PS: Thanks for the travelogue/recent history lesson, Mr. Blanc. Speaking of Europe being drastically changed over the last 30-40 years, have any of you been to Portugal? I want to write a review on "Night Train to Lisbon".

PS

Charlie Wilson was a brain-dead tool, probably less able than Ms. Schiavo in her final days.

PS: Good afternoon, everyone,

“There were a few Afghanistan-1980s movies in the 2000s/2010s --- one big one, whose name I forget, glorifies a CIA gun-runner or the like.”

Charlie Wilson's War?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Wilson's_War_(film)

Off topic, but, I don't know why I find the comments on this blog so amusing...
http://durrrrr.blogspot.com/2005/03/mmmmmnegh.html
http://durrrrr.blogspot.com/2005/04/update-from-heaven.html

☮

PS I lived in London 1986-1988. There were always anti-apartheid protestors parading in front of South Africa House. It might have been 24 hours a day; I don’t know because I was never there in the middle of the night. The “struggle against apartheid” was always in the news. Even sports, because South African national teams were not allowed in international competitions. One constantly heard “Archbishop” Desmond Tutu rail against the evils of the regime. The old bugger died not too long ago. As far as I know, nary a word of apology for what he and his ilk did to South Africa.

PS Well, you’ve given me an opening to tell my Ireland story, so now you’re in for it. Late summer, 1976. I’d taken the ferry from Stanraer to Larne (near Belfast) I’d spent a day or two in Belfast and was ready to take the train (I was mostly hitch-hiking, but wanted to take the train for this leg) to Dublin. Had my ticket in hand, the train was due to leave in about half an hour. Then comes an announcement: The train to Dublin had been cancelled, due to a bomb threat at the border. Bugger! What to do? Within minutes, black cabs were lining up in front of the station. Give the driver your tickets and he would drive four passengers to Dublin. So I drove from Belfast to Dublin by cab with three Irish folk. One I particularly recall. A middle-aged woman. She really wanted the Troubles to end, but, her son-in-law had been killed by an IRA bomb (she gave the details, but, alas, I don’t recall them), and wasn’t about to forgive. I did spend several days on the Dingle peninsula. Celebrated my 30th birthday there, in a local pub. Friendliest people I’ve ever met, the Irish. Dreadful shame what they’re doing to their country. As far as South Africa goes, it’s lost. Whatever the historical rights and wrongs (which you outlined pretty well in a previous post), it’s now black Africa. And black Africa is what it is. There is no antidote. There is no cure. Perhaps the Chinese will do a better job of controlling it than the Europeans did.

PS: I actually read Sam Francis articles on VDare when he was still around. I did know that he coined the term anarcho-tyranny. I didn't know all the other background, so thanks.

So even back then, he found it better off to put the Rhodesia story in terms of Communists v the Free World, huh?

PS: Mr. Hail, that's a good point about Hollywood. They can have a part in memory-holing and important part of history, by producing no movies about it vs tons of them on other parts of history.

One big example is the 7 decades of Communism in the USSR. "Reds" was more sympathetic to those gullible Americans at the beginning. One good one is "Mr. Jones", which I reviewed here recently. However, there aren't dozens of Cold War or hot Cold War action movies as their are for WWII and the Nazis (also Japs) as in "The Dirty Dozen", etc. I'd love to see some. I don't think it'll happen.

Hollywood could always find non-White "heroes" for a movie about the Anti-Apartheid movement. There's gotta be some angle that'd have some action, suspense, what-have-you. I really don't know if they ARE embarrassed. What's to be embarrassed about, if hardly anyone knows what has happened over the 30 years.

We know about the terrible conditions in S. Africa because we read some truthful websites. Does the average Joe Blow? Now that's being memory-holed in real time, the farm killings of Whites there, for example. I just don't think Americans keep up very much, and the Lyin' Press sure doesn't help them do that.

PS

Related:

The great American ethnonationalist scholar-journalist-columnist-theorist Sam Francis, PhD, got his start in commentary by writing pro-Rhodesia material in the late 1970s.

I think this was part of his academic work prior to leaving academia. He made no secret that he was pro-government (i.e., pro-White) in the Rhodesia context but framed it in terms of Marxism (Black insurgents and Robert Mugabe) vs. anti-Marxism (White-Rhodesia).

Every time you use the word "anarcho-tyranny," you are channeling Sam Francis, coiner of the term.

(He was fired from the Washington Times in the late 1990s for being too pro-White.)

PS

"There is so much that young people don't have any clue about"

Compared to the Afghanistan intervention of the same period, the anti-South Africa movement fares especially poorly in historical remembrance or in the culture. Maybe as the 2020s go on, Afghanistan too will be conveniently forgotten, after the few-trillion spent by the Regime over twenty years, using your tax dollars, was abandoned abruptly in mid-2021.

Hollywood: There were a few Afghanistan-1980s movies in the 2000s/2010s --- one big one, whose name I forget, glorifies a CIA gun-runner or the like. Same with the Iran hostages of even earlier: another pro-CIA movie dealt with that (ARGO, winning many prizes from Hollywood). TV has also full of these themes for years.

People know about those things, in part, because they are in the culture. Are there any movies about the anti-Apartheid movement?

Hollwood's not the only thing out there, but it's a sign of something. Few seem to want to remember the Western anti-Apartheid movement.

In part, the Wokeness Juggernaut of our times might dislike that anti-Apartheid movement because it was (ironically) too White, and Wokeness demands a different story.

But mostly it must be that South Africa is such an embarrassment. What was the sum-total in economic losses of the huge riots and looting a year or two ago? (which were actually anti-lockdown riots in part).

PS: Mr. Hail, yes the Communist influence and hot war in Angola etc., is an important part of what happened too. I should write a post about that, but it'll be much later, I think. One wonders how much the other side was behind the Western movements too, but there were plenty of gullible people who loved to be part of a virtuous movement.

Yes, it went on for a decade or so. I remember some scenes from the mid-1980s in a left-wing location of course.

PS: Alarmist, she might have been that type. That doesn't spoil the memory though, because she just wasn't my type anyway. I can't remember how long that sign lasted in the rain either.

Mr. Hail, I don't know if the big Western anti-Apartheid movement has been memory-holed. There is so much that young people don't have any clue about. Anything before they were born, and without so much written about on the internet, never happened. If you say it did, well, OK Boomer.

That's probably a big part of it. If there's not so many people who care about editing wikipedia about it or creating web sites after the fact (seeing as there was no www during the time period of all those events), then they won't find much. Books, what good are history books? I ain't got time for that nowwww....

Even the entire 40 years of the Cold War against the USSR is an example. It was the biggest and overarching political thing going on for Americans for 4 decades! Yet, the lessons are being lost.

PS: Oh, no, Mr. Hail, I meant as far as Ireland went - I did not visit the 6 north counties that are part of Great Britain. I went to a lot of countries, but not as many as I would have like to in 2 months. The East Bloc was still out of the question.

PS

-- From the pro-South Africa side --

...a song presented for its potential historical interest...

From the leading figure of the Rock-Against-Communism movement of the 1980s, Ian Stuart of England:

https://www.bitchute.com/video/gDWHOgyrRawL/

(above link definitely banned on Youtube).

Lyrics:

__________________

STRIKEFORCE
1987

I wanna tell you 'bout South Africa,
and the so-called "fight for freedom"...
The much-praised Black resistance,
and the communists who lead them...!

Not too far away in-- Angola,
or nearer home in Zimbabwe...
The Marxist Black dictators
are looking south,
in fear, to see...:

Strikeforce! White survival
Strikeforce, yeah...
Strikeforce, beat all the rivals
Strikeforce, into the devil's lair.

Well, her neighboring regimes are enemies,
although we're too blind to see
That they're harboring the Marxist murderers
of the terrorist ANC

And the leaders of the West
use sanctions to scream:
"What about the human rights?"
But they don't tell the truth,
'cause they're traitors too
What about the Whites that die?

Strikeforce! White survival
Strikeforce, yeah
Strikeforce, beat all rivals
Strikeforce, into the devil's lair.

___________________

The record on which this appeared circulated pretty widely at the time considering the group had been banned from record stores by 1980 for racism (after a late-1970s successes in the mainstream).

PS

-- the Memory-Hole and the Anti-Apartheid Movement --

I have a feeling that if you presented your late-1980s juxtaposed anecdote as-is to most any b.1980s, b.1990s, b.2000s White-Westerner today, he or she would be baffled and puzzled at what the reference to South Africa is about.

The anti-South Africa movement went the "memory hole" route. I don't get the feeling that it's remembered at all-- I mean in the West by people under x years of age. It's certainly not really talked about. I can't remember the last time I heard anyone in public life or Regime-media mention it.

There's a lot of talk of things going down a cultural-political "memory hole." Usually the term is used ironically, but the phenomenon does exist, and the anti-South Africa movement seems like a really good example.

The various Latin America interventions or civil wars of the 1980s have also completely faded from popular-memory (such that the now-celebrated Whitney Webb, born-1988, I think, apparently wrote long explications of the "Iran-Contra" in her Epstein book, as if explaining something something from the Eleventh Dynasty of Ancient Egypt...In other words, Ms. Webb had no idea what "Iran-Contra" was, and assumed no readers would know what it was, so went at great length explaining it in her book). But the South Africa Boycott movement, I hear of it even less than the Central America interventions.

I myself am not old enough to remember the "Anti-Apartheid" and South Africa Boycott movement(s), but -am- aware enough to know they were big in the 1980s and early-1990s amongst a large swathe of White Westerners. (The old go-to cultural reference of The Simpsons, in its early years, has Lisa Simpson with anti-Apartheid posters on her bedroom wall.) The earlier anti-Rhodesia sentiments of the 1970s reorganized to attack South Africa in the 1980s.

I have an older sibling who -was- aware enough of these things that somewhere in the 1990s this sibling had a habit of pointing out which gas stations had ties to South Africa and which had been part of the boycott. I don't remember if this sibling urged a boycott or not, but did take some pride in knowing which gas companies were supposedly collaborators with South Africa.

So, if I am write, why would the anti-South Africa movement of yester-decade have been "memory-holed"? I guess one easy answer is how uncomfortable the comparison is between the (White) regime they targeted and the (Black) successor regime. It's a little like how Hollywood has never once produced a "gulag" movie.

PS

Hate to spoil a memory, but that sign was probably A4 size. Your Swedish lady friend probably took on a lover of utländsk bakgrund, if she wasn’t raped and dominated by one before that.

PS

Was it only (southern-)Ireland in this late-1980s "tramp abroad"?