Buffalo Gunman’s Racism Directly Tied to Mainstreaming of White Nationalism, Say Critics
Amid the outpouring of grief and heartache following Saturday’s massacre in Buffalo that left 10 people dead and three wounded, critical observers say the racial animus which evidence shows motivated the killer must be seen in the larger context of a white nationalist mindset that has increasingly broken into the mainstream of the right-wing political movement and Republican Party in recent years.
Taken into custody at the scene of the mass shooting at the Tops Market and identified as Payton Gendron, the white 18-year-old male charged with the murders of the victims live-streamed his attack online where he also posted a detailed, 180-page document that has been described by those who have reviewed it—including journalists and law enforcement—as a white nationalist manifesto rife with anti-Black racism, antisemitism, and conspiracy theories about “white replacement.”
“This was pure evil,” said Erie County Sheriff John Garcia during a press conference on Saturday. The killings, he said, “was straight-up racially motivated hate crime from somebody outside of our community.”
The manifesto also includes repeated references to another mass shooter motivated by racial hate, Brenton Tarrant, who in 2019 live-streamed his vicious Islamophobic assault on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand where he murdered 51 people and wounded dozens of others.
“This racist attack is a pure example of evil,” said People’s Action, the progressive advocacy group, in a statement. “It’s also the predictable result of the relentless onslaught of white nationalist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories spewed from the far right, increasingly distributed by major corporate news outlets like Fox News and the extremist politicians their billionaire allies have cultivated.”
“In Christchurch, New Zealand and El Paso, Texas and Poway, California and now again in Buffalo, New York, a gunman motivated by a white nationalist conspiracy theory about invading immigrants shot and killed people of color,” said Sumayyah Waheed, senior policy council for Muslim Advocates, in a statement referencing a series of mass shootings carried out by white supremacists in recent years.
Calling the shooting a “devastating and sickening display of the racism, white supremacy, hate, and gun violence that plague this country,” Kina Collins, a gun violence prevention advocate and Democratic congressional candidate running for Congress in Illinois’ 7th District, stated that “Black people in Buffalo were targeted for no reason other than that they are Black.”
“This was an act of terrorism and it should be treated as such,” she added. “It is another reminder that white supremacy has and will always be America’s greatest threat. White supremacy has infiltrated our military and police departments.”
Such rherotic, Waheed added, “can also be found on cable news and in the rhetoric of politicians today. On his cable news show, Tucker Carlson said that ‘the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World.’ In campaign ads, Donald Trump described Latino immigrants as an ‘invasion.’ In a speech, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called the election of Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib ‘an Islamic invasion of our government.'”
With Republicans and major media personalities “normalizing white nationalist, anti-immigrant, anti-Black, anti-Latino, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim conspiracy theories,” and gunmen like the one in Buffalo carrying out such attacks, Waheed said it is now “clear that white nationalism is the greatest threat to our nation’s security and we must hold everyone who spreads this hate accountable before anyone else is harmed.”
Originally published at Commondreams.org, written by Jon Queally.
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