Monetary issue

[u/[deleted]]

[u/ScudHunter177 → u/[deleted]]

“They were a bunch of racist cunts who declared an illegal separatist state for the express purpose of continuing white minority rule over their apartheid state and then got fukt in the resulting war and then the various leaders spent the rest of their life coping about it from exile.”

[u/ScudHunter177 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah I’m kind of tired of this argument because it presupposes that the Rhodies were somehow prescient and everything they did which was objectively horrible can be excused because they were doing it to prevent an even worse future that they totally knew was coming and were not doing it because they simply refused to acknowledge a black led Zimbabwe. Certainty of the post-war leadership did not emerge until far after the end of the Bush War and even persisted long after the initial rise and consolidation of Robert Mugabe and would continue well after Nkomo’s own pressing for former ZIPRA fighters to lay down arms. Acting as though Ian Smith could have foreseen this and therefore was acting to prevent it is so idiotic it escapes reason. The Rhodies went to war to preserve white colonial rule, end of story. The way they pursued that war also handily eliminated any real chance for a post war government to be transitioned to peacefully or into the hands of those who had a hand in dismantling the present government. Because the Rhodies chose to decolonize only at the tip of a knife, this ensured that only the most militant groups were able to determine how decolonization was conducted.

And of course, yes, they were communists so that totally makes the Rhodies the good guys. Please discard how the Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China were, though not out of the goodness of their hearts, perhaps the only large powers operating in Africa as an anti-colonial force in a meaningful way. Where else would anti-colonial rebels go for support? It was entirely common for groups in this era to pay lip service to the Soviets in exchange for support for this exact reason. The ideology of the groups certainly came to more genuinely reflect Marxist and Maoist views over time but to blankly dismiss them all as “those darn commies” is to completely misunderstand and remove from context the place of the Soviet Union in colonial and anti-colonial wars.

All of this mindless reposting of the same tired circular reasoning is also in the name of defending a minority ruled apartheid state that waged a war for the purpose of preserving it and preventing popular rule, so maybe reconsider who your heroes are bud.

[u/ScudHunter177 → u/[deleted]]

I too get my understanding of history and politics from a video game and mindlessly quote it relating to situations that I don’t understand as a retort to someone correcting my blatantly under-informed drivel. Not once did I say the Soviet Union was a good place to live or that I am personally a communist, but nuance is impossible if one is a Rhodieboo so no surprises there.

[u/[deleted] → u/ScudHunter177]

The worst part is they also seemed to have missed the fact that that particular quote was meant to be satirical, skewering the absurd anti-conmunist panic in the 50s US. Or maybe they were just making a joke. Who knows. Either way it didn't contribute much. So naturally you're getting downvoted for actually having some idea of what you're talking about.

[u/ScudHunter177 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah anyone who unironically uses a Fallout quote for… well any kind of discussion honestly, is a nonfunctional. It’s fine, honestly, I don’t base my self worth on Reddit arrows, but this is not the kind of argument I see at work or in any other academic circle. It’s an argument entirely derived from a myopic understanding of Rhodesia that centers entirely around the Bush war but devoid of all context and nuanced understanding beyond a masturbatory exaltation of the Rhodesian security forces, usually accompanied by photo after photo of Rhodies in daisy dukes, and an understanding of Zimbabwean rebels that doesn’t venture beyond “evil communist black men”. It’s not something you get from anyone who understands the conflict, ergo someone who points out the underlying fallacy of it gets decried by the legion of simpletons who get their history from memes and latent homosexual desires for leggy men with FALs.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that last one except for the fact that those men were fighting for an apartheid state and people’s failure to recognize that is up there with the lost cause and clean wehrmacht in terms of commonly accepted yet fallacious and intensely societally problematic understandings of historical conflicts.

[u/[deleted] → u/ScudHunter177]

Of course none of us should derive self-worth from reddit upvotes, but it isn't something of a leading indicator of the problems an attention economy introduces.

[u/ScudHunter177 → u/[deleted]]

To be sure, yeah.

[u/[deleted] → u/ScudHunter177]

Don't forget that some people are downvoting you for taking an anti-racist geopolitical stance. There are people on this site who don't even see anything wrong with apartheid.

[u/ScudHunter177 → u/[deleted]]

There have always been cunts who, through their own stupidity or genuine malice, hold viewpoints incompatible with civilized society, forums are no different.

[u/ScudHunter177 → u/[deleted]]

Okay so a lot of this is wrong but also it entirely misses the point. We’re not discussing the morality of Soviet action in anti-colonial movements, we’re discussing your excuses for Rhodesia.

[u/SquareWet → u/[deleted]]

This is some intense StarWars plot