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In the week since a gunman killed 10 people in a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y., countless articles and television spots have unpacked the racist conspiracy he shared in a hate-filled manifesto before his shooting spree.

The conspiracythe so-called great replacement theoryis the idea that Democratic lawmakers and other elites are working to force white people into a minority in the United States, usually by increasing immigration. Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson has hammered on the idea more than 400 times while railing against immigration on his show, according to a New York Times investigation, and elected Republicans, including Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York and Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida have bluntly echoed the language in comments and campaign materials criticizing Democrats immigration policy.

But the conspiracy theory also animates another cornerstone of the modern Republican agenda: opposition to abortion.

The anti-abortion movement was born in the 19th century of white fears of a declining white birth rate, says Jennifer Holland, assistant professor of history at the University of Oklahoma. The idea was that by allowing white women to receive abortions, lawmakers were leaving white populations vulnerable to demographic replacement by non-white or immigrant groups with higher birth rates. In the 1870s and 80s, the fear was primarily focused on Jewish and Catholic immigrants, especially those from Italy or Ireland, who had higher birthrates than white Protestants at the time; now, white power organizations that embrace replacement theory focus on Black and Latino communities, which have higher birth rates than whites.

While the Buffalo gunman did not explicitly mention the word abortion in his manifesto, he references birth rates more than 40 times, according to a TIME analysis, and repeatedly expresses his belief that white birth rates must change.

This week, Matt Schlapp, the head of the Conservative Political Action Conference, explicitly linked replacement theory, immigration and anti-abortion, telling reporters in Hungary that overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision enshrining a right to abortion, would be a good first step in fixing the U.S.s immigration problem. If youre worried about this quote-unquote replacement, why dont we start there? he said. Start with allowing our own people to live.

The modern mainstream anti-abortion movement denounces racist groups and ideologies. In January, after white supremacists marched alongside protesters at March for Life event, then showed up at the March for Life rally in Washington, DC, the anti-abortion movements biggest annual gathering, organizers decried any association with them. We condemn any organization that seeks to exclude a person or group of people based on the color of their skin or any other characteristic, Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life, said in a statement to TIME after the January rally. Neither Mancini nor National Right to Life, another prominent national anti-abortion group, responded to TIMEs requests for comments for this article.

But if mainstream anti-abortion activists flatly reject rightwing extremists, the relationship is complicated by the fact that rightwing extremists see the anti-abortion movement as a useful political allyand a potential pool of new recruits. In December, Thomas Rousseau the leader of the white nationalist group Patriot Front reminded his members of approaching opportunities to recruit and proselytize. Our two March For Life events are coming up, he wrote to his followers, according to leaked chats published by media nonprofit Unicorn Riot. The aim is to be more understated, friendly, in smaller groups, and get as many flyers out as possible.

Rightwing extremists attach themselves like a leech to traditional Republican constituencies, Mike Madrid, a veteran Republican strategist who has been critical of the party in the age of Trump, told TIME earlier this year. In doing so, he says, they legitimize and normalize their extremist positions.

Read More: The Coming Battle Over the Anti-abortion Movements Future

Some mainstream anti-abortion activists worry that racist and nationalist groups appear to be increasingly vocal at their events. When you breed this nationalism together with a movement thats largely religious, you start to see these types of things crop up, says Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa, the founder of the anti-abortion group New Wave Feminists, which calls itself a pro-life feminist organization. But never to the degree this year. I was horrified that an actual white supremacy group was there at the March for Life rally in D.C.

In 2018, Herndon-De La Rosas organization pushed out its vice president, Kristen Hatten, after she began sharing white supremacist ideas, including reportedly sharing a Tweet that mocked the idea of Muslims becoming a British majority on social media, according to HuffPost. Hatten later told HuffPost: Ive said I identify with the alt-right to a large extent, and I doThat said, there are elements within the alt-right with whom I dont see eye to eye. I am not a national socialist nor am I a Nazi. I am not a eugenicist. In fact I remain pro-life.

Belief in rightwing conspiracies is ascendent in an increasingly conservative Republican Party, says Kurt Braddock, assistant professor of communications at American University and a faculty fellow at the schools Polarization and Extremism Research Innovation Lab. What weve seen from the Right in recent years is that what was originally on the fringe in 2015, from 2016, forward, the fringe has moved more and more into the mainstream, he says.

Nearly one in three American adults now hold a belief that is in line with the replacement theory. According to an Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll published May 9, a third of Americans believe a group of people is trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains. Another 29% shared the concern that a rise in immigration is leading to native-born Americans losing influence in culture and politics.

Prior to the Civil War, abortion was legal with minimum restrictions in the U.S. But when the war ended, white Protestant Americans fears shifted. After slavery was outlawed, the womens suffrage movement began, and immigration increased, the idea that a white Protestant America would soon be diluted or replaced by immigrant groups gained steam. In 1858, group of physicians with the American Medical Association, led by Horatio Storer, began lobbying lawmakers to begin restricting and banning abortions on the grounds that a low birth rate among whites would allow immigrants, particularly Catholics from Ireland and other parts of Europe, to overtake white Protestants demographically.

While replacement theory wasnt given a name until 2012, these 19th century activists embraced the notion and language explicitly. If a majority of all the youths and children under fifteen years of age in a place is made up from those of a foreign parentage, and is relatively increasing in number every year, how long will it be before such a power will be felt in the management, if not in the control, of the municipal government of those cities and towns? said one of those physicians, according to researchers at Northwestern University and University of California, Berkeley.

Storers movement was successful. By the year 1900, abortion was illegal in all U.S. states, marking a profound shift in four decades. (Ironically, Storer would in the later years of his life convert to Catholicism, according to James Madison Universitys undergraduate research journal).

It really is a radical break from American laws before then, Holland, at the University of Oklahoma, says. Prior to this group of physicians involvement in the procedure, abortion was widely legal and was inherited by English common law. The question is, why would state legislatures be open to [abortion restrictions]? Holland adds. It very much has to do with race.

Read more: How the Great Replacement Theory Has Fueled Racist Violence

Even on its own terms, the logic of anti-abortion racism is deeply convoluted. People of color receive disproportionately more abortions than white Americans. But Seyward Darby, author of Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism, says logic is not the point. You have to step away from theory, and you have to realize the kind of wider world worldview, she tells TIME. What they ultimately want is a series of policies, including making white women have more babies, by force if necessary, and then finding ways if not to reduce the number of children who are not white in the country, then to marginalize them to such an extent that they have no power.

Some far right anti-abortion extremists oppose both immigration and abortions for white women only, and throughout history, similar racist thought has undergirded forced-sterilization campaigns of women of color. For white supremacists, they are not seeking to end abortion because of any kind of morality related to the fetus itself, says Alex DiBranco, executive director of the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism, an organization of experts and scholars who study misogynist movements and ideology. Theyre very much seeing this as a strategic and tactical way to force white women to give birth.

With replacement theory and other racist ideologies no longer relegated to 19th century lobbying efforts or the fringes of the internet, experts on political extremism say that Americans must now grapple with the implications of these beliefs on mainstream politics. Its difficult to get into the minds of the people that engage in this violence and say that theyre pro life, says Braddock, at American University. Generally speaking a lot of these individuals, what theyll say is that they had to engage in violence to precipitate something that would inherently make the world better around them.

With reporting by Vera Bergengruen

More Must-Read Stories From TIME

Write to Jasmine Aguilera at jasmine.aguilera@time.com and Abigail Abrams at abigail.abrams@time.com.

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Where the Buffalo Gunman and the Anti-Abortion Fringe Meet | Time - TIME

We still don't know all the facts aboutwhy 18-year-old white maleperpetrated a horrific hate crime at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York last Saturday. What appears irrefutable, however, is that his violent act was fueled by racist and xenophobic misinformation online.

As I discussed the shootingwith my husband, an immigrant, person of color, fellow psychiatrist and the bravest person I know he spoke with uncharacteristic vulnerability: Im afraid. Grappling with our fear and anger, we begana heated discussion about what should and canbe doneabout digital extremism in a society that has become tragically passive aboutletting people of color fear for their lives on a daily basis.

In public health, primary prevention solutions are considered the most effective toavoidillness, because they eliminate the source of the hazardsono one is exposed. But what do you do when the illness is white supremacy woven into the framework of a nation?

Primary prevention requires government mobilization and national policies. WriterEileen Riverspoints out,for example, how this shooting highlights the need for national education reform that addresses Americas racist and violent past. But if white supremacist theories are becoming increasingly mainstreamwithin the government, primary prevention measures seem infuriatingly improbable. (Although as I wrote this, Congress did narrowly pass a bill to fight domestic terrorism.)

[W]hat do you do when the illness is white supremacy woven into the framework of a nation?

We could try to crack down on extremist content online, butremovingone problematic forum,like cutting off the head of the Hydra,spawns two new ones in its place. Case in point: TikTok is the latest platform caught in the never-ending pro-ana promoting anorexia problem.

Then there are gun control measures, but again, a lack of bipartisan support makes this fix repeatedly a non-starter.

We're left with a call for individualsto confront online extremism. Because young, white males make up the majority of those committing hate crimes in the name of white supremacy, the individuals who may be able to make the most difference are teachers, mental health professionals and especially, parents. As a child psychiatrist and researcher in problematic digital media use, I have some advice on what we (including myself!) might do better:

*Ask what your child/patient/student does online. Let me be clear: The internet does not cause someone to become racist or violent. But the ways social media platforms uniquely facilitate terrorist group recruitment are well-established. Fringe groups use the internet to lure in new recruits with support and camaraderie, all the while stoking in them a sense of moral outrage, feeding them misinformation, and convincing them that unless they commit to their cause, their very lives are at stake. (This isknown as mortality salience.) A young person's devotion to a single forum or website should, at the very least, prompt additional questioning.

*Monitor closely for behavioral changes, especially now. Much like the internet, pandemics dont cause violence or racism, but they may foster an environment where teens with racist views become radicalized. Troubled youth are especially easy targets for online extremist groups and the COVID-19 pandemic created troubled youth in droves. Grappling with sudden, dramatic shifts in their everyday lives, the teenagers of 2020 flocked to the one remaining source of consistent connection: the internet.

[A]nger is a feeling that extremist groups are masterful at taking advantage of online.

While teens increased their chances of encountering extremism as they spent more time online, the pandemic also slashed healthier opportunities for teenagers to build a sense of identity, community and self-esteem. No more hanging out with friends after school, football games or clubs.

The media may have focused predominantly on the rise in teen suicides during the pandemic, but teenanger has also exploded. I worked on an inpatient psychiatric unit during the early days of the pandemic and pediatric admissions for aggression were sometimes more frequent than those for depression.Unfortunately, anger is a feeling that extremist groups are masterful at taking advantage of online. These groups tell youthlike the Buffalo shooterwhere to direct their anger:

There isnt a problem with you, but with Blacks, Hispanics and immigrants. Youre being replaced. Its up to you to do something.

*Watchfor sudden changes in beliefs. While adolescence is normally a stage where teenagers try on new ideologies, if a teen suddenly starts espousing beliefs entirely inconsistent with previously held worldviews, it is time to investigate further. Los Angeles-based writer Joanna Schroeder described this well when she documented her own experiencewatching her sons' online behavior. The red flags started going up for us when, a year or so ago, [our kids] started asking questions that felt like they came directly from alt-right talking points,she said.

*If a teen is exploring online extremism sites, focus on maintaining an in. While yourfirst instinct may be to forbid or admonish, the fastest way to lose access to a troubled teen is to shame them. Extremist forums make recruits feel empowered, and then work to isolate them from opposing (read: true) viewpoints. Adults must remain curious and invested, correct misinformation, and stay in it for the long haul. This is not to condone racist behaviors, but rather to watchfor potential violence. Increase mental health supports when needed and provide alternative screen-free activities that offer connection and validation. Any suspicion of violent intent should be met with an emergent mental health evaluation.

It is critical now more than ever that white allies do all that they can to fight digital extremism. Even if our country is slow to make systematic changes to confront white nationalism, our Black, Hispanic and Asian neighbors deserve far more from us than passivity during these turbulent times. Diverting just one youth away from these forums could quite literally save Black and brown lives.

Correction: A previous version of this piece mischaracterized Joanna Schroeder's descriptions of her children's online activity.

Follow Cognoscenti on Facebook and Twitter.

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We cant control guns or the internet. But we can watch kids for signs of extremism - WBUR News

The Buffalo area is home to a small but growing cadre of right wing extremists who are making inroads at both the grassroots and electoral level

Some people here are taking solace in the fact that the white supremacist who killed 10 people in Saturdays supermarket massacre is from out of town.

As if Western New York doesnt have its own growing cadre of right-wing extremists.

Ill start with a reminder of a story we did last June in which Investigative Post reported only one county in the entire country had more of its citizens arrested on charges related to the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol than Erie County.

Among those charged was an Amherst man who assaulted a Capitol Police officer, stealing his badge and radio, and a Cheektowaga man who damaged CNN camera equipment and invaded the Capitol building. They were among the 100 or so Western New Yorkers who traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend the rally headlined by Donald Trump that precipitated the attempted insurrection.

At the time, Heidi Jones, a Buffalo attorney who researches local right-wing activity, told Investigative Post: Theres intertwined networks that have been recruiting and been active for many years. The COVID pandemic has given such an opportunity to recruit more people into it with the strongly divisive political environment that were in.

Cloee Cooper, a research analyst with Political Research Associates, told Investigative Post: Erie County is kind of a hotspot for militia and far-right groups and local elected officials have been privy to some of that, or endorsed it in the past.

Which brings us to the politicians. Lets start with Tim Howard.

Some 30 people died in the Erie County Holding Center during his tenure. That didnt stop Howard from getting elected no fewer than four times, the third time just months after he spoke at a political rally featuring Confederate flags and attended by avowed white supremacists. One attendee, frequent local political candidate Ricky Donovan, carried a sign that stylized the first letters of Senator Schumer as in U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, who is Jewish in the font of the Nazi SS.

In that 2017 election cycle, Howard joined fellow Republicans Mickey Kearns (county clerk) and Stefan Mychajliw (county comptroller) in waging a campaign that used overtly racist flyers. The mailers featured images of Black football players kneeling and dark-skinned immigrants scaling walls, presumably at the southern border, along with pro-police and anti-immigrant wording that told voters they better vote Republican.

Howard, Kearns and Mychajliw all won election.

When he decided to step down last year, Howard won election as supervisor of the Town of Wales.

Then theres the guy who didnt get elected governor, Carl Paladino.

His track record for racist rhetoric is unsurpassed in recent Western New York history. He won the Republican nomination for governor in 2010 before being trounced by Andrew Cuomo. While Cuomo won statewide by a 2-to-1 margin, Paladino carried all eight counties of Western New York.

He retreated to Buffalo, won election twice to the Buffalo Board of Education in 2013 and 2016 and served until he was removed by the state education commissioner in 2017 for publicly disclosing confidential information obtained in executive session.

In 2016, while still serving on the School Board, Paladino hit rock bottom, telling the alternative weekly Artvoice that in the coming year hed like to see Barack Obama die of mad cow disease contacted after having sex with a young cow. As for Michelle Obama, Paladino said: Id like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.

Did all this make Paladino a pariah?

No.

He remains part of the citys power structure.

For example, he continues to serve on the board of Buffalo Place, which promotes downtown and manages the Main Street pedestrian mall.

His campaign donations have long been accepted by Democrats and Republicans alike, including Byron Brown, the citys Black mayor.

His company continues to do business with various levels of government, including the City of Buffalo, as well as the Buffalo Bills, which has had a sponsorship deal with hotels his company owns since 2013.

Repeat: the Buffalo Bills do business with Carl Paladino.

When Paladino ran for governor, he tapped Michael Caputo, a protege of Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone, to run his campaign. The East Aurora native, who recently moved to Florida, worked on Donald Trumps presidential campaign and later took a job in his administration. He has advised numerous local right-wing candidates, including Mychajliw, the former county comptroller, and Assembly Member David DiPietro.

In 2020, Caputo brought alt-right idol Steve Bannon to an Elma fire hall to rally support for then U.S. Rep. Chris Collins, who was running for reelection while under indictment for insider trading. Collins won.

Paladino, Caputo, Mychajliw and DiPietro all maintain at least informal ties with the New York Watchmen, a quasi-militia group that frequently attends protests is support of right-wing causes. Caputo, in a September 2020 Facebook post, wore a Watchmen shirt as he warned of violence should Trump lose his reelection bid. He describes the groups founder, Charles Pellien, as an old friend.

Some Watchmen favor combat gear at protests. Members were in D.C. during the assault on the U.S. Capitol and a pro-Trump rally two months earlier. Locally, their encounters with other protesters sometimes have turned violent.

Pellien, the groups founder, responded to news of Saturdays massacre by tweeting, Black neighborhood, white suspect in custody. Buckle your chin straps.

The local right-wing scene includes other players, including anti-vaxxers whose activities included picketing the home of Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz when he acted to curb the spread of Covid-19.

A small but growing number of elected officials align with this rag-tag collection of right-wing extremists.

DiPietro, the East Aurora Republican who represents much of the Southtowns and Wyoming County, comes immediately to mind. He rarely gets any legislation passed: his failed proposals include making English the official state language, requiring recipients of public assistance to submit to drug testing, dividing New York into three autonomous regions, and exempting private and parochial schools and day care centers from immunization requirements.

On Twitter, DiPietro followed accounts of right-wing militias and their members. He followed an account with the display name Caucasian Spring, whose bio read I love my whiteness. And yours. Another account he followed tweeted frequently about #WhiteGenocide and decried the de facto genocide of Western Man by immivasion.

DiPietro and Paladino were co-sponsors, along with Howard, of the 2017 rally that drew neo-Nazis and Confederate flags.

Not to be overlooked is Congressman Chris Jacobs, a one-time moderate who has gone full Trump. The last thing I read on him he was pushing to punish the Walt Disney Co. for opposing Floridas Dont Say Gay bill. Because, you know, thats a burning issue to his constituents in Upstate New York.

You can find a small but growing number of right-wing extremists in local government.

For example, theres Williamsville Mayor Deb Rogers and two of her colleagues on the village board, who have equated state measures to limit the spread of Covid to the abuses of Nazi Germany and Communist China.

The far right this month lent its support to at least 26 candidates running in 13 school districts in Erie and Niagara counties. Eleven of them won, in districts that include Williamsville, Akron and Grand Island.

The Constitutional Coalition, which along with WNY Students First assisted right-leaning candidates, said another 11 of their candidates won election in other counties in western and central New York.

These candidates ran on platforms that opposed the teaching of sex education, critical race theory and mask and vaccine mandates to address Covid.

Our base is energized. These school board victories are a strong foundation for future success. The mission is far from done, Nancie Orticelli, founder of The Constitutional Coalition, said in a joint statement with WNY Students First posted on Facebook.

If her words arent a wake-up call for progressives, moderates and other thinking people, I dont know what is.

True, last Saturdays shooter wasnt from here. But remember who was: Timothy McVeigh.

Geoff Kelly and Layne Dowdall contributed to this column.

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The rise of the radical right in WNY - Investigative Post

When I was a teenager, after reading the Diary of Anne Frank, I always asked myself if I had lived in Germany in the 1930s, would I have spoken up and done the right thing. Right now is my 1930s.

On May 14, 10 innocent lives were taken by a white supremacist and domestic terrorist in a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y. On the very same day in the state of Vermont, the VTGrassRoots organization and the states Republican Party were hosting two men who further racist and hateful ideology and alt-right propaganda. If you go to VTGrassRoots website, you will see a video repeating the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. In that video, you will see people of color putting ballots in a ballot box. This is accompanied by very dark and dramatic music. If you are easily fooled, it might lead one to assume that they are stuffing ballot boxes. It only furthers the narrative that our country is being stolen or replaced by people of color.

This is violent and harmful and we will continue to see domestic terrorist acts committed in this country due to white supremacy. There is no proof presented in the video that anything was stolen, just snippets of dark and grainy pictures that promote lies.

I am sure there are those who feel that they are expressing their right to free speech. But because your free speech is hate speech, your rights end where the dignity of others begins. Please take a stand against racism and hate in this beautiful state. Please vote for candidates that will continue and build on values that allow everyone to live with dignity and respect in our country.

Patricia New

North Ferrisburgh

See original here:
Letter to the editor: Let's take a stand against racism - Addison County Independent

Washington

In a 180-page missive posted online before the May 14 mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, alleged gunman Payton Gendron wrote that he wanted "to spread awareness to my fellow whites about the real problems the West is facing."

The problems, according to the alleged shooter? Mass immigration and white people not having enough babies.

"This crisis of mass immigration and sub-replacement fertility," the 18-year-old white man wrote, "is an assault on the European people that, if not combated, will ultimately result in the complete racial and cultural replacement of the European people."

Though he did not call it by its name, Gendron was referring to a far-right conspiracy theory known as the Great Replacement, which says Western elites, Jews in particular, are bringing in immigrants to replace whites.

In addition to the Buffalo shooting that killed 10 Black people and wounded three others, extremism experts say the racist theory has inspired attacks on ethnic and religious minorities as far away as Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso, Texas.

French origins

The idea that nonwhite immigrants could eventually displace native-born white Europeans has roots in 20th century French ethnic nationalism. But the term itself was coined and popularized by French white nationalist author Renaud Camus (no relation to Albert Camus).

As he recently told the right-wing outlet Konflikt Magazin, he first came up with the expression in the 1990s in a small, medieval village in the south of France.

There, near "Gothic windows and Gothic fountains," were Muslim women in veils and men in djellaba robes, he recalled. "I was, of course, accustomed like everybody else to seeing the change of people in [the predominantly Arab and Black] suburbs, but there it was especially striking."

Camus said he later gave a speech titled "The Great Replacement" in a nearby town, and in 2011, self-published a book of the same title in French.

Though never translated into English, the book helped spur the launch of a trans-European far-right network with connections to extremists in the United States, according to Wendy Via, co-founder and president of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.

"The ideas were picked up almost immediately, and they comported with other white supremacist ideas here in the U.S. and other places," Via said.

Describing it as a "plain fact" and not a "theory," Camus said the great replacement is simply "a change of people with a change of culture and civilization."

Extremism experts say it's more than that.

"The great replacement theory is a conspiracy theory that says that white people are purposely being replaced with immigrants, migrants, Muslims, refugees across the world, primarily affecting the Western European countries and the United States," Via said.

American proponents

The white replacement idea gained traction in the United States among white supremacists who adopted it as a substitute for their theory about "white genocide" as they sought to rebrand themselves as white nationalists in recent years.

"The idea of replacing is somewhat easier to understand than genocide for people to accept," said Michael Edison Hayden, a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Though Camus did not blame Jews, American white supremacists have adopted his phrase as an anti-Jewish slogan.

Many Americans first became familiar with the term in 2017 when alt-right activists organized a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where activists chanted, "You will not replace us," and "Jews will not replace us."

The rally turned deadly when a neo-Nazi sympathizer drove his truck into counter-protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.

Link to violence

Camus denies his words have inspired violence. But extremism experts say the replacement idea has helped propel a string of deadly attacks by white supremacists on Jews, Muslims, Hispanics and Blacks in recent years.

Those include the massacre of 13 worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018; the slaughter in 2019 of 51 Muslims at two mosques in New Zealand; and the mass killing of 23 people, most of whom were Hispanic, at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, in 2019.

"It is a substantial influence on these types of attacks," Hayden said.

Hayden noted that before the replacement idea gained currency in recent years, most mass shootings in the country did not appear to be ideologically motivated. For example, the gunman in the 2012 massacre at a movie theater in Colorado suffered from severe mental illness and had no known extremist beliefs.

Now, shooters have found an ideology to justify violence, Hayden said.

"This functions in almost the same way that terrorists of all kinds are able to find sociopathic people or unstable people and fill them with a sense of purpose," he said.

In his manifesto, Gendron wrote that the person who "radicalized" him the most was Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch mosques shooter whose 2019 massacre manifesto was titled "The Great Replacement."

"Brenton started my real research into the problems with immigration and foreigners in our white lands," Gendron wrote.

Gendron added that he decided to take matters into his own hands after "learning the truth" on the right-wing message board 4chan that the "white race is dying out, that Blacks are disproportionately killing whites and that the Jews and elites were behind this."

A Media Matters search of the message board found that users have mentioned the terms "great replacement," "white replacement," or "white genocide" more than 90,000 times since July 2018.

Camus has sought to distance himself from the shooting in Buffalo and other attacks allegedly inspired by the great replacement theory.

A Twitter account apparently linked to Camus said Sunday that neither the Buffalo shooter nor the New Zealand mosques attacker had referenced Camus or his book, rejecting the suggestion that his book was a call to hatred or a call to violence.

Going mainstream

The replacement idea is no longer confined to the outer edges of the far right. Increasingly, prominent conservative television hosts and politicians have faced accusations of using it as a trope to condemn "mass immigration."

One prominent personality accused of promoting the conspiracy is conservative Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Media Matters, said Carlson started regularly discussing the idea in 2019.

"It was a core white supremacist conspiracy theory that suddenly he was talking about on his Fox News show, and then suddenly, other Fox News hosts were doing the same thing. And then Republican politicians," Gertz said.

During a segment last year, Carlson said that Biden's policy of "mass immigration" is designed "to change the racial mix of the country."

"In political terms, this policy is called the great replacement the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from far away countries," Carlson said.

In comments on Monday night, Carlson said the Buffalo shooter was mentally ill and not politically motivated and that "the great replacement theory is coming from the left" where activists and politicians push a demographic shift for political advantage.

During a visit to Buffalo to pay tribute to victims of the shooting, President Biden said he condemned "those who spread the lie" about white replacement. The White House has previously dismissed suggestions that it is promoting an "open borders" policy.

Other Fox News hosts such as Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham have charged that Democrats are seeking to bring in immigrants to replace Americans for political gain, according to Gertz.

In the wake of the Buffalo shooting, Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik has drawn criticism from Democrats and some Republicans for promoting the racist theory. She has denied the charge.

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What is the Great Replacement Theory? - Voice of America - VOA News