Payton Gendron, the only suspect in the Buffalo mass murder, identifies explicitly as a white supremacist fascist. He adds that he has neo-Nazi beliefs.
After his arrest, Gendron reportedly told police he found Black people contemptible and murdered them for that reason.
Cops also say Gendron wrote a manifesto that advances the claim that treacherous elites are hellbent on expanding immigration and suppressing white birth rates. They want to make sure that Black, Jewish, Brown and Muslim people overpower White Christians.
(Gendron's claim is known as "replacement theory." The phrase is misleading. A theory is an abstract idea, value-neutral and designed to be tested. His claim is a garden-variety lie.)
You'd think that Gendron's self-description—that he's a racist with racist reasoning—would close the case on the question of motive here. But some journalists, charged with extending the story on tight deadlines, have rejected the murderer's own account of his motives and reasons. They offer instead a cracked version of economic determinism that has about as much bearing on reality as the "great replacement."
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