It is more than 23 years since the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado shocked the country and the world. In April 1999, two Columbine students killed 13 fellow students and teachers and then committed suicide. In the course of the past nearly quarter century, eruptions of homicidal violence have become almost commonplace.
Horrific mass shootings are associated with the names of the institutions where they occurred: Virginia Tech (2007), Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut (2012) and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida (2018), and others.
The root cause of such violence lies in the capitalist social system, based on ever-intensifying corporate exploitation, inequality, and war. American capitalist society is disintegrating. Mad, individual anti-social acts will not be halted by the pious wishes, much less the indifference, of the political establishment, Democrat and Republican alike.
The same processes—war, poverty, and social misery—that give rise to mass shootings and the daily violence of American society, are also driving a much more progressive development: deepening hatred of capitalism and a growing audience for socialism.
Collected on this page are a selection of articles published on the World Socialist Web Site on school shootings in the United States, beginning with the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.
By David North
In this essay, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North writes, “[T]he concentration on individual warning signs will be of little help in preventing further tragedies. Attention should be focused, rather, on the social warning signs, that is, the indications and indices of social and political dysfunction which create the climate that produces events like the Columbine HS massacre. Vital indicators of impending disaster might include: growing polarization between wealth and poverty; atomization of working people and the suppression of their class identity; the glorification of militarism and war; the absence of serious social commentary and political debate; the debased state of popular culture; the worship of the stock exchange; the unrestrained celebration of individual success and personal wealth; the denigration of the ideals of social progress and equality.”
The ceremony marking the reopening of Columbine High School in Littteton, Colorado, the scene of a horrifying mass shooting and double suicide April 20, was a travesty. Revealed in the event was the inability and unwillingness of any element within official American society to confront the sources of the violence that has erupted in schools and elsewhere.
In this essay on the 20th anniversary of Columbine, David Walsh writes, "There had been school shootings in the US prior to April 20, 1999, but in its planned and systematic character, in its desperate and cold-blooded brutality, in its scope (Harris, in a diary entry, fantasized—well before the September 11, 2001 attacks—about hijacking an airplane and crashing it in the middle of New York City) and in its conscious 'political' timing (on Adolf Hitler’s birthday and the near anniversary of the right-wing terrorist attack in Oklahoma City in 1995), the Columbine event represented something qualitatively new and disturbing"
Elephant’s general subject matter is the massacre that occurred at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado in April 1999. Van Sant’s aesthetic vagueness coincides with or conceals (no doubt unwittingly) an inability to illuminate deeply either the characters or the episode itself.
The mass killing at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, was horrifying, but no one who has followed the evolution of American society over the past quarter-century will be entirely shocked. Such psychopathic episodes, including dozens of multiple killings or attempted killings in workplaces and schools, have occurred with disturbing regularity, particularly since the mid-1980s.
In an op-ed piece in Sunday’s Boston Globe, columnist Jeff Jacoby took to task numerous individuals and organizations whom he claimed were exploiting last week’s Virginia Tech massacre for political purposes, including the World Socialist Web Site.
The following is a selection of recent letters sent to the World Socialist Web Site regarding our coverage of the shootings at Virginia Tech.
The following is a selection of recent letters sent to the World Socialist Web Site regarding our coverage of the shootings at Virginia Tech.
The mayhem at Fort Hood in Texas, which has left 13 individuals dead and 30 injured, is a byproduct of the brutal wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. It is a form of “collateral damage.”
The hollow remarks of the president and the general atmosphere of the memorial left an impression of callousness combined with perplexed anxiety over the mounting signs of crisis within the ranks of the American military.
A selection of recent letters sent to the World Socialist Web Site.
A 24-year-old man allegedly walked into a crowded premier of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado just after midnight early Friday and opened fire, killing at least 12 people and wounding 59.
As with previous episodes of mass killings in the United States, the political establishment and the media is incapable of providing a serious explanation of the Aurora tragedy
David Brooks of the New York Times produced an especially stupid column July 23 on the mass killing in Aurora, Colorado, denying that the crime had anything to do with the state of society.
Beyond the individual motivations of the killer, the mass shooting at Newtown, Connecticut lays bare a brutality that pervades American society.
The massacre is the worst in the US since the 2007 rampage at Virginia Tech University, which left 33 dead. Less than five months ago a shooting rampage at a theater in Aurora, Colorado resulted in 12 deaths and 58 people wounded.
A series of bloody incidents and preemptive arrests took place across the United States in the three days following the massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.
No serious analysis can be found in the American media or within the political establishment of the social and political environment that gives rise to mass killings in the US.
The mass killing at the Inland Regional Center is only the latest in a long string of tragedies that point to the deeply diseased and dysfunctional state of American society.
On December 9 and December 12, the IYSSE is holding meetings on the attacks in France and the US, and the way they are being used by the ruling class.
Obama’s speech Sunday night from the White House reflected the growing political crisis in his administration, amidst mounting calls for an expansion of the US war drive in Syria.
Within barely a day of the attack, US politicians moved to exploit the killings as a means of scapegoating immigrants.
Despite constant coverage of the recent San Bernardino shootings in the mainstream media, little attention has been given to the city’s widespread poverty and social distress.
The question that is imperiously raised by events such as the Orlando massacre is: What is it about American society that so frequently leads mentally unstable individuals to resort to mass murder?
Both major parties’ presumptive presidential nominees have rushed to exploit the tragedy in Orlando to promote war and reaction.
According to a local sheriff, FBI agent provocateurs were used in 2013 in an attempt to lure Omar Mateen into planning an attack.
The government and media have sought to exploit the mass shooting in Orlando as the pretext for escalating war abroad and repressive measures at home.
The worst mass shooting in American history has left 59 people dead and at least 527 wounded.
US politicians and the American media are displaying their usual obtuseness and ignorance in the face of this terrible tragedy, that has ruined hundreds, if not thousands of lives.
The horrifying frequency of mass killings in the United States testifies to the advanced state of societal breakdown.
Thousands of students have joined demonstrations in the aftermath of the latest eruption of homicidal violence. But to stop the killings, they need to understand the deeper social and political roots of these tragedies.
The following article is part of a series of articles dedicated to exposing the militarization of schools and universities.
The tragic death of 14 students and three teachers at the Florida high school has triggered a law-and-order crackdown on students alleged to have posted threatening remarks on social media.
The president has argued that allowing teachers and school staff, particularly military veterans, to carry concealed weapons would deter potential school shooters and protect students.
One year has passed since the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which killed 17 people and sparked nationwide protests by students and youth against gun violence.
One year has passed since the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which killed 17 people and sparked nationwide protests by students and youth against gun violence.
The mass demonstrations in the heart of world imperialism point to the intensification of social tensions and the class struggle worldwide.
The scale of the demonstrations show that the crisis of American and world capitalism is working its way into the consciousness of young people and propelling a new generation into political struggle.
High school students and other youth who attended the rally had far more on their minds than gun control and the midterm elections—the issues promoted by the media and the Democratic Party.
The scale of the horror and the depth of the public reaction suggest that something of a “tipping point” has been reached.
The American ruling elite, its politicians and its media outlets, have nothing insightful or useful to say about this most recent calamity.
Whatever the individual psychological issues which afflicted and possibly motivated Salvador Ramos to kill, they do not explain the routine outbursts of mass violence which plague American society.
The IYSSE urges young people to look honestly at our society. What does the phenomenon of mass violence say about the health of modern-day capitalism?
As police attempted to cover up their complicity in the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, thousands of students protested unending gun violence in mass walkouts.
Trump seized on the horrific massacre to portray the Democrats’ feckless calls for mild gun control measures as a “war on the police,” part of a socialist-communist conspiracy against “law-abiding American patriots.”
For the third time in as many days, Texas police officials offered a contradictory timeline concerning Tuesday’s mass killing.
Are you a student or youth concerned about gun violence? Join our youth and student movement, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE). We have youth clubs at schools and universities through the US and around the world.
Are you an educator concerned about gun violence? Get involved in our network of educator rank-and-file committees throughout the US and around the world. The Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee is a network of educators, students, parents, and workers spearheading the fight to end the pandemic, and defend public education.
