The role of politics in Columbine, the shooting that shook the States
I started this article intending to cover the politics of not just one attack, but many. Isla Vista’s killings, the Tucson assassination attempt, and the El Paso Walmart shooting, to name a few. However, after noticing I had already done 2,000 words on Columbine’s run-down and motives without even skimming the surface of the congressional response, I’ve cut it back heavily.
Religion, fantasy, complexes of superiority, and mental disturbance are all reasons behind America’s biggest tragedies, something the nation is quite prone to, be it because of gun laws, games, or exposure to violence. However, there’s a wider and messier world — politics — which has dealt a big hand in the outcomes of many lives across the United States, most being for the worse. The information we have at hand about how politics has influenced the run-up, undertaking, and aftermaths of America’s biggest tragedies is quite fascinating.
Herein, marred in this world of morbid fascination, is arguably the United States’ most infamous mass murder — the Columbine High School shooting. ‘Columbine’ has become a dark but all-too-common household name in America and across the world, and has garnered the title of the United States’ most notorious massacre. Every time a school mass shooting happens in America, it is in some way compared to Columbine, whether it be by death toll, motive, the number of assailants, or otherwise.
On April 20, 1999, senior students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were two of three students absent from their morning bowling class, taught by Kristine Macauley; she noted that, despite bowling being their favorite, they both were starting to miss the lesson more than normal. They both arrived at the school, parking in spots not assigned to them. They entered Columbine with two propane explosive-laden duffle bags, telling a friend who happened to be on the front doors, “I like you now,” followed by an order to vacate the area. Having already made intricate calculations of how many people would be in the cafeteria at a certain time, the duo put down the bags in the center of the dining room and waited in their cars, also equipped with bombs in the case police attempted to search them.
At 11.19, around five minutes later, pipe bombs and an aerosol canister exploded near Meadowbrook Heights, a suburb three-and-a-half miles south of the high school. This was a diversionary tactic to preoccupy police and fire services. At around the same time that a 911 call was made about the explosion, Harris and Klebold approached the school in black trench coats and pulled out a pump-action and a double-barrelled sawed-off shotgun respectively. They were equipped with more weapons, including Harris’ 995 carbine, explosives, and two knives. Klebold had a TEC-9 semi-automatic pistol, explosives, and another two knives. After shouting, “Go! Go,” bullets hit eleven outside of the school, killing some. At this point, they threw bombs onto the roof, but in general, the pair luckily had major issues with detonations, so these did not detonate. “This is what we always wanted to do, this is awesome!” witnesses recall one of them saying.
A minute after their outside assault on these students, those in the cafeteria and rooms around the school were warned about what was going on and were told to hide. It’s very important to note something here: active shooter drills didn’t happen in 1999; those came into existence thanks to this massacre. During these initial minutes, there were a lot of teachers who believed this was some sort of prank including paintball guns, or a school video production. At 11.26, following a quick shootout with a motorcycle police officer, Harris rejoined Klebold and both shot their weapons down the northern hallways, laughing. From this point, they spend about three minutes in the library hallway, randomly shooting and lighting pipe bombs. One of these falls down the staircase and causes a flash in the cafeteria.
They enter the library and shoot. It is here where most of the casualties occur, with ten killed and twelve injured. 56 were in the room at the time. They leave ten minutes later, at 11.36. After an eight-minute directionless wander, they go to the canteen and shoot the propane bombs, which did not explode as intended. Four hundred or more lives were saved by this fortunate reality. Security cameras pick up a fire after the bombs were shot, but an explosion still does not happen. If they had exploded, it is thought that the cafeteria and the surrounding parts of Columbine would have wholly collapsed from structural damage. They are also seen taking from students’ drinks.
At noon, they exit the cafeteria and climb the stairs to the library, where they fire from the window down to the officers below. Three minutes after the shootout, they travel to an obscured corner of the library and kill themselves at the same time with a shot to the head. The madness, from start to end, would last forty-nine minutes. It would take 15 lives, including Harris and Klebold, and cause 24 injuries. If that one bomb had properly detonated, the death toll could have been forty times higher.
Click here for the full timeline.
Investigators and the public have lots of evidence, thanks to Klebold’s and Harris’ diaries and journals, detailing their every step and every thought. From those remnants of the Columbine shooting history, there is no particular disdain for any administration, any politician, or any organization that made the pair carry out this massacre. Most of their reasoning came down to mental disorders and the creation of infamy. Klebold was depressed, and Harris was both depressed and a clinical psychopath. Klebold wanted to die, and Harris just didn’t care.
However, some of the pair’s logic behind the attack evidently came from more diminutive but still pivotal topics. This starts with rejection from girls, something both of them seemed to experience a fair bit in the years prior to 1999, which may be key in explaining the increasing misogynist thoughts as the diaries progress in time. This is backed up by a doodle in Eric’s notebook (see JSCO p. 25,981) where it seems he wrote, “Sadness, pain, eternal denial is known when she doesn’t love me,” followed by, “I’m sorry,” accompanied by hearts with crosses drawn over them.
In layman’s terms, it was not an active political entity that drove the pair to commit this atrocity, like, for example, how the El Paso Walmart shooter — a white supremacist — was influenced by then-President Donald Trump and the Republican parties.
Now, it’s already fairly clear that although Dylan played a grievous part in the attack, it was Eric that was the more prominent mastermind, especially when it came to the political motives. Investigators and psychologists believe that the Columbine massacre was in part driven by Eric’s various ideologies; he seemed to praise Hitler, Nazism, and far-right principles regularly and fairly passionately, alongside some damning remarks about Christianity, and a perception of hate toward most strata of society. There are swastikas, SS logos, and KKK logos (see JSCO p. 26,013) throughout the archived documents of both boys, and Harris seemed to know a fair bit of both standard German — “ich denk nein” — and inflammatory German — “buck dich [und] saugen mein hund,” pointing to this Nazist obsession of his. Peter Langman Ph.D., who is America’s leading expert on school shooters, published an intriguing piece on the influences of Eric’s ideology, and it is worth taking notes from it.
Psychologists bring the duo’s thoughts down to the disorder named folie à deux (madness of two), where delusional beliefs are transferred between two people. Sociologists, with a slight difference in analysis from psychologists, think that Eric’s comments were to cause a ‘revolution’ in outcast students. A researcher in these fields since 1979, Ralph Larkin says,
“Harris and Klebold committed their rampage shooting as an overtly political act in the name of oppressed students victimized by their peers. Numerous post-Columbine rampage shooters referred directly to Columbine as their inspiration; others attempted to supersede the Columbine shootings in body count. (…) The Columbine shootings redefined such acts not merely as revenge but as a means of protest of bullying, intimidation, social isolation, and public rituals of humiliation.” — Larkin, 2009
Langman, on the other hand, links Eric’s mental state to four main characters of political, literary, and psycho-analytical history: Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson, Thomas Hobbs, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Eric was a proponent of natural selection — his shirt bearing that title during the attack — which is a practice many of those named people put forward for use in society; it’s believed Eric read their pieces to attempt to validate his plan to attack Columbine. Langman intertwines the actions and writings of Harris with those of Manson to display quite fervently how the shooter began to mirror and mimic his life around his writings. All four had similar views of women as quote-en-quote second-class citizens, and there was a strange but quite often observed trait that he had a much higher regard for animal life over humans.
Hobbs became intertwined with Harris over several similarities in comments over bravery, the artificiality of society, and the fact there is not inherently a ‘true good or true evil’. Beyond Good and Evil was the title of a Nietzsche book, which basically describes itself when you relate that title to Eric’s links with Thomas Hobbs. These historical figures made a complex psychological impact on Eric that definitely played a role in the attack. And, for Klebold, the political impacts are noted much less, but it’s fairly easy to say that he, for the most part, followed Eric’s tracks in most ways, including politically; what Eric believed is, most likely, what Dylan did too.
There’s something else interesting that pops up here, which is rather impossible to just skim over: his good ability to hide his hatred and deceit; “His racism is of particular interest because as a younger boy his best friends included one who was black and one who was Asian,” notes Langman. This may have benefitted him from being picked up by a staff member on his ideologies prior to the attack. He had also written a report on Nazi Germany which portrayed them as to how anyone else would think of the people involved with the Nazis — callous, murderous, greedy, insane — which completely contradicted the inner thoughts written in his notebook.
“I love the Nazis too… by the way, I _______ can’t get enough of the swastika, the SS, and the iron cross. Hitler and his head boys ______ up a few times and it cost them the war, but I love their beliefs and who they were, what they did, and what they wanted.” — p. 26,015
While denial of love is one thing — an understandable topic to feel pain over — misogyny is a whole different ball game, and Eric targets not only women but lesbians and other gays in particular. Among others targeted include African-Americans and ‘incurable mental defectives’, i.e. those with mental health and disability issues. Thus, the picture of broad abhorrence of everyone — or everyone who is, at least, not Aryan — in society is what is painted, rather than a picture of targeted, motivated harassment. I also spotted something else which may not tie into politics or hate or any other sort of topic like that, but it’s worth pointing out that on the school planner page that had the map of America, Eric drew arrows signaling an invasion of Canada, Mexico, Russia, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Caribbean; this is yet another sight into quite a messed and hyper-unrealistic mind.
Virtually no information on Dylan Klebold’s ideological beliefs are available, largely because it is Eric that became the largest character of this massacre, therefore the subject of the most scrutiny. He killed the most people; he left behind the most evidence; he was the most outspoken one. We link back to folie à deux, the transfer of delusional thoughts between a close pair of people. It’s quite a common thought now, twenty-two years after the initial siege on Columbine, that this mental disorder, for lack of a better way to put it, is what fuelled the attack into what it became.
Dylan may have just happened to be in the wrong group at the wrong time. That’s still not an excuse for what he did, and it’s likely that Eric’s more vocal opinions on politics, the world stage, groups of people in society, et cetera, got to him and he ended up becoming shooter №2. “Klebold would have never pulled off Columbine without Harris,” states Slate Magazine, quoting an agreement between Dr. Frank Ochberg of Michigan State University, and the FBI’s lead investigator for the Columbine massacre, Dwayne Fuselier; “He might have gotten caught for some petty crime, gotten help in the process, and conceivably could have gone on to live a normal life.”
While a specific motive has not been decided upon by anyone since the day of the attack, it is safe to say that, as highlighted, politics played a huge role. Neither Eric Harris nor Dylan Klebold were influenced by a modern figure, say, like a white supremacist of their day, but rather by literary and historical figures whose horrid ideologies infiltrated their brains in the pursuit of acknowledgment in their school. Rather painfully, the influence of people like Hitler, Nietzsche, Hobbs, Manson, and other infamous figures on people today is a reality we are starting to see far too often, whether it be within the growing list of American school shooting perpetrators, to casual adherents of neo-Nazism within schools like yours and mine.
References
For the benefit of the readers and the validity of the information I use in this piece, this article is cited and referenced, something I have generally stopped doing for my articles for time reasons. If a piece of text is underlined, it will be linked to a reputable and safe site or archive that backs any claims or information. See:
- “Worse than Columbine: Parkland school shooting one of the deadliest in U.S. history,” Tampa Bay Times (February 15, 2018)
- “A little unfinished business on Bowling and Columbine,” Dave Cullen (April 16, 2005)
- “Duffle bags,” Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office
- “Narrative time line of events,” Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office
- “The ultimate nightmare,” Julie Myerson, The Spectator (March 12, 2016)
- p. 25,981 (p. 61 of the file), Jefferson County Sherrif’s Office
- p. 26,013 (p. 94 of the file), Jefferson County Sherrif’s Office
- “Influences on the Ideology of Eric Harris,” Peter Langman Ph.D. (version from February 3, 2016)
- “The Columbine legacy: rampage shootings as political acts,” Ralph Larkin, American Behavioral Scientist (April 2009)
- p. 26,015 (p. 96 of the file), Jefferson County Sherrif’s Office
- “The Depressive and the Psychopath,” Dave Cullen, Slate Magazine (April 20, 2004)
