The Tampa Bay Times obtained a memo GOP leadership circulated to Congressional members that provides guidelines on how to address mass shooting that occur quite frequently in the US: Blame the left and downplay the rise in White Nationalism.
The memo is geared toward helping GOP Congresscritters answer questions from the press or constituents. If asked if White Nationalism plays any role in a mass shooting, the elected official should respond by first denouncing White Supremacy then immediately deflect to the tired and erroneous claims of, “both sides” are to blame.
“White nationalism and racism are pure evil and cannot be tolerated in any form,” the document said. “We also can’t excuse violence from the left such as the El Paso shooter, the recent Colorado shooters, the Congressional baseball shooter, Congresswoman Giffords’ shooter and Antifa.”
As seen above, the memo falsely claimed the El Paso shooter had left leaning, political views. Recent discoveries show that he intentionally targeted “Mexicans.”
Although the person who shot Congresswoman Giffords was a registered Democrat, an investigation found he was obsessed with her, distrusted government entirely, and “his political persuasions were mixed and did not appear to be a factor.”
The GOP’s latest attempt to deflect the rise in White Nationalism and crimes carried out by self-identitifed White Nationalist contradicts “with a well-documented rise in hate crimes and white nationalism on the far-right.”
According to ADL’s Center on Extremism, 73.3% of U.S. extremist-related murders in the past decade were committed by right-wing extremists, including white supremacists. Leaders must immediately take concrete steps to curb this alarming trend. #ElPaso pic.twitter.com/3MPbvzXo6e
— ADL (@ADL) August 4, 2019
FBI Director Christopher Wray also confirmed to Congress, “a majority of the domestic terrorism cases we’ve investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence.”
