Friday, November 09, 2007

The school shooting tragedy in Finland, in which eight people were murdered, got interesting coverage in La Vanguardia. Here's the lead paragraph:

Finland doesn't believe it, not even the government. A multiple murder in their country was, until yesterday, unthinkable, something that only happened in the United States. Pekka Eric Auvinen, an 18-year-old student, armed with a pistol, opened the eyes of the Finns to the fact that globalization includes everything and that massacres like those at Columbine and Virginia Tech are also exportable to the countries of peaceful, developed Scandinavia.

What utter bosh.

First, the shooter used a German name, Sturmgeist89, on the Internet, and he claimed to be an admirer of Hitler and Stalin--and to be violently anti-American. If anything, he was a Nietzche-Nazi, and he called himself "a social Darwinist." Second, such things are not unthinkable in Finland, since in 2002 a nutcase with a bomb blew himself up at a Helsinki mall, killing six other people. And third, we've posted before on mass murders in Europe, of which there have been plenty:

Top European spree killer: Thomas Hamilton, who killed 17 people at a preschool in Dunblane, Scotland, in 1996. Next is Robert Steinhauser, who killed 16 people at an Erfurt, Germany school in 2002. He's tied with Michael Ryan, who killed 16 people in Hungerford, England, in 1987...More European spree shooters: Eric Borel killed 13 people in Cuers, France, in 1995. Richard Durn killed 8 people in Nanterre, France, in 2002. Mauro Antonello killed 7 people in Chieri, Italy, in 2002. Mattias Flink killed 7 people in Falun, Sweden, in 1994. Josef Gautch killed 6 people in Austria in 1997. Jean-Pierre Aillan killed 5 people near Rennes, France, in 1996. Tommy Zethraeus killed 4 people in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1994.

Germany had three single murders in its schools, one in November 1999, one in March 2000, and one in February 2002. In January 2004 another single murder occurred in the Hague, Netherlands.

So I'd say that it's most definitely anti-Americanism to blame a school shooting in Finland on the Americans.

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