Speaker 1: Coll Zone Media. On February twenty seventh, twenty twelve, three
Speaker 1: people were arrested after a rally outside the California State
Speaker 1: Capitol Building in Sacramento. If not for those arrests, the
Speaker 1: little protest may not have even made the news at all.
Speaker 1: A dozen similar rallies organized by the same group that
Speaker 1: were held that day and other cities certainly didn't. But
Speaker 1: a California Highway Patrol officer fell and scraped his knee
Speaker 1: trying to tackle a counter protester, which made the event
Speaker 1: national news with headlines like Occupy protesters clash with police
Speaker 1: officers injured. The arrests were reported by the Associated Press
Speaker 1: in stories carried in newspapers around the country. The initial
Speaker 1: wire story opens with a cursory explanation of the underlying event,
Speaker 1: offering up the phrase a rally by a group so
Speaker 1: protesting violence by blacks against whites in South Africa, but
Speaker 1: news reports about the events focus on the men who
Speaker 1: were arrested, three members of Occupy Sacramento, part of the
Speaker 1: larger nationwide series of Occupy protests that had sprung up
Speaker 1: around the country a few months earlier. In follow up
Speaker 1: stories about the arrests, officers say the event led them
Speaker 1: to reevaluate their strategy for confronting Occupy protesters, who they
Speaker 1: describe as aggressive towards police. Initial reporting quotes one occupied
Speaker 1: protester who spoke to the group's motivation for showing up
Speaker 1: to counter protest, but none of the news stories follow
Speaker 1: that lead who exactly were the people who had organized
Speaker 1: the event of the Capitol and why would those counter
Speaker 1: protesters believe that the group had connections to the clan.
Speaker 1: The Associated Press write up notes in passing that the
Speaker 1: three dozen rally attendees of the Capital were all white
Speaker 1: and almost all men, many with shaved heads and prominent tattoos,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't offer any indication that those very visible
Speaker 1: tattoos had any particular message. The reporter doesn't quote the
Speaker 1: man who organized the rally in Sacramento, but they do
Speaker 1: include a comment from the national spokesman for the organization
Speaker 1: behind the events, Marris Gulett, told a reporter that he
Speaker 1: wasn't surprised that counter protesters had disrupted this peaceful march.
Speaker 1: What's missing from the articles, though, is that the event
Speaker 1: in Sacramento was hosted by the Golden State Skinheads, and
Speaker 1: while he may have been speaking on behalf of something
Speaker 1: called the South Africa Project. Marris Gulett was a lifelong
Speaker 1: member of the Aryan Nations who had recently been released
Speaker 1: from prison for bank robbery. Just beneath the surface of
Speaker 1: those rallies, had anyone bothered to look, was an old
Speaker 1: woman in Louisiana. Years before she started organizing American skinheads
Speaker 1: at poorly attended rallies, she was a key player in
Speaker 1: an international terrorist plot to disrupt South Africa's first post
Speaker 1: apartheid elections. I'm Molly Conger, and this is weird.
Speaker 2: Little guys, we have to talk about white genocide.
Speaker 1: I'd really rather not, but that's just the way things are.
Speaker 1: The most important thing you need to know about white
Speaker 1: genocide is that it is absolutely not a real thing.
Speaker 1: It's not just not happening. It isn't really a thing
Speaker 1: that can happen. The white race is not dying out.
Speaker 1: White people are not subject to a targeted campaign of
Speaker 1: extermination by any government. But on the extreme right, there
Speaker 1: is an intense fear of a loss of white dominance.
Speaker 1: For years now, on the homepage of The Daily Stormer,
Speaker 1: there's been a little widget in the sidebar called demographic countdown.
Speaker 1: It's an actual countdown clock to the moment the United
Speaker 1: States will hit a demographic tipping point when the white
Speaker 1: population drops below fifty percent for the first time. As
Speaker 1: I'm writing this, they have calculated that moment to be
Speaker 1: eighteen years and two hundred and twenty one days from now,
Speaker 1: So mark your calendars. I guess they fear what they
Speaker 1: call the Great Replacement, the idea that through immigration and
Speaker 1: interracial marriage, white people will become a minority in historically
Speaker 1: white majority countries. Abortion, contraception, pornography, homosexuality, all of these
Speaker 1: things are in their minds, causing white birth rates to fall,
Speaker 1: all while non white immigrants pore over the borders replacing them.
Speaker 1: It was David Lane, a member of the neo Nazi
Speaker 1: terrorist group The Order, who coined the pithy slogan that
Speaker 1: encapsulates the fear, his fourteen words, we must secure the
Speaker 1: existence of our people and a future for white children.
Speaker 1: David Lane wrote those words from his cell in federal prison.
Speaker 1: His idea of securing the existence of his people involved
Speaker 1: murdering a Jewish talk radio host. David Lane died in prison,
Speaker 1: but those fourteen words have taken on a life of
Speaker 1: their own, becoming one of the most well recognized white
Speaker 1: supremacist slogans worldwide. This white extinction anxiety is a motivating
Speaker 1: for acts of horrific violence on an individual level. Anders Bravic,
Speaker 1: a man who murdered seventy seven people in Norway in
Speaker 1: twenty eleven, wrote in his manifesto quote, what is happening
Speaker 1: to the indigenous peoples of Western Europe and our cultures
Speaker 1: amounts to a merciless and bloody genocide. When Breton Tarrant
Speaker 1: murdered fifty one Muslim worshippers at mosques in christ Church,
Speaker 1: New Zealand in twenty nineteen, he titled his manifesto The
Speaker 1: Great Replacement, and in it he cites Bravic as an inspiration.
Speaker 1: But it's that same feeling, this paranoid, reactionary whiteness, that
Speaker 1: South African media studies professor Niki Falkov calls an anxious
Speaker 1: racial fantasy that motivates the violence of policy too. When
Speaker 1: Republican politicians froth at the mouth, spreading fear of immigrant
Speaker 1: hordes at the border and give campaign speeches about how
Speaker 1: they're all rapists, with the unspoken implication that they'll impregnate
Speaker 1: your white daughters. They're murderers, They carry deadly diseases, and
Speaker 1: they traffic poisonous drugs that will kill your white sons.
Speaker 1: That's the same fear. It originates in the same place,
Speaker 1: and it leads us to the same violent ends. But
Speaker 1: the great replacement myth is just that, a myth, of course,
Speaker 1: but one about replacement. They believe white people are being displaced.
Speaker 1: They are being replaced. Their cultural hegemony is at risk.
Speaker 1: When immigrants bring their languages, customs, and religions with them
Speaker 1: into white countries in a racial marriage, is making new
Speaker 1: generations less and less racially pure. The belief in the
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories of white genocide and great replacement go hand
Speaker 1: in hand, and they're often used interchangeably. But for that
Speaker 1: white genosie to be more than metaphorical, more than a
Speaker 1: slow death of this imaginary hegemonic white culture, there has
Speaker 1: to be actual violence against white people. If white people
Speaker 1: are victims of an ongoing genocide, surely you can point
Speaker 1: to blood on someone's hands. You have to have a body.
Speaker 1: And the example that bubbles to the surface more often
Speaker 1: than not is the myth of the South African farm murders.
Speaker 1: And that's what got me started on the subject of
Speaker 1: this week's episode. Those rallies in twenty twelve were organized
Speaker 1: by a group calling themselves the South Africa Project, and
Speaker 1: their stated goal was to raise awareness of the genocide
Speaker 1: of the white South African. The narrative is built around
Speaker 1: the idea that white South African farmers are under attack,
Speaker 1: that they are being brutally murdered in alarming numbers by
Speaker 1: black men motivated specifically by desire to kill white people.
Speaker 1: The very idea of the farm murders as some discrete
Speaker 1: category of crime is a contentious one. Have white farmers
Speaker 1: been murdered, yes, But that's where the truth leaves the room.
Speaker 1: As a nation, South Africa has a higher rate of
Speaker 1: violent crime than many other similarly situated countries, But the
Speaker 1: idea that rural white landowners are at a uniquely high
Speaker 1: risk of being murdered in racially motivated violent attacks is
Speaker 1: simply not true. But it's a myth that serves a
Speaker 1: rather particular political purpose. As Nikki Falcon writes in her
Speaker 1: book Warrior, State, Risk, Anxiety and Moral Panic in South Africa,
Speaker 1: white people are not the only victims, or indeed only
Speaker 1: the victims of war murders. Black laborers, though seldom spoken
Speaker 1: about in these terms, are frequently among the victims of
Speaker 1: murders perpetrated by outsiders, and they are also killed by
Speaker 1: white managers and employers. Rates of femicide and domestic violence
Speaker 1: on farms are thought to be high, affecting both black
Speaker 1: and white women. Nonetheless, the trope of the farm murder
Speaker 1: as a specific type of violent crime featuring white victims
Speaker 1: and black killers is frequently invoked to provide evidence for
Speaker 1: the alleged genocide. In two thousand and three, the South
Speaker 1: African Police issued their final report on an inquiry conducted
Speaker 1: into the alleged phenomenon. In analysis of all reported incidents
Speaker 1: on farms and smallholdings spanning nineteen ninety eight two thousand one,
Speaker 1: nearly ninety percent were motivated by robbery, seven percent were
Speaker 1: the result of labor disputes, and only two percent found
Speaker 1: to have any racial or political motivation in any direction.
Speaker 1: In a country with nearly twenty thousand murders annually, there
Speaker 1: are an average of fifty per year that could be
Speaker 1: classified as farm murders, and again, almost all of those
Speaker 1: are robbery homicides, not organized political violence targeting people of
Speaker 1: a particular race. As Falkov puts it, there is evidence
Speaker 1: for murder, atrocity, even torture, there is no evidence for genocide.
Speaker 1: The genocide myth is an iteration of long standing white
Speaker 1: justifications for racist domination. To put it another way, the
Speaker 1: intense and formative anxiety of whiteness that it is always
Speaker 1: under threat would appear among South Africans regardless of whether
Speaker 1: the farm murders happened or not. This anxiety of a
Speaker 1: whiteness that is under violent threat is incredibly useful. Carolyn Holmes,
Speaker 1: a professor of political science at the University of Tennessee Knoxville,
Speaker 1: has written extensively about this phenomenon, addressing specifically the ways
Speaker 1: this myth making is marketed to a racially anxious white
Speaker 1: audience outside of South Africa, writing that white audiences are
Speaker 1: a quote mobilizing around stories of violence against perceived members
Speaker 1: of their group as a way to protect their racial status.
Speaker 1: African nationalist groups like Afroforum and the Swedelanders tour the
Speaker 1: United States, meet with American right wing groups, produce material
Speaker 1: in English, and make appearances in American media because they
Speaker 1: know this message sells here, and lately it's really taken off.
Speaker 1: Earlier this month, Donald Trump posted something on truth Social
Speaker 1: that sent up a big red flag for me. I mean,
Speaker 1: almost all of his posts are pretty alarming, but this
Speaker 1: one sent me scurrying into my archives. On February second,
Speaker 1: he posted.
Speaker 3: South Africa is confiscating land and treating certain classes of
Speaker 3: people very badly. It's a bad situation that the radical
Speaker 3: left media doesn't want so much as mention. A massive
Speaker 3: human rights violation at a minimum is happening for all
Speaker 3: to see. The United States won't stand for it. We
Speaker 3: will act. Also. I will be cutting off all future
Speaker 3: funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this
Speaker 3: situation has been completed.
Speaker 1: He made an almost identical post a week later, on
Speaker 1: February ninth, and in between those two posts, he issued
Speaker 1: an executive order with the title addressing the Egregious Actions
Speaker 1: of the Report Look of South Africa on its surface.
Speaker 1: The egregious action he's referring to is the Expropriation Act
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty four, an act of the South African
Speaker 1: Parliament signed into law by the South African President in
Speaker 1: January of this year, but both his reaction to it
Speaker 1: and his own history of engagement on the subject of
Speaker 1: South African land reform are instructive here. He's not actually
Speaker 1: reacting to the text of that bill. He's reacting to
Speaker 1: the imaginary world constructed by people who wish apartheid had
Speaker 1: never ended. I'll get into a little bit of what
Speaker 1: the Expropriation Act actually says, but first let's go back
Speaker 1: in time a few years, because, like I said, when
Speaker 1: I saw Trump's post a few days before that executive order,
Speaker 1: I had a feeling he was retreading old territory. This
Speaker 1: wasn't the first time he'd fired off a half baked
Speaker 1: take on South Africa land reform. Back in August of
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, nearly two years and almost five thousand tweets
Speaker 1: into his first term, he tweeted the word Africa for
Speaker 1: the first time.
Speaker 4: As president, I have asked Secretary of State Sect Bompao
Speaker 4: to closely study the South African land and farm seizures and.
Speaker 3: Expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. South African
Speaker 3: government is now seizing land from white farmers at Tucker
Speaker 3: Carson at Fox News.
Speaker 1: The tweet was posted at ten thirty eight pm, less
Speaker 1: than an hour after a segment on Tucker Carlson's nightly
Speaker 1: broadcast fear bongering about land reform under President Ramaposa.
Speaker 5: We've got a holicit investigation for you tonight. The President
Speaker 5: of South Africa, Siro Ramaposa, has begun and you may
Speaker 5: have seen this in the press, seizing land from his
Speaker 5: own city without compensation because they're the wrong skin color.
Speaker 5: That is literally the definition of racism.
Speaker 1: Oddly, that segment doesn't mention anything about farmers being killed.
Speaker 1: Trump's decision to include that in his tweet indicates that
Speaker 1: he'd been consuming right wing media about South Africa elsewhere
Speaker 1: prior to this Nightly date with Tucker Carlson's show. If
Speaker 1: I had to guess, though, I'd say his belief in
Speaker 1: the farm murders did probably still come from Tucker Carlson.
Speaker 1: Just three months earlier, he'd invited the leader of a
Speaker 1: white nationalist group onto the show to spread disinformation on
Speaker 1: the topic.
Speaker 5: An embattled minority of farmers, mostly Afrikaans speaking, is being
Speaker 5: targeted in a wave of barbaric and horrifying murders, but
Speaker 5: instead of protecting them, the government just passed a law
Speaker 5: allowing it to seize their farms about any compensation. Based
Speaker 5: purely on their ethnicity and distribute those forms to more
Speaker 5: favored groups. Thousands have already migrated out of the country,
Speaker 5: but they struggled to attack attract any sympathy abroad for
Speaker 5: some reason. Ernst Roots is Deputy CEO of Afroform. It's
Speaker 5: a South Africa civil rights group. It was just in
Speaker 5: the United States to meet with a number of government officials.
Speaker 1: Afroforum is not really best described as a civil rights organization.
Speaker 1: That's what they call themselves, but I would profer that
Speaker 1: apartheid apologists is a more fitting description. In twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: after the group released Tainted Heroes, their documentary critical of
Speaker 1: the struggle against apartheid, a spokesman for the African National
Speaker 1: Congress called the film pure propaganda and suggested that a
Speaker 1: better film might feature the stories of the Afro Forum
Speaker 1: members and the ways in which they had collaborated with
Speaker 1: the apartheid regilme harenst Ruth's appearance on Tucker Carlson's show
Speaker 1: was during his trip to Washington, d C. To meet
Speaker 1: with federal government officials and right wing think tanks. Along
Speaker 1: with Afrofum CEO Callie Creele, he met with staffers for
Speaker 1: Senator Ted Cruz, officials from USAID, and the pair posted
Speaker 1: a photo of themselves with National Security Advisor John Bolton.
Speaker 1: They posted about meetings at the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation,
Speaker 1: and the International Republican Institute. They claimed to have met
Speaker 1: with at least one member of Congress, but they declined
Speaker 1: to say who it was. Their May twenty eighteen tour
Speaker 1: of the United States was meant to capitalize on the
Speaker 1: sudden international interest in the plight of the persecuted white
Speaker 1: South African Just two months earlier, in March of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: News Corps Australia sent reporter Paul Towey on a four
Speaker 1: week tour of South Africa. The timing is curious. This
Speaker 1: was right on the heel of right wing media influencers
Speaker 1: like Lauren Southern and Katie Hopkins traveling to South Africa
Speaker 1: to make content, and for weeks Australian news outlets owned
Speaker 1: by Rupert Murdoch ran stories and videos about horrific violence
Speaker 1: against white farmers, with headlines like horror Tales from South
Speaker 1: African farmers in the Australian South Africa's white farmers attacked, raped,
Speaker 1: forced from land in the Daily Telegraph, White minority targeted
Speaker 1: in South Africa in The Courier Mail and wrights groups
Speaker 1: silent on the whites of South Africa in the West Australian.
Speaker 1: In video reports, Twoey claimed that he was quoting the
Speaker 1: Ramaposa government when he said they were specifically targeting white
Speaker 1: South Africans for land seizures. Australian Facebook feeds were flooded
Speaker 1: with short videos about a pending genocide of white South
Speaker 1: Africans two. His reporting relied heavily on the misrepresented crime
Speaker 1: statistics produced by Afroforum, and many of his stories quoted
Speaker 1: liberally from Afroforum directly or interviewed the aggrieved white farmers
Speaker 1: whose stories had been featured in Afroforum propaganda campaigns in
Speaker 1: the past. As far as I can find, Paul Twey
Speaker 1: never explicitly disclosed any relationship with Afroforum, but the group
Speaker 1: did take credit for influencing his coverage, claiming to have
Speaker 1: provided assistance to a prominent Australian journalist. In the midst
Speaker 1: of this onslaught of reporting, essentially force feeding African or
Speaker 1: white nationalists propaganda to the entire Australian public. Australian Home
Speaker 1: Affairs Minister Peter Dutton told a reporter from the Australian
Speaker 1: right wing town babloid The Telegraph that he'd seen some
Speaker 1: very concerning media coverage of the violent persecution of white
Speaker 1: farmers and he hoped to assist them in resettling in Australia.
Speaker 1: He'd ordered his department to explore options for fast tracking
Speaker 1: humanitarian visas for white South Africans, saying people do need help,
Speaker 1: and they need help from a civilized country like ours.
Speaker 1: Dutton's comments were not well received. He dismissed the criticism
Speaker 1: as lots of outrage from crazy leftists, and he said
Speaker 1: that the outlets who covered the story negatively, like ABC,
Speaker 1: The Guardian and Huftington Post were dead to him. But
Speaker 1: the criticism wasn't just coming from the media. The United
Speaker 1: Nations High Commissioner for Refugees issued a statement warning of
Speaker 1: the dire conditions for refugees living in a processing center
Speaker 1: on the island of Nauru, urging Australia to prioritize actual refugees.
Speaker 1: The UNHCR Director for Asia and the Pacific said the
Speaker 1: decision of the government to open its migration pathways to
Speaker 1: different categories of people is a sovereign decision, but from
Speaker 1: the UNHCR perspective, we do encourage that resettlement opportunities that
Speaker 1: are for refugees and humanitarian quotas that are for deserving
Speaker 1: cases should not be impacted by these decisions on migration.
Speaker 1: The South African government summoned the Australian ambassador and demanded
Speaker 1: a formal retraction of Dutton's statements, with their Foreign Affairs
Speaker 1: minister writing the South African government is offended by the
Speaker 1: statements which have been attributed to the Australian Home Affairs
Speaker 1: Minister and a full retraction is expected. Australian Prime Minister
Speaker 1: Malcolm Turnbull and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop managed to smooth
Speaker 1: things out with South Africa by clarifying that Dutton's offer
Speaker 1: did not represent the actual policies of the nation, but
Speaker 1: Dutton never actually retracted his statement, and as for af
Speaker 1: Reforms attempt to capitalize on that attention on their trip
Speaker 1: to the United States, they only actually managed to meet
Speaker 1: with staffers in Ted Cruz's office, not the Senator himself,
Speaker 1: and a spokesman from USAID downplayed the significance of having
Speaker 1: taken a meeting with the pair offering a bland statement
Speaker 1: that they take a lot of meetings. Their claim to
Speaker 1: have met with John Bolton is an overstatement too. A
Speaker 1: spokesman from the National Security Council clarified that Bolton had
Speaker 1: no idea who Roots and Creole were and he had
Speaker 1: not met with them. They'd simply run into him in
Speaker 1: the hallway at a Fox News studio and agreed to
Speaker 1: pose for a photo with fans. For what it's worth,
Speaker 1: the photo of Roots with Bolton does show that Roots
Speaker 1: is wearing the outfit he appeared in on an episode
Speaker 1: of Talker Carlson that aired a few days later, and
Speaker 1: the men are standing in front of what appears to
Speaker 1: be the kind of large garment steamer that you might
Speaker 1: find in a dressing room in a television studio, not
Speaker 1: a government office building. Peter Dutton was the subject of
Speaker 1: international ridicule, and he very nearly caused an international incident.
Speaker 1: The leadership of Afroforum had made no headway in their
Speaker 1: attempts to meet with government officials, but none of that
Speaker 1: really matters. The only thing that mattered in the end
Speaker 1: was that Tucker Carlson took the bait and he put
Speaker 1: arest Rutz on a television program that the President of
Speaker 1: the United States watched religiously. That segment aired on May fifteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen. Trump didn't tweet about South Africa that night.
Speaker 1: I can't prove he saw that episode, But three months
Speaker 1: later in August, when Tucker Carlson had another guest on
Speaker 1: to talk about South African land reform, the president's tweet
Speaker 1: that night wasn't just about land reform. He specifically referenced
Speaker 1: the idea of large scale killings of white farmers, something
Speaker 1: that hadn't been discussed in that night's episode, but it
Speaker 1: had been the subject of Carlson's interview with Rutz back
Speaker 1: in May. That pathway from white supremacist propaganda in South
Speaker 1: Africa to a presidential tweet is fairly clear. Trump quoted
Speaker 1: and tagged Tucker Carlson in his tweet, a tweet he
Speaker 1: posted forty five minutes after the segment aired. The guest
Speaker 1: on the show that night was a CATO Institute fellow
Speaker 1: named Marion tupe So not actually a representative from Afroforum,
Speaker 1: but when Afroforum met with various right wing think tanks
Speaker 1: back in May, Marion Tupi was the Cato Institute policy
Speaker 1: analyst who replied to Huffington Post's requests for comment about
Speaker 1: their meeting with the group. He even c seed Ernst
Speaker 1: Roots in his reply to the Huffington Post, a message
Speaker 1: that included a bizarre comment that the current South African
Speaker 1: government was explicitly racist and in fact comparable to the
Speaker 1: apartheid government. When Donald Trump tweeted about South Africa for
Speaker 1: the first time as president, he said he was going
Speaker 1: to have Secretary of State Mike Pompeo closely study the
Speaker 1: issue of South African farmers. But I can't actually find
Speaker 1: any kind of official follow up to that. I found
Speaker 1: a brief mention in an article from twenty twenty about
Speaker 1: Pompeo's first trip to Southern Africa as Secretary of State,
Speaker 1: so I guess we can at least deduce that closely
Speaker 1: studying the issue didn't actually involve going to South Africa
Speaker 1: for at least a year and a half. But there's
Speaker 1: no official policy statement or reference to any study performed.
Speaker 1: That article just quotes Pompeo calling the proposed land reform
Speaker 1: bill disastrous for the South African people, and much like
Speaker 1: Peter Dutton's comments in March of twenty eighteen, Trump's tweet
Speaker 1: in August twenty eighteen was not well received by the
Speaker 1: South African government. Within hours, their official Twitter account responded,
Speaker 1: tweeting South Africa totally rejects this narrow perception which only
Speaker 1: seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our
Speaker 1: colonial past hashtag land expropriation at real Donald Trump. The
Speaker 1: following morning, a spokesperson for President Rama Posa called into
Speaker 1: a news broadcast on e NCA, South Africa's most watched
Speaker 1: television news channel, to say the government would not be
Speaker 1: using tweets to conduct international relations.
Speaker 6: The president has noted that two which is attributed to
Speaker 6: the US president President Donald Trump. In our view, the
Speaker 6: treat is unfortunate in missing Homed. However, we've chosen not
Speaker 6: to respond to it via social media. Instead, we'll use
Speaker 6: the diplomatic channels that exist for such purposes.
Speaker 1: Later that day, the same spokesperson, who's Ladico, told CNN
Speaker 1: hysterical comments and statements do not assist in the process.
Speaker 1: The majority of South Africans want to see land reform.
Speaker 1: The majority of our farmers, white and black, want to
Speaker 1: be part of this initiative, and President Cyril Ramaposa hit
Speaker 1: back in remarks at a conference in Limpopo later that week.
Speaker 7: I don't know what Donald Trump has to do with
Speaker 7: South African land because it's never been here and he
Speaker 7: must keep his America. We will here for our South Africa.
Speaker 5: How do you have do?
Speaker 7: South Africa is our land. South Africa belongs to all
Speaker 7: the people who live here in South Africa. He does
Speaker 7: not belong to Donald Trum. He can keep his America.
Speaker 1: But then the story just sort of went away. I
Speaker 1: can't find much in the way of official follow up
Speaker 1: from either government. Trump went back to tweeting and Ramaposa
Speaker 1: went back to working on a plan for land reform.
Speaker 1: Back in twenty eighteen, the new story Trump was reacting
Speaker 1: to was merely a proposal to amend the South African
Speaker 1: Constitution to clarify existing powers of expropriation, and that didn't
Speaker 1: actually happen back then. Now, in twenty twenty five, President
Speaker 1: Ramaposa has signed into law the Expropriation Act, which does
Speaker 1: allow the government to expropriate privately owned land. And that
Speaker 1: might sound very scary if you don't know what it means,
Speaker 1: and that's certainly the emotional reaction. The act's opponents are
Speaker 1: counting on. But the power codified in the Act isn't
Speaker 1: new to South Africa or unique to that country. Expropriation
Speaker 1: of land in the public interest was a power already
Speaker 1: granted to the government in South Africa's nineteen ninety four constitution.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure you're familiar with the Fifth Amendment of
Speaker 1: the United States Constitution. But there's more to it than
Speaker 1: pleading the fifth Honestly, come to think of it, they
Speaker 1: probably should have broken that one out into a couple
Speaker 1: different amendments. But on top of giving you the right
Speaker 1: to not incriminate yourself, the Fifth Amendment has something called
Speaker 1: the taking's Clause, which limits the power of eminent domain
Speaker 1: by requiring just compensation. In other words, if the government
Speaker 1: believes that it is in the public interest and they
Speaker 1: pay you a fair price, they can take your land.
Speaker 1: The constitutions in countries like Spain, Germany, India, and Australia
Speaker 1: have similar provisions. What South Africa is proposing isn't some
Speaker 1: unimaginable tyrannical nightmare. It's eminent domain. There is a provision
Speaker 1: in the Act that's getting quite a bit of attention.
Speaker 1: In Trump's executive order, he writes.
Speaker 3: In shocking disregard of its citizens' rights. The Republic of
Speaker 3: South Africa recently unacted Expropriation Act thirtain of twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four to enable the Government of South Africa to seize
Speaker 3: ethnic minority africaners agricultural property without compensation.
Speaker 1: Putting aside the commentary about race, the Act says nothing
Speaker 1: at all about race or ethnicity. The without compensation language
Speaker 1: has been the focus of much of the negative coverage
Speaker 1: of this act. I'm not an expert on South African politics,
Speaker 1: or constitutional law in any country, or really even the
Speaker 1: ins and outs of eminent domain. But I did read
Speaker 1: the Expropriation Act, and I'm not sure Trump did. It's
Speaker 1: fifty two pages long, but each page is printed once
Speaker 1: in English, followed by the same page in Afrikaans, so
Speaker 1: I guess that makes it a twenty six page law.
Speaker 1: Chapter five of the Act is called Compensation for expropriation,
Speaker 1: and it discusses in detail how compensation is calculated and paid.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of boring bits about interest and mortgages
Speaker 1: and taxes, but I want to talk about Chapter five,
Speaker 1: Section twelve, and then skip on down to sub section three,
Speaker 1: which begins it may be just and equitable for nil
Speaker 1: compensation to be paid where land is expropriated in the
Speaker 1: public interest, having regard to all the relevant circumstances, including
Speaker 1: and the four conditions laid out there. For scenarios where
Speaker 1: it may be appropriate to offer a landowner no compensation
Speaker 1: are things like when the land is entirely unused because
Speaker 1: the landowner's main purpose is not to develop the land
Speaker 1: or use it to generate income, but instead to benefit
Speaker 1: from appreciation of its market value. Or if the land
Speaker 1: is currently owned by an organ of the state and
Speaker 1: they're not using that land for its core functions and
Speaker 1: they are unlikely to require it in the future, if
Speaker 1: the owner has abandoned the land by failing to exercise
Speaker 1: control over it despite being reasonably capable of doing so,
Speaker 1: or if the present value of the land is less
Speaker 1: than the amount of direct state subsidy in the acquisition
Speaker 1: or improvement of the land. The furor being whipped up
Speaker 1: about the law makes it sound like the South African
Speaker 1: government has written a law that says white families will
Speaker 1: be driven from their homes and stripped of all their possessions,
Speaker 1: But the law says nothing at all about targeting any
Speaker 1: particular group for expropriation, and the conditions under which someone
Speaker 1: might be offered anything less than equitable compensation would necessarily
Speaker 1: exclude land that anyone actually lived or worked on. The
Speaker 1: goal of land reform at its core is to address
Speaker 1: the wrongs of apartheid. The Native's Land Act of nineteen
Speaker 1: thirteen prevented black people from buying land, setting aside just
Speaker 1: seven percent of the country's land for use by black
Speaker 1: South Africans. A later amendment expanded that to thirteen percent,
Speaker 1: but the law itself wasn't repealed until nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1: A land audit conducted by the South African government in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen reported that seventy two percent of all privately
Speaker 1: owned agricultural land in South Africa was owned by white people,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that white people make up about seven
Speaker 1: percent of the South African population. I couldn't actually find
Speaker 1: any specific information about how much of that land had
Speaker 1: changed hands over the years, but in a twenty twenty
Speaker 1: article in the African Journal on Conflict Resolution, doctor Adeoya
Speaker 1: Achinola wrote, farm owners or farmers, are predominantly made up
Speaker 1: of the white group, who in most cases inn inherited
Speaker 1: the farms from their families. A prevailing narrative is that
Speaker 1: in most cases these lands and farms had been forcifully
Speaker 1: taken from black South Africans during colonialism and apartheid. It
Speaker 1: may be said, therefore, that few white farmers had genuinely
Speaker 1: bought the lands, particularly in opposed apartheid South Africa. This
Speaker 1: isn't a wrong of the distant past. In nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: when apartheid was finally ended, the South African National Congress
Speaker 1: announced an ambitious plan to return at least thirty percent
Speaker 1: of the stolen land by twenty fourteen. By twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: though only an estimated ten percent of land had been
Speaker 1: returned to indigenous people. The policies of the current government
Speaker 1: won't lead to terrifying scenes of black soldiers forcing pretty
Speaker 1: white mothers off their land at gunpoint, although that certainly
Speaker 1: the image conjured in the white supremacist imagination. It's a slow,
Speaker 1: boring process, involving petitions and judicial review. It's not a revolution,
Speaker 1: but it is an important step in the ongoing process
Speaker 1: of undoing apartheid. The President of the United States, it seems,
Speaker 1: does not feel that way. His executive order not only
Speaker 1: ends all foreign aid to South Africa, but it allows
Speaker 1: quote africaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust
Speaker 1: racial discrimination to be admitted and resettled in the United
Speaker 1: States as refugees. So not only is he saying that
Speaker 1: white South Africans are politically persecuted to such an extent
Speaker 1: that they are refugees deserving special treatment, they are essentially
Speaker 1: the only refugees in the world worthy of assistance by
Speaker 1: the US government. Because he ordered an end to refugee
Speaker 1: resettlement programs on his first day in office last month,
Speaker 1: it probably doesn't help that the president is heavily influenced
Speaker 1: by Elon Musk, a man with a long history of
Speaker 1: spreading propaganda about white genocide in South Africa. In twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, he replied to a tweet from an account
Speaker 1: called end Wokeness, writing, they are actually killing white farmers
Speaker 1: every day. It's not just a threat. Musk was born
Speaker 1: in South Africa under apartheid, and he emigrated to Canada
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine to avoid compulsory military service. The
Speaker 1: South Africa, he knew, was one under apartheid, and in
Speaker 1: addition to his frenetic posting about white genocide conspiracy theories,
Speaker 1: He's also accused the South African government of having quote
Speaker 1: openly racist laws after he refused to participate in regulatory
Speaker 1: hearings with the Independent Communications Authority in South Africa. His
Speaker 1: plan to launch Starlink service in South Africa hit a roadblock.
Speaker 1: The country requires life operating a national network or selling
Speaker 1: internet services nationwide to be at least thirty percent black owned,
Speaker 1: a requirement must claims is simply not possible. Trump has
Speaker 1: yet to nominate a pick for South African Ambassador, but
Speaker 1: the current front runner is rumored to be Breitbart Editor
Speaker 1: in chief Joel Pollock. I considered cutting a clip from
Speaker 1: an interview Pollock gave a South African TV news program
Speaker 1: the other day, but the man has all the charisma
Speaker 1: of a wet rag. But the idea of the Breitbart
Speaker 1: editor becoming the South African Ambassador did remind me of
Speaker 1: another video. Back in twenty eighteen, amidst all that ongoing
Speaker 1: public interest in Australian tabloid coverage of anti white violence
Speaker 1: in South Africa, Breitbart News held a town hall event
Speaker 1: in New Orleans. The topic of the event was something else,
Speaker 1: big tech and speech. But during the Q and A
Speaker 1: session and Coulter came out strong in support of white
Speaker 1: genocide conspiracy theory.
Speaker 8: But I mean, we are seeing a genocide, they are,
Speaker 8: and if we're going to take any refugees, it seems
Speaker 8: to me it ought to be, particularly these white farmers
Speaker 8: who are being chosen and killed in really horrible ways.
Speaker 8: And you can find it by doing a Google search.
Speaker 8: But you can find these web pages. It's not They're
Speaker 8: not just going in and shooting them point blank. They're
Speaker 8: really disgusting and boiling people's death, just really sick, sick tortures.
Speaker 1: Her answer was in response to a question from an
Speaker 1: unnamed audience member, just a random guy at a town hall,
Speaker 1: but I recognize that voice.
Speaker 6: This question is for miss Culter.
Speaker 3: Why do you think the mainstream media has been is
Speaker 3: on the genocide of white farmers in South Africa? And
Speaker 3: why does social media center post about the issue, And
Speaker 3: how can we draw attention to these wild.
Speaker 8: I am so glad you asked that question.
Speaker 1: That's Patrick Casey back in twenty eighteen. He was the
Speaker 1: leader of the white supremacist group Identity Europa. The person
Speaker 1: injecting white genocide talking points into this Breitbart event in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen was the head of a white supremacist organization,
Speaker 1: and not just any white supremacist organization. Identity Europa was
Speaker 1: a primary organizer of the United the Right rally in
Speaker 1: Charlottesville in twenty seventeen. It was Identity Europa members who
Speaker 1: started the chance of you will Not Replace Us as
Speaker 1: they marched through the University of Virginia with their torches.
Speaker 1: But remarkably, Ann Coulter took the ball and ran with it,
Speaker 1: and she demonstrated that she was deeply immersed in this
Speaker 1: same racist worldview. She had these talking points ready to go,
Speaker 1: and you might be asking at this point, Mollie, what
Speaker 1: does any of this have to do with a few
Speaker 1: dozen skinheads getting pelted with rocks and Sacramento in twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: Those rallies against white genocide back in twenty twelve were
Speaker 1: poorly attended and barely reported on. The idea behind this
Speaker 1: organizing strategy was pretty similar to the twenty seventeen March
Speaker 1: against Sharia rallies I talked about a few episodes ago,
Speaker 1: a nationwide series of public protests designed to give the
Speaker 1: appearance of widespread public support for a pretty unpopular racist idea.
Speaker 1: But when Act for America pulled that stunt in twenty seven.
Speaker 1: They were able to attract some mainstream Republican attendees, and
Speaker 1: more importantly, they had access to the legitimizing force of
Speaker 1: the right wing media ecosystem. Act for America issued their
Speaker 1: press releases directly to Breitbart, and their CEO was able
Speaker 1: to publish her own write ups on the events on
Speaker 1: their site. They didn't have to wait for the idea
Speaker 1: to make its way through the human centipede of right
Speaker 1: wing media, slowly laundering fascist ideas through intermediaries and conning
Speaker 1: journalists into picking it up. The group that put on
Speaker 1: those rallies against white genocide in twenty twelve didn't have
Speaker 1: that kind of access. The South Africa Project was very
Speaker 1: obviously a front for the Aryan Nations Chapter in Louisiana.
Speaker 1: They were having trouble forcing their way into the conversation
Speaker 1: and attracting any normal people to their events, But the
Speaker 1: very same idea, presented in almost exactly the same way
Speaker 1: by a man in a suit, made its way directly
Speaker 1: into the White House just a few years later. The
Speaker 1: message hadn't changed, the motivation behind it remains the same.
Speaker 1: The myth of the South African Farm murder exists to
Speaker 1: stoke white anxiety. For African internationalists, it's a desire to
Speaker 1: return to apartheid. For the American audience they sell it to,
Speaker 1: it's a longing to roll back civil rights and integration.
Speaker 1: It may be dressed up as foreign policy, but it's
Speaker 1: no different from the message on those flyers printed out
Speaker 1: by Aryan Nations members. It just took the right messenger
Speaker 1: to get on Tucker Carlson for the President to hear it.
Speaker 1: I did set out to just write a story about
Speaker 1: those rallies and the people involved in them, but current
Speaker 1: events keep getting in my way. I never really know
Speaker 1: where a story is going to take me until I
Speaker 1: have forty or fifty browser tabs open and a dozen
Speaker 1: pages of notes that don't really make any sense. But
Speaker 1: this one took a hard right turn. Early on, I
Speaker 1: thought for sure that the star of the story of
Speaker 1: these white genocide rallies would be Billy Roper. It seemed
Speaker 1: like such an interesting coincidence that in both of these
Speaker 1: tales of fake grassroots rallies for racist causes, there's Billy
Speaker 1: stepping up to the plate to hold an event in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: But when I started probing a little deeper into the
Speaker 1: woman behind the South Africa Project. I made an alarming discovery.
Speaker 1: Before Monica Stone moved to a small town in Louisiana
Speaker 1: to marry an American clansman, she lived in South Africa,
Speaker 1: and she had a different name. And it's a name
Speaker 1: that I found in some very strange places, like the
Speaker 1: memoir of a British Man seeking redemption for his years
Speaker 1: in a violent fascist movement, or deep within the text
Speaker 1: of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission report. But
Speaker 1: you'll have to wait until next week to hear an
Speaker 1: almost unbelievable tale of international gun smuggling, bombings and shootouts
Speaker 1: that failed to prevent the end of apartheid. Weird Little
Speaker 1: Guys as a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: It's researched, written and recorded by me Mollie Kunger. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers are Sophie Lichtermann and Robert Evans. The show
Speaker 1: is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme
Speaker 1: music was composed by Brad Dickard. You can email me
Speaker 1: at Weird Little Guy Podcast at gmail dot com. I
Speaker 1: will definitely read it, but I almost certainly will not
Speaker 1: answer it. It's nothing personal. I don't answer any of
Speaker 1: my emails. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show
Speaker 1: with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit. Just
Speaker 1: don't post anything that's going to make you one of
Speaker 1: my Weird Little Guys