After a gunman killed 22 people at an El Paso Walmart, citing a “Hispanic invasion of Texas” in a manifesto he posted on the internet, some Texas Republicans were quick to condemn his actions as terrorism fueled by white supremacy.

Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush was the first, calling it an act of “white terrorism,” which he said is a “real and present threat that we all must denounce and defeat.” And U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz denounced the massacre as a “heinous act of terrorism and white supremacy.”

But the man behind a political action committee for one of the state’s most influential Tea Party groups took to social media with a different message.

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The day after the tragedy, Fred McCarty, of the NE Tarrant Tea Party PAC, wrote on Facebook: “You’re not going to demographically replace a once proud, strong people without getting blow-back.”

“I don’t condone the actions, but I certainly understand where they came from,” commented his wife, Julie McCarty, who founded the NE Tarrant Tea Party. The comment does not appear on Facebook anymore, but she said she didn’t delete it and stands behind her words.

For years, the NE Tarrant Tea Party, which has since been rebranded as the True Texas Project, has been responsible for recruiting and electing a faction of the most conservative politicians in the state. But in days after the El Paso massacre, the McCartys came under fire for their response to one of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings.

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People have slammed Fred McCarty’s comments as racist and dangerous, saying they echo conspiracy theories espoused by white supremacists who claim white people could be wiped out because of slowing birth rates and immigration. The accused El Paso gunman, Patrick Crusius, also referred to the “replacement” theory in his online screed.

“These are ideas that have been around for a while, but what I think is happened is they’re being much more normalized now,” said Marilyn Mayo, a senior researcher fellow for the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. “These are things that are being said in mainstream circles; you’re hearing it from pundits on right-wing news stations, from politicians.”

Over the years, the McCartys have been supported by some of the most powerful conservatives in Texas. They were tapped by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to serve on the committee planning the 2015 inauguration for him and Gov. Greg Abbott. Patrick then selected Julie McCarty as one of 20 conservative activists to serve on a panel to help him craft public policy.

Patrick himself came under fire for making inaccurate claims disparaging people of color. Two years before President Donald Trump took office, Patrick took heat for calling the influx of immigrants to Texas an “illegal invasion” and saying that immigrants bring “Third-World diseases.”

More recently, Patrick falsely alleged this summer that more people will enter the U.S. illegally in the current fiscal year than are being born here. The claim was far off the mark. The U.S. recorded about 3.8 million births last year. Illegal immigration is predicted to be around 1 million this year.

After the tragedy in El Paso, Patrick said he viewed the shooting as a hate crime targeting immigrants, blaming the violence on a slew of factors ranging from video games to a lack of prayer in schools.

A number of other leaders on both sides of the aisle condemned the mass killing as an act of hate-fueled terrorism. Yet as the nation reeled in its aftermath, Fred McCarty’s comments didn’t slow down.

“You can’t coexist with people who want to take away your right to self-determination,” he wrote three days after the shooting.

The day after that: “Imagine flooding a place with foreign people to the point that the native population will become a minority. Then imagine being shocked at the strife and hostility that results. Imagine.”

In an email statement, McCarty defended his comments. He said that more people have agreed with him than criticized him. Because the Trump administration and the state of Texas have failed to secure the border, he said, a growing number of people are going to be “emboldened to speak out.”

McCarty also attacked the “establishment media,” saying its goal was to equate “traditional Americans” with “white supremacy” because of their views on immigration. He said the media has to do that because “they’ve driven the word ‘racist’ into irrelevancy with severe overuse.”

“The fact that demographic displacement is happening is undeniable,” he said, saying that the number of white students in Texas public schools is decreasing. “The Left cheers this on because it will mean a permanent majority for the Democrats.”

But an expert who has studied white supremacy since the 1990s says the paranoid fear that white people will be replaced has been at the core of white supremacist beliefs for decades.

“This language about flooding a place with foreign peoples is really the language of genocide,” said Jessie Daniels, a professor at The City University Of New York.

“That’s the way that the genocide of the Third Reich started with talking about Jews and floods and foreign,” Daniels continued. “And, this is really dangerous language that he’s engaging in here.”

A similar message appeared in the online manifesto that’s been linked to the accused El Paso shooter, who wrote that he was “simply defending his country from cultural and ethnic replacement.” He later told police he was targeting Mexicans, according to an arrest affidavit.

The massacre in El Paso was the most recent hate-fueled mass killing fueled by white extinction anxiety. Six months earlier, a man killed 51 people at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The accused shooter’s manifesto referred to the “replacement,” which appears to reference to a far-right theory that has since become a catalyst for white supremacist violence.

Texas is a hot bed for organized hate groups that espouse those beliefs. The state is home to the largest chapter of the Patriot Front, a neo-Nazi group that contends that people of color are a threat to the white race. Since 2018, Patriot Front has been linked to more than 870 reports of racist propaganda across the country: more than 40 percent of all such incidents, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

The once-fringe “replacement” theory has made its way into mainstream politics across the country. U.S. Rep. Steve King of Iowa, who has a history of making racist comments, has been among the most vocal in espousing white supremacist beliefs. In an interview published by the New York Times earlier this year, he said: “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”

But the fear of replacement is by no means considered common within the Republican Party, said Matt Mackowiak, who runs a political consulting firm based in Austin and Washington D.C. and has spoken out against King’s rhetoric.

In general, the Republican Party subscribes to the belief that legal immigration is a positive economic driver and needs to be streamlined, Mackowiak said. At the same time, it also demands secure borders and that people immigrating to the U.S. go through legal channels.

“Everyone here today was an immigrant at one time; there are no native white Americans,” said Mackowiak. “I think we all recognize this.”

Unfortunately, he said, some conservative leaders have talked about immigration in ways that have been viewed as racist, which has alienated people of color from the party. Unless the Texas GOP finds a way to change that and attract more Hispanic voters, it’s destined to become the minority party.

2018 was a tough year for Republicans in Texas, particularly for hard-line conservatives. In Tarrant County, then-U.S. Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke became the first statewide Democrat to win the county in decades. He ultimately lost the race to Ted Cruz.

It was a blow to the NE Tarrant Tea Party.

Mackowiak said he still considers the party one of the most powerful Tea Party groups in the state, along with Kingwood TEA Party, which is based outside of Houston. In years past, he’s spoken at the party’s events, and said he respects the organization and conservative activists associated with it.

But Fred McCarty’s statements on the replacement of white Americans are not beliefs that Mackowiak — nor most Republicans — subscribe to, he said.

“If that’s their organization’s view, that would bother me,” he said. “I don’t believe that to be the case, but I don’t know that for sure.”

Marina Starleaf Riker is an investigative reporter for the San Antonio Express-News with extensive experience covering affordable housing, inequality and disaster recovery. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | marina.riker@express-news.net | Twitter: @MarinaStarleaf