This article has an excellent roundup of how conservative pundits have doubled-down on the 'great replacement' conspiracy theory in the wake of the Buffalo shooting. It also explains the various flaws of reasoning in that narrative. I'm really disappointed by this reaction from the conservative media elite -- I had expected them to shy away from it for a while, but instead they have decided to own it. That is troubling, to say the least.
I'll come back later to discuss why I think these pundits are promoting a genocidal conspiracy theory (if anyone has questions). Serwer does a good job of breaking it down. In short, there are several flaws:
- Political identity/ideology is not fixed, especially not across generations.
- Democrats are not openly advocating for 'replacement' (Carlsons' clips show nothing of the sort).
- The problems with this conspiracy theory are not mitigated by replacing "Jews" with "Democrats" -- it still has 99% of the genocidal potential, and 99% of the logical fallacies.
Edit: Here's an Ann Coulter piece that Serwer did not include, but shows the same rhetoric.
I kind of saw a variant of the second theory being circulated: that current citizens who have higher stabdards of freedom and wages are being replaced by immigrants who are willing to work for less and have less rights.
Ann Coulter quoted some mainstream liberals basically saying they believe in some variant of GRT: https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2022/05/18/ann-coulter-here-are-the-nutcases-who-believe-in-replacement/
The economic version is out there too -- and it actually is fairly appealing to Democrats (they don't want US workers to compete with other workers).
Coulter takes her quotes out of context. For instance, I dug up her Patrick Reddy quote (which she did not properly cite, of course), and Reddy did not assume that immigrants inevitably vote for Democrats. Instead, he said that their support for Democrats was a reaction to anti-immigrant actions from Republicans.
Coulter and Carlson also use equivocation to confuse the issue -- they act as though building a political coalition that includes immigrants and their children is the same thing as engineering a demographic change to create a new majority. To see those two things as being even remotely connected, you have to assume that immigrants inevitably favor Democrats.
It's basically just turning it around, though... Instead of we directly benefit from importing the Third World, it becomes aren't these Republicans terrible for not wanting to import the Third World..? Of course they don't get the votes, they're rae-rae.
Keep in mind, though, that the leading GOP figures are guys like
Etc.
The GOP has also been doing its best to appeal more & more to the latino vote.
It's just not racist at all.
Jeb is a leading figure?