Four years after twenty-three people were murdered by a white nationalist, Texas Republicans continue to speak about an immigrant invasion.
For almost four years, residents of El Paso waited for the gunman in the Walmart shooting to be sentenced. Twenty-three people—children, mothers, fathers, and grandparents—were murdered by a man who, according to the Department of Justice, described himself as a “white nationalist, motivated to kill Hispanics.”
In the aftermath of the massacre, police found a manifesto written by the gunman; it cast his actions as “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.” Citing the Great Replacement Theory, the gunman claimed to be “defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.” This logic was embraced by murderers before and after him. In 2018, a forty-six-year-old man walked into the Tree of Life synagogue, in Pittsburgh, and killed eleven worshippers, whom he accused of allowing immigrant “invaders” into the country. (The shooter was sentenced to death earlier this month.) Last year, an eighteen-year-old white man stormed a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York. He gunned down ten of its customers, whom he claimed wanted to “replace my own people.”
For years, the Great Replacement Theory has permeated white nationalist groups around the world, fuelled by conservative personalities in the media and politics.
In reference to migrants at the southern border, Ann Coulter told viewers of Jeanine Pirro’s show on Fox News, “You can shoot invaders”; Tucker Carlson portrayed migrants as a group to be defended against. “Will anyone in power do anything to protect America this time?” Carlson asked on his prime-time program. “Or will leaders sit passively back as the invasion continues?”
Political leaders echoed this sentiment, not only by hardening their policies on the border but also by using terms such as “invaders” and “invasion.”