Trump's white 'genocide' claims explained
Sam Hawley: Donald Trump is beginning to make a habit of it, confronting world leaders while the cameras are rolling in the Oval Office. His latest victim, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who was ambushed with Trump's claims that white farmers are being persecuted in his country. Today, Nancy Jacobs, a professor of history at Brown University, on why Trump is so keen to spread false assertions of genocide, and why white South Africans are going to the US as refugees. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily.
Sam Hawley: Nancy, they say that having a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office is like going into a lion's den right now. The Ukrainian leader has learnt that.
Donald Trump, US President: Your country is in big trouble.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukrainian President: Can I answer?
Donald Trump, US President: You've done a lot of talking. Your country is in big trouble.
Sam Hawley: And now so has the South African president, hasn't he?
Nancy Jacobs: Yeah, he has.
Donald Trump, US President: It's a great honour to be with the president of South Africa, President Ramaphosa. And he is a man who is certainly in some circles really respected, other circles a little bit less respected, like all of us in all fairness.
Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa: We all like that.
Nancy Jacobs: He did much better than Zelenskyy, though. I think Cyril Ramaphosa really pulled it off as well as he could have. South Africans can be proud of that. And he can be proud too.
Sam Hawley: Yeah, it was a very difficult moment for him, that's for sure. Well, the meeting, of course, it started well enough, but then the lights were dimmed.
Donald Trump, US President: Excuse me, turn the lights down. Turn the lights down.
Sam Hawley: And tell me what unfolded.
Nancy Jacobs: Well, Trump said some things before then. And in typical Trump fashion, he was really unspecific. And he said, they say there's a lot of bad things going on in Africa.
Donald Trump, US President:: A lot of people are very concerned with regard to South Africa. And that's really the purpose of the meeting. And we'll see how that turns out. But we have many people that feel they're being persecuted and they're coming to the United States. So we take from many, many locations if we feel there's persecution or genocide going on.
Nancy Jacobs: And then he showed this video. And the video had fake news. But at the same time, Trump was narrating it that made it even more false.
Donald Trump, US President: These are burial sites right here. Burial sites. Over a thousand of white farmers.
Nancy Jacobs: And he was slandering South Africa and not allowing President Ramaphosa any kind of a decent opportunity to respond to him.
Donald Trump, US President: You do allow them to take land.
Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa: No, no, no, no.
Donald Trump, US President: You do allow them to take land.
Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa: Nobody can take the land.
Donald Trump, US President: When they take the land, they kill the white farmer. And when they kill the white farmer, nothing happens to them.
Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa: No, there is quite...
Nancy Jacobs: And Ramaphosa was brilliant and always talking about the great Nelson Mandela and that country's success in peacemaking.
Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa: You know, we were we were lucky because we had the great Nelson Mandela, who taught us how to create peace, to make peace.
Nancy Jacobs: I think the South Africans played it really well.
Sam Hawley: Mm. Well, during the meeting, Trump also held up a series of articles he claimed showed evidence of white farmer killings. And he suggested to President Ramaphosa that Australia was being inundated by white Africans fleeing persecution.
Donald Trump, US President: And you take a look at Australia, they're being inundated and we're being inundated with people that want to get out.
Sam Hawley: Tell me about that.
Nancy Jacobs: I think Trump was a little bit conflicted. At one point, he said there were just a few Australians and then he said it was inundated. Donald Trump doesn't necessarily have a good read on what's going on in other parts of the world or even the United States, for that matter. But I want to say that, you know, Australia is as a part of this history. Back in 2018, it was Peter Dutton. Was that who it was?
Sam Hawley: He was a former home affairs minister at the time, and he'd made some comments on 2GB.
Nancy Jacobs: I remember that. And I remember he was talking about how white South Africans, particularly farmers, were so oppressed and that South Africa should have some sort of a fast track on visas to allow them into the country.
Peter Dutton, then-Home Affairs Minister: We have the potential to help some of these people that are being persecuted. So I've asked my department to have a look at options and ways in which we can provide some assistance, because I do think on the information that I've seen, people do need help and they need help from a civilised country like ours.
Nancy Jacobs: The whole world thought this was ridiculous and awful. But the world's changed a lot since 2018, I guess, because this policy is actually happening in the United States.
Sam Hawley: Before this meeting even began, tensions were really high, weren't they? Because in February, Trump had already moved to cut aid to South Africa. And while his administration had basically frozen refugee programs, it actually opened the doors to white South Africans.
News report: A warm welcome for an unlikely group of refugees.
News report: Nearly 60 white South Africans arrived in the US after being granted refugee status on the basis of being victims of racial discrimination.
Nancy Jacobs: Donald Trump made his anti-immigration policy the centrepiece of his campaign, and it's really his signature policy in the United States now. And the people he's restricted from coming are people from Latin America and Central Africa. And I think this is very much related to his whole anti-diversity, equity and inclusion rant. He's been criticising DEI moves in the United States, and he seems to have the idea of stripping any hint of DEI out of our policy for refugees. And on the other hand, Donald Trump has always been in favour of having immigration from Europe and have more white immigrants. And this idea has been circulating for a while that white South Africans are being persecuted in South Africa, if not victims of genocide. And he's come up with the idea of allowing them to come and really fast track these people from South Africa on these spurious claims of genocide.
Sam Hawley: But the data doesn't back up any of these claims. The claim of genocide is just not true.
Nancy Jacobs: No, it's ridiculous. So South Africa is a really violent country. They've got a real problem with crime and they've got a problem with murder. And some of these crimes are in rural areas. And there have been crimes against white farmers, murder, home invasions and murders. Now, they reached a peak in the late 1990s and early noughts, but they've diminished since then. Since 2020, there have been 247 murders in the countryside in rural areas. And that's too many, right? But it's not established that this crime, these 247 murders are actually racialised, that white people are disproportionately targeted. In fact, those 247 murders in the countryside over the last five years were people of all races. And so last week, for the first time, the South African police gave a breakdown by race. They didn't usually keep those statistics. And they said over the past six months, 18 people were killed in the countryside and two of those were white. There is violence in the countryside. Everyone admits that. The violence does not seem to disproportionately affect white people. Genocide has a really specific meaning. It's the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group. And that is not happening in South Africa today.
Sam Hawley: Mm. All right. Well, Nancy, I want to unpack with you now why it is that Donald Trump has taken the plight of white South Africans up as a priority. He has been going on about this for a while, hasn't he? Since at least 2018.
Nancy Jacobs: Right. 2018. And I think as far as I remember, I first heard the idea circulating when it came out of Australia from Peter Dutton. But it was circulating, I think, in white Christian nationalist circles and in international circles of of white nationalists. And some Americans who had Donald Trump's ear were talking about it. Ann Coulter, a very conservative columnist, and also Tucker Carlson, who was at Fox News at the time.
Tucker Carlson, former Fox News host: Let's be clear about what's happening. This is racist violence as brutal and horrifying and indefensible as anything that happened under apartheid. The difference is at this time, the Western media are cheering it on.
Nancy Jacobs: Tucker Carlson did a report on farm killings and the plight of white South Africans. And Donald Trump tweeted about that in 2018. And that's the first time that Donald Trump seems to have noticed it. It seems he watched Tucker Carlson on TV and then was convinced it was a problem. You know, Trump one. His first administration was really different than Trump two. And things are really different in 2025. And there are more reasons for him to be concerned with white South Africans and to promote white South Africans coming to the United States. First, his whole concern about immigration from Latin America and Africa, his whole anti-DEI bent. And also, he's got Elon Musk, who is really representing a particular idea about white disadvantage in South Africa. And beyond that, Trump's constituency are white Christian nationalists in this country. Apartheid was a Christian nationalist ideology. And Christian nationalism is on the rise in the United States today. So his constituency is very aware of South Africa and that this Christian nationalist policy was abolished. And they're very aware of the white people whom they consider to be so disadvantaged. And by talking about the disadvantage of Afrikaners, I think Trump's playing a dog whistle to his supporters. And they hear that and they understand that he's supporting their Christian nationalist language.
Sam Hawley: Mm, interesting. And what about Elon Musk? He is, of course, South African himself. How big a role is he playing in all of this?
Nancy Jacobs: Oh, I think huge. He has very strong feelings about what sort of people should be populating the United States in particular. I don't know what his investment is in South Africa now, but he thinks there should be more white people in the United States. And opening up the country to white immigrants from South Africa is something that he's certainly behind. I want to say there's one other thing going on that might be influencing Trump. And that has to do with Israel. Because, you know, South Africa brought the case to the International Court of Justice last year accusing Israel of genocide. And Trump, of course, is very associated with supporting Israel. And also his Christian nationalist base are very pro-Zionist. So right-wing evangelicals in the United States are very pro-Israel. So by supporting Christian South Africans who've been victims of the South African government, the same South African government that has accused Israel of genocide, and by accusing the South Africans of genocide, Trump's really turning the whole discourse of genocide on its head in ways that I think are really quite delighting his base.
Sam Hawley: All right. Nancy, as you said, South Africa does have one of the highest murder rates in the world, and crime is a massive problem. But what are the consequences in your mind of Donald Trump spreading these false claims of genocide?
Nancy Jacobs: I think, you know, there are certain South Africans who will take advantage of it. And there are some South Africans who are going to leave the country. They're economic migrants. That's the first thing I'm going to say. Economic migrants are going to take opportunity of the possibility of leaving a country which has real economic hardship now and a lot of crime. And there are a lot of black South Africans who would like to leave South Africa too, but the opportunity is only there for white South Africans. And those who can go will go. And right now, economic migrants are being recognised as refugees by the U.S. government. Beyond that, I'm not sure what the ramifications will be in South Africa. I don't think what's happening in U.S. relations with South Africa right now have a lot to do with South Africa. I mean, it's conditions in the U.S. that have prompted this. I see this as much more portentous as a problem for the United States than for South Africa right now.
Sam Hawley: Nancy Jacobs is a professor of history at Brown University and has studied South Africa for 40 years. This episode was produced by Sydney Pead and Sam Dunn. Audio production by Adair Sheppard. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. Thanks for listening.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ABC News
10 minutes ago
- ABC News
Elon Musk attacks Trump legislation for massive tax cuts, calling it a 'disgusting abomination'
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has launched an extraordinary attack on Donald Trump's sprawling tax cuts legislation, set to add $US3 trillion ($4.64 trillion) to the nation's debt, calling it a "disgusting abomination". Just days after leaving his role as advisor to the US president, the Tesla entrepreneur and Republican donor called the mammoth policy package "outrageous". The legislation would see the US administration extend tax relief through budget cuts which are projected to strip healthcare from millions of low-income Americans who rely on Medicaid. The legislation, which Mr Trump is calling his "big, beautiful bill", passed the House of Representatives earlier this week and is likely to be the subject of fierce debate in the Senate. Now, Mr Musk, who until recently held a cost-cutting role in the Trump administration, has intervened to place on record his opposition. Posting on X, he said he "just can't stand it anymore", adding: "This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. "Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it." When White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked how angry she thought Mr Trump would be about Mr Musk's tweet, she said it wouldn't change the president's stance on the bill. "Look, the president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill. It doesn't change the president's opinion. This is one big, beautiful bill and he's sticking to it," she said at a press conference. The White House said the legislation will spur robust economic growth to neutralise its potential to blow up America's already burgeoning debt pile, which has ballooned to $US36.9 trillion. But several independent analyses have found that — even taking growth into account — it will add between $US2.5 trillion and $US3.1 trillion to deficits over the next decade. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, meanwhile, found that the combined effects of tax cuts and cost savings would result in a significant transfer of wealth from the poorest 10 per cent to the richest 10 per cent. Republicans muscled the measure through the House by a single vote on May 22, a combination of bargaining with vote holdouts on policies and deploying Mr Trump himself to twist arms. House Speaker Mike Johnson is now pleading with the Senate not to alter the bill too much, as any tweaks will need to go back to the lower chamber. ABC/wires
News.com.au
19 minutes ago
- News.com.au
‘Knows too much': Inmate of William Tyrrell person of interest reveals bombshell claims
A 'person of interest' in the William Tyrrell investigation gave a detailed account of the three-year-old's death to another prisoner, who says he tried to tell police but has 'just been brushed to the side'. Simon Sutherland shared an accommodation block with the person of interest, Frank Abbott, in Sydney's Long Bay prison between late March and early April this year. 'He just starts talking about it, like it's nothing,' Sutherland said. 'Like, 'Hey, you know about that William Tyrrell? … I'll tell you the truth'.' The details of Abbott's alleged account are disturbing and unproven, although several parts seem to refer to people, places or things heard in evidence before an inquest investigating William's disappearance. Sutherland said Abbott claimed William was abducted, kept in a wood yard and that his death was an accident, after which the three-year-old's body was disposed of in a suitcase. 'He tells the same story, apparently, to everybody. Like he just starts saying 'Oh, I was the main suspect in the William Tyrrell investigation,' Sutherland continued. 'It's his 15 minutes of fame.' Abbott, himself a convicted child abuser, insisted that he was not responsible for what happened, Sutherland said, 'but when he is telling you, he knows more. It's just he knows too much.' Sutherland, who was in prison for a stalk/intimidate offence before his release in April, said he is speaking out after attempting to report what Abbott told him to police, including in a phone call with the lead detective on the case, David Laidlaw. Sutherland said Detective Chief Inspector Laidlaw told him he was busy, that police continued to believe William's foster mother was involved in the three-year-old's disappearance and he would follow up by phone or email – but this never happened. He also said Abbott described sitting in a four-wheel-drive or station wagon 'in a cul-de-sac (with) a walking trail at the end'. That car had 'all the windows fogged up and somebody went past him and … he thought he was caught out then.' The description of a cul-de-sac with a walking trail at the end matches that of Benaroon Drive, where William was reported missing on 12 September 2014. William's foster mother has previously given evidence saying she saw a white station wagon outside the house where they were staying that morning and a separate witness has told us she saw a station wagon with fogged up windows on the road that day. Police and the inquest investigating William's disappearance have found no evidence Abbott was on Benaroon Drive the day he was reported missing. We are not saying these new allegations are true, just that they have been made and not been followed up by police. William's foster mother, who has been publicly identified by police and media as the 'chief suspect' has not been charged in relation to his suspected death and has repeatedly denied any involvement. DCI Laidlaw's final witness statement to the inquest was heavily redacted with the senior lawyer saying it reflected 'one person's opinions' and that police had found no forensic or eyewitness evidence of what happened to William. Abbott does identify two men as being allegedly involved in William's disappearance, according to Sutherland, although we are not naming them as there is no evidence to support this. Evidence before the inquest shows Abbott has a history of suggesting other people may have been involved in what happened. There are also other unsubstantiated claims in Abbott's version, according to Sutherland, including that he drove to a nearby airport to pick up a green car soon after William went missing. Abbott also claimed to have been in a different town on the day itself 'to go to this guy's house to check his mail', said Sutherland. This contrasts an account given by Abbott on recorded prison phone calls, tendered to the inquest, where he claimed a bank transaction proved he was somewhere else at the time. Witness: William Tyrrell. 'Like I explained to the copper, I said 'Look mate, if it was a drug dealer on drug dealer (murder), I wouldn't give two sh*ts'. I said, 'It's a little boy. … It's a different story when it's a bloody kid.' The NSW Police Force and Abbott have declined to answer questions.
AU Financial Review
37 minutes ago
- AU Financial Review
Economists are as confused as Trump about taxing the rich
If you want to put a policymaker on the spot, ask them what the top rate of income tax should be. The question befuddles everyone. Last month, Donald Trump broke with decades of Republican convention when he reportedly urged Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House of Representatives, to increase America's highest federal levy on incomes from 37 per cent to 39.6 per cent, where it stood before the president's own reforms in 2017. Trump then took to social media to announce that although he would 'graciously accept' such a change 'in order to help the lower and middle income workers', Republicans in Congress 'should probably not do it'. He is nevertheless 'OK if they do'. This is usually the point at which to compare Trump's haphazard argument with the staid advice of economists. But they seem just as confused as the president. Their research on the best level for the top rate of income tax can include statements such as: 'alternative parameter values give a range of -26 per cent to 50 per cent' (you read that right: a negative tax for top earners may be best). Other economists recommend rates as high as 70 per cent or more, once taxes at all levels of government and income are included.
