Biden Denounces Buffalo Massacre. So What?

For President Joe Biden, the racist massacre of 10 people in a predominately Black neighborhood constitutes domestic terrorism, and he has called for gun control. This is what he always does when these rampages take place over and over again. He recognizes it’s not easy because it’s not up to him, but up to Congress, which does nothing.

At least 198 mass shootings, which involve the deaths of four or more people excluding the shooter, have taken place in the United States so far this year.

Gun Crazy

Politicians are silent, because the right to carry “guns” everywhere and all the time is sacred to Americans. They will pay an increasingly more frightening social price as the number of armed individuals who are mentally ill and lured by far-right conspiracy theories continues to grow.

The troubled 18-year-old man charged with a mass shooting on Saturday easily evaded the law that should have barred him from possessing a firearm. He posted a litany of anti-Black rants online, including one about the “great replacement,” a theory about an alleged plot against white Americans.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer demanded that Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch immediately stop amplifying the theory on his network, which is directed at an under-educated, white, working class audience.

It is another useless effort by the Democrats. Celebrity Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a far-right propagandist and demagogue, generates a tsunami of money for Murdoch. For years Carlson has claimed that the Washington elite is conspiring to replace white Americans with immigrants from Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, a theme dear to Donald Trump.

According to a recent poll by the Associated Press, Americans who regularly watch Fox News are more likely to believe the great replacement theory than those who watch CNN or MSNBC.

Schumer claims these racist theories exist on the fringes of American life. He is wrong. They are part of how America views the world. About one-third of American adults believe there is a conspiracy to replace native-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gain.

White Republican Supremacists

Rep. Liz Cheney, a one-time House Republican leader who broke with her party because of Trump, asserts that Republican party leadership accepts the notion of white supremacy.

Some Republicans have even considered creating an “American First Caucus,” centered on “Anglo-Saxon political traditions.” Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar recently participated in a conference organized by a militant white supremacist.

If the trend continues — and it seems to be getting stronger at the moment — the far-right, white supremacist construct that the GOP has become will win a majority of seats in the Senate and the House of Representatives in the midterm elections this fall.