Young, isolated boys meeting online and pushing each other.
This is how journalist Åsa Erlandsson describes the perpetrators behind the increasing number of Swedish school crimes in recent years.
– There are there pure school shooter communities, she says in Efter fem.
Last summer, two people were murdered at Malmö Latin. Similar attacks have been carried out at schools in Eslöv and Kristianstad – in two cases where the perpetrators also had contact with each other.
In the past, Sweden has been relatively spared from school attacks, but something has changed in recent years.
Åsa Erlandsson, writer and journalist at DN, has since the school attack in Trollhättan in 2015 taken a closer look at what drives the perpetrators.
– It is still a small number, it is important to remember that, but there has been an increase. In the last eight years, we have completed about ten school deeds, she says.
“You are very lonely”
In addition to completed attacks and murders, the police have also succeeded in stopping a large number of planned crimes. Åsa Erlandsson sees a common thread among the perpetrators.
– It is almost always about young, very isolated people. You don’t succeed with your social relationships, you may also not succeed with your studies or with your job plans. You are very lonely, she says.
– In one place they are really not alone and that is online and there are pure school shooter communities, you could call it that. Forums where you cheer each other on, inspire each other and even compete in injury outcomes; who could be the worst.
Another pattern Åsa Erlandsson can see is that the various perpetrators, both in Sweden and abroad, are very clearly inspiring each other. The Columbine massacre in 1999, which was the first really attention-grabbing school act, comes up again and again in the forums.
Digital echo chamber
– You can see it when the perpetrators plan their crime in the choice of weapon, homemade uniform and then sometimes they leave behind a writing, a manifesto or similar where you can also pay tribute to previous perpetrators, says Åsa Erlandsson.
– They sit and spin around in a digital echo chamber. These are not new, unique thoughts. You copy why you do this and who you designate as scapegoats, she continues.
If the problem is to be tackled, education and efforts to reach parents are required, among other things – in other words, a great deal of preventive work, the author believes.
– Because at some point something happens in a young boy’s life when he starts to sit in the boys’ room and marinate himself in the darkest corners of the net. Imagine if you could get in there a little earlier and break this self-radicalization that takes place in front of the screen.
– But that is easier said than done.