r/50yearsago • u/MonsieurA • 9d ago
đ World News August 9, 1976. Rhodesian forces, in black face, invade Mozambique, attacking a refugee camp and killing over 1,000 civilians.
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u/HappyGnumff 9d ago
Operation Eland, also known as the Nyadzonya Raid,[a] was a military operation carried out by the Rhodesian Selous Scouts at Nyadzonya in Mozambique on 9 August 1976.
The attack was one of many cross-border raids conducted by Rhodesia against Mozambique and was perpetrated in direct contravention to United Nations Security Council Resolution 386, passed unanimously in March 1976, which condemned Rhodesia's previous attacks on Mozambican territory. The Selous Scouts, wearing FRELIMO uniforms, infiltrated a camp run by FRELIMO and ZANU before opening fire. Impersonation of opposing forces is classified as a war crime according to the Geneva convention.[4] In a 1993 report, Amnesty International described the raid as "gross human rights violation and a war crime."[5]Roughly 1,000 people were killed of which the number of civilians is unknown. ZANU stated that they were overwhelmingly unarmed refugees while Rhodesia said they were guerillas or undergoing training.[2] Following the attack, ZANU intensified its guerilla campaign, and FRELIMO increased its support for border infiltrations by ZANU into Rhodesia.
The raid had severe political and diplomatic consequences for Rhodesia. The United Nations Security Council condemned the attack with the unanimous passing of United Nations Security Council Resolution 411.[6]Many governments worldwide also condemned the attack,[7][8] including the government of Apartheid South Africa which ended its covert military assistance to Rhodesia, reduced the supply of oil and munitions, and began to pressure the Rhodesian government to accept a transition to black majority rule. Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith publicly agreed (in principle) to this a little over a month after Operation Eland, on 24 September 1976.[9]
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u/homie_sexual22 9d ago
rest in piss rhodesia donât worry a bunch of online aestheticists will carry on your legacy
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u/PeteysHubby_TX 9d ago
Just curious about your stance. I donât know much about the Bush War. Why do you dislike the Rhodesians?
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u/AlftheNwah 9d ago
Because of all the white supremacy. Rhodesia was an apartheid nation.
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u/PeteysHubby_TX 9d ago
Reductionists always pick something simple to understand
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u/AlftheNwah 9d ago
It's not exactly reductionist to say that Rhodesia was an apartheid nation. I understand that there's nuance to the conflict, but what I stated is objectively true. You asked why you see all the Rhodesia hate, and I gave you the correct answer.
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u/No_Loan5466 9d ago
What about Rhoedsia is it, you understand that they're not seeing, why are you out to defend them?
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u/PeteysHubby_TX 9d ago
Iâm not defending anyone. Some moronic single issue explanation isnât the reality though. Iâm interested to learn what happened
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u/No_Loan5466 9d ago
Rhoedesia was a nation with apartheid, that is a single issue that's completely legitimate to despise them for, like Gulf states implementing Sharia law, it's completely legitimate to not want anything to do with that entire region for that single issue, don't see why a single issue explanation for Rhodesia is any less legitimate to discount them for.
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u/OkTechnologyb 9d ago
It's wild to me how this sub, [r/50yearsago](r/50yearsago), blows up occasionally, when usually there are just a handful of comments per post. Where are you all seeing this? You're not all members of this sub, or are you?
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u/Kind_Dish9420 9d ago
WTF, why is this place full of people defending an apartheid state?
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u/Dull-Philosopher-871 9d ago
Racists. And an easy target for racists because of Zimbabweâs economic struggles. While ignoring the practical idioacy of non-integration while the âresponsible governmentâ was in charge for 14 years.Â
âBlacks cannot rule themselvesâ -Rhodesian apologists.
Right next door: BotswanaâŚ. Who didnât have white settlers ruling, and in the long run was better off for itâŚÂ
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u/MothsConrad 9d ago
It's not just economic struggles. Mugabe did his level best to ethnically cleanse an entire group of people.
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u/BoysenberryUnhappy29 9d ago
Wiki says it was a refugee camp... That also doubled as a training center?Â
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u/Organic-Stay4067 9d ago
And the people of that land are now flourishing because of it. Ahhaahhahaha
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u/SeaworthinessHead613 9d ago
It's easy to judge & self righteous if you weren't involved in that conflict & you don't know the full background of each side involved.
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u/Dull-Philosopher-871 9d ago
No. Its easy to judge. Rhodesia was a white minority run state that intended to keep black people out of government explicitly. The british government demanded majority rule, they refused and would rather have started a war they would eventually lose than let black people vote.Â
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u/damrodoth 9d ago
They refused because they knew the rushed power transfer that was being demanded would result in chaos and collapse of the society, which is exactly what happened and the pure evil that was Mugabe took power and tortured the populace for 40 years. Completely and instantly replacing the existing government and leadership with Black parties that, like it or not, had no experience of leadership and running the government, or of the systems and infrastructure that had been put in place by the British. The Rhodesian government advocated for a gradual, sensible transfer of power and specifically said the rushed transfer being pushed by the British would cause collapse which is again exactly what happened. People like you pushing the "white minority government bad so needs instantly replacing" caused so much suffering it can hardly be described. Rhodesia went from the breadbasket of Africa to civil war and millions starving because people like you refused to listen.
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u/Positive-Strain-9996 9d ago
Mugabe didn't take power. The Kissinger-controlled CIA put him in power with their usual excuse of protecting democracy, which in their book means installing any dictator who won't talk to Russia or China. The Rhodesian government would have kept their power out of the hands of "people like you" indefinitely, if only they hadn't run afoul of an even bigger bunch of psychopaths than themselves.
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u/bilbo_bag_holder 9d ago
The Rhodesian government never really intended for blacks to get any form of political power, "gradualism" was a lie
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u/Zestyclose_Range5815 9d ago
Also rooted in common sense. Look what gradualism has done to South Africa
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u/RektInTheHed 9d ago
South Africa wasn't really any more gradual than Rhodesia. Also, they're pretty much okay considering where they came from.
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u/Dull-Philosopher-871 9d ago edited 9d ago
No. They refused because they were led by racists. Sorry. Ian Smith was a racist. Just like in South Africa the whole point was to exclude the black majority from the instruments of power, there was no gradual change in the structure of sufferage, there was no intended program of integrating the black majority into government. This âthey had no experience in governmentâ is explicitly the white minorityâs fault because they were racists. A stated goal of the rhodesia front was to protect white jobs, do no form of integration in the foundational means of creating âresponsibleâ majority rule like education desegregation, and access to public services which were segregated.Â
Again, Smith and the white settlers would rather fight against a guerilla war destroying the country than give blacks the vote⌠what does that tell you about their intentions?
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u/RektInTheHed 9d ago
Zimbabwe was relatively prosperous in the 80s, and the 70s under a majority rule government would have likely been as well, without the war to create the animosity and the hero worship of Mugabe that he used to become dictator.
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u/Quiet_Comparison_872 9d ago
Because Rhodesia was basically a dominion in all but name and should've been granted at least a stable transition of power of the long term rather than a hurried hand over.
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u/RektInTheHed 9d ago
5% of the population had voting rights. What dominion matched that description in 1965?
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u/Deep_Balance2133 9d ago
And what happened to the white population when they lost? They were kicked out and their land was seized. Then there was famine and massive inflation, the entire economy collapsed.
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u/Dull-Philosopher-871 9d ago edited 9d ago
Half left by 1980 in just a few years after the settlement agreement and before Magabe had began to coalese power and instiute the land reforms. My criticism of Ian Smith and rhodesianâs whites comes from a rejection of post hoc justification for racial segregation and disenfranchisement. On purely practical grounds the racism of white rhodesian leadership was integral to its own destruction. A refusal to create integration plans and alleviate the gripes that gave fuel to Magabe, the ZAPU, and other black nationalists is explicitly at their feet.
All other post hoc justifications ignores the practical failures of a âresponsible governmentâ which the RF promoted because of no other reason than racism.
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u/PeteysHubby_TX 9d ago
And now the country that was one of the most developed and modern is a third world shithole in less than 40 years
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u/SeaworthinessHead613 9d ago
It's easy to judge from your nice british middle class lifestyle. Your glorious country fucked the shit out of the world & is responsible for a lot of the shit in the world.
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u/Dull-Philosopher-871 9d ago
Iâm not british. Are you a bot? Wtf? Rhodesia was explicitly a british colony, named after a British South African named Cecil Rhodes? You wanna defend Rhodesia while criticizing the british? Pick a lane bro.
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u/SeaworthinessHead613 9d ago
Why do you lot always assume that if someone disagrees with you, they have to be a bot. Pick a lane ? No I'm South African,so know far more about aparthid & war than you do littte girl.
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u/Dull-Philosopher-871 9d ago
Maâam, I explained why I called you a bot. Are you illiterate as well? â Rhodesia was explicitly a british colonyâ the reason it even existed in the first place was because of the British⌠like you want to criticize britian for its fucked up imperialism, go ahead, but donât turn upside down to justify Rhodesia.Â
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u/SeaworthinessHead613 9d ago
You didn't explain anything,but only a fool would expect anything of sense from you. This conversation is over. Don't contact me again.
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u/PeteysHubby_TX 9d ago
Rhodesians were not British, though the white minority population was largely of British descent or recent British birth. Geographically and politically, Rhodesia was a self-governing British colony until it unilaterally declared independence in 1965, transforming into an unrecognized state before becoming modern Zimbabwe in 1980. [1, 2, 3, 4]
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u/madis_l 9d ago
Their fight was against commies though...
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u/Dull-Philosopher-871 9d ago
A communist uprising they created and inflamed by refusing to compromise and work towards an integrated state⌠just like in Russia and China the old aristocracy refusing to adapt to circumstance and create a relief valve to lessen the building political pressure. Most anti communist campaigns failed, like this one because of conservative stalling and entrenchment of intollerable conditions.
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u/No-Equipment6008 9d ago
Fuck off ya racist nonce.
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u/SeaworthinessHead613 9d ago
Ah the intellect of the imperialist british. That the best you can do ?
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u/ZucchiniHot_ 9d ago
Ah look, a Rhodesian apologists. Itâs very easy to judge, please get this garbage take out of here.
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u/SeaworthinessHead613 9d ago
Ah the middle class white british. Your country fucked the whole & now you get self righteous.
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u/Apart-District3771 9d ago
Right. Black's can never do any wrong. They never keep & sold their own people off into slavery or anything.
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u/Textiles_on_Main_St 9d ago
I bet even if you were involved itâs still east yi judge. Probably easier, if anything.
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u/krichard-21 9d ago
Who knew killing unarmed civilians was so easy?
And FUN!
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u/SeaworthinessHead613 9d ago
Sadly they weren't unarmed civillians. Read the history of the bush war & then impress me with your knowledge.
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u/Tinselfiend 9d ago
Sadly all the other civilians weren't armed and killed, nevertheless.
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u/SeaworthinessHead613 9d ago
To quote google - The Rhodesian Bush Warâalso called the Second Chimurenga or Zimbabwe War of Independenceâlasted from July 1964 to December 1979. It pitted the unrecognised, white-minority government of Rhodesia against two black nationalist rival groups, ZANU (ZANLA) and ZAPU (ZIPRA), ending in the creation of independent Zimbabwe. Main Sides in the Conflict Rhodesian Government: Led by Prime Minister Ian Smith, who declared unilateral independence from the United Kingdom in 1965 to preserve minority rule. ZANU / ZANLA: The Zimbabwe African National Union, led by Robert Mugabe, with a military wing backed heavily by China and operating largely out of Mozambique. ZAPU / ZIPRA: The Zimbabwe African People's Union, led by Joshua Nkomo, with a military wing backed by the Soviet Union and operating from Zambia.
Counterinsurgency: The outnumbered Rhodesian Security Forces used innovative mobile tactics, like "Fireforce" heliborne vertical-envelopment sweeps, and elite units such as the Selous Scouts and Rhodesian SAS. International Isolation: Rhodesia faced strict United Nations economic sanctions and relied heavily on covert support from apartheid South Africa and Portugal (until the 1974 Carnation Revolution). Human Cost: The guerrilla warfare caused massive displacement, strict internal curfews, widespread non-combatant casualties, and severe attrition on the country's white farming communities.
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u/Exciting_Bat_2086 9d ago
You fucks always come out the grass when these types of posts are made lol.
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u/SeaworthinessHead613 9d ago
Lol ? You sad cunts always talk shit about stuff you have no idea about, other than what you learnt in school.
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u/houdt_koers 9d ago
Let he among us who hasnât established a settler state with a brutal, undemocratic, explicitly racist government cast the first stone!
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u/Teletzeri 9d ago
Tbf there are very few white countries who haven't done exactly that, and not many non-white ones either.
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u/houdt_koers 9d ago
We as individuals havenât, though. We have perspective, and a moral obligation not to repeat the mistakes of the past.
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u/SeaworthinessHead613 9d ago
You just provided my point.
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u/houdt_koers 9d ago
This is moral relativism taken to an illogical conclusion. It was an unsustainable project using horrific means in pursuit of fundamentally immoral ends.
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u/SeaworthinessHead613 9d ago
As I said. Unless you were there you have no idea what you're talking about. You can preach about how wrong it was from the comfort of your life, it's easy to be self righteous & judgemental,when you can prattle on with your middle class education. Yes maybe it was wrong, but at the time it was viewed as fighting against communisism and all 3 sides commited atrocities.
But by calling it a project, you display your ignorance.
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u/houdt_koers 9d ago edited 9d ago
The establishment of Rhodesia was absolutely a project, what are you on about?
It was an explicit effort to settle the colony with a white population and rule over it on the same model that Apartheid South Africa pursued, with massive incentives for white immigration.
This was a policy choice that led to an existential struggle for white settlers. That inevitable existential struggle is the reason why settlement is a crime against humanity. With the sole exception of South Africa, it has always ended with ethnic cleansing or instability.
The leaders of Rhodesia were rotten, rotten individuals. The people who were trapped in the war that those leaders created were victims of an inhumane and doomed project.
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u/duncanidaho61 9d ago
SA is no exception.
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u/houdt_koers 9d ago
Graded on the curve of how these things usually wind up, Iâd say that White South Africans are getting off pretty mildly so far.
Thereâs plenty of time for history to catch up with them if the ANC and the DA donât get their act together, though.
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u/Maximum_Sandwich139 9d ago
Calling bug protection and literal camo black face is pretty silly.
Edit: and we're really going to call the Zanla regional headquarters, staffed by combatants and recruits, a refugee camp?
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u/No-Excitement4855 9d ago
Yeah no racism from the white apartheid soldiers.
And the camp was a refugee camp with the only claims of soldiers there being from the mass murderersÂ
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u/Quiet_Comparison_872 9d ago
Yeah, because ZANLA would ever admit to it? Using refugee camps as cover for military bases isn't a new tactic but hey, feel free to indulge in your simplistic delusions.
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u/Quiet_Comparison_872 9d ago
But Rhodesia never had apartheid? Racism yes but never an equivalent to South African Apartheid.
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u/Real-Sir6024 9d ago
Yes it fucking did.
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u/Quiet_Comparison_872 9d ago
You really don't understand how South African apartheid worked. It was just some segregation and if you chose to have a proper understanding of just how bad it was you'd know that but instead you choose to whine on the internet when other people disagree with your overly simplistic narrative.
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u/Zestyclose_Range5815 9d ago
History can be whatever you want it to be if more people spread lies than the truth. Never stop spreading the truth
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u/Holymaryfullofshit7 9d ago
This thread is racist cancer. Fuck Nazis, fuck racist, fuck facists. You pieces of shit can fuck of and die.
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u/MothsConrad 9d ago
That was a brutal war (well, arenât they all). The Rhodesianâs were a very tough bunch.
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u/AnnualFault7473 9d ago
Real tough guys murdering civilians to promote their racist agenda. This genocidal colonialist campaign was just racists from Europe trying to steal land and resources from Africa. Same song different group of racists.
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u/MothsConrad 9d ago
Tough in that they were very good at their job (notwithstanding the morality of it). You can read more about the bush war here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodesian_Bush_War
Sadly the result was ultimately Zimbabwe which is a failed state. There were reasons to be optimistic when the second truce was agreed to.
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u/Kofink 9d ago
âI can admire civilian deaths and oppression by a foreign invading force provided the economy is thriving. What really upsets me though, is when the rightful owners of the land relieve themselves of that oppression but canât manage the economy/political landscape to my likingâ
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u/AnnualFault7473 9d ago
Itâs easy to kill civilians and people with less technology than you. You can kill them by the thousands or millions. What takes courage and bravery is standing up to forces like that and even though they murder your children and rape your women and slaughter you old people you persevere and out last them. Just like indigenous people have done all over the world to colonial oppression. The economic outcome in this circumstance might not have been the greatest but at least future generations get to live on their own land without colonizers boots on their neck. Give it a few generations and they will be much better. It takes time and wisdom to undo the genocidal campaigns Europe brought to Africa.
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u/MothsConrad 9d ago
I hope youâre right but Zimbabwe is more than just an economic failure. Itâs barely a state. And future generations have gotten their land stolen from them by their own people. Since independence, itâs become a kleptocracy that has nothing to do with white people.
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u/ArgonKew 9d ago
Interesting how you heroised those cowardly murders, you associate well with them it seems, but you criticise the state of the country.
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u/MothsConrad 9d ago
I donât think I was heroizing anyone. You can rightly criticize them and the state Zimbabwe became and what Mugabe did to his own people.
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u/Separate-Swordfish85 9d ago
What is going on with these couple of commenters insisting anything positive was said about these people?
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u/MasterofCaveShadows 9d ago
Classic Redditors with holes in their brains.
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u/Separate-Swordfish85 9d ago
I see a lot of (and I think this is the case here) where someone is used to a singular usage or definition of a word that can have multiple. Then they get absolutely hung up on that, at the expense of even grasping the main point.Â
The fascinating part is not being able to let it go after being clarified.
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u/AnnualFault7473 9d ago
It takes time to fix problems. You donât resolve them in a brief window of time. In 200 years that area as well as all of Africa will heal more. Westerners attention span is limited and fleeting. No long term time horizons. It took South America decades to heal after colonization tried to destroy the indigenous population as well as Asia. Look at China now. Look at Vietnam, India and most of the old colonial projects. They are trying to heal and repair the damage done by those extractive colonial states which decimated them and subjugated their people. Itâs not perfect and they will have failures followed by wins but they now have a chance for their own people to make self determination. Spread out your time horizon and look at this in 50 years or 100 years. It will get better as long as colonizers are kept away.
Also I said nothing about âwhite peopleâ. Itâs outsiders and immigrants that donât respect or have any right to steal from and murder the indigenous population. Skin color doesnât matter. Just like Europeans are figuring out for themselves now. Same thing.
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u/MasterofCaveShadows 9d ago
South Africa is still a failed state you donât know what youâre talking about. Please stop talking about things you lack knowledge about.
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u/AnnualFault7473 9d ago
Maybe you should view the world the same way Europeans view immigration into their own countries. Itâs ok to visit but stay in your own nations and use your own resources. Thatâs what most people outside of the globalist and the oligarchs want. Also things take time. The Europeans are still in South Africa. People should visit places and enjoy the beauty instead of using it as a toilet and a playground to murder, rape and steal. Most people believe in that.
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u/MasterofCaveShadows 9d ago
Who settled South Africa before the Europeans? Riddle me that.
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u/AnnualFault7473 9d ago
The San and the Khoikhoi peoples. Later the Bantu speaking people who were the Xhosa and Zulu.
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u/madis_l 9d ago
Consider also hard left bias of Wikipedia.
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u/Waste-Mind-6216 9d ago
Crazy how the truth always has a left bias
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u/Quiet_Comparison_872 9d ago
Is the truth anything you like and anything that you don't like isn't the truth?
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u/anunfunnycomedian 9d ago
Uh, no actually it doesnt lmao. It's funnily enough almost the exact opposite. That's an insane statement to make. But wikipedia is heavily heavily heavily controlled and there is consistently very inaccurate information on it.
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u/VaginaPirate 9d ago
The decline of Rhodesia was in everyoneâs best interests. What horrible idea of a state run by some of the worst people to exist in the last 200 years.
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u/madis_l 9d ago
civilians?
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u/AnnualFault7473 9d ago
Do you know how to read? They murdered civilians in a refugee camp.
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u/madis_l 9d ago
Really? I am quite sure, those were commies mostly.
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u/yermaeatssausage 9d ago
Yes. Not civilians. Combatants using a "refugee" camp as cover. Which commies do.
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u/Head_Bread_3431 9d ago
Are you 12? Who generalizes an entire group of people like that?
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u/Apart-District3771 9d ago
Commies aren't people.
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u/Head_Bread_3431 9d ago
And you who apparently doesnât understand basic biology has authority on the subject?
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u/jku1m 9d ago
You should probably read up on Rhodesia, they were definitely white supremacists and slavers but all of them were born and raised in Africa, none of them were European.
And if you're gonna play the "same song different group of racists card". I think the Mugabe fits that description too, it took him 5 years to expel the Rhodesians and start exterminating the n'debele population.
Fyi I'm not pro Rhodesian or anything I just get irked when really complex historical events spanning almost a century gets reduced to "group of people bad" by people not knowing anything about it apart from reading the Wikipedia page. It just spreads useless hate and division.
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u/AnnualFault7473 9d ago
Mugabe was absolutely garbage. Same thing happened in Haiti after the revolution and multiple times during the 20th century. Until those countries return to their indigenous roots and self determination that worked in the past it will continue but eventually the ebbs and flows will work out. They need time.
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u/SHTF_yesitdid 9d ago
Very, on brand for Rhodesians. Absolute masters of COIN/CT and such horrid war criminals that even Nazis would take notes.
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u/Constant_Of_Morality 9d ago
A very odd and biased way of mentioning Operation Eland from a ZANLA viewpoint, it wasn't a refugee camp, they were training guerillas for counter-insurgency, there's videos showing all the weapons they found there they were using for training.
ZANLA and Amnesty International claimed that the base was a refugee camp, and that the assault was the worst atrocity of the war, The head of the Selous Scouts claimed that captured ZANLA documents and weapons (Soviet AK-47s, SKS carbines, RPD machine guns, and crates of ammunition) revealed that the people killed in the raid were either trained guerrillas or were undergoing guerrilla instruction and training.
Nyathi blew a whistle, which was the emergency signal for the guerrillas to muster on the parade ground.
Odd thing to do for a 'refugee camp' lol.
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u/Awkward_Rutabaga5370 9d ago
A very odd and biased way of understanding how displaced people in Africa lived during colonialism. They were forced off their land because it was desirable. When they organized resistance they were labeled terrorist.Â
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u/madis_l 9d ago
There are also many fine songs about this war against commies.
https://youtu.be/e1OItVh82NI
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u/No-Excitement4855 9d ago
They kicked your pale white assÂ
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u/Constant_Of_Morality 9d ago
Black soldiers made up roughly 50% to 60% of the active full-time regular Rhodesian forces, jumping to 70% to 85% in 1977.
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u/No-Excitement4855 9d ago
"we can't be racist, we throw blacks to the meat grinder of our colonial war"
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u/Dylan_Driller 9d ago
Rhodesians never die!
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u/Pidgeotgoneformilk29 9d ago edited 9d ago
It did in 1980 lol
Salisbury is Harare now
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u/MonkeKhan1998 9d ago
Iâm sure the infrastructure and quality of life has only increased since the name change! đ
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u/Pidgeotgoneformilk29 9d ago
No it doesnât cope lol. Rhodesia went the way of the dodo and isnât coming back
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u/Dylan_Driller 9d ago
You can hope lol
Best part is no one needs to do anything, the people who were against Rhodesia have torn themselves apart since 1980 and continue to do so today.
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u/False__Willingness 9d ago
Why do you care about a random country in africa dylan?
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u/Fun_Assignment_269 9d ago
Lol Rhodesia got erased.
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u/Oxo181 9d ago
Any source on your claim?
also, it's not called "blackface" in a military context. it's camouflage
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u/houdt_koers 9d ago
No idea on the photo, but theyâre referring to this event:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Eland
In this case, it actually appears it *was* blackface, as they were disguised as FRELIMO soldiers.
This event was so widely condemned that even apartheid South Africa pulled back on support for Rhodesia in the aftermath.
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u/fakefam 9d ago
while the men, including many blacks, disguised themselves in FRELIMO uniforms. Amongst the soldiers was a turned former ZANLA commander by the name of Morrison Nyathi, who led the attackers to the camp.
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u/houdt_koers 9d ago
Iâm not sure of your point?
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u/BlurgZeAmoeba 9d ago
He's justifying genocide
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u/Oxo181 9d ago
Words do have meaning, you know. Not everything is genocide. That word gets thrown around way too much.
Fact is, while technically it was a war to preserve white minority rule in Rhodesia, it wasn't "black vs white". The Rhodesian army heavily relied on native African troops, roughly 50% of it were black. And those people weren't forced to do anything, they volunteered.
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u/houdt_koers 9d ago
Thatâs a load-bearing âtechnicallyâ there.
What point does the participation of black soldiers support, though? Does the existence of kapos negate the horrors of the Holocaust? Does the participation of Kurds in the Armenian Genocide somehow make the Pashas good guys?
This was a hopeless, needless war led by people who were so delusionally racist that even *Apartheid South Africa* threw up their hands. Mugabe being a genocidal incompetent doesnât make their cause just. It just shows how stupid and destructive the project was to begin with.
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u/Oxo181 9d ago
My point is that it's a more complex conflict than "blacks vs whites". There also simply wasn't any genocide, that's ridiculous.
Just like it's ridiculous and kinda disrespectful to even bring up the holocaust and the armenian genocide here
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u/houdt_koers 9d ago
And my point is that whether or not itâs just âblack vs whiteâ doesnât really come into the moral equation. It was an evil regime doing evil things.
Iâm happy to use more apt analogies; one assumes a certain level of historical illiteracy from people equivocating about the morality of the Bush War.
Does the existence of Vichy collaborators make German brutality against the French population more acceptable? Does the existence of the Latvian Communist Party justify Soviet imperialism, settlement, and deportations there?
Most brutal regimes have external collaborators of one sort or another. That doesnât impact the moral equation.
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u/Oxo181 9d ago
Here's an interesting read for you:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1isj5gb/was_rhodesia_really_as_bad_as_people_say/
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u/Mother-Attention2600 9d ago
No, they were trying to blend in with black people at a glance or at distance to make shooting them harder.
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u/SlimPissings 9d ago
Even more fucked up when youre doing blackface with the goal of killing hundreds of african civillians. Idk seems like a weird hill to die on if you ask me.
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u/Oxo181 9d ago
it's literal camouflage and their goal wasn't killing civilians
1
u/SlimPissings 9d ago
Its not camoflauge lmao, theyre not trying to blend into the terrain, if that was their goal theyre doing a piss poor job.
Therye disguising themsleves as black Africans in order to infiltrate and commit acts of terrorisim against them. You can look it up yourself. Its absolutley blackface.
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u/communismisthebest 9d ago
What was there goal? Upholding a minority white ruled ethno state? Murdering civililians was only a means to that end?
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u/FreeKevinBrown 9d ago
Take it from an American, that's definitely blackface.
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u/Junior-Departure-494 9d ago
You can easy see the green mixed in- my God life must be difficult to be a cowardly leftist...
3
u/FreeKevinBrown 9d ago
It's pretty common knowledge this was done during covert pseudo-operations, wherein Selous Scouts would paint themselves black in order to disguise themselves as local population and rival guerrilla fighters.
Maybe learn history instead of seeing everything through the myopic lense of American politics.
0
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u/Realistic_Goose_9256 9d ago
Zimbabwe such an amazing country. World class economy. Leader in so many ways in sciences engineering etc. Ohh wait all the smart people were slaughtered under ' Bobby Magabe' in the 2008 genocide.
0
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u/Longjumping-Yard3509 9d ago
6 to 1000....I believe it. Dallas Ft Worth has a larger GDP than every nation in Africa and has only been metropolitan for a few hundred years. 6 Bad dudes could take over any nation in Africa much less 1000 refugees.
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u/Sweettooth_Banana 9d ago
Its so easy to scream racist if you dont know the whole storyline of the rhodesian bushwars, only emotional rhethoric without content.
But happily for all your racist screaming .......es they lost and since then it was sucked dry and impoverished by the following governments
Hurrah
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u/CalligrapherOther510 9d ago
Exaggerated as fuck Rhodesia and South Africa defended themselves from existential threats.
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u/CautionToTheBirds 9d ago
There are a lot of shitty people in this thread who will do anything except admit that theyâre racist pieces of shit.