Rhodesia And The Decline Of The West

Will Tanner had an excellent thread on X on what happened to Rhodesia, and the lessons it holds for the West today. I've shared it in full below, followed by a link to excellent essay by Helen Andrews on what happened next. 

Before we get to that, a quick follow up on yesterday's post ("Why They Forced Forced Biden Off The Ticket"). In that post, I linked to a Bitcoin-related trade idea, ahead of Trump speaking at the Bitcoin conference this weekend. I added another crypto trade in the Portfolio Armor Substack on Tuesday, which you can read about here. 

Now on to Tanner's excellent thread. 

First, what was Rhodesia?

It was the little land north of South Africa and south of the Belgian Congo, where decolonization meant chaos and slaughter that effectively hasn't ended since the Belgians left

Despite being landlocked and underpopulated, it was an economic… pic.twitter.com/U6hBkaV1tR

— Will Tanner (@Will_Tanner_1) July 23, 2024

But despite its economic success, resistance to communism, and its hope to chart a course in Africa where the whites wouldn't face the fate of those left behind in Congo or Kenya and where blacks wouldn't face the same fate as in South Africa, America helped the USSR destroy it pic.twitter.com/tWQVMjih2z

— Will Tanner (@Will_Tanner_1) July 23, 2024

Why? Why destroy an agricultural land that mimicked Britain at its Victorian height?

Because Cultural Marxism and liberalism generally had rotted the West from the inside. It was no longer comfortable with itself and its old values, and so wanted to destroy them pic.twitter.com/8krF3dIfTc

— Will Tanner (@Will_Tanner_1) July 23, 2024

As a reminder, the Old World, and much of the new (South America and the Cavalier South) were ruled by hierarchy: landed aristocrats, whether titled or gentry, handed down their wealth and prestige from generation to generation pic.twitter.com/DFFmyKBfeB

— Will Tanner (@Will_Tanner_1) July 23, 2024

But they weren't to destroy all wealth in the impossible quest to eradicate poverty; Jesus reminded us that the poor with always be with us, after all

Instead, donated was responsibly spent on bettering the circumstances of the poor, such as by building worker cottages pic.twitter.com/WM3vvHCLPT

— Will Tanner (@Will_Tanner_1) July 23, 2024

Then came Marxism and Leninism, the twin ideas of enforced egalitarianism and weaponized grievance

Death duties, punitive income taxation, social leveling, and hostility to beauty resulted from those impulses, destroying much of the Old World mindset pic.twitter.com/H7GZmnQCWa

— Will Tanner (@Will_Tanner_1) July 23, 2024

Hatred of hierarchy meant hatred of colonialism and imperialism after all, so Britain and France effectively helped communists carry out atrocities in Algeria, Kenya, the Congo, and more as they left and helped the "national governments" accede to power pic.twitter.com/PbZVQic5cs

— Will Tanner (@Will_Tanner_1) July 23, 2024

So, the UK, and eventually America under Civil Rights Carter and his friends like Andy Young, embargoed Rhodesia. It couldn't import fuel or weapons and so was slowly strangled by the West as communists funded and armed by the USSR and Red China murdered civilians in horrible… pic.twitter.com/2wD37Zcygw

— Will Tanner (@Will_Tanner_1) July 23, 2024

That conduct matters, and it's largely the reason the West is no longer functional and, indeed, often abetting its own destruction by importing hordes of foreigners

It's no longer self-confident, and as such, no longer willing to stand for the traits that made it great pic.twitter.com/bGQPkZBWmd

— Will Tanner (@Will_Tanner_1) July 23, 2024

Now, instead of moon landings, concertos, and palaces, "we" have brutalist architecture, rap music, and food stamps

Was that a good tradeoff? Was it worth it?

Or should we have sided with Rhodesia as it remained the last outpost of the Old World, beset by grievance politics of… pic.twitter.com/Nmk9N6zrJI

— Will Tanner (@Will_Tanner_1) July 23, 2024

Oh, and I should have added this earlier, but also check out @k9_reaper to understand the similar events happening in South Africa, and check out this interview we did with him on the subject, in which we mention the Bush War: https://t.co/ZULkXHDIC8

— Will Tanner (@Will_Tanner_1) July 23, 2024

For Further Reading 

Helen Andrews' essay Zimbabwe's Trauma is an excellent complement to Tanner's thread, if you'd like to learn more. 

I'll leave you with just a brief excerpt from it, addressing a few misconceptions about Rhodesia: 

It was, for precisely this reason, a waste of breath for Rhodesians to defend their regime on the facts — and, to be fair to them, they had no shortage of facts on their side. Secondary-school attendance among black Africans was higher in Rhodesia than anywhere else on the continent in 1960. Spending on African education tripled in the seven years before Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965. A quarter of the students at the integrated national university were black. Apart from its anomalous neighbor to the south, Rhodesia was the only sub-Saharan country where manufacturing accounted for more than 10 percent of GDP — one reason why, in the 1950s, real wages for black Rhodesians rose 40 percent in just five years. A booming economy meant that fewer blacks were willing to resort to the poorly paid domestic work that had long been a social flashpoint (and, it must be said, a magnet for politically reactionary white immigrants eager to live the grand colonial lifestyle on the cheap). Prosperity also produced such fashionable black suburbs as Marimba Park and Pelandaba, which observers admitted “compare very favourably with the best that can be found in England anywhere.”

Those who set material prosperity at naught compared with dignity and justice found Rhodesia equally ready with answers. The franchise was, and had always been, colorblind: Fifty Africans qualified for Rhodesia’s first election in 1923; 500 in 1953; and 65,000 under the two-tiered system in 1962, including 5,500 on the “A” roll (the more exclusive in Rhodesia’s two-tiered voting system based on property, income, and education). Racial discrimination in wage negotiations was abolished in 1959. Post offices and public swimming pools were integrated around the same time, and by the early 1960s white liberals in Salisbury were privately complaining that movie theaters and restaurants were abandoning the color bar faster than they could plan their sit-ins.

This history is worth remembering when hearing calls today for "racial justice". 

If you'd like to stay in touch

You can follow Will Tanner on X here, and his American Tribune here. 

You can follow Helen Andrews on X here, and check out her website here. 

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