“White America,” which is “too comfortable” with the suffering of black people and needs to be “purged” of its “allegiance to white supremacy,” should be “ashamed” after the Buffalo mass shooting, according to a recent Salon piece that accuses the GOP of being a “de facto terrorist organization” as well as the “world’s largest white supremacist” group.
The Tuesday essay titled “A month after Buffalo: Is white America ashamed — or has it already forgotten?” and penned by Salon politics staff writer Chauncey DeVega, bears the subheading, “White supremacist delusions that drove Buffalo shooter are now in the GOP mainstream. So much for a reckoning.”
DeVega begins by claiming the mass shooting in Buffalo last month that killed ten people “has been all but washed away by the onrushing torrent of the news cycle,” if not entirely forgotten.
“For Black people, Buffalo offered one more example of existential terror, one more illustration that Black people in America cannot safely do the most mundane things without facing the danger of racist violence,” he writes.
He also claims that “white America” has both forgotten the incident and become “too comfortable” with the “misery, pain, and death” of black Americans.
“Within less than a month, the Buffalo massacre has largely been forgotten by America’s mainstream news media, white opinion leaders, and the white public as a whole,” he writes.
“White America is entirely too comfortable with Black and brown people’s misery, pain and death — and has used it as the scaffolding for a larger culture of cruelty, oppression and exploitation,” he added.
DeVega then quotes journalist Chris Hedges, who argued that “White people built their supremacy in America and globally with violence.”
“They massacred Native Americans and stole their land. They kidnapped Africans, shipped them as cargo to the Americas, and then enslaved, lynched, imprisoned and impoverished Black people for generations,” Hedges wrote.
“They have always gunned down Black people with impunity, a historical reality only recently discernible to most white people because of cell phone videos of killings,” he added.
Consequently, DeVega asks if the Buffalo mass shooting has “led to a collective reckoning or great awakening for white America, finally willing to purge its racism and its allegiance to white supremacy.”
“It has not,” he asserts.
According to DeVega, “for many Republicans and Trump followers, overt white supremacy and racial authoritarianism have been mainstreamed, franchised and laundered into something positive and noble in the alternate reality of MAGA World.”
In that same light, the Buffalo attack did not “force a sane response to America’s sick gun culture” either, he writes.
“The gun industry, the NRA, Federalist Society judges, right-wing interest groups and organizations, the small proportion of white men who own the vast majority of guns in America, the Republican Party and the right-wing ‘Christian’ churches have the American people in a literal death grip,” he argued.
DeVega then asks if Republicans and Trump supporters “feel shame and disgust about themselves when they learned that the terrorist who killed 10 black people in Buffalo shared their delusional beliefs about white people being ‘replaced’ or ‘oppressed’ in America.”
“Of course not,” he asserts. “If anything, the Buffalo attack appears to have reinforced their commitment to protecting white privilege and white power by any means necessary.”
Police walk outside the Tops grocery store on Sunday, May 15, 2022, in Buffalo, NY. A white 18-year-old wearing military gear and livestreaming with a helmet camera opened fire with a rifle at the supermarket, killing and wounding people in what authorities described as “racially motivated violent extremism.” (AP Photo/Joshua Bessex)
Claiming there is no “substantive evidence” to support the belief that discrimination against white Americans has become as big a problem as that against black Americans, DeVega states that, “White people control every major social, economic and political institution in America.”
“Other research has repeatedly shown that white victimology is highly correlated with support for Trump, other types of anti-Black and anti-brown racial animus, and ‘old-fashioned’ racism and bigotry as well,” he added.
According to DeVega, new polling data “reinforces once again that today’s Republican Party (along with the larger ‘conservative’ movement) has become the world’s largest white supremacist and white identity organization.”
“Based on its increasing support for right-wing political violence, the Republican Party is now a de facto terrorist organization as well,” he added.
DeVega also charged that former President Donald Trump’s “slogans about ‘America first’ or making America ‘great again’ are just restatements of the old principles of herrenvolk democracy with its ‘white freedom’ [and] ‘white power’ ideologies.”
“According to that worldview and white racial logic, America is first, foremost and most fundamentally a white man’s (and white woman’s) country,” he added. “Everyone else is just a guest.”
He concludes by claiming white supremacy remains a fixture in America.
“White supremacy may put on different robes and masks. It may wear suits and ties, dresses and pantsuits, chinos and polo shirts. But it remains a constant in American history,” he wrote.
In March, DeVega said Democrats don’t want unity with the GOP “fascists,” as he accused Republicans of seeking to create a society in which black people “have no rights the white man is bound to respect.”
In February, he claimed the GOP has morphed from an “evil insect” into a full-blown “terrorist organization,” while accusing Republicans and Trump supporters of seeking a war against American democracy, encouraging widescale violence against the left and minorities, and using “stochastic terrorism” to achieve their aims.
In October, a shockingly anti-white and anti-Christian Salon piece by DeVega referred to “the Republican fascist movement” as “objectively evil,” hoping that “people of color” die out in the battle against “multiracial democracy,” while accusing “white Christians” of embracing lies, terrorism, white supremacy, and fascism.
Last February, another Salon essay penned by DeVega accused Republicans of resembling “good Germans” of the Nazi era — wishing to believe they are decent people while hiding behind “fictions of plausible deniability for the evils committed by their leader,” as he described today’s conservatism as seeking “friendly fascism” masked in an appeal to return to “traditional values.”
Follow Joshua Klein on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
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