How the El Paso Gunman Echoed The Words of Right-Wing Pundits
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
How the El Paso Gunman Echoed The Words of Right-Wing Pundits
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/11/business/media/el-paso-killer-conservative-media.html
Tucker Carlson went on his prime-time Fox News show in April last year and told his viewers not to be fooled. The thousands of Central Americans on their way to the United States were "border jumpers," not refugees, he said. "Will anyone in power do anything to protect America this time," he asked, "or will leaders sit passively back as the invasion continues?"
When another group approached the border six months later, Ann Coulter, appearing as a guest on Jeanine Pirro's Fox News show, offered a dispassionately violent suggestion about what could be done to stem the flow of migrants: "You can shoot invaders."
A few days after, Rush Limbaugh issued a grim prognosis to his millions of radio listeners: If the immigrants from Central America weren't stopped, the United States would lose its identity. "The objective is to dilute and eventually eliminate or erase what is known as the distinct or unique American culture," Mr. Limbaugh said, adding: "This is why people call this an invasion."
There is a striking degree of overlap between the words of right-wing media personalities and the language used by the Texas man who confessed to killing 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso this month. In a 2,300-word screed posted on the website 8chan, the killer wrote that he was "simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion."
It remains unclear what, or who, ultimately shaped the views of the white, 21-year-old gunman, or whether he was aware of the media commentary. But his post contains numerous references to "invasion" and cultural " replacement " -- ideas that, until recently, were relegated to the fringes of the nationalist right.
An extensive New York Times review of popular right-wing media platforms found hundreds of examples of language, ideas and ideologies that overlapped with the mass killer's written statement -- a shared vocabulary of intolerance that stokes fears centered on immigrants of color. The programs, on television and radio, reach an audience of millions.
In the four years since Mr. Trump electrified Republican voters with slashing comments about Muslims and Mexicans, demonizing references to immigrants have become more widespread in the news media, the Times review found.
Sometimes the hosts are repeating the president's signature phrases. Sometimes the president appears to take his cues from television pundits. The cumulative effect is a public dialogue in which denigrating sentiments about immigrants are common.
Before the first groups of Central American migrants received heavy news media coverage in 2018, words like "invaders" or "invasion" were rarely used by American outlets. In the last year, the use of such terms has surged, with references to an immigrant "invasion" appearing on more than 300 Fox News broadcasts. The vast majority of those were spoken by Fox News hosts and guests, but some included clips of Mr. Trump using that language at rallies and other public appearances.
The Times analysis examined the last five years of show transcripts from Fox News, CNN and MSNBC to measure the frequency of terms like "invasion" and " replacement ." Segments that included this language were verified by watching clips of the shows to determine whether hosts and guests were speaking in their own words or reporting on the language of others.
"It's a bit of a vicious cycle," said the conservative writer William Kristol, a Republican critic of Mr. Trump's who has worked at Fox News and other networks. "Something is said on Fox News, and Trump repeats it, and that legitimizes it -- and then someone else goes a little further."
He added, "The use of what once would have been viewed as really extreme and inappropriate and sometimes conspiratorial, sometimes dehumanizing language is really striking."
While the notion of immigrants as a national threat was a feature of the conservative Patrick Buchanan's unsuccessful bids to win the Republican presidential nominations in 1992 and 1996 (he used the phrase "illegal invasion" then), they ran counter to the Republican Party's efforts to make itself more appealing to Hispanics and other minorities in the two decades before Mr. Trump became its front-runner.
The portrayal of immigration as a menace has returned with force, a shift brought on not just by radio and TV hosts, but by Republican leaders in Congress and the president himself. This year Mr. Trump has used the terms "invasion" or "invaded" seven times on Twitter to describe the situation at the border, at one point referring to the approach of the migrants as "the attempted Invasion of Illegals." At rallies, he has injected terms like "predator," "killer," and "animal" in his descriptions of immigrants.
The Trump-friendly media world -- from outlets like Sinclair Broadcast Group and The Drudge Report to platforms like Breitbart News and Gateway Pundit -- has used similar incendiary rhetoric. "The fact of the matter is that this is an attempted invasion of our country -- period," Boris Epshteyn, a former Trump campaign adviser, said last year in a commentary on migrants that aired on nearly 200 Sinclair television stations.
At the start of the El Paso suspect's screed, he refers to the "great replacement ," a white supremacist conspiracy theory based on a French book that claims the migration of minority groups can lead to a "genocide" of white culture.
The El Paso suspect, who confessed to the mass shooting last week, claimed in the document he posted to be defending against a "Hispanic invasion of Texas." The words "invasion" and "invaders" appear six times in the text, a stark parallel to the language heard on conservative television and talk radio today.
Before the El Paso shootings, others with deadly or hateful motives used the same language.
The replacement theory was prominent in a document posted on 8chan by the suspect in the massacre that killed 51 people in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March.
The man who is alleged to have killed 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue last October had expressed his contempt for "invaders" before he opened fire on the congregation with an AR-15-style assault rifle, the authorities say. During the white supremacist demonstrations in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 that left one woman dead, marchers shouted, "You will not replace us."
Lawrence Rosenthal, a professor at the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies, said that the shared vocabulary of white nationalists and many prominent conservatives was chilling. "Where that intersects with the Republican Party today," he added, "is the Republican argument that the Democrats are in favor of immigration because that will give them a permanent majority."
Mr. Limbaugh, whose syndicated radio show has a weekly audience of 15 million, has trafficked in similar themes. "Why does the left want this invasion? Why do they want it to come?" he asked in June 2018. "This invasion is a means of transforming the country."
On Wednesday, responding to the El Paso shootings, Mr. Limbaugh said, "What is it about the word 'invasion' that so bothers these people? Is it because that's what it is? Have we ever seen anything like this?"
On Fox News, Mr. Carlson has proffered a version of this idea, albeit in less extreme language than that of the 8chan message boards where the El Paso killer lurked. "I'm for Americans, and nobody cares about them," the host said on his show in March, pushing back against criticism that he was anti-immigrant. "It's like, 'Shut up, you're dying. We're going to replace you."'
Mr. Carlson, whose show averages about three million viewers a night, has featured guests who subscribe to the replacement theory, like Peter Szijjarto, the foreign minister to Hungary's nationalistic president, Viktor Orban. In February, Mr. Carlson and Mr. Szijjarto discussed the need to increase birthrates in their respective countries. Otherwise, Mr. Carlson said, "our plan here in the West is to just let the depressed people die off and replace them with people from other countries."
Another prime-time Fox News host, Laura Ingraham, who was considered for a communications job in the Trump administration, has used similar language. Last October, she warned viewers that their opinions "will have zero impact and zero influence on a House dominated by Democrats who want to replace you, the American voters, with newly amnestied citizens and an ever-increasing number of chain migrants."
Fox News had no comment.
The overlap between fringe ideology and the words of conservative talk show hosts is not accidental, critics say. "They're putting that into the zeitgeist," said Carl Cameron, the former chief political correspondent for Fox News, who now works for a news aggregator aimed at a progressive audience, Front Page Live. "Fox goes out and looks for stuff that is inherently on fire and foments fear and anger," Mr. Cameron added.
The use of "invasion" and "invaders" has also surfaced on outlets away from right-wing media. The Times review of demonizing terms for immigrants found a spike in such terms in 2018 on CNN and MSNBC, but almost exclusively in the context of reporting how leading conservatives had been using such language.
Fox News, it should be noted, is not monolithic. While its prime-time lineup of Mr. Carlson, Sean Hannity and Ms. Ingraham is devoted to right-wing commentary, some of the network's news reporters, like the anchor Shepard Smith, have taken pains to refute misleading language about migrants. Chris Wallace, the "Fox News Sunday" host, recently grilled the White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, about the racism inherent in Mr. Trump's critical remarks about Baltimore.
Days after the El Paso massacre, Mr. Carlson said on-air that white supremacy was "actually not a real problem in America" and likened it to a "hoax." His words ignited widespread criticism, including from fellow conservative commentators like Erick Erickson and a Fox News weekend anchor, Arthel Neville.
The next night, Mr. Carlson returned to his show and urged his critics to "calm down," warning about the roiling divisions in the country, before announcing that he was leaving on a vacation that he and Fox News said had been previously planned.
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Right wing media has been stoking fear and hate for years. They are proud of that fact too.
Putitng aside the silliness of basing the case of building the “analysis” on a handful of words out of a 2400 word screed, why are large parts of his political rantings ignored?
oh yeah, because they are standard progressive talking points.
Fear of automation tAking jobs, calls for a universal basic income, urban sprawl, protecting watersheds, sustainability, health care, fear that the US was being ruled by unchecked corporations, etc.... whole swaths of the manifesto could have been lifted from The New York Times.
He was, as he said himself, inspired by the Christchurch shooter. Or one can look at his writing on automation requiring a universal basic income and write an analysis claiming he was inspired by progressives on NT, who’ve often made similar claims.
Sean, he drove 900 miles in order to kill Mexicans on the border, not shoot up a corporate office.
In addition to driving 900 miles to murder Mexicans, I feel pretty sure he chose El Paso to insure maximum media coverage as well. It should be noted that almost all mass shootings in this country have taken place in or very near to large metropolitan areas to insure said coverage in their eyes.
Eventually, you are probably correct but Douglas is two hours South of Tucson where the closest media outlets are. It would take them a while to get here. My impression is that he wanted near instant coverage but I could be wrong.
I'm pretty sure that Dallas, the area he started from, is a larger metro and a larger media market than ElPaso.
That kid was totally Looney Toons to begin with. No way to really be sure what his ultimate thinking processes were.
You would be correct. Much, much, much larger.
True, but El Paso is right on the border.
It all comes down to fear. Trump uses fear to invoke intense feelings in people, and some of them are a little off their nut. Its the same fear certain groups fall prey to more and more over the years. Who is more likely to act on their fears? Trump takes full advantage and could not care less about the unintended consequences. In this case, the shooter's fear of 'invaders' was at the top of his concerns. No way to shine that turd.
Then put up your argument. I'm right.
Fear...the number one emotion conservatives like to use to sway people. Remember 9/11? People that I thought were strong and brave were asking for figurative blankies
Yup. Fear of Muslims, fear of homosexuals, fear of atheists, fear of rejection, fear of no longer being in control, fear of diversity, fear of their children not adopting their same fears.
The "fear" market is hardly cornered by the right. In fact, the left is rockin it in that regard:
Whole lotta fear mongering coming from the left .....
As usual those talking points are fake, and total projection. You must have gotten that straight from Trump, who lies and accuses others of exactly what he is doing himself.
And anger.
He simply tells people what they want to hear. He's frankly stolen a page from Bernie's playbook.
I really think you're underestimating anger.
Wow .... the denial is strong in this one.
Good luck with that .... you're really gonna need it next year.
2020 is going to make 2016 seem like a picnic for denial ridden liberals.
No...I'm not. I witnessed 2 road rage incidents in under an hour this morning. People are pissed off, there's no doubt about it
the only thing I'm afraid of are scorpions
[Discuss articles not members.]
Fox is never going to admit the vast majority of their "news" happens to be nothing but opinion based pundits spouting off right wing talking points.
Advertisers seem to get it since when these right wing nuts go overboard on their rhetoric they pull their advertising because the words Fox pundits use are offensive to the majority of decent human beings.
Bingo.. They are not even classified as a news source and they are banned in Canada. They are nothing but fake news.
When I read the manifesto the first thing I noticed was that he was parroting much of what JR has been seeding here for years. It is possible left wing media had a big influence on him.
see 2.2
Have you even read his manifesto John?
I'm the person who posted the entire manifesto on Newstalkers. What do you think?
I don't know, you sound like you haven't. Thats why i asked the question.
No reason to get snarky about John.
Why are you making shit up?
I'm not. You calling me a liar?
It’s obvious he only read the parts that his leftist handlers told him to read. Otherwise he’d be aware of the quotes from the shooter in my post #5 that sound just likeJohn and the Democrats
Yeah, now that his gambit is busted he won't respond. Or if he does it will be this rationalization or that.
SOSDD
Have you? Or are you just blabbing
About all he can do unfortuanately
Yes i have and i've actually comprehended it all as well.
Such a simple task appears to out of reach for some folks here.
They prefer to pick and choose pieces/parts that might support a narrative they're pushing instead of considering the entire content. Experts at spinning nonsensical partisan gibberish they be.
Any other questions for me today Don? I live to help keep you well informed ....
John, sparty, lfod, and Don:
This discussion is getting too personal. Address the topic, please.
Its funny. You feel the need to "warn" people, but fail to warn the person who started this segment of personal comments
How do you explain that?
Ok, Dean, too. The point stands - fellow NTers are not the topic here.
Prove it with actual media comments
The El Paso shooter is clearly a psych case who equally rants “talking points” from both left and right.
last time I checked my Constitution, freedom of Speech was still a fundamental American right.
[ Deleted ]
conservatism embraces freedom of speech up to the point where “your fist hits my nose”. Then we believe that someone who violates another’s freedom must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
that said, let’s look at some of the shooters manifesto [ Deleted - sweeping generalization ]
Excerpts from the Manifesto
“The takeover of the United States government by unchecked
corporations. I could write a ten page essay on all the damage these corporations have caused”
“In the near future, America will have to initiate a basic universal income to prevent widespread poverty and civil unrest as people lose their jobs. Joblessness in itself is a source of civil unrest.”
“The American lifestyle affords our citizens an incredible quality of life. However, our lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country. The decimation of the environment is creating a massive burden for future generations. Corporations are heaing the destruction of our environment by shamelessly over harvesting resources. This has been
a problem for decades. For example, this phenomenon is brilliantly portrayed in the decades old classic “The Lorax”. Water sheds around the country, especially in agricultural areas, are being depleted. Fresh water is being polluted from farming and oil drilling operations. Consumer culture is creating thousands of tons of unnecessary plastic waste and electronic waste, and recycling to help slow this down is almost non-existent. Urban sprawl creates inefficient cities which unnecessarily destroys millions of acres of land. We even use god knows how many trees worth of paper towels just wipe water off our hands. Everything I have seen and heard in my short life has led me to believe that the average American isn’t willing to change their lifestyle, even if the changes only cause a slight inconvenience. The government is unwilling to tackle these issues beyond empty promises since they are owned by corporations.”
“Corporate America doesn’t need to be destroyed, but just shown that they are on the wrong side of history. That if they don’t bend, they will break.”
So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.”
“The environment is getting worse by the year.”
“People who are hypocrites because they support imperialistic wars that have caused the loss of tens of thousands of American lives and untold numbers of civilian lives.”
Who the hell would of ever thought, or even guessed, harping on peoples replacements, would/could end in violence...
Yea, no stokin of fear around here.
.
Trump n cump on Fux n other Far Right Conspiracy crappola,
are guilty of murder, at least accomplices, but hey, kumba ya Kelley Ann
I must have missed the episode where Tucker Carlson said we should take a rifle to the mall and spray the place with bullets.
Inspiring violence takes no suggestion of what violence to use, it just requires demonizing a group of people, telling everyone "They're rapists" "criminals" "drug dealers" and "MS-13 gang member". If you keep lying about a group in general, painting them all with the broad brush of villainy, it won't take long before one of the dumbest among the rabid crowd decides to take what they see as "the law" in their own hands. I've no doubt the El Paso shooter sees himself as a vigilante willing to do what so many of his conservative fellows weren't.
So progressives are to blame for inspiring right wing violence. Demonizing groups of people is about all progressives do anymore. This site proves that.
“The Democrat party will own America and they know it. They have already begun the transition by pandering heavily to the Hispanic voting bloc in the 1st Democratic Debate,”, “the Hispanic population is willing to return to their home countries if given the right incentive. An incentive that myself and many other patriotic Americans will provide.” - El Paso shooter manifesto
Doesn't sound like a progressive Democrat to me. Sounds more like a self-declared right wing vigilante who stepped up to Donald Trumps call to push back on what they see as the "browning" of America and a diminishing of their perceived "white culture".
Sounds like all of the Democrat candidates and leftists like AOC
Excerpts from the Manifesto
“The takeover of the United States government by unchecked
corporations. I could write a ten page essay on all the damage these corporations have caused”
“In the near future, America will have to initiate a basic universal income to prevent widespread poverty and civil unrest as people lose their jobs. Joblessness in itself is a source of civil unrest.”
“The American lifestyle affords our citizens an incredible quality of life. However, our lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country. The decimation of the environment is creating a massive burden for future generations. Corporations are heaing the destruction of our environment by shamelessly over harvesting resources. This has been
a problem for decades. For example, this phenomenon is brilliantly portrayed in the decades old classic “The Lorax”. Water sheds around the country, especially in agricultural areas, are being depleted. Fresh water is being polluted from farming and oil drilling operations. Consumer culture is creating thousands of tons of unnecessary plastic waste and electronic waste, and recycling to help slow this down is almost non-existent. Urban sprawl creates inefficient cities which unnecessarily destroys millions of acres of land. We even use god knows how many trees worth of paper towels just wipe water off our hands. Everything I have seen and heard in my short life has led me to believe that the average American isn’t willing to change their lifestyle, even if the changes only cause a slight inconvenience. The government is unwilling to tackle these issues beyond empty promises since they are owned by corporations.”
“Corporate America doesn’t need to be destroyed, but just shown that they are on the wrong side of history. That if they don’t bend, they will break.”
So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.”
“The environment is getting worse by the year.”
“People who are hypocrites because they support imperialistic wars that have caused the loss of tens of thousands of American lives and untold numbers of civilian lives.”
Well if we are going to use his words...
Just remember ...... Soylent Green is people ..... it's made out of people ........
So, if you tell people that Republicans/Democrats are ruining the country, we should just expect that someone is going to get shot? I hear a lot about "toxic masculinity" lately, should I expect be gunned down in the mall just for being a man?
It should take forever. It should be never. Don't make excuses for these people. Nothing justifies murder. Nothing. And nobody's words "inspire" murder either. The moment you start saying this or that speech leads to a shooting, you begin to justify murder. The murderer alone is responsible for his action - not somebody else.
And you know this HOW, because you can see beyond your nose
Good Lord are you making a stretch with that piece of hooy
Methinks that's all you read
So a direct defense of the President is supposed to prove he wasn't motivated by the Presidents words? He's basically admitting that he was motivated by the Presidents right there. He's just saying the problem he perceives existed before Trump, but the facts shows this guy didn't act on his anger towards immigrants until after Trump called them an "invasion" and an "infestation" and called all Mexicans "rapists".
You can not cherry pick the shooters words to support your own delusional opinions.
He said Trump was not a factor, plain and simple.
Well that is apparently the world many conservative Trump supporters live in, a place where up is down, less people at an inauguration is actually more people, where a minority is a majority, where 12,000 lies and counting are considered truth, and where calling Mexicans "rapists" and an "infestation" isn't considered racist. This guy, using Trumps own words and citing Trump then says "But it wasn't Trump" and the gullible sycophants believe a domestic terrorist over their own eyes and ears. If you believe that I've no doubt you believe Trump never cheated on any of his three wives, never paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep porn stars quiet during his campaign, never ran multiple businesses into bankruptcy, never got caught refusing to rent to black Americans, never got caught running a fraudulent "University", was never accused by more than nineteen women of sexual assault, never called ally countries "shit holes", never said he and an authoritarian dictator "fell in love" and never said he believed the giant lying piece of shit murderer Putin over our own American intelligence.
That is the Bizzaro world many conservatives choose daily to inhabit and its fucking insane.
Use google
Zero results. Thanks for playing. Any more useless suggestions?
I can.
Look up Uncle Buds GED trainers and Bait shop.
Brush up on your GED knowledge and pick up some leaches to catch dinner in the same stop.
What could be better?
Even fox fake news admitted he is a white supremacist.
Just what is distinct or unique about American culture? We are a nation of immigrants, people who brought their culture to America. Now we're a potpourri of cultures and identities and that's been going on for about 400 years
So true. Hell, the culture is very different from one part of America to the next - based in large part about which immigrants lived there first (since we're all immigrants), geography, climate, and other things.
Rush of course is referring to the distinct culture of bigotry, hatred, ignorance, anti-science, racism, fake news, misogyny, adultery, and drug use to which he subscribes.
I've lived in 4 distinctly different regions of the United States. Cultural differences is an understatement
" It remains unclear what, or who, ultimately shaped the views of the white, 21-year-old gunman, or whether he was aware of the media commentary."
But the likes of the New York Times is sure gonna "Plant-a-seed" in their little "Children's" heads to ponder
....
......hmmmmmm.
The New York Times is such a Bad Parent. BAD, BAD, BAD PARENT !
BAD PARENT !