El Paso shooter Patrick Crusius
This past weekend's mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, are a sign that white supremacists are mounting an uprising to halt what they call "The Great Replacement," a former neo-Nazi said on CNN yesterday. In fact, Nicholas Picciolini says the violence is likely to get worse in the near future.
"The Great Replacement" is a theory that minorities are "outbreeding" whites, meaning whites are destined to be replaced as the dominant race in American society. From Sarah K. Burris, reporting at Raw Story:
Former neo-Nazi Christian Picciolini, who created The Free Radicals Project, explained on CNN Sunday that these mass shootings from white supremacists are just the beginning.
He explained that the white supremacist manifesto the El Paso shooter (Patrick Crusius) left is something that he’s heard before.
“I think that manifestos have been very similar since 2009 when James von Brunn walked into the D.C. Holocaust Museum and left a manifesto,” Picciolini recalled. “They all reference the same conspiracy theories. Lately, they’ve been referencing something called ‘The Great Replacement,‘ which is this theory that whites are being outbred in America and will be replaced. Now, it’s all based on conspiracy theories, but what’s similar about these things is now that they’re trying to outdo each other, I think the death toll is going to get bigger and bigger.”
White supremacists now are largely trying to outdo Oklahoma City truck bomber Timothy McVeigh, Picciolini says. And President Donald Trump's rhetoric only makes the situation more volatile. From Raw Story:
“So, what’s happening is they are starting to put into action some of his policies that are getting pushbacks in a more extreme manner,” Picciolini explained. “So, they’re now starting to go after immigrants. They’re now starting to go after Muslims, and they’re taking it into their own hands. It’s only going to get worse. What they’re trying to outdo is Timothy McVeigh and his Oklahoma City bombing.”
Christian Picciolini
McVeigh killed 168 people, many of whom were children, by bombing the Oklahoma City federal building April 19, 1995. He explained that his motivation was part of retaliation for the ATF’s raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. While McVeigh did not proclaim to be a white supremacist, he frequently quoted a white supremacist novel, The Turner Diaries.
As for "The Great Replacement" theory. signs of that were apparent at the deadly 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia:
Host Wolf Blitzer recalled the chants at the Charlottesville, Virginia riots, where men shouted out, “Jews will not replace us.” Picciolini agreed it was an example of that kind of “white replacement theory” the right believes.
“And Brenton Tarrant in the New Zealand massacre referenced ‘The Great Replacement’ and several others since then have referenced it as well,” he noted.
What can Americans do about a rising tide of white-supremacist violence? Picciolini has some ideas, but first, he said we need to grasp what is going on. From Raw Story:
“You know, we have these discussions about guns, and we need better gun laws and more common-sense gun laws, but what is going to happen is they’re just going to find other ways to do this, so we need a more comprehensive approach,” Picciolini continued. “Things like a domestic terrorism statute which currently we don’t have on the books. And let me be clear about this: Since the ’80s, these white nationalists groups, myself included, we’re tied globally. So, this is a transnational terror network. What we’re seeing now is a wave of domestic terrorism.”He went on to say that the attacks are a “mirror” to the political polarization the United States is seeing, only “it’s being amplified now, including violence.”
“The more that we’re having discussions about, . . . wedge issues like immigration or gun reform . . . we’re going to see more of these activities happen to people who are feeling like something is being taken away from them when in reality, it’s not,” he said. “Equalization of rights does not equal oppression. And that’s how it’s landing on them at the moment.”
