SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
It has been over 25 years since the shootings at Columbine High School. And since then, school shootings have become an ever-present reality, a reality that students and school districts prepare for. Two recent school shootings highlight a new twist in our understanding of these incidents. Experts say these attacks fall within a growing and poorly understood category of terrorism. NPR's domestic extremism correspondent Odette Yousef joins us. Hey there.
ODETTE YOUSEF, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.
DETROW: So both of these shootings were murder-suicides. Can you refresh us on some of the other key details?
YOUSEF: Yes. The first of these was in Madison, Wisconsin, back in December. Natalie Rupnow, who went by Samantha, was a freshman at Abundant Life Christian School. And before taking her own life, she killed another student and a substitute teacher coordinator.
The other shooting was at Antioch High School in Nashville last month. Solomon Henderson killed another student and himself. Now, some analysts who focus on extremism and terrorism have been looking closely at these incidents, and they told me that they fall into a relatively new, quickly growing category that they call nonideological or postideological terrorism.
DETROW: I think a lot of people might hear nonideological terrorism and have a lot of questions about what exactly that means.
YOUSEF: Yeah. I mean, so what it means is that there's no clear ideological agenda behind the violence. And that's in contrast to other kinds of terrorism that we're more familiar with, like radical Islamist terrorism or white nationalist terrorism. Now, there are themes that show in both of these cases. One is a deep misanthropy. These teens were both harboring a real hatred for humanity. And another is a fascination that they had with people who've committed mass killings in the past. But honestly, Scott, those traits don't really explain why they moved into a head space of planning violence themselves.
DETROW: OK. So then how are experts making sense of all of this, given all of that?
YOUSEF: Well, they're starting with these teens' obsessions with mass killers. There's an online community devoted to this called the True Crime Community. But it's not one where you'll see explicit calls to violence. Now, one expert I spoke to says his team at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue has connected it to at least seven school shooting plots in 2024 alone. And the thinking is that other darker online communities are increasingly interplaying with true crime spaces - you know, ones that organize around ideas of violence and societal decay. Here's Matthew Kriner of the Accelerationism Research Consortium.
MATTHEW KRINER: Most of the individuals who are targeted for this are falling in the range of 13 to 18. That is a considerably different target range than most of the radicalization targets that we've seen in the past from the neofascist movements.
YOUSEF: And some of these networks revolve around very disturbing activities, Scott, like grooming young children into self-harm and harm against others.
DETROW: So what are experts doing about this? What is law enforcement doing about this?
YOUSEF: Well, right now, analysts are trying to better understand this evolving dynamic. But a problem is that they lack detailed centralized data on mass shooting plots in the U.S. You know, even so, many are trying to orient law enforcement to this pattern. You know, and this can really be hard because the language and online activities of many of these young people are often buried under layers of memes and inside jokes. So they may look into these kids' writings and think that it's just kind of, like, incoherent nonsense, but in fact, it does represent a radicalization pathway.
DETROW: That is NPR's Odette Yousef. Thanks so much.
YOUSEF: Thank you.
DETROW: And if you or someone you know might be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
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