Explaining the Proper is a weekly collection that appears at what the suitable wing is at present obsessing over, the way it influences politics—and why you must know.
This previous week, President Donald Trump took a break from bashing immigrants and refugees to grant a particular exception to a bunch of white immigrants from South Africa, a lot of whom are descended from farmers who benefitted from racist apartheid insurance policies.
The choice upset the Episcopal Church, which mentioned it will not work with the federal authorities on refugee resettlement.
When requested by a reporter on Monday why he determined to make this exception, Trump doubled down on the right-wing “white genocide” fantasy.
“It is a genocide that is going down. Farmers are being killed. They occur to be white, however whether or not they’re white or Black, it makes no distinction to me,” he mentioned.
After all, Trump is a racist who makes use of racist language and pushes racist insurance policies—so it completely makes a distinction to him.
Across the identical time that the exception for white South Africans occurred, Elon Musk—who’s initially from South Africa—had a “white genocide” drawback as nicely. Grok, the factitious intelligence chatbot created by Musk’s AI firm, started pumping out details about “white genocide” in responde to unrelated questions.
However the suitable’s obsession with the “white genocide” fantasy is nothing new.
Throughout his time at Fox Information, conservative pundit Tucker Carlson spent episode after episode of his program arguing that a “white genocide” was in progress, and that company media was a part of a conspiracy overlaying it up. He even linked arms with white supremacists in 2018 to argue {that a} imply tweet about Supreme Courtroom Justice Brett Kavanaugh was proof of “white genocide.”
Equally, throughout Trump’s first time period in 2018, he pushed for a federal investigation of “the large-scale killing of farmers” in South Africa, which happy white supremacists who’ve argued that the nation is engaged in “white genocide.”
However, like most of what Trump says, this was constructed on falsehoods. The 2018 knowledge truly confirmed that assaults on farmers in South Africa had been on the decline, disproving the right-wing declare that white farmers had been being disproportionately focused.
In February, a South African court docket decided that claims of “white genocide” had been “clearly imagined and never actual.” Moreover, South Africans are nonetheless residing with the aftermath of bigoted apartheid insurance policies.
Underneath apartheid, Black folks weren’t allowed to personal land, and land was stolen from Black households. A 2017 audit discovered that, whereas white folks make up simply over 7% of the inhabitants, they personal 72% of farms and different agricultural properties.
The “white genocide” fantasy is being invoked in U.S. politics as a result of conservatives way back embraced the politics of victimhood. Even when the suitable is in majority management of U.S. political establishments, like proper now, it nonetheless claims that it’s a persecuted minority.
Few conservative figures like to play the sufferer as a lot as Trump, who has made frequent claims that mysterious forces are out to get him.
This mentality completely combines with the conservative embrace of white supremacy. Claiming {that a} “white genocide” is underway, even when the info disproves it, turns into a method of being racist whereas concurrently laying palms on the mantle of victimhood.
As they flip a blind eye to still-existing systemic racism in South Africa, conservatives proceed to say that there is no such thing as a systemic racism in the USA—regardless of reams of information proving in any other case.
That is a part of the conservative legacy. When he held workplace within the early Eighties, President Ronald Reagan continued to conduct official enterprise with and had diplomatic relations with the apartheid authorities of South Africa. Reagan seemed on because the state pushed these racist insurance policies, and now Trump has welcomed the beneficiaries of that racism with open arms.
Regardless of Trump’s claims that his new refugee exception helps white South African immigrants who’re victims of “white genocide,” it nonetheless exists solely in fantasy.
