Buffalo visit will highlight danger of right-wing extremism
Biden to warn of ‘racist ideology’
When US President Joe Biden visits the site of a racist massacre in upstate New York on Tuesday, he will confront not only the shocking deaths of 10 Black people but warn against an ideology that "tears at the soul" of the country he promised to unite.
On one level, the trip by Biden and his wife Jill Biden to Buffalo will be a grimly routine tradition for presidents who for decades have railed against an unstoppable parade of mass shootings.
Hastily scheduled ahead of Biden's departure Thursday for a major diplomatic trip to South Korea and Japan, the Buffalo visit will be a chance to "try to bring some comfort to the community," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
However, what marks out Saturday's horror, in which a white man went to an African American neighborhood and allegedly opened fire, killing 10 people and wounding three, is that the suspect apparently wrote a manifesto promoting increasingly widely held white supremacist ideas.
At the heart of the manifesto, which law enforcement believe is genuine, was a rant about what is dubbed "replacement theory," which purports the existence of a leftist plot to dilute the white population with non-white immigrants.
It is a conspiracy theory that, like the bizarre QAnon narrative, has spread from the furthest fringes of society to surprisingly mainstream areas, most notably Tucker Carlson's enormously influential nightly talk show on Fox News.
Prominent Republican members of Congress have echoed "replacement theory" talking points, which in turn are not too distant from Trump's multiple speeches as president in which he demonized illegal immigrants as the invaders, once calling them "animals."
Republican House Representative Liz Cheney, a former member of the party's inner circle who has rebelled against the dominant Trump wing, directly linked that kind of chatter to the Buffalo bloodshed.
Party leaders have "enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-Semitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse," she tweeted.
Biden, who says he left retirement to run for president after he heard Trump refusing to clearly denounce a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville in 2017, immediately called the Buffalo killings "antithetical to everything we stand for in America."
The murders were "an act perpetrated in the name of a repugnant white nationalist ideology," he said.
AFP
On one level, the trip by Biden and his wife Jill Biden to Buffalo will be a grimly routine tradition for presidents who for decades have railed against an unstoppable parade of mass shootings.
Hastily scheduled ahead of Biden's departure Thursday for a major diplomatic trip to South Korea and Japan, the Buffalo visit will be a chance to "try to bring some comfort to the community," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
Buffalo Police on scene at a Tops Friendly Market on May 14, 2022 in Buffalo, New York. According to reports, at least 10 people were killed after a mass shooting at the store with the shooter in police custody. Photo: AFP
Like all his predecessors to varying degrees, Biden has promised to address gun control, or rather the lack of gun control. Like them, he has made barely a dent.However, what marks out Saturday's horror, in which a white man went to an African American neighborhood and allegedly opened fire, killing 10 people and wounding three, is that the suspect apparently wrote a manifesto promoting increasingly widely held white supremacist ideas.
At the heart of the manifesto, which law enforcement believe is genuine, was a rant about what is dubbed "replacement theory," which purports the existence of a leftist plot to dilute the white population with non-white immigrants.
It is a conspiracy theory that, like the bizarre QAnon narrative, has spread from the furthest fringes of society to surprisingly mainstream areas, most notably Tucker Carlson's enormously influential nightly talk show on Fox News.
Prominent Republican members of Congress have echoed "replacement theory" talking points, which in turn are not too distant from Trump's multiple speeches as president in which he demonized illegal immigrants as the invaders, once calling them "animals."
Republican House Representative Liz Cheney, a former member of the party's inner circle who has rebelled against the dominant Trump wing, directly linked that kind of chatter to the Buffalo bloodshed.
Party leaders have "enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-Semitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse," she tweeted.
Biden, who says he left retirement to run for president after he heard Trump refusing to clearly denounce a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville in 2017, immediately called the Buffalo killings "antithetical to everything we stand for in America."
The murders were "an act perpetrated in the name of a repugnant white nationalist ideology," he said.
AFP
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