On Friday, a federal judge sentenced the El Paso Walmart mass murderer, who killed 23 people and wounded another 22, to 90 consecutive life sentences. He still faces additional charges from Texas, where he could receive the death penalty.
With the sentencing announcement, over and over, the news media, such as USA Today, Forbes, and the Dallas Morning News, describes this monster as a “white supremacist,” the Washington Post as a “white nationalist,” and the Texas Tribune, a racist who “wanted to shoot as many Mexicans as possible.” Headlines for the Associated Press claimed, “White gunman to be sentenced for killing 23 people in a racist Walmart attack in a Texas border city,” and Rolling Stone noted, “White Supremacist Who Killed 23 at El Paso Walmart Receives 90 Consecutive Life Sentences.”
All that is true. But it is only part of the story. And it is a part of the story that the media wants to ignore.
Since the murderer’s vicious attack on August 3, 2019, the news media has constantly described the El Paso murderer as “far-right” in Newsweek and raised this case as an example of “right-wing extremism in the U.S.” at NBC. Indeed, attacks such as the El Paso mass murder are counted by the Anti-Defamation League as right-wing extremists.
But the El Paso murderer was not a right-winger by any normal definition. His views clearly match up much closer with the views of Democrats. The news media views anyone who is racist as a right-winger.
But the El Paso murderer was a racist because of his environmentalist views. In his manifesto, he wrote: “The decimation of the environment is creating a massive burden for future generations … The next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.”
Nor is it just the El Paso murderer. The Buffalo, New York, and Dayton, Ohio, mass murderers were also racists who were clearly of the left. The Buffalo mass murderer labeled himself an “eco-fascist national socialist” and a part of the “mild-moderate authoritarian left.” He worried minorities have too many children and that it damages the environment. “The invaders are the ones overpopulating the world,” he claimed. “Kill the invaders, kill the overpopulation, and by doing so, save the environment.” His views were no different than the El Paso murderer, but he also has been continually labeled a right-winger.
These deranged killers made minorities their principal target. But they’ve done so out of a crazy environmentalist determination to reduce the human population by whatever means necessary.
The news media and politicians who constantly warn about the world’s imminent end can’t bring themselves to acknowledge the environmental connection, even though climate activists time and again agree that overpopulation is part of the problem. “It does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question: Is it okay to still have children?” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2019. She also warned that the “‘world will end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.”
Similarly, President Biden fans the flames of alarmism when he claims that “climate change poses an existential threat to our lives … this is code red.”
The New York Times, the Washington Post, and other news outlets intend to constrain any racist as a conservative right-winger. But they aren’t. And if there’s any ideological cause that really is sparking violence, it’s environmental extremism. But even when they aren’t labeling these mass murderers as right-wingers, they refuse to admit the real ideology driving these killers.
Lott is the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and the author of “Gun Control Myths.”