The Mass Shooter Game
The Subversive Therapist Podcast
This podcast episode was recorded on 9/27/2023. Don and Andrew discuss U.S. War games. Specifically, Now I’ve Got You, You SOB! as it relates to the Mass Shooter game.
The set up to Mass Shooter is “I will destroy the world and then kill myself.” In simple terms, the War game version of Now I’ve Got You, You SOB! is the climax of Mass Shooter. Both games involve the Othering of a certain person, group, or ethnicity, which creates an obstruction between oneself and the Other. The same can be said for competing nation-states. This Othering justifies violent retaliation.
Mass Shooter involves White (“it”) surveilling Black (weakness for the game) in order to find injustices to enact revenge. The relatively minor infraction is weaponized by White to unleash their fury. Black then retaliates against the fury. When Black’s inevitable retaliation occurs, it authorizes a claim of “self-defense” even though White was in an offensive position. White was looking for provocations to license a game of Now I’ve Got You, You Son of a Bitch! (NIGYSOB!)
For example, the U.S. militarily occupies the Middle East, which provokes the 9/11 attacks. Two decades later, under the guise of the illusory “war on terror,” (see Hide & Seek) the U.S. enacts revenge on one of the “masterminds” who allegedly planned the attack. Israel occupies the Palestinians to provoke attacks by Hamas in order to seek revenge and domination: NIGYSOB!
The Mass Shooter combines NIGYSOB! with the supremacist version of Kick Me. Mass Shooter is driven by White’s need to be perceived by Others (Black), i.e., social recognition. White’s perception is that Black will regret how they treated White, e.g., for the bullying, criticism, lack of sexual interest. White makes themselves agitated (bound up sexual energy), which leads to violence. The exhibitionism of the murders, which is often livestreamed, is the destructive version of the Influencer game. Consider Columbine. One of the masterminds was Eric Harris who imagined the massacre would one day be made into a Hollywood movie:
“For Eric, Columbine was a performance. Homicidal art. He actually referred to his audience in his journal: “the majority of the audience wont even understand my motives,” he complained. He scripted Columbine as made-for-TV murder, and his chief concern was that we would be too stupid to see the point. Fear was Eric’s ultimate weapon. He wanted to maximize the terror. He didn’t want kids to fear isolated events like a sporting event or a dance; he wanted them to fear their daily lives. It worked. Parents across the country were afraid to send their kids to school.” (p. 277)
His existential life position was I’m OK, You’re not-OK (arrogant and paranoid). Therefore, Harris felt a sense of superiority over Others and plotted revenge. In the book, “Columbine”, it is noted that “Eric equated “unique” with “superior.” For example, Harris obtains injustices and gets revenge: he would attack his peers’ houses “to retaliate for perceived slights, but most often for the offense of inferiority.” (NIGYSOB!). The armaments give White situational power to inflict the most damage: I’ll Show Them. White is more interested in the effects the shooting has on their enemies or friends (carnage) than they do in the rewards itself.
Contrary to popular understanding, the Columbine massacre was not a nod to 4/20 or Hitler’s birthday, but a replication of Timothy McVeigh’s work four years (to the day) prior. McVeigh’s devastating Oklahoma City bombing of 168 innocent people was revenge, i.e., NIGYSOB!, for the federal government’s actions against the Branch Davidian compound in the 1993 Waco siege. According to Michael Parenti in his book The Terrorism Trap, McVeigh was associated with the “Christian Identity” group. So, in addition to attacking the federal government, he was also fascistically attacking “the Jews, liberals, and other secularists who have dislodged white Christian America from its spiritual moorings.”
McVeigh is therefore one of the Original Mass-shooter Gangsters (see OMG, e.g., Unabomber). The initial commencement date for the Columbine attack was April 19th, which was to be in solidarity with McVeigh’s actions in Oklahoma City. The delay in the acquisition of supplies (from the Connection role) was why the massacre was carried out on April 20th.
References
Cullen, D. (2009). Columbine. Twelve: New York.
Parenti, M. (2002). The terrorism trap: September 11 and beyond. City Lights Books: San Franscico.
Peterson, J. & Densley J. (2021). The violence project: How to stop a mass shooting epidemic. Abrams Press: New York.