Last Saturday an armed gunman walked into a grocery store in Buffalo New York and killed 10 people. As is so often the case when this kind of senseless tragedy happens, conservatives mentioned "thoughts and prayers", spoke a few lines about the need for "better mental healthcare" and moved on while progressives called for more background checks and other common sense gun control that will never get passed. This is all grimly predictable.
But there is another, darker element to this shooting: before carrying it out, the 18 year old gunman posted a racist manifesto online, and most of his victims were African American. (He even travelled to a specifically African American neighborhood to carry out the shooting). While Republican leaders have, of course, condemned the violence, the words of this young man's manifesto seem eerily familiar to the political speech coming out of the mouths of both Republican politicians and right wing media commentators. Especially concerning a white supremacist belief known as "replacement theory."
Replacement theory is a noxious belief that's held not only in the US, but in other Western countries too. Its first proponent was probably French author Renaud Camus in 2011, who used the term “the great replacement” in a reference to an influx of Muslim immigrants in that country. Put simply, it believes that Western governments (often manipulated by Jewish people), are allowing Western countries to be overrun with non white immigrants who will eventually take over.
While such a brazenly racist and xenophobic theory was once expressed only on white supremacist websites, conservatives have mainstreamed it by toning the rhetoric down slightly while keeping the essential message intact. And they can add a more political twist by alleging, like House Representative Elise Stefanik did in a recent Facebook ad, that “Radical Democrats are planning their most aggressive move yet: a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION. Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.”
The most prominent exponent of this theory in American today is Tucker Carlson, the top rated talk show host on Fox News. According to a recent analysis of his show in the New York Times, Carlson has made a reference to the theory over 300 times on his show in the past few years. Although Carlson has, of course, distanced himself from the shooter and his manifesto, and its possible that the shooter was inspired more by online white supremacist websites than Fox, the fact that many passages of his manifesto echo sentiments that Carlson has said on the air show show the back and fourth influence that Carlson and white supremacist websites have.
It's really stunning to see how much the Republican party has changed over the years when it comes to immigration: back in the presidential debate of 1984, Ronald Reagan said" I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally.” He would later grant amnesty to over a million undocumented immigrants, without any loss of popularity in his party. . I think the turning point for the party's views on immigration came in 1994, when California GOP governor Pete Wilson, facing a tough reelection campaign, openly embraced a state proposition that would have denied social services to undocumented immigrants. The ads he ran were very much precursors of the modern conservative style, with hordes of "illegals" swarming into the state to take over. Both Wilson and the proposition won (the proposition was later overturned by the courts), setting a standard for conservative victory that the right wing media picked up on and that Donald Trump obviously later added to, extending the fear of immigrants beyond the undocumented and into anyone from, as Trump himself put it, "shit hole countries."
Although not all Republicans have embraced this view, with Liz Cheney recently tweeting "The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse. @GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them." most Republicans have continued to embrace this racist garbage because, quite simply, it works. The only way for politicians to stop playing on the bigoted, xenophobic fears of Americans is for them to start losing elections. And that doesn't look too likely in the near future.
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