Guys, I am only 10mins in but cmon. I hate Trump, posted about that frequently, and all the shit you’re giving him on his comments is warranted. However, your commentary and framing of the situation in South Africa I find to be insane. My sources are probably all media reports like you, and then a family friend for 40 years (parents friend before I was alive) who is from and lives in South Africa and then one of my college friends who moved there and has lived there for the past 10 years.
What is going on in South Africa isn’t purely a laughing “look at this hilarious person shouting Kill the Boer to a stadium” type situation. South Africa HAS allowed the taking of land with no compensation as of 2020. SA does have a 10% of the population party chanting to kill off part of their population.
Additionally, your timeline of these events is absolutely abysmal. Malema was convicted of hate speech as of 2010 for singing that song. The song itself was considered hate speech until 2020. In 2010 Malema was basically a no one calling for taking of land, and no one listened, at the time he was part of the current governing party and they ousted him. In 2014 EFF started and they got 25 seats. In 2020, SA passes land reform that Malema was pitching 15 years prior. In 2020, Malema is acquitted of hate speech after Kill the Boer WAS considered hate speech for decades. And by 2025 they now have 40 seats.
Kill the Boer is as innocuous a political slogan as From the river to the sea is. Any stupid ass American approaching the subject as if it is solely a liberation chant is woefully misled and/or completely ignorant. It wasn’t solely a liberation chant/song at any point in history and sure as shit isn’t now.
Back to Trump and what I know from many discussions with the people who live there: you’re right to make fun of him. There is absolutely no genocide and he is exaggerating everything or just plainly making things up. However, to be as flippant as you were about the current situation is insane to me. Both friends have said the situation in the county has changed drastically and palpably in the past decade. No, there isn’t a genocide. But absolutely yes, there are individual farmers who have been murdered for specifically being WHITE farmers. What my friends say is not that it is now suddenly rampant and they feel like they’re going to be killed any day. They say the discussion about it has completely changed. How it is brought up in public in day to day settings, at a coffee shop, at work, with coworkers, with a taxi driver, etc. is completely different. How my friend from college put it (me paraphrasing) is that it is similar to running into a very far-left type in the states and bringing up something completely insanely horrible a far-left protestor extremist did, the person you’re talking to will immediately act and respond as if you’re trying to attack them and they need to protect their party. I.e. if you talk to a leftist and say “wow the protestors really shouldn’t be barring Jews from using public spaces on campus” and the person responds “well have you seen what Israel is doing to Gaza?!?!”
According to my *sources* that sentiment is becoming more and more prevalent. Except it’s not a random campus protest about something happening on the other side of the world, it’s a racially motivated murder that happened in their country.
Again, they aren’t worried about getting murdered. There is no genocide. But, they have noticed a drastic shift, and they have started to get nervous although I have asked both and neither plans on moving yet. One is born and raised there, my college friend single handedly started a company there that is entirely owned and operated in SA and now is engaged to a woman from SA, so they both have good reasons to stay.
Further on the EFF, family friend says he won’t associate with anyone that at all hints that they’re part of that party. Associate meaning, he won’t be around. And my college friend has said if he is out and sees someone who supports EFF at the same venue/bar, he will make sure to not interact with them at all and stay as far away as he can and if he believes there is a large group of them there he would leave.
No one I have talked to thinks they’re just a calm liberation party that only wants peace. Everyone I have talked to has said they’re not genocidal, but they’re certainly in the main very racist, aggressive and confrontational. Like, they’re not going to wait for you to round a corner and kill you, but they very well might kick the shit out of you.
There is a way to make fun of Trump and not diminish complete and total insanity that is occurring in the country’s politics.
I for one woke up to news that an insane person killed two Israelis in DC for being Israeli and found that singular instance an enormous problem. Mainly, because the guy was chanting a slogan probably 10% of the country was on board with, and sitting congress members wouldn’t comment on the murders (looking at you Ilhan you raging antisemite). Having ~10% of a country chanting horrible shit with people in government believing the horrible shit worries me. And by all accounts our problems here are 1/20th as big as they are in SA. Our problem x20 doesn’t get you anywhere near genocide. But it is certainly still a major problem to me.
That’s a little extreme imo. We’re not going to agree with every one of their opinions on any given topic, and given the amount of content the boys have there will be the occasional bad take and/or misunderstanding. And to their credit they’re usually really good about acknowledging the criticism we voice here.
Hard to believe when one looks at the decay of S.A., a country with daily rolling black-outs, > 30% unemployment, mass crime & the largest private security sector in the world, that there anything to laugh at.
Trump makes people dumber & he certainly worked his magic on the hosts of this particular episode.
I mean this isn’t exactly a podcast for nuanced analysis of the minutia of South African instability, it’s pretty clear they are laughing at the sheer spectacle of Trump’s performance in the Oval Office and being in way over his head trying to discuss another countries internal issues.
No it isn't, but these guys have been able to provide enough nuanced commentary on practically everything else over the last half decade, so for them to be so shoddy and dismissive for something like what has been happening in South Africa is just downright pathetic. The idea that Matt proposed, that these land oppropriations is not much more different than iminent domain laws in the US is just lazy and disappointing. You can have a host of opinions of I.D., but we aren't talking about building a freeway offramp or building a pipeline; we are talking about a person losing their land because of their race. Matt would be losing his shit on this in any other context. Maybe its the Gen. X bias to only understand South Africa as an aparthaid state, but their commentary about modern day South Africa (even if only from 2010) is just sad. Kemele described the "kill the Boer" by anologizing Boer to the aparthaid regime. Setting aside the wonderfully toxic notion of associating racial groups with political regimes, that EFF chant literally follows "Kill the Boer" with "the farmers". There is no fucking confusion about that chant.
Perhaps not. But it is not too much to ask for a 30 minute review of almost any material on modern day South Africa which would evidence a state on the verge of collapse. The lack of curiosity from the hosts of the Fifth Column is unexpected. It was a tad shocking to hear formally color blind Kmele pull out Apartheid, as a defence to modern day lynching of white farmers in South Africa.
Despite what movies portray, states don’t collapse all at once. They collapse, when the electricity no longer works, when the police have been privatized, when 70% of people > 25 years old don’t have jobs and can’t read.
Like I said, Trump makes people dumb. Have a laugh at Trump. But when South Africa turns into Zimbabwe, I’m pretty sure the smug amusement at whatever Trumps 2025 gaff was, isn’t going to be very funny.
I really don't think Kmele would defend the lynching of anyone. It seems to me he was describing the downstream effects of apartheid on the psyche/behavior of the populace.
If I say that "white people lynched black people in the south due to historic and cultural issues for the two centuries preceding those actions" I'm not offering that history as a "defense", but rather an attempt at analysis/explanation. You can disagree with his analysis, but I think it's uncharitable and inaccurate to suggest he was defending the practice of lynching.
They are also laughing at the hypocrisy. Everyone on the populist right did nothing but complain how the left racializes everything, but now its ok because it's a "white genocide". Not to mention the fact that there are plenty of other areas in the world where there are just as bad or worse injustices happening and nobody in the MAGA world gives a shit about any of them or are calling for the refugees to come here.
This is idiotic. Just because it’s not a white genocide doesn’t mean it’s not anti-white racism.
And the left racializing everything was anti-white racism too, but not solely. When they went after other groups, like the Jews or Asians or wayward non-black individuals like Kmele who didn’t sign up for their nonsense, they tagged them “white adjacent”. I’m sure plenty of stupid things were said by right wingers and it’s not a genocide, but there’s plenty of open anti-white racism in Sourh Africa and it’s not just rhetoric but calls for violently taking their land, even if saying so makes you feel “cringy”.
As far as refugees go, if Americans don’t want to let in another Dearborn Michigan, population 109,000 that will cause a Democratic president to holdback support for one of its closest allies as that ally is attempting to rescue American hostages from terrorist militias and rid itself of a genocidal threat on its border, that strikes me as prudential. Perhaps the white South Africans are antisemitic or otherwise have deeply anti-American western values too, in which case I agree, don’t let them in. But generally speaking, i don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that 60 wealthy English speaking Christian refugees might not do something like elect 2nd generation American mayor who vows to illegally arrest the Prime Minister of the US’s closest mid east ally should he enter his dumb city where the dumb mayor ignores diplomatic immunity and the foreign policy of his own country because his loyalties are to a refugee camp hellbent on exterminating its neighbors, whose population grew during a supposed 19 month genocide.
Do you realize the irony in this response? My point is that I would prefer we move away from framing everything as some kind of race war, regardless of which side of the political spectrum it's coming from. I have no problem with these South Africans being granted refugee status here in the US, but the only reason Trump cares or even knows about this situation is because he has wealthy South African donors like Elon Musk and David Sacks. It would just be nice if there were actually any coherent set of moral values coming from this administration instead of just constant culture war political theater to satisfy the base. There is no reason we shouldn't be allowing the same refugee status for properly vetted people from Ukraine, Sudan, Venezuela, etc. Just looking for some ideological consistency, but that is probably too much to ask in todays political climate.
OP’s comment was TL,DR but I also only made it about roughly 10 min before having to pause and post here.
Moynihan’s trying to compare seizing land with no compensation for racial justice there to eminent domain with compensation for a public good purpose here??? Obviously eminent domain has been abused and rights violated but it doesn’t compare.
Echoes of Trump’s response to Putin killing adversaries- the US kills people, too.
A small clarification: he targeted a Jewish event (he bought a ticket to it 3 hours beforehand) at a Jewish museum. I don't think we have evidence that he knew there would be Israelis there but your point of course stands. And Sarah was an American Jew and Yaron Christian Israeli. Thanks for all the other details.
Thanks for sharing this. South Africa is a complicated place that feels similar to the USA but is pretty unfamiliar in a lot of ways, which is why I think a lot more people would be interested in it if they had exposure to discussions like this.
That being said, in my experiences living here, South Africans, especially white ones of a certain age, tend to exaggerate the threat *they* face in day to life. Does this diminish the reality of crime people face? Certainly not. Still, it's an important distinction that is not without differences. The bulk of crime is experienced by non-white people inflicted by other non-white people (obviously not a good thing). Unless you've visited South Africa (sorry to be a Douglas Murray here) it's hard to articulate that contradiction.
I 100% agree with your rehashing of criticisms of the EFF too, because they're have anti-democratic, violent tendencies and proudly espouse their admiration for Lenin, Stalin and a host of failed African revolutionaries. Thankfully, *and this is very important*, South African society is not persuaded by radical talk like this and the data backs this up.
While gross and something I don't believe should be sung, the Kill The Boer song is understood to be a liberation song that factually didn't inspire masses of people to go out and kill white people during apartheid or in the years immediately following its toppling. Similar to the river to the sea? I'm not sure because the ANC never once premised it's fight against apartheid as the elimination of white people. Malema was found guilty of hate speech in 2011 for the song, but then found not guilty in 2022 for the song. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it isn’t the case that this song is broadly accepted and sung - it isn’t, and people have been debating its longevity after liberation for over a decade.
At the same time you're not wrong for pointing out that the situation in South Africa is far more fucked up than those pushing back against Trump want to admit or even know. And this is where you and I agree about the reaction to Trump: People hone in on his delivery of the content without stopping to consider that the content is still correct. Still: What he did was ridiculous and worthy of derision, especially because his premise was a racialised interpretation of a broader problem. That’s incorrect and deserves push back - humorous or otherwise.
There has been a shift in the conversation in South Africa too, which you point out. But I'm not so sure it's categorically negative as your *sources* suggest and would think that the vast majority of South Africans I know and interact with every day, would disagree (while at the same time absolutely agreeing that crime is one of, if not the, biggest issue facing the country.)
South Africa is so contextual and the experience of it unfortunately too determined by race and class, to take what someone says wholesale (and that goes for me too).
Fair reply in every way. Some items I’d quibble with as I’ve heard differently. And the age range is 31 to 74 and the two individuals have never met each other or know of each other. But, my difference of opinion is at the very margins and I am not well versed enough to go into that level of detail without tripping all over myself.
Stop giving Jake Tapper credit for coming around to being correct after 70% of the country already did. He asked one good question two years before the election? Please. It's embarrassing.
This so much. The only way you could not see the decline of Biden is if it was willful ignorance. I think this where being friend's with someone ("we like Jake") keeps them from really going after someone who deserves it.
Tapper is more interested in the celebrity, prestige and promotional opportunities for himself with this book than he is than genuine consequences or repercussions that should arise from the content in the book. He is not a journalist. He is a wannabe celebrity who will protect his friends and colleagues first and foremost.
Anyone else see Jon Stewart’s mashup of Tapper promoting his book on the air? Now that gig is up, he’s cashing in on what he knew the whole time. Fuck that nerd.
I hope Israel doesn't "wrap it up" until Hamas is destroyed, the hostages are returned, and they're pretty sure the Palestinians can't pull another October 7th.
Surely some enterprising video editor could compile clips, if they exist, of Jake Tapper grilling Joe Biden, administration officials, and other democrats.
Tapper deserves more heat than he’s getting not less. He’s also become the lightning rod for it by the sheer shameless audacity to put his name on Alex’s book.
I'll sum up this episode by quoting the great Thomas Sowell:
"This is an age when people who are contributing nothing to society gain fame and fortune by denouncing those who are contributing something, because those who are contributing something are not doing so the way idle on-lookers would wish, or in a way that those ignorant of the process would consider right."
—THOMAS SOWELL—
Irreverence or poor taste may provoke, but ignorance reveals a deeper failure—of understanding, not just decorum.
I find it interesting that the first example people reach for when pointing out how bad the Saudis are is almost always the (admittedly horrifying) murder of one well-connected columnist, and not the some 300,000 deaths they caused in Yemen. Or their long-running propagation of extremist Wahhabi ideology. Or the fact that a Saudi intelligence agent paid for two of the 9/11 hijackers to get an apartment in southern California and filmed himself casing the Capital before the attack. Or the fact that they've taken the side of the Salafist factions in almost every regional proxy war in the past couple decades. Khashoggi was the least of their sins.
Pulling the "Golden Dome" string a little, it wouldn't work like the Iron Dome does AT ALL, but journo-types have to stop calling it impossible. Don't be dumb.
Whether or not we should be paying for it is up for debate, that's fine. But that project is not about driving mobile rocket launchers around the border like it is in Israel.
That was my email haha I was amped after watching the media briefing. Tons more I could say, like about that “burial” site, which it wasn’t. Who the fuck buries bodies, and so many, next to a highway? No one. It was a memorial of people killed (still not good). I suppose the calm part of Ramaphosa is emphasised when you consider that he was there, in the heart of the resistance to apartheid, in the 1980s and crucial to the democratic negotiations in the early 1990s. With that backstory I wouldn’t have been surprised if Ramaphosa gave into an emotional response. Nevertheless, the fact that Ramaphosa had to push back against stupid white genocide claims by emphasising how crime ridden the country can be isn’t a good look- in that awful position, keeping things as calm as they did is good on them. And MM is right: The ANC has a very chequered past. Anyway, cheers!
David, thanks for your input. How much of the problem is related to devaluation of the currency and widespread, worsening poverty, and what led to it? If you have a good resource for background review (or anyone), I would greatly appreciate it. I once knew something about deals post apartheid w/ WTO etc., but it is all fuzzy now.
I'm not sure how much currency devaluation has affected the economy. Countries like South Africa, emerging markets, have currencies that are often affected by shifts unrelated to currency devaluation but I'm pretty ignorant on macroeconomics. The reasons South Africa are in the state they're in (highest inequality in the world, nearly 50% unemployment for young people, 20k+ murders in a year with 58 million people) is, in my view, two fold:
1) The deliberate institutionalisation of white supremacy (perhaps the only real example of this) for nearly 350 years (apartheid is the shortest part in this history).
2) The hollowing out of the state by the left-wing socialist arm of the ANC and its godfather, Jacob Zuma. When he became president in 2009, almost everything trended negative for about 10 years. Under the guise of transformation, which is a real and necessary project of modern day South Africa, Zuma and has goons made a good effort to steal everything.
For books: The President's Keepers (Jacques Pauw) is a good one on #2. For #1 I think the book MM mentioned by Riaan Malan, My Traitor's Heart, is a fantastic, fantastic read - even 35 years later.
There are other underlying factors to be sure these two are the dominant forces.
Guys, I am only 10mins in but cmon. I hate Trump, posted about that frequently, and all the shit you’re giving him on his comments is warranted. However, your commentary and framing of the situation in South Africa I find to be insane. My sources are probably all media reports like you, and then a family friend for 40 years (parents friend before I was alive) who is from and lives in South Africa and then one of my college friends who moved there and has lived there for the past 10 years.
What is going on in South Africa isn’t purely a laughing “look at this hilarious person shouting Kill the Boer to a stadium” type situation. South Africa HAS allowed the taking of land with no compensation as of 2020. SA does have a 10% of the population party chanting to kill off part of their population.
Additionally, your timeline of these events is absolutely abysmal. Malema was convicted of hate speech as of 2010 for singing that song. The song itself was considered hate speech until 2020. In 2010 Malema was basically a no one calling for taking of land, and no one listened, at the time he was part of the current governing party and they ousted him. In 2014 EFF started and they got 25 seats. In 2020, SA passes land reform that Malema was pitching 15 years prior. In 2020, Malema is acquitted of hate speech after Kill the Boer WAS considered hate speech for decades. And by 2025 they now have 40 seats.
Kill the Boer is as innocuous a political slogan as From the river to the sea is. Any stupid ass American approaching the subject as if it is solely a liberation chant is woefully misled and/or completely ignorant. It wasn’t solely a liberation chant/song at any point in history and sure as shit isn’t now.
Back to Trump and what I know from many discussions with the people who live there: you’re right to make fun of him. There is absolutely no genocide and he is exaggerating everything or just plainly making things up. However, to be as flippant as you were about the current situation is insane to me. Both friends have said the situation in the county has changed drastically and palpably in the past decade. No, there isn’t a genocide. But absolutely yes, there are individual farmers who have been murdered for specifically being WHITE farmers. What my friends say is not that it is now suddenly rampant and they feel like they’re going to be killed any day. They say the discussion about it has completely changed. How it is brought up in public in day to day settings, at a coffee shop, at work, with coworkers, with a taxi driver, etc. is completely different. How my friend from college put it (me paraphrasing) is that it is similar to running into a very far-left type in the states and bringing up something completely insanely horrible a far-left protestor extremist did, the person you’re talking to will immediately act and respond as if you’re trying to attack them and they need to protect their party. I.e. if you talk to a leftist and say “wow the protestors really shouldn’t be barring Jews from using public spaces on campus” and the person responds “well have you seen what Israel is doing to Gaza?!?!”
According to my *sources* that sentiment is becoming more and more prevalent. Except it’s not a random campus protest about something happening on the other side of the world, it’s a racially motivated murder that happened in their country.
Again, they aren’t worried about getting murdered. There is no genocide. But, they have noticed a drastic shift, and they have started to get nervous although I have asked both and neither plans on moving yet. One is born and raised there, my college friend single handedly started a company there that is entirely owned and operated in SA and now is engaged to a woman from SA, so they both have good reasons to stay.
Further on the EFF, family friend says he won’t associate with anyone that at all hints that they’re part of that party. Associate meaning, he won’t be around. And my college friend has said if he is out and sees someone who supports EFF at the same venue/bar, he will make sure to not interact with them at all and stay as far away as he can and if he believes there is a large group of them there he would leave.
No one I have talked to thinks they’re just a calm liberation party that only wants peace. Everyone I have talked to has said they’re not genocidal, but they’re certainly in the main very racist, aggressive and confrontational. Like, they’re not going to wait for you to round a corner and kill you, but they very well might kick the shit out of you.
There is a way to make fun of Trump and not diminish complete and total insanity that is occurring in the country’s politics.
I for one woke up to news that an insane person killed two Israelis in DC for being Israeli and found that singular instance an enormous problem. Mainly, because the guy was chanting a slogan probably 10% of the country was on board with, and sitting congress members wouldn’t comment on the murders (looking at you Ilhan you raging antisemite). Having ~10% of a country chanting horrible shit with people in government believing the horrible shit worries me. And by all accounts our problems here are 1/20th as big as they are in SA. Our problem x20 doesn’t get you anywhere near genocide. But it is certainly still a major problem to me.
Canceled my subscription over their smug laughing about this. I just don't have the energy or time to waste listening to this shit.
That’s a little extreme imo. We’re not going to agree with every one of their opinions on any given topic, and given the amount of content the boys have there will be the occasional bad take and/or misunderstanding. And to their credit they’re usually really good about acknowledging the criticism we voice here.
Hard to believe when one looks at the decay of S.A., a country with daily rolling black-outs, > 30% unemployment, mass crime & the largest private security sector in the world, that there anything to laugh at.
Trump makes people dumber & he certainly worked his magic on the hosts of this particular episode.
I mean this isn’t exactly a podcast for nuanced analysis of the minutia of South African instability, it’s pretty clear they are laughing at the sheer spectacle of Trump’s performance in the Oval Office and being in way over his head trying to discuss another countries internal issues.
No it isn't, but these guys have been able to provide enough nuanced commentary on practically everything else over the last half decade, so for them to be so shoddy and dismissive for something like what has been happening in South Africa is just downright pathetic. The idea that Matt proposed, that these land oppropriations is not much more different than iminent domain laws in the US is just lazy and disappointing. You can have a host of opinions of I.D., but we aren't talking about building a freeway offramp or building a pipeline; we are talking about a person losing their land because of their race. Matt would be losing his shit on this in any other context. Maybe its the Gen. X bias to only understand South Africa as an aparthaid state, but their commentary about modern day South Africa (even if only from 2010) is just sad. Kemele described the "kill the Boer" by anologizing Boer to the aparthaid regime. Setting aside the wonderfully toxic notion of associating racial groups with political regimes, that EFF chant literally follows "Kill the Boer" with "the farmers". There is no fucking confusion about that chant.
Matt libertarian-brained that HARD.
Perhaps not. But it is not too much to ask for a 30 minute review of almost any material on modern day South Africa which would evidence a state on the verge of collapse. The lack of curiosity from the hosts of the Fifth Column is unexpected. It was a tad shocking to hear formally color blind Kmele pull out Apartheid, as a defence to modern day lynching of white farmers in South Africa.
Despite what movies portray, states don’t collapse all at once. They collapse, when the electricity no longer works, when the police have been privatized, when 70% of people > 25 years old don’t have jobs and can’t read.
Like I said, Trump makes people dumb. Have a laugh at Trump. But when South Africa turns into Zimbabwe, I’m pretty sure the smug amusement at whatever Trumps 2025 gaff was, isn’t going to be very funny.
I really don't think Kmele would defend the lynching of anyone. It seems to me he was describing the downstream effects of apartheid on the psyche/behavior of the populace.
If I say that "white people lynched black people in the south due to historic and cultural issues for the two centuries preceding those actions" I'm not offering that history as a "defense", but rather an attempt at analysis/explanation. You can disagree with his analysis, but I think it's uncharitable and inaccurate to suggest he was defending the practice of lynching.
They are also laughing at the hypocrisy. Everyone on the populist right did nothing but complain how the left racializes everything, but now its ok because it's a "white genocide". Not to mention the fact that there are plenty of other areas in the world where there are just as bad or worse injustices happening and nobody in the MAGA world gives a shit about any of them or are calling for the refugees to come here.
This is idiotic. Just because it’s not a white genocide doesn’t mean it’s not anti-white racism.
And the left racializing everything was anti-white racism too, but not solely. When they went after other groups, like the Jews or Asians or wayward non-black individuals like Kmele who didn’t sign up for their nonsense, they tagged them “white adjacent”. I’m sure plenty of stupid things were said by right wingers and it’s not a genocide, but there’s plenty of open anti-white racism in Sourh Africa and it’s not just rhetoric but calls for violently taking their land, even if saying so makes you feel “cringy”.
As far as refugees go, if Americans don’t want to let in another Dearborn Michigan, population 109,000 that will cause a Democratic president to holdback support for one of its closest allies as that ally is attempting to rescue American hostages from terrorist militias and rid itself of a genocidal threat on its border, that strikes me as prudential. Perhaps the white South Africans are antisemitic or otherwise have deeply anti-American western values too, in which case I agree, don’t let them in. But generally speaking, i don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that 60 wealthy English speaking Christian refugees might not do something like elect 2nd generation American mayor who vows to illegally arrest the Prime Minister of the US’s closest mid east ally should he enter his dumb city where the dumb mayor ignores diplomatic immunity and the foreign policy of his own country because his loyalties are to a refugee camp hellbent on exterminating its neighbors, whose population grew during a supposed 19 month genocide.
Do you realize the irony in this response? My point is that I would prefer we move away from framing everything as some kind of race war, regardless of which side of the political spectrum it's coming from. I have no problem with these South Africans being granted refugee status here in the US, but the only reason Trump cares or even knows about this situation is because he has wealthy South African donors like Elon Musk and David Sacks. It would just be nice if there were actually any coherent set of moral values coming from this administration instead of just constant culture war political theater to satisfy the base. There is no reason we shouldn't be allowing the same refugee status for properly vetted people from Ukraine, Sudan, Venezuela, etc. Just looking for some ideological consistency, but that is probably too much to ask in todays political climate.
Wild, because only months ago people were complaining that TFC didn’t critique Trump enough 🤣
OP’s comment was TL,DR but I also only made it about roughly 10 min before having to pause and post here.
Moynihan’s trying to compare seizing land with no compensation for racial justice there to eminent domain with compensation for a public good purpose here??? Obviously eminent domain has been abused and rights violated but it doesn’t compare.
Echoes of Trump’s response to Putin killing adversaries- the US kills people, too.
That, I think, is the most aggressive what about ism I've ever witnessed.
A small clarification: he targeted a Jewish event (he bought a ticket to it 3 hours beforehand) at a Jewish museum. I don't think we have evidence that he knew there would be Israelis there but your point of course stands. And Sarah was an American Jew and Yaron Christian Israeli. Thanks for all the other details.
Thanks for sharing this. South Africa is a complicated place that feels similar to the USA but is pretty unfamiliar in a lot of ways, which is why I think a lot more people would be interested in it if they had exposure to discussions like this.
That being said, in my experiences living here, South Africans, especially white ones of a certain age, tend to exaggerate the threat *they* face in day to life. Does this diminish the reality of crime people face? Certainly not. Still, it's an important distinction that is not without differences. The bulk of crime is experienced by non-white people inflicted by other non-white people (obviously not a good thing). Unless you've visited South Africa (sorry to be a Douglas Murray here) it's hard to articulate that contradiction.
I 100% agree with your rehashing of criticisms of the EFF too, because they're have anti-democratic, violent tendencies and proudly espouse their admiration for Lenin, Stalin and a host of failed African revolutionaries. Thankfully, *and this is very important*, South African society is not persuaded by radical talk like this and the data backs this up.
While gross and something I don't believe should be sung, the Kill The Boer song is understood to be a liberation song that factually didn't inspire masses of people to go out and kill white people during apartheid or in the years immediately following its toppling. Similar to the river to the sea? I'm not sure because the ANC never once premised it's fight against apartheid as the elimination of white people. Malema was found guilty of hate speech in 2011 for the song, but then found not guilty in 2022 for the song. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it isn’t the case that this song is broadly accepted and sung - it isn’t, and people have been debating its longevity after liberation for over a decade.
At the same time you're not wrong for pointing out that the situation in South Africa is far more fucked up than those pushing back against Trump want to admit or even know. And this is where you and I agree about the reaction to Trump: People hone in on his delivery of the content without stopping to consider that the content is still correct. Still: What he did was ridiculous and worthy of derision, especially because his premise was a racialised interpretation of a broader problem. That’s incorrect and deserves push back - humorous or otherwise.
There has been a shift in the conversation in South Africa too, which you point out. But I'm not so sure it's categorically negative as your *sources* suggest and would think that the vast majority of South Africans I know and interact with every day, would disagree (while at the same time absolutely agreeing that crime is one of, if not the, biggest issue facing the country.)
South Africa is so contextual and the experience of it unfortunately too determined by race and class, to take what someone says wholesale (and that goes for me too).
Fair reply in every way. Some items I’d quibble with as I’ve heard differently. And the age range is 31 to 74 and the two individuals have never met each other or know of each other. But, my difference of opinion is at the very margins and I am not well versed enough to go into that level of detail without tripping all over myself.
Cheers mate. I’d buy ya a beer if I could!
At least in the west, most of the people chanting "from the river to the sea" do have a relatively innocuous interpretation of that slogan.
Stop giving Jake Tapper credit for coming around to being correct after 70% of the country already did. He asked one good question two years before the election? Please. It's embarrassing.
This so much. The only way you could not see the decline of Biden is if it was willful ignorance. I think this where being friend's with someone ("we like Jake") keeps them from really going after someone who deserves it.
Also Tapper showed his true color of being a hack during the Parkland town hall.
Tapper is more interested in the celebrity, prestige and promotional opportunities for himself with this book than he is than genuine consequences or repercussions that should arise from the content in the book. He is not a journalist. He is a wannabe celebrity who will protect his friends and colleagues first and foremost.
Anyone else see Jon Stewart’s mashup of Tapper promoting his book on the air? Now that gig is up, he’s cashing in on what he knew the whole time. Fuck that nerd.
I hope Israel doesn't "wrap it up" until Hamas is destroyed, the hostages are returned, and they're pretty sure the Palestinians can't pull another October 7th.
Moynihan gives Tapper way too much credit for slapping his name on Alex’s book.
The repeated comparison of eminent domain to expropriation without any compensation was really weak and felt quite unserious.
Surely some enterprising video editor could compile clips, if they exist, of Jake Tapper grilling Joe Biden, administration officials, and other democrats.
Tapper deserves more heat than he’s getting not less. He’s also become the lightning rod for it by the sheer shameless audacity to put his name on Alex’s book.
This is the ANC literally a week ago:
https://x.com/MbalulaFikile/status/1922237764788961358?t=8lsZTaCJKx1pzxQS7fsI_g&s=19
You do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to them".
https://youtu.be/zY0l2FtdMY4
Kill all the white man by NOFX
Do the Jews count as whites? Because Borat’s Throw the Jew Down the Well is a family favorite and timeless classic.
I sing it to the 2 year old while swinging him in the air in a faux attempt to throw him down said well. Fun for the entire family.
https://youtu.be/Vb3IMTJjzfo?feature=shared
Everytime I see Kill the Boer mentioned, that pops into my head. I can’t help it.
That is an all time classic, but Fat Mike is a Jew so I don’t think they were included.
I'll sum up this episode by quoting the great Thomas Sowell:
"This is an age when people who are contributing nothing to society gain fame and fortune by denouncing those who are contributing something, because those who are contributing something are not doing so the way idle on-lookers would wish, or in a way that those ignorant of the process would consider right."
—THOMAS SOWELL—
Irreverence or poor taste may provoke, but ignorance reveals a deeper failure—of understanding, not just decorum.
I find it interesting that the first example people reach for when pointing out how bad the Saudis are is almost always the (admittedly horrifying) murder of one well-connected columnist, and not the some 300,000 deaths they caused in Yemen. Or their long-running propagation of extremist Wahhabi ideology. Or the fact that a Saudi intelligence agent paid for two of the 9/11 hijackers to get an apartment in southern California and filmed himself casing the Capital before the attack. Or the fact that they've taken the side of the Salafist factions in almost every regional proxy war in the past couple decades. Khashoggi was the least of their sins.
Pulling the "Golden Dome" string a little, it wouldn't work like the Iron Dome does AT ALL, but journo-types have to stop calling it impossible. Don't be dumb.
Whether or not we should be paying for it is up for debate, that's fine. But that project is not about driving mobile rocket launchers around the border like it is in Israel.
I was hoping there would eventually be an episode on white genocide!
That was my email haha I was amped after watching the media briefing. Tons more I could say, like about that “burial” site, which it wasn’t. Who the fuck buries bodies, and so many, next to a highway? No one. It was a memorial of people killed (still not good). I suppose the calm part of Ramaphosa is emphasised when you consider that he was there, in the heart of the resistance to apartheid, in the 1980s and crucial to the democratic negotiations in the early 1990s. With that backstory I wouldn’t have been surprised if Ramaphosa gave into an emotional response. Nevertheless, the fact that Ramaphosa had to push back against stupid white genocide claims by emphasising how crime ridden the country can be isn’t a good look- in that awful position, keeping things as calm as they did is good on them. And MM is right: The ANC has a very chequered past. Anyway, cheers!
David, thanks for your input. How much of the problem is related to devaluation of the currency and widespread, worsening poverty, and what led to it? If you have a good resource for background review (or anyone), I would greatly appreciate it. I once knew something about deals post apartheid w/ WTO etc., but it is all fuzzy now.
I'm not sure how much currency devaluation has affected the economy. Countries like South Africa, emerging markets, have currencies that are often affected by shifts unrelated to currency devaluation but I'm pretty ignorant on macroeconomics. The reasons South Africa are in the state they're in (highest inequality in the world, nearly 50% unemployment for young people, 20k+ murders in a year with 58 million people) is, in my view, two fold:
1) The deliberate institutionalisation of white supremacy (perhaps the only real example of this) for nearly 350 years (apartheid is the shortest part in this history).
2) The hollowing out of the state by the left-wing socialist arm of the ANC and its godfather, Jacob Zuma. When he became president in 2009, almost everything trended negative for about 10 years. Under the guise of transformation, which is a real and necessary project of modern day South Africa, Zuma and has goons made a good effort to steal everything.
For books: The President's Keepers (Jacques Pauw) is a good one on #2. For #1 I think the book MM mentioned by Riaan Malan, My Traitor's Heart, is a fantastic, fantastic read - even 35 years later.
There are other underlying factors to be sure these two are the dominant forces.
Yes, but why is no one talking about the femigenicide in the Gongo?
(If I'm the only one here that gets that reference I will seriously reconsider how I spend my time)
Fart at 48:22