Right-wing extremism responsible for 10 mass shooting deaths

Yesterday thirteen people were shot and ten killed at a Buffalo supermarket by an 18-year-old white man armed with an assault rifle and high capacity magazines.

A day after one of the deadliest racist massacres in recent American history, law enforcement officials in New York descended on the home of the accused gunman and probed disturbing hints into his behavior, as Gov. Kathy Hochul promised action on hate speech that she said spreads “like a virus.”

The suspect, Payton S. Gendron, 18, shot 13 people on Saturday afternoon at a Tops supermarket in east Buffalo, killing 10, officials said. Almost all the victims were Black — shoppers, grocery workers and a security guard bound together by little more than tragic happenstance.

But Mr. Gendron picked his target carefully, the police said, choosing an area known for its large Black population and even visiting the neighborhood the day before the attack in what authorities described as “reconnaissance.”

Clearly his motive was racial hatred. Gendron left a lengthy manifesto professing concern about the "great replacement" theory that bizarrely warns about white people being replaced by immigrants, Blacks, Jews, and Latinos.

Before embarking on a racist rampage in Buffalo on Saturday, the alleged gunman left behind a document denying membership in “any organization or group.”

“I am the sole perpetrator of this attack,” he wrote.

But the 180-page screed, which authorities are scrutinizing in connection with the massacre, leaves little doubt that the alleged perpetrator, 18-year-old Payton Gendron, belongs to a global fraternity fused by the Internet and fixated on the idea that White people are being intentionally replaced.

That idea, once relegated to the fringe, has gained currency on popular right-wing television programs and in the halls of Congress. The theory, known as the “great replacement,” has turned white nationalism into an international call to arms. The apocalyptic vision has accumulated followers during the coronavirus pandemic, which has deepened political polarization and accelerated the online flow of racist ideology.

All mass shootings are horrific. But they used to be mainly the work of deranged individuals who wanted to kill a bunch of their fellow human beings. 

Now, though, we're seeing mass shootings with a far-right political motivation. That's even scarier, since the crazy ideas motivating the killers are emanating from inside the Republican Party and right-wing media outlets like Fox News.

Tucker Carlson, notably. He's been spouting lies on his Fox show about how Democrats are encouraging illegal immigration so they can get lots of new voters, which is a version of the Great Replacement theory. This is an excerpt from the April 13 CNN story.

Obviously, Carlson was never going to apologize for or retract his remarks. But he could have chosen to ignore the controversy, move on, and let it die out. Instead, he did the opposite. Carlson opened up his show by first replaying the comments he made last week — comments in which he essentially endorsed the "great replacement" theory.

 

Then he mocked critics who were outraged he had done so. "It is amusing to see them keep at it," Carlson said of those who have called for him to be removed from Fox's air, a group that now includes the Anti-Defamation League. "They get so enraged! It's a riot!"

 

Making a mockery of those with very real concerns about his rhetoric wasn't enough for Carlson. He then went on to recite the core element of the "great replacement" theory, describing it to his millions of viewers as accurate. "Demographic change is the key to the Democratic Party's political ambitions,"

 

Carlson said. "In order to win and maintain power, Democrats plan to change the population of the country." Carlson told his audience that the "goal" is "to make you irrelevant." He said it is "provably true." Over and over again, he referenced "demographic" change.

Now that ten people have been killed by a man motivated by the lie of the Great Replacement theory, Tucker Carlson should vow that he'll never bring it up again. Of course, he won't do this. Nor will a House Republican, Elise Stefanik.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the No. 3 House Republican, and other GOP lawmakers came under scrutiny Sunday for previously echoing the racist “great replacement” theory that apparently inspired an 18-year-old who allegedly killed 10 people while targeting Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo.

Yet Republicans around the country are passing laws against discussing race in schools because the United States supposedly has moved beyond racial discrimination. That obviously isn't true, a fact underlined by the deaths of the 10 people in Buffalo.

Mr. Gendron’s writings were littered with racist, anti-immigrant views that claimed white Americans were at risk of being replaced by immigrants or people of color, once-fringe ideas that have been given a fuller airing in recent years by some prominent conservative commentators.

On the far right, the theory, which sometimes blames Jews for fomenting the “great replacement,” has been tied to gunmen in several other mass shootings as well as the 2017 right-wing rally in Charlottesville, Va. that devolved into violence.

Our country desperately needs national gun control legislation. Sadly, the odds of that happening in Congress are slim to none, since Republicans will filibuster it in the Senate.

We also need to control the hate speech that is rampant in the Republican Party, which loves to denigrate immigrants, the LGBTQ community, and anyone else who doesn't conform to their archaic political views, including women who want to choose for themselves whether to have an abortion.

Vote for Democrats. That's the only way the United States is going to pull out of the moral tailspin Republicans have gotten us into.