Just Because Mugabe Is Bad...

The Rhodesian UDI was, in point of legal fact, an act of treason. Accordingly, the Queen never accepted the title "Queen of Rhodesia", and Rhodesia declared itself a republic early in its history after UDI. But then, Rhodesia was allied to, and dependent on, the Republic of South Africa, itself an act of anti-British Boer revenge by persons who had been interred during the War for their pro-Nazi activities. Indeed, both the UDI and the subsequent declaration of a republic were, by definition, anti-British acts on Rhodesia's own part.

Ian Smith was also a close friend to Salazar, and heavily dependent on his regime in Angola and Mozambique. Salazar’s was at that time one of the last two Fascist dictatorships in Europe (although the neocons later sponsored the creation of another one, in 1990s Croatia). In his memoirs, Smith wrote that if Salazar had lived longer, then Rhodesia would still be in existence today.

Rhodesia was settled by the very sections of British society from which Mosley had drawn his support, and its regime reflected the views of such people. A Mosley-run Britain would have had close ties to the regime idolised by that of apartheid South Africa (and, indeed, to apartheid South Africa itself), and it would also have had close ties to Salazar's Portugal.

All these things taken together, Rhodesia was (mercifully) as near as we will ever see to a model of what Britain would have been like if Hitler and Mosley had won, only with better weather and with someone else to do all the work.

Of course Mugabe is bad. But that doesn't mean that Smith was good. He wasn't.