Yesterday, Steven Crowder’s media outlet published three pages of school shooter Audrey Hale’s manifesto, confirmed by Nashville’s Chief of Police, and my colleague Andrea Widburg wrote a great blog on a very obvious motivation behind the girl’s murderous rampage: the well-known leftist mantra of “white privilege.” I’d like to add to Andrea’s work, and highlight another angle: the chip on Hale’s shoulder, one which is eerily evocative to that of another notorious figure.

What do we know about Hale?

Indisputably, she suffered from mental illness and delusions—healthy individuals don’t have crippling identity disorders, and they don’t fantasize about destroying innocent people before acting on those delusions. We can deduce that Hale must have harbored tremendous resentment towards the Christian faith, inferred by her targeting of a Christian school. And lastly, it’s obvious that she was a resentful and envious person, given the language below:

Kill those kids!!!

those crackers

going to private fancy schools with those fancy kwakis [sic] sports backpacks w/ thier [sic] daddies [sic] mustangs convertables [sic]

fuck you little shits

I wish to shoot your weakass dicks w/ your mop yellow hair

wanna kill all you little crackers!!!

Bunch of little faggots w/ your white privlages [sic]

fuck you faggots

DEATH DAY

Today is the day, the day has finally come!

I’m a little nervous, but excited too. Been excited for the past 2 weeks.

God let my wrath take over my anxiety

You know of whom Hale reminds me? Karl Marx. And, surprise surprise, her manifesto reads like his twisted and less-known writings, albeit much less sophisticated in their composition. (Marx could at least spell and spoke his language intelligently without needing to rely on cheap expletives to express himself.)

I suspect that most people aren’t aware of this, but Marx actually produced a number of works in a host of literary genres—he wasn’t just a greedy communist and economic idiot, but also a macabre poet and satanic playwright. 

Around the time that Marx finished his high school education, he penned a thesis in which he repeatedly used the word “destroy” which then became a nickname used by his classmates. From Richard Wurmbrand’s Marx & Satan:

It was natural for him [Marx] to want to destroy because he spoke about mankind as ‘human trash’ and said, ‘No man visits me and I like this, because present mankind … are a bunch of rascals.’

…

He [Marx] writes in a poem, ‘I wish to avenge myself against the One who rules above.’

…

[T[he young Marx wrote the following lines in his poem ‘Invocation of One in Despair’:

So a god has snatched from me my all,

In the curse and rack of destiny.

All his worlds are gone beyond recall.

Nothing but revenge is left to me.

I shall build my throne high overhead,

Cold, tremendous shall its summit be.

For its bulwark—superstitious drea.

For its marshall—blackest agony.

Who looks on it with a healthy eye,

Shall turn back, deathly pale and dumb,

Clutched by blind and chill mortality,

May his happiness prepare its tomb.

In another poem, Marx wrote about walking “like a god” through “the ruins” of a place just destroyed; a very close friend once wrote, “One has at least to fear him [Marx] in order to be tolerated by him.” As for Marx’s hat as a playwright? In his years as a student, he wrote a play called Oulanem, an inversion and anagram of Emmanuel, or as Christians know him… Jesus. From that play:

Yet I have power within my youthful arms

To clench and crush you [personified humanity] with tempestuous force,

While for us both the abyss yawns in darkness.

You will sink down and I shall follow laughing,

Whispering in your ears, ‘Descend, come with me, friend.’

…

Ruined, ruined. My time has clean run out.

The clock has stopped…

Soon I shall embrace eternity to my breast, and soon

I shall howl gigantic curses on mankind.

Themes of destruction and revenge… deranged visions of joyfully dragging others to hell… excitement over death… a desire to be feared... vicious animosity towards the God of the Bible… Are we talking about Hale or Marx?

Tormented people have tormented thoughts, and when these internal thoughts fuel outward actions and expressions, as expected, the product is carnage.

Image: Public domain.