In this episode of International Horizons, John Torpey talks with Heribert Adam, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, to unpack the global ripple effects of Donald Trump’s return to power. From his startling proposal to make Canada the 51st state to his controversial foreign aid cuts targeting South Africa, Trump’s policies are reshaping international dynamics. Meanwhile, Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance have stirred political tensions in Germany by supporting the far-right AfD party. How are these developments impacting global democracy, migration, and racial politics? Adam, a distinguished expert on South Africa and race relations, provides historical context and critical analysis on these pressing issues. Tune in for a deep dive into the international consequences of Trump’s second term.

John Torpey 

Unexpectedly, American President Donald Trump announced early after his return to power that he was interested in making Canada the 51st State of the United States. Then, as he ramped up his attacks on Diversity Equity and Inclusion programs and on foreign aid dispensed by the US Agency for International Development, USAID, he announced an end to foreign assistance to South Africa, arguing that the country was discriminating against Whites. This development, in turn, emboldened White supremacist organizations elsewhere in the world, including in Germany, where Elon Musk and Vice President Vance have just been talking up the Alternative for Germany, the AfD, a party whose stances, some think, violate the German Constitution. So what’s going on? Welcome to International Horizons, a podcast of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies that brings scholarly and diplomatic expertise to bear on our understanding of a wide range of international issues. My name is John Torpey, and I’m director of the Ralph Bunche Institute at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and we’re fortunate to have with us today Heribert Adam, who is Professor of Sociology Emeritus at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. He’s perhaps uniquely placed to comment on developments in North America, South Africa and Germany. He is German by birth, and began his academic career there. He specialized academically in apartheid era South Africa at its aftermath, and he’s lived in Canada for some 50 years. He’s a former president of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on ethnic minority and race relations. Among a number of books, he’s author with his wife and co author, Kogila Moodley, of the book South AfricaWithout Apartheid: Dismantling Racial Domination, originally published by the University of California Press in 1986, and with an expanded edition from the very prestigious German publisher Zorkamp, in 1987. They also wrote Seeking Mandela: Peacemaking Between Israelis and Palestinians, which was published in 2005 by Temple University Press. Heribert Adam was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in the year 2000. Thanks for being with us today, Heribert Adam.

Heribert Adam 

It’s a pleasure to be with you.

John Torpey 

Great to have you. So maybe you could start by telling our listeners a little bit about your academic career, because it’s a rather unusual story, and so it’ll be clearer why I wanted to have you on the podcast. How did you, as a young German scholar in the 1960s, get interested in South Africa?

Heribert Adam 

Well, I started studying Sociology at the University of Frankfurt in the late 50s, 1950s, and that was the height of student rebellion in Germany. And later, when I wrote my PhD, I came across a philosopher from South Africa who studied in Tubingen, and his name was Neville Alexander. I  didn’t pay much attention to him, but he interested me first in South Africa. When I later went to South Africa, I was informed that his theoretical discussion of how apartheid should be changed, costed him 10 years of prison in Robben Island with Mandela. I found that unbelievable that someone could be imprisoned for 10 years just for not participating in any violence, but just the thinking about how apartheid could be changed. Then I was invited by two geographers to actually go with them. They needed a sociologist to go with them to South Africa. The, one of the geographers was the head of a high school in Germany with whom I had frequent discussions. He was actually an apartheid supporter, and he said, you cannot judge the country without having been there. And so I said, yes, I come with you. They had organized a six months visit to the various, what they call ethnic universities. Each of the ethnic groups in South Africa had their own institution, and among those institutions was the Indian University in Durban. And at that Indian University, I met a lady by the name of Kogila Moodley, with whom I’m still married to, and that was the end of the story.

John Torpey 

So but I recall it’s, I have to confess, we’ve known each other for a long time, and my recollection was that you had a not very enthusiastic reception with regard to your interest in South Africa and in race while you were a student at the University of Frankfurt, which, of course, was the home at, you know, before and after World War Two of the so called Frankfurt School of critical theory, and you were in some ways connected to them. So can you tell me a little bit about that?

Heribert Adam 

Yeah, the Frankfurt School with Adorno as my supervisor, we were already a very politicized bunch of students. We protested, for example, as undergraduates in the streets against the Franz Josef Strauss, who had just been Defense Minister, and invaded the weekly magazine, the Spiegel. We didn’t engage in any violence, but we were very much interested in world affairs. And when Adorno came and said to me, why don’t you write your PhD on students at the time when Hitler came into power, it was known that the Hitler had the most support among fraternities, student fraternities…

John Torpey 

The bursenchaften.

Heribert Adam 

Yeah, the bursenchaften, and those who had to, who had a mark on the on their face.

John Torpey 

Dueling scar.

Heribert Adam 

Yeah. You wouldn’t expect that students actually were the most enthusiastic supporters of the Nazis, but they were, and so I started to investigate that at various universities and went into the archives. And indeed, that was a case. What what I did not know, what I learned at the time, Adorno was not interested in, or I should put it differently, Adorno reduced racism to antisemitism. There were no Black students in Germany at the time, and when Adorno spoke about racism, although he had been in exile in America, he meant antisemitism. And I had never met a Black, a Black person in my life. The first Black person I met was when the war ended and the Black soldier on a tank threw some sweets at me just to make some contact. I ran as fast as I could. I thought I had met the devil in person. And that was what, then I thought was a big gap, actually, to not know what the other half of the world, which is not White, was doing and thinking. And that also motivated me to go to South Africa, which I did in 1966 for the first time.

John Torpey 

So it changed your life, to, to put it in brief terms.

Heribert Adam 

Yeah.

John Torpey 

Okay, so it’s an interesting background story, of course. And like many German kids after the war, you know, lots of German American soldiers threw sweets out to the local kids who were looking for something to eat, I suppose, and ideally, I suppose, something sweet. But obviously a very different time in Germany and compared to today. So, but let’s speed fast forward to, you know, some of the issues that I wanted to talk to you about today. And you know, I think I started the introduction to the episode with this story about Trump, talking about making Canada the 51st state. I happen to have seen something on Facebook in the last couple days by Jean Chretien, the former Prime Minister of Canada, who was, shall we say, not, enthusiastic about this proposal, and kind of encouraging his fellow Canadians to insist on their independence and that sort of thing. I mean, I think it was the sort of idea that sort of one associates with Trump, and one doesn’t know whether this is a well thought out idea or something just came to him. And so a lot of people didn’t take it very seriously. But I’ve also seen coverage to the effect that Justin Trudeau, the current Prime Minister, takes it quite seriously. So I wonder what you could tell us about what’s going on there. Right. Well, we’ll just have to see what happens. I mean, the tariffs are sort of on again, off again, this country, that country, proposition. So it’s very hard to know exactly what’s going to happen. But let me turn to the developments with regard to the country that you’ve spent most of your life studying, namely, South Africa. As you know, Trump has made comments about howimpose sanctions basically on on South Africa for its alleged discrimination against Whites, basically has to do with some policies regarding lands that can be appropriate expropriated by the government. But maybe you could tell us a little bit more about what’s going on there and what you think the significance is.

Heribert Adam 

Well, I do think one should take Trump seriously, not so much for his ranting and outbreaks, but for imposing tariffs on Canada now, and it’s a serious business, and so the negotiations, negotiations are going on, how these tariffs can be avoided, but Canada is worried also about all the potential refugees which are coming to Canada when Trump wants to throw out millions of asylum seekers. We don’t know what these millions will do, whether they being rounded up, whether they allow that to happen. Canada responded to Trump basically with, with defiance. Today, people are asked to put Canadian flags out on their lawn and houses. This symbolic act does not impress Trump, but actually it led to a kind of backlash, the opposite of what Trump had in mind. The O Canada anthem is now some much more loudly at hockey games and anti Americanism and boycotts of American goods are totally all the time mentioned as retaliation for that ridiculous suggestion that Trump could incorporate Canada in his imagined empire, that is a pipe dream where 90% of the people have don’t want to be integrated. How do you rule those people? Unless you send the tanks into Canada. The sanctions which can under instituted against the states are also very smart. They exempted California and other democratic states and only affected the Republican majority bordering states, which also will suffer. And so we will see how that battle ends. Perhaps Trump sees light and will not start at the red war. No land so far has been expropriated from Afrikaners-Afrikaners, as the Afrikaans-speaking Whites. And when Trump now says, “I invite Afrikaners who feel discriminated to come to the States and settle here,” the answer from the Afrikaners who fetch Trump that idea first-and these were some right wing parties in South Africa, like AfriForum and Solidarity, they bombarded him with all kinds of complaints, and that way, he got the idea of giving Afrikaners preferential treatment in the US to resettle-say, actually said to him, “we don’t want to go to the States. We want to retain our Africana identity in South Africa on our own soil, rather than giving up our cultural life and being atomized Americans.” So that backfired, and when Ramaphosa-Ramaphosa is the president of South Africa-he tried to phone Musk to have a chat with him. Probably Trump had told Musk, you come from that god damned country, and you remember he once called Africa a shithole. He has never been to any African state. And when that happened, that phone call of Musk, of Ramaphosa to Musk, lasted for two minutes or three minutes, and then Musk came up with the words “change your race laws.” No. Change your race laws. That has been the case for a long time, non racialism and what the goal of Mandela and the race relations in South Africa are actually not bad. The  Institute of Race Relations, which is a very credible institution with the recent survey. In that survey, I think it were 57% said that race relations in South Africa have improved since apartheid was abolished in 1994 and only on there was a question asked, “Have you ever perceived racist incidents yourself in the last five years?” And 67% said that they had not experienced any racist incidents themselves. So race relations in South Africa are not bad, and only 1% of this sample, this survey, had, I suppose, a big sample, said that the land question, which is now a big discussion there, is with a high priority for the 1%, for 1% it was the highest priority, and I think it was unwise for Ramaphosa to actually bring that issue up. Who would want to invest in South Africa, in a country which had passed a law under the label economic expropriation without compensation? South Africa needs growth, needs to do something about unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, and that is not promoted in a country which has for ignorant foreign investors, particularly this expropriation without compensation debate.

John Torpey 

So, yeah. I mean, it may be that race relations, whatever exactly that means, are perceived to be good. But you know, as you’re suggesting, the big problem, the big problem of the  post Apartheid South African regime or country, is, you know, this economic differences between Blacks and Whites, and of course, a lot of Whites have left the country, so that may also help race relations. I’m not sure you know this firsthand, but I wonder you know what you would say about that.

Heribert Adam 

Yes, the exodus of Whites was quite dramatic, particularly since at one stage, at the height of apartheid in the 1980s there were 20% Whites in South Africa. Now they are 8% Whites in South Africa, maybe even less, because many grow abroad without declaring that they have immigrated. And so South Africa loses skills, loses also potential investors and that is a great pity, and I hope the government realizes this and makes actually attempt to invite Whites back. A lot of Whites feel nostalgic, and some Whites actually went back and resettled in South Africa after they had experienced, for example, Canada. I know quite a few families who lived here for 10 years and said South Africa is far better country than Canada to live in.

John Torpey 

Oh, can you explain on what grounds? I mean, other than the fact that they feel sentimental connection?

Heribert Adam 

South Africa is a beautiful country, scenic wise. It has a lot of problems with crime rates, and it differs very much from region to region. What most? Whites moved actually inside South Africa from with the Witwatersrand area into the Western Cape, which is the only province in South Africa which is ruled by the old liberal English Democratic Party, and where the violence is mainly confined, or the crime rate I should say, is confined to the townships, not in the richer white suburbs, which are fairly safe still.

John Torpey 

I see. Yes. I mean, it obviously had a reputation for having a serious crime problem. I mean, how that stands exactly now, but as in the United States, I mean crime, violent crime, happens in very specific places. It’s not evenly distributed across the territory, so I’m sure it’s the same kind of phenomenon that you’re talking about. So let’s turn then to the country from which you hail originally, and which has recently been visited by our sort of presidential wingman and former South African Elon Musk, and just in the last couple days by Vice President, JD Vance, who brought a message that was not particularly well received by European diplomats at the Munich Security Conference. You know, the AfD, the Alternative for Germany-Alternative for Deutschland-is a party that’s seen by the German intelligence services as potentially in violation of the Constitution. There’s been a lot of, well, there’s been the creation by the mainstream parties of a kind of firewall against collaborating, I shouldn’t use that word, but collaborating in parliament, in the Bundestag with the AfD and both Musk and Vance have basically tried to promote the AfD. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how, you know, that’s working and what kind of consequences it may be having for German politics.

Heribert Adam 

Well, in my view, Olaf Scholz, social democratic Chancellor, should not have run again for election. He should have left it to another social democrat. You mentioned the name earlier, Boris Pistorius, who was at the time before he said he is not interested in running as a chancellor candidate. He was one of the most popular politicians, or the most popular politician. He’s a current Defense Minister and but he didn’t want to run against the compete against the Scholz. Scholz has about at the moment, 16% of pollsters support. There are about more than a dozen polling firms in Germany constantly measuring with very large poles the mood in the population. And this Alternative for Germany as a very articulate leader by the name of Alice Weidel. There is in Germany a practice of gender parity for parties, and this Weidel has now much more support because of the incidents you all have read about or heard about of asylum seekers, particularly from Afghanistan, ramming their cars into crowds. In Germany, they just names the cities, Aschaffenburg, Solingen, now Munich, and with every incident like this, the number of percent, or the percentage number of the right wing party goes up. It was 21% I would guess it’s probably now 25% they still haven’t got a majority. The next chancellor will be a guy by the name of Friedrich Merz from the CDU, the Christian Democrats. He has been called the Trump, the German Trump, and he has lost a bit of support because he broke with what John you mentioned, namely, boycott the right wing party. And he did do so that led again to great anti-Merz demonstrations. The German electorate is totally split on that. Now, I should say, and don’t misunderstand me, not all of those members of the right wing party are Neo Nazis, but it has some Neo Nazis in the party, which which Musk has supported with huge amounts of money, and why do the leader doesn’t want to, at one stage she wanted to actually throw them out of the party. But in a recent discussion, I saw she said, how can I throw out someone of my party who has 25% support in his constituency? And so he’s still in the guy by the name of, I forgot his name now, totally when it comes to Hitler, totally, like in the Weimar Republic, in support of of what happened there, did the big debate. Debate is in Germany now about, also about migration into the country as it is everywhere, and the right wing party together with say they who is for remigration of those who were classified as having an immigration background. An immigration background meant, particularly Turkish people, that they came as guest workers to Germany. They were actually hired by by the government, by the guest worker state, they were naturalized, became citizens, and now they want to throw out some of those citizens and makes them remigrate because they’re not German, and that is a big question. Why? Why is that populist mood so prominent in many countries?

John Torpey 

Well, can I throw that question back at you? Because, of course, that is the question. I mean, people pointed to the things that Trump ran on here in the United States. But, you know, many people have observed that the problems of inflation were widespread across Europe in these, you know, many election kind of season, immigration is a matter that, you know, many people are upset about. So it’s clearly not, you know, it’s not only happening in in the United States. I mean, obviously what you’ve just described in Germany is not unlike what’s happening here. So you know, what do you and how do you interpret this? You’re a political scientist.

Heribert Adam  It’s a big question, yeah, how is what we call in academia, othering? How is xenophobia to be explained? I think, personally, we pay too much attention to the motivation of leaders in the literature and probably also in our talk. Now that is important, but it needs to be complemented with the question, why are so many people susceptible to these false prophets and what mobilizes followers? To follow Trump. We don’t know enough about the motivation of the Trump constituency, and here you need to go into-and that was actually the great merit that I learned at the Frankfurt School- into psychoanalysis and psychology, which is not very particularly psychoanalytic psychologizing. What makes people predisposed to hate others? Is it real grievances? Is it the feeling of the self worth is undermined? Is it fantasies? What is it that we cannot tolerate strangers in our midst? And I think that has a lot to do with the human condition, starting with birth, where many of you listeners probably will know the book by Adorno and others, The Authoritarian Personality that was a classic, iconic book, which basically said, once you are predisposed with a weak ego-this is again, Freudianism, which is not very popular-you try to impose and translate what you suffer in your upbringing onto other groups. And we know from experiments that you can even hate fictitious groups. Fictitious groups, in a lot of research presented to people who are predisposed are realistically prescribed as if they were real. Why is that so? Because obviously something when people need to be unloaded unto others, and that can be for Jewish people, is Arabs for Arabs, these are Jews for Hindus, these are Muslims and vice versa. So these are scapegoating. What makes for scapegoating? And I can go on and on, but I that’s not what you want to hear now, but that’s what I would say. That is a more important question, actually, than analyzing the motivation of leaders to research the followers.  Right. Well, thanks for attempting anyway, and answer it that question. You know, unfortunately, we’re probably going to have to pay a lot of attention to these questions for the next little while, and hopefully it doesn’t get too shall we say, out of hand. But on that note, we’re out of time. I want to thank Heribert Adam for joining us today from Simon Fraser University in Canada, and for sharing his thoughts about some of the International ramifications of the second Trump administration. Look for International Horizons on the New Books Network and remember to subscribe and rate International Horizons on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. I want to thank Claire Centofanti for her technical assistance, as well as to acknowledge Duncan McKay for sharing his song International Horizons as the theme music for the show. This is John Torpey saying, thanks for joining us, and we look forward to having you with us for the next episode of Internati