https://archive.org/details/soldieroffortunemagazine
It’s particularly annoying that the article focused on American elections, which basically had nothing to do with SOF magazine. Especially when PMCs have become so widespread in the last few decades, and the modern mercenary’s role in recent conflicts. But I guess the “new” magazine isn’t really intended to cover that industry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_Caruana_Galizia vs, say, Tim Pool.
[1] https://silentprofessionals.org/job_category/military-contra...
On mainland USofA security guard for cash (Vegas) ~ $50K /annum, Vs personal security guard for "individual" ~ $150K /annum
Short for Walter Mitty; i.e. a fantasist
https://jacobin.com/2018/06/american-soldiers-rhodesia-angol...
The other about the very real-politics that make it necessary and the other ugly old world things luking out there (land-empires, genocidal cultures etc.) that very much make the existence of special circumstances necessary. Ever since iraq- the idealists have lost ground, as usas influence in the world unravels.
The funny thing is the inter-depedence. As in- when there side looses, the loosing side gets clingy to the other side.
After Oslo has fallen apart, all thats left is some old-men talking really loud to convince themselves and everyone that the world they made is real and permanent, hysterically clinging to falcons and mercenaries.
However the Persian Gulf war and Blackwater demonstrated that the reality of soldiers of fortune is likely more mercantile and corporate than it is mercenary and curmudgeon.
And more recently the reality of so-called soldiers of fortune are Jan 6 Doughnut Militia LARPers.
At least the 80a fictionalized version of the solider of fortune ideal was some kind of curmudgeoningly politic-neutral stasis, with short term cash as the only North Star, which made survivalism a more interesting and inviting idea. Nowaways engagement with the idea of survivalism is a quick red pill deep end dive into the rabbit hole of alt right wacko conspiracy theories.
I don’t have a point except to say that the allure of the illusion of the solider of fortune magazine is way more interesting than the reality. Maybe that was always true, but it seems like getting back to that ideal, such as it was, is a hard turn from politics - and yet everything seems infused with politics these days.
I mean, this magazine was never that.
> Brown [founder] worked closely with the chief recruiting officer of the Rhodesian Army, Major Nick Lamprecht, on using Soldier of Fortune to recruit white American men for the Rhodesian Army. Lamprecht wrote in an article in Soldier of Fortune urging white American men to come to fight for Rhodesia, writing that: "Rhodesia has many things to offer. Good Rhodesian beer, a friendly populace, and what I would describe as a free and easy, unhurried way of life, lots of wide open spaces"
Generally, back in the day, they seem to have taken a strong neo-colonial/anti-decolonisation line; no idea what they're at now. But, politically neutral, not so much.
I haven’t read this yet but the abstract of this article at least seems to also suggest that characterization is correct, though of course totally fictional: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358238712_Mercenari...
It’s that ideal I’d suggest that made reading the magazine rather fun as a kid, the geopolitics lost on me.
(From the Wikipedia article.)
Yeah, this seems like about what one would expect.