The Buffalo Massacre
The killer was an 18 year old white supremacist, who had been radicalized on the internet by right wing extremists during the pandemic. He lived in a small town near Binghamton, an economically declining and depressed region of New York, and he did extensive surveillance and planning in Buffalo prior to choosing his target. He was armed with a semi-automatic weapon and wearing body armor; he had previously come to the attention of local law enforcement and mental health professionals for his threats of violence while in high school; they intervened, but there was no follow up. He wrote a screed or manifesto referring to his role models in South Carolina and New Zealand and his embrace of the Great Replacement Theory, first developed by a Frenchman, to the effect that Christian whites are being replaced and displaced by people of color and jews.
In surveys, about 1/3rd of Americans may subscribe to some white supremacists’ beliefs about the Great Replacement and one in seven believe them strongly. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/poll-finds-one-third-of-adults-say-they-think-an-effort-is-afoot-to-replace-native-born-americans-with-new-immigrants-for-electoral-purposes-01652314775 Not all of them are ready to shoot up the customers, workers and security in your local supermarket. They do have representatives in Congress, like Greene and Gosar, who share some of their perspectives, they do have media figures who relentlessly fuel them. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/16/buffalo-massacre-great-replacement-theory-republicans A recent ex-President validated some of their views and used extremist rhetoric which in their views endorsed this descent into violence, whether in Charlottesville, in DC on January 6, or this weekend in Buffalo. A number of prominent leaders are ultimately implicated in the issues of easy access to guns, incitement of hatred against racial and ethnic minorities, and white nationalism. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/16/buffalo-shooting-guns-white-supremacist-conspiracy-theories-tragedy/ Old and long repudiated ideas on fascism and racism are being repackaged in new bottles that have found a growing audience during our pandemic enforced isolation. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/white-supremacy-returned-mainstream-politics/ The entry points for this thinking are shows like Tucker Carlson and the darker corners of the internet; by no means do all listeners and readers of this trash get sucked into the extremist vortex.
The descent down these rabbit holes into individual and mass violence and extremist mental chaos has many authors and actors. The open question is how and whether as a society we can ascend from or counteract them. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/white-supremacy-returned-mainstream-politics/ The White House paper on countering domestic terrorism highlighted for me the extraordinary difficulty that American government faces in responding, given our commitments to the First Amendment and to the civil liberties of every American, regardless of the odious political beliefs they may espouse. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/National-Strategy-for-Countering-Domestic-Terrorism.pdf The Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio set a high bar for governmental interference with the rights of free speech. “These later decisions have fashioned the principle that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action. … As we said in Noto v. United States, 367 U. S. 290, 367 U. S. 297-298 (1961), "the mere abstract teaching . . . of the moral propriety or even moral necessity for a resort to force and violence is not the same as preparing a group for violent action and steeling it to such action." The individual violence is easy to decry and possible to prosecute after the fact, but meaningful prevention of the rise in racism, white nationalism, white supremacy and glorification of resort to violence will be a tough nut to crack given the ready ability to so easily disseminate, spread and share lies and disinformation on the internet and the strong Constitutional protections of the First Amendment.
The effort to restore a more civil society will need to be society wide and must encompass both public and private sectors; it must be scrupulous in its adherence to our Constitutional and other legal protections for all Americans. We must not become “Big Brother”, the very thing that we seek to prevent. It must start with sound education in our civic institutions and families emphasizing and developing a common respect for our democratic values and each other. It must enlist both liberals and conservatives in its cause. The recent statements of Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger are particularly welcome, but they are isolated within their own political party in Congress and need company. https://www.npr.org/2022/05/16/1099127039/liz-cheney-republicans-white-nationalism
The rise in violent right-wing extremism and killing is also occurring in Europe as well as in far off New Zealand and even in Norway. But the repetitive associated gun violence from South Carolina to Pittsburgh, from Poway to El Paso is unique to our nation and its fascination with gun culture and its easy access to lethal weaponry enabled by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Heller. In the Heller case, Justice Scalia writing for a 5-4 majority created and recognized an individual right to a handgun kept in one’s home to protect home and family even though the language of the Second Amendment conditions the right to carry and bear arms on participation in a well regulated militia. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf Writing for a bare majority, Justice Scalia recognized limitations to the Second Amendment. “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. ... For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment. … nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. … We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those “in common use at the time.” …. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual weapons.”
Recent rulings by California judges have gone well beyond the limits of the Heller decision and struck down our state’s restrictions on easy access to semi-automatic weapons and restrictions on sales to those under the age of 21 as violative of the Second Amendment; thus the federal courts are not being helpful by striking down our restrictions on easy access to weapons of mass destruction by impressionable young men who have fallen down the internet’s rabbit hole of rabid white nationalism. https://abc7.com/ca-gun-ban-semiautomatic-ninth-circuit-court-of-appeals-laws/11838571/ and https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/Decision%20--%20Miller%2020210604.pdf
It is the responsibility of each and everyone of us as citizens and voters in our daily lives to counteract this deadly racist conduct and its purveyors, we should not simply rely on the courts and the police to prosecute and incarcerate deadly white supremacists but only long after the the enormous crime has left too many of our fellow citizens dead and their families shattered, bereft and inconsolable.