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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Every study of the economic contributions of immigrants has shown that only some East Asians - namely the Japanese - and those of European descent in any way contribute to the public coffers on a net basis. The other groups drain them in a huge way
This same general thing bears out in America: the net fiscal impact of those "undocumented folk" is severely negative...
A rat done bit my sister Nell // with whitey on the moon
If anything symbolizes the noxious race communism strangling our civilization, it's this song, Whitey on the Moon, a paean to the stultifying Stone Age spirit of the global favela
A short 🧵👇
(video by @kunley_drukpa)
The long and short of it is that we face a time for choosing.
Will we embrace what is represented now by SpaceX and Apollo — greatness, aesthetic beauty, and feats of technological brilliance and daring beyond anything seen before?
Or will we embrace the global favela — the spirit, smell, and aesthetic of the steaming, putrid air of a decaying village in Dahomey?
There are a great many people that identify with Whitey on the Moon
They claim to want no leaps forward until everyone is pampered by the nanny state, living in luxury because someone else paid their doctor's bill, as the song's sullen artist indicates
But what they really want is a dragging of all of us into a global favela. They hate any form of achievement, because it reminds them there is nothing they could ever achieve
They, like the glowering savage in the picture below, want to crush anything excellent, beautiful, or marvelous merely because it is so; it reminds them that their ancestors never invented the wheel, and barely escaped the Stone Age
What separated Rhodesia from the rest of the West?
One key matter: it focused on excellence in an age when all others transitioned to ruthless egalitarianism
As Ian Smith put it in the clip below, “We simply have a standard”
That standard is what made the West great
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This is, I think, really the key differentiating factor and is what makes it so interesting to me
In an era when America was in the throes of Civil Rights egalitarianism, tearing down everything to make communist-connected rebels happy, and England was at war with its heritage, taxing those who embodied that heritage out of existence while confiscating their houses, Rhodesia chose the other path
That other path was the one that really matters: it was simply having standards
Their elections are the best example of this. Those weren't racial, but rather required those who were to vote in national elections first prove to the country that they could be stewards, shown through their being stewards in their own lives
Hence the property qualification: requiring the equivalent of $60k in 2024 USD in Rhodesian property, they largely succeeded in screening out those who were irresponsible.
Below, Elon argues DOGE is fighting the bureaucracy, and thus might restore Democracy in America
He's right to call bureaucracy the enemy of the people, but wrong to say it's the enemy of democracy
The two go hand in hand, as the West's 20th century decline shows
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First, what Elon told Rogan was partially correct, but mostly incorrect
He said, “The reality is that our elected officials have very little power relative to the bureaucracy until DOGE. DOGE is a threat to the bureaucracy—it's the first threat to the bureaucracy. Normally, the bureaucracy eats revolutions for breakfast. This is the first time that they're not, that the revolution might actually succeed, that we could restore power to the people instead of power to the bureaucracy.”
In some ways, that is obviously correct. DOGE is indeed at war with the bureaucracy, as shown by the firings, the court cases, the budget freezes, and so on
Elon, and thus DOGE, recognize that the federal bureaucracy is not only overly expensive, but has been spending and regulating in a way that makes it hard to do anything in America, particularly anything worth doing. Business is burdened by taxes and constrained by onerous regulations. Hiring is difficult, and firing an incompetent employee of a "protected" race is nearly impossible. Innovation is stifled by aging bureaucrats. The Deep State has been weaponized against conservatives, and most bureaucrats go along with it because they just want their pensions.
So, DOGE is indeed at war with the bureaucracy, is winning some battles, and the bureaucracy is clearly the enemy of the American people
But he is wrong in saying that the bureaucracy is the enemy of democracy, by which he means modern mass democracy, or a near-universal adult franchise, which hereafter I'll just call democracy
That is wildly off, and proof of that comes from America and Britain throughout the 20th century
I’ve seen much talk about what visas the US ought have, from golden visas to H-1bs
Often missed is that all are highly destructive, lacking a critical focus: assimilation
Rhodesia shows assimilation-focused immigration builds national prosperity without destroying culture🧵👇
This was a critical problem Rhodesia had nearly from the beginning, even as it was still a private colony being built by Rhodes and the British South Africa Company:
Its vast veldt and resultant massive farms, paired with its Anglo roots and the strict criteria on who was in the original Pioneer Column, created a unique and highly distinctive national culture
That culture was, in many ways, an African adaptation of the better aspects of British country life.
This can be seen in Rhodesians eventually being known as “more British than the British,” polo being beloved, a national reputation for love of social drinking, the country estates around which the agrarian economy was organized. And, of course, as @RoryDun76684897 pointed out in my recent podcast with him, there was an Anglo upper class in the country and many of its cultural attributes “trickled down” to much of the prosperous white population in the country
But there were the African variations on that; it wasn’t, like Tidewater Virginia, an attempt to just recreate England but with different crops and fewer villages. The unique conditions of Africa and adaptations those who moved there made meant that its culture, while very British in many respects, was still unique and distinctive
“We will expropriate land without compensation whether [whites] like it or not. If they object, they can seek refugee in America.”
South Africa is going full Zimbabwe. Never go full Zimbabwe.
A reminder of what happened in Rhodesia and why that's a warning for South Africa🧵👇
As a reminder, Rhodesia was essentially the opposite of either Zimbabwe or modern South Africa
It was prosperous, had no anti-black or anti-white apartheid laws, had functioning civil infrastructure, and was a breadbasket rather than a land of fallow farms that have been handed to incompetents out of a desire for racial redistribution
That held true, for reference, even into the later stages of the Bush War, when you'd think things would be falling apart, a la Germany in March of '45
Instead, it was more functional than modern South Africa, which is at peace and aided by the world
Here is how Dr. Theodore Dalrymple described it:
I expected to find on my arrival, therefore, a country in crisis and decay. Instead, I found a country that was, to all appearances, thriving: its roads were well maintained, its transport system functioning, its towns and cities clean and manifesting a municipal pride long gone from England. There were no electricity cuts or shortages of basic food commodities. The large hospital in which I was to work, while stark and somewhat lacking in comforts, was extremely clean and ran with exemplary efficiency. The staff, mostly black except for its most senior members, had a vibrant esprit de corps, and the hospital, as I discovered, had a reputation for miles around for the best of medical care. The rural poor would make immense and touching efforts to reach it: they arrived covered in the dust of their long journeys. The African nationalist leader and foe of the government, Joshua Nkomo, was a patient there and trusted the care implicitly: for medical ethics transcended all political antagonisms.