COULD A RACIAL MASSACRE
LIKE BUFFALO, NY HAPPEN
HERE? NO QUESTION, IT CAN
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
Could a racial massacre similar to what tragically happened last Saturday in Buffalo, NY where an 18-year-old white gunman allegedly shot 11 blacks and two whites, killing 10 blacks, happen in North Carolina?
Remember the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church racial massacre of June 17, 2015 in Charleston, South Carolina, where a 21-year-old white supremacist named Dylann Roof murdered nine black members of a Bible-study group?
In both cases, the white gunmen travelled hours to, and researched the locations of their crimes (in the Buffalo, NY case, a Tops Supermarket in a predominately black section of the city) because they were deliberately targeting black victims. In Dylann Roof’s case, he was seeking to start a race war.
Payton Gendron, the suspect in the Buffalo, NY massacre, was allegedly acting out of concern from an infamous white supremacist meme - the Great Replacement Theory (GRT). They say he allegedly planned to a racial shooting at his high school last year, and if he escaped Saturday’s massacre, do it again elsewhere until he was stopped. Fortunately, Gendron was captured in Buffalo.
Investigators there say Gendron had issued a 180-page racist manifesto expressing concern that blacks, immigrants and other people of color were slowly but surely replacing whites in the general population in an effort to completely take over the country.
“[Jews] can be dealt with in time, but the high fertility replacers will destroy us now, [so] it is a matter of survival we destroy them first,” Gendron purportedly wrote.
Ironically, GRT is also something embraced by mainstream Republican politicians and Fox News commentators when they express reasoning to vehemently oppose the immigration of illegal Mexicans across the US-Mexican border, or validation of black voting rights.
“This [Democrat] administration wants complete open borders. And you have to ask yourself, why?” U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) once asked. “Is it [that] really they want to remake the demographics of America to ensure that they stay in power forever?”
And this view goes beyond one Republican U.S. senator, Fox News or one alleged white supremacist gunman. According to Vice News, “An Associated Press-NORC poll released on [May 1, 2022) showed that fully one-third of Americans, and almost half of Republicans, believe that “there is a group of people in this country who are trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants who agree with their political view.”
We may be hearing a lot about GRT now, but experts say it’s been touted online by white supremacist groups for years.
It was August 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. when white supremacists marched with tiki torches on the campus of the University of Virginia - Charlottesville declaring “Jews will not replace us” and “They will not replace us.”
There’s the August 3, 2019 racially - motivated mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, where a white right-wing gunman issued a white nationalist/anti-immigrant manifesto - based on a similar attack in Norway - when he opened fire in a Wal-Mart store. Twenty-three people were killed, 23 injured. Most were Mexican-American.
Add to that a series of other racial or religious mass murders across the country in recent years, particularly at Jewish synagogues, and the number of mass shootings in North Carolina alone increasing from 11 in 2019, to 20 in 2020, and many observers would agree that the table is set for more racially-motivated mass shootings even here.
Remember, it was 1995 when a group of white supremacist members of the military at Fort Bragg Army base in Fayetteville were smuggling guns for the purpose of a race war they were preparing for before they were caught by federal authorities.
Indeed, according to a USA Today analysis of Gun Violence Archive statistics from 2020, “…mass shootings surged by 47% as many states reported unprecedented increases in weapons-related incidents. In 2020, the United States reported 611mass shooting events that resulted in 513 deaths and 2,543 injuries.”
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most of those mass shootings occurred among black people because of increasing poverty, COVID-19, etc. But the number of hate crime-based mass shootings, where whites kill a group of people of color, like the March 2021 Atlanta, Ga. spa slayings where where eight Asian-Americans were murdered, are expected to increase.
Note the general definition - a mass shooting is where four or more people are injured or killed in one gun incident. Add widespread white supremacy to the mix, along with GRT, or a stated opposition to CRT - critical race theory (which is NOT taught in primary or secondary public schools despite claims to the contrary) - and a crazed Jan. 6th belief that the country is being “taken over” by people of color, and yes, say many observers, Buffalo, NY could happen again anywhere.
“This gunman intended to inspire others if you read his manifesto,” said NY Gov. Kathy Hochul after Saturday’s racial massacre.
-30-
NC HIGH COURT TAKES
UP EX-FELON VOTING
By Cash Michaels
An analysis
There should be no wonder why Republican legislative leaders dearly want to see GOP justices take over the state’s highest court. They already have a definitive majority of the NC Court of Appeals, and securing a majority on the NC Supreme Court, coupled with maintaining control of the NC General Assembly and hopefully winning the Governor’s mansion with controversial black Republican current Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, would give the GOP the last word on all things political in the state for years to come.
But to do any or all of that with the November 2022 midterm general elections up on deck, and the critical 2024 elections just two years away, it is extremely important for North Carolina Republicans to control events on the ground now.
Stopping 56,000 former felons from getting the right to vote per what some say was a “racist’ 1973 law that justified such, is clearly part of the calculus. 56,000 votes out of an estimated 4.2 million voters statewide may not seem like many, but given how tight many legislative and congressional contests tend to be across the state, as little as a few hundred in key districts could unravel any plans for total domination by the state Republican Party.
The kind of domination North Carolina Democrats had before 2011 when Republicans took over the NC General assembly.
And that’s why Republican legislative leaders insisted that the Democrat-led NC Supreme Court not take up the case of voting rights for 56,000 former felons several weeks ago, only to have the state’s High Court do exactly that.
It was March 28th when a three-judge Superior Court panel voted 2-1 to give the 56,000 ex-felons the voting rights that they sought. But the N.C. Court of Appeals temporarily blocked that order on April 5.
That forced attorneys for the ex-felons to then immediately petition the NC Supreme Court to take up their appeal from the full 10-5 Republican-led state appellate court.
Republican legislative leaders countered by asking the state Supreme Court to keep their hands off, and leave it to the appeals court to decide.
“This Court should allow for this case to proceed in the ordinary course. That is particularly so because Plaintiffs offer no valid reason to circumvent that process,” petitioned Nicole Moss, counsel for GOP leaders.
Apparently the five Democrat associate justices of the state’s highest court disagreed, and on Friday, May 6th, ordered the full state appellate court to back-off because they wanted to hear and consider the case.
So now, a decision will be on a normal track to come down before the November midterm elections, exactly what state Republicans did not want to have happen.
Their only hope now is that the High Court’s majority will agree with them, which isn’t likely, and/or that 56,000 more voters this November won’t make a difference as to who goes on to represent the state in Congress, or the legislature.
Republicans also hope that those 56,000 ex-felons, many of whom are black, won’t remember who was trying awfully hard to deny them their right to vote.
Also, not likely.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment