« Attackers who have become » martyrs « thanks to the memes »: Columbine, 26 years ago the massacre that continues to inspire attacks

There Columbine massacre It represents a watershed in the way we tell the violence today: it was the first shooting to find large space on television. It was April 20, 1999 – Exactly 26 years ago – And in that period the channels were emerging All news entirely dedicated to information. The media coverage that received the attack had no precedents. On that day all the cameras of the major news channels were focused on high school where Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold – Two students from the same institute – they killed 13 people (now there are 14: Anne Marie Hochhalterwhich was paralyzed during the shooting, died in March 2025 as long -term consequence of the wounds).

Columbine – the massacre is often indicated with the name of the Colorado school where it happened – it was also the First massacre of the Internet era. It was at that moment that the United States discovered for the first time that the web could also be used to look for information to build explosive devices and to give vent to their murderous thoughts.
More than a quarter of a centuryhowever, it continues to have an impact also on that violence that finds fertile ground in the less enlightened ravines of the internet, where the seed of hatred turns into online radicalization.

The role of the web in the attack

Today the concern is to make artificial intelligence quite safe to prevent a user from asking Instructions to build a bomb. But at the dawn of the internet it was not so difficult to find so difficult Guides to manufacture bombs. And just like that, browsing the web, Eric Harris managed to find « The Anarchist Cookook », the anarchist recipe book, a text that contains the driving step by step to build seven of the « tube bombs » that the two attacks They had placed in the school (but they had never exploded).

Harris also kept a sort of blog Ante Litteram where, in 1997, he had described in detail six « missions » of retaliation made by Harris, Klebold and a third teenager. At the end of the year, the « thoughts » published on their site had begun to take on more and more violent contours. Thus begin the first descriptions on How to build bombsconsidered as « some of the easiest and most lethal ways to kill a group of people ». And in the same period it gives an outlet (virtually) to its murderous fantasies. « All What I want to do is kill and hurt the greatest number of youespecially some people. Like Brooks Brown, « he wrote referring to a classmate of his. All outdoors, on its website, when the public scope of the Internet was still not a constant thought as it is now, in the post-social era.

Other attacks inspired by Columbine

There is a pre-columbine and a post-columbine. A period in which the massacres are told once they are finished and one in which the information is transmitted just as it happens. An era in which the thoughts of an oven are written on paper and others in which you can read these murderous drives even before the massacre takes place. And there is also a post-columbine worldwhere the internet becomes the place to study, dissect, sometimes even venerate those who have made an attack.

To understand the consequences that Columbine massacre had to take a step back and two steps forward. The step back: the first true School Shooting – the mass shootings that take place inside a school – is of the 1966. And while recognizing the undeniable tragedy of the 18 victims, the scope of that event did not have the same impact of columbine, perhaps precisely because it happened in a pre-internet era.

Two steps forward. Virginia Tech ShootingApril 16, 2007. The twenty -three year old Cho Seung-Hui He kills 32 students from his university. In a class task written years earlier, at the time of high school, He said he wanted to « replicate Columbine ». And in an anonymous message sent to an American broadcaster he had called « martyrs » Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Sandy Hook Shooting14 December 2012. The twenty year old Adam Lanza Enter an elementary school and causes 27 victims between school staff and students. In the report published by the Prosecutor of the Connecticut State we read that Lanza had « An obsession with mass murders, in particular for the shooting of April 1999 at Columbine High School in Colorado« . Columbine massacre has become a model for subsequent mass shootings.

An attack that has become pop phenomenon

«Columbine has transformed the mass shooting into pop phenomenon», He explains to Courier Antonio Pellegrino, journalist and author of the book «Horror idiots»(Published by Linkiesta Books), which tells the relationship between mass trait and subcultures online and like the Mass shooting It has become thanks to the Internet, in fact, a macabre element of pop culture. The merit seems to be precisely the diffusion on the web of the writings of Harris and the videos he had recorded (on videotape) together with Klebold. Around these two, explains the author,  » Subcultures that raised them to anti-system martyrscrusaders victims of injustices or arms armed with revolutions without head or tail ». Columbine becomes a model for future massacres, regardless of their motivation. Something to tend to, even an aesthetic to be inspired by. Each internet subculture appropriates a piece of Columbine’s history by taking everything that is most convenient for its purposes from the story. «Despite the post-columbine tractors came from different subcultures-see Elliot Rodger as a symbol of incel or Brenton Tarrant of the radical right typical of 4chan – Everyone took that event as a model. They did « Cherry-Picking« , taking individual elements of the massacre to create a sort of massacre pantheon. Depending on the narrative made in the different forums, each trend chooses specific elements that can be ideologized, » says Pellegrino al Courier.

The road to Harris and Klebold’s martyring passes from forum dedicated precisely to the massacre of Columbine, from the subgroups of Reddit and also from Image Board as 4chan And 8chanthe platforms then became famous to be a fertile culture of extremism (as well as the memes). But the « myth » of the attack is not linked only to the event itself, but also to what the two shooter they represent for these online communities. «The cult that develops on these forums is one mythization of the person who goes to shoot. From this point of view the « Columbines« (I.e. all those who are in various capacities interested in this School Shootingeditor’s note) are fundamental: Eric and Dylan embody the marginalized. I am a symbol. The point is not the massacre itself, they are the ones who made it ».

The power of the memes

«Create memes. Publish memes. And share memes, « Brenton Tarrant wrote in his specifically online manifesto. The author of the massacre of Christchurch – The New Zealand city where the assaulting killed 51 people of Muslim faith – had understood everything on the importance of spreading memes as a propaganda. And if the sadly ironic memes on this attack in 2019 abound, there are those dedicated to a massacre that took place two decades earlier. Columbine, in fact, continues to be a point of reference at the same time both for Mainstream crowds – which now recognize the aesthetic of the traveler, dark glasses and long black leather coat, even if they don’t remember anything about the 1999 attack – both for extremist niches. The goal is inspire potential hemuli With content halfway between irony (which makes a possible defense simple) and the call to arms.

Distinguishing one from the others is not simple. And for this it affects the quantity and content of the memes that today, 26 years after that day, seem to celebrate the most popular and popular columbine massacre of columbine. All in the light of the sunas in 1997 was Harris’ blog. « When life is so hard that he begins to understand this son of … », says a caption that refers to a photo by Harris smiling. Or, again, an image of Klebold dressed in Black T -shirt and leather amphibiansan aesthetic that has become almost a must in the world that orbit the massacres. Not to mention the videos in which the two attacks are transformed into cartoons or the object of romantic desire. A trivialization (it doesn’t matter if voluntary or not) of an atrocious act that continues to inspire attacks. The last is last December, when the fifteen year old Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow He opened fire to the Christian School Abundant Lifekilling two companions and in the end herself. Online was then found a photo that depicted it with a shirt of the German metal band kmfdm who wore Eric Harris, for which according to investigators he had an obsession. « There are also others I admire, or that I would like to say that I admire or that I find interesting, » writes Rupnow in alleged manifest« Like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold ».