For more: New York Times: How the El Paso Killer Echoed the Incendiary Words of Conservative Media Stars
NY Times reporter: The white nationalist “great replacement” theory is “startlingly common” in right-wing media
NYT's Jeremy Peters: “It's not only a regular occurrence to refer to [migrants] as an invading force, but also that the motivation behind their coming here is ... to replace white Americans.”
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From the August 12 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe
MIKE BARNICLE (MSNBC ANALYST): Jeremy, it's striking, the language referenced on the front page of The New York Times today and the link to the El Paso shooter. There is also a very short timeline in many instances between the number of times that these words have been used on Fox -- we just saw a few instances of them -- and sometimes a very short timeline between that language, that type of language, and tweets from the president of the United States directly reflecting the language.
JEREMY PETERS (NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER): Yeah, exactly, Mike. It's not a one-way street here. Sometimes the president's words inform Fox News hosts, sometimes Fox News hosts' words inform the president, and he goes out and repeats them. The result is this really toxic political discourse we have, where it's now become normal to refer to immigrants, migrants as "invaders," as some type of hostile enemy force that needs to be taken out and stopped at the border or, in the words of one pundit, maybe even shot. And how routine this has become, how common this has become, was really striking to us when we reviewed 5 years of transcripts from several news networks and radio programs, talk radio on the right, where it's not only a regular occurrence to refer to them as an invading force, but also that the motivation behind their coming here is not to escape the horrible conditions in their homeland, but it's to replace white Americans. And that's where this intersects with the El Paso killer's manifesto, when you look at this talk of replacement, which is also startlingly common in right-wing media and has great overlap with this manifesto.
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PETERS: This is not exclusive to any one particular right-wing outlet. This was broad. This was almost across everywhere we looked on the right in media. Whether it's from Sinclair, whether it's talk shows like Rush Limbaugh's, websites like The Gateway Pundit, it has appeared on the Drudge Report. You're talking about websites, shows, talk shows, on the radio, on television that have the potential to reach tens of millions of people a week.
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PETERS: It has migrated from the fringe to the mainstream in conservative rhetoric. And the idea of this "replacement," I think, is the best example of that. Because that's something that originated with a white supremacist book about this supposed white genocide that could occur if migrants keep flowing into places like Europe. And what the El Paso killer did, what the killer who shot up the synagogue in Pittsburgh did, they referred to this "invasion," and explicitly in the El Paso killer's case, referred to this idea of "replacement" several times. That the Hispanic race was going to replace people like him, a white guy. And it's difficult to draw cause and effect, but I think you look at the language, the parallels, it's pretty striking.