Rick Stengel on U.S. Taking South African Refugees: ‘Deeply and Morally Wrongheaded and Repulsive’

Wallace: “If the outlines of Trump’s mass deportation plans weren’t already clear, earlier today, the Trump Administration formally lifted protection from deportation for Afghans in the United States, claiming that conditions in the Taliban-controlled nation of Afghanistan had improved enough for them to go home safely. Nearly, simultaneously, a U.S. charter plane carrying dozens of South Africans known as Afrikaners, the white ethnic minority that created and led the brutal apartheid regime in South Africa, landed in the United States of America, where the Trump Administration has admitted them as refugees here, claiming that they have been discriminated against for jobs and have been victimized by violence, expediting a process that normally takes years. That happened as Donald Trump has virtually halted refugee admission in America for people fleeing war and famine in places like Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Back with Rick, Marc and Eddie. Rick Stengel.”

STENGEL: “Yes, so deeply and morally wrongheaded and repulsive. These are the descendants of the people who created the most diabolical system of white supremacy in human history, apartheid. They’re not directly responsible for it, but it was a system that actually moved black people off of the arable land, so they inherited the land that the black people had to give up. It was called forced removal. Something called a Bantustan Policy, where they moved black people out of the cities and farm lands into these remote areas with non-arable land. I mean, it was just one of the most worst processes ever. But what has happened in this strange, bizarre world we’re living in is that the Afrikaners have become the darling of these right-wing white supremacist movements around the world. That it’s like — it’s like the lost cause for them. It’s like the old Confederacy. They’re held up as these white Christians who are being dispossessed of their land. It’s like this is a modern replacement theory in a country where, by the way, white people make up 7 percent of the population and own 78 percent of the farmland. So it’s actually, there’s no injustice here, as you mentioned, it’s taking places away from refugees who are really being crushed by authoritarian governments and military governments, for these folks who have never had anything happen to them. And Trump, amazingly, called it a genocide, one of the worst lies I’ve ever heard him say. There’s just been a small handful of farmers that have been killed over the past 10 years. No land has actually been expropriated. So, it’s just a farce and a sham and a moral ugliness.”