EXPLAINER: White ‘replacement theory’ fuels racist attacks

By DAVID BAUDER
AP Media Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Investigators are still piecing together the motives of the mass shooter who killed 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, this weekend. But authorities aren’t hesitating to call it a racially motivated attack. It’s given a spotlight to a racist ideology seeping from the internet’s fringes into the mainstream. Called the “great replacement” theory, it essentially says there’s a plot to diminish the influence of white people by replacing them with nonwhites. Experts and researchers are concerned that some of this conspiracy theory’s tenets are taking hold, especially regarding immigration to the United States.