White genocide

According to the ADL, "White genocide" is the supremacist belief that the white race is "dying" due to growing non-white populations and "forced assimilation" deliberately engineered and controlled by a Jewish conspiracy to destroy the white race. It has been invoked by figures including Elon Musk on X, by the former Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson, and by Donald Trump and his supporters.

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue says the theory also known as  “white extinction” blames the Jews for masterminding a plot to "erase whiteness, white culture and white civilisation". Whiteness is defined through cultural identity such as being Christian and having Euro-American heritage. Proponents believe diversity is on the way to replacing whiteness and tools to achieve this goal include immigration, eugenics, racial integration and abortion. David Lane, an American neo-Nazi and convicted terrorist who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Resistance Movement helped popularise the white genocide conspiracy theory.

There are close ideological links between white genocide and great replacement theory, as coined by the French writer Renaud Camus, under which white civilisation is being destroyed by multiculturalism. However the difference is that white genocide theory is openly antisemitic, holding the Jews responsible for the ongoing "extermination" of the white race.

The white genocide conspiracy theory is particularly prevalent in contemporary US political discourse and has even gone mainstream. Drawing upon historic traditions of  white supremacist hatred of immigrants, it has become popular with far right ideologues and is mentioned often by figures including Donald Trump and has been mentioned on outlets like Fox News. Rhetoric drawing upon white genocide ideas was employed during the fascist right rally in Charlottesville in 2017 and was referenced on social media by the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooter just before his attack. 

In August 2023 Elon Musk wrote on X: "They are openly pushing for genocide of white people in South Africa.” Then in November 2023 Musk approved a post on X that  melded theories about the great replacement of white people by Jewish people stoking hatred against them. The Tesla owner was condemned by the White House for endorsing a "hideous" antisemitic theory and he lost a swathe of adveristers on his X platform.

Since the October 7, 2023 pogroms by Hamas in Israel, far right identities such as Tucker Carlson have drawn upon the antisemitic white genocide theory to suggest pro-Israel donors on American university campuses are funding organizations and students that have been leading anti-white protests and riots. “If the biggest donors at, say, Harvard have decided, ‘Well, we’re going to shut it down now,’ where were you the last 10 years when they were calling for white genocide? You were allowing this,” Carlson said in November 2023. “You were paying for it. You were calling my children immoral for their skin color. You paid for that, so why shouldn’t I be mad at you? I don’t understand.”