"White genocide" and white guilt: Donald Trump versus history [View all]

"White genocide" and white guilt: Donald Trump versus history
Trump's racist assault on South Africa's president was shockingly clumsy — because the truth doesn't even matter

By Andrew O'Hehir
Executive Editor
Published May 25, 2025 6:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) It’s pointless to proclaim that the second Trump administration has hit a new low. There’s always next week, and the likelihood of deeper and ever more painful absurdities: Drinking straws are causing gender confusion; many Americans are declining COVID boosters and therefore no Americans may have them; the price of eggs has fallen so far so fast that the supermarket now pays you. As I wrote a few months ago, we now seem devoted to living out, on a national scale, the thesis of Leonard Cohen’s final hit single, “You Want It Darker,” released the day before Donald Trump’s election in 2016.

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We are no longer at the level of right-wing conspiracy theory invading the body politic or contaminating government policy — admittedly, that’s been true for years. Trump’s assault on South African President Cyril Ramaphosa last week, featuring an insultingly clumsy propaganda video about that nation’s alleged “white genocide,” represented the triumph of paranoid racist projection as official White House doctrine. To inflict these delusional internet memes and outright fabrications on the elected leader of the nation that made “apartheid” a household word goes light-years beyond historical irony — it’s like an Upright Citizens Brigade comedy sketch that was rejected as overly cynical.

Indeed, the bottomless cynicism of the White House “white genocide” teachable moment strikes me as its most salient characteristic. Trump’s deployment of this far-right fantasy, which emerged in South Africa’s domestic politics about a decade ago and was laundered for American consumption, of course, by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, had nothing to do with its nonexistent truth value or with the internal realities of contemporary South Africa.

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No doubt the opportunity to humiliate a visiting Black head of state was a massive bonus, and to Ramaphosa’s credit — even if reviews back home were mixed — he remained largely dignified and managed to avoid the full Zelenskyy treatment. But South Africa’s leader was nothing more than a bit player in this tableau, while the white Afrikaners under supposed threat of extermination didn’t even get speaking parts. They were more like pathetic background extras, or bizarro-world inversions of the starving children from charity ads of bygone years: You can save Farmer Piet from white genocide, or you can turn the page. .............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/05/25/white-genocide-and-guilt-donald-versus-history/