This is what Zimbabweification means for landowners, and really anyone who is normal and has assets
As leftism is built on envy and grievance, like Mugabe's Zimbabwe, the jackals are coming for wealth in the name of equity, as has happened before in England
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Mugabe is far from the only communist to do this, of course. All such regimes, from the Bolsheviks to Mao, confiscated land in the name of leveling society
But Mugabe is particularly apt, as his land confiscation wasn't so much for economic reasons as for spite and envy
To some extent, that was true of all communist regimes. But some of the Soviets at least appeared to think farm collectivization would lead to some prosperity for at least some of the USSR. Similarly, Mao's collectivization and bird killing had a drop of (quite poor) economic reasoning behind it. It was all ridiculous and foolish, of course, but not motivated purely by spite
Mugabe's land expropriation was. No one thought that taking land out of the hands of intelligent farmers and putting it in the hands of various regime cronies and ex-guerrillas would lead to more prosperity. They just hated that the whites owned it, and so they wanted to steal it while citing racial "equity" as their reasoning
This is essentially what's happening in Britain now
Much as they claim that growing crops or raising animals on land is "hoarding" it and taxing families out of existence so that solar farms and migrant shelters can be built on fields that have been farmed for a millennium, that's not actually what they care about, nor what they really think
Only the dumbest could think poisoning the land with solar panels...in a county known for being cloudy, would be anything approaching a prosperity-inducing idea. It has even less sense behind it than Pol Pot killing people with glasses or Mao killing sparrows. Similarly, the migrants who need shelters built for them are an obvious drain on society rather than being anything prosperity-inducing
So, it's near impossible for anyone with a brain to seriously think that stealing, through brutal taxation, land from farmers would lead to prosperity or "new life"
If it's not about prosperity, then what is it about?
The "prices and rents" line in the above article is telling: they hate that the land of England is tied to its history
They hate that families like the Percys have owned 100k acres for centuries, that farmers who love England have tilled the same soil, whether because they own or rent it, for similar periods of time, that being part of the beautiful countryside is something that ties people to the country's history and traditions
Hence why they claim to want "prices and rents" to fall. It's not really about decreasing costs; if that's what they'd care about, then they'd reduce inflation and the resultant financialization of farmland that has resulted from it. But they're also the easy-money crowd, so it's not that. Rather, the gloating about seeing prices fall is gloating about the massive sales of land they know will happen. They know prices will fall like a rock when huge chunks of farmland hit the market due to families being unable to hold onto the same land their forefathers tilled, and they couldn't be happier
Key to their goal is severing the link between land and tradition
As things currently stand, the landed families and their longtime tenants are much more conservative and care about England herself rather than the cosmopolitan, globalist world of Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer
Breaking that link is key to the liberal "end of history," or having a rainbow flag-festooned boot stomping on the face of normal people, forever. Without people tied to the nation's history, people, and culture, who will stand up to the BLM boot? No one
But it's also just spite
They hate that certain families own much of the land and have managed to hold onto it despite taxes and regulatory hostility
They hate that people like @JeremyClarkson own land and want to be able to do on it what they please, rather than what a council decides
They hate liberty, they hate freedom, and they hate that such feelings tend to come from country living
And that brings us back to Mugabe. They hate that people like the Duke of Rutland (a UKIP patron) enjoy chasing the fox on horseback or shooting grouse, not so much for any reason other than that they exist. They hate that farmers enjoy the crisp country air, the sight of sheep and cows grazing, the joy that comes from riding a horse into a covert or alongside a hedgerow. And, of course, they hate the feeling of private property and ownership; such is a feeling of independence, of resistance to liberalism and its leveling impulse, and so on
And, like Mugabe, they're justifying their confiscation of private property (though through taxation rather than men with guns) in the name of racial equity.
It's just envy, it's just hate of normal white people. It's just Mugabeism
This isn't the first time that this has happened to England
The envy Starmer represents existed essentially from the Parliament Bill to Thatcher, particularly under Attlee and Wilson
The Attlee years particularly stand out as a time when envy won out and countryside life and prosperity were destroyed in the name of envy
The best example of this is what happened to the Fitzwilliam family and Wentworth Woodhouse
The Fitzwilliams grew, under the low-tax Victorian and Edwardian years, fantastically wealthy off their coal mines. Unlike other landowners, such as the Marquesses of But, they didn't rent coal land out but instead ran the mines themselves
As mine owners and operators, they contrasted with the plutocratic, new-man mine owners in that they placed a heavy priority on miner safety, and seemed to care a great deal about miner well-being. They always had the best, most effective safety improvements in their mines, provided employment for mine workers during depression years when the mines were slowed or shut down, and generally treated the miners as people rather than industrial cattle
Proof that their behavior wasn't just an act is that the local miners liked them and stood by them, even during the nationalization period
That period came under Attlee, the post-WW2 PM. He nationalized railroads, mines, and mills in the name of...envy of the wealthy, explained away as caring about worker wages and safety. Amongst those mines confiscated were those of the Fitzwilliams, showing the lie of Attlee's reasoning: the Fitzwilliam miners were well-paid and safe
But, nationalize them Attlee did. The spite and envy were put in clear relief by Manny Shinwell, the Labour Party's Minister of Fuel and Power
He ordered strip mining on the Fitzwilliam family's Wentworth Woodhouse estate, despite the low value of the coal on it. The miners protested and threatened striking over his decision, as they were loyal to the Fitzwilliam family, but Shinwell crushed that and the strip mining began. It ravaged the cultivated, Capability Brown garden landscape. It also continued right up to the door of Wentworth, and damaged the foundation of the house severely, making it unliveable
In the name of spite, he destroyed a family's home and gardens despite that family's kind treatment of their employees
There was no reason for that other than envy. The miners had been well-treated, the coal was valueless, and the family paid its (unjustly high) taxes
But envy lies at the root of socialist Labour's popularity, just as it lies at the root of communism like Zimbabweification
So, with the Wentworth story playing out across the countryside and sky-high estate taxes destroying landed estates and old families, envy as a political force plagued England and culminated in Harold Wilson's 90% death taxes, currency devaluation, and economic stagnation
Of course, those who were destroyed for no reason other than envy were mocked for it by the media
That's back
Economic Envy is behind Starmer's decision to start confiscating land through taxation, and this time the country isn't still wealthy from Victoria but rather impoverished and already overtaxed, so the effects will be even worse
As always, the policy of envy is justified by saying the policy will just make the rich "pay their fair share"
But are land-rich, cash-poor yeomen farmers "the rich"? Should the actually rich, those relatively few peers who survived the death taxes of Churchill, Attlee and Wilson, be destroyed because of envy? Is that just?
No. But it is what liberalism wants. "Equality," by which they mean state-enforced egalitarianism, requires it
So now the last remnants of the old world are being taxed out of existence, their land to be confiscated by the state in a process little different than what Mugabe did to Rhodesia. It's just envy, as the "meme" below shows
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"Barbour Nationalism" has taken off for describing the aesthetic and motivation of the English farmer protest, and resistance to the Professional Managerial Class
The term's perfect in what it represents and describes, and it connects to the country's fox-hunting tradition
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From what I gather, it started with this great post from the always fantastic @kunley_drukpa, as a comment about Jeremy Clarkson's involvement in the protest against Starmer's odious, family farm-destroying death tax, and the sort of person who showed up
And that really is a perfect place to begin, as it's a certain sort of person who has stood up to Starmer in this, and very much the other sort of person who has sided with Starmer and the pro-tax regime
On Starmer's side are, to put it simply, the spiteful mutants. This mainly includes the sort of envious wretches who write abominable articles and tweets like that below, but it is also supported by groups like the Islamists who despise the native population.
Starmer's just telling everyone what the new death tax on family farms is really about, redistributing land from English farmers to BlackRock
Interestingly, this indicates the "You Will Own Nothing and Be Happy" agenda is real and present regime policy, hence the new tax🧵👇
Interestingly, fury over the whole "you will own nothing and be happy" campaign has died down, probably because it has stayed out of the news
But the impulse is still there, as shown by the new, 20% death tax on farmland in England, and desire around the globe, amongst a similar set, for such taxes.
You can see this in the rhetoric
They never say, "It's a good thing that English families have farmed the same patch of land for half a millennium, rented or owned. It connects them to the land and traditions of our country."
No, that's what a sane, loving leader would say. Not the cosmopolitan elite that runs everything in the West right now, with the small exception of El Salvador and probably America under Trump
Instead, they engage in Mugabe-style rhetoric about how the farmers who love the countryside and are tied to its people, traditions, and culture are "hoarding" the land and need to give it up so that more migrants can be crammed into apartment buildings.
I have written a great deal about Rhodesia's descent into Zimbabwe and the warnings it holds for us
However, the sad fact is that England's disastrous 20th Century history shows what property expropriation will really look like in the modern West
I'll explain in the 🧵👇
Remember, before the turn of the century, and really 1910, at that, taxes were generally indirect and quite low in even England, now known for high taxes and regulation
Even after Churchill's People's Budget, taxes stayed comparatively low until World War I. AJP Taylor, describing the era, wrote:
Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service. An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy, or the territorials. He could also ignore, if he chose, the demands of national defence. Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the state who wished to do so. The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale: nearly £200 million in 1913-14, or rather less than 8 per cent. of the national income. … broadly speaking, the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves. It left the adult citizen alone.
But then came World War I, and the dramatically higher taxes on inheritance and income passed to fund the war and enabled by Churchill's People's Budget and Lloyd George's Parliament Bill
The Founding Gentlemen: The American Gentry and the Founding of the Nation
A more interesting aspect of America's founding is that many of those integral to getting the country started weren't normal people
Rather, they were gentlemen - the gentry of the New World
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This is clearest in the case of the Tidewater gentry - the planters of the cavalier Old Dominion
They saw it as their duty to serve their fledgling country. They foxhunted, drank copious amounts of port and claret, ran landed estates like those in England, and were often familiar with military service on horseback.
This contingent included:
James Monroe: an officer, diplomat, and president
James Madison: Congressman, creator of the Constitution, Federalist Papers writer, Secretary of State, President
"Light Horse Harry" Lee (Henry Lee III): An Anglo-Norman cavalry officer in the Revolution, he went on to aid in ratifying the Constitution and served as Governor of Virginia
George Mason IV: A descendant of a cavalier who fled to Virginia, Mason organized a pre-Revolution militia that proved crucial when the war began, served as a leading member of the Continental Congress, and is considered the Father of the Bill of Rights because of the Virginia Declaration of Rights he crafted
Thomas Jefferson: Declaration of Independence writer, wartime Governor of Virginia, diplomat, President, solver of the Barbary Pirate problem
George Washington: Commander of the Continental Army, president-general of the Constitutional Convention, first president
But while the Tidewater planters, who self-consciously imitated the English Gentry and their cavalier ancestors, are the most notable of the gentlemen involved with the Founding and early republic period, there were a great deal more gentlemen from the North and South involved
For example, New York's "Lord Stirling," William Alexander. Heir of the Earl of Stirling, a Scottish Lord, Stirling inherited an immense fortune that he used to build a grand estate in New Jersey, on which he brought wine-making to the US by cultivating thousands of grape vines. During the early Revolutionary War period, Stirling was integral to building the patriot cause. He not only rallied volunteers, but even outfitted an entire regiment at his own expsense.
Similarly, Francis Marion, the infamous "Swamp Fox," was a planter from the Carolinas who managed to butcher British regulars and chase Cornwallis north in a series of over a dozen major battles and skirmishes, leading to the eventual war-winning battle of Yorktown
A little something called democracy, which makes society both uncomfortable with being exceptional and forced to take a utilitarian look at building construction, eschewing beauty in the name of cost-cutting
I’ll explain in the 🧵👇
First, there is the material argument about this issue. Critics of the socio-political argument about democracy contend that, rather, the problem is the Industrial Revolution
Because industrial life means many more people can make a great deal more wages for themselves and profit for society doing some rote task, generally in a factory, than in learning masonry, woodcraft, or the other skills relegated to beauty rather than function
So, there’s not a great mass of semi-skilled labor for beautification of structures, making non-utilitarian buildings using purely industrial supplies much more expensive to construct than in the past. The labor is too expensive, and not really present on a grand scale for any price, proponents of this view contend
But I’m unconvinced
The Industrial Revolution began in England around the start of the 19th century, theoretically providing a few generations to weed out the labor needed for making beautiful things.
That didn’t happen. Some of the grandest and most beautiful country houses were constructed over this period. Eaton Hall comes to mind. Beautiful things still could be made by private parties on a grand scale a century after the Industrial Revolution. So it wasn’t really that
Incredible how it's been 9 years and the leftoids still refuse to understand Trump and his appeal
Yes, people like Trump more than Walz because his power suit and tie are a subtle rejection of radical egalitarianism, of the idea that all non-equal outcomes must be destroyed🧵👇
That's why no one liked Walz
He's an odd guy who wears plebe apparel for no reason other than desperately desiring faux relatability...and his very being, from his connections to Red China to male feminist in a previously unworn flannel or hoodie vibe, are anti-American to the core
Trump, meanwhile, is a caricature of America's aspirational identity
Key to this is that the American social system has been, if somewhat hierarchical, always in flux
Gentry groups rise and fall, family fortunes wax and wane, and even the Tidewater Gentry and Mrs. Astor's 400 are now mostly gone
But replacing them are always newly wealthy new men. The Vanderbilts rose and fell, the Rockefellers rose and remained, Carnegie covered the country in beautiful libraries with an immense fortune, the Morgans arrived on the scene and lasted for a few generations, and so on
This was even true of the much more English, and rigid, Tidewater gentry. Other than the aristocratic, Anglo-Normal Lee family and the Fairfaxes, who left for England, even the top of the pyramid built its wealth from nearly nothing. The Washingtons were middle class at best before becoming planters. The Hampton family, still wealthy and landed, started as merchants. And so on: even the fox-hunters came from nearly nothing just a couple generations before