New York Gov. Kathy Hochul Mourns Buffalo Shooting Victims: ‘I Have 10 Dead Neighbors’

Kathy Hochul expressed her anger and sorrow on Sunday about the racist massacre in Buffalo a day earlier, when an 18-year-old white man shot 13 people at a supermarket in a Black neighborhood, killing 10. Because an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us because we are all God’s people.” The gunman, identified as Payton Gendron, had written a lengthy racist and anti-Semitic online manifesto detailing his support for a conspiracy that white supremacists call “great replacement” ― that white Americans of European ancestry are at risk of being replaced by nonwhite people due to immigration and interracial marriage. How these depraved ideas are fermenting on social media ― it’s spreading like a virus now,” Hochul told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.” “The white supremacy manifestos ― the white supremacy concepts of replacement theory where they’re concerned and now taking to the streets in places like Charlottesville and others, motivated by this idea that immigrants and Jews and Blacks are going to replace whites.” “How these depraved ideas are fermenting on social media—it’s spreading like a virus now.” After mass shooting at Buffalo supermarket in alleged hate crime, NY Gov. … I know it’s a huge, vast undertaking, but these companies have a lot of money.” The governor also went after right-wing politicians and TV personalities, like Tucker Carlson, who have unabashedly spewed racial animosity and white supremacist rhetoric, fueling instances of racist mass violence like the 2019 massacre in an El Paso, Texas, store and the 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Hochul told Chuck Todd that conservative TV commentators like Carlson and political figures “need to be held accountable” just as much as tech platforms allowing white supremacy to grow.