Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Welcome to What could Happen Here, a
Speaker 1: show about things falling apart. I'm Garrison Davis and this
Speaker 1: episode is going to be a special audio companion piece
Speaker 1: to an article published last night on Substack at shatter Zone.
Speaker 1: That's Robert's usual substack, though last night I publish an
Speaker 1: article detailing the online history and transvestigation discourse regarding a
Speaker 1: school shooting in Madison, Wisconsin. The article has pictures and
Speaker 1: hyperlinks which might help explain some of the stuff I'm
Speaker 1: talking about, but I'll do my best to relate it
Speaker 1: here to you on the podcast feed. Another Monday in
Speaker 1: America and another school shooting. On the morning of December sixteenth,
Speaker 1: a female student at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison,
Speaker 1: Wisconsin shot and killed a teacher and fellow student, and
Speaker 1: injured six others before killing herself. Initially, police falsely reported
Speaker 1: the shooter was seventeen years old, but late Monday night
Speaker 1: they correctly identified the deceased shooter as fifteen year old
Speaker 1: Natalie Ruppnow, who went by Samantha or sam. In the
Speaker 1: aftermath of this horrific event, right wing influencers and content
Speaker 1: creators wasted no time in blaming the shooting on trans people,
Speaker 1: labeling the suspect as another in a series of alleged
Speaker 1: transgender terrorists. But what really happened here had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with trans people, and this sadly ordinary for the
Speaker 1: United States. In August of twenty twenty four, the father
Speaker 1: of the future school shooter took his daughter to a
Speaker 1: gun range to do trap shooting. Samantha wore a shirt
Speaker 1: bearing the logo of a band KMFDM. In another photo
Speaker 1: of the shooter, we can see the front of the shirt.
Speaker 1: The same design was famously worn by Columbine shooter Eric Harrol,
Speaker 1: who is a fan of the band. The bulk of
Speaker 1: this new shooter's online footprint suggests a general obsession with
Speaker 1: school shooters and the TCC or True Crime Community, a
Speaker 1: nickname used for the de facto international Columbine fandom. This
Speaker 1: sort of content dominates Samantha's tumbler, which last posted in
Speaker 1: May of twenty twenty four. An alleged online friend of
Speaker 1: the shooter said that she quote posted about school shooters
Speaker 1: all the time unquote end quote, had school shooter leanings unquote.
Speaker 1: Samantha is hardly alone in this. There have been over
Speaker 1: one hundred copycats inspired by the Columbine shooting since nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine. A Twitter account believes to have belonged to
Speaker 1: the shooter posted a series of videos that teased and
Speaker 1: glorified school shootings in the days leading up to her
Speaker 1: own shooting. The account was created in December of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, and the profile picture featured a young man
Speaker 1: in cam ammopants and a tactical backpack. The male profile
Speaker 1: picture was used as evidence by some conservative influencers that
Speaker 1: the shooter must have transitioned, though these same influencers cannot
Speaker 1: agree on whether she was female to male or male
Speaker 1: to female. One user constructed an overlay trying to compare
Speaker 1: the photo of the shooter with her Twitter profile picture.
Speaker 1: This is a ridiculous diagram with about seven images overlaid
Speaker 1: at different opacities, trying to layer the faces and body
Speaker 1: shapes of these two people on top of each other.
Speaker 1: This post is only proof that most of what gets
Speaker 1: passed off as quote unquote ocant online today's just completely
Speaker 1: incompetent rambling and propaganda. The main issue with his diagram
Speaker 1: is that the male profile picture is actually another Columbine copycat.
Speaker 1: A school shooter from Russia, who, similar to Samantha, was
Speaker 1: only fifteen years old when he carried out his shooting.
Speaker 1: Hours after the shooting in Madison, Wisconsin, while right wing
Speaker 1: accounts were still arguing about what sort of transgender the
Speaker 1: shooter had been, a neo Nazi Twitter account named Nitro
Speaker 1: claimed to be friends with the shooter on discord and
Speaker 1: repeatedly denied accusations that the shooter was transgender, calling her
Speaker 1: our quote unquote biological woman. An early complicating factor in
Speaker 1: establishing the motive and identity of the shooter is that
Speaker 1: her alleged Twitter account posted a link to a Google
Speaker 1: doc of her manifesto, but seemingly forgot to make the
Speaker 1: visibility setting public, so you couldn't access the Google doc.
Speaker 1: You had to put in an email for approval, and
Speaker 1: the person who was supposed to approve your email was
Speaker 1: now dead, so there was no way to actually look
Speaker 1: at this person's manifesto. The shooter's alleged Discord friend, Nitro,
Speaker 1: claims to find what he believes to be a snippet
Speaker 1: of a manifesto draft shared by the shooter in a
Speaker 1: Discord group chat based out of the UK, and so
Speaker 1: if this is legitimate and that is a big if.
Speaker 1: This message would have been sent about an hour and
Speaker 1: a half before the shooting, per the discord timestamp. I'm
Speaker 1: going to read a bit of this alleged writing from
Speaker 1: the shooter quote. Women are the only hope for this
Speaker 1: wretched world. But even women have been brainwashed by moids
Speaker 1: for too long. They've internalized the patriarchy and turned on
Speaker 1: each other, always begging for male approval and validation. It's disgusting.
Speaker 1: I realize the truth. Men are irredeemable. Radfem Hitler was
Speaker 1: is fucking vindicated. Now they can't be reformed or redeemed.
Speaker 1: They are a fucking scourge upon the earth. The only
Speaker 1: solution is to total exterminate them and every foid who
Speaker 1: worships these fucking parasites. Every single male must be wiped out,
Speaker 1: from babies to the elderly. Only then can women be
Speaker 1: free to create a new world. All be the pioneer.
Speaker 1: I'll be the first one to take the first step.
Speaker 1: I don't care if their fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, teachers, police,
Speaker 1: and especially n words or politicians. I've been craving to
Speaker 1: kill them all. This is my mission. Only when their
Speaker 1: parasitic sludge has been expunged from the earth. Is when
Speaker 1: then the world will be clean and women can start over.
Speaker 1: It's the only way. In approximately ten minutes, I should
Speaker 1: be dead. It's strange, but it feels good unquote Hopefully
Speaker 1: to most people, this should read like unintelligible gibberish. A
Speaker 1: reactionary quote unquote feminist screed about initiating a wave of
Speaker 1: male targeted violence to cleanse the earth with pepperings of
Speaker 1: moids and foids, which is Internet in cell slang for
Speaker 1: male and female respectively. Also included our racial slurs and
Speaker 1: something called quote unquote radfem Hitler. That last part is
Speaker 1: a reference to a Twitter influencer by the same name
Speaker 1: and the handle hollow earth Turf, whose content is a
Speaker 1: mix of trad influenced right wing feminism with anti trans
Speaker 1: flourishes advocating for a mass purge of moids this includes
Speaker 1: trans women. This account is derided by those both on
Speaker 1: the right and left, but has a small dedicated following
Speaker 1: of conservative radfem and anti trans women with trad or
Speaker 1: often occult interests. The discord Nazi Nitro claimed that the
Speaker 1: shooter was quote unquote a fan of Radfem Hitler and
Speaker 1: talked about the account frequently on Discord, though Nitro previously
Speaker 1: believed her interest in the account was merely ironic. Now, obviously,
Speaker 1: an anonymous Twitter nazi is certainly not the most reliable source,
Speaker 1: but Nitro was the first person to correctly identify and
Speaker 1: post photos of the shooter. Though they could be utilizing
Speaker 1: this newfound clout to troll a widely disliked Twitter user,
Speaker 1: but the fact that he's been right about all other
Speaker 1: details inclines me to not discount his claims just altogether,
Speaker 1: but instead just hold them with a billion pounds of salt.
Speaker 1: Allegations that the shooter was a neo Nazi Radfem certainly
Speaker 1: sent Radfem Hitler into a panic, who quickly deleted her account. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: some of her online associates worked damage control, claiming to
Speaker 1: have contacted the alleged boyfriend that the shooter had been
Speaker 1: quote unquote e dating, with the apparent intention of disproving
Speaker 1: any ties the shooter had to the Twitter Radfem orbit.
Speaker 1: Through this alleged online boyfriend, the right wing turf Ecosystem
Speaker 1: claimed to have acquired a copy of the quote unquote
Speaker 1: full manifesto. This purported manifesto lacks the anti mail, anti
Speaker 1: moid ramblings of the discord screenshot, but unsurprisingly shares its
Speaker 1: use of racial slurs and glorification of violence, at times
Speaker 1: evocative of Pecca Eric Auvinen's manifesto, a Finnish school shooter
Speaker 1: from two US and seven who killed eight people. Auvinen
Speaker 1: considered himself a quote unquote natural selector who had evolved
Speaker 1: beyond the classmates he gunned down. In Samantha's purported manifesto,
Speaker 1: he is mentioned by name as a quote unquote true inspiration.
Speaker 1: Over the course of eight hours, a rad fem Twitter
Speaker 1: account released six pages of what they claimed to be
Speaker 1: Samantha's writing. It contains general misanthropic rambling about humanity and
Speaker 1: parents being quote unquote scum. The writing describes a difficult
Speaker 1: family life, suicidal thoughts, and admiration for school shooters and
Speaker 1: white supremacists. Though it briefly references the accelerationist terror Graham Saints,
Speaker 1: the whole of this piece of writing is much more
Speaker 1: reminiscent of old school column biners than the modern white
Speaker 1: nationalist terror mill u. The alleged manifesto directly names the
Speaker 1: two Columbine shooters, and includes a paragraph on Vladyskov Rosleyakhov,
Speaker 1: another Columbine copycat, but from crimea who also cause played
Speaker 1: as one of the Columbine shooters during his own mass shooting.
Speaker 1: Though the discord Nazi and the reactionary rad femmes question
Speaker 1: the authenticity of the other's alleged manifesto, what both sides
Speaker 1: of the in cell war do agree on is that
Speaker 1: Samantha was not transgender. We're going to go on a
Speaker 1: quick ad break and come back to discuss transvestigation and
Speaker 1: the trans terror panic. Okay, we are back. It seems
Speaker 1: these days the fastest way to get transvestigated is to
Speaker 1: do a school shooting. Transvestigating is the practice of trying
Speaker 1: to determine if an individual is transgender. It's often leveled
Speaker 1: against celebrities, athletes, and politicians, but in recent years there's
Speaker 1: been a new common subject of transvestigation, mass shooters, in
Speaker 1: particular school shooters. Myself, Robert Evans, and James Stout previously
Speaker 1: reported on this trend back in twenty twenty three, right
Speaker 1: as it grew in prominence after the Nashville Covenant school shooting,
Speaker 1: which police say was committed by a trans man. We
Speaker 1: theorized that the online right was testing out a new
Speaker 1: strategy to attack trans people by associating them with mass
Speaker 1: shootings via the use of selective bias reporting and plane disinformation.
Speaker 1: That fear has come to pass. The modicum of believability
Speaker 1: provided by the Nashville shooting, as it's the only legitimate
Speaker 1: trans related incident that meets criteria for mainstream mass shooting databases,
Speaker 1: was enough to fuel this ongoing strategy for the next
Speaker 1: time two years. Since then, conservative influencers have attempted to
Speaker 1: link nearly every viral mass slash school shooting to trans
Speaker 1: people to create a false trend. The strategy operates as follows.
Speaker 1: During the first few chaotic hours after a shooting, a
Speaker 1: small group of right wing content creators weaponize the lack
Speaker 1: of verified information to make posts framing an alleged shooter
Speaker 1: as being transgender. This can be done through the use
Speaker 1: of out of context social media posts, doctrine photographs, photos
Speaker 1: of other people, or simply pictures of long or dyed hair.
Speaker 1: All they need is a collection of loose evidence to
Speaker 1: affirm on social media that a mass shooter is really transgender.
Speaker 1: For more context on this, you can listen to an
Speaker 1: episode of it could happen here, I wrote earlier this
Speaker 1: year covering the rise of fake trans terrorists. The goal
Speaker 1: is to get as many of their followers to see
Speaker 1: and spread these claims as fast as possible. Even if
Speaker 1: it's widely debunked the next day, many who heard the
Speaker 1: false claim won't be aware of the verified correction. All
Speaker 1: these anti trans influencers in need is a brief window
Speaker 1: of time to plant the idea into people's minds, and
Speaker 1: then that becomes remembered history. If this strategy is repeated
Speaker 1: every few months whenever there's a new mass shooting, then
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy to create the false perception of a
Speaker 1: growing trend. Now. In reality, trans people per capita are
Speaker 1: actually way less likely to commit a shooting compared to
Speaker 1: SIS people, and are much more likely to be the
Speaker 1: victim of gun violence. But this past Monday, conservative and
Speaker 1: anti trans influencers tried once again to weaponize a tragedy
Speaker 1: for their own hateful agenda. Monday afternoon, Ian Miles Chung
Speaker 1: posted trans terrorism must end. Hours later, Laura Lumer wrote quote,
Speaker 1: the trans movement is really turning out to be a
Speaker 1: terrorist movement. Just minutes after police responded to the shooting,
Speaker 1: the conservative influencer Matt Wallace posted that an unknown quote
Speaker 1: unquote witness said that the shooter quote looked to be
Speaker 1: transgender unquote. Wallace, who has over two point two million
Speaker 1: followers on Twitter, provided no source or citation and has
Speaker 1: since deleted this post, but others in the online mega
Speaker 1: orbit parroted this language before any identifying information was released,
Speaker 1: with the user just Jeff from Cali writing a transperson
Speaker 1: targeted and opened fire on students at Abundant Life Christian
Speaker 1: School in Wisconsin twelve hit. The right wing content creator
Speaker 1: Ryan Mada baselessly claimed that the shooter was on hormone
Speaker 1: replacement therapy, calling the shooter quote another mentally unstable psychopath
Speaker 1: who was prescribed puberty blocker and hormones unquote. Mada hosts
Speaker 1: a show on the right wing YouTube alternative Rumble and
Speaker 1: has over one one hundred and twenty three thousand followers
Speaker 1: on Twitter. His tweet claiming the shooter was on HRT
Speaker 1: racked up one point six million quote unquote views and
Speaker 1: seventeen thousand likes in just twelve hours. Larger accounts like
Speaker 1: Tya Wichech's libs of TikTok fuel to undo speculation about
Speaker 1: the gender identity of the shooter, ceding confusion into the
Speaker 1: growing discourse and weaponizing a tragedy for political gain. Quoting
Speaker 1: the police chief saying quote, I don't know if the
Speaker 1: shooter is male or female unquote. A small group of
Speaker 1: conservative influencers have just so successfully created in alternate reality
Speaker 1: in which nearly every new mass shooter is transgender that
Speaker 1: they don't even have to outright say it anymore. Accounts
Speaker 1: like libs of TikTok and Malaysian blogger Ian Miles Chung
Speaker 1: can merely gesture to this reality tunnel they've intentionally created,
Speaker 1: and now thousands of people will affirm this fake reality
Speaker 1: as the obvious truth, backed up by historical precedent of
Speaker 1: fabricated memory. Matt Waller Us posted a photo of the
Speaker 1: shooter and the male profile picture, saying what do you
Speaker 1: notice about the shooter again? Ian Miles Chung posted quote
Speaker 1: police are unable to identify if the school shooter in Madison,
Speaker 1: Wisconsin is male or female, but they do know who
Speaker 1: did it and identified them as a student. Is anyone
Speaker 1: else thinking what I'm thinking? Unquote? This speculation fueled conspiracy theories,
Speaker 1: which spread claiming that police were intentionally withholding information about
Speaker 1: the shooter's gender identity in service of some hidden agenda,
Speaker 1: and actually they were just waiting to like let the
Speaker 1: family know that their daughter was dead and making sure
Speaker 1: they had the correct identification. Very basic stuff. Police always
Speaker 1: do this, but no, it's all part of some secret
Speaker 1: agenda and some hidden narrative. As early as one pm
Speaker 1: EST on Monday, which is just like an hour after
Speaker 1: the shooting would have taken place, the neo Nazi Twitter
Speaker 1: account Nitro correctly identify find the shooter as his online
Speaker 1: friend Sam Samantha. As this name spread online, the multi
Speaker 1: gendered nature of the name added to the speculation that
Speaker 1: the shooter was trans. Scarlett Johnson, an activist with the
Speaker 1: ultra conservative parents' rights group Moms for Liberty Shared self
Speaker 1: admitted unconfirmed reports that the shooter was quote unquote a
Speaker 1: transgender teen who went by Sam or Samantha. As alleged
Speaker 1: pictures of the shooter started to spread online courtesy of Nitro,
Speaker 1: the transvestigation of the shooter only intensified. An unfortunate coincidence
Speaker 1: is that the shooter's given name matches the ancient Sam
Speaker 1: Hide meme, in which extremely online people try to trick
Speaker 1: journalists into believing the culprit of a new mass shooting
Speaker 1: was the American comedian Sam Hide. In recent years, the
Speaker 1: meme has turned into the Samantha Hyde meme, used to
Speaker 1: falsely label mass shooters as trans women. One Hide post
Speaker 1: from an unassuming boomer named Ed Massey raked up over
Speaker 1: six hundred thousand views, four point five thousand likes, and
Speaker 1: one and a half thousand retweets. Massy posted quote, when
Speaker 1: you put disturbed children on hormone blockers and sexually mutilate them,
Speaker 1: you're not curing them. You're creating potential school shooters unquote.
Speaker 1: Now it should go without saying, but the use of
Speaker 1: puberty suppressing medication has no link to increased violence. We're
Speaker 1: going to go on one last break and return to
Speaker 1: conclude our discussion of transvestigating school shooters. Okay, we are back.
Speaker 1: Time to talk about the potential double flipper. So as
Speaker 1: this transvestigation continued, the quote unquote, we can always tell
Speaker 1: crowd ended up transvestigating in both directions. Seemingly unsure of
Speaker 1: what a signed gender at birth, this shooter must have had.
Speaker 1: Some believe the shooter was transferm while others concluded they
Speaker 1: were trans mask with one reply to an end Wokeness
Speaker 1: tweet reading quote those do not look like female hands,
Speaker 1: and another transvestigation post saying the shooter is a trans kid,
Speaker 1: a female pretending to be a male. Exactly why we
Speaker 1: keep our Second Amendment rights to protect our children from
Speaker 1: this mental health crisis. Zoom in close on her shirt
Speaker 1: and hand gesture unquote. A now deleted post from a
Speaker 1: terf account also attempted to pass off the shooter as
Speaker 1: a transgirl, saying, quote, the Wisconsin school shooter was a
Speaker 1: seventeen year old transidentified male. It just keeps happening now
Speaker 1: quote unquote. Trans identified male was usually a transphobodogu whistle
Speaker 1: to refer to a trans woman as a male who
Speaker 1: identifies as a trans woman, but sometimes transfoms get confused
Speaker 1: by words and use the phrase to refer to trans
Speaker 1: people who quote unquote identify as men, like this other
Speaker 1: transvestigation post saying quote shooter was a seventeen year old
Speaker 1: trans but identified mail now. One of the most widespread
Speaker 1: posts claiming the shooter was a trans guy came from
Speaker 1: an anti Semitic doctor in Denmark with one point four
Speaker 1: million followers. She falsely claimed with no evidence, that the
Speaker 1: shooter was taking testosterone, writing quote, the Wisconsin school shooter
Speaker 1: has been identified as a seventeen year old trans identified
Speaker 1: male another mentally ill girl on testosterone unquote. As of
Speaker 1: Tuesday morning, this post has over three million views, twenty
Speaker 1: two thousand likes, and eight point three thousand retweets. In
Speaker 1: a following post, this doctor blamed quote unquote the Jews
Speaker 1: for inventing transgenderism as a note extremism. Researchers have argued
Speaker 1: that transphobia is structurally similar to anti semitism. Now a
Speaker 1: common piece of anti trans memetic propaganda deployed in the
Speaker 1: wake of mass shootings is the trans shooter collage. This
Speaker 1: format spread after the Nashville school shooting in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: and this week Matt Wallace provided us with a brand
Speaker 1: new version. This post is an ugly mishmash of one, two, three, four, five, six,
Speaker 1: seven people's faces with a variety of backgrounds, a purposeless
Speaker 1: red circle in the middle of the image, and text
Speaker 1: that reads quote. Almost every child killed in a mass
Speaker 1: shooting in the last few years was killed by a
Speaker 1: transgender shooter. Now out of all those pictures in this clagh.
Speaker 1: Only one person in this klagh has actually reported to
Speaker 1: be transgender, the Nashville shooter in the upper left. The
Speaker 1: rest of the people pictured are not trans and have
Speaker 1: never claimed to be trans. The person with long hair
Speaker 1: in the lower half the image is Colt Gray, who
Speaker 1: is falsely labeled as trans by far right influencers like
Speaker 1: end Wokenness and Mike Cernovich. Cult Gray's discord posts reveal
Speaker 1: he actually held transphobic beliefs. A more classic version of
Speaker 1: the trans shooter collage format is just five pictures with
Speaker 1: texts next to each of them reading the X shooter
Speaker 1: identified as trans, the X shooter identified as trans right,
Speaker 1: just a big list of five of these names saying
Speaker 1: that they all identified as trans. The version I'm using
Speaker 1: here is courtesy of Limbs of TikTok admin Chaya Reichek,
Speaker 1: who posted this earlier this year. But just as before,
Speaker 1: the majority of the subjects in this meme aren't actually
Speaker 1: trans and it's just full of disinformation. The Colorado Springs
Speaker 1: shooter who targeted a queer club is not actually non
Speaker 1: binary and simply tried to weaponize a false identity to
Speaker 1: get out of hate crime. Charges. The person labeled as
Speaker 1: the Denver shooter is not trans, has never claimed to
Speaker 1: be trans. He just has dyed hair. This individual pictured
Speaker 1: did play the shooting with a transgender male who is
Speaker 1: not pictured. Now. Lastly, though the person pictured as the
Speaker 1: Euvaldi shooter is trans, this is not the actual Euvaldi shooter.
Speaker 1: It's a random trans girl who is one of two
Speaker 1: trans women whose photos were used to falsely label the
Speaker 1: shooter as transgender. The other two people in this image
Speaker 1: is the Nashville shooter who does appear to be trans,
Speaker 1: and the perpetrator of the Aberdeen workplace shooting. But back
Speaker 1: to Madison, Wisconsin. So after all of that transvestigating, what
Speaker 1: do we have, just another Columbiner with neo Nazi ties.
Speaker 1: The right has gotten so good at deploying the trans
Speaker 1: shooter as a smoke bomb it obscures the reality of
Speaker 1: the over availability of firearms, the dynamics of online radicalization,
Speaker 1: and the social issues that fuel alienation and anger in youth.
Speaker 1: Instead of focusing on all that on the victims of
Speaker 1: this epidemic of white supremacist violence, we instead have to
Speaker 1: spend a whole day debunking the late shooters pronouns, and
Speaker 1: that's the point. That's what they want us talking about.
Speaker 1: Those who delete their quote unquote trans terrorist posts after
Speaker 1: being conclusively proven wrong, will try the exact same shtick
Speaker 1: in a few months after the next mass shooting goes viral.
Speaker 1: Others won't even care that much. They'll just leave up
Speaker 1: their post, secure in the stability of the reality tunnel
Speaker 1: they helped to create. I'm going to close with a
Speaker 1: quote from Sartra. Never believe that fascists are completely unaware
Speaker 1: of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their
Speaker 1: remarks are frivolous, open to challenge, but they are amusing themselves,
Speaker 1: for it is their adversary who's obliged to use words
Speaker 1: responsibly since he believes in words. This post has been deleted.
Speaker 1: It's Happened Here is a production of cool Zone Media
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.