I saw some meme of him talking online about being against Israel and people calling him anti-semitic, I looked him up and Google tells me he is universally recognized as one of the most brutal modern dictators as leader of Uganda in the 70s. Immediately I thought oh this dude may be based, but on Wikipedia it mentions he gained power through a coup and was initially pro-west. It continues by saying after that he drifted away from them and was backed by totally evil “regimes” like the Soviet Union and East Germany. And that he was like shunned by the UK for declaring himself “CBE”, conqueror of the British Empire. He was a Pan africanist as well, which leads me to seriously wonder if he was all that bad. Was this dude just a useful ally to the Soviets or was he a serious anti-colonial fighter?
Not really, they mean Amin was supported somewhat by the UK for opposing Obote who led the independence movement against the UK. They hoped he would be more right wing, and open to european banks and corporations controlling the economy. So there were alot of accusations that the UK was behind the entire coup to reverse the Ugandan independence movement and make them a colony again. However these accusation were largely unfounded.
Uganda had problems with their neighbors in the DRC, Sudan, Tanzania, and Kenya, so there’s alot of confusion and proxy wars going here, but an easier way to look at it is Kenya was pro western, Tanzania was pro-china, since Kenya supported Amin, and Tanzania supported Obote, Amin appeared to be pro-western, he was also trained by the British army under colonialism, so alot of rumors were being spread that he was a British spy.
However he very quickly severed diplomatic relations with the UK and nationalized all the british owned business anyway, which was like the whole reason James Bond was there in the first place. The soviets then allied them sent them billions of dollars, and Ugandan army officers all began training throughout the soviet union. A major conflict was that Amin invaded Tanzania, however this was because Obote supporters were hiding out there, and staged an attempted coup, Amin accused Tanzania of state supporting them and declared war, however Tanzania insisted it wasn’t involved and quickly begged for peace. Then came what gave Amin his fame today the Entebbe airport kidnapping, which is also where Benjamin Netanyahu became famous