Garnell Whitfield, Jr., whose mother was killed in a mass shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., testified at a Senate hearing on domestic terrorism and called on lawmakers to do something to combat the “cancer of White Supremacy.”
The Arizona Mirror reports, ‘My mom’s life mattered’: Son of Black shooting victim urges Congress to act:
The son of a Black woman shot and killed by a white supremacist begged members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday to take action against such domestic terrorism.
The gunman in Buffalo, New York, was motivated by the “great replacement theory,” a racist conspiracy theory that claims growing numbers of immigrants and people of color will lead to the extinction of the white race, according to the National Immigration Forum.
“It comes under the banner of white supremacy,” said Garnell Whitfield Jr., who lost his mother, Ruth, when the 18-year-old white supremacist traveled to a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo on May 14 and killed 10 Black people.
Whitfield talked about his mother, and how it’s impossible for his family to grasp that she was taken from them “by someone full of so much hate.”
“My mom’s life mattered,” he said. “Your actions here will tell us if and how much it mattered to you.”
Witnesses during the hearing also predicted that the spread of white supremacy in the United States will increase acts of domestic terrorism.
“Extremism is still a sad reality in America — we have to do everything to make America safer,” the chair of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said. “Buffalo, New York, was an illustration on why that’s necessary.”
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At the Senate hearing, two witnesses, Michael German of the Brennan Center for Justice, and Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, warned senators that while the great replacement theory is not new, it is no longer a fringe idea.
They said it has become mainstream due to media coverage on outlets such as Fox News, as well as claims by right-wing politicians.
“We need to prepare for potential political violence in the future,” said Pape, who is also the director of the Chicago Project On Security And Threats.
The Department of Homeland Security issued a notice Tuesday that stated, due to the recent violent attacks against communities of color, in coming months “we expect the threat environment to become more dynamic as several high-profile events could be exploited to justify acts of violence against a range of possible targets.”
“These targets could include public gatherings, faith-based institutions, schools, racial and religious minorities, government facilities and personnel, U.S. critical infrastructure, the media, and perceived ideological opponents,” the DHS summary said.
“Threat actors have recently mobilized to violence due to factors such as personal grievances, reactions to current events, and adherence to violent extremist ideologies, including racially or ethnically motivated or anti-government/anti-authority violent extremism.”
Jan. 6 attack
Pape said that his research has shown that a key characteristic of the more than 800 people charged with participating in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is that they are “middle-class whites residing in counties with the most loss of white population share — exactly who would most likely fear the great replacement as described by prominent political and media leaders.”
He said the white supremacist attack in Buffalo was a prime example. He added that the last time the U.S. saw middle class white Americans involved in political violence was during the second expansion of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.
Durbin said mass shootings targeting places of worship and communities of color are increasing, adding that the first hearing he called on domestic terrorism was 10 years ago after a Sikh temple was targeted. Seven worshipers died.
Durbin asked Pape what role social media plays, as well as the easy access to firearms used in mass shootings.
Weapons have combined with “volatile ideas and beliefs in the mainstream,” Pape said. “You’ve got the combination of these two, which is why we’re seeing many more of these events in the United States. This is a deadly cocktail that promises more violence coming forward.”
Pape added that media figures and politicians that either directly or indirectly embrace the great replacement theory are often rewarded, from high cable news ratings to campaign donations.
Pape said mass shootings related to the great replacement theory include the 2019 Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, where 11 Jewish worshipers were killed, and the 2019 El Paso shooting in a Hispanic neighborhood, where 23 Latinos were killed while shopping at Walmart.
German, a former F.B.I. agent, said there needs to be a federal record of domestic terrorism, adding that it’s not something the Department of Justice tracks.
“The failure to acknowledge the organized and interstate nature of violent white supremacists and far-right militant groups forfeits intelligence that could be used to prepare for and perhaps prevent future attacks,” he said.
Of course, Republicans construe violent White Supremacist domestic terrorism as just exercising free speech, just as the violent MAGA/QAnon seditious insurrection at the Capitol on January 6 were just exercising free speech. Because a violent Party of The Mob of anti-democracy White Christian Nationalists is who they are.
The top Republican on the committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, said that the threat of domestic terrorism is always shifting and can also include political violence.
“We have to condemn all political violence,” he said, adding that “at the same time we have to protect free speech.”
He pointed to the 2017 shooting at the congressional baseball game, where Republicans were specifically targeted by a left-wing political activist, as an example of extreme political violence.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, also raised concerns about political free speech. She asked one of the witnesses, Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School, how law enforcement can make determinations between extreme speech and free speech.
“The concern is if you tie a particular ideology to the F.B.I.,” Turley said, adding that the U.S. has persecuted people for being communists and Marxists.
Senate Republicans in late May, blocked a bill that would require federal agencies to monitor domestic terrorism incidents, including those related to white supremacy. Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said the bill would brand police and military service members as white supremacists. [He is, of course, a complete idiot.]
Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, said at the hearing that he was worried about the fate of the country.
“On that fateful day in Buffalo we realized the danger of allowing hatred in, any form, in our country to fester,” he said. “It tears at the overall fabric of our democracy. Will we be better at being a multicultural nation?”
Dana Milbank writes, “White supremacist attacks stir GOP fears for safety … of White people”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/07/white-supremacist-attacks-hearing-republicans/
Garnell Whitfield was testifying about his 86-year-old mother, Ruth, shot dead last month along with nine other Black people in a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket, allegedly by a white supremacist motivated by the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory.
“What are you doing?” Whitfield demanded of the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee at their hearing on Tuesday. “Is there nothing that you personally are willing to do to stop the cancer of white supremacy and the domestic terrorism it inspires?” With breaking voice and sniffles, he added: “My mother’s life mattered. Your actions here today will tell us how much it matters to you.”
Then, Republicans on the panel answered — with accounts of violence committed by Black people and antifa.
“The Brooklyn subway shooter was a known Black supremacist who called for racial violence,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.). “The Waukesha attacker … was a viciously left-wing Black nationalist bigot. Another Black nationalist gunned down five police officers in Dallas.” Cruz went on, about “the violence of the antifa riots and the Black Lives Matter riots.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), the top Republican on the panel, spoke of 2016, when “two Black racists killed eight police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge,” and of 2018, when “members of antifa in Philadelphia assaulted two Marines.” Extremism, Grassley said, “includes Black racism and antifa ideology.” And Sen. Mike Lee (Utah) focused on a (Black) man and (Asian American) woman who “had thrown a Molotov cocktail into a police vehicle during the antifa riots.”
Their illustrations served to build a case that the focus on white supremacy is “diminishing” violence against others, as Cruz put it, including “violence directed at White people” — and that, as Grassley asserted, “even though many in the press only focus on far-right attacks, the most deadly ideology often changes year to year.”
But that’s just not true. Since 2015, when the recent upsurge in political violence began, the brutality has been overwhelmingly perpetrated by the far right. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, right-wing extremists (generally either white supremacist or anti-government) were involved in 267 plots or attacks and 91 fatalities from 2015 through 2020. Far-left extremists (anarchists, anti-fascists) were involved in 66 incidents and 19 deaths. The proportion of left-wing attacks and plots increased in 2021 (40 percent of the total, compared to 49 percent by right-wing extremists), but right-wing attacks remained far deadlier, accounting for 28 of 30 political-violence fatalities in 2021.
Senate Republicans used similar arguments a couple of weeks ago to block consideration of the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, which would have created dedicated government offices to track domestic terrorism, including white-supremacist violence. That modest bill, with no added surveillance powers or criminal offenses, had passed the House and originally had Republican support. But at a time when Fox News’s Tucker Carlson and Republican officials including House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) have given voice to the “great replacement” conspiracy, Republicans have apparently lost interest in challenging white supremacy.
Instead, they brought in their favorite all-purpose witness on Tuesday, [disreputable] law professor Jonathan Turley, who argued against the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act and claimed that the Jan. 6 insurrection was not an act of domestic terrorism. But mostly, Turley testified about himself: “I have received hundreds of threats against myself, my family, and even my dog. … I am generally viewed as something of a free-speech purist. … I come to this subject as someone who has written, litigated and testified in the areas of terrorism, extremist advocacy, and free speech for decades. I have also represented the United States House of Representatives in litigation. … I should confess to a bias as a Madisonian scholar.”
Committee chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), noting that Fox News’s Carlson alone has amplified the “great replacement” theory (in which White people are supposedly targeted for marginalization) on more than 400 episodes of his show, urged his colleagues to “speak in one voice and repudiate this incendiary rhetoric, along with any individual or extremist group that resorts to violence.”
But Republican senators declined that invitation, instead turning repeatedly to Turley and to their other witness, former U.S. attorney Justin Herdman, to support their desire not to focus on white supremacists; they wanted to evaluate the threat of terrorism without “any sort of analysis of the ideology,” as Herdman put it.
In his poignant opening statement, Whitfield spoke of the man who allegedly killed his mother: “He did not act alone. He was radicalized by white supremacists. His anger and hatred were metastasized like a cancer by people with big microphones screaming that Black people were going to take away their jobs and opportunities.”
Repeatedly, Whitfield asked the lawmakers what they would do about his mother’s death. Republicans, in their refusal to acknowledge the unique harm being done by Carlson, party leaders and white supremacists, gave their answer: not a thing.