The Washington Post’s Brian Broome claimed in a column Tuesday that the Buffalo shooter has the same motivation as conservative opponents of abortion.
WHAT HE SAID
According to Broome, Payton Gendron, the suspect in Saturday’s allegedly racist mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, is not “mentally ill,” “troubled” or “just a misguided teen.”
- “The truth is that he’s simply hateful in the same way that right-wing politics have instructed him to be,” Broome wrote.
- Both white supremacists and “popular right-wing conservatives” fear “losing the top spot” in America’s racial hierarchy, he suggested, and that fear “has mutated into an ideology known as the great replacement theory.”
Broome went on to say that the “same sort of thinking about race and birthrates now dominates the Supreme Court” and explains the recently leaked draft majority opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, a 1973 decision creating a constitutional right to abortion.
- “The leaked draft opinion isn’t about protecting babies. It is about protecting Whiteness. Specifically, White babies … The Supreme Court draft decision is about protecting what conservatives believe is a diminishing demographic and their most valuable resource: White people,” he said.
- “Critical race theory frightens conservatives for a related reason. They imagine that, if schools teach the real American history, White people will be as hated and reviled as the other races in this country. So, it’s best to teach a redacted version of the story.”
Broome denied that he was “engaging in conspiracy theories,” citing his “lived experience” as a black American as proof of his claims.
- “The real agenda here is to boost White birthrates, because among the biggest fears of conservatives is the fear of being outnumbered. It’s all over Gendron’s lengthy ‘manifesto,'” he concluded.
SAME ENERGY
Many prominent liberals have suggested the Buffalo shooter was a product of systemic anti-black racism, particularly on the right.
- “White people have told people who look like me … ‘It is fine to be a minority. You can do it!,” New York Times columnist Charles Blow said Monday on MSNBC.
- “The moment that white people sense that they can be on the verge of being a minority themselves, many of them are responding with terrorism and killing people.”