Most people have no idea who is pictured below, although you should know him. This man should be as disgusting as Mussolini, Mao or Hitler, because he committed genocide against Africans, which resulted in the death of more than 10 million people in the Congo.
This is the Belgian king Leopold II.
He was never talked about at school and most likely almost nothing was written by the media. This is due to the fact that it does not fit into the generally accepted historical account of the oppression of peoples (which includes things like slavery in the United States and the Holocaust).
King Leopold II is part of an unfinished story of colonialism, imperialism, slavery and genocide in Africa, which conflicts with the conventional wisdom of society today laid down by the Western school system. It does not fit into the school curriculum, where, paradoxically, it is customary to condemn openly racist statements. However, it is considered quite normal to remain silent about the genocide committed by the European monarch, which killed more than 10 million Congolese.
King Leopold II of Belgium ruled his vast empire with a brutality that rivals - if not surpasses - the crimes committed by the 20th century's worst dictators.
When Leopold II ascended the throne in 1865, he tried to show more gentleness in ruling the country, which the Belgians demanded from their king after the democratization of society as a result of numerous revolutions and reforms. But he had great ambitions to build a colonial empire with overseas possessions and the conviction, like most statesmen of his time, that the greatness of a nation directly depends on the resources siphoned from these colonies.
He hid his deals behind the guise of "philanthropy" and "scientific" approaches under the banner of the International African Society and used slave labor to extract Congolese minerals and provide various services. His reign was marked by the emergence of labor camps, torture, torture, executions and the creation of his own private army.
The empire was called the Free State of the Congo, and Leopold II was considered its undisputed master-slave owner. For almost 30 years, Congo was not in the usual sense a colony of a European state, but was ruled by Leopold II as his property for the purpose of personal enrichment.
The world's largest plantation, 76 times the size of Belgium, possessed the richest natural and agricultural resources and had lost almost half of its population by the time of the first census in 1924, which counted only 10 million people.
Interestingly, when they talk about Africa in American schools, one usually hears about the caricatured Egypt, the AIDS epidemic, a cursory review of the consequences of the slave trade, and if someone is lucky enough to go to a good school, perhaps something about apartheid in South Africa. …You can also see in commercials a lot of shots with starving children, safari stories in programs about animals, as well as in various films pictures of endless savannahs and deserts.
At the same time, no one talks about the Great African War or the Kingdom of Terror of Leopold during the Congolese genocide. Leopold II essentially turned the Congo into his personal partly plantation, partly concentration camp, partly Christian mission, without the lessons of his tyrannical rule being made available to history.
As you can see, the man killed ten million Africans - but he is not called "Hitler", his name did not become the personification of evil, his photograph does not evoke fear, hatred and grief - and the crimes he committed are hidden under the carpet of history, surrounding all the victims of colonialism with complete silence / imperialism.
