Relying on a new report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), news headlines claim: “All 25 U.S. extremism-related murders last year were linked to right-wing extremists.” The report received wide, uncritical coverage from outlets in the U.S. such as the Associated Press and worldwide in Canada, the United Kingdom, and India. But the ADL’s report is fatally flawed. It assumes that every racist is automatically a “right-winger.”
For example, 10 of the 25 extremist murders last year were by Payton Gendron in Buffalo. But he was anything but a “right-winger.” The Buffalo killer was yet another mass murderer motivated by environmentalism.
In his writeup explaining this attack, 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 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.”
Gendron hated capitalists, whom he believed were destroying the environment and were at the root of much of the problem.
Overpopulation is hardly a core conservative issue. When did you hear a conservative politician calling on people to have fewer children? And while some Republicans support limiting international trade, it’s not for environmental reasons.
Left-Wing Killers
Anderson Lee Aldrich in Colorado Springs accounted for five more of these 25 murders. His attack occurred at an LGBTQ+ bar. The ADL report notes that he hosted a “white supremacist” website, which people falsely identify
