We begin today’s roundup with The New York Times editorial on the Buffalo attack:
American life is punctuated by mass shootings that are routinely described as idiosyncratic. But these attacks are not random acts; they are part of the long American history of political violence perpetrated by white supremacists against Black people and other minority groups. [...]
Replacement theory is an attack on democracy. It privileges the purported interests of some Americans over those of others, asserting, in effect, that the will of the people means the will of white people. It rekindles fears and resentments among white Americans that cynical practitioners of American politics have stoked throughout the nation’s history. It also provides a disturbing rationalization for people inclined to resort to violence when the political process does not deliver what they want or protect what they see as their place in society.
Eugene Robinson at The Washington Post:
Do not dare look away from the bloody horror that left 10 dead in Buffalo. Do not dare write off the shooter as somehow uniquely “troubled.” Those Black victims were murdered by white supremacy, which grows today in fertile soil nourished not just by fringe-dwelling racists but by politicians and other opportunists who call themselves mainstream. [...]
What we need to talk about is how politicians and thought leaders on the right are using the vile poison of replacement theory to further their own selfish ends — garnering campaign donations and votes, boosting television ratings, achieving fame. And we need to talk about how most of this demagoguery is coming from people who should know, and probably do know, that what they are telling potential killers, such as Payton Gendron, the man in custody after the Buffalo shooting, is complete fiction.
Michele Norris also emphasizes the importance of confronting white supremacy:
A poll released just last week found that GRT [great replacement theory] has gone mainstream, with one-third of American adults saying they think there is a deliberate effort to replace native-born U.S. citizens with a wave of immigrants for political gain. That same poll found that nearly half of Republicans agreeto some extent that there’s a deliberate intent to increase the numbers of immigrant voters to minimize the cultural and political influence of Whites. [...]
GRT is like the fertilizer that feeds and sustains white fear when America’s racial makeup is changing. These trends will continue and how that is explained — or alternatively exploited — will impact the safety and security of all Americans. But Black and brown people cannot inoculate against fears that Whiteness is no longer America’s cultural default. White people have to do that themselves.
At The Atlantic, Kathleen Belew looks at the future of the white supremacy movement:
The white-power movement has, since the early 1980s, organized the disparate groups of the militant right (Klansmen, neo-Nazis, militiamen, and others) around cell-style terrorism. Activists deliberately obscure their connections with one another. Yet the historical record reveals an interwoven tapestry of people on the militant right who have united in common cause to target minority communities and to undermine American democracy, and who ultimately hope to provoke race war.
Brittney Cooper at The Cut looks at the normalization of white male violence:
Taken together, violent racist acts like these, the stripping of rights from women, and the collective political will to do absolutely nothing about it effectively inculcate the idea that this is normal. Just accept it. Just be scared. Just demand less. Just shut up. Just stop yelling “Black Lives Matter!” Just stop insisting on your right to vote. Just stop insisting on your right to control your reproduction. Just stop critiquing the police. Just stop it with your demands. Just stop.
I imagine images of white people with their fingers in their ears, yelling insolently like children, “I can’t hear you!” in the face of Black protest. Perhaps that’s not fair. But I’m not interested in being fair, or nice, or reasonable, or nuanced, or civil. That shit does not work.
Carlson’s allies on the right wish to exculpate him of any blame for the violence committed by his adherents. Their defenses amount to lawyerly haggling, collapsing important distinctions in service of avoiding the obvious: Carlson explicitly advocates “great-replacement theory,” a belief system that has inspired a string of mass murders. [...]
Carlson is not directing his audience to commit murder. But he is spreading an ideology that lends itself naturally to murderous tendencies and has accordingly spawned a violent wing. White nationalists see Carlson as their champion, and so too does the vast majority of the conservative movement. Carlson, like Trump, serves as a bridge between the Republican Party and a movement once seen as too extreme and marginal for the party to touch. The defenses of Carlson will ensure that the power of white nationalism continues to grow, along with its body count.