The Daily Reid: American apartheid
MAGA isn't just a political system. It's a modern chapter in the long and ugly history of global apartheid movements.
Good Tuesday, everyone. A question: how you know you’re in apartheid? It’s worth thinking about, because we are. It’s helpful first to understand that apartheid is a form of fascism. It was implemented in South Africa two years after the end of World War II (in 1948) as their version of what in the U.S. since the close of the Civil War was called Jim Crow.
Just like in America, South African apartheid consisted of legalized racial segregation, officialized white supremacy, and whites-only access to the best land and housing, the best jobs, the best education, and every other benefit of what civil rights leader Medgar Evers called “first class citizenship.” Under apartheid, only wealthy, land-owning white men are full citizens. Everyone else (including poor whites and even wealthy white women) are effectively their property … whether they know it or not. So what does that have to do with us? Unfortunately, a lot. Because we are currently in the clutches of not just Trump’s maga movement, but also what tech industry followers refer to as the Paypal Mafia. Here’s a helpful rundown from The Guardian:
In recent months Musk’s promotion of far-right conspiracy theories has grown, from a deepening hostility to democratic institutions to the recent endorsement of Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). He has taken an unhealthy interest in genetics while backing claims of a looming “white genocide” in his South African homeland and endorsing posts promoting the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory. Increasingly, his language and tone have come to echo the old South Africa.
He is not alone. Musk is part of the “PayPal mafia” of libertarian billionaires with roots in South Africa under white rule now hugely influential in the US tech industry and politics.
They include Peter Thiel, the German-born billionaire venture capitalist and PayPal cofounder, who was educated in a southern African city in the 1970s where Hitler was still openly venerated. Thiel, a major donor to Trump’s campaign, has been critical of welfare programs and women being permitted to vote as undermining capitalism. A 2021 biography of Thiel, called The Contrarian, alleged that as a student at Stanford he defended apartheid as “economically sound”.
David Sacks, formerly PayPal’s chief operating officer and now a leading fundraiser for Trump, was born in Cape Town and grew up within the South African diaspora after his family moved to the US when he was young. A fourth member of the mafia, Roelof Botha, the grandson of the apartheid regime’s last foreign minister, Pik Botha, and former PayPal CFO, has kept a lower political profile but remains close to Musk.Musk’s formative years in the 1980s came amid a cauldron of rebellion in the Black townships which drew a state of emergency and a bloody crackdown by the state. Some whites fled the country. Others marched with the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement against any weakening of apartheid. …
Apartheid fascism involves not just the bitterness of racism and the arrogance of perceived racial hierarchy, but also a deep sense of victimhood among the very group it turns into permanent winners.
The South Africa into which Musk was born in 1971, and to which Thiel moved as a child from Germany, was led by a prime minister, John Vorster, who had been a general in a fascist militia three decades earlier that allied itself with Hitler.
The Ossewabrandwag (OB) was founded shortly before the second world war. It opposed South Africa entering the war as an ally of Britain and plotted with German military intelligence to assassinate the prime minster, Jan Smuts, as a prelude to an armed uprising in support of Hitler.
Vorster made no secret of his sympathy for Nazi, or National Socialist, ideology which he compared to the Afrikaner political philosophy of Christian nationalism.
“We stand for Christian nationalism which is an ally of National Socialism,” he said in 1942. “You can call this anti-democratic principle dictatorship if you wish. In Italy it is called ‘Fascism’, in Germany ‘German National Socialism’ and in South Africa ‘Christian nationalism’.”
Smuts’s government took a dim view of that and a few weeks later interned Vorster as a Nazi sympathiser.
At the end of the war, the OB was absorbed into the National party, which then won the 1948 election, in which Black South Africans had no vote, on a commitment to impose apartheid. In 1961, Vorster joined the government as minister of justice and five years later became prime minister.
Nazism may have been defeated in Europe but Christian nationalism was alive and kicking in South Africa under Vorster, with its own brand of racial classification and stratification justified by the need to keep the “swart gevaar”, or black danger, at bay.
In schools, Christian nationalist education sought to forge a South African identity around a singular version of the country’s history. Musk and Thiel were taught that the Afrikaner, mostly the descendants of Dutch colonisers, was the real victim of South Africa’s strife whether at the hands of grasping British imperialists or treacherous Zulu chiefs.
Apartheid didn’t just exist in South Africa before Mandela and the ANC took over, or in the U.S. before the civil rights movement won it’s battle with the racist South (at least temporarily) with the help of successive presidential administrations and Democratic supermajority congresses. The six million or so European settlers who even after the end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade flocked to Africa to mine for gold or create agricultural plantations (often turning indigenous Africans into slave labor) implemented it under various names in virtually all of their colonies: from Namibia to the Congo and Kenya to modern day Zimbabwe (formerly called “Rhodesia.”) What the settlers almost always had in common is that they reserved the best land, the most economic opportunity, and all of the civil, human and voting rights, for themselves. That’s how Black Africans, and indentured Asians and mixed race “colourds” knew they were in apartheid.
Erasing Medgar Evers
Medgar Evers, a Black Mississippian and that state’s first NAACP field secretary, who took that job after enlisting in the Army and fighting in World War II; surviving the German nazis, only to be assassinated by a white supremacist American nazi on June 12, 1963, was buried that summer with full military honors at the personal behest of President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy, along with his vice president, former Texas Senator Lyndon Johnson, knew that American apartheid was unsustainable. The demographics of the country — its core, accidental multiracialism — simply would not sustain segregation forever.
Despite that fact, which remains just as true today, Evers, who was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Biden just last year, was recently erased from the website at Arlington National Cemetery that helps visitors find prominent interred heroes. His erasure, part of the deletion of a section honoring Black war heroes, was conducted under orders from the current president: Donald Trump, as part of his broad “anti-DEI” executive order, whose goal appears to be, to place America back under apartheid — wherein only white men enjoy full citizenship, including the potential for inclusion in the heroic narratives of the nation.
Under apartheid, as in all forms of fascism, Black heroes do not exist, nor can they. And neither they, nor any woman, nor any gay, lesbian or trans person can be uplifted in the official history of the nation. The story a nation must tell itself; its students and especially its children under apartheid is that only one kind of hero — and one kind of full citizen — exists: white men. And even then, only the “right” kind of white men; namely the conservative Christian white men who form the preferred class in the nation’s conservative social order. Only they are entitled to the “first class citizenship” Evers once demanded for Black people. Only they are fully and automatically entitled to a first class education, access to capital to start a business, access to good jobs including federal employment, access to healthcare, bodily autonomy and even access to research that could help people live longer. These other, secondary citizens may matter in some ways — mainly as a pool of cheap labor — but they matter less. Their citizenship is less valuable and more tenuous, and always exists at the discretion of Full Citizenship White Men. In such a world, no white man could even really be considered a criminal for ending the life of a Black man. This is why lynchings were once considered perfectly legal and normal among white Americans. And this is how you know you’re in apartheid. The lives of “the others” lose their inherent value. Here’s how Mississippi Today reported on Evers’ erasure:
World War II veteran Medgar Evers, whom President Trump called “a great American hero,” has been erased from the Arlington National Cemetery website, which featured a section honoring Black Americans who fought in the nation’s wars.
The U.S. Army purged the section that had lauded the late Army sergeant and civil rights leader, who was assassinated by a white supremacist in Jackson in 1963. The decision to erase Evers came after an executive order by Trump to eliminate all Diversity, Equality and Inclusion programs.
Former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Reuben Anderson, who gave Trump a 2017 tour of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, said he can’t imagine the president would want Evers removed. “That’s got to be a mistake,” he said. “That involves a great American who served in the military and was one of the most courageous Americans of all time.”
The White House could not be reached for comment.
Evers is far from the only war veteran whose name has been struck from the website. So was Army Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers, who was awarded the Medal of Honor in the Vietnam War.
“He got shot three times in Vietnam and survived,” said U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson. “History has not been kind to minorities, whether women, people of color or religious groups. Part of what we do in the greatest democracy known to man is to correct the record.”
The Mississippi Democrat said if the Trump administration truly cared about veterans, it wouldn’t have fired 80,000 people from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. “You think it’s hard to get a medical appointment now?” he asked. “You take 80,000 out of that system, and it’s not going to work.”
In 2013, Arlington National Cemetery held a service honoring Evers and his family on the 50th anniversary of his assassination, where Evers drew praise from Republicans and Democrats.
Mississippi’s entire congressional delegation pushed for Evers to posthumously receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom, which his family accepted last year.
But that was before we were back in apartheid.
A page about another Black military hero, Maj. Gen. Charles Rogers, who earned the Medal of Honor for his leadership during the Vietnam War, was also taken down, then quietly restored after an online backlash on Bluesky and even on X-Twitter. But eagle-eyed users noted a deeply offensive change:
After the DOD profile on Rogers was taken down, its URL returned a "404 - Page Not Found" message — and as noted by social media users like Brandon Friedman, an Army veteran and former Obama administration official, the page's URL in the Medal of Honor Monday series was modified to add "dei" to part of its URL: "deimedal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers." Attempts to load the original page redirected to that "dei" link instead, with the 404 message.
The situation changed Monday morning: the page was restored, then seemingly taken down and restored again. Along the way, the "dei" URL was removed; it now redirects to the original page. The "dei" error page can be seen on a version preserved by the Internet Archive.
The Trump-Elon regime is clearly not trying to be subtle. Either that or they are breathtakingly careless and incompetent, and just mass deleting any online record with the word “Black,” “woman” or “gay” in it. Either way, they are disappearing Blacks and women from the official history of the United States, in pretty much every federal agency website. And they’re doing this while replacing four star generals with TV hosts and highly decorated Pentagon leadership with lower ranked white dudes — as if to send the message that there is no height a Black man or woman can reach that makes them superior to even the least qualified white man.
It’s why it should be unsurprising that Trump has stocked his second administration with friendly billionaires, the WWE lady, people from his favorite TV shows and moral weathervanes like Marco Rubio. These are the kinds of people who won’t even try to run their agencies. They’ll eagerly dismantle them on Trump’s and Elon’s orders. They’re not meant to be excellent or meritorious. The fact that they are in-your-face-unqualified, actually sends the message to the secondary citizens of the United States that you will never gain opportunity or favor under the regime through excellence, but rather only through obedience. That too, is a core tenet of fascism.
And as if to be even more literal, the regime is now working to make segregation great again:
After a recent change by the Trump administration, the federal government no longer explicitly prohibits contractors from having segregated restaurants, waiting rooms and drinking fountains.
The segregation clause is one of several identified in a public memo issued by the General Services Administration last month, affecting all civil federal agencies. The memo explains that it is making changes prompted by President Trump's executive order on diversity, equity and inclusion, which repealed an executive order signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 regarding federal contractors and nondiscrimination. The memo also addresses Trump's executive order on gender identity.
While there are still state and federal laws that outlaw segregation and discrimination that companies need to comply with, legal experts say this change to contracts across the federal government is significant.
"It's symbolic, but it's incredibly meaningful in its symbolism," says Melissa Murray, a constitutional law professor at New York University. "These provisions that required federal contractors to adhere to and comply with federal civil rights laws and to maintain integrated rather than segregated workplaces were all part of the federal government's efforts to facilitate the settlement that led to integration in the 1950s and 1960s.
"The fact that they are now excluding those provisions from the requirements for federal contractors, I think, speaks volumes," Murray says.
It does, especially about one of the federal government’s most prolific contractors. Peep this September 28, 2023 memo which still exists, for now at least, on the website of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission:
FREMONT, Calif. – Electric car maker Tesla, Inc., violated federal law by tolerating widespread and ongoing racial harassment of its Black employees and by subjecting some of these workers to retaliation for opposing the harassment, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit filed today.
According to the EEOC’s suit, since at least 2015 to the present, Black employees at Tesla’s Fremont, California manufacturing facilities have routinely endured racial abuse, pervasive stereotyping, and hostility as well as epithets such as variations of the N-word, “monkey,” “boy,” and “black b*tch.” Slurs were used casually and openly in high-traffic areas and at worker hubs. Black employees regularly encountered graffiti, including variations of the N-word, swastikas, threats, and nooses, on desks and other equipment, in bathroom stalls, within elevators, and even on new vehicles rolling off the production line, the EEOC said.
The EEOC’s investigation also found that those who raised objections to racial hostility suffered various forms of retaliation, including terminations, changes in job duties, transfers, and other adverse employment actions.
The EEOC investigated Tesla after EEOC Chair Charlotte A. Burrows filed a commissioner’s charge alleging that Tesla violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by subjecting Black employees to an unlawful hostile work environment and retaliating against employees for opposing harassment. Title VII prohibits racial harassment and requires employers who receive harassment complaints to take prompt and appropriate action to investigate and stop it.
After first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through conciliation, the EEOC filed its lawsuit (EEOC v Tesla, Inc., Case No. 4:23-cv-04984) in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The EEOC’s lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages, and back pay for the affected workers, as well as injunctive relief designed to reform Tesla’s employment practices to prevent such discrimination in the future.
“Combatting systemic harassment in workplaces is a key strategic enforcement priority for the EEOC. Unfortunately, as the lawsuits EEOC has filed this fiscal year show, racial harassment remains a persistent problem in employment. Every employee deserves to have their civil rights respected, and no worker should endure the kind of shameful racial bigotry our investigation revealed,” said Burrows. “Today’s lawsuit makes clear that no company is above the law, and the EEOC will vigorously enforce federal civil rights protections to help ensure American workplaces are free from unlawful harassment and retaliation.”
EEOC San Francisco District Office Director Nancy Sienko said, “When you let a standard slip, you’ve set a new standard. Determining that prolific racial slurs do not merit serious discipline and failing to correct harassing conduct sends an entirely wrong message to employees. It also violates an employer’s legal responsibility to act swiftly and effectively to stop race-based harassment.”
EEOC San Francisco District Office Regional Attorney Roberta L. Steele said, “The allegations in this case are disturbing. No worker should have to endure racial harassment and retaliation to earn a living six decades after the enactment of Title VII.”
A year before the EEOC stepped in, Tesla was sued by the State of California, over allegations that its Freemont, California plant was … wait for it … racially segregated….
Kevin Kish, director of the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, said Wednesday that the agency sued "after receiving hundreds of complaints from workers" regarding Tesla's Fremont factory.
After investigating those allegations, officials found evidence that the Fremont factory "is a racially segregated workplace where Black workers are subjected to racial slurs and discriminated against in job assignments, discipline, pay, and promotion creating a hostile work environment," according to a statement from the department. [Emphasis added]
"The facts of this case speak for themselves," Kish said, adding that the department would continue to take steps to "keep workplaces free of harassment and racism."
Here was Tesla’s response to California at the time:
Tesla strongly opposes all forms of discrimination and harassment and has a dedicated Employee Relations team that responds to and investigates all complaints. We also have a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion team whose work is shown in this public report. Tesla has always disciplined and terminated employees who engage in misconduct, including those who use racial slurs or harass others in different ways. We recently rolled out an additional training program that reinforces Tesla’s requirement that all employees must treat each other with respect and reminds employees about the numerous ways they can report concerns, including anonymously. Above all, Tesla continues to seek to provide a workplace that is safe, respectful, fair, and inclusive—all of which are vital to achieving our mission.
Tesla is also the last remaining automobile manufacturer in California. The Fremont factory has a majority-minority workforce and provides the best paying jobs in the automotive industry to over 30,000 Californians. No company has done more for sustainability or the creation of clean energy jobs than Tesla. Yet, at a time when manufacturing jobs are leaving California, the DFEH has decided to sue Tesla instead of constructively working with us. This is both unfair and counterproductive, especially because the allegations focus on events from years ago.
Over the past five years, the DFEH has been asked on almost 50 occasions by individuals who believe they were discriminated against or harassed to investigate Tesla. On every single occasion, when the DFEH closed an investigation, it did not find misconduct against Tesla. It therefore strains credibility for the agency to now allege, after a three-year investigation, that systematic racial discrimination and harassment somehow existed at Tesla. A narrative spun by the DFEH and a handful of plaintiff firms to generate publicity is not factual proof.
I mean … 50 is a lot of occasions…
And while Trump and Elon can’t do anything to the State of California (and Tesla has since pulled up stakes for apparently more segregation-friendly Texas…) one of the first things Trump did, a week after he was inauguration for his second regime was to fire the leadership of the EEOC, including Commissioners Jocelyn Samuels (who is Black) and Charlotte Burrows, as well as the agency's general counsel, Karla Gilbride, leaving the five-person agency without a quorum. Last month, Gilbride gave an interview to Democracy Now in which she said;
So, I was fired last week as general counsel of the EEOC. That’s the position that heads the litigation program. As you mentioned, two of the four commissioners, two who were appointed by President Biden, were also fired. And that is unprecedented. There have never been commissioners fired before the end of their term. And this is not the only agency where Trump has done this in recent weeks.
And the EEOC was established as part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to ensure equal opportunity in the workplace based on — make sure people are not discriminated on based on race, based on sex, based on disability, age, national origin or religion. And I am concerned that President Trump removing commissioners will imperil that mission. …
…I am concerned about not only the many actions that the president has taken to exceed his powers under the Constitution, but also the influence of private, unelected representatives of corporations, like Elon Musk, most notably, through his role with this shadowy Department of Government Efficiency, which is involved in lots of different agencies.
Meanwhile, in the still flickering embers of America…
A federal judge has ruled the doge dismantling of USAID to be unconstitutional and orders Elon and friends to restore employee access to their computers.
Trump, Elon and doge are preparing to nuke 60,000 Pentagon jobs.
Democrats on the Federal Trade Commission find out it’s their turn to get doged.
Trump may be maga’s god, but he’s hardly the top dog. If he was, Vladimir wouldn’t have kept him on hold for an hour while he took his time getting to their meeting.
Maga is snuffing out free speech in America, as evidenced by the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil and raids on other students and professors who dare to speak up for Palestinians.
And Chuck Schumer, who doesn’t seem all that hopped up on the whole “free speech” thing when it comes to Palestinians, has postponed his book tour in fear of protests by those who happen to mind him selling out Medicaid and every other social program to vote for Trump’s tax cuts for billionaires blank check.
This as Israel is back to full scale bombing Gaza, killing hundreds more people in the last two days.
Honest to John, Joy, I hope you run for office. You’re brilliant!
This is such a well-written essay, backed up by evidence and leading to Joy's obvious conclusion that we're back to a segregated US. I'm honestly interested in where the white men are who aren't in favor of being the only first-class citizens. Yes, I've read from white male writers, and heard from a few white male politicians, but where are all the other white men who should be making it loud and clear that they're against these moves by Trump and Musk.