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On 22 August 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted criticism of the South African government for their plans to redistribute land to black South Africans who were institutionally disenfranchised under that country's apartheid system: The large scale killings phrase included in Trump's tweet was an invocation of white genocide, a conspiracy theory popular among white supremacists who have for years been attempting to advance the baseless claim that white South African farmers are being systematically murdered en masse. The white genocide conspiracy theory is sometimes referred to as the Great Replacement Theory, as the Anti-Defamation League pointed out. It is an idea that until now has existed mainly on the fringes, fostered by proponents including white nationalist and former Klansman David Duke -- who jubilantly responded to Trump's tweet: What particularly pleased [white supremacists like Duke] was the notion that if Trump said it, lots of conservatives would start to believe it, whereas they themselves have been having trouble getting widespread support for this notion, said Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow for the ADL. Sure enough, white supremacist Richard Spencer also tweeted his support for Trump's opening up the conversation about the plight of White South Africans: The white genocide claim started gaining popularity among fringe groups around 2012, according to research conducted by the ADL, who released a statement characterizing Trump's tweet as disturbing: That's not to say that farm attacks and farm killings do not happen in South Africa — they do, every year. But Pitcavage pointed out that although such events are tragic and reprehensible, they have been spun into a twisted story that proponents imagine to be representative of what's in store for whites in the United States, Pitcavage said: Despite President Trump's directive to Secretary of State Pompeo, no evidence documents an epidemic of murders targeting white South African farmers because of their race. The number of farm murders in South Africa hit a 30-year low point in 2017-18, according to a report released by the South African Agricultural Industry (AgriSA) that cited South African police data. Overall, farm attacks have also been on a general decline after spiking in 2001-02 at 1,069, although since hitting a low point in 2013-14 that figure has been on the rise. (Recorded incidents include murder, rape, robbery and causing bodily harm and also all violence aimed at destroying farm infrastructure and property with a view to disrupting legitimate farming activities, according to AgriSA.) The AgriSA report did not account for the race of perpetrators or victims, and independent fact checking organization Africa Check reported that South African police don't track crime statistics by race. Some 19,016 killings were recorded in South Africa between April 2016 to March 2017, an increase over the previous year's number. The most hideous cases of farm murders have, of course, drawn the most media scrutiny. Writing for the publication Quartz Africa, journalist Lynsey Chutel noted that the seclusion and perceived wealth of the farms could explain why their owners are targeted, although she noted that the brutality of some of the crimes may be attributed to racial animosity: Kobus Visser, director of AgriSA's Rural Safety and General Affairs Chamber, also observed that: President Trump's remark appeared to have been inspired by a 22 August 2018 Fox News segment in which Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson blasted a controversial initiative by the South African government to redistribute land, the vast majority of which is owned by a small white minority as a holdover of racial inequality standards that existed under apartheid. Although Carlson did not address the large scale killing of farmers in that segment, he did discuss it in May with a guest from the South African white minority lobbying group AfriForum. Tucker Carlson is incredibly popular among white nationalists because the rhetoric and subjects of discussion on his program frequently reflect the conversations happening in the white nationalist movement, Jared Holt, a researcher for Right Wing Watch, told us in an email, adding:
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