Right wing co-opting and rebranding of Mandela

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How do conservatives and other reactionaries reconcile their airbrushing and co-opting of Mandela as a figure of democracy when back in the day, British conservatives in particular wore t-shirts saying 'Hang Mandela', the leader of which wept crocodile tears at his funeral?

Is it true that he was a leader of a terrorist organization that killed civilians?

"Back in the day".

Back in the day, the native inhabitants of the land I live on were hunted down and exterminated. The same for many others here.

People change as society does.

You're likely thinking of Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair.

When contextualised, its not such a black and white issue.

Mandela's movement wanted to follow a peaceful path in the tradition of Gandhi until killings commited by the apartheid regime made non-violence untenable.

Moreover the point of this thread is the hypocrisy of right wingers who venerate him now, when in earlier life they wanted him either dead or to remain behind bars.

I don't claim ownership of this individual.

Adair is a thoroughly nasty piece of work. Its a shame the Republicans didn't put another bullet in him before he cowardly fled to England.

Because a,) half of these people probably weren't alive in the 1960s, and b.) politics has a short term memory. Mandela positioned himself as an insanely popular president (and an effective one, I understand), and any past wrongdoings just seemed irrelevant. Right wing ideologues would have to be total fools to bring up such inconvenient facts as terrorist acts in an otherwise feel-good narrative.

Well they love him because he kept power with the ruling classes, he prevented the mass population from overthrowing them. Which may not have been all that bad seeing as they had no really strong, educated mass socialist party. Of course Mandela could have led them down the path of socialism and away from the bondage of capitalism but he didn't. Instead he maintained the grip of capitalism and this is why detractors from the 70's love him and honour him now. In short he did their bidding, more than that they could not have accomplished the non revolutionary transition from apartheid without him.

Not all people who identify as conservative have changed their minds on Mandela: for example, have you read the comments on the Fox News Facebook page regarding Mandela? About half of the ones I read (not a great number of them) continue to decry Mandela as a terrorist and a Communist, and that it was a travesty that Fox News was expressing sympathy at his loss.

But the Conservatives that did change their minds? Who knows ... people's opinions can change over time, for any number of reasons.

The anti mandela lynch mobs were active well into the 1980's. David Cameron was a student in the Young Conservatives at the time and helped spearlead the 'hang Mandela' campaign. Which makes it all the more sickening to listen to him deliver his obituaries and fake condolences.

I don't think it has been shown that Cameron was in the "Hang Mandela" wing of the YCs, has it?

Are you sure you really want to praise Mandela so much OP?

He was a Zionist:

And unlike the genocidal anti-Israel haters that you love was genuinely interested in rapprochement with the Afrikaners - learning their language and culture, and really trying to get on with and understand them and, when the ANC won the 1994 elections, eschewing any thoughts of revenge on the Nationalists.

The Palestinian organisations - both Fatah/PLO, Hamas and PIJ - do not want any Jews living in Palestine. No matter their heritage or history or if they have history that long predates the founding of Israel. They favour expulsion and annihilation of Jews and the creation of an almost entirely Sunni Arab Muslim state to replace the present State of Israel. Mandela was diametrically opposed to these things. Although he did support the PLO as I think that his ideology considered them all to be their ideological brothers. I get the sense he was quite confused.

Mandela had his faults - allying with some very dodgy Arab, African dictators and of course the Soviet Union (oh, and let's not forget that he told the Provos not to decommission in the late 1990s) - and I think that this did him and the ANC a lot of harm. I reckon that if the ANC did not have the Communist baggage that white rule would have ended much sooner than it had - definitely by 1980 at least. (See Zimbabwe.)

South Africa is a mess, but that is largely down to the mentality that the ANC infused its people with and not technically a fault of Mandela. They have not followed Mandela's teachings and so I believe that whites (who have lived there for hundreds of years) will continue to flee South Africa as they become more and more persecuted.

Different context.

Mandela once said "the world cannot be free while Palestine is still in chains".

Its no coincidence though, that the usual suspects cheerleading Israel today were the same ones opposing boycotts against Apartheid South Africa.

Mandela is a complex individual that shouldn't be free from criticism, he isn't a saint but regardless of his beliefs and past transgressions he wanted peace and reconciliation at a time it very well could of descended into civil war. He was a much better leader than his contemporary Robert Mugabe.

ICYMI, the CIA provided the information that led to Mandela's arrest.

No, it isn't.

It just shows what a bloodthirsty little racist hypocrite you really are.