April 20 - Hitler's birthday and America's time of terrrorism

[Bundbuster]

https://www.insideedition.com/this-is-why-extremists-glorify-and-plan-for-violent-acts-to-occur-on-april-19-66295

“Right around this time, we focus on April 19 and April 20,” Associate Director Joanna Mendelson, of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, told Inside Edition Digital. “These dates do have symbolic purpose. This is part of the subculture of right-wing extremists and in particular anti-governmental extremists and white supremacists, who glorify really horrific acts, who glorify extremist killers and elevate them on a pedestal.”

On a larger scale, it could look like copycat efforts on the anniversary, just as the Oklahoma City Bombing on April 19, 1995 was carried out as a “twisted act of retaliation” for the violent end to the siege on Waco, Texas two years prior, Mendelson explained.

On April 20, many extremists celebrate the birthdate of Adolf Hitler, who was born on April 20, 1889, or the day of the Columbine High School massacre, which occurred on April 20, 1999.

“Each of these incidents serve as a playbook for right-wing extremists and other adherence, to not only revere, but to possibly model,” Mendelson said. “Because the right-wing extremist movement is fluid in terms of ideology, conspiracy and embrace of violence in general. We see those who embrace violence, glorifying a genocidal maniac like Hitler, but also the duo in Columbine.”

[Doodley]

1. I expect Trump is thinking about his hero today.

[Bundbuster]

2. Will Shitler be allowed to bring his own copy of Mein Kampf to jail?

Or do murca's jail & prison libraries have that in the stacks?

[Doodley]

4. They will allow him to have it in audiobook format.

[malaise]

3. Weed day

😀

[Bundbuster]

7. That should counter some of the violence

but I guess the white nationalists haven't been smoking the Right Stuff.

[malaise]

8. A local radio station DJ is only playing ganja songs today

I had no clue there were so many songs 😂

[JanMichael]

10. You mean Because I Got High isn't the only one?

Oh wait I should remember more but I am high....

Delta 8 may not quite be Delta 9 but um...I forgot my point. Whatever.

[malaise]

13. ROFL

😂😂

[Omnipresent]

5. Happy birthday Hitler?...i think?

Oh god, i sure hope he’s still not alive!

[CanonRay]

6. When Iwas in law enforcement, I dreaded these days.

I was working in Denver when Columbine happened, and a friend (a Secret Service agent) died in Oklahoma City. He was from there and he'd transferred there to retire.

[Bundbuster]

12. I was just a few miles from Columbine that day

Saw and heard wave after wave of siren-screaming law enforcement and ambulance vehicles. With no cell phone, TV, or radio available I could only guess what horror and destruction had gone down. Very traumatic, for you too CanonRay I'm sure.

[edhopper]

9. Sgringtime!

[Hekate]

11. KnR

[Bundbuster]

14. The Columbine-Killers Fan Club

From a paywalled Atlantic article, April 19, 2024:

The Columbine killers have fans. Eric and Dylan’s adoring online following spreads across nearly every continent, and it’s growing across multiple platforms. The Russian government, which has been plagued by an explosion of both Columbine fandom and mass shootings, estimates that more than 70,000 members exist worldwide. They call themselves the TCC, for “True Crime Community,” and I’ve spent much of the past 15 years inside their online world. My book Columbine made me enemy No. 1 for portraying Eric and Dylan as ruthless murderers.

Most gunmen die in the act, so the 54 attacks itemized in the diagram are just the ones that we know of, and that were carried out. A 2015 Mother Jones investigation of Columbine copycats found more than two thwarted attacks for each one that succeeded. It identified 14 plotters targeting Columbine’s anniversary and 13 striving to top its body count. Surviving mass shooters have admitted that they were competing with one another.

All roads lead back to Columbine. The Virginia Tech shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, wrote in a school assignment that he wanted to “repeat Columbine” and that he idolized its “martyrs.” The Northern Illinois University killer marked a third generation, explicitly inspired by both Virginia Tech and Columbine. Sandy Hook was the fourth generation; Adam Lanza had studied all three. Six more school shooters later referenced Sandy Hook and Columbine. Five generations of fallout, all reenacting the original legend.

The Columbine effect has gone global. It has inspired mass shootings in Finland, Sweden, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Ukraine, and Russia—as well as knife and axe attacks in places as remote as Siberia. In 2022, Russia designated the online “Columbine movement” a terrorist group. To comply with the ruling, my publisher required me to disavow the group in the Russian translation of Columbine. Mass murder inspired by those inept perpetrators is America’s most revolting cultural export.

[Bundbuster]

15. And a 2015 Mother Jones investigation of the copycat attacks

On April 20, 1999, two young men fatally shot 13 people and injured 24 others at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. A Mother Jones investigation shows that the nation’s deadliest high school shooting has since inspired at least 74 plots or attacks across 30 states. To gauge just how deep the problem goes, we examined scores of news reports and public documents and interviewed multiple law enforcement officials.

The data we have compiled reveals some disturbing patterns. In at least 14 cases, the Columbine copycats aimed to attack on the anniversary of the massacre. Individuals in 13 cases indicated that their goal was to outdo the Columbine body count. In at least 10 cases, the suspects and attackers referred to the pair who struck in 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, as heroes, idols, martyrs, or God. And at least three perpetrators made pilgrimages to Columbine High School from other states.

As one longtime security specialist explains in our investigation into a growing national effort to stop mass shooters before they strike, “It’s a cult following unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.”