In Buffalo, Joe Biden attacks white supremacist ‘poison’ after racist shooting
- The teen suspected of murdering 10 people at a neighbourhood store embraced a conspiracy theory that white Americans were being ‘replaced’ by immigrants
- The US president called the attack an act of ‘domestic terrorism’, saying that racism was being stoked for political gain
US President Joe Biden on Tuesday called out what he branded the “poison” of white supremacist ideology behind a deadly mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, and said that racism is being stoked for political gain.
Speaking in the city where a white teen is accused of murdering 10 people – most of them African-Americans – in a neighbourhood supermarket, Biden said: “What happened here is simple and straightforward terrorism. Domestic terrorism.”
“White supremacy is a poison running through our body politic and it’s been allowed to fester right in front of our eyes,” Biden said, condemning “those who spread the lie for power, for political gain and for profit”.
In a searing speech that also called for restrictions on ownership of assault-style rifles, Biden listed the victims, fighting tears as he recounted how one of the dead, named as 53-year-old Andre Mackniel, had been buying a birthday cake for his three-year-old son when the gunman entered the store.
Biden’s harshest comments were directed at what he described as the “perverse ideology” of white supremacists that police say inspired the shooter.
In a manifesto, the alleged mass killer referred to the so-called “replacement theory” which claims the existence of a leftist plot to overwhelm the white population with non-white immigrants.