When will the Arizona Senate do something about its Wendy Rogers problem?

The world will be relieved to know that Sen. Wendy Rogers has now summoned up the intestinal fortitude to condemn Saturday’s mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket.

This, after she first suggested the massacre was some sort of political conspiracy.

Now if only she would condemn her own part in the national tragedy that set the stage for Saturday’s racist rampage that left 10 dead and three injured. Instead, Rogers seems far more concerned about those she apparently sees as the real victims here: “regular patriotic Americans”.

“Of course I condemn the violence in Buffalo, who doesn’t?” Rogers tweeted on Monday morning – two days after suggesting it was a false flag attack by a federal agent. “I also condemn the #FakeNews and the government promoting violence and then blaming it on regular patriotic Americans as if regular Americans share those despicable views. Everything is not what it seems.”

'Patriotic Americans' don't amplify those beliefs

Let me just stop here and say that Rogers jumping to the conclusion – without evidence, of course – that an agent of the federal government was responsibile for Saturday’s massacre is not just bizarre and sickening but right on brand for the first-term state senator.

Still, I agree with Rogers on one point.

Regular patriotic Americans do not share the despicable views of the 18-year-old white supremacist who police say spent hours looking for a neighborhood with a high concentration of Black residents upon whom he could take out his rage.

Regular patriotic Americans do not legitimize and amplify the warped beliefs of white nationalists by palling around with them or by praising them or by speaking at their events.

And regular patriotic Americans certainly don’t go around promoting the blatantly racist theory that apparently motivated Saturday’s shooter – that there’s a conspiracy afoot to replace white Americans with non-white people.

Rogers, meanwhile, does all of those things.

Rogers professes the 'great replacement theory'

This first-term state legislator has built a national following on the far right as she rants about election conspiracies and George Soros and the cabal of Jews elites and other nefarious characters who plot to create a New World Order.

About invasions and the conspiracy to take over our country.

Last July, Rogers sounded the alarm in response to a news story about illegal immigration in Texas.

“We are being replaced and invaded,” she tweeted at the time.

Those weren’t words casually chosen.

Another view: Wendy Rogers keeps Arizona in the news. It's not a good look

They came straight from the “Great Replacement" conspiracy theory, which holds that white people are being systematically replaced by non-white immigrants who are invading our country to take it away from the white people who rightfully live here. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the theory has roots in early 20th French nationalism but was quickly picked up by U.S. born-and-bred white supremacists and has sparked murders.

Maybe you remember the “Unite the Right” rally in Chalottesville, Va., in 2017, when white nationalists took the streets, chanting, “You will not replace us” and “Jews will not replace us.”

Maybe you remember Pittsburgh in 2018, when 11 people in a synagogue were killed by a shooter who believed that a Jewish nonprofit was working with refugees to “bring invaders in that kill our people”.

Or maybe you remember the 23 mostly Latino shoppers killed at an El Paso WalMart in 2019, gunned down by a terrorist whose manifesto referenced the “Great Replacement” theory and fears of a Hispanic invasion.

Yes, senator, know exactly what you meant

When pushed on her replaced-and-invaded comment last summer, Rogers took to Twitter to explain she merely meant, “We Americans who love this country are being replaced by people who do not love this country.”

We know what you meant, Wendy.

Just like we know what you meant when you decided to speak – along with Arizona’s own U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar – at February’s America First Political Conference, an event organized for and by white nationalists.

We know what you meant when you lauded white nationalists as “patriots” and when you praised AFPAC founder Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier who has warned that America needs to protect its “white demographic core”.

We know what you meant when you went on social media on Saturday, just minutes after Saturday's shootings, and tried to pass off the massacre of 10 people and the wounding of three others – most of whom were Black – as a false flag operation carried out by an agent of the government. How many times have we heard that following racist attacks?

When will the Senate expel Rogers?

The remark quickly earned Rogers a Senate ethics investigation, with the Senate voting 24-3 to open a probe. (This, to go with the censure she picked up in March after her AFPAC appearance.)

Pity it didn’t earn her an expulsion hearing for conduct unbecoming a human being.

But then, the Senate would have to have actual standards, I suppose.

When called out on the garbage she spews, Rogers quickly wraps herself in red, white and blue. She takes to social media to proclaim herself a victim – “I will not apologize for being white”, she said in late February – and to call herself a “sweet grandma who loves Jesus and America.”

As if her beliefs are somehow normal or patriotic or acceptable.

They aren’t. They are, however, clearly on the rise within a certain segment of the Republican Party, and shame on every political leader who caters to that crowd, either through their words or their refusal to call out the Wendy Rogers of the world.

To be sure, Rogers and her white nationalist pals aren’t responsible for Saturday’s massacre. They just helped foment the rage that led to it.

She is, however, right about one thing.

“Regular patriotic Americans” had no hand in this.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona Senate must do something about its Wendy Rogers problem