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Trump’s most recent incursion into international politics sails off in yet another wrong direction on a vessel constructed of misinformation, powered by effluent from Fox News, its only purpose to do what Trump lives for—to rile up his base.
This week Trump viewed a Fox program reporting on the South African government’s land redistribution plan from massive white-owned farms to black farmers. These are the blacks who were stripped of their land by centuries of white domination. Trump quickly took to Twitter to call upon his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, to “closely study” the large-scale killing of white farmers by blacks, a claim strongly disputed by South Africa’s largest farmer’s group.
Trump cares nothing about white farmers in South Africa other than what they can do to support his racist phobias. He knows nothing about the history of South Africa or the facts behind the redistribution of land. Nothing about the centuries of inequity that have put the vast bulk of farmland into the hands of a small white minority, an inequity barely addressed since the end of apartheid more than a quarter-century ago.
He knows nothing of the policies of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and doesn’t care to. When he calls Ramaphosa a racist, he is once again projecting his own tendencies onto someone else. The alternative facts he quotes about the genocide of white farmers comes from right-wing extremist groups to which Fox has given a podium.
Fox has a firm grasp on the ring in this president’s nose, leading him around like a docile ox. To know where Trump is next headed, all we need to do is to follow presidential mentor, Fox, on its various crusades.
Of course, there’s no reason why Trump shouldn’t be meddling in South African politics. Meddling is what he does, stirring up liberal hornets and sending them off on wild goose chases while he appoints his judges, favors the coal lobby, eviscerates the EPA, and shrinks our national parks. Brilliant. On waxen wings, Trump is spreading his right-wing contagion around the globe. He can’t fly too high soon enough.
South African-born writer, Neville Frankel, is the author of an apartheid-era novel, Bloodlines, The Third Power about the transformation of Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, and a Soviet-era novel, On the Sickle’s Edge.
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