US President Joe Biden has called the racist mass shooting incident in Buffalo as ”’domestic terrorism” and attacked the “poison” of white supremacist ideology behind it.
10 people were killed a few days ago in a predominantly African-American neighbourhood of Buffalo by an 18-year-old white teenager, Payton Gendron.
Gendron had racially profiled the victims and carried out an act of “racially motivated violent extremism” at the Tops Friendly Market according to the FBI.
Condemning “those who spread the lie for power, for political gain and for-profit,” Biden said “White supremacy is a poison running through our body politic and it’s been allowed to fester right in front of our eyes.”
According to Biden, racism is being stoked for political gain and he has called for restrictions on ownership of assault-style rifles.
During his visit to the neighbourhood where the mass shooting took place, Biden recounted that Andre Mackniel, a 53-year-old victim was buying a birthday cake for his three-year-old son when the gunman entered the store.
Gendron, who has been jailed without bail on a charge of first-degree murder, referred to the so-called “replacement theory” in a manifesto that claims the existence of a leftist plot to overwhelm the white population with non-white immigrants.
“A hate that through the media and politics (and) the internet has radicalised angry, alienated, lost and isolated individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced — that’s the word, replaced — by ‘the other,'” Biden said.
“No more. I mean no more. We need to say as clearly and forcefully as we can that the ideology of white supremacy has no place in America,” he added.
(With inputs from agencies)
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