(New York) According to the manifesto he published on the Internet, Payton Gendron was not radicalized by Tucker Carlson or one of the many Republican candidates who propagate the racist theory of ” great replacement.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
The alleged perpetrator of the shooting that killed 10 in Buffalo on Saturday says he “radicalized” himself during the first days of the coronavirus pandemic by exploring the internet to chase boredom. It was there that this self-proclaimed supremacist and anti-Semite said he discovered that the low white birth rate would contribute to a “crisis” whose outcome, desired and encouraged by Jews, would be “the complete racial and cultural replacement of the people European”.
Four days after posting his manifesto, the 18-year-old added Buffalo to the list of places where a believer in the theory has slaughtered people because of their ethnicity or religion. Before this city in the state of New York, there were Christchurch, Pittsburgh, El Paso and Poway.
But these massacres did not have the effect of marginalizing the “great replacement” theory in the United States. On the contrary, this country has witnessed in recent years a trivialization of this concept revived in France by the writer Renaud Camus.
To the point where there are countless candidates and elected Republicans who defend it by evoking the influx of migrants to the southern border.
“Democratic politicians have decided that they cannot be re-elected in 2022 unless they bring in a large number of new voters to replace those who are already there. That’s what it’s about. We have an invasion in this country because very powerful people are getting richer and more powerful because of it. »
“The most racist show”
J. D. Vance, who made these comments on March 17 on Fox News, is a smart man. In 2016, this venture capitalist wrote Hillbilly Elegantwhich Netflix made a movie of in 2020. It knows that migrants arriving at the southern border will play no part in the 2022 midterm elections.
But this political neophyte also knows that this version of the great replacement theory is popular with many Republican voters. He had confirmation of this on May 3 when he won the Republican primary in Ohio for the senatorial election of this important Midwestern state.
PHOTO AARON DOSTER, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
A JD Vance supporter shows his colors on the night of Ohio’s Republican primary for the Senate election.
The man JD Vance addressed in his March 17 talk played an even greater role in this trivialization of the Great Replacement theory in the United States. It’s about Tucker Carlson, who “built what may be the most racist show in cable news history – and also, by some standards, the most successful,” wrote the New York Times recently at the start of a series of articles about Fox News’ most popular host.
In April 2021, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) sent a letter to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott complaining about Tucker Carlson’s “passionate defense” of the Great Replacement theory during a broadcast. .
“Make no mistake: this is a dangerous subject,” wrote ADL director Jonathan Greenblatt. “The ‘Great Replacement Theory’ is a classic white supremacist theme. […]. This is a concept that is discussed almost daily on racist sites on the internet. It’s a notion that has fueled the hateful slogan “Jews won’t replace us!” in Charlottesville in 2017.”
This letter had no effect. Because, according to TimesTucker Carlson is untouchable at Fox News, where he enjoys the protection of the Murdoch family, owners of the channel.
Beyond the ballot box
For Fox News, ratings seem to be everything. For Republican politicians, the polls seem to dictate their speeches.
The results of the most recent barometer on the question, published last Monday by the Associated Press, are eloquent: a good third of Americans, and nearly half of Republicans, think that “there is a group of people in this country who tries to replace native-born Americans with immigrants who share their political views.”
PHOTO ADREES LATIF, REUTERS
Asylum seekers from Latin America cross the Rio Grande to the Texas shore in Roma on Saturday
Blake Masters, Republican candidate for the Arizona senatorial election, probably had access to similar results before posting the following message on Twitter last October: “What the left really wants to do is change the demographics of this country. She wants to do this to consolidate power and never lose an election. »
The effect of such a speech is not limited to the ballot box. According to University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape, Donald Trump’s big lie about the 2020 presidential election isn’t the only conspiracy theory that prompted the Jan. 6, 2021, insurgents to invade the Capitol.
A year later, after conducting two national polls on the issue, he told The Press “We have political leaders and people in the media who have embraced a right-wing conspiracy theory called the ‘great replacement’, which was once a fringe idea. This theory asserts that white rights are being supplanted by minority rights, that the Democratic Party is deliberately opening doors to outsiders so they can alter the electorate and crush the white majority in the United States. I don’t think it should come as a surprise that people receiving these messages become enraged. »
Nor should it be surprising that some of them end up killing.