When Payton Gendron, an 18-year-old white teenager, allegedly opened fire on shoppers in the Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York, he knew exactly who he was aiming at: African Americans. Of the 10 people who were murdered and three wounded in the attack, 11 were Black.
The crime is murder; the motive was hate. The teenager identified himself as a white supremacist and a terrorist in a 180-page screed police recovered. The suspect repeatedly cited what is called “replacement theory,” a grotesque conspiracy theory circulating on the right that claims that Democrats and/or Jews are attempting to replace White Americans by importing non-white immigrants.
