South Africa, Gaza, Greenland: Trump 2.0 and the global settler colonial imaginary

We analyse statements by US President Trump issued since returning to the White House in early 2025 and focus on pronouncements concerning three particular sites: South Africa, Gaza and Greenland. A coordinated array of specifically settler colonial imaginings emerges: South Africa is a site of past settler struggle–a spectre, it must be punished and turned into a warning; Gaza is a site of contemporary settler struggle–it must be erased and emptied of its inhabitants; Greenland is imagined as a site of future settler colonial endeavour–it must be subdued and pre-emptively owned. We observe the articulation of a fully-fledged global settler colonial imaginary with populist characteristics, and a general move away from apologetic settler colonialism and towards a form of aggressive or unapologetic settler colonialism.