The South African case is important because it plays a central role in global white supremacist claims. These mythologies claim that white South Africans, specifically Afrikaners, are the canary in the coalmine: that the alleged oppression they are facing is a blueprint for what will happen to all white people if they don’t “fight back”.

Groups representing some of South Africa’s white minority have responded to a plan by U.S. President Donald Trump to offer them refugee status and resettlement in the United States by saying: thanks,