by Dr. William L. Pierce

TODAY LET’S TALK about liberalism. Let’s look at what this disease of the soul is doing to one group of our people. Let’s look at the consequences of liberalism in a country in the southeastern part of the continent of Africa, a country which until 20 years ago was known as Rhodesia and today is called Zimbabwe. (ILLUSTRATION: Whites murdered by Blacks in Rhodesia)

The reason Rhodesia is called Zimbabwe today is that in 1979 the Rhodesians, under intense diplomatic and economic pressure brought to bear against them by liberals in America and Europe — and to be completely honest about it, showing some symptoms of the disease themselves — decided to let Blacks vote for the next government of Rhodesia. Since there were at that time six million Blacks living in Rhodesia and only 275,000 White Rhodesians, this was in effect a decision by the Rhodesians to commit collective suicide. Some of them realized that fact at the time, but most didn’t, because, as I just mentioned, they were showing some early symptoms of liberalism. Today most of the few Rhodesians who are left realize that they made a fatal mistake 21 years ago. But before we get to the Rhodesian situation today, let’s just remember a little history.

Early in the 19th century people from the British Isles first began farming and mining operations in the part of Africa north of the Limpopo River and south of the Zambesi River: an area which later became Rhodesia. Murderous forays by Blacks were a problem during the 19th century, even though they more often were intent on murdering and eating each other than on killing the White settlers, but eventually the Whites taught the Blacks to behave themselves. By the beginning of the 20th century the Rhodesian highlands were being farmed on a significant scale by White settlers.

The Rhodesian highlands, with their almost European climate and fertile soil, weren’t of much interest to the jungle-acclimated Blacks, but the Whites found the area ideal, and in the period between the two World Wars they built a thriving country, not only with farming and mining, but also with gleaming cities and a number of industries. After the Second World War, many veterans from England migrated to Rhodesia. The Rhodesian population was certainly a cut above that in Europe: taller, fairer, leaner, more enterprising and energetic on the average. Look at photographs taken in Salisbury or on Rhodesian farms. The Rhodesian women especially were tall and blond and beautiful. Rhodesia was a good place to live, a good place to raise White children.

But of course, there was a worm in the apple. A wave of liberalism was sweeping over Europe after the war. Liberalism had defeated fascism. The corpses of millions of liberalism’s opponents were rotting in mass graves all over Europe, after they had been machine-gunned, hanged, starved to death at the end of the war. Other millions of the opponents of liberalism were being worked to death in slave-labor camps behind the Iron Curtain. Liberalism was triumphant. And even in happy, sunny Rhodesia the malignant influence of liberalism made itself felt. The liberals in Europe were screaming about the evils of White colonialism and White imperialism. The White man was oppressing and exploiting the Brown man in India and the Black man in Africa, and it had to be stopped. After all, we were all equal. Race was an inconsequential detail, only a matter of skin color and nothing else. To think otherwise was to be a “fascist,” a “racist.” We had just won a horribly bloody war in order to exterminate the “fascists” and the “racists.” It was intolerable that we should permit “racist” policies to govern our colonies in Africa. The Blacks must be give the vote. We must step down and hand everything over to our Black “equals.”

This insanity even had its proponents in Rhodesia, especially in the Christian churches there. Most Rhodesians at that time were in no mood for giving their country away, despite all of the liberal propaganda. After all, it was their country. They and their ancestors had built it. Despite the influx of immigrants still arriving from England, most Rhodesians had been born in Rhodesia and had lived there all their lives. And they knew what the Blacks were like. They knew that the differences between Whites and Blacks involved infinitely more than skin color. Furthermore, they knew that they were not oppressing the Blacks, who actually were much better off since the arrival of Whites. The Blacks greatly preferred an occasional lashing by a White farmer when they didn’t work hard enough to being eaten by their fellow Blacks when they lost a tribal war.

At least, that was the case with most of the Blacks in Rhodesia, where they worked primarily as farm laborers. But there was some resentment, some envy of the White man. And there were Whites, infected by the disease of liberalism, who were eager to fuel that resentment and turn that envy into active hatred. Some of these infected Whites were in the media. Even more of them were in the Christian churches. One of the principal activities of the Christian churches in Rhodesia was educating Blacks. They set up mission schools throughout the country, where they not only provided free medical care for the Blacks and taught them how to read and write, but also pumped into them the propaganda of equality and of hatred of their White employers. They preached a theology of revolution. Every single Black terrorist leader who later emerged when warfare between Blacks and Whites broke out in Rhodesia — every one — was trained in a Christian mission school. That includes the current Black dictator of Rhodesia — excuse me, Zimbabwe — former terrorist leader, now president, Robert Gabriel Mugabe. It also includes the Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole, who in 1979 was the head of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), one of the principal terrorist groups. And it includes Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the first Black to be maximum leader of Rhodesia after the Whites abdicated.

When Black terrorists became active on a significant scale during the 1960s, the Rhodesians fought back hard. While other European colonies in Africa were abandoned, the Rhodesians, along with the South Africans, were determined to defend their land and their homes. And of course, the liberals in Europe and in America were solidly on the side of the Black terrorists. The liberals cheered whenever the Blacks murdered a White farm family or set off a terrorist bomb in Salisbury. And when the terrorists murdered or mutilated the Black workers of a White farmer, the liberals were silent. They hadn’t really wanted that, but after all, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

An ironic point is that Rhodesia’s Christian missions also were frequent targets. The White farmers learned quickly how to deal with terrorists. Their farms were heavily armed, and they set up a very effective mutual defense and alarm network. When they caught a live terrorist, they hanged him. The Rhodesian Army had the best anti-terrorist fighters in the world. Tracking, catching, and killing Black terrorists became a sport at which they excelled. In their frustration, the Blacks turned on the Christian missions which had trained them. The missions were unarmed and often were in remote areas and so were easy targets. The Blacks would gang-rape the White nuns and nurses and then cut their throats. They would slit open the bellies of the White infants and children and pull out their entrails. They would impale the priests on stakes and gouge out their eyes. The liberals back in America would smirk. They would much rather it had been a White farm family than the White staff of a Christian mission station — but at least the victims were White.

The Rhodesians as a whole were coping pretty well with Black terrorism, so the liberals began applying economic terrorism. Rhodesia was placed under embargo by the United Nations. The intention was to starve the Rhodesian “racists” into submission, to cut off the supplies they needed to defend themselves from the Black terrorists. Well, the embargo was ineffective, because the Rhodesians got whatever they needed from the South Africans, just across the Limpopo River to the south. This infuriated the liberals. Christian church groups in America raised money to send to the Black terrorists in Rhodesia so that they could buy more effective weapons. Whenever the Rhodesians hanged a group of terrorists, church groups and other liberal groups in America would hold candlelight vigils, which seems to be one of the favorite things liberals do.

The Jewish media were the most effective weapon of the liberals against Rhodesia, however. The media in America whipped up a frenzy of bloodthirsty hatred against the Rhodesians. They had students demonstrating on university campuses. They invited terrorist leaders to speak to student groups and helped raise funds for the terrorists. The destruction of White Rhodesia was one of the top-priority projects of American liberals during the 1970s. But the White Rhodesians weren’t especially worried. They had declared their independence from Britain in 1965 when the liberals in Britain tried to impose Black rule on them, and as long as they could trade their farm products and their minerals to South Africa in return for military helicopters and petroleum products, they knew they could fight Black terrorism indefinitely.

So the liberals stepped up the economic pressure against South Africa. And the South Africans, I am embarrassed to say, eventually gave in. They cut off their trade with Rhodesia, leaving the Rhodesians isolated. And I cannot blame this bit of treachery entirely on the liberals. In part it was due to selfishness and stupid shortsightedness on the part of non-liberal South Africans. South African businessmen and politicians thought that if they threw the Rhodesians to the wolves they could relieve some of the economic pressure the liberals were putting on South Africa.

Even without South Africa’s help, the Rhodesians could deal with the terrorists. But liberalism also had infected many Rhodesians and weakened both their self-confidence and their judgment. They decided in 1979 that living under a Black government wouldn’t be so bad after all. Blacks were human beings too, they thought. Surely the Blacks would understand that their own welfare depended on the Whites. The Whites made up only 4.5 per cent of the population, but they produced 92 per cent of Rhodesia’s agricultural output. Black farmers engaged only in subsistence farming, and their own families consumed nearly everything they produced. Without the White farmers and their large, efficient farms, everything would sink back into the jungle. So with all sorts of agreements and safeguards and assurances from the British government and the United Nations, the Rhodesians turned their government over to the Black majority, thinking that then the world would love them, their standard of living would go up because the embargo would be lifted, and everything would be peaceful and prosperous again.

Well, it didn’t take long for cold, hard reality to assert itself. The first thing that happened was the change in the name of their country from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe. Their capital city had its name changed from Salisbury to Harare. And their democratic government, with all its checks and balances to assure the safety of the White minority quickly reverted to the norm for Black Africa: a one-party dictatorship, with an increasingly unstable and unpredictable Black dictator. Robert Mugabe’s party controls 147 of the 150 seats in Zimbabwe’s parliament. There are Black opposition groups in Zimbabwe, but when they try to have public meetings or election rallies, they are set upon by armed thugs from Mugabe’s party, and their leaders tend to disappear or have fatal accidents.

During a peaceful march in Harare on the first of this month by 3,000 members of an opposition group, including 200 Whites, Mugabe supporters armed with clubs and machetes attacked the marchers while Black police watched without interfering. The attackers singled out the Whites in the procession. I’ll read you a few lines from an eyewitness report:

“As the police stepped hastily aside, they charged. Demonstrators fled in panic as stones were hurled toward them. Crouching in a doorway, I saw an ordinary shopping street overrun by anarchy. Thugs raced along pavements beating bystanders to the ground and snatching handbags. . . . Shops hastily barricaded entrances, leaving desperate people trapped in the street. A white man in his fifties was hit by stones and fell to the ground. His companion, a white woman in her forties, was toppled beside him. Seconds later three youths attacked them with clubs, and blood spattered across the pavement where they lay.”

In front of me I have dozens of other eyewitness reports of beatings, slashings, and stabbings of Whites who participated in this peaceful protest against the Mugabe government two weeks ago. I doubt that you read any of these reports in the New York Times or the Washington Post. They really don’t like to report such news.

Much of the recent turmoil in Zimbabwe is related to Mugabe’s threats during the past year to take their farms away from White farmers and give them to his Black followers. Last week, on April 6, he finally announced that he will confiscate White farms without compensation. Even before the announcement, Black gangs already had invaded more than 800 White farms and become illegal squatters, and Mugabe had refused to intervene.

There are only 75,000 Whites left in Zimbabwe today. Of the 275,000 Rhodesians in the country in 1979 at the advent of Black rule, 200,000 already have left. The ones who remain own some 4,500 farms, which still produce more than 90 per cent of Zimbabwe’s agricultural output. Mugabe is basing his popularity with Blacks on a promise to take the farms away from Whites and redistribute the land to Blacks.

Referring to his refusal to remove the illegal squatters from the White farms, Mugabe announced last week: “We will not remove the people from the farms. We are going to share the farms. We are all equal. We all have to share equally.”

The remaining Whites in Zimbabwe are desperate. Their farms are all they have. When those are taken most of them will have nothing left and nowhere to go. A minority of them with British passports can go to Britain, but everything they own, everything they spent their lives building, will remain behind.

Now, here’s the punch line to this story: it isn’t a story in America. The Jewish mass media over here have been far too busy giving us the latest updates on Elian Gonzales to tell us about what’s happening in Zimbabwe. Four days ago, on Tuesday night of this week, I saw a one-minute snippet about the dispossession of the White farmers of Zimbabwe on CNN Headline News. I don’t expect to see much more. So far as the Jewish media bosses are concerned it’s not important news. The victims are our people, not Jews or Blacks or other non-Whites, and so there’s no need to make a fuss about it. And the liberals, of course, aren’t interested.

They were very interested back in the 1970s, when they were busy destroying Rhodesia. But now that the work of destruction is done they have completely lost interest. They don’t care. Their latest project is to persuade the International Monetary Fund that it must not be so stingy in giving our money to African countries which need it. They’re demonstrating in the streets of Washington right now in a campaign to get more money for supporting bankrupt countries — countries like Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. Since the Whites, who were the principal employers of Black workers in Zimbabwe, began leaving a few years ago, the unemployment rate in Zimbabwe has reached 50 per cent. Now the annual inflation rate also has reached 50 per cent. When Mugabe begins grabbing more White farms, as he announced last week that he would, there will be a total collapse of the economy. On top of that one in every five Blacks in Zimbabwe is infected with HIV.

Yes, indeed, a new generation of very earnest college girls and long-haired freaks and hymn-singing Christians soon will have a wonderful, new cause to devote themselves to: providing money and food and medical aid to the starving, AIDS-wasted Blacks of Zimbabwe. They will be demonstrating just as self-righteously for this cause as the previous generation demonstrated for Black rule in Rhodesia.

You know, I started out today to talk about the disease of liberalism. What I’ve talked about so far is just one of the consequences of liberalism, one of the effects of this disease of the soul. The very earnest college girls and the long-haired freaks and the hymn-singing Christians who were so proud of themselves when they succeeded in destroying Rhodesia are just an effect of liberalism also. They aren’t liberals. They don’t have an ideology. They just want to be fashionable. They will take up any cause, with the utmost earnestness, so long as it is fashionable. They don’t have the wits to understand the disastrous consequences of their misdirected earnestness. And they really don’t care.

I used to want to kill all of these people. I wanted to round up every earnest college girl and long-haired freak and every hand-clapping hymn-singer who had demonstrated for Black rule in Rhodesia, or for a boycott of South Africa, or for Black voting rights in the South, or what have you, make them dig an enormous burial pit, and then machine-gun all of them. I wanted to obtain all of the old membership lists of the organizations to which these people had belonged, so that they could all be rounded up and done away with. They have done so much damage in this world, and then walked away from it without the least regret for what they’ve done, without the least understanding of the harm they’ve caused, that it seemed to me that the proper thing to do was just kill them all.

Well, I understand now that that’s not really necessary. There are just too many trendy idiots in the world. They are not even inherently evil. They lack the ability to distinguish good from evil. They have no more inherent morality than animals do. They have no souls. They have only the ability to recognize what is trendy at the moment. The people who need to be killed are the ones who set the destructive trends for the idiots. They are the real liberals, the ones who are really sick and need to be put down.

I’ll talk more about them later. But for now I must tell you, I am really heartbroken when I contemplate what the destructive idiots they manipulate have done to the White people of Rhodesia, who were among the finest of our people and who at this moment are facing a very grim future indeed.

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Source: American Dissident Voices broadcast, April 15th, 2000