Americano: do mass shootings begin online?

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🗓️ 2 September 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

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Summary

Freddy Gray is joined by writer and internet ethnographer Katherine Dee. She's written about the Minneapolis school shooting and Robin Westman for Spectator World. Two children were killed and 17 others injured by a killer with a bizarre online footprint: a mix of memes, nihilism, politics and gore references. Katharine argues 'these shooters are radicalized, but in no particular direction. Their identities fragment. There is a deep fear of being forgotten.'

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to the Americano Show, where we talk about power, politics and prejudices in American life.
0:15.4	Every week we will talk to at least one or two or possibly three or four American experts, international experts
0:23.3	about American affairs. And you can also catch us on Spectator TV on YouTube as often as you
0:30.3	like. Please keep listening and watching. I'm delighted to be joined today by Catherine D,
0:37.1	who is an internet ethnographer.
0:40.3	Do you call yourself an internet ethnographer, Catherine?
0:43.6	Yeah, that's one way to put it.
0:45.4	Yeah.
0:45.9	Internet historian, you write about the internet, very interestingly, on a brilliant
0:50.5	subject called Default Friend, which I highly recommend to all listeners of the Americano podcast.
0:57.1	And Catherine,
0:57.8	you've written a very moving piece about the school shooting.
1:03.0	It was a mass shooting in a Catholic Mass.
1:06.6	It was the first day back for the school,
1:09.5	the Enunciation Catholic school in Minneapolis.
1:13.9	And this terrible crime has happened.
1:16.5	Two children are dead, 17 injured, I think.
1:21.3	And as you say in this piece, you turned on the news for the first time in a long time.
1:27.4	And you heard about it
1:28.2	and you found it
1:28.6	very upsetting
1:30.3	which you found odd
	...

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