Liz Cheney, a longtime staunch Republican whose father is no less than Dick Cheney, is up to here with the GOP. First she started standing up to the insurrectionist wing of her party. Then they stripped her of her GOP leadership. Now she’s ripping them for having “enabled” the white supremacist mentality that led to Saturday’s gun massacre in Buffalo, New York.
The House GOP leadership has 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.
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) May 16, 2022
“The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism,” Cheney wrote in a scorched-earth tweet. “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.”
On Saturday, an 18-year-old assailant killed 10 people and wounded three, the majority of them Black. He had posted an epic manifesto, in which he parroted a conspiracy theory known as the “Great Replacement,” which claims that immigrants are trying to replace white Americans. Tucker Carlson has been talking about for years on his top-rated Fox News show. Indeed, The New York Times recently noted, he’s mentioned it over 400 times since 2016.
Then again, GOP leaders either don’t exactly show spine when it counts or are active cheerleaders for this racially-tinged conspiracy theory themselves. Till they do something to address both far right extremism and out-of-control gun violence, guess we’ll all have to take Patton Oswalt’s gallows humor advice on how to stay safe.