A Hate Crime Expert on the Buffalo Shooter

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. In President Biden's speech in Buffalo yesterday he used the T-word.

President Biden: What happened here is simple and straightforward, terrorism. Terrorism. Domestic terrorism.

Brian Lehrer: President Biden also used the P-word, power.

President Biden: Violence inflicting in the service of hate and a vicious thirst for power that defines one group of people being inherently inferior to any other group.

Brian Lehrer: The P-word and the H-word hate, but he also used the A-words, angry and alienated.

President Biden: A hate that through the media, and politics, the internet, has radicalized angry, alienated, lost, and isolated individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced. That's the word, replaced, by the other by people who don't look like them.

Brian Lehrer: He came back to the P-word. In fact, two P-words.

President Biden: We have to refuse to live in a country where fear and lies are packaged for power and for profit.

Brian Lehrer: President Biden in Buffalo yesterday. With me now is Brian Levin, Director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University in San Bernardino. He was previously with the Southern Poverty Law Center's Klan watch and Militia Task Force, and a New York City police officer back in the 1980s. Professor Levin, thanks for coming on again. Welcome back to WNYC.

Brian Levin: Thank you. With a resume like that, someone everyone can hate. [

laughter]

Brian Lehrer: There you go. We're going to get into those different little bites of President Biden that I picked out because I think each of them could launch a whole conversation. First, where does the Buffalo mass murder fit into the arc of hate crimes in the United States as you study that arc right now? Racist killings of Black Americans are not all that new. Obviously, not at all new, but is there something very 2022 about this one or not so much?

Brian Levin: Oh, gosh, what a great question. The data bears it out. Let me try and roll it out here as quickly as I can. 2019 was a record year for FBI enumerated hate crime. There's all kinds of issues with how they count them, but it was a record for them. It would have been a record even without the massacre in El Paso. Let's look macro going back a little longer.

Replacement Theory, even before it got named that, has been around for decades

and decades and decades in various incarnations here in the United States, and then germinated in France and Germany and elsewhere. What we had since about a decade ago with the string of manifesto killings starting in Norway, and then we saw New Zealand, Charleston in South Carolina, you get the idea, El Paso. We had a really interesting thing, just bear with me.

In 2020, hate crimes, for instance, in New York City dropped, but the rest of the country was up. The reason was antisemitic cases declined because of the gathering restrictions that took place. We saw that Jews are twice as represented in major cities. New York especially has the largest population of Jews in the country. We had this interesting little pause and realignments during 2020.

Antisemitic went down, but in 2019 Jews were the target in New York, LA, and Chicago. What happened, we saw a carousel of a bit of a realignment. First anti-Asian in March and April and then particularly, listen to this, June 2020, we saw a bunch of stuff going on. First, we had this crescendo going from the liberate movement which started on April 17th of folks showing up places armed. Then we saw they were going to State Capitol.

Brian Lehrer: That was the anti-lockdown movement at that time, right?

Brian Levin: Absolutely. It took off on Facebook like crazy. We stopped counting because we had a staff intermission with regard to our researchers' interns. I stopped counting at over 200 of these liberate groups. That laid the fertile ground for the insurrection, people will say, but it also laid the fertile ground for this anti-Black stuff that occurred. Just bear with me, we saw the civil guards and certainly Kenosha I think was an example of how that can spin out of control.

In June 2020, we saw the largest number of social justice protests that we saw in recent decades. By the way, there were some violent ones, but our colleagues at Princeton found over 94% were peaceful. If you look at the leadership, they weren't talking about conspiracy theories, and elimination as doctrine, which labeled people who disagree with them as targets for violence and death.

What I'm saying is, yes, there were violent folks who were on the edges, but if you look at Sharpton, and you look at Ben Crump, look at the get to New York for the next rally, it was very conciliatory with respect to non-violence and police. Go look at it, folks. I'll try and find it. I'm @proflevin on Twitter. I'll put it up there since we can't do it on the show. The bottom line was, we saw this visceral response that went from liberate, this elastic pool of grievance online translated to real-world stuff.

As these increases in rallies occurred across the country, and they were very widespread, not just in big cities like New York, but in mid-sized cities and even small towns. What we saw was an expansion in the number of police departments that actually were able to identify at least one hate crime in their jurisdiction. A multi-year high on that. Here's what else we saw. Here's the big one.

June 2020, was the worst month for anti-Black hate crime ever going back to '91 when the FBI started getting national stats. Just listen to this, that elevation in anti-

Black hate crime, unlike previous spikes around election 2016, or even 9/11, lasted months and months and months. That month was the second-worst month for hate crime overall according to FBI data that we disaggregated, but that elevation, that spike went on for months. We have not seen that before so that was historic.

Brian Lehrer: If we're going to label that, would you call that a backlash? I used all those letters for Biden's language. Maybe this is the B-word backlash to the outpost of protests after the George Floyd killing.

Brian Levin: Absolutely. By the way, there was over $1 billion in damage in some of the more violent ones, but what I'm saying to you is the leadership Sharpton and Crump specifically spoke out against it, and most of the killings were against Black folks. Like here in California, we had a white supremacist run over a protester. Let's look at it that way. Yes, there are some on the left who are violent, but they're violent in a different way.

Brian Lehrer: No. I think I was asking a different question than you answered. The backlash is against the protests, even the peaceful ones that were taking place after the killing of George Floyd. Let me move on from that to President B-- [crosstalk]

Brian Levin: One quick point on that. Listen to this.

Brian Lehrer: Please.

Brian Levin: Remember Lafayette Park? We saw this constant stream of videos on certain broadcast networks and elsewhere, BLM Antifa socialist, busloads and planeloads of Antifa coming to a town near you. The day of Lafayette Park that was cleared out of peaceful protesters, that was one of the five worst days ever for anti-Black hate crimes. Yes, it was a backlash, and it was a sticky internet and broadcast segment to this. They kept that fear going for months and months and months and was used politically.

First blacks were burning down our towns, along with socialist Antifa and all that. Then they were involved in stealing the election and now they're involved with stealing our children with respect to their schools. Even these pedophile stuff against justice-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: They are conspiracy theories. How about President Biden's P-words, power, and profit? Those are different than hate. How much do you see motivations of power or profit behind people pushing a belief in white supremacy today?

Brian Levin: Great point. Let's look at this. When candidate Trump put his Muslim ban proposal out there five days after our community in San Bernardino was attacked, his polls, Fox polls, by the way, showed him in the battleground state of South Carolina, getting a 25% bump in just the days after that. We also saw a 23% increase after the Muslim ban proposal, an anti-Muslim hate crime is above the pop that we had from the terror attack.

Now about the prophet, I was on the air on Fox News Channel doing social justice

protests. I criticized Tucker Carlson using deceptive stats with regard to African-Americans. You know what? Never got called back on there again, but his ratings continued to climb. There's a currency to this, let me just say why, because the same kind of emotional, visceral response that we have to fear that can get people to be violent, can also get people to come out to vote.

Look, [unintelligible 00:10:58] has been a part of politics for some time. What I think is so terrible is the stickiness and the intertwining of the internet where you see this echo chamber, where both complement each other. We see this heightened elevation of hate crime on the streets. There's a correlation between invective online and violence in the street. The one shoe that didn't drop was the mass killings until now, but we knew that steam was going to go somewhere as people were online more and getting radicalized more, particularly with regard to this trading of memes and conspiracy theories.

For instance, this terrorist may never have seen Tucker Carlson, but the memes and the lies and the conspiracy theories, as well as the elimination of this rhetoric, and we don't see that on the left, we don't see the homicides, we don't see the glorification of every weaponry that we see on the hard right.

Brian Lehrer: This conspiracy theory called Replacement Theory, is gaining traction in some parts of white America, that's been getting a lot of press attention since the shooting at Buffalo. Can you explain this conspiracy theory for people who have only heard the term and only vaguely know what it is or where it came from?

Brian Levin: Sure, we're experiencing demographic change not only in the United States but elsewhere. Last decade, we became a minority white Anglo-Christian country. What has happened with that just went from, for instance, the extreme. Everyone knows that we have democratic change going on. Now, it's a conspiracy with Soros and Antifa, and BLM. What we have is this elastic pool of grievance and it's fertilized by fear. Then this elimination is dark and knocks it another ratchet up. With regard to replacement theory, what it says is, not only is there demographic change going on, but the people that are coming in are destroying the country in many different ways.

By the way, leftists, socialists, Democrats, Antifa, Jews, Soros, they're all responsible for it. That's what happened with the Tree of Life massacre. I don't even want to say his name, he said, "Screw the optics," and he went after Jews. Why? Because they were part of this Soros' conspiracy to let in the caravan of immigrants. One quick thing though, listen to this, usually, in election years, we see hate crimes rise later in the year. We saw that in 2018, for instance, and November 2016, the two worst months of the last decade. Now, we're seeing fire season all year long. That's something that I'm concerned about.

hate crime so far in 2022, 16 major cities including New York, up an average of 24%, that's on top of an increase in 2021 and 2020.

Brian Lehrer: The population is actually changing, we all know that. The difference between what's real and what's a conspiracy theory is the belief that someone is

directing the population change for political gain?

Brian Levin: Yes, two-part, that it's being nefariously organized by a cadre of enemies. Number two, that these immigrants that are coming in which by the way, thank God, because if you look at for instance in the mild area, PhDs and researchers, but also the children of immigrants who go to our school, they're doing beautifully. The other shoe on that conspiracy theory walk is that these immigrants are dirty, they're violent, they can't assimilate in any way, and they are alien to our culture, and it's part of an invasion that must be eliminated. It's not only that someone's controlling it, but these people are violent and we have to stand up against it. You can hear it on Tucker Carlson all the time.

Brian Lehrer: If you're just joining us, my guest is Brian Levin, Director of the Centre for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University in San Bernardino. As we're putting the Buffalo mass murderer terrorist attack, racist attack into some kind of context here. 212-433-WNYC, if you have a question for Brian Levin, 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer. Not that hate has logic, to begin with, but by replacement theory math, it's not black people who were replacing white people, it's not Jews, the chant of Jews will not replace us, which was famously heard at Charlottesville.

Jews are only 2% of the American population, 2%. Black people have been around 13% for a very long time. Of course, the reason there's even that much of a black population is that black people from Africa were brought here in chains for slavery, starting in 1619 as we all know, establishing that as an original American institution. Black Americans are as original American as any European. How does this replacement theory make any sense even to the perpetrators of it, except as an excuse for anti-blackness and anti-Semitism?

Brian Levin: It is. Look, there's always a grain of truth in horrible bigotry and conspiracy theories. The fact of the matter is, we are demographically changing, that's not a bad thing indeed. Here's the other thing-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Just not in those directions.

Brian Levin: The Latino population grew quite a bit during the first decade of this century. You know what? It moderated and Asians were growing at a faster clip. The bottom line is it's non-whites. Here's the thing, not everyone is as smart as you, Brian. They're looking at this, that anyone who's not me is an outgroup, outgroup equals threat. We have memes. One other quick thing. I was on a panel with a psychologist, she hit it out of the park. She said there is a deliberative type of bigotry, which comes about because, hey, someone takes an opposing position on me. For instance, people want to unionize and the company says, "Oh, that's something that we don't like."

People have different sides. This is a little different. This is based on emotion. This is a visceral response to a feeling of fear that is cultivated by the very things that you referenced before, politicians, broadcasters, and others, who know that this can get

people to stay with them because it hits them where their fears are, where their gut is rather than where their head is.

Brian Lehrer: Potentially, this goes even further into uncharted and scary territory. We've even talked about so far, perhaps, depending on your hierarchy there, as some in the conservative movement look to autocracies around the world as models and openly question whether democracy is the best system for their interests. Here's a clip that some of you will have heard this morning, listeners, from a report by NPR's Mara Liasson on Morning Edition today about the CPAC annual conservative conference being set this year for the country of Hungary, because they admire their increasingly autocratic leader, Viktor Orbán. Here's Mara.

Mara Liasson: There are more and more conservatives who say as Peter Thiel one of the biggest donors now in the Republican Party who said, "Democracy and freedom are not compatible." There are people who are questioning small-l liberalism on the right, small-l liberalism, meaning democracy with checks and balances, free press, independent judiciary, tolerance for diversity of backgrounds and opinions. I think that the things that Orbán has done to many people look undemocratic, but to a lot of conservatives, they look like the only way to save their way of life.

Brian Lehrer: Whoa, Mara Liasson on Morning Edition today. Brian, have you heard that before people saying out loud democracy and freedom are not compatible, as they identify with this white Christian identity, right-wing?

Brian Levin: Yes, here's the thing that I think is so interesting. Prejudice has both depth, direction, and also an informational component. You have different strata, you have some folks that say, "No, I don't want to change things so much but blacks did steal the election." Then it becomes a rabbit hole. What I'm saying to you is when you look at the polls that say white people are under attack. Even before the pandemic, it was up around 40%.

What I'm saying is this fear is being stoked, but it's not like-- Just bear with me. I was at the ballgame and I'm looking at the box scores. I'm quiet and the people next to me were clapping when there was a hit. What I'm saying is we have both a deliberative type of prejudice, but also a visceral one. You don't have to have all your ducks in a row fact-wise, as long as feeling and image-wise.

That's why with this teenage terrorist means were a large part of his-- The 21st-century bumper stickers were part of that. Peter Thiel, interesting enough, he was in my law school class, and I knew him back then. Listen to his anti-democratic stuff for a while, and we lionize money in this culture. By the way, Peter's invited to my university anytime if he wants to have a discussion. For some time, he was saying that America was at a competitive disadvantage because we gave women suffrage and their vote was bleeding heart vote, that would spend too much of government funds.

That's why we needed pods in the ocean without governance, and he backtracked on the anti-women's suffrage thing. When you put that, along with elimination in this language bust their skulls, like President Trump said, or just this weekend, for

instance, Ted Nugent, who knew that that guy was still around saying, "Bust the heads of Democrats." There was something different. People call me all the time saying, "What about the left? What about the left?"

We've seen violence from the left but generally, the left believes-- Like the social justice protests they were about changing laws. They weren't about destroying the whole country. Although yes, were there some slackers on? They did probably but when we look at on the hard, far-right, and white supremacists, there's a whole ecosystem of eliminations doctrine, kill them, and that these folks, whoever they are, in this constellation, this elastic pool of grievance, they're all related.

It's Newsom, out here in California. Governor Newsom, and Tifa, BLM, they're all enemies, and they all are existential threats that must be eliminated. That's the language that we're getting. On the left, it's like a lot of hacking and insulting. By the way, I've gone to these conflictual protests. A lot of times what the left will do is they'll direct violence to a particular target, and then had fisticuffs and meant that you humiliating them and getting them out of town as opposed to necessarily killing them. Since 2018, white supremacist far-right have dominated the extremist homicides, according to our research here in the United States and for some time before that as well.

Brian Lehrer: By the way on the Peter Thiel, women's suffrage is making a soft. He can backtrack, but he can't unsay it. We know what was going on spontaneously in his brain. Also, that's one of the reasons that they like Viktor Orbán because like Putin, they've got this toxic masculinity, male supremacy not just white supremacy also male supremacy thing going on in traditional sexuals.

Brian Levin: Thank you so much. Oh, I love doing your show, Brian. Call anytime. There were so many tentacles to this. You are right. We have a separate Insell movement. Nevertheless, this toxic masculinity is another, just bear with me, white males are losing power. One of the ways that we're doing this is from these, what did Rush Limbaugh use to call them? Feminazis. What do we do with Nazis? We destroy them. What is Putin say about Ukraine? They're Nazis. You see the elimination of this language, these folks who are the enemies represent an existential threat who must be destroyed, and toxic masculinity, as well as the weaponization fetish, is out there too.

Brian Lehrer: Let me get a few phone calls in here for you. Kathy in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with Brian Levin from the University of California. Wait, I'm going to give you--

Brian Levin: California State. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: I'm going to say for people who don't know him, he's the Director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University in San Bernardino, Brian Levin. Kathy, go. Now you're on, sorry.

Kathy: I just wanted to say that in all of the reports on this killing in Buffalo, they never bring up the parents. The parents knew he had guns in the home and they did

nothing. The thing is that racism doesn't start with an 18-year-old. You don't come into this world a racist. It starts with the parents. That's where the culture starts and that's-- [crosstalk]

Brian Levin: Not in this case. The parents apparently were like-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: I read that he said in that 180-page thing that he posted that his parents didn't know. That he was hiding the guns from his parents. He was hiding the fact that he dropped out of community college from his parents and his participation with his ideologies, right?

Brian Levin: Right. Here's the thing, great, great point. Look, sometimes the parents do, but in the Fourth Reich Skinhead case, 30 years ago, here in California, they were going to kill Rodney King and mow down a black church, they got radicalized from a terrestrial peer group. Now, what happened is, just bear with me, during the pandemic, we saw people go online more. I do agree with you, weapons acquisition is incredibly important to this. I had one of my friends who was victimized in the San Bernardino terror attack, say, "Hate is out there but do we have to give them weapons of war to carry it out?"

Brian Lehrer: Todd in Somerset, you're on WNYC. Hi, Todd.

Todd: Hi, thank you for having me on. I really appreciate your show very much. Whether I can use my language properly, I hope. What I wanted to say was that I think that this is a historical thing that has to do with people who have a way of life in the United States and that they're afraid of losing their way of supporting themselves. These are what I'm talking about the people that live here, they're not just white, they're also Black people, Clarence Thomas.

For example, the Liberals are trying to electrify the automobile and a lot of people have a job dependence on gasoline, and on motorcars, and other things, diesel. The amount of change that's happening is making people afraid and that that's why they're lashing out violently. They're fear for their way of life, their support. This has always been a thing in the United States with people who've moved here and that they're making a living here, and that they feel that this is being threatened that their way of life, it is because of all the change that's happening. That's being partly spurred by liberals. That's what I think is causing this violence.

Brian Levin: What's spurred by liberals? I missed that part. I was with you up until then.

Brian Lehrer: You're talking about the example that you gave was electrification of motor vehicles when a lot of people have jobs in the fossil fuels industry.

Todd: Yes. If you drive around, you see gas stations everywhere and that these people, and all the people who are into developing, the construction industry, the diesel mechanics that they're feeling that they're going to lose their way of life, their jobs, much greater than the coal industry I think on another level of-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Why would they take that out on ethnic or religious differences?

Todd: Because it's liberals. They're taking out on Jews. They think that Jews are aliens, that they're going to take away their way of life, their jobs. They're taking away in general on a liberal basis.

Brian Lehrer: Todd, thank you. Do you agree with his sociological analysis at all?

Brian Levin: In small part, let me tell you what I mean. If you looked at the white end resistance comics from the '80s, for instance, and earlier they would have white people build this country. What I'm saying to you is again, it's a constellation of interconnected changes, fear, and threats. It's change overall, and that change goes from everything to you used to be able to work in a factory and build things to now the left is going to take away our hamburgers.

What I'm saying to you is, it's a multifaceted threat, even when it's not even related. Change is occurring because the world changes irrespective of who's behind the levers. What I'm saying to you is this notion of attaching any type of uncomfortable change to some conspiracy is something that we've seen on the hard right for some time, but what I think is so interesting now, is that people talk about the internet. It's not just the internet. It's how we communicate with each other and how conspiracies and stereotypes that label who is the legitimate target of regression, based on this fear is an amorphous pool.

It includes the vegans, it includes the Antifa. I was on a radio show earlier today out in New Orleans, somebody called in and said, "Antifa did the insurrection." Any kind of change, but also anything that could be regarded as violent is immediately shifted over to that outgroup. That outgroup has been fairly consistent, but now it's much more amorphous because of the internet and conflictual elimination politics, which labels anyone that's in an outgroup as a legitimate target for violence.

Brian Lehrer: We have to leave it there with Brian Levin, Director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University in San Bernardino. He was previously with the Southern Poverty Law Center's Klan Watch and Militia task force and a New York City police officer in the 1980s. Brian, thank you so much.

Brian Levin: Thank you for having me.

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