Echo chambers of misinformation — the Afrikaner Facebook groups chasing Trump’s refugee offer

Media bias.

19 May 2025

A number of Facebook groups targeting Afrikaner refugees have exploded in popularity since the initial group departed for the US last week.

Many of the Facebook groups popular with prospective Afrikaner refugees to the US are private and require users to fill out questionnaires and do background checks to prove their Afrikaner-ness. Daily Maverick gained access to one such group.

The groups are, unsurprisingly, heavily pro-Trump, anti-ANC and riddled with misinformation. There are also a number of WhatsApp groups in which hopeful refugees share their experiences and offer advice for applying to the US.

Most of the content shared on these groups is largely targeted towards cementing the idea that Afrikaners are victims of racial discrimination and prejudice in South Africa, frequently making reference to the debunked “white genocide”.

Speaking to reporters after a Cabinet meeting last Thursday (15 May), Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said: “South African Police Service statistics on farm-related crimes do not support allegations of violent crime or genocide targeted at farmers generally or any race group.”

Read more: US decision to resettle Afrikaner refugees is ‘misinformed’, says Cabinet

The members of these Facebook groups, however, still believe they are being singled out.

The posts frequently link to videos by right-wing content creators, such as former DA member of Parliament Renaldo Gouws. The videos often make reference to or claim that Afrikaners and farmers are subjected to prejudice and discrimination by the government or black people in general.

Afrikaners Trump refugees

Gouws found himself in a hotbed of controversy after a racist video resurfaced after he posted 15 years ago. He has since apologised for his actions.

Read more: Ex-DA MP Renaldo Gouws settles hate speech case, apologises for racist video

Professor Herman Wasserman from Stellenbosch University’s Centre for Information Integrity in Africa explained how fake news tends to thrive in these types of environments.

By being antagonistic towards mainstream media, these groups “legitimise their own information or misinformation that they share in what is called echo chambers or filter bubbles online, where they only speak to themselves and where there’s no fear of contradiction or fact-checking”, he said.

Trump as a saviour

The frequent depiction of Trump as a sort of saviour in these echo chambers is also common.

Wasserman argued that populist leaders like Trump or Vladimir Putin often portray “themselves and are held up by their supporters as some sort of saviour for them and as a strong man”.

He added that Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan is a way of signalling that he is some sort of saviour of America and American values.

“And the Afrikaners would find resonance with that because they often also are mired in a sort of victimhood discourse, the whole idea of white Afrikaners being persecuted, being attacked, being discriminated against, being unfairly robbed of jobs, all of that stuff. That’s all a victim discourse,” said Wasserman.

Read more: Let’s not call these Afrikaners refugees — they’re background extras in Maga’s noisy scam

He added that by awarding refugee status to the Afrikaners, Trump is seen as coming to save them from this reported victimhood, and that’s why they see him as a saviour.

Dr Nicola Davies-Laubscher, a postdoctoral fellow at Stellenbosch University’s Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology, who researched how misinformation is spread on Facebook by Afrikaners during the Covid-19 pandemic, found many similarities between her research and the current groups.

She explained that her research found that the themes of the misinformation being spread echoed the popular rhetoric that came from the US and Trump’s administration, similar to the content being shared by the prospective “Amerikaners” refugees.

“There’s definitely this perception that the Afrikaner goes into a rabbit hole of misinformation that’s very closely aligned to right-wing or right-centred populist rhetoric from America,” she said.

Cultivating ‘fake news’

The members of at least one group, numbering about 1,300 members, which Daily Maverick accessed, instructed its members, as prospective “Amerikaners”, to avoid contact with the media at all costs.

They seem to particularly have it in for News24 after its critical reportage on the refugees.

Davies-Laubscher explained that people are told they need to do their own “research” by going to right-wing podcasts or Facebook sites to get what they would term the truth or real news, as opposed to trusting mainstream media.

“What I found interesting in my study was that the misinformation in the comments echoed the talking points and catchphrases commonly used in right-wing US media, such as Fox News, during the pandemic,” she explained.

Wasserman also cautioned that all the coverage of the Afrikaners and their claims can be seen to legitimise their allegations.

“The fact that there’s so much attention to this and so much coverage of this, I think it will certainly be seen as a legitimate news event. And that in itself elevates this whole discourse to something that is now being taken seriously. We have to constantly remind people that the content of this victimhood is based on lies and factual inaccuracies,” he said.

“There’s been a deliberate attempt by Afrikaner lobby groups to push that narrative [victimhood] and it is being circulated further.”

Wasserman also explained that the refugee status is the result of years of active lobbying by Afrikaner interest groups.

“So, if you are asking what is the impact of all this, this is one big impact, one big effect of a long campaign of misinformation.”

Pawns in a game

Wasserman said there has been a gap in media coverage of the Afrikaner refugees. According to him, the media has to do more to remind the public that the refugees are pawns in a larger geopolitical game.

“We can make fun of them and so on, but they should not bear the brunt of our anger and our rejection. They probably don’t realise this, but they are pawns, they are chess pieces in a much bigger political game.”

According to Wasserman, the refugees are being used by Trump in his domestic agenda, where he is appealing to his predominantly white and very conservative voter base, who want to see evidence of a black government that uses diversity to transform society, and to see that that government has failed.

Read more: Trump’s Afrikaner refugees — the search for white victims

Davies-Laubsher also noted that there is a racial dimension to the refugee programme.

“What I think we’re seeing with Trump is a definite racist element. I’m not saying that all [59] people who went to America are racist, but there’s a racial overtone and a sense of racial superiority,” she explained.

Wasserman added that this could play into Trump’s geopolitical agenda to punish and discredit South Africa’s stance against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

“So, by issuing this directive to accept the Afrikaner refugees, in the same breath, he is almost criticising South Africa for its position at the ICJ,” he said.

“So, yes, we can focus on these guys and interview them, but I don’t think their views are going to be incredibly surprising or interesting. They are basically just parroting and repeating what this political agenda is feeding them.”

The ‘refugees’

The initial group of refugees who have traded their braais for barbeques do not fit the typical mould of a refugee. Among them are IT experts, factory workers, a hairdresser, housewives, farmers and pensioners who left a comfortable upper-middle-class life in the suburbs and boutique guest farms.

The UN Refugee Agency defines refugees as people who “are unable to return to their own country because of feared persecution as a result of who they are, what they believe in or say, or because of armed conflict, violence or serious public disorder”.

Crime statistics do not support the group’s validity as refugees.

Statistics giving the rate of homicides per 100,000 persons, as reported by the Sunday Times, indicate that in rural and peri-rural areas black Africans bear the brunt with a rate of 52.6, while coloureds are at 45.3, Asians at 22 and whites only at 11.6.

Guy Lamb of Stellenbosch University’s political science department told the Sunday Times that “violent crime in South Africa is highly concentrated in about 150 urban and peri-urban areas. Residents in these areas are mostly black African.”

This paints a very different picture from what Trump and other lobbyists claim is happening in South Africa. DM

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Politics

Trump as a saviour

Cultivating ‘fake news’

Pawns in a game

The ‘refugees’