[Peace-discuss] When You Kill Ten Million Africans You Aren't Called ‘Hitler’

Sat Oct 5 16:42:08 UTC 2013

The point here is that no one has ever heard of Leopold....Why is that?

________________________________
 From: E. Wayne Johnson 朱稳森 <ewj at pigsqq.org>
To: Stephen Francis <stephenf1113 at yahoo.com> 
Cc: sftalk <sftalk at yahoogroups.com>; "peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> 
Sent: Saturday, October 5, 2013 9:20 AM
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] When You Kill Ten Million Africans You Aren't Called ‘Hitler’

King Leopold of Belgium was an interesting fellow.

Most of those killed in the Congo were killed by fellow Africans
who became the military police, and by pestilence.

Not exactly a round 'em up and kill 'em programme like Hitler
but atrocious none the less.

On 10/05/13 22:28, Stephen Francis wrote: 
For
all you antiSemitism accusation freakoids out there.... Why is
it that the vast majority have never heard of King Leopold II of Belgium.  
>The
website WalkingButterfly is not anti-semitic....and notice all the
Socialist organizations advertising.
>http://www.walkingbutterfly.com/2010/12/22/when-you-kill-ten-million-africans-you-arent-called-hitler/
>
>http://www.walkingbutterfly.com/?s=holocaust&submit.x=-1255&submit.y=-147 
See Socialist advertising.
>
>Mark
Twain:  “King
Leopold’s soliloquy; a defense of his Congo rule“   
>When
You Kill Ten Million Africans You Aren’t Called ‘Hitler’
>
>Take
a look at this picture. Do you know who it is?
>Most
people haven’t heard of him.
>But
you should have. When you see his face or hear his name you should get
as sick in your stomach as when you read about Mussolini or Hitler or
see one of their pictures. You see, he killed over 10 million people in
the Congo.
>His
name is King Leopold II of Belgium.
>He
“owned” the Congo during his reign as the constitutional monarch of
Belgium. After several failed colonial attempts in Asia and Africa, he
settled on the Congo. He “bought” it and enslaved its people, turning
the entire country into his own personal slave plantation. He disguised
his business transactions as “philanthropic” and “scientific” efforts
under the banner of the International
African Society. He used their enslaved labor to extract Congolese
resources and services. His reign was enforced through work camps, body
mutilations, executions, torture, and his private army.
>Most
of us aren’t taught about him in school. We don’t hear about him in the
media. He’s not part of the widely repeated narrative of oppression
(which includes things like the Holocaust during World War II). He’s
part of a long history of colonialism, imperialism, slavery and
genocide in Africa that would clash with the social construction of the
white supremacist narrative in our schools. It doesn’t fit neatly into
a capitalist curriculum. Making overtly racist remarks is (sometimes)
frowned upon in polite society, but it’s quite fine not to talk about
genocides in Africa perpetrated by European capitalist monarchs.
>Mark
Twain wrote a satire about Leopold called “King
Leopold’s soliloquy; a defense of his Congo rule“, where he mocked
the King’s defense of his reign of terror, largely through Leopold’s
own words. It’s an easy read at 49 pages long. Mark Twain is a popular
author for American public schools. But like most political authors, we
will often read some of their least political writings or read them
without learning why the author wrote them (Orwell’s Animal Farm for
example serves to re-inforce American anti-socialist propaganda, but
Orwell was an anti-capitalist revolutionary of a different kind, and
that is never pointed out). We can read about Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer,
but King Leopold’s Soliloquy isn’t on the reading list. This isn’t by
accident. Reading lists are created by boards of education in order to
prepare students to follow orders and endure boredom well. From the
point of view of the Education Department, Africans have no history.
>When
we learn about Africa, we learn about a caricaturized Egypt, about the
HIV epidemic (but never its causes), about the surface level effects of
the slave trade, and maybe about South African Apartheid (which of
course now is long, long over). We also see lots of pictures of
starving children on Christian Ministry commercials, we see safaris on
animal shows, and we see pictures of deserts in films and movies. But
we don’t learn about the Great African War or Leopold’s Reign of Terror
during the Congolese Genocide. Nor do we learn about what the United
States has done in Iraq and Afghanistan, killing millions of people
through bombs, sanctions, disease and starvation. Body counts are
important. And we don’t count Afghans, Iraqis, or Congolese.
>There’s
a Wikipedia page called “Genocides in History”. The Congolese Genocide
isn’t included. The Congo is mentioned though. What’s now called the
Democratic Republic of the Congo is listed in reference to the Second
Congo War (also called Africa’s World War and the Great War of Africa),
where both sides of the multinational conflict hunted down Bambenga and
ate them. Cannibalism and slavery are horrendous evils which must be
entered into history and talked about for sure, but I couldn’t help
thinking whose interests were served when the only mention of the Congo
on the page was in reference to multi-national incidents where a tiny
minority of people were  eating each other (completely devoid of the
conditions which created the conflict). Stories which support the white
supremacist narrative about the subhumanness of people in Africa are
allowed to be entered into the records of history. The white guy who
turned the Congo into his own personal part-plantation,
part-concentration camp, part-Christian ministry and killed 10 to 15
million Conglese people in the process doesn’t make the cut.
>You
see, when you kill ten million Africans, you aren’t called ‘Hitler’.
That is, your name doesn’t come to symbolize the living incarnation of
evil. Your name and your picture don’t produce fear, hatred, and
sorrow. Your victims aren’t talked about and your name isn’t remembered.
>Leopold
was just one part of thousands of things that helped construct white
supremacy as both an ideological narrative and material reality. Of
course I don’t want to pretend that in the Congo he was the source of
all evil. He had generals, and foot soldiers, and managers who did his
bidding and enforced his laws. It was a system. But that doesn’t negate
the need to talk about the individuals who are symbolic of the system.
But we don’t even get that. And since it isn’t talked about, what
capitalism did to Africa, all the privileges that rich white people
gained from the Congolese genocide are hidden. The victims of
imperialism are made, like they usually are, invisible.
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