Op-Ed: The Media’s Favorite Terrorists Are Always White Men
A white, Christian, fascist MAGA plotted a day of bloodshed and later texted his family, “Dad went to war last night.”
That chilling text message to his wife and kids was a blood-soaked benediction and a declaration of allegiance to his politics, to whiteness, to God.
He dressed up like a cop. Slipped on a creepy silicone mask to hide his face and climbed into a fake police car full of high-powered weapons. He had a notebook filled with a hit list that included the names of 45 elected officials. Everything was meticulously mapped out, annotated, and studied. He surveilled their homes. Tracked their routines and knew details about their spouses and children.
And then he stalked his targets and opened fire, murdering a Minnesota Democratic lawmaker and her husband, and wounding another Democratic official and his wife. The killings triggered a massive, two-day manhunt involving 20 SWAT teams, helicopters, and drones. Vance Boelter was taken into custody alive and quietly folded into the system that always seems to exercise restraint with men who look like him.
And despite all these chilling details, the news headlines have been sterile.
“Politically motivated shootings.”
“Assassination suspect.”
“Suspect in Minnesota shootings captured.”
Nowhere in the initial stories was there even a whisper of the word that should’ve screamed from every page: TERRORIST. Because that’s what he is. But the media refuses to call him that. Because when a white Christian man enacts political violence, the media suddenly becomes shy. The language softens. The tone shifts to neutral.
Had he been Muslim, this would have dominated news cycles as some kind of jihad. Had he been Black, his body might still be cooling on the sidewalk, and his name would be trending as a hashtag. Had he been undocumented, Republicans would be staging press conferences in body armor, and Fox News would have declared a national emergency.
But because Boelter is white, male, Christian, steeped in MAGA grievance, radicalized by right-wing propaganda, and hunted Democrats, we’re being told this was just a textbook case of a “politically motivated shooting.” It’s just politics.
No, let’s call it what it is: the pathology of white violence. It’s terrorism in a red hat.
And this country is left once again pretending the real threat to democracy comes from books, DEI, Black people, drag queens, trans kids, and immigrants. Not from heavily armed white men in costume with kill lists in their glove compartments.
Why won’t the media call this terrorism?
Because doing so would mean telling the truth about who is actually dangerous in this country. Because calling Vance Boelter a terrorist would mean indicting an entire ideology that’s white, Christian, authoritarian, and the political party that nurtures it.
Boelter is not an outlier.
He is the logical conclusion of a hateful political movement built on grievance, white racism, violent entitlement, and delusions of being replaced by people of color or going extinct. He is what happens when white men are told they are the rightful owners of power, and any shift toward equity or justice is treated as an existential threat and a prelude to tyranny. And yet, the press contorts itself into knots trying to name anything but the truth. They tiptoe around his whiteness, his fascism, his brand of Christianity, his MAGA allegiance, and his love for Donald Trump. Because to say it plainly would implicate not just one man, but a whole movement and the current president.
The media’s complicity doesn’t just show up in headlines; it is baked into policy. While newsrooms downplay white terror, the government has been quietly diverting attention elsewhere, helping to protect the very people committing the violence.
In March, the Trump administration quietly scaled back FBI investigations into right-wing domestic terrorism. Instead, federal agents were reassigned to immigration enforcement. They’ve been busy chasing down law-abiding migrants while violent white extremists have been building arsenals and kill lists at home. Memos revealed plans to deploy 2,000 agents full-time to ICE operations, siphoning manpower from counterterrorism, counterespionage, and violent crimes.
And all of it was deliberate.
Redirecting federal resources away from right-wing domestic terror and toward immigration enforcement isn’t a bureaucratic oversight. It’s a strategic act of preservation. It shields the state’s most loyal foot soldiers, armed white men who see violence as a civic duty, while targeting those deemed expendable: immigrants, refugees, the racialized “other.”
Turning white violence into patriotism and turning brown existence into a crime is how authoritarian power sustains itself. So, when the Trump administration scales back investigations into domestic terror to instead hunt migrants, he’s feeding his base. He’s giving them the illusion of safety by criminalizing migration while allowing the real threat, white Christian extremists steeped in MAGA propaganda, to organize, arm, and act with lethal force..
White supremacy demands a state that is blind to itself. It cannot afford a government that investigates its most devout believers. It needs media that softens the language. It needs federal agencies that turn away. It needs silence, diversion, and plausible deniability.
The goal is to protect the image of the MAGA base. Pretend the greatest threat is at the border, not in white suburbs and rural communities. Not in white churches. Not among Trump’s most loyal foot soldiers.
This is why Vance Boelter, a man who plotted mass murder, surveilled Democratic officials, consumed InfoWars, ran a bogus mercenary security company, and idolized Trump, isn’t being called a terrorist. It’s why he was taken alive. It’s why his wife, Jenny Boelter, who was caught with cash and passports during a traffic stop, isn’t in custody.
Make no mistake: Boelter meets every legal and moral definition of a domestic terrorist. His crimes were not random acts. This was a political execution. He targeted lawmakers. He told his family he went to “war.” He had plans to kill more.
The greatest threat to America is coming from white men like Boelter. White men with badges. White men who mask their faces during immigration raids. White men with Bibles and ballots. From voters who cheered for blood. From feckless lawmakers who wink at militias. From extremists who stalk doctors and bomb clinics. From a president who calls for violence and pardons insurrectionists.
Boelter was not a lone wolf.
He acted on instruction. From Trump. From Stephen Miller. InfoWars and Fox News. From the algorithmic rage machines of social media platforms run by technofascists who monetize racial hatred. From the entire MAGA ecosystem that grooms white men into martyrs for a cause soaked in grievance, God, and guns.
And instead of connecting the dots, our media is hiding the thread. The silence around this violence isn’t accidental; it’s engineered, it’s complicity. It isn’t balance, it’s surrender.
While the press fumbles for language, the white supremacist machine continues to move in the shadows, demanding more victims. Still building lists. Still preparing its next soldier.
Dr. Stacey Patton is an award-winning journalist and author of “Spare The Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America” and the forthcoming “Strung Up: The Lynching of Black Children In Jim Crow America.” Read her Substack here.
SEE ALSO:
Whiteness Won’t Save You: Medicaid Cuts, RFK Jr., And The Death of White Supremacy
Dear Black Folks: The Protests Against ICE Are Absolutely Our Fight Too [Op-Ed]
