Trump's Asylum for White South Africans is a New Low for Racial Capitalism

Last month Donald Trump broke his own immigration policy to grant asylum to 59 white South Africans, allowing them to ‘seek refuge’ in the US. This raised more than a few eyebrows. Trump has torn apart the rights and lives of hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of migrants since taking power. He has, for instance, suspended all refugee resettlement programmes, programmes which have given refuge to people fleeing conflict since the Vietnam war. These white Afrikaners are the sole exception Trump has made. In a subsequent meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa, he explained using a laughable video, that White South Africans were facing a ‘genocide’ claiming that he has welcomed these Afrikaners because they were ‘being killed.’ The evidence Trump used to justify this claim was a popular video of EFF leader Julius Malema singing a well-known Anti-Apartheid song which features the lyrics ‘kill the Boer’ - Boer refers to White South African farmers. Trump had apparently failed to consider that the EFF are not in government in South Africa and that this year only one white farmer has been killed in South Africa - compared to five black farmers. No politician in South Africa, even any specifically representing the Afrikaner community, has claimed that they are undergoing such a ‘genocide.’ 

‘Farmers are being killed, they happen to be white, but whether they are white or black makes no difference to me,’ there is little evidence to support this claim made by Trump following the oval office debacle. It clearly makes no difference to him if they’re even being killed, because they are not. The question remains as to why he has welcomed these Afrikaners and disregards the Palestinians and Congolese who are undergoing an actual genocide. The answer points to a rather worrying theme.

‘Anti-white racism’ has long been a fringe idea, peddled by extreme right-wing groups. Let us be absolutely clear, ‘anti-white racism’ exists neither systemically or sociologically, and is merely an ideological tool used by racists such as Trump and his supporters. The proportion of white people who report race-based hate is negligible, and no white person faces any systemic discrimination, certainly not in South Africa. Donald Trump defended his claims with reference to a law which allows land to be taken from Afrikaners - descendants of mostly Dutch settlers who farm on stolen land - under certain circumstances. After this law was introduced, Trump cut off all aid to South Africa, which led to this Oval Office meeting. To this day no land has been taken under this law. It is a law which tries, perhaps not hard enough, to address the extraordinarily disproportionate privilege which White South Africans enjoy, more than 30 years after the fall of Apartheid. Despite making up only 7.7% of South Africa’s population, White people make up 62% of management posts in the country and own three quarters of the private land. Despite making up the overwhelming majority of its population, it is South Africa’s black population which faces institutional racism, one wonders why Trump isn’t worrying about this. The notion that Afrikaners are facing any sort of discrimination really is clearly complete nonsense. Trump doesn’t care about supposedly genocidal rhetoric, or perhaps he misses what Israeli officials say every week, he only cares about the maintenance of White Supremacy, which is essential to the world which he seeks to create for himself and his billionaire friends. 

This altercation with Ramaphosa strives to do one thing, which is to undermine the fight against the systemic racism which plagues the US and the West. It trivialises this issue by creating a false equivalence to a frankly non-existent struggle which should not get any airtime whatsoever. Trump’s sledgehammer approach to DEI comes from a similar place. He is emboldening racists by allowing them to convince themselves that they are somehow oppressed. It is little wonder that racism is on the rise in America. Last year a black student in a Massachusetts school was subject to an online mock ‘Slave Auction.’ In Ohio, a black-owned bingo hall was vandalised with a KKK symbol and the words ‘you don’t belong.’ Where was Mr Trump’s outrage at this? And yet he supposedly cares about the plight of the White Afrikaner. 

Trump is trying to make us forget what racism is with this Afrikaner stunt. Racism is the ideology which holds up capitalism and neo-colonialism, Donald Trump’s two favourite things. It was Malcom X who said that ‘you can’t have capitalism without racism.’ Little wonder, then, that it is convenient for Donald Trump to keep racism around. A typical way of scuppering a cause is to make it seem less important than it is. This move from Trump is overtly racist, he is denying refugees from Palestine, Congo, Sudan and so on, and allowing these White South Africans, just so he can make a point.