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WASHINGTON: A teenage white supremacist who raged that people of color are replacing whites in America in a 180-page “manifesto,” zeroed in a minority-frequented store in Buffalo, New York, on Saturday and massacred 13 people, almost all blacks.
Payton Gendron, 18, surrendered after the carnage, which he lived-streamed on a social media platform, and was charged with first-degree murder in what law enforcement officials described as a racially motivated hate crime. He pleaded not guilty and was remanded without bail.
There appeared to have been plenty of red flags about Payton’s extremist views and his intent to conduct mass shooting. Aside from the racist opinion he expressed in the manifesto, authorities in the school where he studied told the local media in Buffalo that he had threatened violence and shooting in exchanges with fellow students and had been referred for mental health evaluation and counseling.
On his way to conduct the massacre at a place that he chose by looking up the zip code with a heavy black population, he began a live stream that showed him wearing military-style tactical gear with helmet.
On the barrel of his rifle, the “N-word” is spelled out in white paint on the barrel, with the number 14.
The number 14 is said to refer to a 14-word statement that is popular with white supremacists, and reads, ‘We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white people. The statement is attributed to the late David Lane, an activist with a white supremacist terror group known as The Order.
In a 180-page manifesto that he posted online before going on his killing spree, the big-built teenager espouses paranoid white supremacist views, referring to the “great replacement theory,” which claims Democrats are deliberately importing illegal migrants into the US to achieve electoral dominance while driving whites to extinction.
The theory is aired often in the so-called “Ultra MAGA” constituency, including by some prominent commentators in the right-wing media.
In his screed, Gendron says he was radicalized by 4Chan, the online chat group that launched Qanon, and he refers to other mass shootings by white supremacists like Brenton Tarrant, who massacred 51 people in mosque in New Zealand, and Dylan Roof, who who killed nine people in a black church in South Carolina.
The Buffalo carnage resembled a similar one in Texas in 2019 when another white man, Patrick Crusius, drove across the state to mow down 23 Latinos at a Walmart in the border city of El Paso.
There have also been multiple racist attacks on Asians — including Indians — in recent years in a country that is never short of lectures on violence and discrimination in other countries.
Familiar venting about gun control (from Democrats) and gun rights (from Republicans), with the usual “thoughts and prayers” for the victims, erupted after shooting in a country where gun violence is endemic.
President Joe Biden said racially motivated hate crime was “abhorrent to the very fabric of this nation” in a statement that called “Any act of domestic terrorism, including an act perpetrated in the name of a repugnant white nationalist ideology…antithetical to everything we stand for in America.”
“Hate must have no safe harbor. We must do everything in our power to end hate-fueled domestic terrorism,” he added.
There was a clamor on social media to describe the incident as terrorism and the perpetrator as a terrorist, with reminders that armed white killers are invariably captured alive and receive preferential treatment in a country where unarmed black people are rampantly killed by the police for little or no provocation.
Payton Gendron, 18, surrendered after the carnage, which he lived-streamed on a social media platform, and was charged with first-degree murder in what law enforcement officials described as a racially motivated hate crime. He pleaded not guilty and was remanded without bail.
There appeared to have been plenty of red flags about Payton’s extremist views and his intent to conduct mass shooting. Aside from the racist opinion he expressed in the manifesto, authorities in the school where he studied told the local media in Buffalo that he had threatened violence and shooting in exchanges with fellow students and had been referred for mental health evaluation and counseling.
On his way to conduct the massacre at a place that he chose by looking up the zip code with a heavy black population, he began a live stream that showed him wearing military-style tactical gear with helmet.
On the barrel of his rifle, the “N-word” is spelled out in white paint on the barrel, with the number 14.
The number 14 is said to refer to a 14-word statement that is popular with white supremacists, and reads, ‘We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white people. The statement is attributed to the late David Lane, an activist with a white supremacist terror group known as The Order.
In a 180-page manifesto that he posted online before going on his killing spree, the big-built teenager espouses paranoid white supremacist views, referring to the “great replacement theory,” which claims Democrats are deliberately importing illegal migrants into the US to achieve electoral dominance while driving whites to extinction.
The theory is aired often in the so-called “Ultra MAGA” constituency, including by some prominent commentators in the right-wing media.
In his screed, Gendron says he was radicalized by 4Chan, the online chat group that launched Qanon, and he refers to other mass shootings by white supremacists like Brenton Tarrant, who massacred 51 people in mosque in New Zealand, and Dylan Roof, who who killed nine people in a black church in South Carolina.
The Buffalo carnage resembled a similar one in Texas in 2019 when another white man, Patrick Crusius, drove across the state to mow down 23 Latinos at a Walmart in the border city of El Paso.
There have also been multiple racist attacks on Asians — including Indians — in recent years in a country that is never short of lectures on violence and discrimination in other countries.
Familiar venting about gun control (from Democrats) and gun rights (from Republicans), with the usual “thoughts and prayers” for the victims, erupted after shooting in a country where gun violence is endemic.
President Joe Biden said racially motivated hate crime was “abhorrent to the very fabric of this nation” in a statement that called “Any act of domestic terrorism, including an act perpetrated in the name of a repugnant white nationalist ideology…antithetical to everything we stand for in America.”
“Hate must have no safe harbor. We must do everything in our power to end hate-fueled domestic terrorism,” he added.
There was a clamor on social media to describe the incident as terrorism and the perpetrator as a terrorist, with reminders that armed white killers are invariably captured alive and receive preferential treatment in a country where unarmed black people are rampantly killed by the police for little or no provocation.
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