death to three people: a 20-year-old teacher's assistant, a 15-year-old schoolboy and a 42-year-old mathematician. Eyewitnesses noted that Anton was aiming at "people with dark color skin".
School attacks also occurred in Finland, France and Estonia. In many cases, the aggressors knew about Columbine and deliberately imitated the style of the American assassins.
Came to Russia
As you can understand, the cult did not bypass Russia either - the case in the Perm school was not the first time that teenagers were inspired by Harris and Klebold. On the morning of September 5, 2017, 15-year-old Mikhail P from No. 1 in Ivanteevka near Moscow brought air weapons and a kitchen hatchet to the classroom. He is from a computer science teacher with whom he had a conflict. The woman received a head injury. Then the teenager went to the audience, where the second half of his 9 "A" class was sitting, to deal with long-time offenders. The attacker wore a black cloak and dreamed of militarism, which caused ridicule from his classmates; Michael wanted revenge. Fortunately, most of the students managed to escape. As a result, only three people were injured: a teacher and two schoolchildren who jumped out of windows.
Michael is not just a duet from "Columbine" in appearance- he fully shared their philosophy and even called himself Mike Klebold on the VKontakte social network. On the page, the attacker posted videos and photos with idols, and always told his friends that he wanted to repeat the path of the two killers.
Our selection presents cases of school massacres committed by teenagers. Cruel and pointless..
On the morning of September 5, a monstrous incident occurred in Ivanteevka near Moscow: a 9th grade student burst into the computer science office with a cry: “I came here to die,” after which he attacked the teacher, hitting her on the head with a kitchen hatchet. The crazy teenager did not stop there, he opened fire from a traumatic pistol and began to scatter smoke bombs around the class. His frightened classmates, trying to escape, jumped out of the windows.
The offender was captured by school security and handed over to the arriving police. The teacher and several students who received fractures while jumping out of the window were hospitalized, now nothing threatens their lives.
It was possible to find out that the student had been preparing for the attack for a long time. According to his social media page. net, he was keenly interested in mass murder and was a fan of Dylan Klebold, a teenager who staged a brutal massacre at Columbine High in 1999.
Why is this even happening? Why do apparently well-off teenagers grab weapons and go to kill their teachers and classmates?
Perhaps we can answer these questions if we recall the most resonant mass killings in schools.
February 3, 2014. School No. 263, Otradnoe, Moscow, Russia
Tenth-grader Sergei Gordeev, armed with a rifle and a carbine, burst into the geography classroom and killed teacher Andrei Kirillov with two shots.
When the police arrived at the school building, Gordeev opened fire on the police, as a result of which senior sergeant Sergei Bushuev was mortally wounded.
Gordeev was detained and taken to a pre-trial detention center. At trial, his lawyer insisted that the teenager was mentally ill:
“He thinks that he invented all of us, that now he will close his eyes, and all those who are not interested in him will disappear. He told his own mother that she was his illusion.
According to the lawyer, his defendant committed the murder in order to prove the theory of solipsism - a doctrine that claims that all the world exists only in your imagination. Gordeev also planned to commit suicide.
By a court decision, Sergei Gordeev was declared insane and sent for compulsory treatment in mental asylum.
April 20, 1999. Columbine High School, Littleton, Colorado, USA
One of the worst massacres in US history took place at the Columbine School.
At 11:10 a.m., two heavily armed high school students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold parked in their cars outside the school building and planted two timed bombs in the school cafeteria.
The youths planned to wait for the explosions on the street, and then shoot all the people running out of the building. Schoolchildren hoped to destroy about five hundred people in this way, but the bombs planted in the canteen did not work. Then the frustrated criminals burst into the school and started shooting at everyone who fell into their field of vision. They killed one teacher and 12 students, the youngest of whom was 14 years old. More than 20 people were injured. After the massacre, the killers committed suicide: each shot himself in the head.
Harris and Klebold come from wealthy, respectable families. Both were not popular at school and were addicted to computer games. As follows from their personal diaries, they began preparations for the massacre in the year of the tragedy.
December 14, 2012. Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut, USA
This crime is especially horrendous because young children were its victims.
In the morning, 20-year-old Adam Peter Lanza shot dead his sleeping mother, armed himself with several pistols and rifles from her weapons collection, got into his car and drove to primary school"Sandy Hook".
At 9:35 a.m., he burst into the building and shot children and teachers for 11 minutes. Then, hearing that the police were approaching, he shot himself. This happened between 9-46 and 9-53.
The victims of the 10-minute massacre were 26 people: 20 children aged 6 to 7 years and six women. The headmistress and school psychologist were killed while trying to stop the killer, 4 teachers died trying to save the children and covering them with their bodies.
dead children
The motives behind the brutal massacre remained unclear. Adam Lanza was born into a prosperous family, his mother was a teacher and collected weapons. It was on her that all the weapons from which her son shot at his victims were registered. Adam was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a mild form of autism, which, however, is not characterized by aggressive behavior. He was distinguished by increased anxiety, was fond of computer games and did not eat meat, not wanting to be the cause of animal suffering ...
March 11, 2009. Albertwil-Realschule College, Winnenden, Germany
A former student of the school, 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer fired his father's pistol, which killed 15 people. At first he acted in the school building, and then moved to the streets of the city, where he killed several more people. Once surrounded by police, Kretschmer shot himself.
The motive for the brutal crime was the refusal of the girl whom Kretschmer was courting to meet with him. This girl studied at the school where the massacre took place, and was one of the first to be killed.
November 7, 2007 Jokela Lyceum, Tuusula, Finland
18-year-old student Erik Auvinen staged a gun shooting at his school. 8 people were killed: 6 students, a school principal and a nurse. After the massacre, Auvinen fled to the men's room and shot himself in the head.
On the eve of the tragedy, Auvinen posted a video on YouTube titled "Massacre at Jokel School - 11/7/2007". The film contained photographs of the school and of Auvinen himself with weapons, as well as excerpts from amateur videos of Klebold and Harris, who staged a massacre at the Columbine school. Auvinen was a quiet and shy teenager who was bullied by his peers, while he himself bullied elementary school students. The killer was fond of computer games, was interested in weapons and wanted to leave a memory of himself. He hated gays, single parents, and couples in love. He began planning the massacre back in March.
March 24, 1998. Jonesboro School, Arkansas, USA
On that fateful day, Jonesboro School students 11-year-old Andrew Golden and 13-year-old Johnson Mitchell opened fire on children in school yard. The weapon was stolen by Mitchell from his own grandfather. The shooting killed four children aged 11 to 12 and a teacher who shielded the students with her body. More than 10 people were injured.
students and teacher killed in shooting
Police arrived at the scene and arrested the teenage killers.
Golden and Mitchell were never able to explain what was the motive for the crime. According to some reports, they were fond of the occult. The perpetrators received 8 and 10 years in prison and this moment are at will.
March 21, 2005. Red Lake School, Minnesota, USA
16-year-old teenager Jeffrey Weese shot 9 people and then committed suicide. Jeffrey's first victims were his grandfather, a retired police officer, and his girlfriend. Having dealt with them and armed with two pistols and a shotgun that belonged to his grandfather, Wiz went to his school, where he killed seven more people: five students, a teacher and a security guard. According to eyewitnesses, during the murders, Wiz did not leave a smile on his face.
After a shootout with the arriving police, the teenager locked himself in one of the offices and shot himself in the head with a shotgun.
Wiz was a quiet and shy boy who was bullied by his classmates. He did poorly in school, was obsessed with computer games, and admired Hitler. 4 years before the tragedy, his father committed suicide. After some time, Jeffrey's mother, suffering from alcoholism, died in an accident, so the grandfather, with whom Wiz was in conflict, was raising the teenager.
A terrible massacre took place on April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School in the town of Littleton, Colorado. Thoroughly prepared, two "outcast" students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold showed up at their school with two shotguns and walked through the library, classrooms and offices - in less than an hour they sent 13 people to the next world. Another 24 were shot. Two homemade bombs planted in the school cafeteria, fortunately, did not work. When the "plan" was completed, the teenagers put guns to their heads. As the investigators later found out (and 80 people worked on the case), the high school students were fans of neo-fascism and timed the attack to coincide with the birthday of Adolf Hitler. Many times they "simulated" their execution in computer games. Their "feat", alas, has become an example for mentally unstable teenagers. In the USA, in Europe, in Russia - all over the world.
In terms of the number of victims, this tragedy has never ranked first in the American anti-rating of mass massacres in educational institutions. Even in 1999, she was in third. It was later "displaced" by the terrorist attacks at Virginia Tech in 2007 and at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. However, it was after Columbine that America shuddered. Firstly, everyone noticed an unhealthy trend, and secondly, there was someone, or rather what to blame: violent videos and computer games (teens loved Doom), weak parental control and free circulation of firearms.
Perhaps precisely because the tragedy was widely covered and exaggerated in the press (according to CNN, the funeral of the first victim of the massacre, Rachel Scott, showed the highest viewing rates in the history of the television company and even bypassed), it was Columbine that mentally unstable teenagers around the world wanted to repeat. .
Collage: Channel Five
"The Cloak Mafia"
In the United States, this phrase has become a household word for teenagers who want reprisals against those who tease them. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were part of this "hobby circle" even before its name acquired such a gloomy connotation.
“Denver school kids who survived the shooting say the two killers wore ski masks and raincoats and were part of a tight-knit group of loners known as the Raincoat Mafia. A photograph of this group was published in a 1998 album. At school, participants are described as obsessed with guns, the Nazis, the military, the internet, and the songs of Marilyn Manson. BBC newspaper the day after the tragedy.
Photo: schoolshootingsusa.weebly.com
Members of the "mafia" always wore black raincoats, regardless of the weather. Later, the “technically useful” side of the long-skirted clothing was also revealed - under it it is very easy to carry weapons to school. The Interest Circle united the outcasts of society, who were constantly bullied by school "stars" - athletes, players of football teams. After Columbine, the name became a household name.
Sea of followers
A real wave of horror swept the Western world after the shooting at Columbine High School. The speed of repetition of aimless and merciless murders was also striking. Eight days later, on April 28, 1999, the first case of imitation occurred. 14-year-old Todd Smith Cameron used a 22-caliber semi-automatic rifle to open fire in the corridor of the Canadian school W. R. Myers High School and killed 17-year-old Jason Lang. Another person was injured. A child with a weapon was twisted by a physical education teacher. At trial, the shooter said he was inspired by the Columbine massacre. Cameron was sentenced to life imprisonment, but in 2005 he was released. He immediately tried to hide from the authorities and was again arrested.
Exactly one month after Columbine, on May 20, 1999, 15-year-old Thomas Solomon Jr. fired at his Heritage High School. With a revolver and a .22 semi-automatic rifle, he wounded six people. But then he surrendered to the police. On November 9, 2000, the shooter was sentenced to 40 years in prison and another 65 years of probation. Solomon has also stated that he was inspired to shoot by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. In addition, he also referred to himself as a member of the "cloak mafia".
Further, on March 5, 2001, 15-year-old Californian Charles Williams, the son of a military and field doctor, stole a revolver and a semi-automatic rifle from his father to deal with the offenders at Santana High School. He killed two people and wounded 13. After that he was arrested. During interrogation, he admitted that he wanted to repeat Columbine. He has been serving a half-century prison sentence since 2002.
16-year-old Jeffrey Wise was much more determined. On March 21, 2005, before going to a showdown with schoolchildren, he shot his grandfather and his lady. At his school in Red Lake, Minnesota, he killed seven and injured five people. At the same time, he tried to copy the shooters from Columine. Since one of their victims was a Baptist, it was rumored that the shooters asked her if she believed in God, and allegedly this question was addressed to other victims. The FBI did not later confirm this information. As eyewitnesses later claimed, Wiz asked the same question to one of the students.
Do you want to play a game?
Developer Danny Ledonne was also affected by Columbine. And in 2005 he created a computer Super game Columbine Massacre RPG, completely repeating the massacre of 1999. Creepy shooter minute by minute simulates the day of the tragedy. Scenes are accompanied real photo and video from the scene. The goal is to shoot as many people as possible.
It was in this by no means harmless “shooter” that car mechanic Kimvir Gill, one of the followers of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, often played. On September 13, 2016, a Canadian with a rifle, sawn-off shotgun and pistol entered the building of Dawson College in Montreal and began firing left and right. As a result, he wounded 20 people and shot an 18-year-old student, and he himself got a bullet in a shootout with the police.
Just like Harris, Gill kept a “hate blog”, which no one looked at in time either. The man liked to wear military-style clothes and handled weapons well. He received combat training and was a member of a hunting club, which gave him the right to own a small arsenal. On his blog, he even published pictures with a carbine, with which he later went to shoot children.
Surpassed "teachers"
Virginia Tech Massacre in Blacksburg on April 16, 2007 by a student from South Korea Cho Seung Hee. The man started the massacre from the student hostel. With two pistols in his hands, he shot everyone who got in his way. Then he moved to the educational building. In total, he killed 32 people, wounded 25 more. He left a farewell video in which he mentioned "martyrs Eric and Dylan". In terms of the number of victims, this massacre became the second mass execution in the United States. In the first place - the terrorist attack at the elementary school "Beth" in 1927.
In the same way
One of the most recent shootings occurred on December 14 at an elementary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. Although, after the investigation, the connection with Columbine was not directly discovered, 20-year-old Adam Lanza repeated the senseless actions of the "predecessors". Before heading to the slaughterhouse, Lanza shot and killed his mother. In elementary school, his targets were six- and seven-year-olds. He killed 20 kids, six adults, and wounded two more. In total, 28 people died in the massacre, including the shooter himself. As a result, in terms of mass, this case ranked third in the history of murders in US educational institutions.
It is also known about at least three prevented massacres, when the future killers could be calculated in advance.
"Russian Klebold"
In September 2017, Russia experienced the American tragedy 18 years ago. , which later hit the teacher on the head. Before the attack, a post appeared on the student's social media page “I delete my life 09/05/17”. According to one version, the student was bullied by classmates for being strange and wearing military-style clothes, and he could even come to class with camouflage paint on his face. He took the nickname not just speaking, but directly pointing to the "idol". Mike Klebold - indicated on his page on the social network. The 15-year-old "Ivanteevsky Strelka" is really called Mikhail, but no one paid any attention to the seemingly fictitious surname before the tragedy.
The student was detained by a special forces squad that arrived at the scene. A criminal case was opened against him under the article “Attempted murder”.
Video: Channel Five
Not virtual reality
Augmented reality glasses, super-clear graphics - technologies that are improving every year and ... help teenagers immerse themselves in a world of violence and murder, where, if something goes wrong, new life, and the difficult level can be replayed. It is generally impossible for teenagers to understand that the “next level” will be at best in a psychiatric hospital or a penitentiary institution. Yury Zinchenko, chief freelance psychologist of the Ministry of Health, in an interview portal iz.ru told how to work with teenagers stuck in their own world of illusions, formed by social networks, games and media.
“Pain points in adolescence are many: it is high level aggression and senseless cruelty, suicidal behavior and the use of psychoactive substances, escape from reality into a fantasy world and computer addiction. Solving problems by attacking rather than finding a compromise is often promoted in movies and social networks. The reasons for such a crisis are the glorification of violence, the depreciation of human dignity and the fetish of personal success according to the principle “the end justifies the means”. The value of human life is significantly underestimated due to the same computer games, where a character can have ten or a hundred of them. It is foolish to expect that increased school security will save the situation. Conversations with teenagers that violence is bad are unlikely to have an effect either. It is necessary to correct the attitudes and behavior of children, to help them correctly express their position and emotions. But as long as we go into discussions about whether children need psychological support, who should do it and how, the situation will only get worse,” says Yuriy Zinchenko.
The "super predator" theory
In the 90s, the statistics of juvenile delinquency in the United States simply rolled over. Since 1983, the number of murders committed by teenagers with firearms has tripled. At the same time, since 1980, the number of victims of "street wars" has quadrupled. And this category of murders was the fastest growing. For the first time, the criminologist John Dilulio, professor of political science and social science at Princeton University, spoke about child killers in 1997. In the Weekly Standard, he published an article titled "The Rise of the Super Predators" in which he spoke of the dreaded "demographic crime time bomb." The political scientist assured that the "explosion" would occur as soon as the number of 14-17-year-olds with illegal inclinations reached half a million.
In response, the University of Pennsylvania criminologist Marvin Wolfgang objected to him. He conducted a study according to which only 6% of boys commit serious murder-related crimes. And, accordingly, by the year 2000, when, according to the theory of "super predators" in America, there should be at least half a million young criminals, there will be only 30,000 of them, that is, the same 6% of the total number of teenagers. Another crininologist, Mark Blumstein, attributed the rapid rise in homicides since 1985 to the emergence of a new drug, crack. According to him, the dealers hired countless teenagers, supplying them with both drugs and weapons. The theories were quickly forgotten, and the term from the loudest of them about "super predators" migrated to the political sphere.
Information about Columbine is still freely available on the Internet. The tragedy turned into a "heroic saga" for adolescents with an unformed psyche and destructive behavior. The “feat” is repeated with varying frequency by the followers of an absurd cult, who are now rightfully called “super losers” and do not really remember the names of the successors of the gloomy story.
Aniya Bataeva
Dmitry Kurkin
Massacre organized by two teenagers at Columbine High in April 1999, was far from the first outbreak of violence in educational institutions (they have been counted in the United States since at least 1840). Nevertheless, it was she who became a pop-cultural phenomenon, references to which pop up over and over again when investigating similar incidents.
The very word "Columbine" for nineteen years has become almost an official synonym for the massacre of classmates and / or teachers. A recent gun attack at a Perm high school was almost immediately dubbed the "Permian Columbine", once it was revealed that one of the attackers had a keen interest in the history of the Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. The case in the Ivanteevka school, where a high school student who called himself Mike Klebold on the Web, injured a teacher, became "Columbine in Ivanteevka". The attack at the Ulan-Ude school has not yet been connected with the events of nineteen years ago, but by inertia it was also called the “Buryat Columbine”. The Russian media have already picked up the label and do not seem to be going to give it up.
Despite the fact that the original plan of Harris and Klebold, by and large, failed (otherwise there could have been many more victims), their followers from among the so-called columbiners try to stage their actions over and over again, trying to imitate them in everything, including the choice clothes. Let's figure out how it turned out that the two killers acquired a romantic aura of people who "avenged everyone who was bullied at school", and whether it is possible to fight columbiners as a destructive subculture.
Video games are to blame
The tragedy at Columbine shocked America: researchers note that the school massacre even ousted the terrorist attack in Oklahoma City (at that time the largest in US history) from the mass consciousness, the second anniversary of which Harris and Klebold initially chose during the day for the attack.
In trying to pinpoint the culprits, the public blamed industrial metal and (which by 1999 had finally become an all-American bogeyman), the film Natural Born Killers (which, strictly speaking, satirizes the media cult of Bonnie and Clyde) and "violent video games that promote violence" (Note that the realism of video games at that time was relatively low). When it became known that the psychiatrist who observed Harris prescribed him a medicine, some suspected that the refusal of the antidepressant could cause a teenager to have an outburst of aggression, but the version was not confirmed: the autopsy showed that Eric continued to take it.
Much more prosaic reasons - the bitterness of two teenagers, of whom one (Harris) complained of depression, anger and suicidal thoughts, and the second (Klebold) was bullied by classmates - became apparent a year later: after conducting a study of similar incidents, they found out that two-thirds of them were associated with bullying.
However, such an explanation did not give the layman either a switchman who could be blamed for the tragedy, or a simple answer to the question of how school shootings could be prevented in the future. As a result, the Columbine legend, fueled by the media and mothballed by the Internet, has taken on a life of its own. Columbiners appeared.
Dylan Klebold cult
It was only three years before Columbine grew from provocative tabloid headlines to a sinister pop culture phenomenon that put Harris and Klebold on par with serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer. The tragedy formed the basis of Gus Van Sant's The Elephant and Ben Coccio's lesser-known Day Zero, both of which were released in 2003 and became a kind of artistic reconstruction of Columbine. Documentary Bowling for Columbine, in which director Michael Moore focuses on the gun lobby that supports the free sale of firearms in the US, won an Oscar. Direct references or indirect references to the mass shooting arranged by two teenagers in the lyrics became commonplace. "Columbine" has become part of urban folklore.
Generation X author Douglas Copeland, worried that in the story of Columbine the killers get much more attention than the victims, wrote the novel Hey Nostradamus!, whose characters are survivors of a school massacre or lost their loved ones as a result of it - trying to deal with. However, this attempt to shift the focus did little to change the coverage of history: its main characters in popular culture there are still two teenagers who have taken up arms.
The core of the columbiners who romanticize the crimes of Harris and Klebold are teenagers bullied by classmates or suffering from a lack of attention. Remarkably, the thematic communities focused primarily on the figure of Klebold. “[They] admire Dylan, the tragic depressive boy, the girls are just in love with him,” says journalist Dave Cullen, author of Columbine, pointing out the discrepancy between the online myth and the nuances of the real story. - Although Eric was the leader in Columbine, and one would expect him to be more attractive, but the cult of Dylan is much larger than the cult of Eric. Girls fall in love with him in the same way that grown women fall in love with drug addicts or alcoholics - believing that they will save his lost, suffering soul.
Cullen notes that columbiners are most often driven by the desire to shock peers and research interest: “I am sure that for most this is a pose: when in real life the teenager is not particularly successful, he sees the way out in constructing a tough personality on the web. They pretend, but at the same time they believe that the rest are saying this all seriously ... It becomes scary when you realize that in 0.01% of such cases there may be a conditional Adam Lanza (teenager who committed the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012. - Approx. ed.) who is really serious in his words. After all, he discussed Columbine with his peers - they responded to him with interest, which he regarded as support.
Finding killer diaries and school surveillance videos that show what Klebold and Harris were wearing and how they behaved on the day of the massacre is still not difficult. New incidents in Russian schools have once again fueled interest in history: it is claimed that users have become five times more likely to use the #columbine hashtag.
Concerned public figures have already called on the Prosecutor General's Office to recognize "any mention" of Columbine as extremist, but this proposal does not seem to be effective in essence or implemented in practice (see " Streisand effect"). In the coming months, columbiner communities will most likely be purged from social networks - VKontakte has already begun deleting the corresponding publics - but there is no doubt that they will “overwinter” on the deep web and return to public access again.
"Top 10 bloody crimes"
Columbine, perhaps because it became a household name, asked several painful questions at once regarding how psychological climate in schools and modern ethics. How responsible is the media (in the broadest sense of the word) for the “glamorization” of massacres and is it right to restrict access to information about them? How to talk about especially cruel, far beyond the ordinary crimes, without falling into cheap sensationalism and savoring someone else's grief? Is it possible to consider that the collections of the "most bloody massacres" are pushing embittered and psychologically unstable people to try to break into the "top 10"? And is it possible to prevent the emergence of new columbiners by "banning the Internet"?
A pre-arranged attack by two high school students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold on other students and staff at their school with small arms and improvised explosive devices on April 20, 1999, Hitler's birthday. The terrorists turned out to be Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, students at the school. In terms of the number of victims, the tragedy once ranked third among massacres in US educational institutions.
The first signs of aggression began to appear in 1996, when Eric Harris registered a personal website on the company's server. By the end of the year, the site already contained instructions on how to harm others and make explosives, as well as stories about all the trouble arranged by Harris and Klebold. In early 1997, the blog first began to show signs of Harris' growing anger towards society.
Due to the low number of visitors, Harris's site did not cause alarm and fear until the end of 1997, when Dylan Klebold gave the address to Brooks Brown, a former friend of Harris. On the site, the young man found numerous death threats directed at him. Brown's mother repeatedly contacted the Jefferson County police, and investigator Michael Gwerra was aware of the site's existence.
Future terrorists filmed videos demonstrating that they had weapons. Recordings showed that the boys were preparing a plan to blow up the school, rivaling the terrorist attack in Oklahoma City. The diaries also contained ideas about escaping to Mexico, hijacking a plane from Denver International Airport, and using it to blow up a building in New York.
Harris and Klebold planned a bombing in the school cafeteria at the time when it will be the largest number people - several hundred. The optimal time for this was determined on the basis of observations and records made in advance. The attackers hoped that after detonating the bombs in the cafeteria, they would shoot the surviving students and teachers on their way out. Then, when ambulances, firefighters, police, and journalists began to drive up to the school, the bombs planted in the teenagers' cars were expected to go off and kill people outside. However, bombs in the school cafeteria and cars did not work.
On the day of the tragedy, the youths met at Harris's car near the school, took two 9-kilogram (each based on a propane tank), after which they entered the school cafeteria a few minutes before the start of the first lunch break and placed several bags of bombs there. When the bombs didn't go off, they fired chaotically, causing a brutal massacre in the library. Leaving the library, the young men went to the area with offices. They looked into many classrooms through the glass and met the eyes of the students hiding in them, but did not try to break into them. According to witnesses, Hariss and Klebold's behavior seemed aimless. The students hiding in the cafeteria heard one of the attackers say, “Today the world will end. Today we die."
The SWAT team and the police quickly arrived at the scene, trying to evacuate and rescue the schoolchildren. Because of the shooting covering the evacuation, witnesses were unable to determine exactly when Harris and Klebold committed suicide.
It is worth noting that this shocking event gave rise to and inspired about 9 followers (for example, on April 16, 2007, a 23-year-old student from South Korea, Cho Seung-hee, opened fire with two pistols, first in the student dormitory, and then in the academic building of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, killing 32 and injuring 25 others, the shooter committed suicide in one of the auditoriums.In his farewell video, he mentioned "martyrs Eric and Dylan")
School photo 
From CCTV cameras 
Suicide 
Funeral 
