"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth"
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Trump’s ambush of Ramaphosa over the so-called genocide of white farmers in South Africa has thrilled neo-Nazis and white supremacists
It was once a fringe conspiracy theory confined mostly to the milieus of white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Now the purely invented ‘white genocide’ concept— inspiration of far-right terrorists from the Christchurch mosque killer to the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue murderer, and the ideological evil twin of the racist ‘Great Replacement’ narrative— has gone mainstream. And it is all thanks to Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
The racist and antisemitic white genocide canard falsely asserts that white populations are being forcibly assimilated and deliberately exterminated by non-white majorities through immigration and intermarriage. It is cast as a plot engineered by shadowy, cosmopolitan ‘globalist’ Jewish elites. It was cited by the Christchurch, New Zealand terrorist Brenton Tarrant in 2019 in his “The Great Replacement” manifesto before he went on to murder 51 people in two mosques. “This is ethnic replacement,” the manifesto said. “This is cultural replacement. This is racial replacement. This is WHITE GENOCIDE.”
Robert Bowers, who murdered 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, also adhered to the white genocide theory, declaring that “all Jews must die” and that they “were committing genocide to his people”. And on January 6, 2021 at the violent Capitol riots, antisemitic and racist symbols and catchphrases linked with white genocide were on display. In fact one of the theories uniting the disparate insurrectionist groups from The Proud Boys and Oathkeepers militias to QAnon backers who attempted to take the Capitol by force and overturn the legitimate results of the presidential election of Joe Biden, was adherence to the Great Replacement and its sister white genocide theory.
Now the hateful conspiracy has found its most powerful platform yet — inside the White House.
In a sinister, highly staged scene on May 21, US President Donald Trump forced South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and his delegation to watch a dimmed-lights video in the Oval Office. The video alleged a racist massacre by blacks of white Afrikaner farmers as evidence of genocide. Looming over proceedings was South African-born apartheid-nostalgic Elon Musk, the online world’s most influential and rabid proponent of the white genocide theory, alongside Trump’s conspiracist vice president JD Vance.
The centerpiece of the video was drone footage of a field filled with white crosses — presented by Trump as a mass grave of white victims. In reality, the crosses were part of a 2020 protest memorial following the killing of a white farming couple during a robbery. Organizers explained the crosses symbolized all victims of farm violence, not just white ones.
“We are completely opposed to that,” a calm but visibly shocked Ramaphosa said of Trump’s claims. “That is not government policy.” Trump, unmoved, doubled down. “When they take the land, they kill the white farmer,” he insisted.
The disinformation did not stop there. Trump also held up a printout from a conservative blog, claiming it showed “white farmers being buried” — pointing to a Reuters photo. But the image was a screenshot from a 2024 YouTube video filmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo after deadly clashes between Congolese forces and a Rwandan-backed militia. The people pictured were Red Cross workers handling body bags after a mass killing.
Trump’s father Fred attended KKK rallies, and the Oval Office Ramaphosa ambush was the culmination of years of Trump dabbling in white nationalist mythology. As reported by The New York Times, Trump has been alluding to the white genocide since the 1990s, when he said “this isn’t going to become South Africa”, in response to reports that the majority of the American population could become non-white.
In the years following the 1990 overthrow of Pretoria’s apartheid regime, the white genocide was seized upon by a small group of far-right Afrikaner farmers and their ideological allies in the United States.
South Africa has its own dubious record with false genocide rhetoric, including accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza at the International Court of Justice, and propagating the 2001 Durban conference “Zionism is racism” libel.
A notion similar to white genocide was propagated by white nationalists in United States around the turn of the 20th century, as racist populations and governments doubled down with their discriminatory Jim Crow laws refusing to accept post-slavery rights for Blacks. At the same time demagogues and extremists pandered to fears of waves of immigration from Central and Southern Europe exemplified in the 1916 racist novel by Madison Grant The Passing of the Great Race.
As President in 2018 Trump found his inspiration in then-Fox News host and far right conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson, who “crystallized his views of South Africa”. A willing Trump picked up on a Carlson claim that South Africa’s President was “seizing land from his own citizens” and that the law underpinning this unsubstantiated seizure was “the definition of racism” to announce an investigation. Shortly after the Carlson broadcast, Trump tweeted: “I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. “South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.” @TuckerCarlson @FoxNews.”
In 2019, Trump floated fast-tracking asylum for white South Africans. Today, the US President openly welcomes Afrikaner ‘refugees’ while refusing or deporting migrants of other nationalities — all based on so-called killings of white farmers in a ‘white genocide’.
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.
As documented by the Global Centre for Hate and Extremism, the term was coined in the 1980s by a former Republican Congressional staffer and Ronald Reagan Administration appointee. Robert ‘Bob’ Whitaker was a segregationist who eventually wrote for the neo-Nazi press and later ran for president on a white nationalist ticket. He also popularized the phrase “anti-racist is anti-white”, followed by “Diversity = White Genocide”. The slogan quickly caught on with white supremacists and was referenced by the Pittsburgh synagogue terrorist Bowers who posted on the Gab social network: “Daily reminder: Diversity means chasing down the last white person.”
Spurred on by Whitaker, white genocide was taken up by the American neo-Nazi and KKK terrorist David Lane who invented the now notorious ‘14 words’. “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.” Under this schema Jews are not white and are out to destroy white civilization. The seventh plank of Lane’s manifesto says: “All Western nations are ruled by a Zionist conspiracy to mix, overrun and exterminate the White race”.
“While influenced by the infamous antisemitic forgery known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the document goes further, blaming members of what it euphemistically calls the “Zionist occupation governments of America” for homosexuality and abortion as well,” notes a Brandeis University Professor Jonathan Sarna.
For his role in the murder of the Jewish radio host Alan Berg in Denver in 1984, Lane received a 190 year jail term. But he was undeterred. From prison he penned the “White Genocide Manifesto”. Lane died in prison in 2007 but his legacy lived on.
In 2019 the Christchurch mosque terrorist Tarant drew on Lane’s writings and wrote of the “white genocide” as motivation for murdering 51 people. The far right attacker also cited Anders Breivik as an inspiration. The Norwegian Breivik was a far-right white supremacist terrorist who murdered 77 people in 2011. Pre-attack, he published “A European Declaration of Independence” referring to the white genocide. “What is happening to the indigenous peoples of Western Europe and our cultures amounts to a merciless and bloody genocide.”
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 advertisers on his X platform.
In May 2025, Musk's Artificial Intelligence Grok chatbot went off message on X and began spouting repeated claims about white genocide of Afrikaner farmers - much like its proprietor - but in response to entirely unrelated questions posed by users, including about fitness regimens and crypto currencies. The outbusts were blamed on a "rogue employee" however reporst highlighted the frequent promotion of the conspiracy theory by Musk.
Since the October 7, 2023 pogroms by Hamas in Israel, far right identities such as Carlson have invoked 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.”
In the wake of Trump’s attack on Ramaphosa, neo-Nazis around the globe cheered. Austrian neo-Nazi and Identitarian Movement of Austria (IBÖ) leader Martin Sellner praised Trump’s remarks for making it “globally acceptable to talk about white identity,” invoking the Nazi-era slur Lügenpresse (“lying press”). Sellner has twice been sent to jail for his neo-Nazi activities and he has plasteredd a swastika on a synagogue in Austria. As revealed in the investigation into the Christchurch attacks, the terrorist Tarrant admired Sellner and exchanged email messages with him before his terrorist massacre, while his IBÖ also received 1700 Euros in donations from Tarrant.
In 2017, Trump refused to categorically condemn neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville’s deadly race riots chanting “You will not replace us” and “Jews will not replace us,” slogans tied directly to the Great Replacement and to the white genocide conspiracy theories.
A key marcher at that rally was Holocaust denying online livestreamer Nick Fuentes who said he attended to protest ‘cultural genocide’ (a term used by Trump’s failed pick for defence secretary Matt Gaetz) and later was presented at the January 6 riots at the Capitol. Trump invited Fuentes to dinner at Mar-a-Lago in 2022 along with fellow Jew-hater Kanye West.
Judging by the carefully choreographed platforming of white genocide from the Oval Office this month, the conspiracy theory long dear to the Commander-in-chief's heart is not going away anytime soon.
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