US Could Address Exploitation Of Internet By Terrorists Following Buffalo Shooting - Biden

Sumaira FH Published May 17, 2022 | 10:33 PM

The US government could take steps to address the use of the internet to radicalize and mobilize individuals for terrorism in the wake of the white supremacist mass shooting in Buffalo that left ten people dead and three others injured, President Joe Biden said on Tuesday

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 17th May, 2022) The US government could take steps to address the use of the internet to radicalize and mobilize individuals for terrorism in the wake of the white supremacist mass shooting in Buffalo that left ten people dead and three others injured, President Joe Biden said on Tuesday.

"I'm not naive. I know tragedy will come again... But there are certain things we can do," Biden said during remarks on the shooting in Buffalo. "You can't prevent people from being radicalized to violence, but we can address the relentless exploitation of the internet to recruit and mobilize terrorism. We just have to have the courage to do that, to stand up."

Payton Gendron, 18, is accused of carrying out the shooting at a Buffalo supermarket on Saturday. The FBI qualified the shooting as a racially motivated hate crime.

Gendron allegedly left a manifesto in which he expressed white supremacist beliefs, including theories of white population replacement.

Gendron also made use of the Black Sun - a symbol used by Nazi Germany and neo-Nazi groups, including the Ukraine's Azov battalion.

Gendron referenced in the manifesto the internet as a factor in his radicalization and cited other far-right shooters, including Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant, as inspiring him.

Biden called white supremacy and its belief system a "poison" for the United States as a nation and characterized the shooting in Buffalo as an act of domestic terrorism.

The authorities have charged Gendron with first-degree murder for allegedly perpetrating the shooting, which carries a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Gendron also faces the possibility of terrorism charges, according to Erie County District Attorney John Flynn.