Telegram

This Monday, a fifteen-year-old named Natalie Rupnow murdered Erin M. West, a substitute teacher, and fourteen-year-old Rubi P. Vergara, a fellow student, injuring six others — two critically — at her school in Madison, Wisconsin. Before the police could intervene, Rupnow shot herself. It is not a bold prediction to say that this tragedy will not meaningfully shift our national conversation. These events blur together in the American psyche, like car crashes, their horror dulled by repetition. That Rupnow was female and younger than the median age of school shooters does not disrupt the pattern. It is — to my increasing horror, every time I write an article like this one — another story in our endless churn of violence.

How did Yevgeny Prigozhin, the hot dog vendor-cum-leader of the Wagner private military company, become addicted to the allure of likes, retweets and digital validation? From the outside looking in, the warlord posts like a rich kid splayed over his dad’s Porsche — except rather than a swanky car, Prigozhin brags of the travails of the world’s deadliest private military, replete with tanks and artillery.   The early war days of PMC Wagner’s social media presence could be compared to that of ISIS or other paramilitary groups: the posts had a clear agenda, including intimidation, like the “hammer of revenge” video they circulated over Telegram, which documented the brutal murder of Yevgeny Nuzhin, a former Wagner Group member.