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Buffalo Massacre Aftermath: Mainstream Media Still Validating Racist ‘Replacement Theory’

Brian:

The horrific, racist massacre in a Black community in Buffalo, New York was carried out by a self-identified fascist. He came in and mercilessly killed so many people. Ten people. It’s also obviously racist because the shooter is saying that he’s an adherent to replacement theory. There’s a direct connection to Charlottesville, when the fascists marched, and there was a very strong anti-fascist response to them, and they were chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” Replacement theory is being promoted not only by the fascists in the streets with guns, but also by Fox News.

 

Esther:

President Biden was addressing a gathering of police officers when he commented on this tragedy on Saturday. He pivoted very quickly to talk about how important police officers are, how brave they are, and really, I was just really shocked at how the white supremacist nature of this massacre was not being talked about.

 

But we know that’s because these corporate politicians are finding themselves in a real quandary, because they are supporting white supremacist neo-Nazis in Ukraine. They still claim that this is not true, and I’m still hearing commentators talk about “Oh, that’s not true, that’s Russian propaganda. There are no neo-Nazis in Ukraine. There are no Nazis. We’re not supporting Nazis. We’re not arming Nazis.”

 

But then you have this young man who carried out this massacre wearing Azov battalion symbols, the same symbols that they’re wearing in Ukraine. So maybe that’s why people are staying away from it. But I was just really shocked at how people were really holding up the police and talking about the police as opposed to the victims and the massacre and the anguish and tragedy and trauma in this community.

 

Brian:

If you watch the media coverage, you couldn’t but come to the conclusion that from the point of view of the media in the United States, the corporate capitalist owned media, that Black lives actually don’t matter, because none of the stories were about the lives of the people who were killed, about their family members.

 

In Buffalo, New York, that local coverage exists, but nationwide, no. Nationwide, the story is about a troubled, mentally ill young man, a lone gunman, somehow subscribing to fringe theories without making clear that at the very center of this is a rising tide of racist violence going on in the country that is being generated and promoted by a climate that says that there is such a thing as white grievance.

 

This argument is that somehow white people will be offended by telling the story of this country, which is a story of white supremacy, the story of the enslavement of African people. This whole idea is that white people have a legitimate beef and so let’s try to really understand what replacement theory is? That would be like saying, “let’s try to get to the bottom of why Hitler wanted to exterminate Jews.” No, people don’t do that. This type of coverage is another reflection of the profound racism that’s everywhere in American society.

 

Nicole:

And there have been a slew of these disgusting massacres and mass shootings that have this as the motivation.

 

In 2015, people may remember Dylan Roof was invited to come in and pray in the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in a Black church with predominantly Black parishioners. Toward the end of the service, he opened fire and killed nine people.

 

Then in 2017, in the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, white supremacists rallied together and one of them drove his car into counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring dozens more. At that rally they chanted “You will not replace us” and “Jews will not replace us,” which are clearly chants referencing the great replacement theory.

 

2018, at a Pittsburgh synagogue, a man shot and killed 11 people and wounded six. He had written that a Jewish organization that had supported Central American migrant caravans, “likes to bring invaders in that kill our people.” “Screw your people, I’m going in.”

 

Brian:

Some are saying that this is just a person, an individual, who carried out that massacre. But that was the main theme of the whole Trump administration, that migrants were this great invading horde. And then you have people like Tucker Carlson and other racists who are promoting this replacement theory, like immigrants from Latin America and Africa are going to replace white people, or Black Americans or Asian Americans are replacing white people at the job. It’s this great political drumming up of grievance, of scapegoating, and it’s not simply individual souls gone astray.

 

There’s a large section of the right wing in America using the mass media to create a climate where these ideas are considered not just okay, but completely valid. If you decontextualized the massacres from the political climate, you’re missing the big picture.

 

Nicole:

People don’t just come up with these insane ideas out of thin air on their own, and these massacres are clearly happening so frequently. In addition to the 2015 shooting in Charleston at Emanuel AME, the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right killing, the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, in 2019 another shooter shot and killed 23 shoppers at a Walmart in El Paso. He told police that he had sought to kill Mexicans, and his manifesto referenced a “cultural and ethnic replacement” and a “Hispanic invasion.”

 

And then this past weekend in Buffalo, a white shooter specifically targeted a Black neighborhood of Buffalo, and killed 10 and injured three more. He wrote online that the victims he targeted were trying to “ethnically replace my own people.”

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Brian Becker

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