Why did Payton Gendron (allegedly, but he live-streamed it, so it’s not like there’s much doubt) murder ten people at a Buffalo, New York grocery store on May 14?

The pat, and at least partially correct, answer, is that Gendron subscribes to something called the “Great Replacement” theory.  That’s mostly what we hear about in mainstream media descriptions of his 180-page “manifesto”: He’s a “right-wing” racist who believes that political elites are conspiring to replace him and his fellow “white” Americans with people of color.

What most mainstream publications don’t do is link directly to the manifesto itself so that members of the public can easily access it, read it, and form our own opinions on its contents. They’re telling us what they want us to know about it in the hope that we’ll think what they want us to think about it.

I was able to find the manifesto — not via a major US newspaper, but linked from a “white nationalist” publication by a prominent racist writer — after a short search.

On a quick read, the only real conclusion one can reach (other than that a shower sounds like a great idea) is that Gendron is, well, crazy, very much in the Unabomber vein. He’s got a bunch of grievances, and for some reason he decided that walking into a store and gunning down a bunch of people was the best way to call those grievances to our attention — and, per the “Great Replacement” stuff, to reduce the non-white population directly, and perhaps indirectly scare other members of that population into leaving the US.

But there’s more to Payton Gendron and his grievances than the “Great Replacement.” For example, he describes himself as in the “mild-moderate authoritarian left” category politically, complaining that under “conservatism,” the “natural environment is industrialized, pulverized and commoditized.” Some of his opinions fit comfortably into the 21st century “progressive” mold.

Mainstream media’s reluctance to show us the whole sordid thing is self-serving in that sense, but also part and parcel of the notion that “de-platforming” crazy ideas reduces crazy conduct, particularly of the violent sort.

That notion has never worked out in practice. In fact, the opposite seems to be true. For example, the Weimar Republic made liberal (sic) use of anti-hate-speech and “insult” laws to suppress Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party. And the Nazis used that attempted suppression to paint themselves as martyrs and inspire their base to action.

Attempting to suppress Gendron’s manifesto doesn’t stop those who want to read it because they’ll likely agree with it from finding it. It just makes it harder for the rest of us to engage his terrible ideas and steer the impressionable away from them with better arguments.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On May 10, Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy & Technology released a report — “American Dragnet: Data-Driven Deportation in the 21st Century” —  which you should find disturbing but shouldn’t find surprising.

The part you should find disturbing: “ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]  has created a surveillance infrastructure that enables it to pull detailed dossiers on nearly anyone, seemingly at any time. In its efforts to arrest and deport, ICE has — without any judicial, legislative or public oversight — reached into datasets containing personal information about the vast majority of people living in the U.S.”

The part you shouldn’t find surprising: “ICE has created a surveillance infrastructure that enables it to pull detailed dossiers on nearly anyone, seemingly at any time. In its efforts to arrest and deport, ICE has — without any judicial, legislative or public oversight — reached into datasets containing personal information about the vast majority of people living in the U.S.”

In responding to the report, a number of commentators pronounce themselves shocked — shocked! — that a federal agency which the US Constitution says can’t be allowed to exist would do things the US Constitution says it can’t be allowed to do.

According to the US Constitution (see Article I, Section 9; Article V; and Amendment 10), the federal government has no legitimate power to regulate immigration. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. ICE has no lawful function whatsoever. It’s just a bunch of guys with guns, running around harassing, abducting, and sometimes murdering, travelers.

Also according to the US Constitution (see Amendment 4), the government isn’t allowed to conduct unreasonable searches and seizures of our “persons, houses, papers, and effects.” The ICE “data dragnet” is the very definition of such unreasonable searches and seizures.

Your data and information are yours, not theirs, and absent very specific (“particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized”) warrants issued on the basis of probable cause to believe you’ve committed a crime,  ICE (even if it could legally exist) would have no business rummaging through that information even if doing so entailed the off chance it might catch a criminal, which it doesn’t (immigration is not a crime — see above).

But why on earth would anyone be surprised that a criminal organization like ICE would commit, you know, crimes like searching your stuff without a warrant?

In 1982, James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling set forth what’s commonly known as the “broken windows” theory. According to that theory, visible signs of petty crime, such as broken windows, encourage more — and more egregious — crimes.

While that theory has often been used to justify depredations like the ICE “data dragnet,” it also explains them: Tolerating the very existence of a criminal organization like ICE naturally encourages it to constantly pursue, and frequently escalate, its criminal activities.

The solution to such problems is not “judicial, legislative or public oversight.”

The solution to such problems is disbanding criminal organizations like ICE and obeying the Supreme Law of the Land, under which there’s no such thing as an “illegal immigrant.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Nearly three months into the war Ukraine, events up-ended quite a few assumptions by quite a few people. I count myself in that crowd.

I didn’t expect Vladimir Putin to order the invasion.

When he did, I expected it to go the way of the 2008 Russo-Georgian War — a quick rout of Ukrainian forces, a stern “don’t ever do that again” warning from Putin (as with Ukraine, the Georgia dust-up had to do with attempts to re-conquer seceded, pro-Russian areas), and a quick return to International Relations Business as Usual.

When it didn’t go that way, I at least expected Russian forces to wrap up the obvious objectives — securing the seceded Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republicans and a land corridor along the Azov coast connecting them to Crimea — in time for Putin to give a “mission accomplished” speech on World War Two Victory Day (May 9), wag a “don’t do that again” finger at Kyiv, and stand down.

Instead, Putin seems to have made a poor decision and bought himself a quagmire. Some blame his inability to get the job done on a US/NATO “proxy war,” and they’re not wrong, but it’s not like there’s anything new or novel in the idea. The US and Russia have been playing the “proxy war” game since the beginning of the Cold War, each assisting the other’s opponents in an attempt to expand their own empire and limit the expansion of the other.

In the 1990s, John Walker’s “bumper sticker” graphic popped up on the Internet: A Soviet flag with an “X” through it, next to an American flag without the “X.” The slogan:

“Evil Empires — One Down, One to Go …”

Both empires are, indeed, going, and the US “proxy” war in Ukraine, even if it brings about a Russian defeat, will likely hasten the US empire’s decline as onlooking regimes realign — not necessarily “with Russia,” but toward a studied neutrality.

Some take Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine as evidence that he aspires to reconstitute the Soviet empire. But while he’s described that empire’s disintegration as a “geopolitical catastrophe,” his record suggests he’s less interested in reconstituting it than in preserving some semblance of its remnant state’s “sphere of influence.”

If either “proxy war” party is guilty of “reconstitution” (even “expansion”) hubris, it’s the United States. Instead of taking “yes” for an answer, reaping a peace dividend, and moving to a peace economy when the Soviet empire collapsed, the US reveled in its role as self-perceived “only remaining superpower” and went right back to fighting — and losing — wars of aggression and conquest. Only when it brought prospective NATO expansion to Russia’s border with Ukraine did Putin rouse himself to real belligerence.

While the timelines are very different, both the Soviet and US imperial bankruptcies resemble the process of Mike’s in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises: “Gradually and then suddenly.”

For the US, “suddenly” now knocks at the door. The alternative being nuclear holocaust, might I suggest that we consider beating our swords into plowshares?

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY