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Neighborhood Watch

by Anti Anti

The Bloody Cultural Import

US imperialism has gifted us another form of violence. This time, it’s stochastic and it’s coming for the children. It has claimed the lives of three children and injured dozens already, just in the June 22 Tacloban school shooting that shocked the nation.

With the culture of bullying, bystanders to psychological mistreatment, and failed social interventions, the western-centric online world of the Philippines has given many teenagers a space. Unfortunately, a small but undeniable number end up calling peers of those who encourage misanthropy, anxieties, fears, and hatred.

They find people who feel the same. But they respond with a longing for violence, a desire to hurt they consider enemies. They find enemies in “woke ideology” (such as feminism or acceptance of trans people), Islam, racial minorities, activists and “communists”, the urban poor, or other scapegoats. Their fellow students, even. Any who they feel have wronged them.

And when the culture of American school shootings and far-right ideologies grows further still, nihilistic violent extremism (NVE) becomes the outlet. Stochastic violence means violence which is statistically likely to occur due to conditions that radicalize parts of the population, especially from public opinions. It was a matter of time when our society’s failure to intervene and heal social wounds would manifest this cultural import as a morbid symptom.

These kids find community in hate.

In a paper written in June 27 by Cedric Cortez Jr., Tacloban’s Columbine, he used the term “morbid symptom” to describe this phenomenon, with reference to the 1999 Columbine high school shooting. This shows that this is part of a larger pattern in the growing rise of the far-right throughout the world. School shootings are a morbid symptom of this societal decline.

This decline arises from a society tearing at the seams by economies run by billionaires and imperialists driving the cost of living to bare survival. The people seek an answer to the growing tensions of society. But they are misdirected.

Energy against a system of global oppression is directed instead toward ideologies of hatred, division, and a supposed evil nature in humanity. When we remain blind and divided, these communities take their anger out on the most vulnerable aspects of society, as if student activists were a great evil, as if trans people were some disease, as if the homeless were some scourge, and so on. These ideas become communities that run amok online, and these communities become movements that only benefit the ultra-wealthy, and death to the people most in need. This is a fundamental feature of fascism, given to us by the US as we continue to live as a neocolony, and import their culture of violence that they export to every corner of the world.

Worse yet, with youth growing up in Duterte’s bloody “war on drugs” and the impunity of police and military against our communities through Marcos Jr., why should we be surprised when violence seems so normal to us?

We idolize the military that brutalizes activists, indigenous people, and farmers. We idolize the police that slaughters students, rallyists, and the urban poor.

Why should we be surprised when, eventually, school shootings reach the Philippines?

Failure to Analyze means Failure to Prevent means Failure to Intervene

Mainstream media and the Philippine government doesn’t know how to respond when an NVE is perpetrated, because that would mean they have to investigate the root issues that cause children to be misinformed and seek community in the most violent and hateful online spaces. It means they’d have to blame their education system, the culture of bullying, and the destruction of common spaces for the youth—but sure, it’s the video games that make kids radicalized.

They have thus far failed to analyze the “diffused and leaderless fascism” of these online NVE communities, which look to school shooters as inspiration—saints and predecessors to follow in the footsteps of. A death cult that reveres violence, not because they are overtaken by a demonic spirit or that they alone are morally evil criminals, but because their community has failed them. They seek validation from the extremists that have idolized terror, to advance a cause in service of oppression.

Studies like that of Cortez Jr. remain academic and outside the mainstream at large, so blindspots remain of how these groups recruit, radicalize, and communicate through the internet.

Now, facing several months of an increasingly visible trend of youth violence, where do our institutions turn?

Students could undergo training in mental health first aid, cultivating community, and counter the online spread of extremism through education. Instead, the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Local Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Offices (DRRMOs), and the Department of Education (DepEd) ran an active school shooter simulation exercises on June 23 in Angeles City, and they later ran one of the very first active school shooter drills with students in Manila Science Highschool on July 15.

We don’t need more guns in our schools, we need more preventative measures that leave no child behind.

Then our very own university takes little action to explicitly address this rise in hateful ideology and prevention of violence. Random and inconsistent bag checks primarily increase vigilance to report “minor offenses”—dyed hair, piercings, skirt lengths, transphobic reports of “crossdressing”, and other supposed grievances.

And with the exclusion of Pride from further official recognition compared to prior years, it enabled more conservatism and online trolling. What hateful ideas are emboldened when an institution does not take inclusivity seriously?

Meanwhile, the Philippine government sponsors violence through the police and military against its conscientious citizens, as with the recent SONA protests. With the desensitization of the youth to violence in a world wracked by images of abuse, genocide, war, and calling slain students “corned beef”—I say it again—why should we be surprised when our youth become agents of extreme violence and acts of terror?

So long as these conditions remain, we can only expect this trend to grow. Now is the time to take seriously the underlying causes that direct students to violence, and find community in extremists rather than friends and family. But the only thing that our institutions can think of is more violence. This is not a war against children or a war against crime, but a war against those that divide us and turn our children into agents of terror. Do not let the fascists take our children.

And now, we have come to the present where, as of writing, there is a threat to shoot up four schools in Angeles City.

Now is the time for community.

Our agimat is each other
Anti-Fascist, Anti-Authoritarian — Anti Anti