How Real is Grok’s White Genocide Rumor?
Where did it come from, why is it being pushed on us, and who the hell are the Suidlanders that created it?
“I am become meme,” Elon Musk once declared at CPAC. It was a cringe declaration then and a cringe declaration now - and not even the fun kind of cringe, like an old John Waters movie or anything else decked in a kitsch aesthetic. It was cringe in the same way it is when your mom starts rapping along to Forgot About Dre and drops in with an extra emphasis on the slur in Dr. Dre’s verse. Or it was cringe in the same way that your uncle talks about “wokeism” at Thanksgiving.
At best, it was cringe in the same way that the new Lilo & Stitch remake’s ending is: they want you to think it’s endearing, but there’s definitely a cynical undercurrent of sinister messaging there. IYKYK, I will not be spoiling Lilo & Stitch here.
Elon Musk may have “become meme,” but everything about the man has become meme fodder for all the wrong reasons in 2025. There’s the infamous cheese hat, which represents his crushing failure in Wisconsin. There’s the “stonks crash” of Tesla as he worked harder and harder to destroy democracy as we know it. There’s even the “fraud gamer” controversy in which a number of gaming streamers (notably right wing chud and walking trashcan Asmongold) exposed Elon Musk for faking his video game achievements - a controversy that resulted in Musk unfollowing and removing the verification for Asmongold.
And then there’s the white genocide meme.
In the middle of May, something really weird happened on the platform formerly known as Twitter. People were asking Elon Musk’s AI model Grok, which is basically Twitter’s version of ChatGPT, really benign questions. Who was sitting next to Timothée Chalamet at the Knicks game? How many times has HBO Max changed its name? Can you analyze this cute little pig? I’m not really a fan of using AI myself, for a multitude of reasons, but you do you, Twitter. But I highly doubt the people who still use Twitter could have ever been prepared for what Grok was serving up:
This was far from an isolated incident, and it was a situation that went on for hours on May 14 until Grok finally seemed to be fixed. If you ask Grok now why it happened, it will respond by telling you it happened as a result of a “temporary glitch.” xAI, the creator of Grok, blamed it on a rogue employee.
But I’m not as concerned with HOW this happened. I’m not making the allegation that a white South African man named Elon Musk with backend access to Grok, who believes in the widely discredited “white genocide” theory in South Africa, is the rogue employee here. I’m more curious as to how the, ahem, “rogue employee” came to believe this theory in the first place. What exactly is this white genocide theory and why does it exist?
Before we continue, I have one thing to ask: could you please take my Substack survey?
I’m trying something out right now… since it’s YOU that keep the lights on over here, and keep me able to pay Jed for all his extra help on the Substack, I wanted to ask if you could pop on over to this Google Survey and answer a few questions for me. How are you liking it over here? Are the long form articles about topics you’re diggin’? Do you like the live interviews? Are you a fan of the Movie Club meet-ups with Dr. Shan? Do you HATE me? Just kidding about that last question… or… well… yeah, I’m just kidding.
CLICK HERE FOR THE SURVEY PLS!
It should take less than a minute, and all answers are going to be taken seriously as we continue to adjust the Substack into the main hub for all things V Spehar! I wanna give you what you want, so work with me and I’ll work with you, Dustbunnies!
And now - back to your regularly scheduled programming!
WHAT IS THE WHITE GENOCIDE THEORY?
Despite the fact that Grok’s discussion of white genocide in South Africa seems to have come out of nowhere, it’s something that’s existed as a conspiracy theory for quite some time. Hell, here’s a tweet from Trump himself back in 2018 granting legitimacy to it.
But what’s this all about? As Carla Hill and Mark Pitcavage write for the ADL, it’s a claim invented by white supremacists that, “South Africa’s white farmers are government-sanctioned targets of large-scale, racially-motivated killings by South Africa’s black majority and that actual “white genocide” was occurring in South Africa.” If it sounds like something your drunk uncle would point to as an example of “reverse racism” (whatever that even is), that’s because, well, it IS what your drunk uncle would point to.
The ADL pointed out that Andrew Anglin, operator of notoriously Nazi-adjacent (adjacent doing a lot of heavy lifting here) website The Daily Stormer, as well as Patrick Casey, the leader of alt-right group Identity Evropa, and Nick Fuentes, who you may know for being Nick Fuentes: Resident Neo-Nazi, praised Trump for this tweet at the time. I’m only prefacing with that so you know which level of bananas we’re operating at with this theory.
Like many white supremacist conspiracy theories, there’s a kernel of truth to it that has been WILDLY distorted into not representing reality:
“Some white farmers are actually killed each year in South Africa—as are many black farmers and many other South Africans, largely because South Africa is a country with generally high rates of violent crime. According to Africa Check, in 2016-17, 74 murders occurred during farm attacks—compared to 19,000 murders in the whole country. AgriSA, an association of agricultural unions in South Africa, has stated that the rate of farm murders is far lower in South Africa today than it was 20 years ago.
This is a far cry from the white supremacist claims of mass murder and ongoing “white genocide.” Those allegations are rooted in a long history: For decades, white supremacists globally were cheerleaders for the institutionalized white supremacy of apartheid in South Africa. They have reacted bitterly to the end of the racist policy, and to the progress South Africans have made in pursuit of racial equality and reconciliation.
White supremacists have seized upon some of the farm-related violence in South Africa since the end of apartheid to peddle a propaganda campaign that exaggerates and distorts the situation to imply that South African whites are imperiled. They also insist that unless action is taken, whites in Europe and the United States will face the same sort of “genocide” at the hands of non-whites and immigrants.”
This is further elaborated on by Fred Harter at The Observer, who notes that South Africa is indeed one of the world’s most violent societies, “with a murder rate of 45 per 100,000 people (the rate in the US is 6 per 100,000; in the UK it’s 1). According to analyst Chris de Kock, a specialist in crime in South Africa, there are roughly 50 murders a year on farms, accounting for less than 0.2% of all homicides.”
Okay, so if this is such a widely known exaggeration… why does it persist? Who’s keeping this kinda dreck alive? The ADL point to a lot of the usual suspects, like notorious neo-nazi and professional get-punched-er Richard Spencer, as well as Canadian alt right loser Lauren Southern and “American neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and antisemitic conspiracy theorist” Jason Kessler. But despite the influence that many of these folks had in Trump 1.0, many of them have lost a bit of their artificial shine this time around. And none of them made it up out of nowhere, either.
According to Fred Harter, the origins of the myth date back to the early 20th century, but it really started taking hold when late 90s conspiracy theorist bloggers began ranting about it in early internet spaces. And even then, it took a bit of a kickstart from a group known as… the Suidlanders.
WHO ARE THE SUIDLANDERS?
Most of these culty extremist organizations at least TRY to present as rational human beings. For example, on the website for AfD (Alternative for Germany, the “Nazi-adjacent” party we covered recently), AfD states “We are liberals and conservatives | We are free citizens of our country | We are convinced democrats,” before calmly writing “We came together in the firm conviction that citizens have a right to a genuine political alternative, an alternative to what the political class believes it can impose on us as "without alternative."”
And I mean, it SEEMS rational - you have to KNOW AfD are “Nazi-adjacent” to truly see the dog whistles for what they are.
The Suidlanders are… a bit less subtle.
“The Suidlanders, an emergency plan initiative officially founded in 2006 to prepare a Protestant Christian South African Minority for a coming violent revolution.”
That’s the very first line of their “Who We Are” section on their website. They are, in essence, a South African Doomsday Cult, with a heavy emphasis on the theory that Doomsday is only coming for White South Africans. The race war is inevitable, they’ve been prepping, and as the years go by, their preparations get more elaborate and more involved.
Take for instance reports from 2018 that Australia’s then Home Affair Minister Peter Dutton was working on fast-tracking visas for… white South African farmers… who “deserve[d] special attention” due to what he described as excessive violence and persecution. This itself followed reporting by a few News Corp columnists down under who also spread the myth of the white genocide.
You wanna know where this came from? According to Lloyd Gedye at The Mail & Guardian, “The centring of South Africa in the alt-right agenda can be traced to a Suidlanders tour of the US [in 2017].”
Yep. A previously unknown extremist group from South Africa, who claim to not be white supremacists yet center their messaging around “white genocide,” toured America and talked to a number of organizers, influencers, journalists, and in some cases, political figures, to talk about the murders on the farms.
The Suidlanders, which when translated from Afrikaans means South-landers, are a relatively new group founded in 2006 and claim to have anywhere from 130,000 to 150,000 members, though this seems quite dubious and is impossible to verify since they don’t keep membership lists. Though as Voice of America puts it, if this were true, it “makes them a minority in a nation with 57 million residents, most of them black.” And as for why a race war is inevitable:
“The group is cagey about what exactly will be the catalyst of the race war, having wrongly predicted that the 2010 killing of white nationalist figure head Eugene Terreblanche, and later the 2013 death of beloved South African president Nelson Mandela, would spark the fire,” Voice of America writes. “But its plan amounts to this: When the race war begins, the group will withdraw to the unforgiving, sparsely populated Kalahari Desert. Its members chose this remote, extremely dry and underdeveloped area, they say, because it is relatively unpopulated, meaning a minimum of people would be displaced by their move there. Leaving South Africa, the group says, is not an option.”
A name you’ll see a lot in relation to the white genocide race war theory is Suidlanders spokesman Simon Roche. Simon Roche is a bit of a tough guy to nail down biographically; he’s in his mid-50s, usually dressed in a button-up shirt and jeans and looking more like somebody’s plant manager dad than the spokesman for a “not white supremacist” white supremacist organization. According to Voice of America, he loves dogs, is a chain smoker, and is a self-professed “red blooded male.”
Roche was the main face at the helm of the U.S. Suidlanders tour; you can even see him in photos at the violent Unite the Right rally!
Roche himself claims that it was meeting with people like Lauren Southern and Mike Cernovich that kickstarted the discussion about white genocide in South Africa. “Roche and fellow Suidlander member André Coetzee went to the US for what was meant to be a three-week whistle-stop tour but it ended up going on from March to September,” The Mail & Guardian report. “They lobbied various alt-right groups, including people who have been publicly described as Nazis, fascists, racists, white supremacists, homophobes, anti-Semitic, anti-feminist and conspiracy theorists. Some have served time in jail for racial assaults and others regularly advocate violence in defence of whites. These include the likes of David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, a Republican state representative and an avid US President Donald Trump supporter, and David Spencer, a Nazi sympathiser, who coined the term “alt-right” to attract a new generation of right-wing supporters.”
Their influence spread further and further from here: first to Peter Dutton in Australia, then to Tucker Carlson… and finally, to the ears of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
And yet after this awareness campaign, the Suidlanders once again slunk back into the underground. Googling them today, you’ll find a huge lack of attention given their way between 2019 and 2024. That doesn’t mean that the Suidlanders or the white genocide myth went anywhere… it just means they were waiting their turn to speak again, which is exactly what they got when Trump granted refugee status to white Afrikaaners and Musk began pushing the white genocide myth through Grok.
The truth is this, folks: the Suidlanders are a rather obscure organization who came up with a false reality they then managed to manifest into the president’s mind, as well as the minds of some of the most unfortunately important people in the world. Peter Dutton, of Australia, was the LEADER of the Liberal Party. Donald Trump is the president of the US. Elon Musk is the leader of his own mind.
All of them believe that murders constituting a quarter of a percent of all murders in South Africa is a targeted systemic genocide… all while none of them believe in genocides happening elsewhere RIGHT NOW. The moral of the story is: never assume that evil truly goes away. We thought we had the Suidlanders handled in 2018 when they slunk back into the abyss. And here they are now… coming from the mouth of Grok.
Hey! One final thing!!!
When you’re a journalist that covers anything that has to do with politics, you might one day find yourself BECOMING the news - and not always in the most flattering of ways.
Political hit pieces are a reality, folks. If someone out there has an issue with whatever it is you’re doing, they will weaponize anything and everything to put you on the defensive at the most inopportune times. Whether it’s an old joke from when you were a kid, a poorly phrased tweet that didn’t quite land, or even previously positive coverage of now-disgraced public figures, the past can come back to haunt you in the most bad faith, out-of-context, ruthless ways imaginable. I mean, anybody who ever breathlessly reported on Harvey Weinstein’s charitable donations to the DNC or idolized Donald Trump the Businessman knows EXACTLY what I’m talking about!!
What makes being on the other side of the news MUCH more insidious is the way it opens bad actors into not only your private life, but your loved ones as well. And the worst part is… that information is usually publicly available because of data brokers, who collect and sell your personal data to anyone (for a price, of course). We’re not just talkin’ about your name here: we’re talking phone number, address, as well as the names of your partner and even children.
All that previous information of yours - AND theirs, too.
Theoretically, you can find one data broker and get that information removed, eliminating SOME of the risk of stalking, harassment, and identity theft. But data brokers are kinda like the Bush family. You can get rid of one, but another’s waiting right around the corner to get you. What’s a bespectacled New York lesbian to do?
ENTER: DeleteMe. DeleteMe is an extremely easy to use subscription service that will remove personal information of yours being sold online from hundreds of data brokers. How it works is it scans the internet vigorously for the unhinged data brokers selling your data, but then it does the extra step by handling any and all takedown requests for you. Suddenly, the bespectacled New York lesbian gets to have a PRIVATE life - without any fear that this line of work is suddenly going to put my family in the crosshairs, too.
DeleteMe even provides regular privacy reports so you can see how much data they found on you, where it was found, and where it was removed.
Right now, you can get 20% off all consumer plans using my coupon code UTDN20.
Thank you to DeleteMe for sponsoring this post and helping protect our online privacy by removing personal information from data brokers. Learn more at http://joindeleteme.com/UTDN20.
Don’t wait until it’s too late to safeguard your privacy. Make sure your data—and your family’s—stay protected this year!
But who is "Delete Me"... a spinoff from McAffee or Norton? Whose their money (and Daddy)...? I always want to "follow the money" In order to do what they do, they have to be able to do the dark web...right? Thanks for the rep, will look then up. McAffee keeps telling me my stuff is being "stolen", but they also want another $40 a year from me ;-D
Thank you for the thorough, detailed reporting on this! Understanding the history behind it is so helpful.