White genocide, a transnational white supremacist conspiracy theory, claims that white people are being subjected to a systematic “genocide” often due to immigration and interracial marriage, which extremists claim will lead to the end of the white race. It shares an ideological similarity to the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which blames “elites,” often meaning “Jews,” for plotting to “replace” white people with migrants or those of non-European descent.
White genocide was coined by a Reagan appointee to the Office of Personnel Management Bob Whitaker (who also coined the term “anti-white”), who would later run his own white supremacist group. The term was popularized by American neo-Nazi, KKK member, and domestic terrorist David Lane, who murdered a Jewish radio host in 1984, in his “White Genocide Manifesto,” which he wrote while imprisoned. Lane also coined the 14 words, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children,” a slogan used by many racist extremist groups and individuals to convey their own genocidal ambitions.
“White genocide” has been used by believers in the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory to commit heinous acts of hateful violence. The Christchurch, New Zealand, shooter, who in 2019 murdered 51 people at two separate mosques, wrote in his manifesto, titled “The Great Replacement,” “This is ethnic replacement. This is cultural replacement. This is racial replacement. This is WHITE GENOCIDE.”
Trump’s recent declaration that South Africa is committing a “genocide” against white farmers represents the mainstreaming of a concept once popular only within neo-Nazi and white supremacist circles. Not only is the President invoking white genocide indicative of a terrifying alignment with the ideologies of violent extremists, but it is completely baseless and categorically false. Trump claimed that this “genocide” was taking place based on white farmers being “brutally killed.” According to the BBC, almost 7,000 people were murdered in South Africa between October and December 2024, with twelve being killed in farm attacks (only one of the twelve was a farmer, with the rest being farm dwellers and employees, who were likely black).
Trump has been exposed to the idea of white people being “replaced” since at least the 1990s. The New York Times reports that when one of Trump’s advisers mentioned a news item projecting that the U.S. would eventually no longer have a white majority (in 2000, the Census Bureau projected this will be the case in the 2040s), Trump responded that there would be a revolution should that happen. “This isn’t going to become South Africa,” he is quoted as saying in the book Confidence Man.
In his first term, Trump also pushed this idea of genocide targeting whites in South Africa. In 2018, Trump tweeted that he had instructed then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to look into “the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large-scale killing of farmers.” Trump apparently had completely bought into the racist and bogus scenario depicted by white supremacists as a “canary in the coal mine” scenario for white people. In May 2019, Trump and national security officials were in the Situation Room discussing Iran when Trump instead brought up the idea of granting asylum and citizenship to white South African farmers.
The pan-European white nationalist network Generation Identity (GI) ran a racist anti-migrant “Defend Europe” campaign, which involved GI chartering a boat in the Mediterranean to prevent migrants from entering Europe and intercepting humanitarian ships offering aid to migrants in distress. The group even attempted, unsuccessfully, to stop a Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) ship from embarking on a rescue mission. The Christchurch shooter donated nearly $1,700 to the Identitarian movement in Europe, and exchanged emails with its de-facto leader and former neo-Nazi, Martin Sellner. In 2019, the Identitarian movement in Germany was classified as right-wing extremist by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, and, in 2021, the French government dissolved Generation Identity (GI), that country’s Identitarian movement due to its connections to violence.
The United States has seen several acts of mass violence based on beliefs in white genocide and the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, with several mass shooters citing their so-called impending “replacement” as justification for their violence, including at the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, PA, which claimed the lives of eight people, a mass shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., where ten Black people were shot and killed at a supermarket in 2022, and in Allen, Texas, where eight people were killed in 2023.
In general, neo-Nazis and white supremacists have described an alleged white genocide conspiracy theory as a means to erode white superiority. In recent years, Americans have played a key role in framing and spreading these racist and antisemitic ideas not only in the United States but also abroad. For example, in 2017, Proud Boys founder Gavin McInness tweeted “This attitude + immigration = white genocide in the West (South Africa’s version is much more intense).” Several American politicians also use “Great Replacement” inspired rhetoric in their own public statements on immigration.
Several white supremacists, including Martin Sellner, are cheering on Trump’s recent statements for making it “globally acceptable to talk about white identity and interests,” while decrying the “Lügenpresse” (“lying press”), a term which harkens back to Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and the Nazi Party’s efforts to demonize the media and journalists before committing the Holocaust. The White Papers Policy Institute, an American organization aiming to “craft policy alternatives that promote the collective interests of Western Peoples who seek self-determination,” which recently had a representative attend an ethnic cleansing summit in Italy alongside other Americans, posted that they’re “very grateful for the recognition of the Boer genocide in South Africa” by Trump and praised his “Westerners only refugee admittance policy.” An American neo-Nazi Active Club, part of a transnational movement co-founded by American white supremacist Robert Rundo, celebrated Trump’s “dead white people, dead white farmers” statement by posting a message saying “we will have the 14 words, I am confident of that.”
