What happened?
The nation was thrust into a fraught
national reckoning on guns, white
nationalism, and domestic terrorism
this week, after at least 31 people
were killed and dozens more wound-
ed in mass shootings in Texas and
Ohio. In El Paso, 21-year-old Patrick
Crusius shot and killed 22 people
and wounded 26 others with a semi-
automatic rifle inside a crowded
Walmart before surrendering to
police. Just before driving from an
affluent Dallas suburb to commit
the shooting, the gunman posted a
racist manifesto on 8chan, a message
board frequented by white suprema-
cists, in which he said the attack was a response to the “Hispanic
invasion of Texas” and “open borders,” and the Democrats’
attempt to “enact a political coup by importing and then legalizing
millions of new voters.” This was an echo of President Trump’s
frequent rhetoric about the influx of Central American migrants at
the border, but the shooter said he’d developed his anti-immigrant
views before Trump.
Less than 15 hours later in Dayton, 24-year-old Connor Betts
used an AR-15 to kill nine people and wound 27 outside a bar in
a popular nightlife area in a rampage that lasted only 30 seconds
before he was killed by police. The shooter’s sister was among the
victims. A self-declared “leftist” on social media, the gunman had
a history of threatening women and kept a “hit list” of people he
wanted to kill or rape, acquaintances said. One of the gunman’s ex-
girlfriends said he was obsessed with mass shootings and told her
that he heard voices and wanted to “hurt a lot of people.”
President Trump visited Dayton and El Paso in the aftermath of the
shootings, where he faced protests for his opposition to gun control
and his anti-immigrant rhetoric. Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas),
a Hispanic congresswoman who represents the El Paso area, said
Trump was “not welcome” in her city.
“Words have consequences, and the
president has made my community and
my people the enemy,” Escobar said.
What the editorials said
White nationalist terrorism “is a seri-
ous and growing reality,” said the Los
Angeles Times. According to the Anti-
Defamation League, 73.3 percent of
all extremist-related deaths in the U.S.
over the past decade have been linked
to right-wing terrorists like the El Paso
shooter. In a televised speech he read off
a teleprompter, President Trump belat-
edly called on Americans to condemn
“white supremacy” and “hatred.” He
“should start with himself.” Trump has
been “fanning the flames of division
and fear” for years, and while the El
Paso gunman may have learned to view
Hispanic immigration as an infestation
of vermin from online cesspools, Trump
has legitimized that bigotry and
brought it into the mainstream.What about the Dayton shooter?
asked The Wall Street Journal.
The mass murderer in Ohio ap-
pears to have had leftist politics.
More importantly, he was a deeply
disturbed man who was alleg-
edly obsessed with mass shoot-
ings and openly fantasized about
committing violence. The twisted
motivations of mass killers “are
varied and often too convoluted to
sort into any clear ideology.” The
common thread is that both the
El Paso and Dayton shooters were
angry, isolated young men who felt alienated “in our increasingly
atomistic culture.” Blaming individual politicians or ideologies is
“pointless and counterproductive.”What the columnists said
There are “disturbing parallels” between radical Islam and white
nationalism, said Jonathan Last in TheBulwark.com. Just like
followers of ISIS and other Islamist terror groups, white suprema-
cists are obsessed with purity and use social media to spread their
agenda, radicalize others, and celebrate terrorist acts. Imagine
how the country would have responded if the El Paso shooter had
labeled himself a “jihadist,” said David French in National Review
.com. Law enforcement needs the resources and the mandate to
pursue “racist radicals” with the same intensity as ISIS. “It’s time
to declare war on white-nationalist terrorism.”That will never happen while Trump is in office, said Michelle
Goldberg in The New York Times. The Trump administration has
slashed millions of dollars in funding dedicated to monitoring and
combating white supremacist terrorism while signaling to Justice
Department employees that such efforts would be unwelcome. A
former FBI supervisor has said agents feel “reluctant” to investigate
groups and individuals that “the presi-
dent perceives as his base.” Meanwhile,
Trump has done more than anyone to
mainstream white nationalist tropes,
and he “probably couldn’t bottle up the
hideous forces he’s helped unleash even
if he wanted to.”It’s not just Trump, said Adam Serwer
in TheAtlantic.com. Right-wing media
increasingly traffics in white national-
ist talking points. Fox News’ Tucker
Carlson—who declared this week that
the threat of white supremacy is a
“hoax”—regularly depicts the brown-
ing of America through immigration
as a dire threat. Laura Ingraham has
told viewers that Democrats “want to
replace you” with illegal immigrants,
a version of the “great replacement”
conspiracy theory embraced by the El
Paso shooter. America, we have a seri-
ous white supremacy problem. APEl Paso mourns: A makeshift memorial outside the WalmartTHE WEEK August 16, 2019
4 NEWS The main stories...
American carnage in Texas and Ohio
Illustration by Howard McWilliam.
Cover photos from AP, Newscom (2)What next?
Federal agencies are “scrambling” to meet the
domestic terrorism threat with limited resources,
said Laura Strickler in NBCNews.com. Two years
ago, the Homeland Security office responsible
for combating domestic terrorism had a staff of
16 employees and a budget of $21 million. Staff-
ing cuts have left it with just eight employees
and a budget of $2.6 million. Roughly 80 percent
of the FBI’s counterterrorism agents are focused
on “foreign ideologies” like Islamist extremism.
That includes agents investigating homegrown ji-
hadists. Federal officials also face legal obstacles
in pursuing domestic terrorism, said Sabrina Tav-
ernise in The New York Times. Obtaining wiretap
warrants is more difficult, and white supremacist
rhetoric—unlike jihadist calls for violence—is
protected by the First Amendment. “If they did
the same thing that they did with the Muslims,”
said Martin R. Stolar, a New York civil rights law-
yer, “the blowback would be outrageous.”