May 14, 2022
The congressman who represents Buffalo, New York in Congress warned of racist domestic terrorism after an 18-year-old white man allegedly murdered ten people at a mass shooting being investigated as a hate crime.
The suspect reportedly wrote a 106-page manifesto pushing the racist "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory espoused by Fox News personality Tucker Carlson.
Rep. Brian Higgins (D-NY) discussed the racist dynamics of the attack in an interview with CNN's Pamela Brown.
Higgins noticed the investigation was in its early stages, but said it appears "cohesive in terms of the motivation."
"This was an individual that was from outside our area, he was not from Buffalo. He came to Buffalo heavily armed with at least an AK-47 that was modified, killed ten people, three people are in the hospital, expected to recover. but this is a sad day for Buffalo, a sad day for the nation," he explained.
"There's premeditation. when you make a charge against somebody, you have to put all those pieces together. but even in the preliminary information that we have, clearly this is an individual that selected Buffalo, selected an area of Buffalo that is predominantly African-American, from outside the area. That is not coincidental," he argued. "And we believe, and law enforcement officials believe, that this is part of an organized effort to attack the minority community generally and the community of Buffalo as its target."
"When you say part of an organized effort, what do you mean by that?" Brown asked.
"That there is an element in our society that is blatantly racist, and they're violent and this is clearly an indication of domestic violence. There was -- you know, he live-streamed the horrific detail in real time of this murder of innocent people," he explained.
He warned racism is a threat to the country.
"And so all indications are, this points to an effort to exact domestic terrorism that is racially motivated on a community. But that threat to our community in Buffalo and western New York is a threat to the nation," he said.
Watch:
CHILLING
The username on a livestream of the massacre ties him to racist conspiracy theories.
Kelly Weill
William Bredderman
Allison Quinn
Published May. 14, 2022
The New York teenager accused of killing 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket on Saturday afternoon in a “straight-up racially motivated hate crime” appears to have spent months before the attack spewing racist conspiracy theories on social media sites.
Law enforcement officials have named the alleged gunman as 18-year-old Payton Gendron, of Conklin, New York. They also confirmed that Gendron livestreamed some of the attack.
Footage from the livestream, posted on the video platform Twitch, shows a man decked out in military garb filming from a helmet-mounted camera before exiting the car with a rifle, on which he appears to have painted racist slurs.
A spokesperson for Twitch confirmed to The Daily Beast that the shooting was broadcast live on the platform by a person with the username “jimboboiii.” They said they were “vigorously monitoring” to shut down any re-streams of the horrifying footage.
A person using the same social media handle as Gendron’s Twitch account shared racist and antisemitic comments on Reddit and Discord in the months before the attack. In addition, a hate-filled document that surfaced online soon after the assault was written under the name Payton Gendron and contained a vow to target Buffalo because of its large Black population. He wrote that he would specifically target Black people, both inside and outside the Tops store, which was mentioned by name and location.
That document also described plans to murder an armed security guard on duty and included a crude sketch of the store and where the author expected the guard to stand inside. It anticipated a gun fight, and described how the author planned to absorb shots with body armor.
The document also included some biological details, noting that the author lived with his two brothers and parents. A neighbor of the Gendron family told The Daily Beast the 18-year-old has two brothers.
Law enforcement sources have told The Daily Beast that they are investigating a possible manifesto, but the document could not be authenticated in the hours after the massacre. It’s not clear if the version that was circulating online could have been altered by someone.
A person using the username “Jimbo Boiii” also posted a review online for a pawn shop near Gendron’s hometown, which is a three-hour drive from Buffalo. The shop advertises its purchase and sale of coins, a theme in both the Reddit account and the purported manifesto. The writer of the latter described accruing gold and silver pieces as a way to spite national governments that print paper money, and the Jewish he imagined control them.
The manifesto also pays tribute to the gunman in the Christchurch, New Zealand shootings, who killed 51 people at two mosques—referring to the 2019 mass shooter as “the person that radicalized [me] the most.” The writer specifically lauds the earlier gunman’s obsession with the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, a racist fantasy about a supposed plot to eliminate white people.
The shooter thus appears to have followed in the footsteps of notorious white supremacist gunmen like those in the 2019 massacres in El Paso, Texas; Poway, California; and the 2018 attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue.
In the aftermath of Saturday’s shooting, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called out social media for enabling the gunman to spread his views.
“The social media platforms that profit from their existence need to be responsible for monitoring ... They can in a sense become an accomplice if not legally, but morally,” she told reporters.
At an evening press conference, Buffalo officials said there was no known contact between law enforcement and Gendron and that they had no warning of the attack.
Gendron was previously enrolled at SUNY Broome Community College but it was not immediately clear how long he studied there. A spokeswoman for the school, in comments to The Buffalo News, described him as a “former student.”
-- Eileen Grench contributed reporting