White Supremacist Terrorism: From Christchurch to Buffalo

World Affairs

We're releasing our latest episode early this week in light of the recent tragedy in Buffalo. Please take care of yourselves.

The recent mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York left ten dead, three injured, and a city–and country–reeling. Within hours of the deadly attack, evidence emerged that the 18-year-old gunman’s crimes were racially motivated, explicitly targeting the area’s Black community.

Buffalo is the most recent in a string of high-profile acts of violence inspired by the “great replacement theory,” an extremist doctrine based on the unsubstantiated belief that non-white populations will “replace” and subjugate white majorities across the globe.

Once confined to the radical fringe, replacement theory has now entered mainstream conservative rhetoric, peddled by prominent right-wing figures like Tucker Carlson and J.D. Vance, and shared in online networks from El Paso to Christchurch. On this week’s episode, Ray Suarez sits down with Daniel Byman, a counterterrorism expert and author of Spreading Hate: The Global Rise of White Supremacist Terrorism, to discuss the roots of the global white power movement, how extremism spreads, and what the mainstreaming of violence as a political tactic means for targeted communities–and democracy–in the world today.

Guests:

Daniel Byman, Senior Fellow at Brookings Institution and professor at Georgetown University

Host(s):

Ray Suarez, co-host of World Affairs