President Donald Trump met with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa within the Oval Workplace on Wednesday and angrily confronted him with false allegations of a “white genocide” in his nation.
Trump has been obsessive about the problem in latest weeks, even making exceptions for white immigrants from South Africa to come back to America as supposed refugees, all whereas proscribing migration for different nationalities.
Trump informed aides to flip down the lights within the Oval Workplace and compelled Ramaphosa to observe an edited video purporting to point out proof of mass murders concentrating on white Afrikaner farmers. Later, Trump leafed by means of a stack of printouts that he claimed was proof of the follow.
Ramaphosa strenuously objected, explaining to Trump that whereas some political teams in South Africa have used violent rhetoric concerning the subject—which stems from the apartheid-era follow of stealing land from Black residents underneath that nation’s racist legal guidelines—his get together and the present authorities are against it.
Trump decried the violent rhetoric and advised that folks utilizing it needs to be arrested, which stands in distinction to his personal repeated utilization of violent language towards Democrats and his resolution to pardon the Trump supporters who violently attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Undaunted, Trump even argued that white Afrikaner farmers at present face oppression equal to what Black South Africans confronted underneath apartheid. Apartheid was enshrined in South African legislation for roughly 40 years, institutionalizing racial segregation and resulting in mass killings tied to political violence.
However much more damning for Trump’s rhetoric is that a number of research have proven that claims of a “white genocide” in South Africa are false. Whereas the nation has a extreme crime downside, the notion that white folks there are being persecuted, not to mention on the stage of persecution Blacks confronted throughout apartheid, is fake.
Some of the high-profile promoters of the white-genocide fantasy is billionaire Elon Musk, who attended the Oval Workplace assembly with Ramaphosa. Musk is initially from South Africa and grew up throughout the waning days of apartheid.
Musk’s attendance comes only a few days after he stated he can be much less financially concerned in politics. Within the 2024 election cycle, he donated a minimum of $288 million to elect Trump and different Republicans.
Trump has a well-documented historical past of racism, from his description of nations with massive nonwhite populations as “shithole” nations to his promotion of the racist “birther” conspiracy about former President Barack Obama.
Together with his “white genocide” campaign, Trump is popping a debunked, racist conspiracy right into a core American overseas coverage.
