President Trumps promotion of a white-nationalist conspiracy theory involving South Africa prompted fierce backlash there Thursday and fresh criticism in the United States that he is compromising American foreign policy to stoke his far-right political base.
Former U.S. diplomats and South African leaders denounced Trumps declaration in a tweet late Wednesday that he had instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to monitor the large scale killing of white farmers and the governments expropriations of their land.
White-nationalist groups have for years spread false claims about the murder rates, assertions that have been widely debunked. Local police data shows the number of people murdered on farms has dropped by half over the past two decades from 140 in 2001-2002 to 74 in 2016-2017, according to the Associated Press.
Trumps tweet appeared to come in response to a segment on Fox News in which host Tucker Carlson railed against a plan by South Africas governing party to pursue constitutional changes allowing the government to redistribute land without compensating the owners. The measure is designed to redress racial inequalities that have persisted for nearly a quarter-century after the end of apartheid in 1994.
White nationalists in the United States and South Africa, where a fringe group called Afriforum has advanced the conspiracy theory, hailed the presidents remarks. David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, thanked Trump on Twitter and tweeted an image of a white woman holding a sign reading Stop white genocide. Mike Peinovich, a far-right podcast host, called Trumps endorsement very big and said that this is how we slowly chip away at the all-consuming anti-white discourse.
Critics lambasted the president for endorsing the conspiracy theory to his 54 million Twitter followers. Patrick Gaspard, who served as U.S. ambassador to South Africa under President Barack Obama, noted that this was the first time Trump had mentioned Africa on Twitter since he took office.
He uses the occasion to lift a white-supremacist meme from the darkest place he can find, Gaspard, now president of Open Society Foundations, said in an interview. So many of my friends in South Africa are bewildered that a modern president of the United States, instead of leaning into issues of constitutionalism and jurisprudence, lifts up these themes. Its dangerous and poisoned.
Trump faced an intense backlash for saying last summer that a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, where a counterprotester was killed, featured some very fine people on both sides. In January, he sparked more outrage when he complained to lawmakers in a private meeting at the White House that U.S. immigration law offered protections for people from shithole countries, referring to Haiti, El Salvador and some African nations.
The presidents tweet about South Africa was his latest bid to signal common cause with nationalist movements abroad, including in Europe, where Trump and his top aides have expressed solidarity with populist governments pursuing anti-immigration agendas.
Trump has not visited Africa since taking office, although first lady Melania Trump announced this week that she will visit the continent in October for her first major solo trip.