Thread by @Will_Tanner_1

Why did the West work with the communists to destroy Rhodesia?

Or, why would the "free" side of the Cold War ally with the communists to destroy a thriving, resource republic in a critical area

It makes no sense at first. But it makes much sense with a closer look 🧵👇

Critical to understand here is what the two main sides of the Cold War were

On one side was the communist block. It wanted, whatever its internal divisions, to spread communism abroad, mainly by launching revolutions within the old Empires of the Great Powers

The other side was America. It, by hook or crook, aimed to contain and then roll back communism, mainly by subsuming the same former Great Power colonies the communists were aiming for, and replacing colonial government with nationalist-minded locals that would engage in free trade with America and at least pay lip service to liberal democracy

Notably, then, both sides shared two common traits

The first was a desire to strip the old powers of their empires. So, whenever imperialism fought the locals, America and the Soviets were on the same side, as happened first in the Suez Crisis

Egalitarianism, or the belief that there are no differences in capability between humans and that if any differences show themselves to exist, the state must destroy them, was the other common trait. The Soviets (and Red Chinese) were a bit more brutal about it, but the impulse was the same. "Liberal democracy" meant the destruction of natural hierarchy based forms of government, namely aristocracy, and its replacement with mass democracy or leveling dictatorship. Communism just jumped straight to the dictatorship bit, with a leveled country and a dictator + his cronies at the very top

So, when an inegalitarian society presented itself, both powers were hostile to it

That didn't necessarily mean they were on the same side, but it did mean they were both hostile to the inegalitarian government

America, for example, destroyed Catholic political power and the land-owning aristocracy in Vietnam after it took over when a lack of support from America forced the French out; those were the same goals as the communists, just with a different veneer

This is what came up in Rhodesia

While it was not an apartheid society, much unlike its neighbor to the south, it also wasn't egalitarian

Propertied voting, large agricultural estates, and a paternalist, colonial-tinted government meant it emphasized and supported rule by the best

Only the propertied (owning the equivalent of about $60k USD in Rhodesian property) could vote in national elections, as they were the ones who had shown themselves to be competent stewards of wealth, and thus could steward the wealth of the country

In the tribal villages, it was the chiefs who ruled (and they supported Ian Smith) and the national government provided paternalistic aid to them

So, the rebels were the ones on the side of "equality"

It was they who were, ostensibly, fighting for "equity," "equality," and thus the egalitarian system supported by the liberal democracy West and communist East

The only states to buck the trend were those with remnants of hierarchical, anti-liberal, and anti-communist governments. Namely, first Salazar's Portugal and the South Africans, and later the rightist Rabin government in Israel as well, denied the UN's demands and aided Rhodesia rather than work with the communists

America, in thrall to the Civil Rights Revolution; England, raging with egalitarian furor since the Parliament Bill, and particularly under Labourites Attlee and Wilson; and the communists, egalitarian by their very nature, all ganged up on Rhodesia

The thing was, though Rhodesia was resource-rich, full of motivated anti-communists, generally free and respectful of the classic rights of Englishmen, and in a long-running war with the communists, the West didn't really care

Perhaps if it was a post-colonial government it would have, as that would have taken away the imperialist veneer

But instead, it was still largely ruled and owned by men of English stock, reveled in its English heritage, and had propertied voting, which served as a stinging rebuke of egalitarian politics

So, with both America and England rebuked and humiliated by Rhodesia as it succeeded in using hierarchy to create a free and prosperous system as they fell apart internally due to the egalitarian politics Rhodesia rejected (this was the age of inflation, Civil Rights unrest and chaos, and massive upticks in often racially motivated crime), they destroyed it so it could no longer serve as a counter-example of them

They got rid of the competition rather than learning from it, destroyed a functional state rather than use it as a lesson of why 90% death + income taxes and racial grievance politics don't work, but paternalism, freedom, and limited franchise voting do

Rhodesia got what the Communists and liberal democracies wanted for it

It had the Mugabe-included election demanded of it, saw him elected, and then saw utter destruction follow

As could be expected, inflation, genocide, and expropriation came, much as it had everywhere from Indochina to Algeria

But all societal goals of the egalitarians in West and East alike had been met: the differences in outcomes were leveled as the state fell apart and all success was wiped away

So, if you've been reading my threads and articles on Rhodesia and curious why it happened, why the West worked with the communists, this is why

It wasn't bad leadership, greed for resources, or otherwise. It was egalitarianism

This is also why Rhodesia remains relevant:

The egalitarians remain in control of the West and want to destroy what vestiges of hierarchy and natural order exist

They want to turn us all into Zimbabwe, as the alternative is admitting that men are as different as wolves and chickens. They won't admit such facts of nature, and so they remain at war to impose global Zimbabwe