Live-streamed Philippine school shooting raises alarm over ‘memetic violence’

A deadly school attack in the southern Philippines is drawing scrutiny as part of an apparent regional pattern of youth violence that echoes the staging, symbolism and online spectacle of mass shootings overseas. Authorities are investigating whether the incident in Zamboanga, in which a student reportedly broadcast parts of the attack online, was influenced by exposure to digital media, while analysts said the case underscored the risk of “memetic violence” – in which past atrocities are glorified online and recast as scripts for imitation. The attack took place on Tuesday morning at the junior high school campus of the privately run Ateneo de Zamboanga University in Zamboanga City, where police said a student brought weapons onto campus, opened fire inside a classroom and killed a fellow student. Investigators are still examining the sequence of events and the student’s motive. Zamboanga Mayor Khymer Adan Olaso said in a radio interview on DZBB that the student had live-streamed the attack through a body-worn camera. Olaso also said that the gunman shot at a teacher and a Grade 10 student before taking his own life. The shooter’s father, a customs police officer, was relieved of his duties after the attack as investigators looked into reports that the firearms used belonged to him. The attack occurred a little over a week after a 14-year-old in Thailand killed seven people in a rampage that began at home and continued at a public school on the outskirts of Bangkok. It also came less than two months after two students opened fire at a public high school in Tacloban City in the central Philippines in June, killing at least three students and injuring 20 others. School shootings remain rare in the Philippines, where gun ownership is regulated, although illegal firearms remain in wide circulation. For analysts, the recent attacks are troubling less because they point to a single ideology than because they suggest a shared grammar of violence in which young perpetrators appear conscious of how their actions will be seen, shared and remembered. These incidents shared characteristics such as “meticulous premeditation, a deliberate attention to aesthetics and presentation and a drive for notoriety through mass violence,” said Saddiq Basha, a senior analyst at the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. The pattern had been emerging “since at least last year, probably earlier,” said Munira Mustaffa, a Kuala Lumpur-based security analyst who heads Chasseur Group and previously worked in counterterrorism roles in Malaysia’s government and military sectors. Mustaffa said what had changed was that the last three attacks in the Philippines and Thailand were completed instead of being disrupted, “which is what has finally made it visible”. “Authorities and observers have been slow to connect them because the modality differs each time, and that is complicated by the perpetrators’ very young age,” she added. Beyond blaming games The Zamboanga attack has brought renewed focus to whether children in the Philippines are being drawn into harmful online subcultures through gaming platforms or adjacent chat spaces after similar concerns were raised following the Tacloban school shooting. Officials have been examining whether such cases bear the imprint of nihilistic violent extremism (NVE) – a loose term for online subcultures that glorify destruction, cruelty, mass violence or self-harm – but experts said the label should not be applied to the Zamboanga case without stronger evidence. In a television interview with ANC, Olaso characterised the shooter as a “very bright student” but noted that he was a “Roblox fanatic”, referring to the popular online gaming platform that has faced scrutiny over concerns involving child safety, grooming and extremist content in connected online spaces. Interior and Local Government Secretary Jonvic Remulla said that although authorities had yet to conduct a forensic examination on the shooter’s electronic devices, they had a “great degree of confidence” that Roblox had influenced the shooter’s actions. “Roblox in itself is not a dangerous game. It is the chat group that is beside it, that is where the coaxing happens, where the radicalisation takes place,” he said at a briefing on Wednesday. Authorities had previously looked into online games as a potential pathway for radicalisation during the Tacloban attack in June, while officials also examined suspicions that the Tacloban shooters were influenced by 764, a nihilistic violent extremist network accused of targeting vulnerable children online. At a congressional hearing, Senator Risa Hontiveros also cited a photo of one Tacloban suspect wearing a KMFDM shirt – a reference associated with the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in the US – as among the signs investigators were examining. “It is very difficult to accept that our country must face another school shooting,” Hontiveros said in a statement on Tuesday. “For now, we cannot say whether this incident is connected to nihilistic violent extremism or other similar online communities that we have started to investigate following the Tacloban shooting,” she added. Observers said social media could play a role in shaping such incidents but could not by itself explain why a young person would choose to attack a school. “Social media does play a role, in the sense that it can expose individuals to the aesthetics and call-to-action of Western perpetrators of mass violence, especially amplified within the online echo-chambers of like-minded individuals,” Basha said. “Yet, online exposure alone is insufficient to account for such acts, and we have to consider factors such as the grievances formed offline.” The fact that the Zamboanga incident was live-streamed has drawn comparisons with earlier attacks designed to reach an online audience, such as the 2019 Christchurch mosque attack, though experts said the available evidence did not establish a direct ideological or subcultural link. “Until we know what exactly he was exposed to online, consumed or inspired by, it is difficult to make conclusive statements,” Mustaffa said, adding that the shooter’s body camera indicated “the attack was built to be watched and the attacker intended to have an audience.” “Aside from the premeditated act of live-streaming … there are currently no concrete indications that the perpetrator of the Zamboanga mass shooting was influenced by any specific violent online subculture, though I would not be surprised if he was,” Basha said, adding that any attempt to tie him to one at this point would be speculative. Mustaffa said gaming platforms such as Roblox were more accurately understood as possible venues for radicalisation, not causes. “The games aren’t what radicalising them, it’s the socialising or bonding that took place during the co-op, and there’s always a risk of grooming during those interactive sessions. The Zamboanga attack was likely animated by the attacker’s own grievance, and personal grievance is the one persistent element across the attacks in the region so far,” she said. Basha said that while authorities might look for adult groomers influencing young perpetrators, as in the Tacloban case, they should not overlook the possibility of “peer-to-peer, horizontal grooming between youths within these online communities”. As authorities in the Philippines, Thailand and across the region adapt to the recent cluster of attacks, Mustaffa warned against reaching for “simple explanations like blaming games, or building a narrative around the perpetrator’s bullying or personal struggles. Those things may well be part of the picture, but they don’t explain the decision to attack, and treating them as an explanation makes the next case more likely.” “Turning schools into fortresses won’t help, and it isn’t practical … What’s needed is a networked effort across parents, schools, law enforcement, and platforms, and the first task is working out what that looks like in practice,” she said.

Live-streamed Philippine school shooting raises alarm over ‘memetic violence’

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Analysts say the Zamboanga attack appears to fit a pattern of violence shaped by online spectacle, imitation and the pursuit of notoriety

Analysts say the Zamboanga attack appears to fit a pattern of violence shaped by online spectacle, imitation and the pursuit of notoriety