By Felicia J. Persaud
News Americas, FORT LAUDERDALE, FL, Fri. June 3, 2022: In the aftermath of the massacre of innocents in Buffalo and Uvalde and several other mass shootings since, it has become abundantly clear that the Grand Ole Party and its band of right-wing replacement theorists are no more going to help change America’s gun laws than it will the nation’s archaic immigration laws.
What is obvious is that the GOPs love of guns, sold to mindless right wingers as a “constitutional right,” matches their hate for immigrants, especially black and brown ones, who they feel are threatening their majority control, aka, replacing them.
Even before details were known about the shooter who killed 19 children and two school faculty at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the right-wing fringe media were quick to post that the shooter was an “illegal immigrant from El Salvador.”
Quickly after the gunman’s name was announced, users on a number of fringe platforms jumped to spout this lie, basing it undoubtedly on the shooter’s Latino surname. Some even claimed that President Biden’s “lax” immigration policies were to blame and as such, “blood was on his hands.” Others added to the false claim that the shooter was transgender, which coupled with “illegal alien,” was enough to send right winger through the roof.
However, it was soon announced by the Governor of Texas Greg Abbott that Salvador Ramos, the murderer, is as American as Apple Pie. He was born in North Dakota not El Salvador or any other countries Donald Trump and his toxic band label as S-hole countries.
Yet, conspiracist and click bait nut, Alex Jones, and even Republican Congressmember Paul Gosar, all helped spread the false information on Twitter, Reddit and other social media platforms. Some right-wing users added embellishments, including that he was “on the run from Border Patrol.”
“He was an illegal alien wanted for murder from El Salvador,” read one tweet that was liked and retweeted hundreds of times. “This is blood on Biden’s hands and should have never happened.”
Gosar fit both unfounded claims in a single now-deleted tweet that also misspelled the killer’s name. “It’s a transsexual leftist illegal alien named Salvatore Ramos,” Gosar tweeted Tuesday night.
Ten days before, White supremacist Payton Gendron, 18, had killed 10 in a Tops Supermarket in Buffalo. In nearly 700 pages of his private diary, dating back seven months, he wrote that he sought to kill Black and immigrants because he wanted to prevent white people from losing their rightful control of the country.
A recently published poll found that almost half of Republicans believe that immigrants are being brought to the United States as part of such an effort. Right-wing rhetoricians in the United States portray undocumented immigrants as the primary threat.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a leading purveyor of replacement theory rhetoric, has promoted the idea on more than 400 episodes of his program, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Representative Elise Stefanik of New York ran paid ads on Facebook during her re-election campaign that combined imagery of immigrants with the accusation that “Radical Democrats are planning their most aggressive move yet: a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION.”
Her ad continued, “Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.”
By contrast, GOP voters and lawmakers have made gun rights central to everything they do. About 100 mid-term GOP ads are proliferated with gun toting wannabe lawmakers, or lawmakers, showing how strong they are with a gun. It’s almost as if the subtle message is ‘elect me so we can use our guns to keep out the immigrants and ensure our White majority.
That’s the love and hate fervor logical Americans and people of color are up against in the war for white supremacy. What’s the answer? More blacks and immigrants becoming legal gun owners and NRA members. See how fast those GOP members will change those gun laws when that happens.
The writer is publisher of NewsAmericasNow.com – The Black Immigrant Daily News.
