Arizona GOP lawmaker Wendy Rogers suggested that Saturday’s racially-motivated mass shooting at TOPS supermarket in Buffalo, New York, could be a false flag operation.
After the shooting Rogers implied that the shooter was a federal agent in a post on Telegram.
“Fed boy summer has started in Buffalo,” Rogers wrote, referring to a conspiracy theory among the far right that claims mass shootings are “false flag” operations conducted by FBI agents to blame conservatives and to justify taking away citizens’ freedoms, according to Insider.
Rogers was censured by the Arizona Senate in March for calling for violence against her opponents. Trump has endorsed her re-election bid.
On Saturday, Payton Gendron, 18, was arrested outside the TOPS Supermarket after traveling hours to kill 10 people and injured three others in the predominantly black neighborhood. Eleven of the victims were Black while two were White.
In a manifesto posted online he cited racist and anti-semitic theories including the ‘great replacement theory‘ which claims that an intentional effort is underway to replace white Americans with people of color through immigration.
The theory is promoted by several right-wing personalities including Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Rogers herself.
“We Americans who love this country are being replaced by people who do not love this country. I will not back down from this statement. Communists & our enemies are using mass immigration, education, big tech, big corporations & other strategies to accomplish this,” Rogers wrote in a tweet in July.
White nationalist and right-wing political commentator Nick Fuentes also called Saturday’s shooting a false flag operation.
Neither Rogers nor Fuentes provided any evidence to support their claim that the FBI was behind Saturday’s mass shooting.
