White Afrikaners Are Trump’s Kind of Oppressed Minority

Opinion|White Afrikaners Are Trump’s Kind of Oppressed Minority

In March, a South African lobbyist for white rights named Ernst Roets appeared across from Tucker Carlson in an episode on Mr. Carlson’s YouTube channel called, “Man Charged With Treason for Speaking to Tucker About the Killing of Whites in South Africa.” This being the Tucker Carlson Show, at least two pieces of misinformation were shoehorned into the title. A man hadn’t been charged with treason for speaking to Mr. Carlson and white folks weren’t being killed in South Africa — at least, not at a rate higher than the rest of the population.

The title was correct on one point: Mr. Roets had indeed been interviewed by Mr. Carlson before. On the first occasion, he decanted an entire grievance mythos into the MAGAverse. The gist of his argument, as Mr. Carlson summed it up in his recent podcast episode, was that South Africa is shockingly racist against white people — “far more than apartheid ever was” to Black people.

In South Africa, Mr. Roets’ particular brand of performative victimhood is greeted not with jail time or the gallows, as it would be the case in some countries, but mostly with memes. Bazillions of them. The vast majority mock the notion that Mr. Roets’ constituency — white, right-wing Afrikaners disgruntled with the status quo — are in any way singled out for mistreatment by the government. In fact, no one community in South Africa has benefited more from apartheid’s economic legacy than white South Africans, yet for years a small but vocal group has decried what they consider to be institutional discrimination against them, making their claims on television shows, podcasts and social media.

But as Tucker Carlson goes, so goes the Trump administration. In February, after halting lifesaving aid for African H.I.V./AIDS and malaria programs across Africa, President Trump signed an executive order that, among other things, offered refugee status to “ethnic minority Afrikaners,” the vast majority of whom are white. In the middle of May, with uncommon efficiency, a plane chartered by the U.S. government spirited almost 60 new refugees to the United States, where they were met by a welcoming committee.

As we say in South Africa, ’n Boer maak ’n plan. A farmer makes a plan.

Contrary to the claims in Mr. Trump’s order, there is no evidence that the civil rights of white South Africans have been systematically trampled on, or that white landowners face disproportionate violence. They own farms that occupy about half of South Africa’s area, despite making up around 7 percent of the population. No white-owned land or home has been forcibly taken by the government under a new land law mentioned in Mr. Trump’s order.

These lobbyists travel into and out of South Africa without hindrance, facing no bans or financial repercussions. (Such opportunities, most readers will be unsurprised to learn, were not available to Black dissidents during apartheid. They were banned, jailed or forced into exile.) Recently, an opposition party has suggested bringing treason charges against an activist group, an idea drawing some enthusiasm among members of the government. But good luck pulling that one past South Africa’s highest court, which has a liberal bent. Mr. Roets and his backers live in a democracy — a noisy, messy, contested one — but a democracy nonetheless.