On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold engaged in a shooting and bombing spree in Columbine High School that left fifteen students, including the alleged gunmen, dead. ...
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When a youngster decides to make war on his school and classmates, the media leaps to vilify him, his alleged influences, his weaponry, and his parents. Politicians are keen to do the same, and capitalize on the shootings by pushing for new firearm regulations and stiff penalties. And why not? Don’t we punish psychotics bent on threatening life and property, set upon destroying the "American" way of life? Shouldn’t we condemn those who take the lives of others through "senseless" violence? Or should we try to make sense of it? Preferring the latter option, I propose that kids killing kids may be the radical protest of our age, and that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold may be the Mark Rudd and Abbie Hoffman figures of today.
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While these young boys may have no Port Huron statement, no manifesto, and no coordinated actions (that we know of), they are a legitimate radical faction that may have one-upped the violent Weather Underground and the revolutionary Abbie Hoffman. These boys have truly embraced "revolution for the hell of it," maybe better than Abbie ever did. The randomness of their "non-campaign" may be the ultimate expression of "rage against the machine," ripping into the system, as it were, at its most vulnerable and fundamental level, perhaps more so than Weatherman’s bombing of the U.S. Capitol.
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The violence unleashed by these juveniles also acts as a call to action for like-minded individuals. Their ability to gain recognition and exert power grows with each like incident, forcing us to look for connections and search for scapegoats. Maybe they have no pithy slogans, no unifying symbol, maybe Marilyn Manson is no Bob Dylan, and maybe their Woodstock ’99 is a poor rip-off of the original (which "ripped off" Monterey), but no one can deny the radicalism of their murderous behavior. Who would not concede that terrorizing the American machine, at the very site where it exerts its most powerful influence, is a truly revolutionary task? To be inarticulate about your goals, even to not understand them, does not negate their existence. Approve or disapprove of their methods, vilify them as miscreants, but don’t dare disregard these modern radicals as anything less than the latest incarnation of disaffected insurgents waging the ongoing American revolution.
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