Not a random act of violence
Republican politicians, including some of the party’s top leaders, openly espouse versions of a white supremacist conspiracy theory holding that an orchestrated effort is underway to displace white Americans. A recently published poll found that almost half of Republicans believe that immigrants are being brought to the United States as part of such an effort.
On Saturday, a gunman who said he was motivated by a version of this “replacement theory” killed 10 people at a Buffalo grocery store, officials said. The suspect, identified as Payton S. Gendron, wrote in an online diatribe that he sought to kill Black people because he wanted to prevent white people from losing their rightful control of the country.
Mr. Gendron described himself as part of a movement. He said that he was inspired by similar attacks on other minority communities and that he hoped others would follow his example. The suspects in several mass killings in recent years, including the 2015 murder of nine Black worshipers at a church in Charleston, S.C.; the 2018 murder of 11 Jewish worshipers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh; the 2019 murder of 51 Muslim worshipers at a pair of mosques in New Zealand; and the 2019 murder of 23 people, many Latino, in El Paso, Texas, also propounded versions of this racist worldview.
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.
Politicians who have employed some of the vocabulary of replacement theory generally do not make explicit calls for violence. The office of one of those politicians, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, said in a statement that the Buffalo attack was an “act of evil” and that she “has never advocated for any racist position.”
The matter is not so simple.
The Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a leading purveyor of replacement theory rhetoric, has promoted the idea that elites are seeking to replace white Americans on more than 400 episodes of his program, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
In September, Ms. Stefanik’s re-election campaign paid for a Facebook ad that combined imagery of immigrants with the accusation that “Radical Democrats are planning their most aggressive move yet: a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION.” Ms. Stefanik’s ad continued, “Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.”
It is telling that House Republicans last year installed Ms. Stefanik in leadership to replace Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who remains among the most forthright critics of the party’s illiberal turn.
Ms. Cheney tweeted on Monday: “The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-Semitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse. @GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.”
She’s right.