Murphy calls on Republicans to condemn ‘hateful theories about replacement’

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) urged Republicans to condemn “hateful theories about replacement” after the suspected perpetrator of the mass shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., cited the racist “great replacement theory” in a manifesto published online.

During an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday, Murphy argued that a majority of extremist shootings that take place in the United States are done by white supremacists.

“You see this throughline from El Paso to Charleston to Buffalo in which white supremacists who feed off of this online conversation about the ‘replacement theory,’ fed by mainstream conservative and Republican institutions, are turning their anger into mass violence,” Murphy said.

“And so this is a moment for my friends in the Republican Party, who more than occasionally endorse these hateful theories about replacement, to stop it. To stop it, to stand down, to condemn this kind of talk, to stop suggesting that Muslims or immigrants or Black people or Jews are a threat to society,” he continued, “because every time that they say things like that on the Senate floor, every time they go on Fox News and repeat that lie, they are unfortunately feeding this river of racist ideology into the brains of people who are contemplating mass violence.”

“I know that’s not the intention of my Republican colleagues, but they’ve just got to be really careful about the things that they say right now,” he added.

Ten people were killed and three others injured on Saturday after an 18-year-old suspect, who is white, opened fire at a Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo. Among the victims killed or injured, 11 of them were Black.

Following the shooting, number of Democrats — and even some Republicans — have taken their GOP colleagues to task for what they call scare mongering around immigration and race.

The great replacement theory claims that there is an intentional effort, through immigration, to have white Americans replaced with people of color.

The 18-year-old suspect, who subscribes to the conspiracy theory, sought to carry out the shooting in an area with a majority Black population, according to authorities, and in his manifesto published online cited other racially motivated mass shooters as his inspiration.

In the wake of the shooting, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) alleged that top House Republicans had “enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism.”

“History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse. @GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them,” she added in a tweet on Monday.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has been criticized for encouraging the replacement theory, accused the Buffalo suspect on Monday night of being a “mental patient” and “paranoid.”

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