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In three weeks, Donald Trump has imploded whatever positive image the United States might have had internationally.

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[-] Alwaysnownevernotme@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Jeez I asked for a definition of empire. I'm sure that a resident of the most horrific colonial power in all history knows what it means. So tell me.

Edit: lol it just struck me how funny it is for a Belgian to say the USA's hegemony will be forgotten, most living humans couldn't even find you guys on a map.

[-] NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

He lives in Belgium? I thought that was a type of doughnut...?

[-] Alwaysnownevernotme@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

It's basically a cocaine ring with a chocolatier influencer account and a trust fund.

[-] Bloomcole@lemm.ee 1 points 4 days ago

And again, basic stuff. I'm not going to educate a child or someone that had education on a child's level. Who TF knows, maybe you've been thought creationism in your weirdo backward country.

[-] Alwaysnownevernotme@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

For decades, colonial history has been barely taught in Belgium.

Oh. Maybe you didn't know...

[-] nomy@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

A Belgian lecturing about atrocities and empires being forgotten is particularly humorous.

Then again, I suppose the Congo Free State wasn't technically a genocide because it was economically motivated. Not based on national, ethnic, racial, or religious interests, just money.

[-] Alwaysnownevernotme@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

God. That's like It not being technically murder because you kept them alive and in agony.

[-] Alwaysnownevernotme@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

In one, a man sits on a low platform looking at a dismembered small foot and small hand. They belonged to his five-year-old daughter, who was later killed when her village did not produce sufficient rubber. She was not unique - chopping off the limbs of enslaved Congolese was a routine form of retribution when Leopold II's quotas were not met.

Colonial administrators also kidnapped orphaned children from communities and transported them to "child colonies" to work or train as soldiers. Estimates suggest more than 50% died there.

Killings, famine and disease combined to cause the deaths of perhaps 10 million people, though historians dispute the true number.

Leopold II may never have set foot there, but he poured the profits into Belgium and into his pockets.

He built the Africa Museum in the grounds of his palace at Tervuren, with a "human zoo" in the grounds featuring 267 Congolese people as exhibits.

Let's look through US history for our child slave soldier colonies.

But first modern Belgiums take on its past!

former Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel and the father of future prime minister Charles Michel, called Leopold "a hero with ambitions for a small country like Belgium".

In a TV debate this week, a former president of the Free University of Brussels, Hervé Hasquin, argued there were "positive aspects" to colonisation, listing the health system, infrastructure, and primary education he said Belgium brought to Central Africa

[-] Bloomcole@lemm.ee 1 points 4 days ago

a resident of the most horrific colonial power in all history That pales in to insignificance compared to the US. You get those numbers every decade when youfeel the need to liberate another defenseless country from their resources.

[-] Alwaysnownevernotme@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Whoops all quote

this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
859 points (100.0% liked)

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