WASHINGTON —
President Joe Biden flew on Tuesday to mourn at
the site of America’s latest deadly mass shooting, warning that the white
supremacist ideology motivating the alleged gunman is tearing the country’s
“soul” apart.
اضافة اعلان
In the hastily organized trip to Buffalo, New York,
Biden, accompanied by his wife
Jill Biden, reprised the wearily familiar role
for presidents of consoler-in-chief. He was to begin by meeting families of the
10 Black murdered allegedly by a white gunman in a neighborhood supermarket
Saturday.
Also scheduled were meetings with community leaders
and first responders, as well as a visit to a makeshift memorial at the
supermarket to offer “condolences and comfort to those affected by this
tragedy,” a White House official said.
Biden will then deliver a speech that, like so many
he’s given, will urge Congress to overcome division on restricting firearms
ownership, a constitutionally protected right that has led to there being more
guns than people in the world’s richest nation.
After decades of mass shootings in schools,
nightclubs, movie theaters, and churches, many
Americans are numb to each new
outrage, while presidents have repeatedly discovered their powerlessness to
change laws in the face of a reluctant Congress.
In Saturday’s rampage, the killer wielded an AR-15,
a military style weapon which has been used repeatedly in mass shootings around
the country while at the same time being one of the most popular rifles for
legitimate gun enthusiasts.
Having long campaigned unsuccessfully to ban
assault-style rifles, Biden will once more demand laws to “keep weapons of war
off our streets,” the White House official said. He will also highlight the
failure to keep firearms away from people with serious mental illness who are
“a danger to themselves or others.”
Racist ideology
The most acute portion of Biden’s remarks could be about
a far wider threat to the nation - the racism and extremism that the
79-year-old Democrat cited as motivations for first coming out of retirement to
take on
Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
In a preview of the speech, the
White House official signaled strong
wording from Biden, who will “call this despicable act for what it is:
terrorism motivated by a hateful and perverse ideology that tears at the soul
of our nation.” “He’ll call on all Americans to give hate no safe harbor, and
to reject the lies of racial animus that radicalize, divide us, and led to the
act of racist violence we saw on Saturday,” the official said.
Biden also will call on Americans “to seek a more perfect union that
embraces the diversity that has made us the strongest and most dynamic nation
in the history of the world”. The suspect captured after the shooting was said
by police to have authored a lengthy manifesto promoting extreme, but
increasingly widely held, white supremacist ideas.
At the heart of the manifesto was a rant about what’s dubbed “replacement
theory”, which purports the existence of a leftist plot to dilute the white
population with non-white immigrants.
It is a conspiracy theory that, like the bizarre QAnon narrative, has
spread from the furthest fringes of society to surprisingly mainstream areas —
most notably Tucker Carlson’s enormously influential nightly talk show on Fox
News.
Prominent
Republican members of Congress have also echoed “replacement theory” talking
points, which in turn are not too distant from Trump’s multiple speeches as
president in which he demonized illegal immigrants as invaders, once calling
them “animals”.
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