This article was curated by It’s That Part, where we highlight the truth in every fact—curated for deeper insight and critical reflection.
White grievance and straight up racism are the animating features of Trumpism. Donald Trumps rise and rule cant be understood without accepting that reality.
Thats why it was utterly predictable that the president would use Wednesdays White House meeting with South Africas president to aggressively push the fiction that white farmers are the victims of a genocide being carried out by Black South Africans.
Weve had tremendous complaints about Africa, about other countries, too, from people, said Trump, who showed the South African president a video clip of a fringe leader there calling for white-owned land to be given to Black residents. They say theres a lot of bad things going on in Africa. And thats what were going to be discussing today.
The video included what Trump described as the burial sites of over a thousand murdered white South Africans. None of it was true. Not the burial sites, which The New York Times reported was for a funeral procession for a single white couple that was killed. And not the genocide, which no credible agency has confirmed.
The genocide is a lie of breathtaking scope, one no president briefed by the worlds most sophisticated intelligence communities could espouse without understanding that he was lying.
Trump, however, misses no opportunity to take up the mantle of the aggrieved white man, who somehow believes himself to be at imminent risk of losing status and power. Despite being born to extraordinary wealth and privilege, Trump embraces that sense of victimhood, that belief that others – namely, Black people – are given unfair advantages and still complain about their lot.
This was the future president on NBCs Meet the Press 1989: A well-educated Black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market. If I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated Black because I really do believe they have an actual advantage today.
Why wouldnt a man who embraces that lunacy NOT want to return to an earlier time in America when white men dominated everything everywhere and had no reason to sweat any Black, well-educated or not? Most political movements are forward-looking, but Trumps is a sepia-shrouded look back to when white men were omnipotent and America was great.
The crowds who packed venues to hear candidate Trump speak didnt do so in spite of that mindset. They did so because of it. And Trump, a truly gifted avatar, understands that pleasing his masses – and himself – means pointing out all of the instances when a white man was denied his due or made to feel bad for flexing his power.
So Trump makes a show of firing the Black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and replacing him with a white man. Trump launches a sustained assault on diversity, equity and inclusion policies, believing they are a threat to white male dominance. His administration withdraws from reform agreements its predecessor made with police departments in Louisville and Minneapolis, both of which were the site of high-profile instances of Black people being killed by law enforcement. (No weak-kneed reform is needed if a police department routinely abuses the Black people its supposed to protect! White men can flex; its for others to fear.)
There are horrific scenes of mass violence actually taking place in this world. Trump reached for a fictional one in South Africa because it fits with the story he and many other white men tell themselves, one that has them as vulnerable victims. After all, if the focus is on that fiction, there would be no need, no justification, for programs and policies that lift up, protect and advance other people.
