You do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to the Nazis for hating Belgium
Speaking about Golden Dawn and Belgium, yet another reminder that Giannis Lagos, one of the heads of GD, convicted for orchestrating the murder of Pavlos Fyssas and arguably the one most directly responsible for it, is currently chilling in Brussels because the EU Parliament still hasn't suspended his legal immunity: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/19/world/europe/Greece-Golden-Dawn-Lagos.html
Cause most of online people are americans, and they dont even know what a Belgium is
But I'm American, and I still want Leopold exhumed and hacked to pieces
A lot of Belgians agree. The statues of him that remained were torched or destroyed during Belgian BLM-protests. Most cities where that didn't happen got the message and removed them after the protests.
Whenever the genocides in Africa start to become a national talking point it gets suppressed because Europe doesn't want to pay reparations to Africans or deal with the implications of the mass atrocities coming from the "good" governments that predated the fall into fascism.
The French essentially forced the Haitians to pay them for freeing themselves - French slaveowners demanded that they be compensated for "lost property" i.e. emancipated slaves. Aristide estimated it to be $21 billion in today's dollars and asked the French to pay it back. The French won't even consider it.
Pretty sure Namibia was the first genocide of the 20th century (~1905). Congo was before that (~1880s onwards)
where's here? seen plenty of hate for Leopold II and Belgian Congo on chapo chat. do you mean American mass culture?
belgium's going thru some rough times, we gotta give them a hand and not get mad at them
Yeah well everyone does, including the US, and for the same reasons (shit leadership).
If you are from the US I think its because Belgium never had a real presence in the Americas, and the colonization of Africa nobody knows much about. Probably the only time they ever come in contact with the Belgian Empire is reading Heart of Darkness in high school English class.
But also I don't think any country gets any hate for their colonialism - like in the US, England is just a cool country with a cool city to visit and the people there have funny accents, and everyone loves the royal family. Nobody really cares about the horrors of the British Empire.
