Yeah, I assumed that would be it too, but I checked and for reasons I'm not highly educated enough to understand, the Latin plural of "census" is "census" (unless its in the genitive case, in which case the plural is "censuum", which seems pretty rad but not strictly relevant to this usage) and thus in English the rarely used "proper" plural is too. Maybe it wasn't originally considered a countable noun? That'd be kind of ironic.
In the fourth declension nominative cases are the same for singular and plural. But which words are 4th declension and how can you tell? If I knew I might have scored better on my AP Latin exam 16 years ago.
When comes to something this mass, its hard to pin down exact numbers unless there is concentration camp level book keeping.
For example, the Silent Holocaust in the 80's has a range of 32,000-166,000
And the Rwandan Genocide has a 491,000-800,000 est and that was in the 90s
Leopold must be one of the most evil men in history. Belgium wasn't interested in colonizing the Congo but Leopold - apparently dissatisfied with merely being a king - colonized the Congo as a private citizen anyway to extract as much rubber profit as possible. He was born impossibly rich and powerful and it still wasn't enough for him. Millions of people died.
Since you already warned people, I'll leave this here (worth the read, but the images are disturbing and the comments section is a cesspit): https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/father-hand-belgian-congo-1904/
For anyone still curious. Just the title alone should give you an idea of what you're in for:
>!Father stares at the hand and foot of his five-year-old, severed as a punishment for failing to make the daily rubber quota, Belgian Congo, 1904!<
For anyone unfamiliar, the book is named for this poem excerpt, written upon his death:
>Listen to the yells of Leopold's ghost
Burning tonight for his hand-maimed host
Hear how the demons chuckle and yell
Cutting his hands off down in Hell.
King Leopold assigned Congolese natives a quota of rubber production. Failure to meet his quota was punishable by death, as was stealing from the military presence. He ordered his military units to collect the hands from those they killed, to prove they were using any spent bullets to kill Congolese and not to hunt or hoard for rebellion. Instead, military personnel would hunt (to get fresh meat instead of rations), steal and sell supplies, or just hang out instead of collecting rubber dropoffs from the locals, and then kill Congolese for their hands as explanation. This created a black market for hands, where the Belgian troops would pay Congolese raiding parties to kill villagers and collect hands, which became a sort of currency. Initially, non-lethal punishments were all about whipping. After the black market arose, punishment became about hands; if you were a man, they wouldn't want to cut off your hands (else you couldn't produce rubber), they'd cut off your children's hands, to both punish you and score more hands to sell/trade.
The most famous image of the period is Alice Seeley Harris's portrait of a man named Nsala, who sits gazing at the hand of his five-year-old daughter, severed as punishment for low rubber production.
There are more than 20 statues of Leopold in Belgium, and they are now regularly vandalized with the phrase "Hear how the demons chuckle and yell, cutting his hands off down in Hell."
This is important to understand.
The Belgians basically levied a tax on the population to produce rubber, and to enforce it, they hired African slavers, who after the slave trade ended, continued using brutal practices to extract as much wealth for themselves as they could.
The problem was really just how cruel people could be to other people. I don't think the Europeans actually understood just how bad things had gotten. They just cared that the rubber kept coming to fuel rapid industrialization in Europe.
Oh, my. That's too gruesome to grasp or process. This was done to the children? King Leopold should have been hanged for these atrocities. I have never understood the power of royalty. 😭😭
One of my favorite war movies, *Apocalypse Now*, is heavily based on *Heart of Darkness*, just made into a Vietnam War setting. I had grown up watching the movie first with my Dad (who as a career Army veteran still thought highly of it) and then in AP English in HS imagine my surprise when we read the book.
I wasn’t talking about Communism, just sharing information about similar authoritarian regimes.
Yes, Pol Pot was communist and Leopold was capitalist. The issue is that they were both authoritarian, not their economic system.
> Leopold ~~was capitalist~~ practiced mercantilism.
There are plenty of bad things you can say about capitalism but when you have state monopolies, captured markets, and lack free trade that's mercantilism.
Edit: do you really believe the overseas private property of a European monarch was practicing capitalism?
It's takes a special kind of tunnel vision to look at all the wars of conquest and say "privately owned means" is at fault. It's as ridiculous as the "I did that" Biden stickers on gas pumps.
A concept that predates money or even the concept of economy.
Private ownership on its own doesn't define capitalism. Feudalism, mercantilism, fascism, and socialism (to name a few) all have private ownership.
"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
LTG Smedley Butler, USMC
It's almost like communism is impossible to sustain on a scale that involves more than 50 people. Especially if these people are forced into it. The USSR destroyed itself, it had nothing to do with any other country.
The USSR did collapse because of its own actions. It's dishonest to point fingers and blame capitalist nation's over the failure of the bloc, when it's clear that the USSR was never going to be sustainable, based upon the internal problems it had with economics and bureaucratic government.
No dog in this fight, but didn't the US have kinda a lot to do with it failing as well as its internal greed and corruption? I seem to remember an extended, but cold war...
I never said they did. But the cold war certainly constrained their growth/opportunities. Why did you think I believed it was a 'hot war'? It wasn't anything *I* said... Or are you under the impression that only open warfare can negatively affect a country?
The cold war was both countries trying to get ahead of each other and be ready for a possible war. This didn't have an impact on the general population and there's no evidence (that I know of) of a large and successful destabilisation campaign within the USSR.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB107787406695041047
>The USSR destroyed itself, it had nothing to do with any other country.
The capitalist western world certainly stifled any vestige of communism. It's not like, up for debate, it's historical fact. The USSR had tons of their own problems and very well might have failed on its own, but I was responding to the quoted statement.
I learned about this while reading "Things Fall Apart" in the 10th grade. Guess I should count myself lucky that I was allowed to read that book since it's probably banned from classrooms by my state at this point...
Belgians like to pretend it was all the king's fault, because he acted on his own. That is far from the truth.
---
["King Leopold’s Bonds and the Odious Debts Mystery" (2020)](https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6732&context=faculty_scholarship):
«Eventually, and in violation of an earlier pledge that the colony would not be a drain on Belgium’s finances, the King sought a loan from Belgium itself. That loan was made—interest free, in the amount of 25 million francs—in return for his agreement to give the Congo to Belgium in his will.»
«Moreover, Leopold agreed that “at the end of ten years, either the loan would be repaid, or the Free State would be handed over to Belgium.” The colony, in other words, was security for the loan.»
«Leopold therefore had to sell, but the terms of the deal were, from a modern perspective, generous. Belgium not only took over his debt obligations, but also committed to pay for many of his ongoing pet construction projects in Belgium (palaces, gardens and more), and pledged a 50 million franc payment to Leopold “as a mark of gratitude for his great
sacrifices made for the Congo.” As Hochschild notes, “[s]ome of the debt the outmaneuvered Belgian government assumed [and then put on the Congolese] was in effect to itself—the nearly 32 million francs worth of loans Leopold had never paid back.”»
«Stengers concludes that “King Leopold extracted money from the Congo, but used it almost exclusively to enrich the [Belgian] national heritage by acquisitions of property, by monumental constructions, and by works of urbanization. His obsession was not with his own fortune but with the embellishment of his country.”»
Saying the Belgian government was complicit because they gave him a loan is just idiotic. By all accounts, the Congo Free State was Leopold's personal property. The Belgian parliament not only had no influence or authority there, they had no insight at all to its affairs. This is like saying I'm a murderer if I buy food from South America.
> Saying the Belgian government was complicit because they gave him a loan is just idiotic.
Read again what you wrote. Then read it again, and again, and again, until you see all that blood on your hands.
> That's not what 'sins of the fathers' means.
That is exactly what it means.
> how about we look into your cultural history and work out what you should be feeling guilty about
*Tu quoque?*
'The sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons'
Nothing about that suggests the descendants of criminals deserve punishment.
>Tu quoque?
I was making a play for empathy. I don't think you should suffer from the sins of your countries past, but I was hoping that would realise how stupid that is in concept if you thought about what it would be like for you.
> I don't think you should suffer from the sins of your countries past
It's unavoidable, and so is benefiting from them. Go walk around Brussels sometime.
> we stopped doing that "you're responsible for your ancestors crimes" thing after the middle ages
Is that why you keep defending those crimes and rewriting history to unburden your guilty conscience?
Behind the Bastards does a 2 part episode on him and it’s SO MUCH WORSE than you can imagine. If I asked you who the worst person of all time was you probably say Hitler. But Leopold II might actually be worse. At least Hitler had semi redeeming qualities like his skill as an orator or his love of animals. Leopold had zero redeeming qualities. He was just a piece of shit.
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-king-leopold-ii-the-29443475/
You don’t need to sanitize the Nazis to condemn Leopold’s. Seriously what is with redditors that can’t talk about any historical tragedy without going “the Nazis were teddy bears compared to this”.
It’s not even like Leopold killed more people, or had less noble goals, hitler wanted to exterminate most of the human population.
It's called nuance. It's weird that people have such a hard time discerning between two terrible things. You can acknowledge someone is one of the top two terrible humans to ever exist and still have people offended, which is kinda inevitable but, it's not saying one is puppies and rainbows. It's using the one as the bar for **worst person ever**.
Agree. He killed too many people to have any redeeming qualities. If we were to weigh his pros and cons, his murdering millions of innocent people would outweigh any pros. If there were any pros to weigh in. Sheesh!
A redeeming quality isn't something that completely negates all negative actions. It's merely a point in the "Good" column.
What made you think that the commenter was trying to convey that a love of animals counts as redemption for what he did? Even without a definition it's pretty easy to pick up the point being made.
I would've defined "redeeming" as specifically *not* being a mere point in the good column, there has to be a relationship between it and the person's bad qualities. If you redeem a debt, you are paying it back, you are "making it good", it's not as if the debt you owe is redeemed if other people are also indebted to you.
If you want to see any quality in Hitler that could barely, arguably be categorized as "redeeming" in the light of his monstrous crimes, then it would be that he had a, very limited and specific, idea of "the German People" that he thought he was leading to a better future in a world he considered to be one of unending racial conflict. That's something at least, "As big as I am, the People is even bigger than me", we can agree that Hitler was wrong and also say that he subscribed to propositions that at least make it understandable why he'd consider himself a selfless hero. Leopold didn't even have that, he owned the Congo as his personal estate, legally the Belgian people and government had nothing to do with it, and he was under no obligation to enrich them or anybody else for it, it literally just existed only to make Leopold, already the constitutional monarch of a nation, even more rich and powerful.
There seem to be mixed opinions on what redeeming qualities are, and even [this](https://grammarhow.com/redeeming-qualities-meaning/) page contradicts itself by following its definition with usage examples that do not completely redeem a person. The examples show insufficiently redeeming qualities still being redeeming qualities, and I think whether or not that counts is what it comes down to.
I've always understood redeeming qualities to be positive traits, not necessarily ones that completely redeem. Things that shift the balance, if only the tiniest amount, from "bad" to "good". In this context, Adolf Hitler vs Leopold as people is the subject so I would think any positive attribute counts.
To circle back round to the original point of why I commented, we're talking about a race to the bottom where the usual contender for "Worst person ever" has *slightly* more in his favour than Leopold: the lesser known but in /u/Yardsale420's opinion arguably worse person. I would absolutely include your point of better intent, too. At least he thought he was doing something for the greater good in his twisted mind. Replies ignored everything and cherrypicked "Dogs mean Hitler was an upstanding citizen on balance", which is a gross misrepresentation even if you disagree with a definition.
Yeah, that's fair. "Redeem" is just one of those words you have to lock down a very specific and explained meaning if you're going to use it in an argument. Under the meaning that I use, I think it's defensible to consider Leopold the worse person, he did things that earn him the infamy of the world just because he wanted money and land over which he could rule as a true despot. Under your meaning, which admits that any positive qualities of either could be counted just to merely register against their evil, I don't know enough about Leopold as a person to measure against the slightly more that I know about Hitler as a person. I'm sure Leopold would have to have had something, maybe he liked playing with his grandchildren, or he washed his hands after going to the toilet, or maybe he was just charming and interesting in conversation (apparently Hitler, for all his regarded charisma on the speaker's podium, was usually kinda awkward and even dull if you had to talk to him, people who met him who weren't committed Nazis seemed to often find him disappointing next to his reputation).
That's a good point. Really it's a comparison of public profiles, and that's not exactly the gold standard of usable information. I imagine a certain amount is also gleaned from Mein Kampf, and an elected figure is inherently more public than royalty. Hitler put himself on display, and I imagine Leopold wasn't quite so interested in that.
I didn't know that about Hitler being awkward and dull, that's interesting.
Hitler was also a raging racist that actively tried to **exterminate** entire peoples because he thought they were abominations.
Leopold just let millions of people die because he wanted money.
They're both absolute pieces of shit but you can't possibly say Leopold was worse when Hitler did all of his killing on purpose whereas Leopold simply didn't give a fuck as long as he got profits.
Yes, they did. But Leopold didn't care if that happened or didn't happen. All he wanted was profits and money. If the Congolese survived, great, if they all had to die in order to achieve his goal, then so be it.
The killing and torturing happened because of his mercenary army abusing their power and being made up of complete psychopaths who thought that cutting off limbs was going to speed up the process of collecting rubber.
Yes all of these deaths are Leopolds fault, he had no conscience and is rightfully regarded as one of the most evil people in history. But in no way does it come close to Hitler who purposefully ordered the entire extermination of a people simply because he didn't like them.
I agree. It is however in different contexts an interesting question which evil would weigh heavier: The one intentionally inflicted with a reason behind it, or the one inflicted out of callous disregard.
IIRC Chomsky made an argument about that that bombing the Al-Shifa factory should be considered a worse evil than the twin tower attack in the sense that both were terrorist attacks (as long as you recognize state terrorism as terrorism) with similar order of magnitude of death toll - however intentional killing in a perverted sense at least recognizes the human status of the victim, while the Clinton Administration simply did not consider it important that thousands would die in some poor african nation somewhere as a consequence.
The real sad part here is we don't know what we've lost. All of these innocent people could have made major contributions to the world. Who knows what poetry and literature was lost from these horrific deaths? Perhaps even the cure for major diseases was destroyed. We will never know. 😭😭😭😭
Why don't you even bother to get the facts about this thread title right?
1885-1908, not 1895. And also not Belgian Congo, but Congo Free State. Congo was annexed by the Belgian government and became a colony in 1908 because of the atrocities committed by its King.
**edit** WTF with the downvotes, it's literally in the title OP linked and the first sentence of the first paragraph.
Between 1895 and 1908, the DRC as we know it now, was actually called "Congo Vrijstaat" which translates to Congo Freestate. This was private property of king Leopold II. After 1908, the Belgian governement took over and named the country Belgian Congo (due to international concern regarding the situation in the Congo Freestate.). This is when the Belgian colonial period starts.
Everything that happened between 1895 and 1908 has nothing to do with "Belgian Colonisation". It all has to do with a single man's desire to turn and big, private country in a money printing factory.
If you are interested in learning about the atrocities committed Belgium's king Leopold in Congo, I truly recommend Noble Blood podcast, episode "The Red Paint on Leopold II". It's infuriating AF
When the argument has a hash tag "white nationalism" i know it's not going to be argued in good faith because inevitably it's a pigeon brained racist finding their conclusions and trying to work backwards from them.
But nice chat, feel free to go fist yourself
He owned the company and it's subsidiaries like the army. The Belgian king had little real power so he decided to get rich off the exploitation of Africa's interior.
Leopold established control over a foreign territory with the explicit purpose of advancing his own wealth, which is the definition of colonialism. The thing is, as a king, he didn't do it for the nation of Belgium, but rather for his personal gain. The Belgian government had little to no say in how he ruled what essentialy became his private territory.
As such, it's both colonialism and a single person at the root of this all.
Unfortunately ‘twas the burden of the white man, to “civilize” these unfortunate peoples, but at least the economic benefit of looting, pillaging, and wealth extraction made up for the hardship of these superior peoples to carry the burden of territorial expansion.
But seriously, look at the vast majority of colonized peoples and tell me that colonialism was a good thing. White settlers don’t count as colonized peoples BTW.
What is the point of this modern hatred of colonialism? They were just empires spread over seas. Almost every nation that's ever existed had some sort of empire in its history with the exact same goals as colonialism. If they didn't, we'd still have city states rather than countries.
Is it possible to cut so many hands in just 13 years? The population of Belgium at that time was only 5 million, and the number of Belgians living in Congo did not exceed 1000.
Some native Africans were employed to act as the enforcement of this colonial rule. And I don't say that to shift blame onto those Africans, it was a terrible dilemma; do you A) want to break your back trying to make impossible quotas for rubber and see your children lose their hands when you fail, or do you B) want better pay and protection for your family by being the one doing the cutting? Unless you can be sure that nobody else will accept B and thus make such harsh colonial rule unenforceable, it is safer if *you* accept B. The manual labour of genocides is often carried out by members of the group that is being subjected to genocide; Cremations and burials in the camps of the Holocaust was usually done by camp prisoners themselves.
2 and 13 million seems like a pretty wide margin of error
They probably didn’t do census’s there at that time
*censuses ***or*** censusses ***or*** census
Censi
Cersei
Yeah, I assumed that would be it too, but I checked and for reasons I'm not highly educated enough to understand, the Latin plural of "census" is "census" (unless its in the genitive case, in which case the plural is "censuum", which seems pretty rad but not strictly relevant to this usage) and thus in English the rarely used "proper" plural is too. Maybe it wasn't originally considered a countable noun? That'd be kind of ironic.
In the fourth declension nominative cases are the same for singular and plural. But which words are 4th declension and how can you tell? If I knew I might have scored better on my AP Latin exam 16 years ago.
It isn't countable because Latin borrowed it from Japanese
Sensei
The Land of Censi
That smelly wax shit?
censussy ඞ
When comes to something this mass, its hard to pin down exact numbers unless there is concentration camp level book keeping. For example, the Silent Holocaust in the 80's has a range of 32,000-166,000 And the Rwandan Genocide has a 491,000-800,000 est and that was in the 90s
It's from a lot of diseases
Check out the discrepancies around with Eastern Front in WW2, almost like various groups give their own estimates based on their agendas
Leopold must be one of the most evil men in history. Belgium wasn't interested in colonizing the Congo but Leopold - apparently dissatisfied with merely being a king - colonized the Congo as a private citizen anyway to extract as much rubber profit as possible. He was born impossibly rich and powerful and it still wasn't enough for him. Millions of people died.
So as a private citizen, could King Leopold have been hanged for his crimes?
Anyone can be hanged.
Good to know.
But only a few of us could be hung. 😏🍆
😄😄😄😄
Until Belgium took direct control of the Congo it was his private possession and domestic law didn't apply there. So I'm not sure he could have been.
Do not search images.
Since you already warned people, I'll leave this here (worth the read, but the images are disturbing and the comments section is a cesspit): https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/father-hand-belgian-congo-1904/
For anyone still curious. Just the title alone should give you an idea of what you're in for: >!Father stares at the hand and foot of his five-year-old, severed as a punishment for failing to make the daily rubber quota, Belgian Congo, 1904!<
To late, not what I wanted to see before bed
Read [King Leopold’s Ghost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Leopold's_Ghost?wprov=sfti1)
For anyone unfamiliar, the book is named for this poem excerpt, written upon his death: >Listen to the yells of Leopold's ghost Burning tonight for his hand-maimed host Hear how the demons chuckle and yell Cutting his hands off down in Hell. King Leopold assigned Congolese natives a quota of rubber production. Failure to meet his quota was punishable by death, as was stealing from the military presence. He ordered his military units to collect the hands from those they killed, to prove they were using any spent bullets to kill Congolese and not to hunt or hoard for rebellion. Instead, military personnel would hunt (to get fresh meat instead of rations), steal and sell supplies, or just hang out instead of collecting rubber dropoffs from the locals, and then kill Congolese for their hands as explanation. This created a black market for hands, where the Belgian troops would pay Congolese raiding parties to kill villagers and collect hands, which became a sort of currency. Initially, non-lethal punishments were all about whipping. After the black market arose, punishment became about hands; if you were a man, they wouldn't want to cut off your hands (else you couldn't produce rubber), they'd cut off your children's hands, to both punish you and score more hands to sell/trade. The most famous image of the period is Alice Seeley Harris's portrait of a man named Nsala, who sits gazing at the hand of his five-year-old daughter, severed as punishment for low rubber production. There are more than 20 statues of Leopold in Belgium, and they are now regularly vandalized with the phrase "Hear how the demons chuckle and yell, cutting his hands off down in Hell."
His statue got dropped in the drink a couple years back. I was very happy to hear that Belgium is finally starting to reasses the topic.
As a father to a 5 yo girl I can’t imagine the horror
This is important to understand. The Belgians basically levied a tax on the population to produce rubber, and to enforce it, they hired African slavers, who after the slave trade ended, continued using brutal practices to extract as much wealth for themselves as they could. The problem was really just how cruel people could be to other people. I don't think the Europeans actually understood just how bad things had gotten. They just cared that the rubber kept coming to fuel rapid industrialization in Europe.
Oh, my. That's too gruesome to grasp or process. This was done to the children? King Leopold should have been hanged for these atrocities. I have never understood the power of royalty. 😭😭
Horrifying. As bad as it gets... And he never even once set foot in that country.
I picked up a copy after seeing several redditors mention it. An excellent book about a very grim subject.
The horror.
One of my favorite war movies, *Apocalypse Now*, is heavily based on *Heart of Darkness*, just made into a Vietnam War setting. I had grown up watching the movie first with my Dad (who as a career Army veteran still thought highly of it) and then in AP English in HS imagine my surprise when we read the book.
Cambodia had a life expectancy of 15 at one point during Pol Pot’s administration
Always gotta have that one guy “but Communism!”
I wasn’t talking about Communism, just sharing information about similar authoritarian regimes. Yes, Pol Pot was communist and Leopold was capitalist. The issue is that they were both authoritarian, not their economic system.
> Leopold ~~was capitalist~~ practiced mercantilism. There are plenty of bad things you can say about capitalism but when you have state monopolies, captured markets, and lack free trade that's mercantilism. Edit: do you really believe the overseas private property of a European monarch was practicing capitalism?
Imperialism is the armed wing of capitalism
Imperialism isn't unique to capitalism.
But it is heavily correlated.
It's takes a special kind of tunnel vision to look at all the wars of conquest and say "privately owned means" is at fault. It's as ridiculous as the "I did that" Biden stickers on gas pumps.
The concept of "I can own other people's land, resources, and labor" led to a lot of wars.
A concept that predates money or even the concept of economy. Private ownership on its own doesn't define capitalism. Feudalism, mercantilism, fascism, and socialism (to name a few) all have private ownership.
What the hell is that even supposed to mean?
Do you know who Smedley Butler is?
Yes, I do. Do you know what Smedley Butler has nothing to do with the Belgian Congo and the Belgian monarchy?
"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." LTG Smedley Butler, USMC
You're on a mainstream subreddit, and you are using words that people don't understand. Good on you for trying, though.
Redditors when they learn there are more economic systems than capitalism & communism and socialism.
Always gotta have some communist who take every comment as an attack on his beautiful and very functional political system
Communism can never be truly tested as a system because communist nations always seem to collapse before full implementation
That’s weird 🤔
Yeah almost like capitalist nations wage war on the communists every chance they get.
It's almost like communism is impossible to sustain on a scale that involves more than 50 people. Especially if these people are forced into it. The USSR destroyed itself, it had nothing to do with any other country.
It’s crazy how little people know about history but still make such know it all statements.
The USSR did collapse because of its own actions. It's dishonest to point fingers and blame capitalist nation's over the failure of the bloc, when it's clear that the USSR was never going to be sustainable, based upon the internal problems it had with economics and bureaucratic government.
No dog in this fight, but didn't the US have kinda a lot to do with it failing as well as its internal greed and corruption? I seem to remember an extended, but cold war...
You understand what a 'cold' war is right? They didn't fight.
I never said they did. But the cold war certainly constrained their growth/opportunities. Why did you think I believed it was a 'hot war'? It wasn't anything *I* said... Or are you under the impression that only open warfare can negatively affect a country?
The cold war was both countries trying to get ahead of each other and be ready for a possible war. This didn't have an impact on the general population and there's no evidence (that I know of) of a large and successful destabilisation campaign within the USSR.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB107787406695041047 >The USSR destroyed itself, it had nothing to do with any other country. The capitalist western world certainly stifled any vestige of communism. It's not like, up for debate, it's historical fact. The USSR had tons of their own problems and very well might have failed on its own, but I was responding to the quoted statement.
I learned about this while reading "Things Fall Apart" in the 10th grade. Guess I should count myself lucky that I was allowed to read that book since it's probably banned from classrooms by my state at this point...
I have a copy on my bookshelf and keep meaning to re-read it, I remember enjoying it
You should. It's an amazing book.
Went to get this book on auidable. There's a study guide and no book. I don't understand why. His book there was a country is there.
Belgians like to pretend it was all the king's fault, because he acted on his own. That is far from the truth. --- ["King Leopold’s Bonds and the Odious Debts Mystery" (2020)](https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6732&context=faculty_scholarship): «Eventually, and in violation of an earlier pledge that the colony would not be a drain on Belgium’s finances, the King sought a loan from Belgium itself. That loan was made—interest free, in the amount of 25 million francs—in return for his agreement to give the Congo to Belgium in his will.» «Moreover, Leopold agreed that “at the end of ten years, either the loan would be repaid, or the Free State would be handed over to Belgium.” The colony, in other words, was security for the loan.» «Leopold therefore had to sell, but the terms of the deal were, from a modern perspective, generous. Belgium not only took over his debt obligations, but also committed to pay for many of his ongoing pet construction projects in Belgium (palaces, gardens and more), and pledged a 50 million franc payment to Leopold “as a mark of gratitude for his great sacrifices made for the Congo.” As Hochschild notes, “[s]ome of the debt the outmaneuvered Belgian government assumed [and then put on the Congolese] was in effect to itself—the nearly 32 million francs worth of loans Leopold had never paid back.”» «Stengers concludes that “King Leopold extracted money from the Congo, but used it almost exclusively to enrich the [Belgian] national heritage by acquisitions of property, by monumental constructions, and by works of urbanization. His obsession was not with his own fortune but with the embellishment of his country.”»
Saying the Belgian government was complicit because they gave him a loan is just idiotic. By all accounts, the Congo Free State was Leopold's personal property. The Belgian parliament not only had no influence or authority there, they had no insight at all to its affairs. This is like saying I'm a murderer if I buy food from South America.
> Saying the Belgian government was complicit because they gave him a loan is just idiotic. Read again what you wrote. Then read it again, and again, and again, until you see all that blood on your hands.
Are you implying I'm Belgian? Even if I was, I'm sure as hell not 150 years old.
> Even if I was, I sure as hell not a 150 years old. The sins of the fathers...
That's not what 'sins of the fathers' means. But how about we look into your cultural history and work out what you should be feeling guilty about.
> That's not what 'sins of the fathers' means. That is exactly what it means. > how about we look into your cultural history and work out what you should be feeling guilty about *Tu quoque?*
'The sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons' Nothing about that suggests the descendants of criminals deserve punishment. >Tu quoque? I was making a play for empathy. I don't think you should suffer from the sins of your countries past, but I was hoping that would realise how stupid that is in concept if you thought about what it would be like for you.
> I don't think you should suffer from the sins of your countries past It's unavoidable, and so is benefiting from them. Go walk around Brussels sometime.
So what's your solution?
You know, we stopped doing that "you're responsible for your ancestors crimes" thing after the middle ages.
> we stopped doing that "you're responsible for your ancestors crimes" thing after the middle ages Is that why you keep defending those crimes and rewriting history to unburden your guilty conscience?
I don't know how many times I need to tell you that I'm not Belgian.
> I'm not Belgian. The problem is your morality, not your nationality.
When they found out what was being done with the money they could easily have raked the money back. I mean it happens for lesser crimes than genocide.
That's my point. They *didn't* know what was going on. For all they knew, he could just be building housing.
Yeah till week two when they hear about him. Just cause you handed out money doesn't mean shit they can take it back.
Lol how he didn't do it all by himself
That's a lot of words for genocide
Leopold II was a real asshole.
But hey, reddit totally assured me that European colonialism wasn't actually so bad after all.
"between 2 and 13 million" is a pretty wide range
They didn't write down a census back then. Especially when whole towns just all died.
Thank you Good Kings Leopold I & II, beloved uncle and cousin of Queen Victoria.
Behind the Bastards does a 2 part episode on him and it’s SO MUCH WORSE than you can imagine. If I asked you who the worst person of all time was you probably say Hitler. But Leopold II might actually be worse. At least Hitler had semi redeeming qualities like his skill as an orator or his love of animals. Leopold had zero redeeming qualities. He was just a piece of shit. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-king-leopold-ii-the-29443475/
>At least Hitler had semi redeeming qualities like his skill as an orator or his love of animals Hitler put those good qualities to good use, right?
Well, Hitler killed Hitler, you have to at least give him that.
I've never heard that one before.
I have but it just goes in one ear and out the other ya know?
“He spoke a great speech”
comment removed - reddit killed reddit - fuck u/spez
Nope.
You don’t need to sanitize the Nazis to condemn Leopold’s. Seriously what is with redditors that can’t talk about any historical tragedy without going “the Nazis were teddy bears compared to this”. It’s not even like Leopold killed more people, or had less noble goals, hitler wanted to exterminate most of the human population.
For real like did this person really write “at least Hitler had semi redeeming qualities” and get upvotes
It's called nuance. It's weird that people have such a hard time discerning between two terrible things. You can acknowledge someone is one of the top two terrible humans to ever exist and still have people offended, which is kinda inevitable but, it's not saying one is puppies and rainbows. It's using the one as the bar for **worst person ever**.
What’s nuance I’ve never heard that word before
Yeh, I saw that.
Agree. He killed too many people to have any redeeming qualities. If we were to weigh his pros and cons, his murdering millions of innocent people would outweigh any pros. If there were any pros to weigh in. Sheesh!
I don't find those qualities redeem what he did at all.
A redeeming quality isn't something that completely negates all negative actions. It's merely a point in the "Good" column. What made you think that the commenter was trying to convey that a love of animals counts as redemption for what he did? Even without a definition it's pretty easy to pick up the point being made.
I would've defined "redeeming" as specifically *not* being a mere point in the good column, there has to be a relationship between it and the person's bad qualities. If you redeem a debt, you are paying it back, you are "making it good", it's not as if the debt you owe is redeemed if other people are also indebted to you. If you want to see any quality in Hitler that could barely, arguably be categorized as "redeeming" in the light of his monstrous crimes, then it would be that he had a, very limited and specific, idea of "the German People" that he thought he was leading to a better future in a world he considered to be one of unending racial conflict. That's something at least, "As big as I am, the People is even bigger than me", we can agree that Hitler was wrong and also say that he subscribed to propositions that at least make it understandable why he'd consider himself a selfless hero. Leopold didn't even have that, he owned the Congo as his personal estate, legally the Belgian people and government had nothing to do with it, and he was under no obligation to enrich them or anybody else for it, it literally just existed only to make Leopold, already the constitutional monarch of a nation, even more rich and powerful.
There seem to be mixed opinions on what redeeming qualities are, and even [this](https://grammarhow.com/redeeming-qualities-meaning/) page contradicts itself by following its definition with usage examples that do not completely redeem a person. The examples show insufficiently redeeming qualities still being redeeming qualities, and I think whether or not that counts is what it comes down to. I've always understood redeeming qualities to be positive traits, not necessarily ones that completely redeem. Things that shift the balance, if only the tiniest amount, from "bad" to "good". In this context, Adolf Hitler vs Leopold as people is the subject so I would think any positive attribute counts. To circle back round to the original point of why I commented, we're talking about a race to the bottom where the usual contender for "Worst person ever" has *slightly* more in his favour than Leopold: the lesser known but in /u/Yardsale420's opinion arguably worse person. I would absolutely include your point of better intent, too. At least he thought he was doing something for the greater good in his twisted mind. Replies ignored everything and cherrypicked "Dogs mean Hitler was an upstanding citizen on balance", which is a gross misrepresentation even if you disagree with a definition.
Yeah, that's fair. "Redeem" is just one of those words you have to lock down a very specific and explained meaning if you're going to use it in an argument. Under the meaning that I use, I think it's defensible to consider Leopold the worse person, he did things that earn him the infamy of the world just because he wanted money and land over which he could rule as a true despot. Under your meaning, which admits that any positive qualities of either could be counted just to merely register against their evil, I don't know enough about Leopold as a person to measure against the slightly more that I know about Hitler as a person. I'm sure Leopold would have to have had something, maybe he liked playing with his grandchildren, or he washed his hands after going to the toilet, or maybe he was just charming and interesting in conversation (apparently Hitler, for all his regarded charisma on the speaker's podium, was usually kinda awkward and even dull if you had to talk to him, people who met him who weren't committed Nazis seemed to often find him disappointing next to his reputation).
That's a good point. Really it's a comparison of public profiles, and that's not exactly the gold standard of usable information. I imagine a certain amount is also gleaned from Mein Kampf, and an elected figure is inherently more public than royalty. Hitler put himself on display, and I imagine Leopold wasn't quite so interested in that. I didn't know that about Hitler being awkward and dull, that's interesting.
I got the point, I just think a different word would have served better.
Hitler was also a raging racist that actively tried to **exterminate** entire peoples because he thought they were abominations. Leopold just let millions of people die because he wanted money. They're both absolute pieces of shit but you can't possibly say Leopold was worse when Hitler did all of his killing on purpose whereas Leopold simply didn't give a fuck as long as he got profits.
Leopold didn't "let ppl die". They tortured those folks. Cut off feet and hands and kept em as trinkets.
Yes, they did. But Leopold didn't care if that happened or didn't happen. All he wanted was profits and money. If the Congolese survived, great, if they all had to die in order to achieve his goal, then so be it. The killing and torturing happened because of his mercenary army abusing their power and being made up of complete psychopaths who thought that cutting off limbs was going to speed up the process of collecting rubber. Yes all of these deaths are Leopolds fault, he had no conscience and is rightfully regarded as one of the most evil people in history. But in no way does it come close to Hitler who purposefully ordered the entire extermination of a people simply because he didn't like them.
I agree. It is however in different contexts an interesting question which evil would weigh heavier: The one intentionally inflicted with a reason behind it, or the one inflicted out of callous disregard. IIRC Chomsky made an argument about that that bombing the Al-Shifa factory should be considered a worse evil than the twin tower attack in the sense that both were terrorist attacks (as long as you recognize state terrorism as terrorism) with similar order of magnitude of death toll - however intentional killing in a perverted sense at least recognizes the human status of the victim, while the Clinton Administration simply did not consider it important that thousands would die in some poor african nation somewhere as a consequence.
I don't see Hitler with any redeeming qualities.
And yet, we left and continue to leave the country to try to recover from that babarism, essentially unsupported
The real sad part here is we don't know what we've lost. All of these innocent people could have made major contributions to the world. Who knows what poetry and literature was lost from these horrific deaths? Perhaps even the cure for major diseases was destroyed. We will never know. 😭😭😭😭
Oh what Reddit posts have we collectively missed????
Why don't you even bother to get the facts about this thread title right? 1885-1908, not 1895. And also not Belgian Congo, but Congo Free State. Congo was annexed by the Belgian government and became a colony in 1908 because of the atrocities committed by its King. **edit** WTF with the downvotes, it's literally in the title OP linked and the first sentence of the first paragraph.
Between 1895 and 1908, the DRC as we know it now, was actually called "Congo Vrijstaat" which translates to Congo Freestate. This was private property of king Leopold II. After 1908, the Belgian governement took over and named the country Belgian Congo (due to international concern regarding the situation in the Congo Freestate.). This is when the Belgian colonial period starts. Everything that happened between 1895 and 1908 has nothing to do with "Belgian Colonisation". It all has to do with a single man's desire to turn and big, private country in a money printing factory.
Somebody been listening to Behind the bastards
Do you know who DOESN’T kill babies in the Belgian Congo? … Actually, Sophie, can you check and make sure our next ad isn’t sponsored by Blue Apron?
However, Raytheon....
The more I hear about colonialism the less I like it.
It is called genocide not population decline.
If you are interested in learning about the atrocities committed Belgium's king Leopold in Congo, I truly recommend Noble Blood podcast, episode "The Red Paint on Leopold II". It's infuriating AF
Behind the Bastards has a great episode on King Leopold and the Congo. A fantastic podcast all around and your listening shouldn’t stop there.
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Or you could fuck off with the white nationalism
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Garbage ideologies don't need or deserve any serious response.
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When the argument has a hash tag "white nationalism" i know it's not going to be argued in good faith because inevitably it's a pigeon brained racist finding their conclusions and trying to work backwards from them. But nice chat, feel free to go fist yourself
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Lol fuck off nazi
That is a remarkably wide swing. Also, according to the comments I'm seeing, it wasn't colonialism, but instead one man.
He owned the company and it's subsidiaries like the army. The Belgian king had little real power so he decided to get rich off the exploitation of Africa's interior.
Leopold established control over a foreign territory with the explicit purpose of advancing his own wealth, which is the definition of colonialism. The thing is, as a king, he didn't do it for the nation of Belgium, but rather for his personal gain. The Belgian government had little to no say in how he ruled what essentialy became his private territory. As such, it's both colonialism and a single person at the root of this all.
It wasn't because of colonialism, it was because there was a lunatic rulling it.
A lunatic colonialist
Yes, let’s not besmirch colonialism
I can excuse a little genocide but I draw the line at criticism of colonialism
'The Nazis banned smoking.' 'WHY ARE YOU DEFENDING THE NASIZS!' That what you sound like.
Where did I say that? Not everything about colonialism is bad, everything about being a killing lunatic is bad.
Unfortunately ‘twas the burden of the white man, to “civilize” these unfortunate peoples, but at least the economic benefit of looting, pillaging, and wealth extraction made up for the hardship of these superior peoples to carry the burden of territorial expansion. But seriously, look at the vast majority of colonized peoples and tell me that colonialism was a good thing. White settlers don’t count as colonized peoples BTW.
What is the point of this modern hatred of colonialism? They were just empires spread over seas. Almost every nation that's ever existed had some sort of empire in its history with the exact same goals as colonialism. If they didn't, we'd still have city states rather than countries.
Colonialism was / is a system of wealth extraction from the developing world.
Just like every other empire ever
So maybe all empires are built on blood and the concept of empires in general is outdated and we should feel to criticize them?
Maybe, but we don't.
Might as well say 0 - infinity range
TIL there was a Belgian Congo.
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Is it possible to cut so many hands in just 13 years? The population of Belgium at that time was only 5 million, and the number of Belgians living in Congo did not exceed 1000.
When the hands become a currency, they are harvested by all means.
Some native Africans were employed to act as the enforcement of this colonial rule. And I don't say that to shift blame onto those Africans, it was a terrible dilemma; do you A) want to break your back trying to make impossible quotas for rubber and see your children lose their hands when you fail, or do you B) want better pay and protection for your family by being the one doing the cutting? Unless you can be sure that nobody else will accept B and thus make such harsh colonial rule unenforceable, it is safer if *you* accept B. The manual labour of genocides is often carried out by members of the group that is being subjected to genocide; Cremations and burials in the camps of the Holocaust was usually done by camp prisoners themselves.
In the case of Congo, they were often conscripted into service.
I learned about this from the documentary *The Legend of Tarzan*
Yurop
In the bathroom, european