BY MAGGIE TROWE
DES MOINES, Iowa - In the wake of the April 20 attack on
students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, the
capitalist rulers and their media are calling for stepped-up
attacks on democratic rights.
Police in Littleton allege that two students, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, carefully planned an attack with shotguns, semiautomatic weapons, and homemade bombs. Police say that Klebold and Harris, whose bodies were found on the scene, killed 13 people and wounded over 20 others, and then killed themselves.
Fellow students say Klebold and Harris were part of a group that called itself the "trench coat mafia," and admired Adolf Hitler, the leader of the fascist National Socialist (Nazi) movement in Germany. One student told the Denver Post, "They talk about Hitler a lot. They take a real pride in him. It's creepy." April 20, the date of the attack, was the date of Hitler's birth. Some students reported that Klebold and Harris were hostile toward Blacks, other oppressed nationalities, and Jews, as well as athletes.
Proposals for stepped-up gun control, increased police presence in schools, and censorship of the Internet and of movies, TV programs, and video games have peppered media coverage and politicians' statements since the killings. Liberals like Mary Gore, the vice president's wife, promote censorship, asserting that graphic violence on television and the Internet were factors in the killings.
In Iowa, a group is circulating a petition to bar Marilyn Manson - supposedly a favorite singer of Klebold and Harris - from performing in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, April 28.
A National Public Radio broadcast was dedicated to the subject of the deleterious effects on youth of computer games such as Doom and Quake.
Gary Bauer, announcing his candidacy for the Republican nomination for U.S. president, denounced "movies, music, and television shows" that create a supposed culture that "glorifies death in a thousand different ways."
Patrick Buchanan, the ultrarightist Republican presidential candidate who seeks cadres for a fascist movement, blamed "the train to hell America boarded decades ago, when we declared that God is dead." He and others have called for religion in the schools as a supposed solution.
School administrators immediately clamped down on students across the country. Here in Des Moines, the Iowa Civil Liberties Union protested after North High School officials ordered a student to leave for wearing a black trench coat to school and students at East High School were sent home for wearing flamboyant makeup.
Workers discuss how to react
Workers at the Swift plant where I work in Marshalltown,
Iowa, have been discussing the shootings for days. A couple
of Mexican-born workers were immediately concerned about the
possibility that there was a racist aspect of the attack.
Black workers and others took note of the reports that a
Black youth, Isaiah Shoels, was apparently was shot simply
because he was Black.
Adrienne, who is Black, said she thought that such killings take place "because children today don't fear their parents and they don't fear God." She went on to say there should be three cops in every high school. Later, after we talked about recent cases of police abuse - from two unarmed workers killed by police in Des Moines to the killing of Amadou Diallo in New York by cops who fired 41 bullets - she wasn't so sure more cops were the answer.
Over lunch another worker, Jesse, said, "Did you notice the boys were celebrating Hitler?" Bev said two of her children live in California, and she is worried that the same thing will happen there.
While I think the social breakdown under capitalism in its death agony results in some cases of extreme antisocial acts, working people should reject calls for more cops in the schools, more curfews for youth, more censorship of movies, TV, and the Internet.
I put quite a bit of emphasis on the evidence that Klebold and Harris were influenced by fascist ideas. The attacks by the bosses on our wages and working conditions and the bipartisan offensive led by the Clinton administration on welfare, social security, and affirmative action gains give the green light to fascist currents to push their scapegoating ideas and more frequently put them into action. This is part of a social polarization that is taking place.
At the same time a layer of vanguard workers and farmers, among them young fighters, is coalescing. As this development of a fighting vanguard evolves into a powerful revolutionary working-class movement, it will take up not only bread-and- butter issues but social questions - the fight against racism and to defend women's rights and the rights of immigrants, as well as the fight against the brutal imperialist assault on the workers and farmers of Yugoslavia and Iraq. We will involve working people, and especially youth, in a struggle that gives them confidence and dignity and a feeling of human solidarity. Antisocial acts will decrease. And as part of building such a movement we will learn to mobilize against racist and fascist outfits and individuals and drive them back.