A common theme emerged from the 180 pages of hate-filled writings that Payton S. Gendron, the young man who killed 10 people this Saturday at a Buffalo supermarket, posted online: the idea that white Americans run risk of being replaced by people of color.
Gunmen have cited the racist idea, known as “the great replacement” or “replacement theory”, in a series of killings and other acts of violence committed in recent years. Associated in the past with the extreme right, the idea has become more and more widespread, defended by politicians and large-scale television programs.
The theory has been the motivation for several attacks in the United States and elsewhere, from the 2019 massacre at a synagogue in Poway, California, to the bombing that killed 51 worshipers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in the same year.
The racist theory was directly cited in a four-page text written by the accused of killing more than 20 people in El Paso, Texas, in 2019, who said the attack was launched in response to the “Hispanic invasion” of the state and spelled out fear. of Hispanics coming to power in the United States.
A year earlier, when 11 people were killed in a shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the accused had stated similar racist views, describing people helped by a Jewish refugee assistance agency as “invaders”.
French author conceived theory
Replacement theory was conceived in the early 2010s by Renaud Camus, a French author who wrote about the fear of white genocide, arguing that immigrants who have more children pose a threat to these people.
Camus has sought to distance himself from violent white supremacists by criticizing the massacres, although his views have been cited in several attacks. But he told the New York Times in 2019 that he still espouses that theory.
The idea that white people should fear being replaced by “others” has been spreading across far-right online platforms, as the New York Times has been reporting, and influencing discussions by American white nationalists.
The theory has also been in evidence in some acts of violence. According to the international Jewish organization Anti-Defamation League, about 60% of extremist homicides committed in the United States between 2009 and 2019 were perpetrated by people who espoused white supremacist ideologies such as replacement theory.
“Today this is the idea that most inspires mass violence in white supremacist circles,” says Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “This particular concept outperformed pretty much everything else in white supremacist circles, becoming the unifying idea that crosses borders.”
Experts say the belief represents a shift in the discourse of these groups. A few decades ago, supremacists often proclaimed themselves superior because of their race. While this still happens, many now emphasize that they fear being made extinct by people of color.
At a racist public rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, participants chanted the slogan “Jews will not take our place”.
Gendron, who is white and 18, expressed similar views in his manifesto, alluding directly to “racial substitution” and “white genocide”.
The first page of his text contained a symbol known as a “sonnenrad,” or black sun — two concentric circles with jagged rays emanating from the center. The Anti-Defamation League says the symbol was common in Nazi Germany and has now been adopted by white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
Gendron praised nationalism and criticized European men for allowing themselves to be “ethnically replaced”. He lamented the diversity in America, writing that people of color “should get away while they still can”. He also criticized progressives, saying that all they could do was “teach white kids to hate themselves”.
Beirich, who read the manifesto on Saturday, said the text appeared to contain “a hodgepodge of all crazy white supremacist ideas.”
