This weekend, there were two more mass shootings, in El Paso, TX, and Dayton, OH. As I write this, reports say that at least 20 people were murdered in El Paso, and nine were killed in Dayton. This follows the mass shootings last weekend in Gilroy, CA, and Brooklyn, NY.
NBC News reporter Ben Collins reported on the El Paso shooter’s alleged manifesto, writing, “The screed posted to the anonymous extremist message board [8chan] railed against immigrants in Texas and pushed talking points about preserving European identity in America.”
8chan is a far-right message board where shooters like this are portrayed as heroes; both the New Zealand shooter and the Poway Synagogue shooter both posted there. The Gilroy shooter recommended on Instagram a book that is popular among white supremacists on 8chan. Sharing his assessment on air, Collins was blunt: 8chan has a “body count.”
The El Paso shooter’s alleged manifesto is built around the “great replacement” theory -- the white supremacist conspiracy theory that immigrants are being brought into the United States to replace white people. That should sound familiar: It's a regular part of Fox News prime time. It is specifically one of the things that Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson have been criticized for pushing.
I spent a lot of time watching Fox News’ Saturday coverage of the El Paso shooting, and it was striking how the coverage bent toward propaganda. There were numerous interviews with survivors and witnesses that could have been done by any news outlet. But in between those interviews, Fox went out of its way to avoid any conversations about easy access to guns and the rash of far-right white nationalist shooters.
The network repeatedly speculated about a link between video games and the El Paso shooting.