Media outlets labeled the Buffalo shooter a right winger. Was that accurate?

Following the mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket that took the lives of 10 people and wounded at least three more, media outlets dove into the online postings reportedly published by the suspect. Outlets attempted to characterize the shooter as a right-winger who had adopted the views of Fox News host Tucker Carlson, conservative media and the Republican Party. They selected a few items from the online screed as evidence of the shooter’s supposed conservative leanings.

A headline at Rolling Stone declared, “The Buffalo Shooter Isn’t a ‘Lone Wolf.’ He’s a Mainstream Republican.”

MSNBC’s Donny Deutsch said Democrats need to make Republicans “own” the ideology behind the shooter’s actions.

“Call out Tucker Carlson, call out the politicians, and make this – make them own it,” Deutsch said. “This is a Republican platform.”

CNN host Brian Stelter likened the writings to what viewers get during Fox News’ primetime shows.

But is that the whole story?

Here are five ideas from the Buffalo supermarket shooter’s writings that are not mainstream Republican ideas viewers find on Fox News:

• The writings indicate that the shooter is a fan of “green nationalism,” which he calls “the only true nationalism.”  Radical green ideas are far more popular on the left than on the right.
• The documents also attack libertarianism and beloved right-leaning thinkers such as Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman.
• Though the media attempted to tie the shooter to Tucker Carlson, the killer’s alleged postings mention Carlson exactly zero times.  He cited Fox News just once — in an anti-Semitic infographic claiming the outlet is controlled by Jews.
• The rants support “worker ownership of the means of production,” which is an idea straight out of Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Engel’s “Communist Manifesto.”  It is most certainly not something espoused by a typical Fox News viewer.
• The published screeds also explicitly say he is not a conservative. The posts rip conservatism as “corporatism in disguise” and declare he wants “no part of it,” blaming Republican ideology for “the ever-increasing wealth of the 1%.”  That rhetoric is a common refrain of the left, not the right.

A full reading of the words attributed to the Buffalo supermarket shooter make it clear that whatever his views might have in common with Tucker Carlson’s, his warped ideology is complicated by ideas that are commonplace among Democrats and often found on liberal media outlets.