The Afrikaner Broederbond originated partly from fears of demographic swamping and white degeneration

Evidence

The development from Dutch to Afrikaner was motivated and mobilized substantially in reaction to the projected threats of mixture. Where the Dutch came to pride themselves as robustly individualistic, Afrikaners were nothing if not invested in a homogenizing collective; where the Dutch deemed themselves diplomatic, Afrikaners were dogmatic; where the Dutch were entrepreneurial, Afrikaners were dour, even paranoid; where the Dutch are famously marked by their particular brand of repressive tolerance, Afrikaners collectively came to be known for their intolerant repression. Or so the stereotypes suggest. Racial sanctification elevated Afrikaner society in self-assessment, selfselection, and increasingly separation as God’s children, visions of modernday Israelites wandering in the deserted hinterland. Self-selection is often the cohering response to the paranoid threat of evisceration or extinction. Baptism was almost exclusively restricted to children of white parents, whether burgher (largely) or the expanding class of poor whites. Baptism furnished the mark of belonging to the sanctified class of the self-nominated, and so of maintenance, promise, or possibility of ascendancy. The stamp of salvation came to define power and privilege, elevation and exclusion, linking them ontologically and theocratically to racial conception and comprehension. Theo-political self-ordination and the unstinting drive to domination came to be increasingly firmly forged from this moment. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1383 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Broederbond arose from elite fears of Afrikaner dilution, impoverishment, and demographic swamping. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1533; Threatened privilege drove Dutch colonists into a homogenizing white Afrikaner identity — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1382; Afrikaner identity formed as a reaction against the threat of racial mixture (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Anticipatory threat of mixture forged Afrikaner ethnic mobilization and racial theology. #corroborates (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1383
• Origins of white response to blackness remain historically uncertain. #complicates (0.72)