What is white genocide?
Many will have seen that Trump has brought 50 white South Africans to America as ‘refugees’ because of a ‘white genocide’.
Some in Australia will remember Peter Dutton tried to do something similar back in 2018, when he wanted to fast track humanitarian visas, claiming that “they need help from a civilised country like ours” and saying that they’d be a great fit for Australia because they would “abide by our laws, integrate into our society, work hard [and] not lead a life on welfare”.
https://bsky.app/profile/lukelpearson.bsky.social/post/3lp6nszp5g22g
The idea of a ‘White Genocide’ is considerably older though and traces it roots back to old eugenics based fears of white people eventually being ‘bred out’ or ‘killed off’ through non-white immigration, ‘forced assimilation’, inter-racial marriage, or violence. This rhetoric was used in Nazi Germany, in Australia under the White Australia Policy, in Apartheid South Africa, as well as in Northern Europe and the United States of America.
It was repopularised for the modern era by neo-Nazis in the 1990s and 2000s, and has been seen in various white supremacist terrorist manifestos, including the Christchurch massacre in 2019.
Originally, various ‘white genocide’ theories were claimed to be a specific plot that is being masterminded by ‘the Jewish cabal’ but is now often attributed to whichever racial group racists are trying to target that day.
More broadly, these theories are an attempt to justify violent white supremacy by painting white people as the victims of a conspiracy designed to eradicate them and thereby justifying violent racist acts as a form of self-defense.
Most commonly for the past decade or so, white genocide has been used online as a means to attack diversity and anti-racism.
This is where I first came across it, back on Twitter in the late 2010s with the rise of the ‘Alt-Right’, when various racist troll accounts would regularly tweet at me the slogans ‘anti-racism is a code for anti-white’ (which comes from what is known in white supremacist circles as ‘the mantra’), ‘Diversity is a code word for white genocide’ or their common shorthand slogans ‘anti-racism = anti-white’ and ‘diversity = white genocide’.
It gained global attention when hundreds of white nationalists marched in Virginia chanting ‘You will not replace us’ because of plans to remove a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee.
Another related slogan is ‘It’s ok to be white’ which similarly positions itself as a defense against anti-white racism. This is a softer version designed to attract and recruit young disenfranchised white men into white supremacist thought. It was also a motion in the Australian parliament in 2018 moved by Pauline Hanson and was only narrowly defeated 28 – 31 by Australian senators. (The Coalition voted in favour of it initially but then backtracked and claimed it was an ‘administrative error’ even though senior coalition members immediately came out in defense of their support after facing backlash).
The imaginary white genocide in South Africa is useful propaganda because it lets various racists and white supremacists pretend that its no longer merely a fear but is instead a reality.
But the inescapable reality is that white South Africans are not the victims of a genocide. They are not even the victims of racism. They are not being oppressed in any way shape or form. However, when you’re used to privilege, equality feels like oppression.
And this is the underlying truth of the white genocide argument – the idea that white people not being able to exercise white supremacy and benefit from the oppression of others is somehow a denial of their ‘rights’ as white people.
It also conveniently distracts from the actual genocide occuring in Palestine, which is being committed by Israel with direct support from America and which Australia refuses to name or condemn. A genocide ‘template’ that is allegedly being replicated in Sudan.
TLDR: White genocide is made up neo-Nazi propaganda.
