Last year, Rep. Mike Collins, a second-term Georgia Republican who is challenging Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff this fall, posted a meme that appears to have gone largely unnoticed.
asserted
that → challenge → meme
On the left was a photo of Donald Trump in the Oval Office, pointing to someone just out of the frame.
asserted
photo → point → frame
The photo was accompanied by a quote from the president: “Can you turn the lights down?
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you → accompany → lights
I want to show you something.”
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I → want → something
Next to it Collins had attached an image and a snippet of dialogue from the 2006 film Blood Diamond.
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Collins → attach → film
It comes just after Leonardo DiCaprio’s grizzled mercenary tells an American journalist, played by Jennifer Connelly, he’s from “Rhodesia.”
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he → come → Rhodesia
“We say Zimbabwe now, don’t we?” Connelly says.
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Connelly → say → Zimbabwe
“Do we?” DiCaprio responds.
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DiCaprio → do → ?
The reference—a one-off post with no accompanying context or follow-up—might have gone over the heads of most of Collins’ constituents.
uncertain
reference → go → constituents
A poster with the handle “X Wigger” responded: “We are all Rhodesia now.”
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We → respond → handle
Another user replied to Collins with a faded photo of three shirtless Rhodesian soldiers, and the words, “PATRIOTS IN CONTROL.”
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user → reply → CONTROL
“[W]e’ve got a sitting congressman rhodesia-posting now boys,” wrote a staffer at the right-wing outlet The Blaze.
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staffer → w]e’ve → outlet
“[I]ncredible things are happening.”
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things → happen → ?
Collins, who did not respond to a request for comment, has been dogged by his close associations with white nationalists, including a Nazi-posting son-in-law who lives next door.
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who → respond → law
But he is far from alone in expressing his affinity for Rhodesia.
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he → express → Rhodesia
The now-defunct white supremacist state in southern Africa is having a moment on the right.
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state → have → right
Bo French, the Republican nominee for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, wrote last year that “We need to be Rhodesia.”
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We → write → Commission
The Washington Post reported in September that a now-former campaign staffer for Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted created a Spotify playlist devoted to songs about the country.
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staffer → report → country
Donald Trump Jr. is peddling Rhodesian lifestyle apparel.
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Jr. → peddle → apparel
Some of Silicon Valley’s leading lights are Rhodesia-posting, too.
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Some → post → lights
There was a time not so long ago when public support for Rhodesia was “morally untenable,” as the New York Times put it in a 2018 story about a resurgence in interest among “white supremacists.”
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Times → be → supremacists
Although their governments differed in their particulars, Rhodesia was, then and now, closely linked in the popular imagination with apartheid South Africa—two white-minority nations that violently resisted Black self-determination on the continent.
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that → differ → continent
But the former British colony had found “new life” on the far right, the Times reported.
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Times → find → right
Before murdering nine Black parishioners at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, Dylann Roof posted his manifesto at a website called “The Last Rhodesian.”
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Roof → murder → website
In a photo he posted on the site, he wore a jacket with the apartheid-era South African flag over his right breast; the Rhodesian flag—green and white, with two antelopes in the middle—was right below it.
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flag → post → it
(Roof was himself following in the footsteps of an earlier white supremacist gunman.
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Roof → follow → gunman
James Earl Ray attempted to flee to Rhodesia after assassinating Martin Luther Luther King Jr.)
You don’t have to spelunk in the darker recesses of the web to find Rhodesia-posting today.
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You → attempt → posting
Collins isn’t even the only battleground candidate who’s dabbled in it.
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who → dabble → it
Brandon Herrera, the Republican nominee in a competitive House district in West Texas, filmed himself doing what he called “Rhodesian LARP” in a 2023 episode of his YouTube firearms show, as part of a series in which he fires off historical weapons.
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he → film → weapons
(Herrera has previously been criticized for goose-stepping to a prominent Nazi song during an episode on German guns, which he has defended as satirical and “funny as hell.”)
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he → criticize → hell
For his Rhodesia video, previously reported on by the Texas Observer during his unsuccessful 2024 campaign, Herrera dressed in Rhodesian camouflage and shot a “based” Rhodesian light automatic rifle while reciting dialogue from Blood Diamond with his buddies.
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Herrera → report → buddies
Later, he appeared back at his studio in front of a large Rhodesian flag—an emblem that the Anti-Defamation League has classified as a “hate symbol.”
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League → appear → symbol
Herrera, who did not respond to a request for comment, told his viewers he didn’t want to get into politics, but went on to describe the Rhodesian Bush War—the bloody, decade-and-a-half long conflict between the white government’s soldiers and Black guerilla forces—as “basically a civil war between the Dutch people of that area and the locals and/or communists.”
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he → respond → area
(He acknowledged in the YouTube comments that they were, in fact, British, not Dutch.)
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they → acknowledge → fact
“Pretty much no matter what kind of take you have on that, someone will hate you for it,” he said of the conflict.
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he → have → conflict
“But, long story short: The side that was sympathetic with communism won, and now Zimbabwe doesn’t have food.
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Zimbabwe → win → food
Cade Lamb, the son of Arizona Republican congressional candidate Mark Lamb and himself the founder of a border vigilante organization called the Sonoran Asset Group, promoted his father’s 2024 campaign for US Senate on Instagram by sharing a T-shirt design that featured the slogan, “BE A MAN AMONG MEN” in big red letters.
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that → call → letters
It bore an uncanny resemblance to a recruiting poster for the Rhodesian army—one the ADL has said is used by “[w]hite supremacists, as well as some others, generally on the far right.”
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ADL → bear → right
The Lamb campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
asserted
campaign → respond → comment
For $12 you can even buy a version of the poster that features Kyle Rittenhouse in the place of a Rhodesian soldier.
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that → buy → soldier
…and 51 more, not listed.
The Aporia
