White nationalism is an urgent threat that American people must now confront, said an opinion article published by The Atlantic magazine this week, noting that the white-power movement has led to more violence.

 

The mass shooting of Black grocery shoppers in Buffalo, New York, on Saturday follows a string of similar attacks. Gunmen have targeted worshippers at synagogues and mosques and temples and Bible study; they have opened fire on summer camps and people at festivals, said the article, titled "White Power, White Violence" by Kathleen Belew, the author of Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, and an assistant professor of history at the University of Chicago.

 

In each event, a white-power activist was the perpetrator. Several of the assailants wrote extensively about their motivations in manifestos that outlined a coherent political ideology, the article added, noting that "in the United States, they have been backed by a broad social movement that our legislators have failed to condemn, that our court system has failed to prosecute, and that our society has not stopped."

 

The article pointed out that this means that these are not "lone wolf" attacks even when they may appear to be, and certainly not just because a shooter has claimed to have been operating alone.

 

"But all of this violence represents only half of the urgent threat we must now confront. The other half of white nationalism is in our halls of governance and on our televisions, claiming ignorance of its most violent outgrowths," said the article.

 

In white-power ideology, mass violence is seen as a tool rather than an end point. American people "need look no further than the manifestos that are now routinely shared online from gunman to gunman, imparting instructions for future mass shooters as well as explaining how the attack itself is meant to provoke race war and civil unrest," according to the article.