When violence is its own reward

When Axel Rudakubana killed three girls in Southport in 2024, the race was on to diagnose him ideologically. Was he a jihadist? He did have al-Qaeda literature. Was he anti-white? He did own books about anti-colonial violence.

All attempts to conjure up a coherent ideological narrative failed because the fact was that Rudakubana had a deep fascination with violence in general. He was obsessed with genocides, rebellions and torture. In all likelihood, he ended up pursuing violence for its own sake.

State institutions failed to isolate Rudakubana before he could commit his crimes. Now, though, a teenager who apparently “researched” the Southport killings has been jailed for possessing explosives and making threats against his school. Jagger Strang allegedly wallowed in media about spree killings and serial murderers, as well as filming himself torturing animals.

We are used to slotting perpetrators of extreme violence into neat categories: “jihadist”, say, or “far right”. This can be perfectly valid. A Prevent Learning Review that followed Rudakubana’s horrific crimes, though, warned of a rise in people who “demonstrate an interest in multiple extremist ideologies in parallel” and “are obsessed with massacre, or extreme or mass violence, without specifically targeting a particular group”.

These killers — and aspiring killers — are not members of organised criminal groups but are copycats. In the US, just last week, for example, a teenager obsessed with the Columbine High School massacre shot two people to death in a library. Another Columbine revivalist took part in a murderous rampage at a high school in the Philippines.

Dark online communities play a significant role in fuelling this violence. The “True Crime Community” is an online fandom, popping up on platforms like Discord and Telegram, to idolise serial killers and mass shooters. “Participants in TCC,” explains a report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue: 

… behave as devoted fans of their favorite murderers: dressing like them, doodling their names in notebooks at school, putting up pictures in their rooms or lockers, creating or commissioning art of them, etc.

As absurd as this sounds, many people linked to the True Crime Community have perpetrated violence. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue identified seven school shooters with links to the TCC in the space of two years.

Other online communities brand themselves as misanthropic — flattering the pretensions of their members while indulging their bitterness and paranoia. Such online spheres include the mordantly named “No Lives Matter” and the more obscurely titled but even more sinister “764” — a deranged sextortion cult. Members of these communities marinate in media about extreme violence, neo-Nazism, child pornography, and misanthropic hatred. As a disturbing article from Wired explains:

The phenomenon has proved incredibly hard to combat due to a lack of coherent structure or ideology … Young extortionists and assailants egg each other on to progressively more lurid and debased acts of violence for the sake of internet notoriety and status.

Isolating and deconstructing such communities is vital, of course. But it would be a mistake to reduce this threat to social media alone. The fact is that young people would not seek out such dark online communities if they were not already alienated and disturbed. Online radicalisation is a real issue, but teenagers do not naturally graduate from Mr Beast videos to mass killer fandoms. Something has to be going wrong already. Supporting isolated young people before they head too far down a morbid path is essential. 

Looking up to such murderers isn’t just bad, and it isn’t just “radical” — it’s pathetic

I would also be wary of demonising an interest in dark and disturbing subjects. Obviously, an interest in X need not imply enthusiasm for X. I was very interested in war as a child but that does not mean I liked it. Parents, schools and state services should be careful to distinguish between curiosity and obsession, and between interestedness and admiration. 

Quite apart from anything else, paranoia about morbid subjects might increase their perverse allure. These kids are not attracted to them because they doubt that their parents would disapprove. That’s part of the appeal! As well as condemning serial killers and spree killers, then, we should not be shy about emphasising how wretched and small-minded such perpetrators of violence have been — resentful, twisted, selfish and pretentious. Looking up to such murderers isn’t just bad, and it isn’t just “radical” — it’s pathetic.