Trump sees himself as the defender of the white race
Wolfgang Hansson
This is a commentary text. Analysis and positions are those of the writer.
Published 13.09
Donald Trump does not seem to have any problem with Israel starving and bombing an entire population.
Instead, the leader of the world's most powerful country is engaging in a fabricated genocide of whites in South Africa.
Trump sees himself as the savior of the white race.
The scenes in the Oval Office yesterday were very reminiscent of when Trump berated Ukrainian President Zelensky. The difference was that South African President Cyril Ramaphosa did not take the bait when Trump, without warning, showed a video that would prove that a genocide of white farmers is taking place in South Africa.
Ramaphosa remained calm and tried to explain the real situation objectively. Meanwhile, Trump continued to spread his lies in front of the world's television cameras.
Just like with Zelensky, it was a planned ambush against a leader he had invited to the White House. Ramaphosa was to be taught a lesson for not doing anything about the "genocide" of whites in South Africa. As punishment, Trump withdrew all aid to South Africa soon after taking office.
In contrast, Trump recently declared when he visited three hardline dictatorships in the Arab world to conclude lucrative business deals that he would have no opinion on how they treat their people.
Ramaphosa had brought with him the white agriculture minister from the opposition Democratic Alliance party. As well as two well-known white professional golfers, Ernie Els and Retif Goosen.
All testified that South Africa is a violent society but that there is no genocide of whites.
Trump didn't listen. His video showed images of white crosses at a cemetery where he claimed thousands of victims of the genocide were buried. Once again, it turned out that Trump was out cycling.
Admittedly, the images were from the funeral of a white farmer couple who were murdered. But the white crosses were placed by white activists and were removed after the funeral. There is no such thing as a mass grave.
Which doesn't stop Trump from making a difference between people.
While the president has initiated a mass deportation of illegal immigrants from Latin America, he has granted asylum to 50 white South Africans who landed in the United States last week.
I myself have made a number of longer reporting trips to South Africa after the apartheid system (where the white minority decided everything) was abolished and interviewed white farmers and other whites who are dissatisfied with the fact that they no longer have any special privileges.
They, like the black majority population, are frightened by the violence in South Africa. Many farmers feel particularly vulnerable because their farms are often isolated.
Year after year, the country is at the top in terms of the number of murders. But the violence affects everyone. Whites are not disproportionately affected.
Talking about genocide is nothing but a conspiracy theory driven by the white power movement, whose cause it is not the first time Trump has gone.
For decades, Donald Trump has promoted the thesis that the white race is under threat. That white people are discriminated against and disadvantaged in the United States and other countries.
In the 1990s, he funded an advertising campaign against a group of black and Latino men who were wrongly convicted of raping a white female jogger in New York in 1989. Trump demanded that the state impose the death penalty on the five.
Later, Trump was behind a campaign in which he claimed that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States and therefore not a legitimate president. He did not even back down when Obama released his birth certificate.
Today, Trump has ordered an end to all forms of diversity work in American government and private companies. He completely ignores the slavery and open racial discrimination that blacks in the United States were subjected to until the civil rights laws were passed in the 1960s.
For two and a half months, Israel has blocked all humanitarian aid to the more than two million Palestinians living in Gaza.
By giving the US at least SEK 30 billion per year in military aid to Israel, Trump is the only one who can seriously influence Prime Minister Netanyahu to let the aid in.
It is likely that Trump has been pushing behind the scenes, but he has not publicly condemned Israel's attempt to starve an entire population while bombing them from morning to night.
He has suggested that the entire population of Gaza should be forcibly evacuated, but at the same time has made it clear that the US does not intend to accept any refugees from Gaza.
Instead of addressing what could truly be a genocide, Trump is defending a group of people where the majority still belong to the most privileged in South Africa.
He is doing so by publicly trying to humiliate one of those who fought against apartheid and was Nelson Mandela's right-hand man.
One wonders how many other leaders will dare to visit the White House in the future after witnessing the treatment that Zelensky and Ramaphosa have been subjected to.
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