{"id":16745,"date":"2022-05-17T18:28:34","date_gmt":"2022-05-17T22:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/2022\/05\/17\/buffalo-shooting-tied-to-racist-great-replacement-theory-2\/"},"modified":"2022-05-17T18:28:34","modified_gmt":"2022-05-17T22:28:34","slug":"buffalo-shooting-tied-to-racist-great-replacement-theory-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/2022\/05\/17\/buffalo-shooting-tied-to-racist-great-replacement-theory-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Buffalo shooting tied to racist \u2018great replacement\u2019 theory"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

By JOHN LESLIE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Saturday, May 14, a white supremacist gunman, Payton Gendron, 18, entered a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y., and slaughtered 10 people<\/a>, while wounding three more. Eleven of the 13 victims shot during the incident are Black. The shooter live-streamed video of his murder spree online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few days earlier, Gendron had posted a long \u201cmanifesto\u201d <\/a>online, which included plans for the attack and cited the so-called \u201cgreat replacement theory<\/a>\u201d\u2014the white nationalist myth that asserts that elites, often portrayed as Jews, are conspiring to replace whites in the United States with minorities and immigrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gendron\u2019s rambling statement cited Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 51 people in shootings at two New Zealand mosques in 2019; Dylann Roof, who murdered nine Black people at a church in South Carolina in 2015; and Anders Breivik, the Norwegian neo-Nazi, who killed 77 people, mostly teenagers, at a social democratic youth camp in 2011 as inspirations for his radicalization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Police recovered an AR-15 used in the shootings, as well as a shotgun and hunting rifle from Gendron\u2019s vehicle. Scrawled on the AR-15 were the words \u201chere\u2019s your reparations;\u201d Tarrant, Breivik, and Roof\u2019s names; and the number 14\u2014representing the 14 words that are commonly used as a declaration among white supremacists: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.” The acronym \u201cSYGAOWN\u201d (meaning, Stop Your Genocide Against Our White Nations) was written on the shotgun, as was the symbol of the Nazi Romanian Iron Guard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White nationalism goes mainstream<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

White nationalism is based on the fear that whites as a social group will lose their primacy in U.S. society through declining white population numbers and increased immigration. It\u2019s true that the \u201cnon-Hispanic\u201d white population as a percentage of the whole is shrinking. White nationalism sees this as the result of a conscious policy of liberal elites, often Jews, to \u201creplace\u201d the white population with a population that racists think will be more easily controlled by ruling elites. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Southern Poverty Law Center<\/a> wrote: \u201cWhite nationalists seek to return to an America that predates the implementation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Both landmark pieces of legislation are cited as the harbingers of white dispossession and the so-called \u201cwhite genocide\u201d or \u201cgreat replacement\u201d\u2014the idea that whites in the United States are being systematically replaced and destroyed.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neoliberalism and decades of anti-worker policy have helped drive this mythology into the consciousness of some sectors of the white population, as rural and small-town communities suffer the blows of austerity and a hollowed-out economy.  Coastal \u201celites\u201d and the big cities are seen as the enemy by many rural whites whose living standards have declined, while the Democrats seem out of touch with the problems of the \u201cflyover\u201d states. Conspiracy theories and appeals to anti-immigrant sentiments only further fuel the flames of reaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The GOP has moved sharply to the right in recent years, after years of racist dog whistles about immigrants and \u201ccrime” while playing to the politics of white resentment. White nationalist themes like replacement theory, once just the inspiration for violent militia and neo-Nazi groups, have moved more into the mainstream of Republican politics in the Trump years. Trump himself made coded appeals to the far right in his campaigns. GOP advocates for replacement theory avoid the most blatant terminology, but the message is clear\u2014\u201cthey\u201d are intent on taking the future away from white Americans. This is sometimes referred to as \u201cwhite genocide.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 2017 Charlottesville, Va., rightist mobilization, white nationalist marchers chanted, \u201cYou will not replace us!\u201d and \u201cJews will not replace us!\u201d The Charlottesville far-right rally turned violent, with attacks on counter-protesters and the murder of Heather Heyer, an anti-fascist activist. The more mainstream usage of replacement theory in the GOP and in right-wing media accuses the Democrats of encouraging immigration from Latin America and the Middle East to \u201creplace\u201d traditional (white) voters with people more likely to support the Democratic Party. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fox news propagandist Tucker Carlson, heir to the Swanson frozen dinner fortune, is the chief mainstream advocate of replacement theory on right-wing media. According to The<\/em> <\/em>New York Times<\/em><\/a>, \u201cin more than 400 episodes of his show, Mr. Carlson has amplified the notion that Democratic politicians and other assorted elites want to force demographic change through immigration.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The GOP has enabled far-right<\/a> views in their ranks in Congress. A group of House Republicans attempted to form an \u201cAmerica First Caucus\u201d in 2021 that in part cited the importance of \u201cuniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions\u201d in the U.S. In February 2022, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona attended a white supremacist conference organized by Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who aims to push the GOP further to the right. Republican Party minority leader Kevin McCarthy called their attendance \u201cappalling and wrong\u201d but took no action against them. In the current midterm election cycle, GOP candidates have played up supposed threats to \u201creal\u201d or \u201ctraditional\u201d (white Christian) Americans. GOP rhetoric about the \u201cinvasion\u201d at the border allegedly being enabled by the policies of the Biden administration taps into this same fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just three days after the mass shooting in Buffalo, Rep Elise Stefanik<\/a>, the third ranking House Republican, repeated replacement theory talking points, saying, \u201cDemocrats desperately want wide open borders and mass amnesty for illegals allowing them to vote. \u2026 Like the vast majority of Americans, Republicans want to secure our borders and protect election integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stefanik has claimed that the Democrats want to \u201cgrant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants\u201d in order to \u201coverthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

J.D. Vance<\/a>, the Trump-endorsed Senate candidate in Ohio, has also pushed the great replacement conspiracy theory. According to the New Republic<\/em><\/a>, Vance \u201cmade similar comments, arguing that Democrats were trying to bring about \u2018a shift in the democratic makeup of this country\u2019 and that they were purposefully allowing fentanyl into the U.S. \u2018to kill a bunch of MAGA voters in the middle of the heartland.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voting for the Democrats won\u2019t save us<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The convergence of neo-fascist ideology in one of the main capitalist parties, coupled with the growth of an increasingly violent and armed far right, represents a real threat to the working class and its allies. Liberals will argue for gun control policies or that voting for Democrats will offer a bulwark against the fascist creep in society. Revolutionary socialists argue just the opposite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Democrats, because they are a capitalist party tied to Wall Street, are incapable of mounting an effective opposition to the rise of the right. In fact, the Democrats have been trying to win back that part of their former base, working-class whites, since the defection of the Dixiecrats to the GOP in accord with Nixon\u2019s Southern Strategy<\/a>. During the 2008 Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton<\/a> opined that Obama couldn\u2019t win the votes of \u201cworking people, hardworking people, white people.\u201d Similarly, her husband referred to Obama\u2019s victory in South Carolina by comparing it to Jesse Jackson\u2019s primary win in that state in 1988. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We must carry out anti-racist and anti-fascist education campaigns in all unionized and non-unionized workplaces, and lift up the demands of oppressed sectors on the job and the fight against discrimination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This struggle is linked as well to the fight to organize the unorganized at Amazon and elsewhere. Many of the new organizing drives from Alabama to New York to California are being led by workers from oppressed nationalities. Amazon management used overtly racist tactics to attempt to derail the unionization drive at Staten Island playing workers of different nationalities against each other. Amazon’s chief legal counsel described Amazon Labor Union leader Chris Smalls as \u201cnot smart, or articulate, and to the extent that the press wants to focus on us versus him, we will be in a much stronger PR position than simply explaining for the umpteenth time how we\u2019re trying to protect workers.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building opposition to the far right will require the independent mass mobilization of the working class and oppressed. This opposition must include the trade unions as an essential component. Mass action is crucial to drive these thugs back under their rocks. Democratically run self-defense guards will also play a necessary role in the struggle. Ultimately, the defeat of fascists and the far right will require the forging of a revolutionary workers party and the struggle for democratic workers power and socialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: Protesters march to the scene of shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., Sunday, May 15, 2022. (Matt Rourke \/ AP)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

SEE OUR NEW WEBSITE: WWW.WORKERSVOICEUS.ORG<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
Buffalo shooting tied to racist \u2018great replacement\u2019 theory<\/a><\/blockquote>