Prominent Republicans slammed The Washington Post on Tuesday after the outlet tied them to Payton Gendron, the self-described “eco-fascist” who allegedly shot and killed 10 people in Buffalo, New York, over the weekend.

Gendron wrote prior to the shooting Saturday that he could be described as either a populist or “ethno-nationalist eco-fascist national socialist,” according to The Post’s Climate 202 newsletter published Tuesday. “Eco-fascism” is an ideology that postulates an increased global population poses a threat to the climate and leads to environmental degradation worldwide.

The Post noted three instances of conservatives — Republican Arkansas Rep. Bruce Westerman, Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Republican Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich — allegedly espousing “similar rhetoric” without specifically referencing “eco-fascism.”

“Trying to link observing illegal trash dumping on federal land to an unhinged, evil manifesto from a mass shooter is illogical, moronic and nothing short of unethical,” Westerman told The Daily Caller News Foundation in a statement. “The Washington Post should be ashamed.”

The Post’s newsletter noted that, in 2021, Westerman warned trash on the U.S.-Mexico border was an example of “environmental degradation” and Brnovich filed a lawsuit accusing the federal government of bypassing a legally-required environmental review of its immigration policies. Carlson alleged immigrants had polluted the Potomac River in a 2019 interview with The Atlantic.

In addition, Katie Conner, a spokesperson for Brnovich, said anyone should be suspicious of outlets that employ terms like “eco-fascism” in an attempt “to label or stereotype others whose positions they may disagree with, instead of actually addressing real environmental issues.”

Trash and wet clothes are littered near where migrants have crossed from Mexico into Del Rio, Texas. (Jennie Taer/The Daily Caller News Foundation)

“The truth is that General Brnovich is a first-generation American and a strong supporter of legal immigration, but it is intellectually inconsistent and frankly, disingenuous, for anyone claiming to care about the condition of our environment to censor or disregard the damage that is occurring to our Sonoran desert ecosystem as a direct result of President Biden’s continued promotion of lawlessness and chaos at our nation’s southern border,” Conner told TheDCNF.

A Fox News spokesperson directed TheDCNF to Carlson’s comments addressing the shooting on his show Monday evening.

“All people have equal moral value, no matter what they look like, all lives matter. Period,” Carlson stated on his show. “That’s not the determination of the U.S. government, that’s the determination of God and it is true.”

Later in the article, The Post noted that the Sierra Club, a left-wing green group, faced internal fights in the 1990s and early 2000s over its relationship with anti-immigrant activists. However, the newsletter failed to acknowledge that the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the largest environmental groups in the U.S., continues to advocate against overpopulation and population growth.

“Unsustainable population growth and lack of access to reproductive health care also puts pressure on human communities, exacerbating food and water shortages, reducing resilience in the face of climate change, and making it harder for the most vulnerable communities to rise out of intergenerational poverty,” the Center says on its site.

The Post, Sierra Club and Center for Biological Diversity didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from TheDCNF.

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