This is The Guardian.

Welcome to The Guardian long read, showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture, politics and new thinking.

For the text version of this and all our long reads, go to the Guardian.com forward slash long read.

How the U.S. far right bought into the myth of white South Africa's persecution by Eve Fairbanks, read by Catherine Fenton.

There's a little town in the scrub in South Africa, a full day's drive from the country's

big cities that has become perhaps the most scrutinized place on Earth, given its size.

It is nine square kilometers, 3.5 square miles, of suburban-style houses harboring about 3,000

people, with a main drag, a municipal swimming pool, one gas station, and some pecan farms.

Nothing of consequence ever really happens there, a fact the townspeople take as a point

of pride. And yet over the past three decades, dozens of English language news outlets have made a

pilgrimage to it, often more than once. The New York Times alone has run four dedicated profiles.

The essays have kept pace year after year, quoting the same people over and over, even as

nothing of note occurred. There's been no war, no disaster.

That changelessness is the point.

No people of color are allowed to live in the town, called Orania.

The name is a nod to the river that runs nearby.

Irania's founders established it in 1991, the year after South Africa's best-known black liberation leader and future president, Nelson Mandela, was freed

following 27 years in prison. Understanding that Mandela's liberation meant that white minority rule was coming to an end,

the founders trekked into the desert, bought a disused mining town wholesale, and established a colony.

Laws permitting, indeed mandating, spatial segregation by race, had just been abolished in the country. So they declared the town

private property. Orania's founders said they wanted to run an experiment. Could people of European

descent live in South Africa without relying on people of color to do manual labor, pump their petrol, and clean their

...