New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Sunday that the shooting at a Buffalo supermarket that left 10 dead and three wounded was “white supremacy terrorism” and urged social media companies to step up their enforcement efforts against extremist content.
“I’m calling on social media platforms to be making sure that they’re doing a better job monitoring the hate speech that’s out there, especially when it’s directed against populations and comes under the guise of white supremacy terrorism, which is exactly what happened here in Buffalo,” Hochul said in an interview with “Face the Nation,” discussing a manifesto that was purportedly written and posted by the suspected gunman before Saturday’s attack.
* Transcript: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on “Face the Nation”
Police said the suspected shooter, identified as 18-year-old Payton Gendron, opened fire at a Tops Friendly Market in an attack that was motivated by racial hatred, shooting 11 Black people and two White people. He was confronted by law enforcement at the store and taken into custody. Gendron was arraigned Saturday on a charge of murder in the first degree and pleaded not guilty.
Gendron lived in Conklin, New York, roughly three-and-a-half hours from the supermarket, and purportedly wrote and posted a hate-filled manifesto online, in which he said he chose the location for the attack because of its high Black population and relative proximity.
In the wake of the shooting, Hochul said her state is taking “proactive measures” to monitor social media platforms and called on internet companies to boost their monitoring of hate speech that “comes under the guise of whit… (Read more)
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