The Buffalo Massacre Should Surprise No One
Words by Habibah Jaghoori
May 14th of 2022 saw a horrific and sadly not very surprising massacre against the black people of America in Buffalo, New York. The mass shooter, a self-described white supremacist drove three hours to conduct a shooting spree at a supermarket, resulting in the tragic death of 10 people and 3 others injured. The massacre was live streamed on Twitch. 11 of the 13 victims were black. At one point during the attack, the terrorist pointed his weapon to a white person, apologised and immediately aimed towards another direction. He has pled ‘not guilty’ in court.
This massacre was not a spontaneous act, but a hate crime planned months prior to the attack. The terrorist’s social media displays hundreds of racist posts, each outlining different plans of assault against communities he feared were ‘replacing’ white people. A year before the massacre, the terrorist had undergone a police investigation for making threating remarks to his black peers in their final year of high school.
The terrorist responsible for the latest massacre on black people had written a 180-page manifesto fuelled with Republican like propaganda of the ‘Great Replacement Theory.’
In the manifesto he claims, ‘whites are being deliberately outnumbered in the U.S by migrants from other countries to skew elections in favour of the democrats.’ In the manifesto, precise details of the massacre were outlined as the supermarkets zip code 14208 was considered to be ‘the highest black percentage that is close to where I live.’ Other positions of hate against ‘blacks, Jews, left-wing people and transgender people’ were widespread in his 180 pages of ignorance and hate.
Investigations show that in November of 2021, the terrorist posted and praised a manifesto written by the 2019 Christchurch shooter on discord and on December he wrote ‘I will carry out an attack against the replacers and will even livestream the attack.’
Needless to say, authorities and so-called civil servants who are meant to protect and serve had endless opportunities to prevent the Buffalo massacre from happening. The evidence and reason to intervene before the shooting occurred was strong but the U.S state and its violent arms refrained from taking action. They willfully allowed for this massacre to happen. This should shock no one. The current U.S ringleader Joe Biden’s crocodile tears are worthless.
Racism, anti-human violence and white supremacy are systemic structures in the United States created and maintained by the country’s law and policy. The product of such structures sprouts continuous acts of domestic terrorism nation-wide and the normalisation of KKK mobs rampant in schools, workplaces and recreational settings. The entirety of the U.S is built on oppressing the black race and degrading their humanity which has allowed for heinous hate crimes to occur without any serious consequences. The U.S government and its multiple bodies are the organised KKK. This rich and powerful entity sponsor worldwide terrorism and protect their terrorists through channels of diplomacy, ‘justice systems’ and farce constitutions.
The target of all anti-racist struggle should be the state itself. It should be the system that exploits humans, pits them against each other, discards the sanctity of human life and mother nature and gives power to people that hold the monopoly of violence.
As Malcom X has said,
‘You can’t have capitalism without racism.’
On Dit stands in complete and unconditional solidarity to the Black Lives Matter movement and extends their full support for the demands of the black communities.
