How a racist conspiracy has driven a surge in migration to Europe

Tunisia’s president embraced a conspiracy theory. Aggression against Black Africans in Tunisia exploded. An exodus followed. Anthony Faiola reports

Graves of migrants who died at sea remain unmarked in a cemetery near Sfax in Tunisia (Lorenzo Tugnoli/The Washington Post)

On the same day that Tunisia’s president warned of a “criminal plot” to overwhelm this predominantly Arab country with Black Africans, Komenan Assa’s landlord evicted her.

“He told me to take my baby and go,” says Assa, a 25-year-old Ivorian who moved to this port city five years ago. “It was clear to me: he was a racist who believed the president.”

Weeks later, amid an eruption of aggression against Black Africans that followed the president’s embrace of a “great replacement” conspiracy theory, Assa joined the exodus of people trying to escape. Her group made it eight hours in a flimsy steel boat, overpacked with migrants, before the vessel overturned in the Mediterranean Sea. As passengers struggled, her baby, Musa, was kicked out of her arms and drowned. Her boyfriend screamed her name before he went under, too.