Near Air Force One, the first couple laid a bouquet of white flowers at a memorial of flowers, candles and condolences near the Tops supermarket, where on Saturday a young man armed with a machine gun targeted black people in the deadliest racist attack in the United States since Biden took office.

Biden met privately with the families of the victims, first service officers and local officials before the president was to make public remarks in which he planned to call for tougher gun laws and urge Americans to renounce racism and embrace the diversity of the nation. The White House said.

This is a message that Biden has voiced several times since he became the first president to specifically address white supremacy in his inaugural address, calling it “internal terrorism that we must confront.” However, such beliefs remain an entrenched threat at a time when his administration has focused on fighting the pandemic, inflation and war in Ukraine.

The victims of the shooting in Buffalo were ordinary buyers, a retired police officer who saved his life during the attack

The White House said the president and first lady would “miss the community that lost 10 lives in a senseless and horrific mass shooting.” Three more people were injured. Almost all the victims were black, including all the dead.

On Monday, Biden paid a special tribute to one of the victims, retired police officer Aaron Salter, who worked as a security guard at the store. He said Salter “gave his life trying to save others” by opening fire on an armed man, but he himself was killed.

Upon arrival in Buffalo, the president and two New York senators were greeted by Governor Katie Hochul, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown and local police and firefighters.

The hated writings of the shooter echo the words of white supremacists who marched with torches in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, a scene that Biden said inspired his decision to speak out against President Donald Trump in 2020 and led him to join. what he calls the “battle for the soul of America”.

A retired police officer who faced a shooting at Buffalo is called a hero: “He fell into battle”

“It’s important for him to appear before families and society and express his condolences,” said Derrick Johnson, NAACP president. “But we are more concerned that this will not happen in the future.”

It is unclear how Biden will try to do this. Proposals for new gun restrictions are usually blocked by Republicans, and racist rhetoric spreading on the fringes of national politics is only intensifying.

18-year-old Peyton Hendron was arrested at a supermarket and charged with murder. He pleaded not guilty.

Hendron reportedly posted a banner full of racism and anti-Semitism on the Internet before the shooting. The author called himself a supporter of Dylan Rufus, who killed nine black parishioners at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, and Brenton Taranto, who attacked a mosque in New Zealand in 2019.

Investigators are considering Hendron’s connection to the so-called “big replacement” theory, which unreasonably claims that white people are deliberately fascinated by other races through immigration or birth rates.

The claims are often intertwined with anti-Semitism, with Jews identified as the culprits. During the Unite the Right march in 2017 in Charlottesville, supporters of white supremacy chanted “Jews will not replace us.”

What is white replacement theory? Faith fuels racist attacks

“Many of these dark voices still exist today,” White House spokeswoman Caryn Jean-Pierre said Monday. “And the president is determined, as then … to make sure we fight off these forces of hatred, evil and violence.”

In the years since Charlottesville, substitution theory has shifted from the Internet country to basic right-wing politics. One-third of U.S. adults believe that there is “a group of people in this country trying to replace Native Americans with immigrants who agree with their political views,” according to a December poll by the Associated Press and NORC. for public relations research.

Tucker Carlson, a well-known Fox News presenter, accuses Democrats of organizing mass migration in order to consolidate their power.

“The country is being stolen from American citizens,” he said on August 23, 2021. He repeated the same topic a month later, saying that “this policy is called a great replacement, a replacement of the American heritage by more obedient people from the far corners of the country.”

Carlson’s show usually gets the highest ratings in cable news, and he responded to a furor Monday night by accusing liberals of trying to silence their opponents.

“Therefore, because a mentally ill teenager killed strangers, you cannot be allowed to express your political convictions out loud,” he said.

His commentary reflects how this conspiratorial view of immigration spread through the Republican Party ahead of this year’s midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress.

An ad on Facebook posted last year by the election committee of MP Eliza Stefanik, RN.Y., said Democrats wanted a “permanent MEMORIAL OF THE ELECTION” through an amnesty for illegal immigrants. This plan should “overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.”

Alex Degras, a senior adviser to Stefanica’s company, said Monday that she had “never advocated racist positions or made racist statements.” He criticized the “dead and false reports” about her advertising.

Stefanic is the third-ranked leader of the Republican House of Representatives, replacing MP Liz Cheney, R-Vayo, who angered the party with her denunciations of Trump after the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

Cheney tweeted Monday that the Caucasus leadership “allowed white nationalism, white supremacy and anti-Semitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends much worse.”

The rhetoric of replacement theory has also swept through primary Republican campaigns.

“Democrats want to open the borders so they can introduce and amnesty tens of millions of illegal aliens – this is their election strategy,” the Blake Masters, who is running in the Senate primaries against Republicans in Arizona, wrote on Twitter hours after the Buffalo shooting. – Not on my watch.

A Masters spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Although Biden did not speak directly about the theory of substitution, his warnings about racism remain an integral part of his public speeches.

Three days before the Buffalo shooting at a Democratic fundraiser in Chicago, Biden said, “I really think we’re still fighting for the soul of America.”

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Associated Press writer Karen Matthews of New York contributed to this report.