White ‘replacement theory’ examined in aftermath of Buffalo mass shooting
The racially motivated massacre of 10 people in a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket is drawing attention to the far-right “great replacement theory” that has worked its way into the mainstream — thanks in part to popular cable news hosts who push such rhetoric in prime time.
Authorities in Buffalo are examining the role alleged teen gunman Payton Gendron’s far right ideology played in the shooting of 13 shoppers on Saturday. All but two of the victims were Black.
The 18-year-old from Conklin, N.Y., reportedly left a manifesto indicating he sought out targets at a grocery store 200 miles from his home based on the concentrated number of Black residents in that area. Investigators are working to authenticate that document.
According to many right-wing conspiracy theorists, there is a plot afoot to make white Americans less influential in the U.S. by empowering immigrants and minority groups, which they believe to possess more liberal orientations. Adherents to that belief also fear that whites are in danger as a majority due to having lower birth rates than other demographic groups.
That fear was on full display during 2017′s deadly Unite the Right protests in Charlottesville, Va., where white nationalists marched while chanting, “You will not replace us” and “Jews will not replace us.”
Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism researcher Mark Pitcavage says some Americans in the mainstream have bought into the notion Democrats are supportive of bringing Latin American voters into the political process to advance their own political agendas.
Pitcavage worries that highly viewed Fox News host Tucker Carlson — who has complained immigrants make America “poorer and dirtier” — may be normalizing fringe hate speech by beaming it into living rooms nationwide during the dinner hour.
“It actually introduces the ‘great replacement theory’ to a conservative audience in an easier-to-swallow pill,” he said.
Conservative presidential candidates in the U.S. have only won the popular vote one time since 1992.
Carlson — who has argued the Jan. 6 insurrection happened because “millions of American voters were convinced the last election was not fair” — said on his show last year that Democrats hoped to replace the nation’s current electorate with “more obedient voters from the Third World.”
The notion of replacement theory precedes Carlson. French writer Renaud Camus is often credited as the movement’s modern-day champion. His 2011 book “Le Grand Remplacement” suggested to a large audience that African immigrants were changing the face of Europe.
With News Wire Services
