New York Times: Republicans Play on Fears of ‘Great Replacement’ in Bid for Base Voters

By Shane Goldmacher and Luke Broadwater
Read the full article here.

The mass shooting in Buffalo was the work of a lone gunman but not the product of an isolated ideology.

In a manifesto, the suspect detailed how he viewed Black people as “replacers” of white Americans. The massacre at the grocery store on Saturday trained a harsh light on the “great replacement theory,” which the authorities say he used to justify an act of racist violence — and on how that theory has migrated from the far-right fringes of American discourse toward the center of Republican politics.

…
By 2017, white supremacist groups embraced Mr. Camus’ ideas, employing antisemitic conspiracy theories. They adopted a new slogan — alternately “Jews will not replace us” or “You will not replace us” — chanted at rallies, most infamously at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., that August, where a white nationalist killed a counterprotester. White supremacists who committed mass killings in Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso, Tex., in 2019 both referred to the theory in their respective manifestoes.

“These conspiracies are at the core of the Republican Party right now and I don’t think it’s partisan to say that,” said Amy Spitalnick, the executive director of Integrity First for America, which won a lawsuit against the organizers of the 2017 Charlottesville rally.