Once again, the truism that hate speech fosters violence has been tragically reconfirmed, this time in Buffalo, New York. A white supremacist’s rampage Saturday that killed 10 was fueled by so-called replacement theory, the far-right fantasy that white Americans are being intentionally “replaced” by invaders of color to steer politics leftward. As Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and top Republicans continue to toot this anti-immigration dog whistle, the bloodshed in Buffalo shows how easily it can translate into attacks on anyone who isn’t white.
Payton Gendron, 18, allegedly shot 13 people — 11 of them Black — at a supermarket in a Black Buffalo neighborhood. Gendron, now in custody, is believed to have written a 180-page manifesto describing himself as a white supremacist and anti-Semite. It rails about “replacers” — defining them not just as immigrants but also Black Americans — and laments that they “invade our lands, live on our soil, live on government support and attack and replace our people.”
“Why is diversity said to be our greatest strength?” Gendron wrote. As The New York Times pointed out, the question is almost verbatim what Carlson asked viewers in a 2018 segment of his show: “How, precisely, is diversity our strength?”
Carlson is perhaps the most prominent voice to espouse replacement theory, but he is by no means the only one. Many Republicans have flirted with variations on that theme, attempting to connect with white voters frustrated that the nation’s white majority is shrinking as a percentage of the population.
That shift is the result of long-visible demographic trends, not some left-wing conspiracy. But that didn’t stop Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., the third-ranking House Republican, from posting Facebook campaign ads last fall alleging “Radical Democrats” were planning “a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION” by loosening immigration to create a “liberal majority in Washington.” Similarly, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told Fox News last year that “the anti-American left” sought to overwhelm “traditional, classic Americans” with outsiders as a means of holding power.
They and others can obfuscate all they want about how that theory is specific to immigration. But as the Buffalo shooter so horrifically demonstrated, the argument is presented in a heavily race-tinged, us-versus-them context that easily does double-duty as justification for more generalized racial hatred. Does anyone seriously doubt what Gingrich meant by “traditional, classic Americans”?
As is so often the case in today’s GOP, the most reasonable voices are the outcasts. “The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism,” tweeted Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming. “History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse.”
She went on to implore GOP leaders to “renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.” Unfortunately, that will be a tall order for a party that has sought to normalize white nationalism for the sake of votes.
———
