Counter-Currents
1,877 words
The rise and fall of South Africa has garnered a great deal of attention in White Nationalist circles, as it should. The parallels between past and present events in South Africa and the contemporary White world portend tragedies and travesties not yet realized. However, the historical and sociocultural similarities between the former nation of Rhodesia, now referred to as Zimbabwe, and the postmodern White world are even more striking. It would be an immense undertaking to perform a thorough analysis of all of the similarities (and differences), and to do so goes beyond the scope of this essay. Instead, I will focus upon the parallels we postmodern White Nationalists can transpose from the Rhodesian experience to our own dire predicament, via several comparative historical vignettes.
T. E. Lawrence once declared that combating guerrilla insurgents is like “eating soup with a knife,” an allusion to the slow and messy process that would accompany such a bizarre undertaking, but it is an apt metaphor for the position Whites find ourselves in today. By exploring our past we can plan new trajectories for the future. The term parallax refers to the positioning of an object relative to its viewer; as the position of the viewer changes, the relative position of the object shifts. By exploring contemporary problems through the lens of history, we can better position ourselves collectively as a people to overcome any obstacles that befall us. The road to freedom will be long, circuitous, and messy; as such we owe it to ourselves to glean what we can from the past experiences of our racial kinfolk, if only to begin a dialogue on the long-term strategy of the White Nationalist movement. Furthermore, shared values, beliefs, and objectives are the bonds that unite a racial group, and as we begin our slow ascent out of the ‘swamp’ of present European civilization we need to begin formulating not only who we are, but also where we want to go.
Within the context of Rhodesia, failed grand strategic thinking and a variety of external variables led to the state’s demise, and ultimately to White racial collapse in southern Africa. From both a military and political perspective, tactically Rhodesia was unstoppable. For 15 long years, beleaguered Rhodesia maintained near total tactical military supremacy in the region despite severe weapon, materiel, and manpower shortages. Yet, military victory bereft of a strategic vision and clearly delineated political objectives is ultimately self-defeating. The political objectives of Rhodesia changed throughout the course of the war. Initially Rhodesia sought to maintain White minority rule, later hoped to create an African puppet regime, and finally sought nothing more than a seat at the proverbial “multicultural table.” This last political objective sealed the fate of tiny Rhodesia, and led to the pogrom of White genocide presently occurring in southern Africa. The nation of Rhodesia faced a series of overwhelming odds since its inception as a sovereign nation, but its greatest threat was its internal lack of strategic aim. This is a mistake we cannot afford to make.
As Greg Johnson articulated in New Right versus Old Right, white racial survival is the ultimate goal of White Nationalism, but I would go one step further and say we must explore not only how to survive, but also how to thrive racially as one people. The policy failures and lack of strategic vision of former Rhodesia mirror those of the contemporary White Nationalist movement. The survival of the White race is imperative, but whites will only succeed if they maintain unity; in what form this “unity” manifests itself, and how centralized or decentralized it is, is open to debate. In order to reach our peoples greatest potential, we must seek unity of both race and thought, and harmonize these into a new European/White ecumene. In Ricardo Duchesne’s penultimate work, The Uniqueness of Western Civilization, Duchesne rightly speculates that a penchant for rational abstraction is the hallmark for White racial success. From this ancestral proclivity new and old ideas must be forged, crafted in a manner conducive to White unity. We’ve all borne witness to the perils of abstraction run amok, such as diversity for the sake of diversity and so-called “human rights”, but abstraction, when grounded in blood and soil and beholden to a people rather than to a proposition like universal equality, can produce a clarity of vision commensurate with the greatness of our race. I’m not opting for ideological orthodoxy or an outright purge, but I am suggesting that we as a movement begin a dialogue towards what we can and cannot accept.
Rhodesia wasn’t able to formulate a clear sense of strategic national purpose, because they couldn’t decide what they could and could not accept. Pragmatism is the basis of power politics, but it must be grounded by an immoveable set of axiomatic principles. Rhodesia was overly pragmatic with regards to its policies on race and racial integration, and for this they suffered severely. The apex of the White population in Rhodesia was just over 308,000, in the early 1970s. As the “Bush War” progressed, military recruiting policies became more lax about race. The arming of non-European indigenous peoples has never benefited Whites, and the annals of history are littered with the charred remains of once glorious White empires brought down by the enfranchisement of the proverbial “Other.” As the war dragged on Rhodesia armed more and more African blacks and ‘coloureds’, and once armed they desired political parity. At the beginning of the “Bush War” Rhodesians scoffed at the notion of a peace settlement with an African-dominated political infrastructure, but by the war’s end it was a reality. White racial survival is our ultimate objective, and our collective survival depends upon total racial separation: as the recent histories of Rhodesia, South Africa and the southern United States illustrate, segregation doesn’t work. Complete and total separation is imperative, but how shall this be achieved? By white autonomous zones? PLEs? Diasporas and tribal networks? Or through some other medium or regulating mechanism? Rhodesia at first sought racial hegemony, then survival, and was ultimately a victim of its own internal vacillations, particularly with regard to racial integration. In order to avoid the fate of Rhodesia our resolve must be steadfast and not moved by political pragmatism or short-sighted opportunism. Furthermore, we must articulate a clear vision of how to proceed with regard to the racial question. Our lack of a cohesive vision is tantamount to a proverbial arming of the natives, and the natives are getting restless.
As stated previously the White population of Rhodesia reached an apex of 308,000 souls in the early 1970s, with approximately 80% of the population being of pure Anglo stock, while nearly 20% were Boers, descendants of Dutch farmers who speak Afrikaans. Unlike the colonization process in North America, assimilation didn’t happen as quickly in Rhodesia; large cities like Salisbury aside, White intra-white racial division was a determent to the Rhodesian republic. Old hostilities and petty ethnic rivalries exacerbated an already precarious military and political situation. Intra-racial division, aside from contributing to Rhodesian political incongruity, proved deleterious to the war effort by limiting the mobilization of the population,despite increasingly intrusive conscription efforts. The barbarity of the war caused many to emigrate back to Europe or South Africa, and intraracial white racial division compounded the situation. To illustrate the gravity of the Rhodesian situation with regard to the small White population, in 1977 the then-largest external offensive operation of the war, ‘Operation Dingo’ was launched with only 185 Rhodesian soldiers, and was successful against a force of over twelve thousand African ‘soldiers’. The scarcity of available men and materiel for use in the “Bush War” meant any asset loss was disastrous, and the emigration of the whites of Rhodesia was a tragedy that could have been avoided. Fewer white soldiers contributed to Rhodesia’s eventual reliance upon native African soldiers, and the militarization of the native population was a step towards their political enfranchisement.
We contemporary White Nationalists find ourselves in similar circumstances. The rampant division within our movement, though generally not based upon intraracial ethnic distinctions, is just as disastrous as the Rhodesian situation. Like our former Rhodesian brothers, our numbers, though growing, are few and the upcoming struggles will require mobilization of our entire movement for the survival of our race. European civilization has always been conflicted, agonal in nature, and historically our propensity for low-level kinship violence has been evolutionarily beneficial. However, in the midst of possible racial extinction, it’s of the utmost importance that internecine movement division stop. But how can division stop, particularly if we begin to explore new strategic paradigms, as dialogue breeds division?
Put simply, we can stop division through dialectical synthesis. The musical virtuoso J.S. Bach wasn’t simply a master composer and performer; he was first and foremost a “synthesist” and thus able to harmoniously weld together an eclectic assortment of European musical styles into a cohesive melody. More to the point, like the works of Bach, we in the White Nationalist movement must shed the detritus of the past and form a new metapolitical imperative based upon a thoughtful, long-term strategy and movement unity. Strength in numbers is a very real thing, and as was the case for our Rhodesian ancestors it will be a deciding factor in our movement’s life or death.
The White Nationalist movement has grown not only as a consequence of the election of President Trump, but also because of the weakness of our enemies. In Rhodesia, many of the rank and file members of the armed forces attributed their success to the so-called “k” or “kaffir factor”. The “kaffir factor” posited that it was the incompetence of the various African guerrilla movements, like ZANU and ZIPRA, which played a crucial role in tiny Rhodesia’s ability to wage war for nearly 15 years against a series of terrorist ‘guerrilla fighters’. On the whole, our enemies are more fractured than we are as their ideas are intrinsically irrational and contradictory at the metaphysical level. The philosophy of our age is overwhelmingly centered upon vague notions of egalitarianism and equality, yet we find ourselves in a world ruled by corporate plutocratic overlords whose interest doesn’t extend beyond their own deep pockets. Native Africa never truly overcame the so-called “k-factor,” though it did receive outside help from a variety of forces, from international finance to Communist China, that eventually proved terminal for the Rhodesian republic. Our enemies are divided, fractured, and motivated by a specious ideology of bizarreness; they are however well-funded. Furthermore, these opposition groups seek not only the demise of White Nationalism as a movement, but the extinction of the white race as a whole. As the forces surrounding our movement and our people regroup, it would behoove those of us in the vanguard to pave a clear path of coherent, practical strategic success and organizational unity that our successors may utilize as the movement blossoms. Like the ‘Rhodesian War’, our struggle will be a generational one, and as our numbers dwindle the situation will become more dire unless we can assert organizational unity. The “idiot factor” of the snowflake generation will only last for so long, and while we have a bit of a respite, let’s make the best of our enemies’ weakness and push ahead towards the creation of new and useful paradigms.
13 comments
There is certainly a fracture occuring in the WN movement right now. Roughly, I’d charaterize it as Identitarianists vs Accelerationists.
Those who want a mainstream, mass movement to affect mass cultural(and thus political) change vs those who insist on an apocalyptic, White Sharia, survivalist(and narrowly tribalist)vision.
Interestingly, the identitarian faction wants to abandon the WN label as a way of mainstreaming the movement; while the Tribalists want to abandon the label because they really aren’t white nationalists; they detest– hate, even– “normies” who aren’t red pilled and only want to play at constructing an insular and aloof, “tribe.”
“Interestingly, the identitarian faction wants to abandon the WN label as a way of mainstreaming the movement;”
That comment reminds me of some of Revilo P. Oliver’s writings, and speeches where he stated, or implied that most conservatives, or nationalists thought they should engage the problem without mentioning the Jews.
There most certainly is a divide. One group is looking at our predicament from purely political and social angle. The other group also takes in account economical and environmental perspective. And ultimately the biological perspective as well.
All our complacency comes from easy lives that most of whites still have. We have this sense of prosperity and it comes from booming growth of 20th century. As of lately this growth is achieved by skyrocketing debt. The situation is completely unsustainable and its going to end one way or another. Then there is environmental perspective. You don’t have to subscribe to all of peak oilers doom and gloom stuff, but most basic logic tells us that we cant keep increasing oil and mineral consumption forever.
All our social systems (monetary, pension, health, etc) require perpetual growth (of population, consumption, debt) to continue its existence. Without it they would collapse. Nothing can grow forever, the system will collapse. It wont collapse when we run out of resources, it will collapse when hope of further growth is gone. This point isn’t far in future.
We have built extremely complex system that sustains our existence. Western world today is not like it was in 1929 or Rhodesia where most people could just move into country and live off land. Without our current system functioning properly, most people would promptly die of starvation. Once system collapses our mighty civilization will quickly descend into most primal, brutal battle for survival. And here the knowledge about biology and human nature comes to play. People become tribal in such circumstances and the most radical faction always wins.
I wish nothing more than to get our white ethnostates through peaceful political process, however I am almost certain that we will get what I described above. Bodies are going to be stacked so high as they have never been stacked before and we are going to be stacking or we are going to be stacked. Until that time comes I think its best to enjoy life. And build up resilience of course.
Good points, Miha. Ever since the mid 1960s when the US Congress allowed lowering of tariffs, which allowed cheap(er) made foreign product into the USA, which further forced corporations to leave US soil, there has been a shrinking tax base for the gov’t to draw upon. Social programs were funded through ever increasing deficit financing. At $20 Trillion, I cannot see it going on for much longer than the year 2017. Any logical person (peoples) can tell that the US gov’t will never pay back what it has already borrowed. So, who in their right mind would lend to the US gov’t at this point and into the future?
Whites are in peril due to the political split of Whites, due in turn to the machinations of jews who own the US culture institutions (academia, news, entertainment). The jew culture turns some Whites into race traitors who are die-hard, raving LEFTISTs. A second group are the majority of Whites who are confused/mystified & stay on the fence. A third group, like me and some found here, are not brainwashed.
If Whites were not politically divided, this country would be righted back into good shape quick. Either Whites have to take back the culture from jews or Whites have to end the jew culture. So that either way Whites are not brainwashed and return to their natural state i.e. take the side of their own race/folk.
Mr. Crowley, you are right on the money, how on earth do you manage to have such an intimate knowledge of Rhodesia (are you perhaps an ex Rhodesian)? You are quite correct in that an imaginative solution was lacking for Rhodesia.
For Rhodesia, I also know that mr. Ian Smith did not want to see the problem of the Zionist faction inside Rhodesia. Please see chapter 16 of this book (Ivor Benson was his information advisor. He then left Rhodesia for South Africa, saw that white South Africa is not up to scratch and then left South Africa):
https://de.scribd.com/document/326645868/Benson-Ivor-The-Zionist-Factor-pdf
For Ian Smiths attitude toward the blacks, I once read a website (more than a decade ago), where someone alleged that Ian Smiths wife was realistic about the black problem, but that her husband did not want to see it.
ex South African,
Thank you for the kind words. I am however not Rhodesian, though I’ve known quite a few and as my maternal side is German, “very German” if you catch my drift, I can understand and empathize with the tragic sense of dismay that accompanies the loss of ones homeland. Rhodesia was a remarkable nation, the breadbasket of Africa and its loss was a global tragedy for the White race.
Thank you for the link, I’ve actually read that particular book, and Mr. Benson was right on so many accounts. The “J-Factor” was a significant catalyst with regards to the fall of Rhodesia, and many individuals have speculated over the years about the impossibility, or rather the improbability of how a country who experienced more economic growth than Great Britain in the mid-1970s could have somehow have collapse economically, and militarily so quickly.
In fact, militarily speaking, Rhodesia was doing more in the year that it fell (1979, or arguably 1980) than it had during the entirety of the war, and the “stab-in-the-back” mythos of post-WW1 Germany is quite applicable to the Rhodesian experience. Several military coups were planned, but never executed as the ‘top brass’ became more feckless, ostensibly motivated by amongst other things the dreaded “J-Factor.”
More importantly, and relevantly to our situation, several attempts were made to assassinate Robert Mugabe. These ultimately failed, but interestingly years later it was revealed that White liberal Rhodesians had been forewarning Mugabe. The “J-Factor” was a real danger to Rhodesia, but so were their Shabbos goyim.
With regards to Mr. Ian Smith, I’ve heard the same thing about his wife Janet as well. Reading Smith’s written works one gets a sense that he understood the racial problem, but his solutions were overly optimistic. Political enfranchisement in a ‘democratic’ system is the first step towards independence, and to recklessly believe that newly enfranchised African blacks would be sated with limited or minimal electoral participation is bizarre to say the least. Rhodesian survival depended upon complete and total racial separation and this could have been achieved had some of their leaders possessed more spine. The bombing of the Cahora Bassa Dam would have knocked Mozambique out of the war, the removal of the ‘Rhodesian’ national beef herd from African hands, and a more open hand given to the famed Selous Scouts, to name but a few things would have worked towards this separation.
Thank you very much for your reply. I was part of the Battle Group Charlie back then (Eland/Panhard armoured car gunner). Back then I never knew the bigger picture. Today I do. With mixed feelings and lots of anger in my heart.
http://www.thepatriot.co.zw/old_posts/racists-who-destabilised-zimbabwe/
Another view on Ian Smith.
Ian Smith, the sell-out. The author is a veteran Rhodesian soldier.
http://www.rense.com/general44/zzim.htm
Part of our strategy must be to move from what now is a defensive position to one in which we take the war to our enemies’ front door. Of course all this is wishful thinking, as we don’t really have a ‘movement’. At present all we have is a veneer of intelligent and insightful White activists communicating via the internet and attending the occasional conference, but detached from the great bulk of a confused and apathetic White population.
Before we can take any offensive action the credibility and legitimacy of the present governing elites must be completely demolished. Trump is the last gasp of the system in presenting a reasonably credible figure to the long suffering White electorate. Future candidates for high office in all the parliamentary ‘democracies’ will be increasingly genocidal toward Whites, that is the opportunity for which we must prepare.
“Trump is the last gasp of the system in presenting a reasonably credible figure to the long suffering White electorate.”
Ha, Ha, excuse me, I can’t help but remember the time Trump engaged Vince McMahon in a wrestling match where the loser shaved his head. To me Donald Trump has never been anything but a buffoon.
A very impressive article indeed. The truth, no matter what we intellectually bombard our enemies, or “normies” with, is but water off a duck’s back. The cold, harsh, and mostly unwanted reality, is that the terms, “Nationalist”, and “White”, are soiled items.
The media, wholly owned and controlled even at minority independent levels, by Jews, have for the next 20 plus years, and since WW11, eroded confidence and trust in any saviour of our kind.
South Africa, is an excellent example. There was too loose, a “movement” to garner enough high impact, and polarised opposition to international Jewish back-stabbing. However, if I may be so bold, the following link may be of value, in finally putting into place, an intellectual and physical opposition to what we are facing.
Thus, if you and your readers read the content thoroughly, you will see it was devised to totally circumvent the enemy’s traditional “Operating Procedures”, and dismiss the need to run an organisation on “leaders” and everyone down the chain. Please enjoy, but consider it as radically changing our “attack mode”, and using HUMAN RIGHTS as it’s reason for existence.
http://westernrennaissanc.wixsite.com/westernrenaissance
Bear in mind that up until c. 1960, White dominance over third world peoples was the go-to position for many European countries and, one can argue, the United States. It was not until 1960 that Harold Macmillan made his “Winds of Change” speech. France fought a rather ruthless (and mostly successful) counterinsurgency campaign in Algeria, not throwing in the towel until 1962. The Belgians granted the Congo independence in 1960 and even then pulled the strings to maintain their interests there. The Portuguese continued to fight for their African empire until the home government was overthrown in 1974. 1965, the year of the Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence, was also the time segregation was finished off in the USA by various federal civil rights acts as well as Hart-Cellar (i.e., third world immigration) becoming policy.
The point is, from the Rhodesian perspective, White domination over black Africans was the accepted mode of operation, had been so for centuries in some places. Then, abruptly, the rug was pulled out from under Whites in Africa as London, Paris, Brussels and Washington DC decided that colonialism, imperialism and racial segregation were very, very bad things (almost as quickly as Oceania being at war with Eastasia and not Eurasia).
Of course, the people making the policy changes in London, etc., did not have to face the immediate consequences of black majority rule. At the time, Britain, France, even the USA were all solidly majority White. The Rhodesians, the pieds noir and eventually the Afrikaaners could be thrown to the wolves in order to status signal at the United Nations. Rhodesia upset the timetable somewhat by fighting a tactically successful counterinsurgency against black guerrillas, but the country was in a strategically impossible situation because the guerrillas had outside support from the Communist bloc, from radical African states, and from too many turncoats within the Western world.
But in the 21st century, the chickens have come home to roost. The immigrant-refugee hordes swarming over the European and North American limes are the latest front in the war of third worlders waged against White nations. Now it is Cologne, Malmo, Paris, London, Rotherham, Ferguson, Detroit which are being turned into third world mosaics of warlord-gang rule, terroristic violence, pillaging expeditions with cars and buildings are burned, and let us not omit sexual slavery.
One wonders how many Europeans who a year or two ago held up “Refugees Welcome” banners, or in decades past supported the ANC, have seen their own cities burned out and children terrorized by the forces of “liberation.” And being good egalitarians, don’t know what to do. The warrior peoples who once held back the third world tide – whether Rhodesian troopies or French paras – are gone. Just as critically, the ideologies which once sustained the Western world have evaporated (or perhaps just been submerged).
At least the Rhodesians understood they were under attack and put up a fight. There are many lessons to be learned from the bush war, and also from the South African border war in Angola as well as the Portuguese and French counterinsurgencies. But tactical ascendancy is not enough. White nationalists need to provide the political foundations so the next time around they will gain that strategic victory which proved ephemeral somewhere between the Limpopo and Calais.
We face annihilation.
To prevent it, like the people of Rohan in the Tolkien epic, we must go to a place of strength and numbers. Both South Africa and and Rhodesia faced obliteration surrounded by their enemies. We must do this as well. Go to a place that is mostly White, live and train with and next to our people and bring up clean, morally straight children. *
You want and need a plan, a plan to find and build a new nation founded on racial and ethnic principals that our forefathers knew from their modest education. A plan that embraces both the technology of tomorrow as well as the pride we have in our race.
Join us, in the Northwest Front. Move here and know that the darkening of America will never close on our Mountains. Know that the Jew will never “normalize” the sicknesses of the mind and bring Cultural Marxism to our shores. Here we stand. This is where they die.
Don’t die as our forefathers died, defending the indefensible, surrounded, trapped and killed off. We know now of the Pre-Ice age White Clovis people driven back by the Amer-Indian Hordes who killed of the “White Giants”. We know of the Vikings who traded with the Amer-Indians and were genocided out again. Always we were too few, too independent, too scattered to stand and fight. The third time we conquered this land with gunpowder and brains and built the greatest civilization ever seen.
This must be saved.
Read Freedom’s Sons by Covington. Live the dream.
White Homeland! Northwest Front!
(we must retrieve the Whites of South Africa. All of them)
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