Violent Far-Right White Radicalism Editor’s Blog – Talking Points Memo / by Josh Marshall

Violent Far-Right White Radicalism

Editor’s Blog – Talking Points Memo / by Josh Marshall / 6h

We’re digging into the details of this horrific massacre that unfolded overnight (US time) in New Zealand. There is a 74 page manifesto in which the alleged killer described his aims, motivations, etc. There are some oddities to the document in that it combines explicit declarations of support for some of the most notorious racist, anti-immigrant murderers of the early 21st century. It is also filled with some of what we might commonly on social media call trolling, sarcastically or provocatively overstated comments. We shouldn’t see this as in conflict. It’s a mode of expression deeply rooted in the subculture. But I want to take some time to describe how deeply tied this killer’s worldview, politics and aims are rooted in the rightist anti-immigrant politics which are now mainstreamed in the United States

This shooter is someone who is immersed in the great arc of anti-immigrant, racist hyper-nationalist discourse and paramilitary violence ranging from the rightist parties of Europe, various mass murderers like Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik to the white supremacist and neo-Nazi subculture we have come to know so well in the US. Charlottesville, Pittsburgh, Charleston. Dylann Roof’s massacre gets explicit reference as an inspiration and antecedent for this massacre.

The language of ‘replacement’ is the centerpiece – the idea that white Christians with low birthrates are being replaced by non-white immigrants with higher birthrates. This is literally the language of Steve King. He’s alluded to it and discussed it numerous times, both explicitly and implicitly. He discussed it at length in this interview with a far-right newspaper in Austria. Other far-right Republican officeholders do the same.

If you look at the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre shooter, he was of course attacking Jews. But his actual theory (not his alone of course but the one he embraced) was that Jews were a non-Christian force organizing the importation of non-white immigrants into the United States. He focused in the immediate sense on the caravans the right wing media was then whipping up hysteria about and conspiracy theories about George Soros funding them. But the concept is widespread. Jews want to destroy “white civilization” and they are doing so by importing immigrants of color to overwhelm native whites with higher birthrates.

Anti-Semitic attacks were a major part of the Charlottesville ‘Unite The Right’ march. But we should remember that it was anti-Semitism interwoven with ‘Great Replacementism’. Remember the chant at Charlottesville: “Jews will not replace us“.

I could cite numerous other examples of the pervasiveness of the idea. What is more significant is how the general ‘replacementist’ ideology without the explicit anti-Semitism and with the racism slightly more muted is the common language of the far right across Europe and North America and is core to Trump political movement here in the United States.

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