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

Sat Oct 5 20:48:45 UTC 2013

I had heard of him.

Of course I am nobody.

Dont tell emily dickinson that there are 3 of us.

On 10/06/13 0:42, Stephen Francis wrote:
> 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 
>> <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 
>> <http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/i2l/kls.html>“
>> 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 
>> <http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/i2l/kls.html>“, 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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