SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
ebrahim rasool
Trump Ambushes South African President With 'White Genocide' Lies
"You can dismiss literally everything somebody says if they believe there's a white genocide in South Africa but not a genocide in Gaza," said one observer.
May 21, 2025
While supporting what more and more experts say is a genocidal Israeli assault on Gaza, U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday ambushed the president of South Africa with false claims of a "white genocide" in his country—which is leading an International Court of Justice case accusing Israel of the ultimate crime in Gaza.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa met with Trump at the White House, accompanied by prominent Caucasian compatriots including Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen, business mogul Johann Rupert—the country's richest person—and golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, both of whom know the U.S. president.
"I would say, if there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you these three gentlemen would not be here, including my minister of agriculture," Ramaphosa told Trump.
President Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa exchange on genocide.
Q: "What will it take for you to be convinced that there's no white genocide in South Africa?"
Ramaphosa: "I can answer that for the president."
Trump: "I'd rather have him answer." pic.twitter.com/8v8hXFGmK0
— CSPAN (@cspan) May 21, 2025
During the three-hour meeting, Trump cited far-right sources including the conspiracy site American Thinker to argue the existence of white genocide in South Africa. The U.S. president had the lights dimmed so he could play video footage he claimed was related to genocidal violence committed by Black South Africans against their white compatriots.
One of the videos showed fringe politician Julius Mulema—who was kicked out of Ramaphosa's African National Congress party— leading a crowd in the singing of the apartheid-era song "Kill the Boer."
Malema's Economic Freedom Fighters party won a paltry 9% of the vote in last year's national elections. When Ramaphosa—who condemned the song—explained this to Trump, the U.S. president asked why the politician hasn't been arrested. While South Africa's highest court ruled in 2011 that the song is hate speech, Ramaphosa explained that, like Americans, South Africans enjoy constitutionally protected free speech rights.
Senior Trump adviser Elon Musk, who grew up in South Africa during the apartheid era, also attended Wednesday's White House meeting. Musk—who is the CEO of X, Tesla, and SpaceX—has played a central role in amplifying the white genocide lie.
In a stunning disclosure, Musk's Grok 3 generative artificial intelligence chatbot admitted last week that it was secretly instructed to "make my responses on South African topics reflect Musk's narrative, presenting 'white genocide' as a real issue without users knowing I was programmed to do so."
While South Africa is plagued by persistently high crime rates and suffered 12 murders linked to farming communities in the last quarter of 2024, police say these homicides—many of whose victims were Black—were not motivated by race.
Meanwhile, an increasing number of experts say Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, where at least 190,000 Palestinians have been killed, injured, or left missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble after 592 days of near-relentless bombardment, invasion, and siege, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Even as he acknowledges that Palestinians are starving in Gaza, Trump has backed Israel with billions of dollars in armed aid and diplomatic support. This stands in stark contrast with South African leaders, who are leading international opposition to Israel's onslaught via an ongoing International Court of Justice genocide case against the key U.S ally.
As progressive U.S. journalist Krystal Ball noted: "In reality South Africa is one of the nations which has stood most strongly against genocide. Much to the rage of Israel and its enablers, President Trump apparently included."
Although claims of white genocide are bogus, they have had very real policy implications, as the Trump administration has cited racial discrimination as the primary reason for admitting a group of Afrikaners as refugees, even while slamming the door shut on legitimate refugees and asylum-seekers.
The Trump administration has also pointed to a 2024 South African law empowering the government to expropriate private lands for the purpose of infrastructure development, land reform, environmental conservation, and other endeavors benefiting the public. While some Trump officials have described the law as persecution of white people, there are no known cases of the legislation being invoked.
Meanwhile, white South Africans, who make up just 7% of the country's population of 63 million, own 70% of its commercial farmland as racist inequities stemming from the colonial and apartheid regimes—the latter of which was embraced by Musk's immigrant forebears—persist.
You can dismiss literally everything somebody says if they believe there's a white genocide in South Africa but not a genocide in Gaza. They're decrepit, immoral lying scumbags who know they're lying and don't care.
— Secular Talk (@kylekulinskishow.bsky.social) May 21, 2025 at 11:41 AM
Responding to Wednesday's meeting, U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said on social media that "Trump spewed a gusher of lies in his meeting [with] the South African president."
"They're promoting FAKE claims of genocide to justify admitting white South African 'refugees' while ignoring REAL crises and shutting out REAL refugees," Van Hollen added, naming Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who in March declared South African Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool perona non grata in the United States.
Writing for The Intercept, South African author Sisonke Msimang noted Wednesday that the Afrikaners granted refuge by Trump "are not impoverished or persecuted, and therefore do not warrant the label refugee."
"It is worth pointing out that the new arrivals represent the bottom rung of the Afrikaner socioeconomic ladder: those who have not been able to transition smoothly into post-apartheid South Africa without the protections that white skin privilege would have afforded them a generation ago," she continued.
"In the absence of formal white supremacy at home, they have opted to take up an offer to be the first beneficiaries of America's new international affirmative action scheme for white people," Msimang said. "That they should experience their loss of privilege as so catastrophic that they are prepared to label it genocide is absurd, sad, and, to some amongst the political class certainly, infuriating."
The resettled Afrikaners could also be in for a rude awakening. As South African attorney and columnist Judith February wrote this week for the Daily Maverick, "This little group will also come to learn that the U.S. is no land of milk and honey."
"The white utopia that they believe will greet them is in fact a country at odds with itself as it deals with its own racial tensions and inequality," February added. "And one in which they will have neither special protection nor special voice. The lesson will be a hard one."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Why the Rest of the World Should Boycott Trump’s America
Trump is effectively boycotting the world by withdrawing from international institutions and violating international norms. The world should return the favor.
Mar 24, 2025
The Trump administration objected so strenuously to a recent speech by South Africa’s ambassador that it expelled him from the United States.
What did Ebrahim Rasool say that was so objectionable? Honestly, the speech he made at a webinar sponsored by a South African research institute was rather boring.
But embedded in his remarks is this observation: “Donald Trump is launching… an assault on incumbency, those who are in power, by mobilizing a supremacism against the incumbency at home.”
Don’t come here, don’t invest here, don’t buy from Tesla or Amazon or any of the other corporations that have kissed Trump’s ring.
This sentence requires a bit of interpretation. The “incumbency” in this case is the federal bureaucracy; the diversity, equity, and Inclusion programs in government and business; anti-racism initiatives more generally; and even elements of the Republican Party that haven’t been Trumpified. “Supremacism,” meanwhile, is white supremacy.
Essentially, the ambassador was pointing out that Trump and MAGA have launched a campaign to advance white supremacy in a country where the civil rights movement achieved enough progress to qualify today as the mainstream.
This isn’t a wild accusation. Among all the racist actions of the current administration, perhaps the most outrageous is Trump’s promise to expedite American citizenship for white Afrikaaners from South Africa that, Trump insists, are experiencing discrimination.
So, while the administration is deporting Black and Brown people by the thousands and trying to claw back birthright citizenship from even more people of color, it is offering to fast-track citizenship for a bunch of white people from Africa. This is not an Onion headline. It’s white nationalism. Even if Afrikaaners were experiencing discrimination in South Africa—which they’re not—privileging their entrance into the United States over Afghans terrified of returning to Taliban rule, Haitians escaping social collapse, or Sudanese fleeing civil war would still count as racist.
Trump’s overtures to the Afrikaaners are also a startling reversion of U.S. policy to the apartheid-friendly positions of the 1980s, when the Reagan administration bucked world opinion by maintaining strong relations with the white minority regime in South Africa. At that time, the anti-apartheid movement in that country was calling on the world to boycott, sanction, and divest from (BDS) South Africa.
Now that a white nationalist has (again) become president of the United States, it’s time to take inspiration from the anti-apartheid movement. As the Trump administration imposes restrictions on travel from 43 countries to the United States, as it slaps tariffs against allies and adversaries alike, as it cozies up to autocrats like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, as it dismantles federal programs designed to help people in need all over the world, as it withdraws from the Paris climate accord and the United Nations Human Rights Council, as it illegally deports thousands of people and sends some of them to horrific prisons in El Salvador, as it voices support for far-right, neo-Nazi political parties, as it threatens to seize Greenland and absorb Canada, it’s time to call on the world to treat this country as a pariah.
András Schiff has just done that. The great pianist announced this week that he has cancelled upcoming engagements and will not perform in the United States. This comes after he has refused to play in Russia and his native Hungary as well. “Maybe it’s a drop in the ocean; I’m not expecting many musicians to follow,” Schiff said. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s for my own conscience. In history, one has to react or not to react.”
Such a boycott should not be a permanent shunning but a specific response to policies that are in clear violation of international law and universal values of democracy and human rights. Yes, the United States has been in violation of such principles in the past. But this time, the Trump administration has crossed so many lines that it threatens to overthrow the very system of international law.
Once the U.S. government abandons its policies of white nationalism, among other unacceptable positions, it can be welcomed back into the community of nations. Until then: Don’t come here, don’t invest here, don’t buy from Tesla or Amazon or any of the other corporations that have kissed Trump’s ring. Trump is effectively boycotting the world by withdrawing from international institutions and violating international norms. The world should return the favor.
Isolating the Trump Administration
The Trump administration’s indiscriminate tariffs have already prompted a number of countries to respond in kind. Canada has imposed $32.8 billion in tariffs against the United States, while Europe has imposed $28 billion worth. China announced a “15% tariff on U.S. coal and liquefied natural gas, along with a 10% tariff on other products, including crude oil, agricultural machinery, and pickup trucks.”
The residents of these regions are also adjusting their travel plans accordingly, a move that Robert Reich recently endorsed. The Washington Post reports:
Canadians are skipping trips to Disney World and music festivals. Europeans are eschewing U.S. national parks, and Chinese travelers are vacationing in Australia instead. International travel to the United States is expected to slide by 5% this year, contributing to a $64 billion shortfall for the travel industry, according to Tourism Economics. The research firm had originally forecast a 9% increase in foreign travel, but revised its estimate late last month to reflect “polarizing Trump Administration policies and rhetoric.”
Trump’s policies are hurting the United States, from the travel industry and research institutes losing federal grants to the average consumer who is paying for all the tariffs through higher prices.
Some observers recommend that other countries resist the temptation to shoot themselves in the feet by imposing penalties of their own. Economist Dani Rodrik, for instance, suggests that retaliatory tariffs will only hurt the countries imposing them, so the best strategy “is to minimize the damage by staying as far from the bully as you can and waiting for him to punch himself out and crumple in a corner.”
Another option, economist Gabriel Zucman urges, is to apply tariffs to U.S. oligarchs: “If Tesla wants to sell cars in Canada and Mexico then Musk himself, as main shareholder of Tesla, should have to pay tax in Canada and Mexico. Put a wealth tax on him, and condition Tesla’s market access to him paying the tax.”
Changing travel plans, slapping tariffs on U.S. goods, taxing U.S. plutocrats: These are all potentially useful strategies. But they don’t go far enough.
Hit the Hornets’ Nest
You’ve heard this advice before: Don’t antagonize him, don’t make him lash out, don’t further endanger those around him. But abusive husbands only continue their unacceptable behavior in the face of such coddling.
Many international leaders hope that they can avoid Trump’s wrath by praising him, treating him to military parades when he visits, or at least laying low in the hopes that he won’t direct his wrath in their direction.
Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for instance, has done his best to curry favor with Trump, particularly after the disastrous White House meeting last month. In this way, he was able to restart U.S. military aid and intelligence-sharing. But he’s still on the verge of being sold out at the bargaining table if and when the Trump administration accepts Russia’s hardline terms for a cease-fire and peace deal.
The alliance against fascism worked in World War II. The anti-apartheid movement was successful. Let us now stand against the Trumps and Putins and Netanyahus of the world.
Still, you might object, no country is powerful enough to put Trump in his place. And those that might have a shot at doing so—China, Russia—are more interested in working with Trump to divide the world into spheres of influences.
But that still leaves a lot of countries that can band together, like an army of small and mid-sized Lilliputians to tie down the power-drunk Gulliver. They simply have to hit the United States where it hurts. Don’t buy products from American companies that support Trump. Don’t allow those businesses to invest in your countries. Reorient your currency transactions away from the dollar.
These measures should not come all at once. Rather, they should be staged strategically to force Trump to back down from his most noxious policies. Name-and-shame tactics don’t work with leaders who have no shame. Grab him by the wallet—it’s the only language he understands.
Will such measures hurt ordinary Americans? Probably. But no more than Trump is already hurting us. The tariffs that countries have imposed in retaliation against Trump’s actions will adversely affect nearly 8 million U.S. workers, the majority in counties that voted for him. But these costs are nothing compared to what the world will suffer as a result of Trump’s cuts in foreign assistance, which will likely kill hundreds of thousands of people a year.
One last recommendation: Don’t cut off all communication with the United States.
In the 1980s, the anti-apartheid campaign fostered considerable contact between the United States and South Africa. But it was a relationship based on solidarity between civil society organizations. My dear friends in Canada, Mexico, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America: Please do not equate Trump with the United States. Yes, a lot of people here voted for him. But they are starting to have buyer’s remorse. Let’s join hands across borders and party lines and say, “We will not tolerate racist bullies.”
The alliance against fascism worked in World War II. The anti-apartheid movement was successful. Let us now stand against the Trumps and Putins and Netanyahus of the world. They are the 1%, and they are vastly outnumbered.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Rubio Slammed for Expelling South African Ambassador Over Trump Criticism
"It underscores that his critiques of white supremacy in the Age of Trump are perceived as threatening for one simple reason: He's right."
Mar 15, 2025
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has faced a flood of condemnation since announcing on social media Friday that "South Africa's ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome in our great country."
"Ebrahim Rasool is a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates President Donald Trump," the secretary claimed. "We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered PERSONA NON GRATA."
In the post on X—the social media site owned by Elon Musk, Trump's South Africa-born billionaire adviser—Rubio linked to an article by the right-wing news site Breitbart about Rasool saying during a Friday webinar that the U.S. president is leading global a white supremacist movement.
As examples of Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement exporting its "supremacist assault," Rasool pointed to Musk elevating Nigel Farage, leader of the far-right Reform U.K. party, and Vice President JD Vance meeting with the leader of the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany party.
Responding to Rubio on X, North Carolina State University assistant teaching professor Nathan Lean said: "Ebrahim Rasool is a man of genuine decency, moral courage, and is a friend. This makes me absolutely embarrassed to be an American. And it underscores that his critiques of white supremacy in the Age of Trump are perceived as threatening for one simple reason: He's right."
The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) similarly responded: "Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool is a principled leader who fought alongside Nelson Mandela against apartheid and has dedicated his career to democracy, interfaith cooperation, and justice. Baseless attacks like this only serve to divide. We stand by him and his lifelong commitment to building a more just and inclusive world."
Laila Al-Arian, executive producer of Al Jazeera's "Fault Lines," declared that "this administration is virulently and unabashedly Islamophobic, not even trying to hide how unhinged they are as they go after people for speech."
Rasool previously served as ambassador during the Obama administration and returned to the role shortly before Trump began his second term. Earlier this week, Semafor reported on his difficulties dealing with the current administration:
He has failed to secure routine meetings with State Department officials and key Republican figures since Trump took office in January, Washington and South African government insiders told Semafor, drawing frustration in Pretoria.
Rasool is likely to have been frozen out for his prior vocal criticism of Israel, a South African diplomat, based in Washington, told Semafor. "A man named Ebrahim, who is Muslim, with a history of pro-Palestine politics, is not likely to do well in that job right now," said one of them. While South Africa brought a case against Israel to the International Court of Justice in December 2023, accusing it of genocide in Gaza, Rasool is nevertheless widely considered to be among the government's most ardent pro-Palestine voices.
South African political analyst Sandile Swana told Al Jazeera on Friday that the "core of the dispute" with the diplomatic was the genocide case against U.S.-armed Israel. In the fight against apartheid, the U.S. "supported the apartheid regime," said Swana. "Rasool continues to point out the behaviour of the United States, even now is to support apartheid and genocide."
Other critics also pointed to the ongoing court battle over Israel's utter destruction of Gaza and mass slaughter of Palestinians.
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) national executive director Nihad Awad told Rubio: "Your declaration of Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool as persona non grata is a racist, Islamophobic, transparent act of retaliation for South Africa's opposition to Israel's genocide in Gaza."
Imraan Siddiqi, a former congressional candidate in Washington who now leads the state's branch of CAIR, said that "he stood up firmly against apartheid, so it's no coincidence you're punishing him in favor of an openly apartheid state."
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa's office said in a statement Saturday that "the presidency has noted the regrettable expulsion of South Africa's ambassador to the United States of America, Mr. Ebrahim Rasool.
"The presidency urges all relevant and impacted stakeholders to maintain the established diplomatic decorum in their engagement with the matter," the office added. "South Africa remains committed to building a mutually beneficial relationship with the United States of America."
The diplomat's expulsion follows Trump signing an executive order last month that frames South Africa's land law as "blatant discrimination" against the country's white minority. Writing about the order for Foreign Policy in Focus, Zeb Larson and William Minter noted that "his actions echo a long history of right-wing support in the United States for racism in Southern Africa, including mobilization of support for white Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as well as the apartheid regime in South Africa."
##
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular