Weapons and racism, a lethal cocktail in the United States. As analysts who are not under the purview of the rifle lobby maintain, racial hatred exists in a generalized way in all the countries of the Western bloc, developed societies such as the United States, but in those other places there are far fewer deaths because they lack a bar free access to weapons.
The reality of this tragic combination was faced this Tuesday on the ground by the president of the country. Joen Biden visited Buffalo to express his condolences and solidarity with the victims and residents of this city in the state of New York after the massacre last Saturday that left ten dead. “What happened here was simply terrorism, domestic terrorism at the service of hate,” he said, describing the misdeed of 18-year-old Payton Gendron, who came to this city last Saturday with the aim of killing black citizens.
“White supremacy is poison,” Biden proclaimed in a heartfelt speech. This ideology, which has no place in the life of the country, “has been allowed to fester and grow in front of us, no more,” she insisted.
Lamenting Saturday’s murderous and racist outburst, Biden continued: “Evil will not win, I promise you, hate will not prevail and white supremacism will not have the last word, we will not allow it to destroy the soul of the nation.”
He stressed that “through the media, politicians, the internet, individuals have been radicalized and enraged, who believe that they will be replaced by others who are different from them,” he insisted on the motivation expressed by the gunman in a manifesto and in various texts attributed to Gendron that have emerged on the internet.
“It is a perverse ideology, I ask all Americans to reject this lie. And I condemn those who spread this lie for power, political gain or for (economic) profit,” he stressed.
He did not name names, but it is clear who he was referring to. Biden recalled that she decided to run for the White House when in the summer of 2017 she saw and heard the hordes of neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, shouting “they will not replace us.” That seemed to him a horror before which he could not remain silent. Instead, then-President Donald Trump praised those protesters.
Nor did he quote Fox and its star Tucker Carlson, the great theorist in a mass medium on the conspiracy to replace white people with those others they don’t like.
“The American experiment, democracy, is in danger like it has never been in my life,” he reiterated. “Hate and fear get too much oxygen from those who pretend to love America but don’t understand America,” she lamented.
Biden still reiterated that “we are not going to allow white supremacy to destroy the soul of the nation.” He also made a call to attention, in addition, to war weapons roaming the streets as if nothing was happening, as the most normal thing in the world. The president appears poised to once again try to limit the sale and use of highly deadly weapons. It is the same thing that has been said after so many massacres so that nothing changes.
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