Every Republican in Congress voted against Wednesday’s House measure that condemned the recent mass shooting at Buffalo, New York, and denounced the white supremacist theory which allegedly motivated the shooter.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s (D-New York) measure, which passed 218 to 205 largely by party lines, explicitly condemns the “Great Replacement” theory — a bunk White supremacist and extreme rightConspiracy theory: Global elites plan to overpopulate traditionally white countries with people of color.
The conspiracy theory, which has become popular among right-wingers all over the world, is said to be the inspiration for the shooting. The Buffalo mass shooter, who killed 10 people and injures three others, was 11 percent Black.
“It takes two things to kill multiple people whom you don’t even know. It takes hate, and evil in someone’s heart, and a weapon of mass destruction,” Bowman saidin a press conference. Congress “need[s] to fight against hate in all of its forms to truly build a multiracial Democracy,” he said.
“The ‘Great Replacement’ theory believes that only white people are responsible for progress in our society, and that the growth of a multiracial and multi-religious society is a threat to white people’s existence and the health of our nation,” Bowman continued. “This has spread and infected the minds of so many.”
The procedural measure is which had 147 cosponsors in the House, was voted on before debate on Democrats’ bill to raise the age limit for purchasing semiautomatic guns and restrict the amount of ammunition that can be bought at once.
While it’s common for the minority party to vote against the majority party’s procedural measures, the move also highlights Republicans’ recalcitrance to condemn white supremacy as the party hurtles further to the right. After the shooting, Republican leaders refusedTo condemn the hateful theory, which has been openly discussed embraced by far right politiciansThe party; Fox NewsFurther Amplified the lieThe network was available for viewing in the days that followed the shooting.
Though the theory has garnered national attention due to the recent shooting in Buffalo, it’s been at least partially responsible for several mass shootingshatred rallies over the years; the shooter who murdered 51 people in Christchurch mosques, New Zealand, named the manifesto after the theory and referred to it multiple times.
White supremacy is a broad term that includes Republicans. also refuse to condemn, was at the root of recent mass shootings such as the 2015 massacre of worshipers at a Charleston, South Carolina, church.
Instead, Republicans now seem more open than ever to embracing murder and violence when it’s done in the name of dangerous far right ideologies. Republicans have been a minority in the past. You have madeAn idol out ofKyle Rittenhouse killed two people and shot three others at a protest against brutal police force in 2020. Rittenhouse has cavorted with far right militia members and has displayed white nationalist hand signals — and, when he was acquitted of murder charges after A biased trial, Republicans showered the killer with praise.
