It Could Happen Here - The Refugees Fleeing South Africa's "White Genocide"

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

James is joined by Molly to discuss the Trump administration admitting 59 Afrikaner "refugees" and the myth of a "white genocide" in South Africa. Sourceshttps://support.iraplegalinfo.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057039031-What-is-the-U-S-refugee-resettlement-process  https://welcome.us/explainers/us-refugee-admissions-program-suspended-until-further-notice-welcome-corps-terminated  https://www.rescue.org/press-release/irc-responds-termination-state-department-grants-refugee-resettlement-program  https://2021-2025.state.gov/refugee-admissions/  https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/addressing-egregious-actions-of-the-republic-of-south-africa/  https://www.nytimes.com/article/afrikaner-refugees-trump-south-africa.html  https://za.usembassy.gov/refugee-admissions-program-for-south-africans/  https://www.episcopalchurch.org/publicaffairs/letter-from-presiding-bishop-sean-rowe-on-episcopal-migration-ministries/   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. Today we are talking about white genocide. And when I think of genocide, there is only one name that comes to mind, and it's Molly Konga. Molly, welcome. I just, I wanted you to be here as we talked about the genocide of the white race. I mean, who better to talk about it than two pasty fellows like us. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure we're like soon for the shopping block here. Molly, what's happening? Why, why are we, well, I will explain a. Molly, what's happening? Why are we...

Well, I will explain a little bit of what's happening and then you can tell me how on earth we got here. The United States terminated its refugee admissions program in January of this year, right? When Donald Trump became president and signed a ton of executive orders. So since then, the United States has not admitted any refugees. In February, it also stopped, the United States terminated its cooperative agreement with refugee resettlement agencies, which meant that even refugees who had arrived weren't getting the assistance that they previously got.

However, on the 12th of May, the United States admitted 59 Africana refugees from South Africa. And concurrently, Donald Trump told the press that what's happening was a genocide of the white people. He said it wasn't because they're white. He said if there was black people, he would do the same thing. I mean, there are several genocides impacting black people right now, and they are not getting refugee admissions to the United States. Apparently, these people are being genocided. So, Molly, can you explain what's going on here? How the genocide happened? Sure. I mean, the short answer to that question is it is not happening. It is not real. It

is not a thing that is happening, or in my opinion, really could meaningfully happen under the conditions that they're talking about. So again, like you said, they have terminated all refugee resettlement programs. So people coming from active war zones, active ongoing genocides, people fleeing political persecution all over the world, they don't deserve our help. They don't need our help anymore. Right? But these people, these people from South Africa are uniquely experiencing the worst thing that can happen to a person, I guess, which is white genocide. So white genocide, I think, is often sort of used interchangeably with great replacement

theory. So the white genocide conspiracy theory and the great replacement theory, I think they're hand in hand, they're very similar, there's a lot of overlap and they're used interchangeably. But white genocide is much more specific and it's more recent iteration on the theme. It comes from a mid 90s book written in prison by a neo-Nazi terrorist named David Lane. David Lane notably coined the 14 words. We don't need to say them. He had a lot of anxiety that if we don't do something, white people will become extinct, will be pushed out of existence by immigrants who are outbreeding us.

You know, there's this sort of concurrent belief that pornography, which is, you know, in their minds, something that is a Jewish tool of oppression of the white race, it is, you know, it's causing us to do interbreeding, it's diluting our bloodline. So all of these things together are going to push white people out of existence, which again, not happening, not true, not a real thing that can happen, but it's something they're very anxious about. But when you spend a lot of time talking about how white people are being pushed out of existence, you got to be able to point to something. You have to point to a place where a white person has been meaningfully harmed and they can't really do that. So the talking point that they fall back on most often when you're talking about white genocide, you know, if you're really wringing your hands

about this and you have to be able to point to something, they point to the South African farm murders. It is this idea that white farmers in South Africa are being targeted for murder en masse. That is this massive ongoing campaign of violence, which again, is not happening and is not true. There is a more violent crime in the country of South Africa than in other similarly positioned nations. They do have a little bit more violent crime than we do here, for instance. crime in the country of South Africa than in other similarly positioned nations. They

do have a little bit more violent crime than we do here, for instance. But if you break down the numbers and they have, they have conducted a multi-year study of this, you know, hypothetical phenomenon, white farmers are not being targeted for murder. They're not being murdered in larger numbers than any other demographic. It's just not a thing that's happening. Yeah. I know. It's almost like a laughable claim or like, except that it's also terribly sad when like Israel is just kind of babe-rooting a genocide in Gaza now. They're not even trying to pretend anymore.

They're like, no, we're going to kill everyone by starving them. That's what we would like to do. And obviously those people cannot enter the United States as refugees, but these folks from South Africa can. How did it go from a neo-Nazi in prison to the brain of the president of the United States? I mean, that idea sort of filtered into American right-wing think space over the last, I guess, 30 years since Lane wrote that manifesto from prison, slowly and through multiple origin points. But I have argued repeatedly over the last several months that we can point to exactly the moment

that Donald Trump heard about this. There is a specific moment in time in August of 2018, when Donald Trump first found out about the plight of the white South African. I have the dates somewhere in my notes, but it was, it was one evening in August of 2018 when he was watching Tucker Carlson. Shocking. He was watching an episode of Tucker's show back when it was still on TV, and he had some policy analysts from the Heritage Foundation on to talk about this, this terrible thing that's happening. And about 45 minutes after that segment aired, Donald Trump tweeted the word Africa for the first time.

Really? He has tweeted thousands and thousands and thousands of times about, a lot about Robert Pattinson's relationship with Kristen Stewart, you know, things about Diet Coke, things about vaccines. He's tweeted a lot of things, but he tweeted about Africa for the first time

45 minutes after the segment on Tucker Carlson. And he had bought into this idea that these people are being uniquely persecuted. God. Yeah. Carlson has mainstreamed a lot of these white nationalist talking points. But yeah, this one, and you have a really good series on this on your show, right? If people want to learn more about the plight of the Afrikaner, you can explain that over several hours. Yes, I spent three months sort of tracing this story in painstaking detail, if you're interested in checking that out over on Weird Little Guys.

And you should. It's great. It's great. Good podcast. I highly recommend. So like, we've seen that this thing gradually gained momentum, I guess. And then at some point, obviously someone got into Trump's here in the last month. Uh, and he made an executive order, right? He shared his executive order. I'm just going to read from it now. Quote, refugee resettlement and other humanitarian considerations. The secretary of state and the secretary of Homeland Security shall take appropriate steps,

consistent with law, to prioritize humanitarian relief, including admission and resettlement through the United States Refugee Admissions Program for Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination. Such plans should be submitted to the president through the assistant to the president and homeland security advisor." So, like, he's asking them to develop a plan basically for resettling these white South Africans in the United States, right? Right.

So when he says that it's not about race now, when he's pushed on that now and he says, oh, it's not about race, it's not because they're white, the word Afrikaners appears in the executive order. And that doesn't just mean South, that's not a demographic term for people from South Africa. It is a racial term for the descendants of Dutch settlers. Those people are white. Yeah, no, they're like, by definition, right, they are white South Africans. They are like, therefore, definitely the group that benefited from the apartheid era. Very much so. As if this wasn't clear enough, Christopher Landau appeared at a press conference

meeting these refugees wearing a orange, white and blue tie. It's quite a unique tie. I actually googled orange, white and blue tie. Couldn't find one. For people who are not familiar, that is the apartheid era flag of the Republic of South Africa. That is a deep cut. The decision to use that particular color scheme when you're greeting these Boer refugees is very intentional and very odd.

Yeah, it's got to be a choice, right? No one has a striped orange, white, and navy blue tie lying around. And the sort of dedication to reviving that as a symbol is not without precedent. So with Dylann Roof, the Charleston church murderer, had on patches, he had the flag of Rhodesia, obviously, they love Rhodesia, but he had the apartheid era,

orange, white, and blue South African flag. And that was strange and unique enough as, as a symbol that an American would dig up and identify with, that the South African press noted it at the time of the Charleston church shooting. Yeah. It was not in the mainstream. That is a troubling sartorial choice. Yeah.

Yeah. It's, it is worrying. Like you say, there's a line from the Africanus through Dylan Roof to this horrific ideology, right? You know what? What probably doesn't have a direct line to a part? We can't be sure of that, I guess. But hopefully, hopefully these products and services do not have a direct through line

from apartheid. Well, hopefully it's not the Washington State Patrol again. Hi, I'm Kristin Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode. I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right. I have some memories I can fill you in.

And that you're going to fill me in. Yes. But then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time. He said he wrote this like I was in his head in some way,

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I think people sometimes misunderstand the program, what it means, where it comes from, who it's for. So to begin with, like, I want to distinguish between asylum seekers and refugees, because I think in like the popular lexicon, these two words are used interchangeably. A refugee is outside of the United States and makes an application through the US refugee admissions program, an application through the US refugee admissions program and that application is processed and approved or rejected or delayed or left for years and years and years while they are outside the United States. An asylum seeker is someone who is either inside the United States or presenting at the border of the United States and requesting asylum. So they're different categories, right?

Generally, to be a refugee, one has to register with the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, and thus one has to have fled one's home country. It's somewhat notable that this flight came from Johannesburg, right? Like these people were in South Africa. But apparently DHS set up office space in Pretoria and they were conducting these interviews in Pretoria. Right, which again is unusual, right? So you have to normally go to a resettlement support center, right? And I want to talk about the process of background checks in a minute because,

surprise, surprise, it didn't happen here. At least not as far as I'm aware. Like if it did, it's the most expedited version of this process that we've ever seen. So these refugees have been admitted as P1 refugees. And people talk about P1 like it's a visa category. It's not actually, it's a priority category. There are four priority categories for people getting refugee visas. P1 cases, the highest priority, are normally referred by embassies, the United Nations High Commission of Refugees, or non-governmental organizations. If people have heard of this at all, it's probably with reference to Afghan folks who worked with the United States, who are not

being admitted under the United States refugee admission program right now. Some of them are stuck in third countries, even at airports, if they don't have a visa for that third country, waiting to work out what the US is gonna do this time after lying to them for decades and letting them down again. And unlike these real estate agents from Johannesburg,

they can't just go back home. Yeah, right, they actually have fear of persecution if they do, which is not the case for you South African folks. P2 are people like there are special groups designated for humanitarian concern. Like some Congolese people living in Rwanda in the past, some Burmese groups living in Thailand have been P2. P3 are family reunification cases. So you can, you know, if one person has refugee status to come to the United States, they can bring the rest of their family. And

then P4 are people who have sponsors through something called the Welcome Corps. Familiar with the Welcome Corps, Molly? I'm not. No, it sounds like the coolest branch of the military, you know, like you've got the Marines and then the Welcome Corps next door. The Welcome Corps was set up in 2023 by the Biden administration to allow five US citizens, I think a minimum of five, to get together to sponsor someone for refugee admission for the United States and basically take responsibility for their housing and for reorienting them in the US community, right? Getting their kids enrolled in school,

helping them find a job, all that kind of stuff. It was a cool program. It lasted less than two years that Donald Trump rolled that up in January of 2025. So we don't really have P4 cases anymore. So all admissions were halted in January. In February, the government, as I said, cut all cooperative agreements with resettlement agencies. So let's talk about what the normal process looks

like for refugees. Generally, they require several years of background checks and interviews. For many, it's not possible in their countries for most, right? For instance, there is not a resettlement support center in Afghanistan. So people have to leave. That's how you see them in Pakistan, right? What you're seeing now, actually, is Afghan people who are in Pakistan have timed out on their visas in Pakistan. So they're now facing immigration enforcement there, because they haven't been able to get resettled in the US before their Pakistan visa expires. They go through medical and biometric checks. There are at least two

interviews, there are security checks. When they do their first interview, they have to give in things like their identifying documents, work history, declare all their family relationships, all that kind of stuff. Then they have an interview with US citizenship and immigration services after that. Then if they are admitted, they take cultural orientation classes before traveling. If that's when you learn how to be an American, right? I don't know what it involves,

but they have to take those before they come. And then the US government works with the IOM for travel, right? And that travel is funded through a zero interest loan to the refugees. So like in every other case, you pay for your flight, you have to pay it back starting six months when you get to the United States. That has not been the case for our Afrikaner refugee friends,

right? It appears that the United States government chartered a flight on their behalf. Once the refugees arrive, they are referred to a resettlement agency. Some of the names people might be familiar with are like HIAS, the Hebrew immigrant aid society, who have literally been resettling refugees since the refugee and asylum seeker category was created right as a response to the Holocaust. Maybe IRC is another one people are familiar with. Which interestingly HIAS was the target ire of a great replacement theory motivated mass shooter here in America.

Yes. Robert Bowers posted a lot about Hias in the days and weeks before he carried out that mass shooting. Yeah, the tree of life scene they got, right? People aren't familiar. Yeah, that was at the time of the quote unquote migrant caravan fall of 2018, would it? Yes, that would be that time period. Yeah, that was a pretty pretty bleak time. I was in Tijuana a lot at that time with

seeing the migrant caravan folks, interviewing folks trying to help. Yeah, coming back to that was I remember thinking like what a fucked up world. So those people didn't get refugee admissions, right? Those people were here seeking asylum. The system right now is suspended, right? As many as 12,000 people who have been approved are waiting for travel authorization come to the United States. So they're completely in limbo, right? You're in limbo and at great personal risk.

Yeah, yeah. They're in, I mean, people spent 20 years in refugee camps waiting to be admitted to the United States. And like, it's hard for me to describe, I tried to in my Darien Gapp series, right, how desperately sad refugee camps are as places, right? And I think people think of refugee camps as like, oh, you go there for a few weeks and you sleep under a big white tent. No, children are born and raised there. Yeah. People live their whole lives of refugee camps as like, oh, you go there for a few weeks and you sleep under a big white tent. No, children are born and raised there.

Yeah, people live their whole lives in refugee camps. You know, the ones that they tie Burmese border have been there since the 1940s. But they live their whole lives often without even basic essential services, right? I did see, for instance, HIAS had a little school in Lajas Blancas, which is one of these UN refugee camps in Panama. The reason they have a little school is because children spend so long there that they miss out on their education if they don't have a little school for them. And so that's just like insult to injury in this whole process, right?

It's not only is he shutting off this avenue for refugee status for everyone else and giving it to these people who, you know, I think it's fair to say, don't deserve it. Yeah. But he's made this process so simple and so easy and so painless and that not only are they not fleeing persecution, but they're getting this fast track, this easy pass. Yeah. And like, we are paying for it. I mean, I remember recently some friends and I were helping someone who had been admitted to the US, not as a refugee actually on a different visa category, but like they were really having a hard

time navigating the basics and funding that so like we were able to help them out. I mean, obviously international immigration is a difficult process. It wouldn't be easy. I mean, you and you've immigrated internationally, right? It's not a simple process, but looking at the people who have taken Trump up on this offer of refugee resettlement, these appear to be people who could have simply immigrated had they chosen to.

Yeah, it seems that way. They could have just moved. Yeah, they could have, I mean, come here on like a B1 visa or like, I mean, pathways to citizenship are relatively rare. If you just like say you want to move to the US, right? Like you just want to become an American unless you have a bunch of money. So like these guys will have a pathway to citizenship. It's not quite clear how Trump said that they will have one.

What does that mean? I know normally if you're admitted as a refugee, you can file for permanent residency in a year. And then after a number of years, you can file to be a citizen. I just noticed as we're talking, so, you know, I'm not familiar with how the process normally works, right? That's, that's your wheelhouse. That's something you're very familiar with.

So maybe this is normal. It just looks strange to me. So I've been on vacation the last week, so I'm just back today. And so I just opened up the, um, the embassy's website because, you know, as I was writing this story and sort of tracking this as it developed, there wasn't good guidance from the consulate on what this process would look like. So I'm just looking at it again today and they have updated it as of yesterday. This is the US embassy and consulate in South Africa.

New update yesterday, there is a form you can fill out. James, it's a Google doc. It is a Google form. The US embassy website has a link to a Google form that you can fill out if you want to become a refugee. Great. I'm sure that's highly secure. Yeah.

Google doc. Wow. Wow. It's funny. I was on that website today as well. That is, oh dear. Uh, that is sad. Uh, I mean, yeah, I don't think a Google Doc can possibly be as secure

as it would need to be to have the amount of information the government gets on you when you become a refugee is all the information, right? Just to outline the criteria to be eligible for US resettlement consideration, individuals must meet the following criteria. It must be of South African nationality and must be of Afrikan ethnicity or be a member of a racial minority in South Africa. I thought it wasn't about race. Yeah. I thought it wasn't about race, James.

Yeah, it seems. And then they must be able to articulate a past experience of persecution or fear of future persecution. What they don't mention here is that, like normally there are protected categories they must be able to articulate a past experience of persecution or fear of future persecution. What they don't mention here is that normally there are protected categories into which refugees and asylum seekers have to fit. Those are race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. I mean, I guess you could argue that

the Afrikaners are not per se a race. It? Like there could be, it's conceivable that one could be white and of South African nationality, but not be African. Oh, very much so, very much so. I mean, there's, African is a very specific sort of genealogical lineage. Yeah, and like, political. Which is why I think they have been careful here to say, or a member of a racial minority,

because they're saying like, look, we're not gonna do the genealogy. We don't care if your great-grandfather was Dutch We just need you to be white. We just need you to be white Yeah, when you arrive you can do a 23andMe test and then they do your percentage and you know And they put you back on the plane. No, they just got the Pantone color scale. They're just gonna hold up the paint chip. Yeah They get you at what's it called? Fucking the paint shop there where you go in and they mix it for you. So yeah, they didn't mention these, these protected categories here.

The U S state department has said has received 8,000 inquiries from people seeking information about the refugee program. And that's a lot of people that does that. That is a large number of people. Hi, I'm Kristin Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode. I remember some things about shooting the pilot.

Right, I have some memories I can fill you in. And that you're going to fill me in. Yes, but then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up. I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time. He said he wrote this like I was in his head in some way,

which I found really interesting. And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big? She had inexplicable feelings. Got it. It is a human being that can't explain to her friends why somebody that might be beneath her is dictating the hunt. You can't miss this.

Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts? In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked.

Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. It happened in Levittown, New York. But reporting the series took us through the darkest corners of the internet and to the front lines of a global battle against deepfake pornography. This should be illegal, but what is this? This is a story about technology that's moving faster than the law and about vigilantes trying to stem

the tide. I'm Margie Murphy and I'm Olivia Carville. This is Levertown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope. Listen to Levertown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1978, Roger Caron's first book was published, and he was unlike any first time author Canada had ever seen. Roger Caron was 16 when first convicted.

I spent 24 of those years in jail. 12 years in solitary. He went from an ex-con to a literary darling almost overnight. He was instantly a celebrity. He was an adrenaline junkie and he was the star of the show. Go Boy is the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable. I had a knife go in my stomach, puncture my spleen, break my ribs, I had my guts all in my hands. Only to find himself back where he started. Rodger's saying this, I've never hurt anybody but myself.

And I said, oh, you're so wrong. You're so wrong on that one, Rodger. From Campside Media and iHeart Podcasts, listen to GO! Boy on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you gotta pray for yourself, as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself.

Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov, brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. The Episcopal Church here in the United States, right, not like a notably woke organization,

I would say. Episcopal, I mean, they do good, Episcopal migration ministries do good work. You won't find me shit talking to them. They do good things for people who need help. It has ended its partnership with the United States government. So I'm going to read a little bit here from Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe, first time for me quoting a bishop on the podcast. Since January, the previously bipartisan US refugee admissions program in which we participate has essentially shut down. Virtually no new refugees have arrived, hundreds of staff and

resettlement agencies around the country have been laid off, and funding for resettling refugees who have already arrived has been uncertain. Then, just over two weeks ago, the federal government informed Episcopal Migration Ministries that under the terms of our federal grant, we are expected to resettle white Afrikaners from South Africa, whom the US government has classified as refugees. In light of our Church's steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of South Africa, we are not able to take this step. Accordingly, we have determined that, by the end of the federal fiscal year, we will conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the US

federal government. It has been painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years. I am saddened and ashamed that many of the refugees who are being denied entry to the United States are brave people who worked alongside our military in Iraq and Afghanistan and now face danger at home because of their service to our country. I also grieve that victims of religious persecution, including Christians, have not been granted refuge in recent months. Good for them, honestly.

Yeah, like- Because I think, I mean, I think maybe people don't think about this or don't realize that a lot of these programs, like this is a federally grant funded federal program through a partnership with the Episcopal Church. So like, you know, in the early days of Doge, you know, they were saying like, oh, we found all this wasteful spending, all this suspicious payments to these religious organizations. Those are social programs.

We have outsourced all of these government functions to these church-based social programs. For better or worse, say about that what you will, but that is in fact, how many of these things function. Yeah, like when I think about, like I've spent a decent amount of time in refugee camps, the majority of the services that are provided by faith programs highest, there's Bethesda World Ministries, I think it's called, it's Catholic Charities, it's a very migration

ministries, there's CalSA aid, the Seek Group, right? I don't think they receive any federal maybe they've, I don't think they receive federal funding. But I think for the Episcopal Church Church as a massive organization to come out and say, yeah, we won't dirty our hands with this, that's incredible. No, it's great. And like more organizations should, I think they're being resettled in Virginia for the most part. Oh good, that's where I live, James. Oh good, yeah, great. Well, you know, you could take one in, Molly, you could have one in, Molly.

You could have a little Africana come live with you or like a... Which like, so Charlottesville, where I live, is home to a large number of Afghan refugee families. It's like, I know people who work with our new Afghan neighbors and like helping them get settled in our community and helping women get driver's license and get them sewing machines so they can sew their traditional garments at home. And like, it's a beautiful community effort to welcome these people into our town. But I just can't imagine the worst people on earth coming here.

Yeah. Well, you can help with sewing machine, right? You could help us sew up a little pre-Rainbow Nation South Africa flag for them. But yeah, it is like, I've helped people arriving here on refugee visas and like, it's actually a really, really affirming and wonderful thing to do in your community. And like, now is a time when you can still do that. All the people who were resettled here before January, the funding that was supposed to help their kids

enroll in school, that was supposed to help especially women learn to drive, right? That was supposed to help people orient themselves in the US, find education, find work, right? As a person who moved to America, it is a very confusing place. You have like 75 different layers of government. None of them really want to help you. Uh, there's, there's a lot of forms to fill in. The rent is insane.

Right. Okay. And then you add people drive like fucking maniacs. So like, and we don't have healthcare here, James. I'm sure that was a culture shock for you, but like, so when I was poking around in some of these Facebook groups for these, for the South Africans who were sort of interested in maybe seeking this opportunity and they were talking about sort of the pros and cons,

and whether they would go, and how the process was going to work. And the one fear that I saw come up over and over again is like, well, I heard the healthcare is pretty bad there. Like, yeah, dude, it is. Damn, yeah, damn. Don't come here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

In some states, right, there are state-funded, like, safety net programs. I don't know about Virginia. Oh, and I'm sure as America's special and only refugees, they will be afforded access to all available programs. Yeah, we'll put them on TRICARE after we've kicked the trans folks off. That's how we're making up for the gap. Yeah, it's pretty bleak, honestly. I would really encourage folks, like if you are listening to this and thinking, oh, it fucking sucks that those people have not been granted refugee status.

Like I'm thinking of like, I met a woman from Zimbabwe when I was in Darien Gap, who had come with her daughter, right? She had faced persecution at home in Zimbabwe, a country that is not Rhodesia anymore, we're keeping score. A country that was never Rhodesia. Rhodesia never, we're keeping score. A country that was never Rhodesia. Rhodesia never existed. Yeah, right. Yeah. She went to South Africa, right, to attempt to be safe.

And persecution followed her there. So then she took this journey all across the Americas, carrying her kid through the jungles and over the mountains and through the rivers. And that's where I met them. And we've stayed in touch, right? She's in the United States now. She's working on her asylum process and it is expensive and it is by no means secure.

And this is like a woman who has faced, who fits multiple categories, right? In their protected, they've protected categories here, right? It's going to be very hard and very expensive for her. And it really genuinely fucking breaks my heart to see someone who like, would be such an asset to any community who was such a ray of light, even in like some of the hardest places I've ever been, she might not get to stay here. And these folks will. And that really makes me sad. But yeah, if you have a chance in your community, like, almost the way I sometimes find out about refugees arriving or being settled is like on next door.

And real estate store is mostly a site for aging racists. But like sometimes people will be like, hey, there's an Afghan family here and they don't like one of the things in California is that you can rent a house and they don't have to give you a fridge. Yeah, a fridge is like a luxury. It's not for the poor. Oh, shit. So like trying to help people find a fridge before Ramadan, right? Like I have a truck, I'm a bigger guy, I can lift a fridge into the back of my truck if someone has a fridge they don't want.

So like that's a thing I can do to help and it makes me happy to do that. And like I can carry a fridge upstairs. Like that's not something you can do. There are a million other things you can do, right? Including just like having people over for dinner, cooking food for them, offering to take them out on a walk and show them your neighborhood. Like, there are so many ways that you can welcome people. And like, while people aren't newly arriving, there are people who are still recently arrived who really could do with some help. The government isn't paying for any more. We can't stop the government paying for flights for

Afrikaners, but like you can do something. You can do something positive and will maybe make you feel better about the fact that, you know, your taxpayer dollars are bringing the poor downtrodden Afrikaners from South Africa to neighborhoods near Mali. It's just such an ugly intersection, right? This is not just like our addled brained president falling victim to a racist conspiracy theory that he saw in Tucker Carlson, right? That's how the idea got into his mind. But I think this resurgence of his alleged interest in the plight of the white South African is this terrible intersection of personal grievance and financial interest.

It's no coincidence that the text of the executive order, it's not just about whites are being persecuted, but there's a pot shot on the side in the first section of the executive order that like, and South Africa has been very unfair to Israel, right? That South Africa being a leading voice in the international community on the genocide in Gaza is part of this. That they need to be punished for their advocacy against the genocide. When their ambassador was expelled, it was not a coincidence that he is a Muslim South African who has been very vocal about the genocide in Gaza and that he appears in public in a kufi'ah,

that when he returned to South Africa after being expelled from the United States, he was talking about Palestine when he got home. And that's not a coincidence. And it's also not a coincidence that Elon Musk is currently fighting to launch Starlink in South Africa. And so, this is sort of a longer explanation, but just sort of in brief, since apartheid ended in 1994, they have racial equality laws, that if you have a national level company, something like Starlink, something you're going to provide a national telecommunications contract that serves the whole country,

there has to be some black ownership of the country. They're not saying that there can be no white executives. They're not saying, you know, white people aren't allowed to do business, but there has to be some black ownership stake in the company. And large corporations around the world manage this by establishing a local subsidiary that is owned locally

by a majority of black shareholders. Microsoft does it, like every big company does it. Companies operate in South Africa. International corporations operate in South Africa and they do it every day and they do it easily. But Elon Musk refuses to do that. He refuses to have any black ownership stake in his company or a local subsidiary,

so he's not allowed to have Starlink there. And so for the last couple of months, he's been walking out of meetings, he's been yelling at the president of South Africa about how he's racist against white people. And so like, this is personal, it's financial, and it is a racist conspiracy theory. And now we're all having to live it. Yeah, it's also not a coincidence. So like, Musk has started interacting with some of these like white farmer accounts on his racism app, right? Like that. I think that one, I think it's, maybe its screen name is just Boar, or it's-

Oh yes, a South African news site recently unmasked that particular individual. Oh cool. Yeah, I haven't read the article yet. Like I said, I've been on vacation, but they're on the case. Yeah, great, good. And the thing about these, you know, white identity South African nationalist kinds of guys

is apartheid wasn't that long ago. Yeah. 30 years ago, right? So anybody 50 or older who's talking a lot about white identity in South Africa, I would just like to ask you what were you doing in 1990? Yeah. Just tell me who you were hanging out with in 1990 because I have questions. Yeah. Like I remember the end of apartheid very like that's one of my earlier like political memories. I remember like Nelson Mandela coming out at the rugby world cup in 1995. And like that being a big, people like, I guess, maybe our listeners, a lot of our listeners are younger than me, but like South Africa was something of a pariah state under apartheid, right?

Like they couldn't, people wouldn't even play sports with them. They didn't even go to the IOC Olympic games. And the IOC, not,OC, not an anti-racist organization, an organization which famously sent the Olympic Games to Adolf Hitler's Germany. But yeah, they were a complete global pariah. And to have gone from that to like, the US has to intervene in the plight of the persecuted Afrikaner within my lifetime, it's pretty fucking bleak. I just see a quick turnaround and an ugly one. But like I said, the average white South

African who is very vocal about white rights may have a very close connection to a very recent act of terrorism, if you know what I'm saying. They're not just talk. It was very violent in the early 90s. Yes. Yeah. Molly's done some good stuff on the, on the, on the, the violence of white South Africans. And I guess what folks in the U S who were inspired by them. Molly, do you, do you have anything you want to, you want to plug? Otherwise, I'm couldn't do it. Sizway, I guess is what you want to plug right? Yeah. I'm keeping an eye on their treason case against Afroforum. I mean, it's just political talk, but it's fun. We'll see. Apparently the investigation is ongoing. But no, if you

are interested in more about how this happened, I did an eight part series about political violence at the end of apartheid and its connections to American neo-Nazis. You can check that out on Weird Little Guys. It's a good time, I think. There's a really fun episode about a Dolph Lundgren movie from the late 80s that was secretly funded by South African military intelligence. Yeah, it's a good time and we live in hell. If What Happened Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, CoolZoneMedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Hi, I'm Kristin Davis, host of the podcast Are You a Charlotte? Sarah Jessica Parker is here, and she is sharing stories from the very beginning, like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode. I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right. I have some memories I can fill you in. That you're going to fill me in.

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