this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
88 points (100.0% liked)

World News

424 readers
384 users here now

Please help and contribute as we vote on rules:
https://quokk.au/post/21590

Other Great Communities:

Rules

Be excellent to each other

founded 9 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Solumbran@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

When royalty is having better morals than democracies, it shows a pretty bad sign.

[–] Mniot@programming.dev 17 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Not just any royalty. When the king of Belgium says you're being inhumane...

[–] TheFrogThatFlies@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I'm out of the loop. Care to fill in with a very short summary?

[–] 0_o7@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Colonial atrocities on par or worse (because documented) than the rest of the Western "civil"ization

[–] Kickforce 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Allowed by a 19th century Belgian king to be perpetrated by a bunch of international companies in a system heavily pushed by the US, but lets just say "the Belgians did it".

[–] Mniot@programming.dev 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

If you're trying to let the non-wealthy Belgians off the hook for it, I'm mostly down. The above comments were all specifically about royalty and Leopold II.

And genocide always (?) turns out to be built around greed. Israelis might hate the Palestinians, but the reason to kill and enslave them is to steal their land and profit from their labor.

[–] Kickforce 1 points 6 days ago

Yeah, the current king isn't really responsible for his great - great - great grandfather's actions either. Indeed Israel cares not about the Palestinians and just wants their land. It's all greed.

[–] Mniot@programming.dev 3 points 6 days ago

Belgium controlled the Congo in the early 1900s and used slave-labor to extract rubber. There's a ton of documentation on the atrocities committed. Things like stealing all the children, then sending their parents the severed hands of their kids and telling them if they didn't meet quota they'd get feet next.

It's not like other colonial powers weren't also incredibly evil, but Belgium's crimes were quite recent and well-known (both now and at the time). Very much like Israel!

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 3 points 1 week ago

I am sure PR consultants told him to go to town here to white wash his name since he ain't done nothing wrong.... Here