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Saturday, Jul 4, 2009
The writings of Eric Harris reveal an equal-opportunity hater who rails against minorities and racists and can't stand the WB.
Sep 23, 1999 | It opens with a manifesto, and culminates in his proposal for a "final solution."
Eric Harris set the tone for his so-called diary with his opening words: "I hate the fucking world." Only later does he reveal what he intends to do with his hate. "If you recall your history," a later entry reads, "the Nazis came up with a 'final solution' to the Jewish problem: kill them all. Well in case you haven't figured it out yet, I say 'Kill mankind.' No one should survive."
Eventually he lowered his sights a bit. He fantasized about destroying his metro area on his Web site: "I live in Denver, and dammit, I would love to kill almost all of its residents." Finally he settled on Columbine High, and hatched a plan to take out the entire school.
Harris' infamous "diary" was actually more of an occasional journal. He didn't confide in it every day. Sometimes a month or two would pass before he returned to scribble more tortured rants. Sometimes just a few lines, others up to a page or two. Often the cursive scrawl grows almost illegible. There were only about a dozen entries over the course of a year. In between he pounded out diatribes on his computer, leaving behind a huge trail of notes, essays, printouts, computer files and a Web site.
Very little has been divulged about the Harris texts, particularly the diary. "That diary has been seen by so few people," said lead investigator Kate Battan. "So few people. There's been one copy made of it. The original is in the evidence vault, and the one copy is in my briefcase."
Sources close to the investigation shared material from a variety of Harris' written sources. In most cases, they read them aloud, so that punctuation and superficial transcription errors may have occurred. The texts are filled with vitriol. "After I mow down a whole area full of you snotty ass rich mother-fucker high strung God-like-attitude-having worthless pieces of shit whores, I don't care if I live or die," read one entry.
Harris railed against just about every conceivable minority, right alongside their majority counterparts: "We hate niggers, spicks ... and let's not forget you white P.O.S. [pieces of shit] also. We hate you."
"They didn't like rich white people; they didn't like poor white people," said division chief John Kiekbusch, the ranking officer overseeing the case. "What you have is an almost nondiscriminating hate," another source said. Harris "goes out of his way to indicate it's all-inclusive. What he writes about hating is everybody."
Racists, in fact, rank high in the Harris hate pantheon: "You know what I hate? Racism. Anyone who hates Asians, Mexicans, or people of any race because they're different."
Many of Harris' passages get downright comical, railing against "all you fitness fuckheads," people who think they're martial arts experts, and people who try to impress others by bragging about their cars.
"You know what I hate? Star Wars fans: get a friggin life, you boring geeks. You know what I hate? People who mispronounce words, like 'acrost,' and 'pacific' for 'specific,' and 'expresso' instead of 'espresso.' You know what I hate? People who drive slow in the fast lane, God these people do not know how to drive. You know what I hate? The WB network!!!! Oh Jesus, Mary Mother of God Almighty, I hate that channel with all my heart and soul."
"I think a lot of 14-, 15-year-olds, 16-year-olds talk about stuff like that," a key investigator said. "That part is typical teenage. This kid took it a step further, a giant step further, and actually acted on this indiscriminate hate. It was a suicide mission. They just wanted to achieve notoriety and hurt as many people as they could -- and show how terribly they thought they had been treated."
"The thing that really strikes me about Harris and Klebold," Battan said, "is that sometimes, in the different evidence that we've found, they're so childlike and immature -- which is a teenager -- and other times they're almost adult-like, which is also a teenager. Sometimes they want to be adult-like and say, 'It's because we're above all you people,' and other times it's 'You shouldn't have picked on me.' Those are the writings and talkings of kids that are trying to become adults. And they're not being very successful at it."
