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Blame for Buffalo

Who’s holding the New Right accountable for its rhetoric?

Jeffrey Kass
3 min readMay 26, 2022
Phoenix, Ariz., USA — Jan 6, 2021: Trump supporters day of insurrection
Image: Shutterstock/Rebekah Zemansky

On Sunday, May 15, 2022, a white supremacist in military-style camouflage clothing carried a semi-automatic rifle into a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y., and massacred ten of our Black brothers and sisters.

Community rebuilder Katherine Massey. Retired Buffalo police officer Aaron Salter, Jr. Father and husband Heyward Patterson. Food pantry operator Pearl Young. Grandmother Celestine Chaney. These are just a few of the people murdered by Payton Gendron.

Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia’s response was unfortunately a typical refrain we hear after such events.

“I don’t know how you stop a lone person who just gets so embedded in this material that develops such hate for somebody.”

Well, Commissioner, we actually do know how to stop them because it wasn’t some random lone person who caused this.

It’s been brewing for some time, but the Trump-encouraged New Right has been in full-throttle, hate-induced fear mode more than ever.

Take the number one-rated Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.

In the last year alone, Carlson has many times mentioned the bizarre racist and anti-Semitic conspiracy fantasy known as the “great replacement theory.” This…

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Jeffrey Kass
Jeffrey Kass

Written by Jeffrey Kass

A Medium Top Writer on Racism, Diversity, Education, History and Parenting | Speaker | Award-Winning Author | Latest Book: Black Batwoman V. White Jesus | Dad

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