The Great Replacement Killers
Another mass shooting, another rambling manifesto about white people being "replaced."
I wasn’t going to write much about the Buffalo mass shooting, because I feel like I’ve written it all before. Everyone has their script prepared whenever this happens, as it does with depressing regularity in the United States.
Mass shootings are not exclusively an American phenomenon - in Nova Scotia we’re still reeling from the worst gun rampage in Canadian history just a few years ago, and Europe has experienced several bad ones in recent years - but it’s no coincidence that they’re much more common in the country with so many more firearms in circulation.
And we’re all pretty much resigned to the fact that there won’t be any change on the federal level, so we’ve moved on to good old-fashioned point-scoring. Admit it: when a terror attack or gun massacre happens, you all think the same thing: “please, God, let the terrorist be from [ethnic/religious/political group which I already dislike and oppose].”
While early reporting is often wrong (and fodder for conspiracy theories) it certainly looks like this might have been another Christchurch situation, with a white supremacist killer posting a racist manifesto and livestreaming his attack:
A gunman sporting a rifle and body armor opened fire in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, killing at least 10 people before being taken into custody Saturday afternoon, law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.
Details on the number of additional people shot at the Tops Friendly Market and their conditions weren’t immediately available. The two officials were not permitted to speak publicly on the matter and did so on the condition of anonymity.
Investigators believe the man may have been livestreaming the shooting and were looking into whether he had posted a manifesto online, the official said. The official cautioned the investigation was in its preliminary stages and that authorities hadn’t yet discerned a clear motive, but were investigating whether the shooting was racially motivated.
The supermarket is in a predominately Black neighborhood, about 3 miles (5 kilometers) north of downtown Buffalo. The surrounding area is primarily residential, with a Family Dollar store and fire station near the store.
This AP story mentions a supermarket mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado that happened just over a year ago. It’s doubtful that killer had the same motivation, but several others in recent years subscribed to the same ideology:
Actually, Miller might be wrong. That is, his list of right-wing mass shootings and terror attacks motivated by the “Great Replacement” theory doesn’t include additional attacks in which it may have been a factor, such as the 2017 Quebec City mosque shooting and the Utoya massacre of 2011.
Not everyone who believes this stuff is a right-wing terrorist - not yet, anyway - but pretty much every right-wing terrorist believes it. As did the marchers in Charlottesville who literally chanted it. (In that case it was “Jews” whom they insisted wouldn’t replace them, but the perpetrators vary. Though I won’t be surprised if the Buffalo terrorist’s lengthy manifesto includes several references to “Zionists” and the Rothschilds. Like I said, these things have a sadly predictable script.)
And it’s gained additional currency in recent years, as right-wing media and political personalities promote it.
I can lose my internet commentator license for saying this, but I’m actually reluctant to draw a straight line from, say, Tucker Carlson’s anti-immigration nationalism to this afternoon’s shooting. We don’t know if this guy ever watched Carlson’s show; like most terrorists, regardless of ideology, he almost certainly had some serious mental health problems; other cases where the internet pronounced a certain politician or commentator guilty by association have turned out to be rushes to judgment; and, I am wary by nature of arguments which open the door to censorship.
But Carlson and his copycats sure as heck aren’t helping matters by pushing such poisonous conspiracy theories. Yesterday’s fringe conspiracy theory, if coddled and left unchallenged, becomes today’s mainstream talking point.
We’re all so polarized these days that when someone is on “our team” we give them a pass. Almost everyone says they’re against antisemitism, but in practice they only seem to get really upset about it when it’s their political opponents or members of their designated outgroups expressing it. And that’s how this kind of thing gains a degree of respectability.
How so we combat such dangerous nonsense? As I’ve noticed in writing so much about COVID-19 conspiracy theorists and how to get through to them or whether it’s even possible, there many different approaches. But shrugging it off and leaving it unchallenged is not one of them.
A straight line, no. It's a long, winding and splintered road with a lot of switchbacks and forks and cul de sacs. But ultimately, when enough of the branches converge, it ends up in the same bloody place.
As a longtime owner and user of firearms, I am filled to overflowing with anger, revulsion and contempt for the Right and their absolute steadfast refusal to not only not do the simplest of things to try to address the problem of ubiquitous gun ownership and possession by unstable, irresponsible or just outright plain old bad or stupid people, but to even engage in anything resembling a credible conversation about the subject.
Technically and strictly speaking, I wish physical harm on no one. But it's too bad we don't have a way to put into pill form the pain and loss the surviving victims and their families and those of the dead feel when these senseless and largely preventable killings occur, for I would happily cram an entire bottleful down each and every one of the any weapon, anytime, anywhere crowd's throats.