The Madison, Wisconsin School Shooter Was A Columbine Copycat: Here's What That Means

school shooting in Madison, Wisconsin. The article has pictures and hyperlinks which might help explain some of the stuff I'm talking about, but I'll do my best to relate it here to you on the podcast feed. Another Monday in America and another school shooting. On the morning of December sixteenth, a female student at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin shot and killed a teacher and fellow student, and

injured six others before killing herself. Initially, police falsely reported the shooter was seventeen years old, but late Monday night they correctly identified the deceased shooter as fifteen year old Natalie Ruppnow, who went by Samantha or sam. In the aftermath of this horrific event, right wing influencers and content creators wasted no time in blaming the shooting on trans people, labeling the suspect as another in a series of alleged

transgender terrorists. But what really happened here had nothing to do with trans people, and this sadly ordinary for the United States. In August of twenty twenty four, the father of the future school shooter took his daughter to a gun range to do trap shooting. Samantha wore a shirt bearing the logo of a band KMFDM. In another photo of the shooter, we can see the front of the shirt. The same design was famously worn by Columbine shooter Eric Harrol,

who is a fan of the band. The bulk of this new shooter's online footprint suggests a general obsession with school shooters and the TCC or True Crime Community, a nickname used for the de facto international Columbine fandom. This sort of content dominates Samantha's tumbler, which last posted in May of twenty twenty four. An alleged online friend of the shooter said that she quote posted about school shooters all the time unquote end quote, had school shooter leanings unquote.

Samantha is hardly alone in this. There have been over one hundred copycats inspired by the Columbine shooting since nineteen ninety nine. A Twitter account believes to have belonged to the shooter posted a series of videos that teased and glorified school shootings in the days leading up to her own shooting. The account was created in December of twenty twenty four, and the profile picture featured a young man

in cam ammopants and a tactical backpack. The male profile picture was used as evidence by some conservative influencers that the shooter must have transitioned, though these same influencers cannot agree on whether she was female to male or male to female. One user constructed an overlay trying to compare the photo of the shooter with her Twitter profile picture.

This is a ridiculous diagram with about seven images overlaid at different opacities, trying to layer the faces and body shapes of these two people on top of each other. This post is only proof that most of what gets passed off as quote unquote ocant online today's just completely incompetent rambling and propaganda. The main issue with his diagram is that the male profile picture is actually another Columbine copycat.

A school shooter from Russia, who, similar to Samantha, was only fifteen years old when he carried out his shooting. Hours after the shooting in Madison, Wisconsin, while right wing accounts were still arguing about what sort of transgender the shooter had been, a neo Nazi Twitter account named Nitro claimed to be friends with the shooter on discord and repeatedly denied accusations that the shooter was transgender, calling her

our quote unquote biological woman. An early complicating factor in establishing the motive and identity of the shooter is that her alleged Twitter account posted a link to a Google doc of her manifesto, but seemingly forgot to make the visibility setting public, so you couldn't access the Google doc. You had to put in an email for approval, and the person who was supposed to approve your email was now dead, so there was no way to actually look

at this person's manifesto. The shooter's alleged Discord friend, Nitro, claims to find what he believes to be a snippet of a manifesto draft shared by the shooter in a Discord group chat based out of the UK, and so if this is legitimate and that is a big if. This message would have been sent about an hour and a half before the shooting, per the discord timestamp. I'm going to read a bit of this alleged writing from the shooter quote. Women are the only hope for this

wretched world. But even women have been brainwashed by moids for too long. They've internalized the patriarchy and turned on each other, always begging for male approval and validation. It's disgusting. I realize the truth. Men are irredeemable. Radfem Hitler was is fucking vindicated. Now they can't be reformed or redeemed. They are a fucking scourge upon the earth. The only solution is to total exterminate them and every foid who

worships these fucking parasites. Every single male must be wiped out, from babies to the elderly. Only then can women be free to create a new world. All be the pioneer. I'll be the first one to take the first step. I don't care if their fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, teachers, police, and especially n words or politicians. I've been craving to kill them all. This is my mission. Only when their

parasitic sludge has been expunged from the earth. Is when then the world will be clean and women can start over. It's the only way. In approximately ten minutes, I should be dead. It's strange, but it feels good unquote Hopefully to most people, this should read like unintelligible gibberish. A reactionary quote unquote feminist screed about initiating a wave of male targeted violence to cleanse the earth with pepperings of moids and foids, which is Internet in cell slang for

male and female respectively. Also included our racial slurs and something called quote unquote radfem Hitler. That last part is a reference to a Twitter influencer by the same name and the handle hollow earth Turf, whose content is a mix of trad influenced right wing feminism with anti trans flourishes advocating for a mass purge of moids this includes

trans women. This account is derided by those both on the right and left, but has a small dedicated following of conservative radfem and anti trans women with trad or often occult interests. The discord Nazi Nitro claimed that the shooter was quote unquote a fan of Radfem Hitler and talked about the account frequently on Discord, though Nitro previously

believed her interest in the account was merely ironic. Now, obviously, an anonymous Twitter nazi is certainly not the most reliable source, but Nitro was the first person to correctly identify and post photos of the shooter. Though they could be utilizing this newfound clout to troll a widely disliked Twitter user, but the fact that he's been right about all other details inclines me to not discount his claims just altogether, but instead just hold them with a billion pounds of salt.

Allegations that the shooter was a neo Nazi Radfem certainly sent Radfem Hitler into a panic, who quickly deleted her account. Meanwhile, some of her online associates worked damage control, claiming to have contacted the alleged boyfriend that the shooter had been quote unquote e dating, with the apparent intention of disproving any ties the shooter had to the Twitter Radfem orbit.

Through this alleged online boyfriend, the right wing turf Ecosystem claimed to have acquired a copy of the quote unquote full manifesto. This purported manifesto lacks the anti mail, anti moid ramblings of the discord screenshot, but unsurprisingly shares its use of racial slurs and glorification of violence, at times evocative of Pecca Eric Auvinen's manifesto, a Finnish school shooter

from two US and seven who killed eight people. Auvinen considered himself a quote unquote natural selector who had evolved beyond the classmates he gunned down. In Samantha's purported manifesto, he is mentioned by name as a quote unquote true inspiration. Over the course of eight hours, a rad fem Twitter account released six pages of what they claimed to be Samantha's writing. It contains general misanthropic rambling about humanity and

parents being quote unquote scum. The writing describes a difficult family life, suicidal thoughts, and admiration for school shooters and

white supremacists. Though it briefly references the accelerationist terror Graham Saints, the whole of this piece of writing is much more reminiscent of old school column biners than the modern white nationalist terror mill u. The alleged manifesto directly names the two Columbine shooters, and includes a paragraph on Vladyskov Rosleyakhov, another Columbine copycat, but from crimea who also cause played as one of the Columbine shooters during his own mass shooting.

Though the discord Nazi and the reactionary rad femmes question the authenticity of the other's alleged manifesto, what both sides of the in cell war do agree on is that Samantha was not transgender. We're going to go on a quick ad break and come back to discuss transvestigation and the trans terror panic. Okay, we are back. It seems these days the fastest way to get transvestigated is to do a school shooting. Transvestigating is the practice of trying

to determine if an individual is transgender. It's often leveled against celebrities, athletes, and politicians, but in recent years there's been a new common subject of transvestigation, mass shooters, in particular school shooters. Myself, Robert Evans, and James Stout previously reported on this trend back in twenty twenty three, right as it grew in prominence after the Nashville Covenant school shooting,

which police say was committed by a trans man. We theorized that the online right was testing out a new strategy to attack trans people by associating them with mass shootings via the use of selective bias reporting and plane disinformation. That fear has come to pass. The modicum of believability provided by the Nashville shooting, as it's the only legitimate trans related incident that meets criteria for mainstream mass shooting databases, was enough to fuel this ongoing strategy for the next

time two years. Since then, conservative influencers have attempted to link nearly every viral mass slash school shooting to trans people to create a false trend. The strategy operates as follows. During the first few chaotic hours after a shooting, a small group of right wing content creators weaponize the lack of verified information to make posts framing an alleged shooter

as being transgender. This can be done through the use of out of context social media posts, doctrine photographs, photos of other people, or simply pictures of long or dyed hair. All they need is a collection of loose evidence to affirm on social media that a mass shooter is really transgender. For more context on this, you can listen to an episode of it could happen here, I wrote earlier this year covering the rise of fake trans terrorists. The goal is to get as many of their followers to see

and spread these claims as fast as possible. Even if it's widely debunked the next day, many who heard the false claim won't be aware of the verified correction. All these anti trans influencers in need is a brief window of time to plant the idea into people's minds, and then that becomes remembered history. If this strategy is repeated every few months whenever there's a new mass shooting, then it's pretty easy to create the false perception of a

growing trend. Now. In reality, trans people per capita are actually way less likely to commit a shooting compared to SIS people, and are much more likely to be the victim of gun violence. But this past Monday, conservative and anti trans influencers tried once again to weaponize a tragedy for their own hateful agenda. Monday afternoon, Ian Miles Chung posted trans terrorism must end. Hours later, Laura Lumer wrote quote, the trans movement is really turning out to be a

terrorist movement. Just minutes after police responded to the shooting, the conservative influencer Matt Wallace posted that an unknown quote unquote witness said that the shooter quote looked to be

transgender unquote. Wallace, who has over two point two million followers on Twitter, provided no source or citation and has since deleted this post, but others in the online mega orbit parroted this language before any identifying information was released, with the user just Jeff from Cali writing a transperson targeted and opened fire on students at Abundant Life Christian

School in Wisconsin twelve hit. The right wing content creator Ryan Mada baselessly claimed that the shooter was on hormone replacement therapy, calling the shooter quote another mentally unstable psychopath who was prescribed puberty blocker and hormones unquote. Mada hosts a show on the right wing YouTube alternative Rumble and has over one one hundred and twenty three thousand followers

on Twitter. His tweet claiming the shooter was on HRT racked up one point six million quote unquote views and seventeen thousand likes in just twelve hours. Larger accounts like Tya Wichech's libs of TikTok fuel to undo speculation about the gender identity of the shooter, ceding confusion into the growing discourse and weaponizing a tragedy for political gain. Quoting the police chief saying quote, I don't know if the

shooter is male or female unquote. A small group of conservative influencers have just so successfully created in alternate reality in which nearly every new mass shooter is transgender that they don't even have to outright say it anymore. Accounts like libs of TikTok and Malaysian blogger Ian Miles Chung can merely gesture to this reality tunnel they've intentionally created, and now thousands of people will affirm this fake reality as the obvious truth, backed up by historical precedent of

fabricated memory. Matt Waller Us posted a photo of the shooter and the male profile picture, saying what do you notice about the shooter again? Ian Miles Chung posted quote police are unable to identify if the school shooter in Madison, Wisconsin is male or female, but they do know who did it and identified them as a student. Is anyone

else thinking what I'm thinking? Unquote? This speculation fueled conspiracy theories, which spread claiming that police were intentionally withholding information about the shooter's gender identity in service of some hidden agenda, and actually they were just waiting to like let the family know that their daughter was dead and making sure they had the correct identification. Very basic stuff. Police always do this, but no, it's all part of some secret

agenda and some hidden narrative. As early as one pm EST on Monday, which is just like an hour after the shooting would have taken place, the neo Nazi Twitter account Nitro correctly identify find the shooter as his online

friend Sam Samantha. As this name spread online, the multi gendered nature of the name added to the speculation that the shooter was trans. Scarlett Johnson, an activist with the ultra conservative parents' rights group Moms for Liberty Shared self admitted unconfirmed reports that the shooter was quote unquote a transgender teen who went by Sam or Samantha. As alleged pictures of the shooter started to spread online courtesy of Nitro,

the transvestigation of the shooter only intensified. An unfortunate coincidence is that the shooter's given name matches the ancient Sam Hide meme, in which extremely online people try to trick journalists into believing the culprit of a new mass shooting was the American comedian Sam Hide. In recent years, the meme has turned into the Samantha Hyde meme, used to

falsely label mass shooters as trans women. One Hide post from an unassuming boomer named Ed Massey raked up over six hundred thousand views, four point five thousand likes, and one and a half thousand retweets. Massy posted quote, when you put disturbed children on hormone blockers and sexually mutilate them, you're not curing them. You're creating potential school shooters unquote. Now it should go without saying, but the use of

puberty suppressing medication has no link to increased violence. We're going to go on one last break and return to conclude our discussion of transvestigating school shooters. Okay, we are back. Time to talk about the potential double flipper. So as this transvestigation continued, the quote unquote, we can always tell crowd ended up transvestigating in both directions. Seemingly unsure of what a signed gender at birth, this shooter must have had.

Some believe the shooter was transferm while others concluded they were trans mask with one reply to an end Wokeness tweet reading quote those do not look like female hands, and another transvestigation post saying the shooter is a trans kid, a female pretending to be a male. Exactly why we keep our Second Amendment rights to protect our children from this mental health crisis. Zoom in close on her shirt

and hand gesture unquote. A now deleted post from a terf account also attempted to pass off the shooter as a transgirl, saying, quote, the Wisconsin school shooter was a seventeen year old transidentified male. It just keeps happening now

quote unquote. Trans identified male was usually a transphobodogu whistle to refer to a trans woman as a male who identifies as a trans woman, but sometimes transfoms get confused by words and use the phrase to refer to trans people who quote unquote identify as men, like this other transvestigation post saying quote shooter was a seventeen year old

trans but identified mail now. One of the most widespread posts claiming the shooter was a trans guy came from an anti Semitic doctor in Denmark with one point four million followers. She falsely claimed with no evidence, that the shooter was taking testosterone, writing quote, the Wisconsin school shooter has been identified as a seventeen year old trans identified male another mentally ill girl on testosterone unquote. As of Tuesday morning, this post has over three million views, twenty

two thousand likes, and eight point three thousand retweets. In a following post, this doctor blamed quote unquote the Jews for inventing transgenderism as a note extremism. Researchers have argued that transphobia is structurally similar to anti semitism. Now a common piece of anti trans memetic propaganda deployed in the

wake of mass shootings is the trans shooter collage. This format spread after the Nashville school shooting in twenty twenty three, and this week Matt Wallace provided us with a brand new version. This post is an ugly mishmash of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven people's faces with a variety of backgrounds, a purposeless red circle in the middle of the image, and text that reads quote. Almost every child killed in a mass shooting in the last few years was killed by a

transgender shooter. Now out of all those pictures in this clagh. Only one person in this klagh has actually reported to be transgender, the Nashville shooter in the upper left. The rest of the people pictured are not trans and have never claimed to be trans. The person with long hair in the lower half the image is Colt Gray, who is falsely labeled as trans by far right influencers like end Wokenness and Mike Cernovich. Cult Gray's discord posts reveal

he actually held transphobic beliefs. A more classic version of the trans shooter collage format is just five pictures with texts next to each of them reading the X shooter identified as trans, the X shooter identified as trans right, just a big list of five of these names saying that they all identified as trans. The version I'm using here is courtesy of Limbs of TikTok admin Chaya Reichek,

who posted this earlier this year. But just as before, the majority of the subjects in this meme aren't actually trans and it's just full of disinformation. The Colorado Springs shooter who targeted a queer club is not actually non binary and simply tried to weaponize a false identity to get out of hate crime. Charges. The person labeled as the Denver shooter is not trans, has never claimed to

be trans. He just has dyed hair. This individual pictured did play the shooting with a transgender male who is not pictured. Now. Lastly, though the person pictured as the Euvaldi shooter is trans, this is not the actual Euvaldi shooter. It's a random trans girl who is one of two trans women whose photos were used to falsely label the shooter as transgender. The other two people in this image is the Nashville shooter who does appear to be trans,

and the perpetrator of the Aberdeen workplace shooting. But back to Madison, Wisconsin. So after all of that transvestigating, what do we have, just another Columbiner with neo Nazi ties. The right has gotten so good at deploying the trans shooter as a smoke bomb it obscures the reality of the over availability of firearms, the dynamics of online radicalization, and the social issues that fuel alienation and anger in youth.

Instead of focusing on all that on the victims of this epidemic of white supremacist violence, we instead have to spend a whole day debunking the late shooters pronouns, and that's the point. That's what they want us talking about. Those who delete their quote unquote trans terrorist posts after being conclusively proven wrong, will try the exact same shtick in a few months after the next mass shooting goes viral.

Others won't even care that much. They'll just leave up their post, secure in the stability of the reality tunnel they helped to create. I'm going to close with a quote from Sartra. Never believe that fascists are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge, but they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who's obliged to use words responsibly since he believes in words. This post has been deleted.

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