Biden condemns racist theory of white supremacy in visit to Buffalo after mass shooting

President Joe Biden on Tuesday commemorated the victims of last weekend’s mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, and condemned the ideology that drove the killer to “carry out a murderous, racist rampage” at a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood. Kathy Hochul, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, rebuked the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory the shooting suspect adhered to and called for federal action to restrict access to guns. A ‘poison’ in U.S. society After that introduction memorializing the victims, Biden focused his remarks on white supremacy, which he called “a poison … running through our body politic.” He alluded to politicians and media members who exploited the so-called great replacement theory — a false view that holds white Americans are under threat of extinction by a plot to systematically replace them with nonwhite people. The suspected Buffalo killer, 18-year-old white man Payton Gendron of Conklin, New York, reportedly posted a 180-page document filled with “great replacement” talking points before traveling to the supermarket on Buffalo’s predominately Black East Side to commit the killings.