When you see a screed like this kid wrote, it is hard not to laugh, until you find out the teenager drove 200 miles to carry out his vendetta on the black people of a community he has absolutely no contact with. The absurdity that Jews are trying to replace white people with Black and Hispanic immigrants should have 99% of the population rolling their eyeballs, but to read recent polls half of Republicans apparently think this way. It's been softened somewhat with Jews left out by conservative commentators like Tucker Carlson, but the antisemitic origins remain.
Thanks to talk shows and social media, the "great replacement theory" has become mainstream among conservatives. They firmly believe they are being displaced in American society, and indeed the world over. Marie Le Pen has essentially ridden this issue in her two runs for French President, and you hear it all throughout Europe, but fortunately you don't see the mass shootings like you do in America, at least not with the same frequency. This was the 198th mass shooting recorded in the United States this year. According to the ADL, a staggering 55 percent of these shootings are carried out by white supremacists.
This is the "Second Amendment people" Donald Trump threatened upon the country had Hillary Clinton won the presidential election in 2016. A euphemism for advocates of gun rights, but in actual fact these yahoos believe themselves to be oppressed in this pluralist nation and use guns as a means to redress their perceived victimhood. Their greatest fear is that there will be a zombie apocalypse where sub-human immigrants take over the country they believe to be rightfully theirs.
Forget the real replacement that took place centuries ago when Europeans came to the American continents in boatloads, bringing their guns and germs with them, and killing off an estimated 90 percent of the indigenous population. White Christian conservatives now consider North America, or more specifically the United States, as theirs ordained by God, conveniently forgetting the genocide that took place. The irony is that many of these white supremacists don't even consider the surviving native Americans to be truly American, as reported in this incident at Shasta Lake, California.
Nor do these religious extremists understand that the vast majority of the Black population in America stems from the slave families brought over from Africa as early as the 16th century. They are not recent arrivals. Alas, we can't expect these ignorant racists to know much about this, as they were screening out such facts long before the critical race theory became the whipping post of zealous conservatives. In their addled minds, they were here first!
The odd part is when you can actually get persons of color to subscribe to your white supremacist views. Dave Chappelle poked fun at this years ago with his character Clayton Bigsby, but now you can find these deluded Blacks everywhere, including in the Pennsylvania Republican Senate primary. The scary part is that Kathy Barnette might actually win.
Sadly, a lot of people don't take what is going on seriously. They roll their eyes at anyone who tries to point out the malignant nature of these racist attacks, wanting to believe that they are just random acts of violence. Costa-Gavras explored this theme in his 1988 movie Betrayed, which may appear a bit hokey in the trailers but packs quite a message. Notice the placard that reads "the white race is an endangered species." This "great replacement theory" is nothing new. In his movie, he tracks an international web of white supremacists that were already linked together on the nascent internet.
What we don't want to admit eventually bites us on the ass. More and more whites see their privileges eroding and lash out in violent ways. Worst of all, an alarming number of "kids" carry out these malicious attacks, whether they be at grocery stores, churches or schools. It makes you wonder what kind of views are being inculcated in their homes and communities. The shooter in this case comes from Conklin, New York, a predominantly white town on the Pennsylvania border, where he threatened to shoot up his school last year. He was treated for a couple days and then released. Now, he will spend the rest of his life in jail, where he can polish up his manifesto. This white supremacy is even more rampant in the American prison system.
Woe be it to anyone who tries to call attention to this malignant cancer, especially with the concurrent calls for tighter gun regulation. If there is anything these zealous "libertarians" value more than the second amendment, it is the first amendment, in which they believe it their god-given right to say whatever they feel. Wokeness be damned!
This is why nothing ever gets done. Democrats suggest legislation at the city, state and federal level only to see it held up in chamber or struck down by federal courts. As my wife repeatedly says, there appears to be no law in America. It doesn't really matter anymore as law enforcement agencies have no way of tracking the number of assault rifles and high capacity magazines floating around the country, given so many states have done away with gun regulations all together. Even in the state of New York, you don't need a permit for a "long gun." This is one reason my wife has no intention of ever living in the United States.
It is literally more dangerous to be living in some cities in the United States than it is to be living in Odessa or Kyiv, which are under periodic shelling from Russian forces. The degree of violence is astounding. You can't even go to a grocery store without watching your back in a city that has a relatively low homicide rate of 55 persons per year. You would almost think the United States was at war with itself.
Americans definitely do seem to be fighting imaginary threats, or existential threats as they are more often called. The Republican Party learned that fear is a great motivator in getting people to the polls and has been pushing this "great replacement theory" to one degree or another as long as I can remember. This is why immigration remains the foremost issue on conservative minds in any election.
I worry that this paranoia is spreading to Europe. The most horrible example being the Norway bombing and mass shooting in 2011 where Anders Breivik killed 77 persons in two separate incidents in the name of white supremacy. He was cited in this kid's manifesto. Marie Le Pen was able to run a surprisingly suspenseful campaign, garnering more than 40 percent of the vote in France, largely on the issue of immigration and how France is losing its identity. We see more successful campaigns in Hungary and Austria, and the same attitude seeping into Polish politics as well. Even countries like Germany are not immune from it. Here in Lithuania, such anti-immigration sentiments are growing as well, although so far no one has taken it into his own hands to act out the way Breivik did. Part of the reason is that European countries aren't afraid to call out this racism and take steps to curb hate speech. They also regulate firearms, making it much harder to get an assault rifle or other semi-automatic weapon. Still, if one is as determined as Breivik he can find a way.
In America, conservative pundits write off these mass shootings as isolated incidents, refusing to see them as part of a greater cycle of violence stemming from white supremacy. In the mind of someone like Tucker Carlson, these shooters are deranged individuals that in no way reflect his own white supremacist views. Never pausing, at least in public view, to think if his words might have inspired the shooter.
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