After threatening last weekend to go “guns-a-blazing” into Nigeria in defense of Christian Nigerians, President Donald Trump has ended protection for another group facing violence and political instability. On Wednesday, the Trump administration terminated temporary protected status shielding immigrants from South Sudan from deportation, even though the African nation has faced escalating violence, political instability, and food insecurity in recent weeks.
The announcement stands in stark contrast to another recent decision from the administration to give Afrikaners priority for asylum, even as the State Department moved to severely limit refugee admission to the United States. The president has justified prioritizing white South Africans by spreading misleading claims about the persecution and killings of white farmers.
While Trump’s immigration and foreign policy stances in relation to these three countries may seem disjointed, experts on white supremacy and Christian nationalism told The Intercept that it all fit into the white Christian nationalist playbook. Trump’s strategy feeds into his base’s fears over immigration and demographic change while positioning the president as a defender of Christian values.
“There is this myth that if [white Christians] lose a majority in the United States of America, then the white Christian civilization that we have built here is fundamentally going to be threatened … and that’s why you have to open your borders to the Afrikaners and close your borders to people who are not white and not Christians,” said Stephen Lloyd, a professor of theology at Loyola University Maryland who specializes in world Christianity as well as theology, ethnicity, and race in South Africa.
Trump’s narrative, however, flies in the face of facts on the ground.
After Trump threatened to deploy military action in Nigeria over claims that Christians were being persecuted, and designated Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” for alleged violations of religious freedom, Nigerian officials and regional experts quickly fired back.
“We are not proud of the security situation that we are passing through, but to go with the narrative” of a Christian genocide, Kimiebi Imomotimi Ebienfa, a spokesperson for Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Al Jazeera, “no, it is not true. There is no Christian genocide in Nigeria.”
While Nigerians have undeniably experienced violence at the hands of militant groups like Boko Haram, Christians have not been the exclusive target. In fact, much of the violence has been directed at Muslims who practice their faith in a way these groups disagree with.
“There are many Christian victims of violence in Nigeria. Nobody disputes that,” said Alex Thurston, an associate professor at the University of Cincinnati, who specializes in Islam and African politics. “[However], the idea of a genocide against Christians is the wrong framing. The violence in Nigeria affects many different Nigerians of many faiths.”
Research from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, an independent global monitor of conflict and protest data, found that of the 1,923 attacks on civilians in Nigeria,