Leopold and George

…I hope that the American kids (now and in the future) will get a more self-critical account of the US’s role in Iraq than what I learnt about Belgian’s role in the Congo.

Not a chance, apart from what a few maverick teachers might do on their own. There’s a well-organized and quite effective right wing lobby that stands ready to protest any honest admission in school curricula that the US has ever been anything but the best and wisest of nations. There is certainly not a lot of honest teaching going on about Vietnam, except possibly in the sub rosa fashion already alluded to.

Available on-line for those who want to check it out: King Leopold’s Soliloquy, Mark Twain’s take on the atrocities in the Belgian Congo.

I wonder if Hochschild has seen that in addition to King Leopold’s Ghost.

No, American school children learn a complete pack of lies about the Mexican War – a case where the US was by any civilized modern standard in the wrong. The nonsense I was told by my liberal teachers in the New Jersey school system – about how Mexico could never develop the west properly, so it was right for the US to steal it from them – compares to the Belgian occupation of Congo in quantities of horse manure, even if it doesn’t compare in murderous consequences.

Iraq, like Vietnam and the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, will become another noble cause undertaken too naively and lost through excessive moral scruples when compared to America’s unscrupulous enemies. Lord knows, we can’t let the children understand that their country might do something stupid or wrong.

Not a fun thread so far, except for Scott’s contribution. Hochschild’s piece was nothing special, but it’s pretty clear that his main motive was the entirely laudable one of clearing his own name. I’d hate to go through life being thought of as one of George W. Bush’s favorite authors. (What he actually read was probably one of his two-page typed executive summaries, of course. Cliff’s Notes are unnecessarily exhaustive.)

When I was finished up college in 1979, Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” was one of several writings depicting gross injustices which we were forbidden to give a political reading to. “Benito Cereno” and “Billy Budd” were two others. Symbolic, psychological, religious, or formal readings were the only ones allowed. I haven’t reread these pieces in years, but I remain convinced that the utter moral blindness of the civilized authorities in face of their victims (including a white victim in Billy Budd’s case) is a central theme in all three. I have no idea whether tha canned English-Department interpretation has changed yet; judging by the squealing about academic leftism, on would suspect that it has.

I had a friend who studied the Civil War at Boston College during the 60s, and he was appalled at the neutral or even pro-Confederate bias he found. Apparently nothing he read was saying that although the Civil war was brutal and bloody, putting an end to slavery had to be done one way or another.

I read Hochschild’s book a few years ago, and it’s the source of probably 95% of what little I know about Congo. While Leopold’s adventures aren’t the first analogy I’d think of when it comes to Iraq, I didn’t think the op-ed was so far off the mark. And in an age when a Krauthammer or a Hanson or a Kristol or a… routinely pluck op-ed pieces from their own colons, Hochschild’s offers little to complain about.

Sglover,

Michaela Wrong’s book In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz is another excellent book with a great deal about the Mobutu era as well. I also recommend her book about Eritrea, I Didn’t Do It for You.

Radek: “Ay, that’s a really bad comparison. The war in Iraq is stupid and has been ran incompetently but it’s not comparable to Leopold’s Congo. For one thing the Belgians held on to the Congo for something like 70 yrs. You think that’s gonna happen with Iraq? ”

Probably not, but the incompetancy of the administration will have a lot to do with that.

“Or even that Bush wants that to happen?”
Yes, he does – dressed up, of course, with updated pieties.

“And last I checked there weren’t hundreds of thousands of Iraqis with their hands cut off, nor deaths in excess of 8 million (yup, that’s a million there).”

Well, hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis. And cutting hands off is so outmoded, in an era of cordless drills.

ahhh Dan Simon. Season’s Greeting to you sir. Perhaps you’d care to start the New Year off with a clean slate by confessing what a total ass you made of yourself over the Qana Ambulance “Hoax” and apologising to me and the other commenters on the relevant CT thread for your behaviour?

I know Adam Hochschild in real life, a little, and the impression of him I have gained over the last decade is that of a passionate yet meticulous writer who abhors unsubstantiated accusations.

And so I was interested to find this thread before I’d seen the LA Times piece in question. Could it be that Adam had tossed off an ill-considered piece that was worthy of such dismissal?

And then I read the LA Times piece.

You would think, after the last few years, that I would have developed the mental calluses necessary to shrug off blatant, disingenuous bad-faith arguments the likes of which Dan Simon displays above. But it’s especially depressing given that we can actually click over to read the piece to find out how badly Simon has misrepresented Hochschild’s arguments. (At this point, I’m williing to grant Radek and Tom Riel and cetera the possibility that they read the piece too quickly.)

Come on, people. Hochschild is carefully drawing very specific, limited parallels here. Accusing him of saying “Iraq = Congo” just makes you look stupid.

Welp, I reread the article and I still think’s pretty bad and too heavy on hyperbole. But I think John’s explanation that “he just wanted to clear his name” makes a lot of sense and goes a long way towards an excuse.

The most compelling difference is King Leopold was called out by one of the biggest media figures of his age (Mark Twain, “King Leopold’s Soliloquy”) whereas nearly all the big media figures of this age were prominently displayed on the website “MediaWhores Online” … . Pretty much tells you all you need to know … .

For one thing the Belgians held on to the Congo for something like 70 yrs. You think that’s gonna happen with Iraq? Or even that Bush wants that to happen?

as regards bush’s desires, on available evidence, the answer would be yes.

You would think, after the last few years, that I would have developed the mental calluses necessary to shrug off blatant, disingenuous bad-faith arguments the likes of which Dan Simon displays above. But it’s especially depressing given that we can actually click over to read the piece to find out how badly Simon has misrepresented Hochschild’s arguments.

Let’s see…I referred to “Hochchild’s comparison of Abu Ghraib with the millions slaughtered in the Congo”–and Hochchild said, “As a reader of history, you must have been interested, I’m sure, in something else in the Congo story: the case of another world leader facing his own Abu Ghraib scandal.” I said that Hochchild “compares Leopold’s plunder of the Congo with the windfall earned by Halliburton et al. in Iraq”–and Hochchild said,

Leopold cleared at least $1.1 billion in today’s dollars during the 23 years he controlled Congo, and his businessmen friends made additional huge sums. Much of the money flowed into companies with special royal concession rights to exploit the rain forest. Final question, for extra credit: Do those companies remind you of anything? If you mentioned Halliburton or DynCorp, you’re right again.

I’m looking for the misrepresentation, but I just can’t seem to find it. Perhaps you could be more specific?

Gotta love group blogs. Right after Henry’s post to the effect that “public discourse should be carried on with respectful acknowledgment of one’s opponent’s merits,” we get “George Bush is the new King Leopold!”

On the substance of Ingrid’s point, maybe it’s because I was in Montessori and private schools in the 70s and 80s, but my experience was nothing like Steve’s or Scott’s. I can’t remember what was grammar school vs. high school, but here’s my general recollection. The American Revolution was taught as a heroic time, but also a conservative action to protect property rights, poisoned by slavery. The War of 1812 was a failed misadventure. The Mexican War and the Spanish-American War were pure imperialism (as was the Monroe Doctrine in practice, if not in original intent). The Civil War was fought incompetently, and it was pointed out that Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and that the Eman. Proc. freed only the slaves in the states then outside federal authority (i.e., it did nothing). Certainly there was no hint of the Lost Cause. In junior high we read Freedom Road (this is all coming back to me now) and learned a bit about the rise of the Klan, but not too much about Jim Crow in general after that. We definitely learned about Army massacres of Indian tribes. For WWI, I seem to recall that it was mostly blamed on Europeans, but we touched upon Wilson’s stroke and Congress’ rejection of the League of Nations. I recall learning about Palmer raids. The Depression was covered without much exploration as to why it occurred and a lot of admiration for Roosevelt. WWII and everything after it was a big rush at the very end of the year, so it was mostly a blur. Discussion of WWII was generally very pro-American, but we hit upon Japanese internment camps. It was mentioned that the decision not to bomb the rails to Auschwitz and the decision to drop the atomic bomb were controversial, but without taking the time to explore those issues. No time to discuss Vietnam or the civil rights era at all.

Radek, I understand the basis forAhmadinejad – Hitler analogy. I’m just using it to demonstrate a deficiency the ‘Leopold killed millions and Bush only hundreds of thousands’ argument.

First, I doubt that Hitler would have liked to attend a conference on Holocaust denial.

Second, for what it’s worth, history classes in the Netherlands did pay attention to Dutch atrocities in the Indies and elsewhere (when I went to school in the 1980s). Not all of them, but the worst ones (at least I hope those were the worst ones). Enough to make you see that colonialism was really, really bad for the locals.

The one taboo left has to do with the Indonesian war of indepencence (the “police actions” as the Dutch called them at the time). A lot of the veterans are still alive, and even some of the politicians of that time. So even when everybody understands that (1) this war was morally wrong to begin with and (2) it was a dirty war with lots of war crimes committed in the field, I don’t know if the terms “war crimes” and “gone unpunished” have made the schoolbooks yet. As I recall my teacher put things far more bluntly than my history book did.