As the recent tragic shooting and killing of innocent blacks by a young white supremacist in Buffalo, New York, demonstrates, there is the growing role of conspiracy theories. The racist ‘replacement theory’ has become a common far-right ideology and has been connected to multiple mass shootings carried out by white supremacists, including the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, a Black church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015 and the 2019 shooting of Hispanics at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas . Unfortunately, its central ideas are now promoted not just by violent extremists, but by right wing media personalities like Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
The conspiracy theory’s more racist adherents believe Jews are behind the so-called replacement plan. Broadly speaking, the roots of this ‘replacement theory’ are deep. In the U.S., one can point to past and current efforts to intimidate and discourage Black people from voting. The antagonists’ view this as replacing” white voters at the polls — dating to the Reconstruction era after the 15th Amendment made clear suffrage couldn’t be restricted on account of race. More recently, white nationalists marching at the Charlottesville, Virginia, rally in 2017 chanted “You will not replace us!” and “Jews will not replace us!”
There are Americans and Canadians who believe in conspiracy ideas about immigrants being brought into the U.S. and Canada as part of a political plot to increase non-white voters in support of so-called ‘liberal’ and ‘left-oriented’ political parties. Besides Fox News, many of the followers prefer watching right-wing networks such as OANN or Newsmax. Access to such networks is readily available on both sides of the border, often via the Internet. Extreme nationalist groups in turn promote such conspiracy theories on their on Web sites. Thus begins the radicalization of young whites, men in particular. Regrettably, like other conspiracy theories, the ‘replacement theory’ has even been taken up by some right-wing politicians. The fact is that such theories have no place in the traditional conservative thinking, and certainly not in their platforms. In the U.S. in particular, one needs Republicans in particular to disavow such theories.
Don’t think for a moment that this theory is only believed by a small number of Americans. In a poll released last week, the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about 1 in 3 Americans believe an effort is underway to replace U.S.-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gain. The attention paid by many Republican politicians to what they see as a leaky southern border along the U.S. has been interpreted, at least by some, as a nod to the concern of white people who worry about being “replaced.”
However, while the majority of followers of replacement theory do not overtly promote calls to arms, there are smaller groups of white supremacists who are inclined to support violent tactics. Indeed, they consider those behind the above noted horrific mass shootings as being saints in their eyes. They sadly don’t hesitate to use such theories as a means to justify the use of violence.
The question for governments and societies is how to combat the spread of such conspiracy theories and the resulting climate of hate that they support? There are no easy answers. It may not be enough to just treat the associated violent behaviour as hate crimes, after the fact. What is most likely needed is to confront and outright disown such theories and the resulting disinformation, especially emerging from certain media sources. Political and spiritual leaders have to step up on a daily basis to speak against such divisive conspiracy theories and to promote unity and mutual respect among our citizens. This will take a massive effort, particularly as hate mongering has simmered in our society for decades. Much more has to be done to de-radicalize our youth in particular. De-radicalization is the on-going process of hopefully changing a person’s belief system through such means as peer group and family intervention and various education schemes.
FROLITICKS 