by Dmetri Kakmi

A couple of weeks ago, two adolescent sociopaths went on yet another killing spree in an American school. In response, the land of the righteous and its satellite colonies, Australia and England, went into yet another frenzy of hand-wringing in an effort to find someone or something to blame.

All the usual cliches were dragged out: ban Internet violence; ban movie violence. Pin it on Marilyn Manson's nihilistic lyrics; point the finger at The Artist Formerly Known as a Good Singer's pistol mike. And, just to add spice to the brew, it is now rumoured that one of the killers might have been gay. Yet in a culture that worships the gun as if it were a hot prick, very few people have yet to acknowledge that there are no more scapegoats left for Americans. The time has come to exorcise the devil within, oh land of the Puritan fathers!

The first thing the Littleton massacre highlighted was the savage, relentless emotional and physical torture that jocks and debutantes rain on nerds and wallflowers in schools the world over. Little did they expect, however, that one day the tables would be turned on them in such a horrific manner. It's alienated, sexually repressed Carrie going on a murderous rampage on her prom night all over again. As a skinny bookworm who was constantly picked on at high school, I understand (but do not condone) the pent-up rage and ostracism that would cause two boys to slaughter their classmates. But is it political correctness that keeps commentators from asking if there is some connection between the explosive male psyche and, in particular, the development and repression of male sexuality at the adolescent stage that could possibly trigger violent behaviour in some boys?

All you have to do is watch teenage boys rampaging around shopping malls during school holidays to see that this is a highly volatile period in their lives. Get them in packs and you can feel the hair-trigger violence waiting to explode. Adolescents also make up the memberships for violent urban gangs, and, significantly, are responsible for a large proportion of gay bashings. It would seem that at this age, apart from the violent urgings of awakening sexuality, there is a great desire to belong and to define oneself in opposition to both parents and society in general.

This testosterone-driven violence, mixed in with any number of the environmental components besieging modern cities, could be creating walking time bombs. It goes without saying that all teenagers are discontented in some way, but the majority do not kill or harm others. But times are changing, and we need to examine what effects the disintegration of strong family ties, and of the various political and religious structures in industrial nations are having on children. Education in America and its aforementioned colonies is also in disarray. Apart from failing to provide an adequate educational base, institutions have been infantilising students since the 60s. Are baby boomers now paying the price of their laxity?

As an atheist, I believe that religion may be a necessary evil to keep the lid on humanity's innate ferocity. For decades fascistic rule kept all the various warring tribes of Yugoslavia living together in relative peace. Look what's happening there now that those iron shackles have been overthrown. One hierarchy is trying to dominate the other. That is in effect what the Littleton killers were trying to do in their own primitive and brutal fashion. It's also worth noting that, as a friend of mine pointed out, for the Littleton boys, death may have seemed like the only way of obliterating pain and the spiritual emptiness of middle-class life.

One of the first things that was played up in the media about the two boys was that they did not belong; they were called nerds by their classmates, and there were claims that they belonged to a white-supremacist neo-Nazi group. In light of this, American school authorities are encouraging students to blow the whistle on classmates who are erratic, moody, reclusive so that a team of counsellors might descend with their assimilationist pills and prescriptions for conformity. But we don't want to see a return to regimented 50s surveillance of youth. It's worrying to think that from now on authorities might clamp down on the slightest signs of anti-social behaviour in adolescents as dangerous and unacceptable, thus creating a race of pre-programmed blonde moppets of the Beverly Hills 90210 kind.

Just to confirm that America, apart from being one of the most racist nations on earth, is also virulently anti-homosexuality, rumours that one of the boys might have been a samesexer have upset the gay-rights apple cart something shocking. Only in America, where sex is both denied and exploited to the hilt, could news of this sort be taken seriously and reported as if it actually had significance. Of course, the inept gay rights lobby, which is generally run by a bunch of nincompoops, is left speechless and scrambling for higher ground like rats. Days after the story broke, they have yet to make one coherent, intelligent statement to the press. It doesn't seem to have occurred either to them or the pundits from various factions that sexual inclinations are largely irrelevant in cases of mass murder, where the perpetrator is generally expressing internalised frustrations and feelings of powerlessness against socio-political forces in an open public space. Did anyone ask if Martin Bryant's wonky heterosexuality had anything to do with the massacre at Tasmania's Port Arthur? Was Timothy McVeigh's sexuality called into question when he blew up that building in Oklahoma City?

In response to right-wingers who are screaming that Fags are killing America's youth the only reasonable answer is: homosexuality does not kill people. People kill people. If anything, statistically speaking, more gays have been killed by straights than vice versa. One reason why gay activists haven't known how to respond to this news is that they and their trendy supporters have for so long promoted the idea of gays as suffering saints that they now have trouble accepting the fact that gays are just as capable of violence as everyone else. It is an undeniable fact that some of the most horrific serial killers on record were gay. Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Nilsen are just the tip of the blood-spattered iceberg. In their case, it could be argued that various early childhood environmental factors and our society's negative attitudes towards homosexuality impacted to turn a harmless physical impulse into an abattoir. If one of the obviously unstable Littleton boys had been gay, it's more likely that he would have been a serial killer, not a mass murder. It is mainly during serial killings that deep-seated psycho-sexual impulses are played out within a private enclosed space.

So, the question remains: how has mainstream society failed its children so totally that some of them are turning to lunatic-fringe groups, like the neo-Nazis, for meaning and as an outlet for their frustrations? Part of the answer is that these groups give the illusion of empowerment and belonging. Secular middle-class life has created a vacuum, with nothing stepping in to replace the old traditional social glues. By stripping the individual of all power and self-determination, and failing to instil a sense of ethics and morality, we have created a race of sexually-stunted and infantile human beings, who have no meaning in life other than to seek a dubious immortality through some kind of notoriety. Now we're reaping what we have sown.