

It read, “Wanted: Employment as mercenary on full-time or job contract basis. The January 1976 issue of Soldier of Fortune included a classified ad placed by Daniel Gearhart, a 34-year-old Vietnam veteran with money trouble. But unlike a dungeon master, Brown invited his readers to live out their armchair warrior daydreams in places where people died for real.įor several years after Brown founded Soldier of Fortune in 1975, the magazine ran full-page recruiting ads for the Rhodesian Army, which employed foreign mercenaries to defend the apartheid-style regime of prime minister Ian Smith. Brown, the founder and publisher of Soldier of Fortune, has long rocked “Kill a Commie for Mommie” t-shirts with no sense of irony. We talked about killing commies the same way we talked about slaying orcs. For my Dungeons & Dragons buddies and I, reading Soldier of Fortune was like perusing a Dungeon Master’s Guide or Monster Manual.

Royko left out elementary school D&D geeks. “But since mercenaries represent only a tiny portion of the reading population, the magazine tries to broaden its appeal to include those who might be called war fans, weapon-lovers, fanatic anti-commies and Walter Mitty types who enjoy the vicarious thrill of reading about blood and guts.”
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE MAGAZINE RHODESIA PROFESSIONAL
“It’s directed at professional mercenaries - men who will fight for pay and those who want to hire them,” wrote Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko in March 1984. But what made Soldier of Fortune so enticing in my 11-year-old mind was less its editorial content than its infamous advertising.Īlong with ads for mail-order brides, bounty hunter training manuals, surveillance electronics, Secrets of the Ninja lessons (including “mind clouding” and “sentry removal”), Nazi memorabilia, machine guns, silencers, and sniper rifles, Soldier of Fortune advertised the services of guns for hire. I remember Soldier of Fortune articles in those days being a macho-to-the-max amalgam of firearms reviews, anti-gun control rants, Vietnam POW conspiracy theories and gory first-hand reporting on Cold War proxy wars, military coups and revolutions in Second and Third World nations. This was in the mid-1980s, the Rambo-era heyday of the “journal of the professional adventurer.” The seizure was preceded by a parent-teacher conference at which exhibit A was a recent two-page essay I’d written about wanting to be a mercenary when I grew up. When I was in sixth grade my parents took away my collection of Soldier of Fortune magazines. The Dark Side of “Soldier of Fortune” Magazine: Contract Killers and Mercenaries for Hireĭavid Holthouse - Media Matters for America

SOLDIER OF FORTUNE MAGAZINE RHODESIA FULL
MichaelWme on The Hegemon Will Go Full Hybrid War Against BRICS+.Marilyn Langlois on Heeding Cornel West’s ‘Cri de Coeur’.Richard Falk on Heeding Cornel West’s ‘Cri de Coeur’.Roger Kotila on 9/11: Whodunnit? and Why It Matters to the Peace Movement KUDANKULAM ANTI-NUCLEAR SATYAGRAHA, INDIA.ASIA-UPDATES ON MYANMAR ROHINGYA GENOCIDE.Activism Africa Airborne contagion Anglo America Assange Biden Big Brother Biography Brazil BRICS Capitalism Casino Capitalism Catastrophe Capitalism China Climate Change Conflict Conspiracy Theories Coronavirus Corruption COVID-19 Cuba Cultural violence Democracy Development Direct violence Disaster Capitalism Eastern Europe Economics Economy Ecuador Elites Environment Europe European Union Fatah Finance Food for thought - Editorial cartoon Gaza Genocide Geopolitics Global warming Greed Hamas Health Hegemony History Human Rights ICC Imperialism India Indigenous Rights Inequality Inspirational International Relations Invasion Israel Joke Journalism Justice Latin America Caribbean Literature Lockdown Media MENA Military Military Industrial Complex Military Industrial Media Complex Military Intervention Military Supremacy Music Video Nakba NATO New World Order Nonviolence Nuclear war Nuclear Weapons Occupation Oslo Accords Palestine Palestine/Israel Pandemic PCR Tests Peace Pentagon Poetry Politics Power Predatory Capitalism Profits Proxy War Public Health Putin Racism Religion Research Russia Science Science and Medicine Settlers Social justice Solutions Spirituality State Terrorism Structural violence Super rich Surveillance Sweden Torture Trump UK Ukraine UN United Nations USA US empire US Military Vaccines Violence Violent conflict War War Economy Warfare War on Terror West West Bank Whistleblowing WHO WikiLeaks World Zionism
