Rhodesian Parallax

1,877 words [1]

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 [2], 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.