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 – I don’t yet know an approximate percentage but I fear its extremely high – 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 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 – this 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, potentially killing in upwards of 5-7 million people from 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 no less). 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 Congolese 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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This is an extraordinarily important reading, and I recommend everyone read it.
That being said, please stop using the genocide of the Jews and the Romani as a measuring stick. Please stop making it sound like the way white western culture talks about the Holocaust is somehow perfect and that the world has somehow done enough for it’s victims. I know it’s a good rhetorical point, but it’s a form of oppression olympics that also serves to demonize Jews and Romani who talk are still publicly grieving our dead. The piece also makes it sound like the only reason people still talk about the Holocaust is because it somehow serves a white capitalist narrative – Hitler killed Jews and Romani because they weren’t white. And to the extent people do learn about what happened to our people during the Holocaust, it is because of a lot of effort and noise made by our communities. As soon as WWII ended and the cold war started, people didn’t want to hear about what had happened in Germany, because it didn’t fit the new paradigm of global conflict.
People should definitely learn about what Leopold II did in the Congo. People should absolutely spend time in school from an early age learning about the devastation of colonization in Africa.
But they should do so because what happened is important for everyone to understand, not because of however much time they do or don’t spend on the genocide of another people.
Also, Wikipedia is open source, editable site. When I went on it to check wikipedia Leopold’s genocide in the Congo is on this list. It is also not only on the “Genocides in History” page, it has it’s own section complete with links to separate pages. The point about the lack of western attention could have been made without lying about what was on Wikipedia. If you go into the history of the page, you can find out what the edit history is. If you look into the talk pages, you can see the discussion. (the link leads to the purple link in the screen shot)
The one user PBS (not to be confused with Public Broadcasting Station) has removed the category several times based on this person’s historical analysis. It has been added back in several times (the screen shot only shows the most recent series of changes) and their talk page, which I linked above, and can link again here, has some of the discussion on it.
According the the original poster on tumblr, they did not right this, rather took it from another post that was written back in 2010. Wikipedia changes daily, so it is always worth double checking any claims sourced there, or things people claim about the content of the site. I can only assume the original poster did check.
I also want to add that the person who posted this on tumblr has since added that they don’t agree entirely with the comparison to Hitler, as the events of the Congolese genocide should stand on their own. I’m thankful this comment was made, but it was not on the version of the post that crossed my dashboard and I feel that my comments are still important because a lot of people are not seeing it with this added note.
Yes, thank you so much for saying this, it is SO incredibly important and I’m sorry I missed these points. I’m agnostic and it often makes it hard for me to recognize and understand religious injustices/persecution, but I’m working on it I promise. And I honestly missed his statements about Wikipedia bc when I read their OP I went straight to Wiki to get information about this horrible excuse for a human being. Wiki is how I first knew this person had really ever existed. Then I branched a bit out, but still, that’s where I started (like usual).
I should say tho that the author DID say: “There’s a Wikipedia page called ‘Genocides in History’. The Congolese Genocide isn’t included. The Congo is mentioned though.” But when you go to it it’s clearly more than just “mentioned” and KL II’s genocidal regime IS briefly explained. But don’t forget that the original piece was written in 2010 so maybe this info wasn’t there yet? 5 years is a long time after all. Is there a way that we can check?
2) I got a some kind tweets today pointing out an error that I had not noticed:
Thank you @SeinfeldBassrif bc I never even noticed it said that. I have crossed it out but unfortunately that won’t stop all the other reblogs from spreading without the correction. But maybe this post will get lots of shares and we can tackle some of this misinformation I’ve helped spread 😦
3) **This isn’t so important I guess but I just wanna go on record that I really hate the title bc it makes no sense lol. I mean seriously, WHY would they call KL II “Hitler”? His horrible actions & name can and should stand for themselves.
**This turned out to be way more important of a problem than I realized. I’m sorry for playing it down here.
Reblogging bc this got popular again w/o the corrections
Aaand again. Every time this post gets popular I will 100% be boosting this version because it’s the only one that deserves to be read and boosted.
I’m still incredibly sorry for sharing this article w/o at least correcting it and calling out the title in my OP. If I had known better back then though I promise I would have done this wayyyy differently. Hopefully by boosting this post w/ corrections I can help stop others from making the same antisemitic mistake.♡
I cannot believe this post keeps getting popular but it’s NEVER this version. WHY?!?!?!? If you’re reading this rn, please boost (if u can).
Mooncustafer 