<![CDATA[Political and Economic Crises (Pt 10)]]>

<![CDATA[Political and Economic Crises (Pt 10)]]>On the evening of July 28 (2019) in Gilroy, California, a 19-year-old white gunman, Santino William Legan, fired into a crowd of people attending the annual Garlic Festival. Legan was the racist grandson of a former county supervisor. He succeeded in killing three people, two of them children, before he himself went down in a hail of police gunfire — or, in another version, shot himself in the mouth after being wounded by police gunfire.

The following Saturday in El Paso, Texas, another young white male racist, 21-year-old Patrick Crusius, fired into a crowd at a local Walmart. Crusius killed 22 people and wounded dozens more before he was captured by police. Only a few hours later, a 29-year-old white gunman, Connor Betts, opened fire outside a bar in Dayton, Ohio. Before he was killed by police gunfire, Betts killed nine people, mostly African-American but also his own sister. In high school, Betts had expressed vicious misogynistic views.

Of the three white gunmen, the most “articulate” — and the only one to survive — is Patrick Crusius. He is the author of a racist manifesto that, echoing Donald Trump and other right-wing politicians, blamed white unemployment on — in addition to automation and corporations — the “Hispanic invasion” of Texas.

In his manifesto, Crusius hailed the March 15 massacre earlier this year by white racist gunmen of 51 Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.