Guns massacre and terrorize innocent victims: Guns kill people
"American life is punctuated by mass shootings that are routinely described as idiosyncratic. But these attacks are not random acts; they are part of the long American history of political violence perpetrated by white supremacists against Black people and other minority groups," The New York Times editorial board.
The Buffalo Massacre Was Not a Random Act of Violence
By The Editorial Board: The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
Replacement theory is an attack on democracy. It privileges the purported interests of some Americans over those of others, asserting, in effect, that the will of the people means the will of white people. It rekindles fears and resentments among white Americans that cynical practitioners of American politics have stoked throughout the nation’s history. It also provides a disturbing rationalization for people inclined to resort to violence when the political process does not deliver what they want or protect what they see as their place in society.
The Fox News host Tucker (aka #Schmucker) Carlson, a leading purveyor of #evil replacement theory rhetoric, has promoted the idea that elites are seeking to replace white Americans on more than 400 episodes of his #fakenews program, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
After yet another horrific mass shooting, there will be the usual calls for common-sense gun control measures, most of which will regrettably fall on deaf ears because of the partisan politics that surround the Second Amendment. However, there is a deeper, darker and more disturbing issue that warrants just as much attention as the prospect of stronger gun regulations.
Racism and religious intolerance are fueling a wave of deadly violence in America that foreshadows more troubling times ahead. Black people are being attacked solely because they are Black, Jews are being targeted just because they are Jewish, and Asian Americans and Muslim Americans are being assaulted simply because of their race and religion. This systematic xenophobia and barefaced bigotry are patently un-American and antithetical to the democratic ideals upon which this nation was built, and they pose one of the biggest threats to our republic.
As a society and as a nation, we need to place as much of an emphasis on curbing the rabid racism that drives people to target and terrorize people based on their race or ethnicity, as we do on ending the mass shootings that ensue.
“Now I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term ‘replacement,’ 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,” Mr. Carlson said on an episode in April 2021.
It must also be emphasized that the United States makes it easy for domestic terrorists to kill. The police said that the Buffalo assailant used a Bushmaster XM-15 rifle that he had purchased legally at a gun shop near his hometown. As a practical matter, almost anyone can buy guns that are designed to kill a lot of people quickly. The only real line of defense is the judgment of the people who sell guns. “He didn’t stand out — because if he did, I would’ve never sold him the gun,” Robert Donald, the store’s owner, told The New York Times.
The focus on the gunman’s motives should not obscure the fact that the most important step the government can take to impede similar attacks is to limit the availability of guns.
It must also be emphasized that the United States makes it easy for domestic terrorists to kill. The police said that the Buffalo assailant used a Bushmaster XM-15 rifle that he had purchased legally at a gun shop near his hometown. As a practical matter, almost anyone can buy guns that are designed to kill a lot of people quickly. The only real line of defense is the judgment of the people who sell guns. “He didn’t stand out — because if he did, I would’ve never sold him the gun,” Robert Donald, the store’s owner, told The New York Times.
The focus on the gunman’s motives should not obscure the fact that
the most important step the government can take to impede similar attacks is to limit the availability of guns.
American democracy also requires the constructive use of free speech, especially by the nation’s political leaders. There are always demagogues whose stock in trade is the #evil demonization of immigrants and other minority groups, and American society has long allowed those on the fringes to air their views. The question in any era is whether such views are voiced, or echoed, by those in positions of responsibility.
It is telling that House Republicans last year installed Ms. Stefanik in leadership to replace (the brave) Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who remains among the most forthright critics of the party’s illiberal (right wing!) turn.
To The New York Times Editor:
To all who defend the right to bear arms, please tell me again how that is more important than the lives just lost in Buffalo and Laguna Woods, Calif., or in Sandy Hook and Parkland, and on and on and on …
This is not a rational argument and I just can’t get emotional about a gun, but I can get very emotional about the 6- and 7-year-olds lost at Sandy Hook, or the high school students in Parkland, or the mature and elderly elsewhere.
“When will we ever learn?” Or won’t we?
Judith Rudikoff
Bridgeport, Connecticut
Racism and religious intolerance are fueling a wave of deadly violence in America that foreshadows more troubling times ahead. Black people are being attacked solely because they are Black, Jews are being targeted just because they are Jewish, and Asian Americans and Muslim Americans are being assaulted simply because of their race and religion.
Opinion echo published by The New York Times editorial board:
By The Editorial Board: The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
 |
| Guns kill people! |
Republican politicians, including some of the party’s top leaders, openly espouse versions of a white supremacist conspiracy theory holding that an orchestrated effort is underway to displace white Americans. A recently published poll found that almost half of Republicans believe that immigrants are being brought to the United States as part of such an effort.
On Saturday, a gunman who said he was motivated by a version of this “replacement theory” killed 10 people at a Buffalo grocery store, officials said. The suspect, identified as Payton S. Gendron, wrote in an online diatribe that he sought to kill Black people because he wanted to prevent white people from losing their rightful control of the country.
Mr. Gendron described himself as part of a movement. He said that he was inspired by similar attacks on other minority communities and that he hoped others would follow his example. The suspects in several mass killings in recent years, including the 2015 murder of nine Black worshipers at a church in Charleston, S.C.; the 2018 murder of 11 Jewish worshipers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh; the 2019 murder of 51 Muslim worshipers at a pair of mosques in New Zealand; and the 2019 murder of 23 people, many Latino, in El Paso also propounded versions of this racist worldview.
American life is punctuated by mass shootings that are routinely described as idiosyncratic. But these attacks are not random acts; they are part of the long American history of political violence perpetrated by white supremacists against Black people and other minority groups.
Politicians who have employed some of the vocabulary of #evil replacement theory generally do not make explicit calls for violence. The office of one of those politicians, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, said in a statement that the Buffalo attack was an “act of evil” and that she “has never advocated for any racist position.”
On Saturday, a gunman who said he was motivated by a version of this “replacement theory” killed 10 people at a Buffalo grocery store, officials said. The suspect, identified as Payton S. Gendron, wrote in an online diatribe that he sought to kill Black people because he wanted to prevent white people from losing their rightful control of the country.
Mr. Gendron described himself as part of a movement. He said that he was inspired by similar attacks on other minority communities and that he hoped others would follow his example. The suspects in several mass killings in recent years, including the 2015 murder of nine Black worshipers at a church in Charleston, S.C.; the 2018 murder of 11 Jewish worshipers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh; the 2019 murder of 51 Muslim worshipers at a pair of mosques in New Zealand; and the 2019 murder of 23 people, many Latino, in El Paso also propounded versions of this racist worldview.
American life is punctuated by mass shootings that are routinely described as idiosyncratic. But these attacks are not random acts; they are part of the long American history of political violence perpetrated by white supremacists against Black people and other minority groups.
Politicians who have employed some of the vocabulary of #evil replacement theory generally do not make explicit calls for violence. The office of one of those politicians, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, said in a statement that the Buffalo attack was an “act of evil” and that she “has never advocated for any racist position.”
(Hello? Was Elise Stefanik abducted by aliens? Voters want to know!)
 |
| UFOs are real, and they have abducted Elise Stefanik |
But, the matter is dangerously not so simple.
 |
| Mass shootings do not fit one profile - they are complicated. |
Replacement theory is an attack on democracy. It privileges the purported interests of some Americans over those of others, asserting, in effect, that the will of the people means the will of white people. It rekindles fears and resentments among white Americans that cynical practitioners of American politics have stoked throughout the nation’s history. It also provides a disturbing rationalization for people inclined to resort to violence when the political process does not deliver what they want or protect what they see as their place in society.
The Fox News host Tucker (aka #Schmucker) Carlson, a leading purveyor of #evil replacement theory rhetoric, has promoted the idea that elites are seeking to replace white Americans on more than 400 episodes of his #fakenews program, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
Opinion letters published in The New York Times from readers:
Buffalo New York massacre!
Racism and religious intolerance are fueling a wave of deadly violence in America that foreshadows more troubling times ahead. Black people are being attacked solely because they are Black, Jews are being targeted just because they are Jewish, and Asian Americans and Muslim Americans are being assaulted simply because of their race and religion. This systematic xenophobia and barefaced bigotry are patently un-American and antithetical to the democratic ideals upon which this nation was built, and they pose one of the biggest threats to our republic.
As a society and as a nation, we need to place as much of an emphasis on curbing the rabid racism that drives people to target and terrorize people based on their race or ethnicity, as we do on ending the mass shootings that ensue.
“But they become hysterical because that’s —that’s what’s happening, actually.” Representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, later tweeted that Mr. Carlson “is CORRECT about Replacement Theory as he explains what is happening to America.”
In September, Ms. Stefanik’s (aka GOP's Lady Macbeth) re-election campaign paid for a Facebook ad that combined imagery of immigrants with the accusation that “Radical Democrats are planning their most aggressive move yet: a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION.” Ms. Stefanik’s ad continued, “Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.
Right-wing rhetoricians in the United States portray undocumented immigrants as the primary threat. This sanitizes replacement theory for mainstream consumption without diluting its logic. The same argument is easily applied to other minority groups.
Renaud Camus was the French writer that coined the term “the great replacement”, in a 2011, book to describe what he saw as a conscious effort by French elites to open the country’s doors for Muslim immigrants to replace the ethnically French population and culture.
The template has been adapted for use by extremists around the world. Mr. Gendron wrote that he blamed Jews for orchestrating the replacement of white Americans. He copied large portions of his manifesto from the document posted to justify the New Zealand killings, in some cases inserting the name of the Jewish philanthropist George Soros in place of the former German chancellor Angela Merkel’s name. The manifesto posted by the El Paso shooting suspect, which Mr. Gendron also referenced, spoke of the “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” The common thread — the ineluctable core of replacement theory — is that some people are white and some people are not, and the people who are white are threatened by those who are not
Right-wing rhetoricians in the United States portray undocumented immigrants as the primary threat. This sanitizes replacement theory for mainstream consumption without diluting its logic. The same argument is easily applied to other minority groups.
Renaud Camus was the French writer that coined the term “the great replacement”, in a 2011, book to describe what he saw as a conscious effort by French elites to open the country’s doors for Muslim immigrants to replace the ethnically French population and culture.
The template has been adapted for use by extremists around the world. Mr. Gendron wrote that he blamed Jews for orchestrating the replacement of white Americans. He copied large portions of his manifesto from the document posted to justify the New Zealand killings, in some cases inserting the name of the Jewish philanthropist George Soros in place of the former German chancellor Angela Merkel’s name. The manifesto posted by the El Paso shooting suspect, which Mr. Gendron also referenced, spoke of the “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” The common thread — the ineluctable core of replacement theory — is that some people are white and some people are not, and the people who are white are threatened by those who are not
The focus on the gunman’s motives should not obscure the fact that the most important step the government can take to impede similar attacks is to limit the availability of guns.
It must also be emphasized that the United States makes it easy for domestic terrorists to kill. The police said that the Buffalo assailant used a Bushmaster XM-15 rifle that he had purchased legally at a gun shop near his hometown. As a practical matter, almost anyone can buy guns that are designed to kill a lot of people quickly. The only real line of defense is the judgment of the people who sell guns. “He didn’t stand out — because if he did, I would’ve never sold him the gun,” Robert Donald, the store’s owner, told The New York Times.
the most important step the government can take to impede similar attacks is to limit the availability of guns.
American democracy also requires the constructive use of free speech, especially by the nation’s political leaders. There are always demagogues whose stock in trade is the #evil demonization of immigrants and other minority groups, and American society has long allowed those on the fringes to air their views. The question in any era is whether such views are voiced, or echoed, by those in positions of responsibility.
It is telling that House Republicans last year installed Ms. Stefanik in leadership to replace (the brave) Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who remains among the most forthright critics of the party’s illiberal (right wing!) turn.
https://twitter.com/Liz_Cheney/status/1526159124840558592
Opinion echo letter to the editor:To The New York Times Editor:
To all who defend the right to bear arms, please tell me again how that is more important than the lives just lost in Buffalo and Laguna Woods, Calif., or in Sandy Hook and Parkland, and on and on and on …
This is not a rational argument and I just can’t get emotional about a gun, but I can get very emotional about the 6- and 7-year-olds lost at Sandy Hook, or the high school students in Parkland, or the mature and elderly elsewhere.
“When will we ever learn?” Or won’t we?
Judith Rudikoff
Bridgeport, Connecticut
Racism and religious intolerance are fueling a wave of deadly violence in America that foreshadows more troubling times ahead. Black people are being attacked solely because they are Black, Jews are being targeted just because they are Jewish, and Asian Americans and Muslim Americans are being assaulted simply because of their race and religion.
N. Aaron Troodler
Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania
Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania
Labels: Buffalo, Elise Stefanik, Judith Rudikoff, mass shootings, N. Aaron Troodler, The New York Times, white supremacy
posted by Juliana L'Heureux | 4:55 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home