The battle for people’s minds

Terrified of the able visionary tutelage of President Robert Mugabe and the practical and psychological implications of a successful Zimbabwe for the West’s economic interests worldwide, the Anglo-Saxon response has been to shape a regime change agenda to

CONFLICT over ideology is a key reason behind the pursuit of the regime change agenda, according to Kinzer’s seminal work, “Overthrow”.

This article will deal exclusively with the West’s thirst for ideological supremacy over perceived rivals, and the West’s incessant drive to impose its ideology on vulnerable, weaker sovereign states.

The most obvious example given thus far is the Western nations’ failed attempt to strangle at birth the Russian Communist revolution in 1917.

Alarmed by the rise of Russia as a great power, the United States saw the emergence of communism as an existential threat to all the tenets of its capitalist ideology.

The term “Cold War ” came to symbolise the overt and covert battles for spheres of influence between capitalism and communism; the theatres of war stretching across the globe, in Africa, South America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

It is instructive to highlight the key differences between the competing ideologies.

It is with a sense of schadenfreude that the arch-proponent of capitalist ideology, the US, is also identified as the key driver of the regime change agenda on the global stage.

The central tenet of capitalism is the individual’s pursuit and accumulation of wealth in the form of property, business and industry, a tenet that is Darwinian in ethos.

Since the arrival of the US as the leading superpower from the late 19th century when the American economy boomed dramatically, successive American governments have arrogantly assumed the mantle of securing foreign markets to satisfy the American domestic market’s thirst for foreign economies to conquer and dominate.

In order to secure these foreign markets, it has been imperative that the foreign markets in question remain friendly and subservient to American political and economic interests.

Where American interests abroad have been threatened, the US has reacted quickly to limit and, if possible, to reverse the hostile foreign climate in order to restore the status quo.

To effect the required changes, the US uses coercion in the form of military, economic and political pressure.

It is no coincidence that sovereign Zimbabwe in 2017 has been declared a clear and present threat to American interests abroad by luminaries George Bush and Barack Obama.

The explanation in the West’s hysterical reaction lies in the fact that Zimbabwe’s indigenisation drive is the very anti-thesis of America’s self-serving doctrines of capitalism.

With its underlying premise of empowerment and its emphasis on the collective over the few, the restoration of land and indigenisation comprehensively undermine the main thrust of capitalism, the accumulation of individual wealth.

Terrified of the able visionary tutelage of President Robert Mugabe and the practical and psychological implications of a successful Zimbabwe for the West’s economic interests worldwide, the Anglo-Saxon response has been to shape a regime change agenda to preserve the West’s economic interests in Zimbabwe.

What then can be said Communism, the ideology?

Inspired by the Bolshevik revolution, the early communists of Russia arrived on the international scene with what the capitalists considered to be a heretical message.

The capitalists were apoplectic with rage at the notion that individuals were not permitted to own property nor industries, notwithstanding the idea that people of all social classes were of equal standing in society.

The US governments of the 1920s were horrified for now they were confronted by a formidable political ideology with popular mass-appeal across the world and furthermore threatened the core and foundations of capitalist ideology.

The genesis of the Cold War has its roots in the existential clash between the diametrically-opposed ideologies of capitalism and communism.

Wherever a pro-communist government came into power, the wheels of the regime change agenda were rapidly set into motion.

A graphic example of a country with communist leanings that fell foul of Western aggression as part of a regime change agenda includes the long-suffering Cuban government of the popular, late-lamented Fidel Castro who unwittingly allowed his nascent republic to become a prominent pawn in the Cold War between two competing ideologies.

It is unsurprising that South America has a high concentration of regime change agenda-targeted countries.

Successive US administrations have always considered the region of South America as being in their sphere of influence, a euphemism for a region where American political, economic and military interests remain paramount. of