Every detail of Payton Gendron’s white supremacist attack in Buffalo reeks of the murderer’s clear aim of terrorizing not only the Black shoppers he killed on Saturday but also the rest of us, who are left in fear of the copycat attacks that he explicitly sought to inspire.
The murderer shot Black people with a rifle with the N-word scrawled on it. His decision to livestream his racist attack added to the attack’s dehumanizing and dystopian nature by displaying the deaths of his victims as if the massacre were a video game. And the 180-page manifesto that he left behind — part meme farm and part manual — contains pages of racist and antisemitic memes and clearly seeks to inspire copycat attacks by outlining weaponry and providing tips for carrying out more attacks.
Gendron, the 18-year-old white man who shot 13 people, murdering 11 of them, mostly Black, in a white supremacist attack at Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, had planned to attack Black shoppers at the grocery store because it was located in a predominately Black neighborhood. He is best understood as an accelerationist who hopes his instance of “direct action” will hasten a racial crisis, enabling reactionary forces to create a societal disruption and orchestrate a takeover of the U.S.
In attacking Black residents at the grocery store, Gendron explicitly sought to terrorize all Black folks with the hopes of rallying other likeminded white Americans to the cause.
While law enforcement often kills Black people suspected for minor infractions, if any at all, the white murderer survived his encounter with responding police officers. While I do not condone police violence, law enforcement’s ability to apprehend mass murderers like Dylann Roof rubbed salt into a collective emotional and psychic wound inflicted by Gendron. Gendron’s release of his 180-page racist manifesto explaining his motivation for his racist attack added to the burn.
The murderer’s actions at the Tops Friendly Market were a disturbing echo of the white supremacists’ chants of “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville in 2017. In his manifesto, the killer proclaimed himself a white supremacist, Nazi, separatist and nationalist who subscribes to the racist and conspiratorial “Great Replacement Theory,” which suggests that immigration, decline in white births, and efforts, such as diversity, equity and inclusion programs in schools and the private sector, and critical race theory are erasing white Americans. In an example of the symbiotic relationship between white nationalists on the ground and far right media, Fox News host Tucker Carlson has amplified the white nationalist “great replacement theory” to millions of viewers in numerous segments.
As I learned more about the details of the racist attacks in Buffalo and read the murderer’s manifesto, I recalled a rather lengthy twitter debate I had with a self-proclaimed white nationalist that took place over the course of 2016 and 2017. In fall 2016, white nationalists began hanging racist, misogynist, homophobic and Islamophobic posters on the University of Michigan’s campus, where I worked. Those responsible for the offensive posters sought to build support for white nationalism and expressed affinity for Donald Trump, whose campaign they saw as part of their organizing efforts. We responded by encouraging white students and community members to organize the group, Collective Against White Supremacy (CAWS), to combat white nationalist messaging by taking down the posters and replacing them with anti-racist ones. The organization also offered support to predominantly Black and people of color (POC) student groups as well. But, we never had to respond to any acts of physical violence.
Maple Leaf
Article URL : https://truthout.org/articles/racist-attack-in-buffalo-was-crafted-to-terrorize-us-heres-how-we-fight-back/