White Victimhood Gone Viral: South African Farm Violence Activists

• In Event: Political Ethnography and Fieldwork in the Study of Contemporary Populism

Abstract

Utilizing cases of violence against white landowners by black laborers in South Africa, this paper argues that the brutality of extra lethal violence provides an opportunity for mobilization not only by perpetrating populations, as extant literature has already theorized, but also victim populations. Organizations representing those who perceive themselves to be connected to the victims of such violence—white, mostly rural, and largely conservative South Africans—stand to benefit from focusing on the brutality of such violence. Both perpetrator and victim groups could benefit from exaggerating the extra-lethality of such violence, not least because organizations representing white farmers draw more members and funds in increased threat environments. The advocacy of right-wing white groups like Afriforum and the Suidlanders has led to high profile media appearances, as well as parliamentary speeches in South Africa and Australia, as well as comments by elected officials in the US, the European Parliament and Australia. Despite a dearth of evidence that such crimes are centralized, directed or systematically on the rise, the alt-right in the US, Western Europe and Australia has recently taken up the cause of South African farmers as a central story of their narrative of white victimhood in 2018. At least 3 foreign documentaries have been produced this year alone on the topic. US tours by South African white activists have resulted in White House meetings and prime-time interviews on major news networks. This paper examines the ascendency of the white violence narrative from its origins in South Africa through to its current popularity, despite an overall lack of empirical evidence of any kind of crisis, impending or actualized. Using qualitative approaches, this paper examines not only the diffusion of a narrative, but the shifting frames and utility of the narrative across contexts. An ethnographic approach to these questions allows for examinations of the ways in which audiences and ideological entrepreneurs engage in an iterative and co-constitutive process of defining community and victimhood.

Author

• Carolyn Ethel Holmes, Mississippi State University