Full Transcript for Trump's Refugee Program Is Reserved for Whites Only

But as we've been told, 34 00:02:06.400 --> 00:02:09.599 the safe refuge of Afrikaaners is an urgent matter. 35 00:02:09.800 --> 00:02:12.240 It's a genocide. That's second place that you people. 36 00:02:11.960 --> 00:02:12.919 Don't want to write about. 37 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:14.960 President Donald Trump last May. 38 00:02:15.319 --> 00:02:19.080 Farmers are being killed. They happen to be white. But 39 00:02:19.159 --> 00:02:21.960 whether they're white or black makes no difference to me. 40 00:02:22.120 --> 00:02:26.400 But white farmers are being brutally killed and the land 41 00:02:26.520 --> 00:02:28.599 is being confiscated in South Africa. 42 00:02:29.719 --> 00:02:32.039 There's been a problem with violent crime in South Africa. 43 00:02:32.159 --> 00:02:33.520 Let's put that out there first. 44 00:02:33.800 --> 00:02:38.560 But this idea that white farm owners are particularly victimized 45 00:02:38.800 --> 00:02:41.520 doesn't play out if we look at the police statistics. 46 00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:43.599 So where does this myth come from? 47 00:02:43.960 --> 00:02:47.159 Carolyn Holmes is a professor of political science at the 48 00:02:47.280 --> 00:02:52.479 University of Tennessee Knoxville, where she specializes in South African nationalism. 49 00:02:52.840 --> 00:02:54.919 When I spoke to her last May, she had been 50 00:02:54.960 --> 00:02:59.960 tracking the year's long pr campaign behind the white genocide narrative. 51 00:03:00.439 --> 00:03:03.400 A series of activist groups have really made this their 52 00:03:03.639 --> 00:03:07.199 central cause. There's a really easy way to make statistics 53 00:03:07.240 --> 00:03:09.840 look more powerful, and that's to mess around with who 54 00:03:09.919 --> 00:03:13.240 actually counts as a white farm owner, who actually counts 55 00:03:13.280 --> 00:03:15.560 as the victims that they're concerned about. 56 00:03:15.639 --> 00:03:19.199 I read one piece in Al Jazeera that, even looking 57 00:03:19.360 --> 00:03:23.639 at data provided by some of these African or advocacy groups, 58 00:03:23.680 --> 00:03:28.639 the supposed proof showed that just about sixty farmers across 59 00:03:28.680 --> 00:03:32.919 all races are killed each year in a country where 60 00:03:33.039 --> 00:03:37.000 there are some nineteen thousand murders annually. That doesn't make 61 00:03:37.039 --> 00:03:38.039 a strong case. 62 00:03:38.319 --> 00:03:39.319 No, It doesn't. 63 00:03:39.759 --> 00:03:43.080 Full time residents of commercial farms, regardless of race, are 64 00:03:43.080 --> 00:03:47.800 actually statistically significantly less likely to experience violent crime than 65 00:03:47.919 --> 00:03:52.080 their urban and pery urban counterparts in South Africa. These 66 00:03:52.319 --> 00:03:56.360 activist communities have foregrounded this idea of white victimization by 67 00:03:56.400 --> 00:03:59.439 picking out a very small number of stories and continually 68 00:03:59.479 --> 00:04:02.400 focusing on them. They tend to be stories with incredibly 69 00:04:02.439 --> 00:04:06.560 sympathetic victims. They say, look at this particularly horrifying case 70 00:04:06.680 --> 00:04:10.120 that happened in twenty eighteen, and it's like, well, okay, 71 00:04:10.240 --> 00:04:13.680 that was seven years ago. Those folks were brought to trial, 72 00:04:13.759 --> 00:04:16.560 The people who perpetrated that, they're all serving. 73 00:04:16.279 --> 00:04:17.879 Time, those that were convicted. 74 00:04:18.639 --> 00:04:22.120 This is not misinformation in the way that we've traditionally 75 00:04:22.160 --> 00:04:24.959 thought about it, where we can correct it by saying, oh, 76 00:04:24.959 --> 00:04:28.639 but that's factually incorrect. I can hold up every statistic 77 00:04:28.680 --> 00:04:31.240 in the world saying, you know, white people are not 78 00:04:31.680 --> 00:04:35.480 significantly more likely to be targeted. But the story has 79 00:04:35.560 --> 00:04:39.120 become so real that it has resulted in forty nine 80 00:04:39.160 --> 00:04:43.680 people leaving their home and coming to Texas. 81 00:04:44.240 --> 00:04:47.959 We've made reference to some of these activist groups, you 82 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:50.879 call them white rights groups. Who are they? 83 00:04:51.000 --> 00:04:51.839 There's a lot of them. 84 00:04:51.920 --> 00:04:55.519 So we have groups like EFRE Forum, we have groups 85 00:04:55.560 --> 00:04:59.160 like the Uranium Movement. We have more militant groups like 86 00:04:59.199 --> 00:05:05.319 the AWB. They historically have focused on things like language 87 00:05:05.360 --> 00:05:10.600 rights and self defense training and neighborhood watch patrols, and 88 00:05:10.720 --> 00:05:14.240 some would call it vigil anti activity. They've recently pivoted 89 00:05:14.279 --> 00:05:19.800 to specifically talking about rural security and quote unquote farm murders, partially, 90 00:05:19.839 --> 00:05:23.279 I think because it's been so successful for them in 91 00:05:23.319 --> 00:05:24.839 the international arena. 92 00:05:24.879 --> 00:05:29.680 And to advance the narrative of this disproportionate violence levied 93 00:05:29.680 --> 00:05:33.120 against them. Some of these africanric groups have pointed to 94 00:05:33.360 --> 00:05:37.680 a Cosa anti apartheid song Yeah, which they say explicitly 95 00:05:37.759 --> 00:05:41.360 calls for the killing of white farmers. The South African 96 00:05:41.399 --> 00:05:44.480 courts have weighed in on this. Elon Musk and Marco 97 00:05:44.560 --> 00:05:48.600 Rubio have posted about it repeatedly on X Tell Me 98 00:05:48.639 --> 00:05:49.240 about It. 99 00:05:50.680 --> 00:05:50.879 Right. 100 00:05:50.959 --> 00:05:54.000 Shoot the Boor is what that song is, and it 101 00:05:54.079 --> 00:05:55.680 was a struggle song. It was part of the anti 102 00:05:55.680 --> 00:05:58.560 apartheid movement. That this is a song that was sung 103 00:05:58.959

--> 00:06:03.120 in the context of an armed struggle against a white 104 00:06:03.120 --> 00:06:07.480 minority regime. So it's very controversial. It's sung sometimes in plosa, 105 00:06:07.560 --> 00:06:11.439 sometimes in Zulu, and it was particularly brought to the 106 00:06:11.480 --> 00:06:14.040 forefront by a politician by the name of Julius Malema. 107 00:06:14.439 --> 00:06:16.800 He was then the leader of the ANC Youth League. 108 00:06:16.839 --> 00:06:18.879 He sung it at a rally, got a lot of 109 00:06:18.879 --> 00:06:23.279 people fired up about this in twenty ten, the first 110 00:06:23.279 --> 00:06:25.959 time that made a lot of international headlines. There was 111 00:06:26.040 --> 00:06:30.920 also a farm killing of a far right Africaner leader, 112 00:06:31.040 --> 00:06:33.560 Eugene terre Blanche, and so a lot of people sort 113 00:06:33.560 --> 00:06:36.319 of paired those two events and said, look, this is 114 00:06:36.360 --> 00:06:39.800 evidence this is a causal connection between singing the song 115 00:06:39.839 --> 00:06:42.480 and violence against white people, and it was ruled to 116 00:06:42.480 --> 00:06:44.920 be a form of hate speech in twenty ten, although 117 00:06:44.959 --> 00:06:47.560 that ruling was then overturned in twenty twenty two. 118 00:06:48.079 --> 00:06:51.199 Other folks like Julius Malema, who has now. 119 00:06:51.240 --> 00:06:53.279 Been kicked out of the ANC and has his own 120 00:06:53.319 --> 00:06:56.120 political party, has said, this is a legitimate part of 121 00:06:56.199 --> 00:06:58.519 our struggle history and we need to be able to 122 00:06:58.519 --> 00:07:00.360 honor the people that fought for our freedom. 123 00:07:00.800 --> 00:07:03.920 Of course, the reason that we're speaking is that the 124 00:07:03.959 --> 00:07:10.160 Trump administration has elevated the grievances and claims of some 125 00:07:10.240 --> 00:07:15.040 of these Africaner groups, including AfriForum. How and when did 126 00:07:15.040 --> 00:07:17.079 they first get the president's year. 127 00:07:17.720 --> 00:07:20.800 So in the first Trump administration, a lot of these 128 00:07:20.839 --> 00:07:25.079 white rights groups saw an opportunity, and so AfriForum, one 129 00:07:25.120 --> 00:07:28.199 of the major groups that have forwarded this idea of 130 00:07:28.279 --> 00:07:31.800 white victimhood, came to the United States in twenty eighteen. 131 00:07:32.040 --> 00:07:33.639 They were wildly successful. 132 00:07:33.800 --> 00:07:37.519 They got meetings with people like rand Paul Ted Cruz, 133 00:07:37.720 --> 00:07:40.600 They posted a photo on their social media of a 134 00:07:40.600 --> 00:07:43.639 meeting with John Bolton in the White House, and in 135 00:07:43.720 --> 00:07:47.480 probably the biggest pr coup, they landed a sort of 136 00:07:47.519 --> 00:07:49.759 primetime spot on Tucker Carlson's show. 137 00:07:50.240 --> 00:07:53.199 Well Now was a fascinating and significant story. The media 138 00:07:53.279 --> 00:07:56.800 have all but ignored. An embattled minority of farmers, mostly 139 00:07:56.839 --> 00:08:00.240 Afrikaans speaking, is being targeted in a way of of 140 00:08:00.439 --> 00:08:02.399 barbaric and horrifying murders. 141 00:08:02.639 --> 00:08:05.120 Basic thing that you can do to help us is 142 00:08:05.160 --> 00:08:07.360 to talk about this, to talk about it on public platforms, 143 00:08:07.399 --> 00:08:09.759 and in that way to continue to put piti on 144 00:08:09.759 --> 00:08:11.439 the sid African governments to tell the truth. 145 00:08:11.519 --> 00:08:12.600 I agree Ustry. 146 00:08:12.720 --> 00:08:15.839 In the wake of that Tucker Carlson interview, we have 147 00:08:16.040 --> 00:08:18.399 the first Trump tweet in twenty eighteen. 148 00:08:18.800 --> 00:08:21.639 Trump writes that he's asked his secretary of State Mike 149 00:08:21.680 --> 00:08:26.319 Pompeio to closely study the South Africa land and farm 150 00:08:26.439 --> 00:08:30.079 seizures and the large scale killing of farmers. 151 00:08:30.680 --> 00:08:35.000 What were they advocating for on this tour exactly? 152 00:08:35.720 --> 00:08:41.120 So that's an interesting question because aside from international attention, 153 00:08:41.759 --> 00:08:45.799 they didn't necessarily have a policy prescription that was embedded 154 00:08:45.799 --> 00:08:49.480 in these tours. What they said is we need attention, 155 00:08:49.840 --> 00:08:54.000 we need help, maybe we need some sort of international 156 00:08:54.039 --> 00:08:58.720 diplomatic pressure, we need possibly something like capacity building for 157 00:08:58.799 --> 00:09:00.399 the South African police forces. 158 00:09:01.039 --> 00:09:03.679 Fast forward to the present. Policy did come out of 159 00:09:03.679 --> 00:09:05.399 this tour ultimately, yes. 160 00:09:05.440 --> 00:09:11.200 With the executive order that outlines this refugee status for africaners. 161 00:09:11.639 --> 00:09:15.080 The fascinating thing is that it was met with deep 162 00:09:15.159 --> 00:09:18.279 ambivalence by these activist communities that had worked so hard 163 00:09:18.279 --> 00:09:22.000 to put this issue item on the agenda of President 164 00:09:22.080 --> 00:09:23.360 Trump and his administration. 165 00:09:23.799 --> 00:09:26.720 Refugee status wasn't really on their wish. 166 00:09:26.480 --> 00:09:30.399 List, not at all, and they have repeatedly said so 167 00:09:30.440 --> 00:09:31.279 since February. 168 00:09:31.519 --> 00:09:34.679 We want not to be refugees in another man's country. 169 00:09:34.799 --> 00:09:38.080 Asturnia Movement say, if someone wants to help help us, he. 170 00:09:38.120 --> 00:09:40.840 Yea and Strut's the guy who was on Fox News 171 00:09:41.039 --> 00:09:43.559 with Tucker. Carlson was interviewed by The New York Times 172 00:09:43.600 --> 00:09:45.600 and he said, I'm not sure I know anybody that 173 00:09:45.679 --> 00:09:46.919 wants

to be a refugee. 174 00:09:46.960 --> 00:09:50.639 We like America, we regard ourselves as friends of America, 175 00:09:50.759 --> 00:09:52.840 but we want a future for our community. 176 00:09:52.960 --> 00:09:55.600 Yeah, in the southern tip of the African continent. 177 00:09:55.759 --> 00:09:59.480 One of the current leaders of afri Forum, Cali Kreole, said, 178 00:09:59.639 --> 00:10:03.120 quote Afrikaaners, let me be clear, cannot survive as a 179 00:10:03.120 --> 00:10:06.519 cultural community in the US or any other country. What 180 00:10:06.559 --> 00:10:09.519 they want is more power in South Africa exactly. 181 00:10:09.600 --> 00:10:13.080 And so interestingly, there was a song that AfriForum produced 182 00:10:13.120 --> 00:10:17.039 in late twenty twenty four called the Maksua. 183 00:10:17.120 --> 00:10:18.919 The Afrikaner does this. 184 00:10:19.320 --> 00:10:25.720 The Afrikaner Masura, and it's all it's talking all about 185 00:10:25.759 --> 00:10:29.639 how we live here. We're from here, this is our home, 186 00:10:30.120 --> 00:10:33.919 this is where we speak our language. They're desperately trying 187 00:10:33.960 --> 00:10:38.440 to establish legitimacy in South Africa, right, So the question 188 00:10:38.600 --> 00:10:42.360 is what do you do when you've achieved this objective 189 00:10:42.360 --> 00:10:45.879 that you never set out to achieve, that is wildly unpopular, 190 00:10:46.039 --> 00:10:49.080 and you're still trying to operate in that country. 191 00:10:49.559 --> 00:10:50.720 These groups are sort of like. 192 00:10:50.639 --> 00:10:52.399 A dog that caught a car, but they caught the 193 00:10:52.440 --> 00:10:55.759 car that they weren't chasing. They were trying to get attention, 194 00:10:55.919 --> 00:10:57.519 They were even trying to get sanctions. 195 00:10:57.840 --> 00:11:00.639 They were never trying to get refugee status that they have. 196 00:11:00.720 --> 00:11:04.840 It how that affects them domestically is a really big 197 00:11:04.879 --> 00:11:06.000 problem for them. 198 00:11:06.480 --> 00:11:10.200 Another kind of lost in translation quality to all this 199 00:11:10.399 --> 00:11:14.120 is that people like Elon Musk, even Donald Trump, have 200 00:11:14.200 --> 00:11:19.399 been using the term white genocide to describe these exaggerated 201 00:11:19.440 --> 00:11:24.720 claims of violence against white farmers. That term white genocide, 202 00:11:24.799 --> 00:11:28.240 it's pretty taboo in South Africa, right, and it's pretty 203 00:11:28.240 --> 00:11:31.279 taboo among the groups making some of these claims. 204 00:11:31.440 --> 00:11:32.639 No, it is. 205 00:11:32.799 --> 00:11:36.919 The term white genocide is a kind of a third 206 00:11:37.000 --> 00:11:42.559 rail in South African politics. Afriftum has very carefully walked 207 00:11:42.559 --> 00:11:46.159 a line around never saying those words in that order. 208 00:11:46.559 --> 00:11:49.720 And in fact, the only groups that

are making genocide 209 00:11:49.799 --> 00:11:54.480 type claims are paramilitary groups in South Africa. They don't 210 00:11:54.519 --> 00:11:58.519 command a lot of public support, but they exist. These 211 00:11:58.600 --> 00:12:02.240 most extreme claims come from a non resident population, and 212 00:12:02.320 --> 00:12:05.799 in fact they primarily come from a non Afrikaans population too. 213 00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:08.960 Elon Musk is not an africaner, he is an English 214 00:12:09.039 --> 00:12:09.679 South African. 215 00:12:10.639 --> 00:12:13.879 Is it fair to say that white genocide is akin 216 00:12:14.080 --> 00:12:16.759 to the kind of white supremacist idea of the great 217 00:12:16.799 --> 00:12:18.720 replacement theory in the United States. 218 00:12:18.919 --> 00:12:19.519 Absolutely. 219 00:12:20.200 --> 00:12:24.759 This sort of cross pollination of racist ideology between the 220 00:12:24.840 --> 00:12:29.320 United States and South Africa goes much further, though than 221 00:12:29.440 --> 00:12:30.759 white supremacist forums. 222 00:12:31.279 --> 00:12:35.559 It seems like every so often there will be a 223 00:12:35.600 --> 00:12:39.679 cataclysm of violence, like Dylan ruf Kenning mass murder in Charleston, 224 00:12:39.720 --> 00:12:43.679 South Carolina, wearing an apartheid era flag on his jacket, 225 00:12:43.919 --> 00:12:46.120 and people will say, what does that have to do 226 00:12:46.159 --> 00:12:48.519 with anything? And what I want to say is that 227 00:12:48.559 --> 00:12:53.320 this conversation has been happening. It's been happening for a century. 228 00:12:54.000 --> 00:12:56.480 The United States and South Africa have been intertwined sort 229 00:12:56.519 --> 00:13:01.799 of since South Africa became a single country. And there 230 00:13:01.879 --> 00:13:07.480 is this attention by particularly a philanthropic class of Americans, 231 00:13:07.559 --> 00:13:11.679 people like Andrew Carnegie, who said, what South Africa needs 232 00:13:12.360 --> 00:13:14.120 is the same thing that the US South needs. 233 00:13:14.440 --> 00:13:16.919 It needs a welfare state to lift up white. 234 00:13:16.639 --> 00:13:22.600 People, and it needs institutional segregation. And so this took 235 00:13:22.639 --> 00:13:26.120 the form of a variety of laws in South Africa. 236 00:13:26.279 --> 00:13:30.559 So the Land Act, the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, 237 00:13:30.600 --> 00:13:34.399 et cetera. And all of these were state efforts to 238 00:13:34.559 --> 00:13:38.039 define a population of whites that would then be the 239 00:13:38.039 --> 00:13:44.480 beneficiaries of welfare state programs in the service of making 240 00:13:44.559 --> 00:13:48.080 sure that white people didn't quote fall below their racial station. 241 00:13:48.679 --> 00:13:53.600 In what ways did South Africans look to Jim Crow 242 00:13:53.679 --> 00:13:56.759 era the United States for inspiration on their end. 243 00:13:57.559 --> 00:13:59.720 So one of those pieces of legislation that I had 244 00:13:59.720 --> 00:14:02.480 spoke about, the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, which was 245 00:14:02.799 --> 00:14:06.919 a bedrock of what was then the nascent apartheid government, 246 00:14:07.480 --> 00:14:10.440 has as its first appendix a list of US states, 247 00:14:10.480 --> 00:14:12.679 not just in the South in fact, but across the 248 00:14:12.840 --> 00:14:17.879 Union that had more restrictive covenants on interracial marriage than 249 00:14:17.919 --> 00:14:19.720 the one that was being proposed in South Africa. 250 00:14:20.039 --> 00:14:22.120 So it was very much a look, we can't be 251 00:14:22.200 --> 00:14:24.279 the bad guys. Look at what they're doing over there. 252 00:14:24.639 --> 00:14:29.440 So there's this trading off of respectability, trading off of 253 00:14:29.519 --> 00:14:33.679 ideas about how to define whiteness, how to institute segregation 254 00:14:34.639 --> 00:14:38.919 across the Atlantic Ocean throughout the twentieth century. 255 00:14:39.559 --> 00:14:42.519 These africaner groups, they didn't ask for refugee status. There's 256 00:14:42.559 --> 00:14:47.039 no proof for the white genocide conspiracy theory. What does 257 00:14:47.120 --> 00:14:51.440 the Trump administration get from this stunt? 258 00:14:52.480 --> 00:14:57.960 This is a cause that many of his most fringe 259 00:14:58.000 --> 00:15:03.000 supporters believe in deep In many ways, the Afrikaans community 260 00:15:03.080 --> 00:15:05.159 has been made a sort of ping pong ball in 261 00:15:05.200 --> 00:15:09.000 the conversation about immigration here in a way that. 262 00:15:09.320 --> 00:15:11.639 Is profoundly dehumanizing. 263 00:15:12.200 --> 00:15:15.679 You know, they're not actually interested in engaging with the 264 00:15:15.720 --> 00:15:18.360 politics on the ground in South Africa. There is an 265 00:15:18.559 --> 00:15:21.200 effort to say, look at these folks who have been 266 00:15:21.240 --> 00:15:27.080 victimized when they let majority rule happen. We can't let 267 00:15:27.240 --> 00:15:28.960 ourselves be replaced. 268 00:15:29.759 --> 00:15:33.399 Carolyn Holmes is an assistant professor of political science at 269 00:15:33.440 --> 00:15:37.320 the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Carolyn, thank you very much. 270 00:15:37.600 --> 00:15:39.279 Thank you so much for having me. It's been great. 271 00:15:41.799 --> 00:15:44.480 That's it for the podcast Extra. Do not forget to 272 00:15:44.519 --> 00:15:47.039 listen to The Big Show on Friday to hear the 273 00:15:47.080 --> 00:15:51.279 fourth and final episode of American Emergency, The Movement to 274 00:15:51.399 --> 00:15:54.279 Kill FEMA. We've been working on this series for a 275 00:15:54.320 --> 00:15:57.279 really long time. We're super excited about the finale. We're 276 00:15:57.279 --> 00:15:59.639 going out with the bang. And if you haven't caught 277 00:15:59.639 --> 00:16:01.320 the first US three you can check them out in 278 00:16:01.360 --> 00:16:04.559 the OTM podcast feed or on on themedia dot org. 279 00:16:04.879 --> 00:16:06.559 See you then, I'm Michael Lollinger. 280 00:16:13.759 --> 00:16:18.320 WNYC's journalism and storytelling is heard by millions of passionate listeners. 281 00:16:18.840 --> 00:16:22.600 Sponsors of our programming gain our listeners attention and their respect. 282 00:16:23.240 --> 00:16:27.600 Learn about how your organization can support WNYC and WNYC 283 00:16:27.639 --> 00:16:31.519 studios at sponsorship dot wnyc dot org