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

Garrison Davis does a deep dive into the dark online world of America's latest school shooter and unravels why right-wing influencers keep trying to portray her as transgender.

https://shatterzone.substack.com/p/the-madison-wisconsin-school-shooter 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. Welcome to What could Happen Here, a
show about things falling apart. I'm Garrison Davis and this
episode is going to be a special audio companion piece
to an article published last night on Substack at shatter Zone.
That's Robert's usual substack, though last night I publish an

(00:24):
article detailing the online history and transvestigation discourse regarding a
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

(00:46):
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

(01:07):
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

(01:27):
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

(01:48):
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

(02:13):
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.

(02:36):
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

(02:56):
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

(03:19):
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

(03:41):
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

(04:02):
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

(04:23):
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

(04:46):
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

(05:08):
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.

(05:32):
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,

(05:54):
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

(06:18):
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

(06:39):
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

(07:03):
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

(07:26):
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,

(07:48):
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.

(08:12):
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

(08:33):
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

(08:56):
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,

(09:19):
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

(09:40):
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

(10:03):
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

(10:24):
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

(10:49):
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

(11:13):
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

(11:37):
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

(11:59):
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

(12:20):
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.

(12:43):
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

(13:03):
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

(13:26):
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

(13:50):
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

(14:12):
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

(14:35):
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

(14:55):
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

(15:19):
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

(15:39):
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

(16:01):
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,

(16:25):
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

(16:47):
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

(17:10):
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,

(17:32):
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

(17:54):
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

(18:15):
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.

(18:49):
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

(19:11):
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

(19:35):
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

(19:57):
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

(20:17):
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

(20:40):
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

(21:02):
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,

(21:23):
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

(21:43):
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

(22:03):
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

(22:25):
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

(22:48):
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.

(23:11):
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

(23:32):
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.

(23:53):
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

(24:15):
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

(24:38):
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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(25:00):
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