Dozens of Afrikaners accepted into the United States as refugees from the South African government.

 

Afrikaners after leaving South Africa. New York Post/AFP.

49 Afrikaners have been accepted as refugees into the United States from South Africa. New York Post. President Trump said that they were victims of genocide due to racial land laws that could be used to target them and farmers being murdered. Trump ended foreign aid to South Africa in response to the land law being passed, though no land has been seized as of this writing. Critics, including South Africa's government and the Episcopalian church, say that no genocide is happening. 

My Comment:

Whether or not South Africa is committing genocide on white Afrikaners is largely a question of semantics. I don't think there is a de jure genocide, the South African government isn't loading people into trains yet, though they might in the future. But I do think there is a de facto one. 

Why? Well, farm murders are a real thing, and I do think that the primary motive is racial vengeance. Some of these crimes have been horrific and I have seen little evidence that the South African government cares. You could argue that it's just South Africa's horrific crime rate but I would say there's an obvious difference between the victimization rate of the Boer farmers that are now fleeing and the British descended Whites that live in the city. There are plenty of rich whites living in the cities of South Africa but the murder rate for them is a lot lower, which begs the question why the rural crime rate is so high? And why are the number of people imprisoned for these farm attacks so low? 

It's also clear that there are elements of the South African government that truly hate these people, largely because of racial memories of apartheid. Punishing people for the actions of their ancestors is deeply wrong but we are seeing these land confiscation laws and have politicians singing "kill the Boer". Like I said, nobody is getting thrown onto trains yet but it sure sounds like it could happen in the future. And it's clear that there is specific hatred against these Whites particularly, Anglo Whites in South Africa are treated well. 

Even if you were to concede that there is no actual genocide in South Africa, which I don't, these folks can use the same arguments that folks from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala used with their refugee applications. The high crime rates and incompetent governments there were used as justification for having millions of Central Americans enter the country, so why is it any different when the refugees are White? The only conclusion is that the folks objecting to this are racist. 

I would also say that I never really believed the Central American "refugees" are anything other than economic refugees, especially now that El Salvador is a safe country. These South Africans? They are absolutely not economic migrants as they are fairly rich in the first place. 

What about the double standards about not letting in other groups of refugees? The big difference there is that there are hundreds of countries that can take refugees from Iraq or Afghanistan but I doubt there are any that will take these South Africans. These folks have pretty much nowhere else to go and given the direct threat against them, I think it's more than justified to let them come in. 

I also think that there is a pretty obvious double standard here. The left does not like the idea of acknowledging that White people too can be the victims of bias, discrimination and racism, let alone genocide, so there is a real motivation to downplay the threat against these farmers and excuse the actions of both the criminals that are killing people and the government that does little to nothing to stop it. To them it's impossible for a privileged or rich group of whites to be the victim of anything, so the hysteria over this case was sadly predictable. 

As for the folks still in South Africa, I think they should get out as soon as possible. Like I said, I don't know that there is a de jure genocide on the way, but it sure feels like they are moving that way. Getting out now would be extremely advisable and the window for getting out might be limited. It's very possible that somehow a judge will rule that this can't happen and at the very least we have no idea what the policy will be once Trump is out of office in 2029.