Expert panel on the Buffalo shooter and what he stands for: "He was not a lone gunman."

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:

Jared Holt
@jaredlholt
Talked to @chaunceydevega about the attack in Buffalo

"Though the Biden administration has made some progress [...] it is working uphill against a Republican Party seeking to exert minority rule over the country by agitating its most extreme elements"

salon.com
Expert panel on the Buffalo shooter and what he stands for: "He was not a lone gunman"
Buffalo killer didn't act alone, panel agrees: He was nurtured by the Fox-GOP "doom loop of racist discourse"
10:05 AM · May 17, 2022

https://www.salon.com/2022/05/17/expert-panel-on-the-buffalo-shooter-and-what-he-stands-for-he-was-not-a-lone-gunman/

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In total, Gendron's manifesto reads like a catalog of the white racial paranoid fantasies, delusions and conspiracy theories that have become standard talking points for Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and numerous Republican elected officials, candidates, and other public figures.

Gendron's act of terrorism is not surprising: It is the predictable if not inevitable result of a decades-long strategy by the Republican Party and larger white right to encourage and normalize political violence and terrorism against Black and brown people, Democrats, liberals, progressives, the LGBTQ community, Muslims, and anyone else deemed to be the enemy of their fascist, authoritarian project.

As I wrote earlier this week,

Donald Trump, the Republicans and the larger white right did not start the slow, long-burning fire of white supremacy in America. But they have gleefully thrown gasoline, grenades and other explosives on the fire and then danced around the flames as they spread.

Fascism is an ideology based on racial authoritarianism and violence. As the conflict created by the Trump movement heats up, we are likely to see more terrorist attacks against Black and brown people and other targeted groups, attacks just as horrifying as the one last Saturday in Buffalo, or perhaps worse. There is a line inscribed in blood that leads from Donald Trump's hateful rhetoric to Jan. 6, 2021, to last Saturday in Buffalo. Where it will lead next? Unfortunately, we will soon find out as the next chapter in the new American neofascist nightmare is being written all around us in real time.

I asked a range of experts to offer their insights about Saturday's terror attack in Buffalo and what that event reveals about American society in this moment of democracy crisis, rising neofascism and other troubles. Their comments have been edited for clarity and length.

*snip*