Charleston Suspect Dylann Roof's Idolization Of Rhodesia And South Africa Is Rooted In Right-Wing History

[Steve Hayes]

Charleston Suspect Dylann Roof's Idolization Of Rhodesia And South
Africa Is Rooted In Right-Wing History
For decades, elements on the right glamorized the regimes and systems
that systematically disenfranchised darker people in Africa.
By Zaid Jilani / AlterNet
June 18, 2015

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The killings in Charleston, South Carolina, last night have renewed
discussion about the threats that racism and white supremacists
continue to pose.

The chief suspect in the shootings, Dylann Storm Roof, reportedly
exclaimed, “You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And
you have to go,” before opening fire on black churchgoers, signifying
a racist intent to the attack.

Online, it emerged that Roof's Facebook image is of him in a jacket
that has the flags of Apartheid-era South Africa and white-ruled
Rhodesia:

Today, it is unusual to see right-wing ideologues openly identify with
white supremacist regimes abroad. It is more common in this region to
see people adorning the Confederate flag, which flies outside the
South Carolina statehouse.

But for years, the American right allied itself to these racist
governments, holding them up as beacons of hope amidst Third World
chaos and Communist powers.

Defending Racist Regimes Abroad

As much of the world was turning against South Africa's Apartheid
regime and enacting boycotts and sanctions, the 1984 College
Republican platform boasted that “socio-economic and political
developments” there were “resulting in the betterment of the lives of
all the peoples of South Africa.”

Disgraced Republican super lobbyist Jack Abramoff traveled to South
Africa and met with pro-Apartheid groups; he later helped open the
think tank the International Freedom Foundation, which dedicated its
resources to undermining the African National Congress's Nelson
Mandela. He moved to what is now called Namibia to produce a
propaganda film titled Red Scorpion, which glamorized fighters in
Angola who were allied to South Africa.

Right-wing activist Grover Norquist, who today runs the powerful
Americans for Tax Reform, also traveled to South Africa in a bid to
undermine the boycott movement. He became a ghost-writer for
pro-Apartheid Jonas Savimbi, and upon returning to the United States,
he kept a “I'd rather be killing commies” bumper sticker on his
briefcase, in a reference to the anti-Apartheid guerillas in Southern
Africa.

Another figure who allied himself to the white supremacist regimes was
a young Jeff Flake. Flake, who is a Republican Senator from Arizona
today, testified against an anti-Apartheid resolution in the Utah
State Senate and later worked as a D.C. lobbyist representing the
South African mining industry. He also represented a uranium plant in
Namibia that was targeted by activists for discrimination.

The Reverend Jerry Falwell, the godfather of the resurgent Christian
Right, faced off with the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who was mobilizing
for the boycotts of South Africa, on the ABC News program Nightline.
Falwell insisted that South Africa was making progress and that by
targeting it for boycotts and sanctions, Jackson was ignoring
atrocities in other countries and singling out a white-led country in
South Africa.

The case of Rhodesia represented a singular appeal to the global
Christian right. As Norman H. Murdoch writes in his book Christian
Warfare in Rhodesia-Zimbabwe: The Salvation Army and African
Liberation, he explains the ideology of the country's leader Ian Smith
as believing that “to be Christian was, in his mind, to be white,
European, and anti-Marxist.” It should be little surprise, then that
William F. Buckley, the founder of the National Review, went on
expenses-paid trips to Rhodesia and also made trips to South Africa.
Of South Africa he wrote that the Apartheid system has “evolved into a
serious program designed to cope with a melodramatic dilemma on whose
solution hangs, quite literally, the question of life or death for the
white man in South Africa.”

The Ugly Echoes Of History

While these major figures would be unlikely to ever own up to their
support for the racist governments in Africa, you occasionally see
evidence that mainstream right-wingers harbor resentment at the rise
of democracy to replace white supremacy. A RedState diary in 2010
blames former president Jimmy Carter for failing to support Rhodesia's
government. Upon the death of Nelson Mandela in 2013, former
Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich had to write a vocal defense of
the civil rights leader due to the amount of right-wing hate that was
spouted upon his passing. Some on the right today like Breitbartwriter
Virge Hall are claiming that Roof's Facebook photo must be
photoshopped.

But most of the American right today will never admit that this is the
history it leaves behind: one of naked support for white supremacy and
glamorizing of regimes and systems that systematically disenfranchised
darker people.

Yet we should not pretend that this history does not influence the
right-wing's political movements today. Notice how a series of
Republican presidential candidates made statements about the shooting
but not a single one even noticed racism as a likely motivation. And
in way the right has pledged its fealty to an increasingly racist
government in Israel, or the contortions it makes to deny the legacy
of racial injustices in this country, you hear an ugly little echo of
the Falwells and Buckleys. That's an ideology that ultimately, as we
are re-learning in Charleston, has a death toll.

Zaid Jilani is an AlterNet staff writer. Follow @zaidjilani on
Twitter.

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--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
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[infowolf1]

> The chief suspect in the shootings, Dylann Storm Roof, reportedly
> exclaimed, "You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And
> you have to go," before opening fire on black churchgoers, signifying
> a racist intent to the attack.
>

And he chooses a bunch of church people, easy targets at that no great
heroic act with risk, he fired on the wrong bunch if he was going to
think and talk like that, he should have gone off on some street gang.
but no, its church people. wrong target and no risk. cowardly.

[nickk - not the imposter]

The kid just turned 21, had some sort of drug problem and his dad buys him a 45. What is wrong with this picture? Lock his dad up!

[Unknown]

Naming negroids 'black people' is like naming children 'little people'
to pretend that they differ only in size.

Children change/evolve in decades.
Human races change/evolve in evolutionary time.

Using old US-race-classification terminology: there's ample evidence
of the 'ordering' mongoloid, caucasoid, negroid;
which seems to correspond to the out-of-Africa migration.
Ie. the furthest from the source [longest journey time}] are the most
evolved.

That's why I was asking if the 'AusAbos' arived by Quantas?
If colour mattered: South Indians<very dark: I've forgoten the name>
would have similar traits to negroids. They don't!