President Donald Trump says there is a genocide of white people taking place in South Africa, meaning that Black South Africans are deliberately attempting to kill white farmers because of their race.

Trump and his spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, have said violence targeting white farmers in South Africa justifies admitting about 60 white Afrikaner farmers to the U.S. as refugees in May 2025.

This comes after Trump, in January, suspended admitting people, most of whom are not white, from other countries through the United States’ refugee program. The U.S. had previously given refugee status – a legal right to remain and work in the country – to tens of thousands of people each year who were fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries.

During a May 21 White House meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Trump highlighted white genocide in South Africa, saying, “We have thousands of stories talking about it.” Ramaphosa denied that a white genocide is happening in his country. Trump then had a staffer dim the lights and play a video that, among other inflammatory content, showed white crosses along a road.

“These are burial sites,” Trump said. “Over a thousand white farmers.”

Trump’s white genocide claims, which echoed assertions he made during his first term, were quickly debunked by independent fact-checkers.

Fact-checkers pointed out that while crime rates in South Africa are high in general, there is no evidence of white genocide there. The crosses in the video Trump showed did not mark mass graves of white farmers. They were part of a 2020 tribute to two white farmers murdered by armed men who stormed their house that year.

As someone who has studied genocide and far-right extremists for years, I think it is necessary to understand what white genocide is and how it developed into a central issue in U.S. immigration debates starting in Trump’s first term.

The origins of white genocide

As I detail in my 2021 book “It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US,” white genocide is a far-right extremist conspiracy theory claiming that allegedly bad people, often Jews, are carrying out a dangerous plot to destroy the white race. While this idea circulates worldwide, it has distinctly American roots.

This conspiracy dates back to the 1800s and the rise of nativism, a xenophobic belief held by some white Protestant Americans that certain immigrants, especially German and Irish Catholics, were dangerous and threatened to disrupt American traditions, culture and economic security.

Nativist fears have continued to influence U.S. politics and culture.

The American lawyer Madison Grant, for example, made nativist arguments in his 1916 book “The Passing of the Great Race,” which warned of immigrants’ threat to Americans and “race suicide.” Adolf Hitler once called Grant’s book his bible.

Nativism has also influenced white power extremists, who believe in white superiority and dominance. They began using the specific term “white genocide” after the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, which they perceived as eroding white people’s power.

The growth in this term’s popularity among some right-wing extremists also coincided with Congress approving the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965. This act significantly increased the number of immigrants the U.S. legally accepted into the country each year and also allowed more non-European – and nonwhite – immigrants to settle in America.

In the 1970s, William Pierce, an American former physics professor turned neo-Nazi, wrote a book called “The Turner Diaries.” The book, which the FBI has called the “bible of the racist right,” is about how a fictional extremist group, “The Order,” overthrows a U.S. government that gives power to nonwhite citizens and is controlled by Jews. The order proceeds to kill nonwhite people and Jews, as well as “race traitors” who don’t support their cause.

The book inspired a 1980s group of violent neo-Nazis who also called themselves The Order, based off the fictitious group in Pierce’s book. Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which killed 168 people, was modeled on a scene from “The Turner Diaries,” which depicts the extremist group’s bombing of the FBI headquarters.

In 1988, David Lane, a former member of The Order, crystallized the idea of white genocide in a short essay, “The White Genocide Manifesto.” The manifesto asserts that there is a “Zionist conspiracy to mix, overrun and exterminate the White race.”

Jews do this, Lane claims, through “control of the media … industry, finance, law and politics” and by promoting antiwhite policies such as desegregation. To prevent white genocide, Lane calls for the establishment of a white homeland in North America – by violence, if necessary.

White genocide’s entry into the mainstream

Research shows that 61% of Trump voters believe “a group of people in this country are trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants and people of color who share their political views.”

This belief is often known as replacement theory, a variant of the idea of white genocide.

Many of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists believed that white Americans were being replaced. So, too, did the far-right protesters who chanted, “You will not replace us!” at the extremist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

There are also instances of such white power extremist views leading to violent acts. One example is the mass shooting of 11 Jewish people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. Another is the El Paso Walmart shooting that resulted in 23 murdered Latino victims in 2019.

Right-wing populists such as Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk have helped fuel replacement theories by contending that Democrats are trying to replace white voters with nonwhite immigrants.

Concern for white farmers isn’t actually about South Africa

I believe that Trump’s recent focus on alleged white genocide in South Africa has little to do with South Africa. It is all about American politics and advancing some of Trump’s goals, such as reducing immigration into the U.S.

First, by suggesting white genocide is taking place in South Africa, Trump amplifies his supporters’ fears that they, too, could soon be outnumbered by nonwhite people – in this case, immigrants.

Trump has been harping on the alleged dangers of nonwhite immigration since he first ran for election in 2015, and it was central to his 2024 election victory.

Replacement theory claims also help justify Trump’s goal of deporting immigrants living illegally in the U.S., as well as stopping refugee admissions from many countries, by highlighting the supposed dangers nonwhite immigrants pose to Americans, both in terms of potential threats to their physical safety and job prospects and security.

This recent example is not the first time Trump has made white genocide claims to advance his agenda. Based on his track record, it is likely he will do so again.

Alex Hinton receives receives funding from the Rutgers-Newark Sheila Y. Oliver Center for Politics and Race in America, Rutgers Research Council, and Henry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.