Hitler's Birthday: Rumor-Panics in the Wake of the Columbine Shootings
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Abstract
This paper will examine details from a number of these 1999 panics to study them as an emergent form of folk narrative. The gruesome details of the Columbine massacre created stress that the panics dissipated in an essentially therapeutic fashion. They involved a complex interplay of os-tensive actions modeled after existing traditions. Many of these acts of ostension—perpetrating hoaxes and making bomb threats—were criminal in nature, but they did not involve violence, and the ordeals they gave rise to cleared the air and made most parties feel as though they had defeated any similar threat. However, as I argued ten years ago, rumor panics may communicate the seeds of the violence that they warn against. As folklorists, we need to be concerned about whether some forms of folk narrative might contribute to the social problems that give rise to them.
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