The mass killing perpetrated last Saturday by a young white supremacist in the city of Buffalo in the United States could act as a backlash within the American conservative movement and the Republican political class, which several members have promoted and are still promoting. of the “great replacement”, pointed out by the killer to largely justify the violence of his gesture.
Coming from the French extreme movement in the 1970s, introduced and deliberately promoted in the United States by Steve Bannon, one of the architects of “Trumpism” in the early 2000s, the conspiracy theory tells that immigration policies would be intentionally put in place to “replace” the population considered to be “native” of a country.
In the neighbor to the south, it was declined by evoking more precisely the threat of a “great replacement” of the white American electorate by immigration planned behind the scenes by a left presented as radical and above all “anti-racist”, and this , in order to continually maintain power, claim the defenders of this theory.
Recall that in 2018, immigrants represented 13.7% of the American population, a proportion still lower than the historical peak of 1890 (14.8%) of new Americans who contributed to economic, social and cultural growth and development. from this country.
In a manifesto circulated online, the Buffalo killer, an 18-year-old white supremacist, makes direct reference to this theory. On Saturday, in a Buffalo neighborhood, he opened fire on 13 people, 10 of whom were African Americans.
His document also mentions other mass killers motivated by racism as well as fear of this ‘great replacement’, including the Charleston, South Carolina murderer who took the lives of 15 African-American parishioners in a church. in 2015 and the Christchurch, New Zealand killer who shot dead 51 Muslim citizens in cold blood during a prayer in 2019.
Echoes in the House of Representatives
On Sunday, the number 3 Republican in the House of Representatives, Elise Stefanik, a faithful of ex-President Donald Trump, was sharply criticized by a colleague for her past adherence to this conspiracy theory. “Did you know [qu’elle] supports the white replacement theory,” US Congressman Adam Kinzinger wrote on Twitterwho openly opposes the populist drift in his country and his party.
Without naming this “great replacement,” Ms. Stefanik, in a series of election ads in 2021 decried the “radical Democrats” so-called plan to overthrow “our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington,” and this, by granting “amnesty to 11 million illegal immigrants”. She then spoke of a “permanent electoral insurrection”. In capital letters.
The plot is also promoted by the Republican candidate and aspiring senator from Ohio, dubbed by Donald Trump, JD Vance who during the primaries, which he won in early May, made himself the spokesperson for this anxiety in the face of “a change in the democratic makeup of this country that would mean we would never win,” he said last month in Portsmouth.
Republican representative from Wyoming and critic of Donald Trump, Liz Cheney, for her part, called on her party to take responsibility for the crime committed in Buffalo. “The leadership of the party in the chamber has liberated nationalist, white supremacist speech and anti-Semitism, she summarized on Twitter Monday morning. “History has taught us that what begins with words ends with much worse. The leaders of [parti républicain] must reject these words and those who defend them. »
The “great replacement” emerged from the margins of the Internet and specialized forums where the theory was confined for several years, aided above all by influential political commentators in the United States, including the incendiary columnist Tucker Carlson of the Fox News network. A survey of New York Times published in May demonstrated that nearly 400 episodes of his daily show focused on Democrats’ use of immigration to intentionally change the country’s demographics.
Fear is fueled elsewhere in the world, such as in Quebec, by populist columnist Mathieu Bock-Côté who reported last February in the pages of the Montreal Journal of the “programmed disappearance of Quebecers” by an “insane increase” in immigration thresholds. It was then a question in its text of a growth equivalent to 4.7% of the Canadian population resulting from immigration, permanent and temporary, by 2024.
A hatred supported by social networks
Tucker Carlson’s comments, like those of other commentaries from the radical right, find their way online where they now participate in a new form of socialization through hate and outrage supported by social media.
“It’s not a pipeline. It’s an open sewer,” summed up Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News political editor who wrote a forthcoming book on how the media stoke anger to build their audiences, in the pages of the New York Times.
For Democrat Congressman Brian Higgins, who represents Buffalo, the “great replacement” is mostly a “crazy racist plot that cynical politicians are using to foment division in America”. “What really needs to be replaced in this country is ignorance and hatred, which fuel division, perpetuate lies and kill our neighbours,” he said in a statement quoted by the washington post. “The amplification of racism in all its forms is an un-American disease and everyone, especially those who call themselves leaders, must speak out against it.”
Last week, an Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that the normalization of “great replacement” by thought leaders has convinced one in three Americans to date that a plan to replace “white” Americans campaign by immigrants was being rolled out across the country for electoral purposes.
In the United States, only American citizens can vote. The naturalization process conferring this right on an immigrant can take several years.