As the de-facto leader of the right-wing opposition to land reform in South Africa, AfriForum’s deputy CEO Ernst Roets recently appeared before the South African Parliament’s Constitutional Review Committee to provide a high-profile presentation outlining the objections of the white community to “expropriation without compensation.” Having built up a significant profile at home and abroad in far-right conservative circles, Roets perhaps expected to be treated with deference as an authority on the subject, but instead his confrontational address united the country’s entire political class against him. In his statement, Roets accused the ANC of “Marxism-Leninism,” said that the idea that white people stole the land was “the single biggest historical fallacy of our time,” and accused the entire Parliament of being “drunk” on ideology and hatred for white people. In return, as Pieter du Toit notes, his speech was “met with anger, none more so than from the white and Afrikaans MPs representing the ANC, DA and ACDP.” One by one, MPs of all races and parties chastised Roets, calling him “arrogant” and a “disgrace.”

How did we get here? Although South Africa’s land reform debate has been going on for a while, it has largely come with a lack of data and a clear policy. In this vacuum, AfriForum, a white, Afrikaner “civil society” or “lobby group”—a white supremacist organization that has been trying to present itself as mainstream—was able to position itself as the most prominent opponent of land reform, and for a while seemed to be winning the public relations war. Moreover, after launching an international campaign against land reform and sending a delegation to the United States earlier this year, it looked like the far-right had also successfully hijacked the international reception to land reform (helped also by the international networking of fringe group Suidlanders and North American alt-right bloggers). As the myth of “white genocide” in South Africa picked up traction among the white right in Europe and North America, it also seemed to be seeping slowly into the mainstream. Outlets including the Wall Street Journal and the BBC (whose original headline read “South Africa Risks ‘Zimbabwe-style’ land chaos”) irresponsibly echoed the right-wing narrative that land reform threatened to turn South Africa into another Zimbabwe, or perhaps even Venezuela. In Australia, “white genocide” narratives have been disturbingly successful, promoted even by cabinet ministers. Notably, the success of the far-right in spreading its narratives was made easier by the fact that the South African government failed to do any of its own outreach to the international community.

Then, late on August 24, 2018, US President Donald Trump, apparently responding to a segment about South Africa on Fox News, tweeted that he would direct Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to “closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers.” In doing so, Trump mainstreamed the racist conspiracy theories that have been propagated by white nationalists in South Africa and their international supporters. The far-right in South Africa and around the world was jubilant—but if they had expected Trump’s endorsement to rally the world against the government’s plans for expropriation without compensation, it may have actually had the opposite effect, at least momentarily.

Mainstream reporting in response to Trump’s tweet has been surprisingly good—not only have major outlets widely dismissed the content of Trump’s tweet, they have also correctly highlighted its origin with white supremacists. The editorial board of the New York Times condemned Trump’s statement in harsh terms, calling it a “white nationalist myth,” and its news headline reads that Trump “Seems to Embrace Racist Narrative.” Reporting by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, all identified the origins of Trump’s claims with white supremacy groups, and have provided historical overviews with sympathetic (if cautious) appraisals of the need for land reform. Countless explainers fact-checked the claim of white genocide, and debunked the statistics presented by Fox News.

In South Africa, the response from the media to Trump has been both offended and amused. SABC News New York correspondent Sherwin Bryce-Pease posted his immediate critical reaction in a video which was widely shared, and eNCA, a private media company, posted a fact-check video criticizing Fox News for not having its “facts straight.” During my own interview on SABC News, my interviewer himself referred to Fox’s Tucker Carlson’s segment as “a tirade based on a lie,” and “pathetic to say the least.” The editorial of South Africa’s Business Day came out in defense of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and the political process of consultation over land reform. As Africa is a Country’s Sisonke Msimang has argued, the incident may have even backfired for AfriForum: “Trump is held in such low regard among reasonable people” that his endorsement of AfriForum “signaled a setback” for its efforts to win over moderates in South Africa. Outside of far-right Afrikaner circles, Trump’s tweet was not the least bit welcomed.