What The Hell America!

Afrikaners aren’t fleeing violence; they’re fleeing the loss of dominance—and Trump is here for it.

This story originally appeared on Jill.substack.com, a newsletter from journalist, lawyer and author Jill Filipovic.

This week, Afrikaner “refugees” began arriving in the U.S.—some of the only refugees welcomed by the Trump administration. These white South Africans claim they are being persecuted at home: that white farmers are being attacked; that South Africa is not a safe place for them to live.

Much of the criticism of Trump’s decision to end refugee resettlement from just about everywhere else on the planet while welcoming a group that really isn’t facing particularly severe persecution has been derided as “political.” And it certainly is a stunt intended to provoke liberal outrage.

But we should just call it what it is—it’s not “political.” It’s not a dogwhistle. It’s racist. It’s racism shouted through a bullhorn. It’s signaling a politics of white rule and white protection.

I have no doubt that these white South Africans have complaints. Violence in South Africa really is a problem—although the Black South African population suffers much more from it. I am sure that white land-owners fear their land will be expropriated, but in truth no land has actually been seized.

The economic gap between white and Black South Africans has barely budged since apartheid. White people make up roughly 8 percent of the population but hold more than 65 percent of the top management jobs.

And there’s little evidence that white farmers face any particular peril—it’s Black farm workers who bear the brunt of deadly violence on South African farms.

There are a great many people in need of safe harbor. The U.S. would be lucky to have many of them. Instead, Trump has turned nearly all of them away, except for this one privileged minority.

But even if we take Trump’s word for it on their plight, their situations stand in pretty sharp contrast to, say, Sudanese refugees who are starving in sweltering camps, or Afghan women who can’t leave the house or get an education, or Palestinians who are watching the decimation of their homes and community. There are a great many people in need of safe harbor. The U.S. would be lucky to have many of them. Instead, Trump has turned nearly all of them away, except for this one privileged minority.

What makes this one minority group distinct from nearly all other groups seeking safety from persecution is that this group is white.

And that is the point.

The Trump administration is not claiming to be helping the most in need. They are claiming that they find the particular kind of “discrimination” that white South Africans face to be intolerable. That is: any challenge to white domination.

“This is persecution based on a protected characteristic—in this case, race,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said. “This is race-based persecution.”

The issue at hand is indeed race-based, but it’s not persecution. It’s group of people who were once at the top of a formal racial hierarchy in which all of the power was in their hands. Now, a hugely disproportionate amount of the economic power remains in their hands, but their power is not absolute. And that is what they—and the Trump administration—find offensive.

There are good reasons to ignore this obvious troll from Trump (by way, I suspect, of Elon Musk and Stephen Miller). It is an obvious attempt to bait liberals into outrage and a debate over good refugees versus bad ones, and sins of the past versus hardship in the present.

The same way Trump courted some of the country’s most overtly misogynist men … treating Afrikaners as the only minority group worth aiding makes the racial politics of this administration even starker.

But like so much else of this made-for-TV administration, it is a pretty unsubtle signal about who they believe should be in charge. We’ve gone from All Lives Matter to White Lives Matter pretty quickly. The same way Trump courted some of the country’s most overtly misogynist men and made his gender politics clear with the repatriation of accused rapist and sex trafficker Andrew Tate, treating Afrikaners as the only minority group worth aiding makes the racial politics of this administration even starker. The administration even tells Afrikaners that they don’t have to prove persecution to qualify for refugee assistance; as white people who are no longer in charge, they are presumed to be persecuted.

And this, too—the lower standards for white people—is a cornerstone of MAGA governance. For all of their complaining about DEI and unfair advantages afforded to women and racial minorities, the truth is that the Trump administration is staffed almost entirely by people who are badly unqualified for their jobs, and only in their positions because of their identities (whites, men, Fox News personalities) and their fealty to the leader. This is an administration that does things for show. And what they are showing with this refugee stunt is that, if they have their way, all the power will be white power.