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By David Bauder<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A racist ideology seeping from the internet\u2019s fringes into the mainstream is being investigated as a motivating factor in the supermarket shooting that killed 10 people in Buffalo, New York. Most of the victims were Black.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ideas from the \u201cgreat replacement theory\u201d filled a racist screed supposedly posted online by the white 18-year-old accused of targeting Black people in Saturday\u2019s rampage. Authorities were still working to confirm its authenticity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Certainly, there was no mistaking the racist intent of the shooter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WHAT IS THE \u2018GREAT REPLACEMENT THEORY\u2019?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Simply put, the conspiracy theory says there\u2019s a plot to diminish the influence of white people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Believers say this goal is being achieved both through the immigration of nonwhite people into societies that have largely been dominated by white people, as well as through simple demographics, with white people having lower birth rates than other populations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The conspiracy theory\u2019s more racist adherents believe Jews are behind the so-called replacement plan: White nationalists marching at a Charlottesville, Virginia, rally that turned deadly in 2017 chanted \u201cYou will not replace us!\u201d and \u201cJews will not replace us!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A more mainstream view in the U.S. baselessly suggests Democrats are encouraging immigration from Latin America so more like-minded potential voters replace \u201ctraditional\u201d Americans, says Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n WHAT ARE THIS CONSPIRACY THEORY\u2019S ORIGINS?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n How long has racism existed? Broadly speaking, the roots of this \u201ctheory\u201d are that deep. In the U.S., you can point to efforts to intimidate and discourage Black people from voting \u2014 or, in antagonists\u2019 view, \u201creplacing\u201d white voters at the polls \u2014 that date to the Reconstruction era, after the 15th Amendment made clear suffrage couldn\u2019t be restricted on account of race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the modern era, most experts point to two influential books. \u201cThe Turner Diaries,\u201d a 1978 novel written by William Luther Pierce under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald, is about a violent revolution in the United States with a race war that leads to the extermination of nonwhites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The FBI called it a \u201cbible of the racist right,\u201d says Kurt Braddock, an American University professor and researcher at the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Renaud Camus, a French writer, published a 2011 book claiming that Europe was being invaded by Black and brown immigrants from Africa. He called the book \u201cLe Grand Remplacement,\u201d and a conspiracy\u2019s name was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n WHO ARE ITS ADHERENTS?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n To some of the more extreme believers, certain white supremacist mass killers \u2014 at a Norway summer camp in 2011, two Christchurch, New Zealand, mosques in 2019, a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2017 \u2014 are considered saints, Pitcavage says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those \u201caccelerationist white supremacists\u201d believe small societal changes won\u2019t achieve much, so the only option is tearing down society, he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Buffalo shooter\u2019s purported written diatribe and some of the methods indicate he closely studied the Christchurch shooter \u2014 particularly the effort to livestream his rampage. According to apparent screenshots from the Buffalo broadcast, the shooter inscribed the number 14 on his gun, which Pitcavage says is shorthand for a 14-word white supremacist slogan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A written declaration by the Christchurch shooter was widely spread online. If the message attributed to the Buffalo shooter proves authentic, it\u2019s designed to also spread his philosophy and methods to a large audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n IS THE THEORY MAKING WIDER INROADS?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While more virulent forms of racism are widely abhorred, experts are concerned about extreme views nonetheless becoming mainstream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a poll released last week, The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about 1 in 3 Americans believe an effort is underway to replace U.S.-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On a regular basis, many adherents to the more extreme versions of the \u201cgreat replacement\u201d theory converse through encrypted apps online. They tend to be careful. They know they\u2019re being watched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey are very clever,\u201d Braddock says. \u201cThey don\u2019t make overt calls to arms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n WHO\u2019S TALKING UP THIS THEORY?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In particular, Tucker Carlson, Fox News\u2019 most popular personality, has pushed false views that are more easily embraced by some white people who are concerned about a loss of their political and social power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI know that the left and all the gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term \u2018replacement,\u2019 if you suggest the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World,\u201d he said on his show last year. \u201cBut they become hysterical because that\u2019s what\u2019s happening, actually, let\u2019s just say it. That\u2019s true.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A study of five years\u2019 worth of Carlson\u2019s show by The New York Times found 400 instances where he talked about Democratic politicians and others seeking to force demographic change through immigration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fox News defended the host, pointing to repeated statements that Carlson has made denouncing political violence of all kinds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The attention paid by many Republican politicians to what they see as a leaky southern border along the United States has been interpreted, at least by some, as a nod to the concern of white people who worry about being \u201creplaced.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik\u2019s campaign committee was criticized last year for an advertisement that said \u201cradical Democrats\u201d were planning a \u201cpermanent election insurrection\u201d by granting amnesty to undocumented immigrants who would create a permanent liberal majority in Washington. Stefanik represents a New York district.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pitcavage says he\u2019s concerned about the message Carlson and supporters are sending: \u201cIt actually introduces the \u2018great replacement theory\u2019 to a conservative audience in an easier-to-swallow pill.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Originally published at AP<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By David Bauder A racist ideology seeping from the internet\u2019s fringes into the mainstream is being investigated as a motivating factor in the supermarket shooting that killed 10 people in Buffalo, New York. 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