4 more years of Trump

Lmao

Its wild, man. I dont know how much longer the US is going to continue believing our votes matter. I keep hoping theres some big revolution on the way but I think were just going to watch netflix, stare at our phones and buy our tombstones on Amazon.

You can tell what kind of person Bernies actually is by looking at what kind of people he surrounds himself with, such as this moron. Just look at this guy, he would have been a perfect Securitate or Stasi goon. I heard Project Veritas use deceptive editing bla bla but this is straight from the horse's mouth so you can't use that argument here.



Real funny how people from rich countries who have never been through communism welcome it with open arms.

I agree, full-blown communism would suck. Having lived in both America and Australia, I can safely say that capitalism seems to work at it's best with just a select few "socialist" concepts like universal healthcare, worker's rights, mandated paid sick leave and such. It's way better for the country and the general populous than actual communism. Needless to say, anyone advocating violence is either mental or just a serious edgelord.

Bernie was always a weak candidate anyway.. I agreed with a decent handful of his politics, but he's just so weak and flaccid and always was - He spent more time in his debate with Biden talking about "what a good friend he is" than anything else, effectively sucking off his opponent, and he always does this crap. It honestly seems pathetic and undermines anything he says. Trump has this shit in the bag easily either way, honestly.. I know Biden is the pick, but it didn't matter anyway. Just look at the two potential opponents: You've got a weak as piss candidate who is never willing to be harsh and real on one hand, and on the other a senile loon has had no idea what's going on. Trump is very unmovable and boisterous during debates, he's willing to get dirty and that's just what works in a debate setting, regardless of whether or not what you're saying is truthful. I will be so insanely stunned if he isn't reelected.

Leopold II of Belgium disguised his whole rubber-colony in the Congo as a "humanitarian effort" to help Africans. When in fact he killed 13 million people in the process, and caused 20 million to lose their hands. He also was responsible for the first concentration camps. He disguised genocide, in "WOKE" bullshit, and people actually believed him at the time. It was all for his own profit.

Of course not. Leopold managed to *achieve* something.

Funny how quickly some people can forget history and willingly support a person like Sanders. The dude is totally corrupt, typical commie for ya.

thehill.com/opinion/campaign/480148-bernie-sanders-is-part-of-the-swamp

doomro I hate to be a debbie downer (nah that's a lie I fucking love being a debbie downer) but it's wreckers like you that will be first up against the wall, lefties only turn on each other once they've run out of sensible people to brutalise, eg. after, or once they start losing, the civil wars they start.

speaking of which, Kontra if you're going to talk shit about wokeness do yourself a favour and stop parroting braindead leftie talking points, ok? Leopold didn't kill 1300000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 people because the Congo simply didn't have 1300000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 people in it. The Alternative Hypothesis has an article on the subject here:
thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2016/07/24/mythologies-about-leopolds-congo-free-state/
TL;DR the population of the Congo Free State was well under the numbers required for that sort of death toll, there might have been population growth during the period anyway, the Belgian presence was light and they weren't involved with many of the atrocities anyway.

I tried to be rigorous about it and double check some of the numbers. I couldn't verify that the population grew during the Free State period (Wikipedo says 'a reduction of the population of the Congo is noted by all who have compared the country at the beginning of Leopold's control with the beginning of Belgian state rule in 1908' but is impressively nonspecific about who those people actually are, which is a reliable indicator of bullshit as it prevents double checking, something bullshitters would prefer you didn't do). I found some continental population estimates:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Africa#Alternative_Estimates_of_African_Population,_0%E2%80%931998_AD_(in_thousands)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Past_population
www.thuto.org/ubh/ub/h202/wpop1.htm
That would seem to indicate that Africa's population density was, in fact, quite low, as the article states (this site reckons that Europe's land area is about 1/3 that of Africa's -- Dickipedia has articles with land area by country but I don't want to get my calculator out so this will go unverified).
I also found this Wikipedo page that has population estimates by country based on a now defunct site:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_in_1900
Note that the Belgian Congo (France) (yeah I don't know either, perhaps they mean the French Congo?) had an estimated population of 280,000, and most sub-Saharan African countries are rather low on the list, so I'd say AH's provided numbers are probably broadly correct.

As far as the claims that the Belgian presence was light and they weren't really involved with too many of the atrocities anyway, this is harder to verify without a lot of reading. The chief primary sources seem to be a Belgian government report and an earlier document called the Casement report, an independently produced eyewitness report that prompted the Belgian's own investigations.
I will note that WP summarises the Casement report as 'The Casement Report comprises forty pages of the Parliamentary Papers, to which is appended another twenty pages of individual statements gathered by Casement as Consul, including several detailing grim tales of killings, mutilations, kidnappings and cruel beatings of the native population by soldiers of the Congo Administration of King Leopold', the majority of whom were African mercenaries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_Publique). To that I'd add George Washington William's 1890 open letter to Leopold, which is short enough to read in a single sitting (https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/primary-documents-global-african-history/george-washington-williams-open-letter-king-leopold-congo-1890/) which claims that 'There are from sixty to seventy officers of the Belgian army in the service of your Majesty’s Government in the Congo of whom only about thirty are at their post; the other half are in Belgium on furlough' and 'Your Majesty’s Government has established nearly fifty posts, consisting of from two to eight mercenary slave-soldiers from the East Coast. There is no white commissioned officer at these posts; they are in charge of the black Zanzibar soldiers, and the State expects them not only to sustain themselves, but to raid enough to feed the garrisons where the white men are stationed. These piratical, buccaneering posts compel the natives to furnish them with fish, goats, fowls, and vegetables at the mouths of their muskets; and whenever the natives refuse to feed these vampires, they report to the main station and white officers come with an expeditionary force and burn away the homes of the natives. These black soldiers, many of whom are slaves, exercise the power of life and death. They are ignorant and cruel, because they do not comprehend the natives; they are imposed upon them by the State. They make no report as to the number of robberies they commit, or the number of lives they take; they are only required to subsist upon the natives and thus relieve your Majesty’s Government of the cost of feeding them. They are the greatest curse the country suffers now', so based on this AH is probably broadly correct about this, although as seen in the quote Washington Williams' does make a number of specific claims of bad behaviour on the part of the Belgian officers.
(Humorously, Washington Williams also accuses the Belgians of not conducting sufficient cultural imperialism -- poorly equipped missions, failing to quash the cannibalistic native slave trade, not establishing European style schools -- which I'm sure would have led to accusations of 'cultural genocide' and stealing Congo's generations, etc. etc. if these things had been accomplished. But Washington Williams couldn't have known how anti-colonial 'thought' would develop, of course. FWIW I skimmed portions of the Casement report, which does claim on p. 26, as per the no.s on the top of the page, of the PDF that the slave trade had been ended by the time of it's composition, ie. 1904. The same page also has a description of a raid not unlike those described by Washington Williams, but doesn't mention if white officers were present).
Regarding mutilation, Casement does make mention of it and also claims that white officers were present for at least some of the attacks (he doesn't say one way or the other for what seems to be the majority of cases, which, given he saw fit to specifically point out when they were, would imply they weren't). He does point out one case the government acted against the perpetrators (p. 56), so it's not necessarily the case that the Belgians knew strictly what was going on either. Hard numbers are, for the most part, not provided (although there seems to be plenty of unmutilated persons running around), but on p. 43 one interlocuter claims that in 6 months approx. 6000 people had been killed or mutilated in the locality, although without corroboration I'm not sure if that was a typical or even reliable figure. In any case based on this not-very-close reading I'm willing to endorse the view that the majority of atrocities were committed by unsupervised soldiers and am sceptical, and you should be too, of claims, as per WP's Atrocities... article via somebody called Peter Forbath, that the severed hands 'became a kind of currency' (Forbath, later in the Atrocities article, apparently gives an estimate of 5 million dead -- more likely than 13 million but still, frankly, bullshit).

AH provides a link to the Belgian report, which I attempted to skim through, but Google cbf translating the whole thing for some reason. A portion of it is available here:
translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.droitcongolais.info/files/rapport-d-enquete-Leopold-II,-l-EIC-et-le-genocide.pdf&prev=search
The Casement report is available here:
archive.org/details/CasementReport/page/n1/mode/2up#reviews

Phew! Alright, so where did these numbers come from? Since it's obvious that neither the Belgians or their deputies killed 13 million people (or chopped off 20 million hands, for fuck's sake) since that would be utterly impossible. From WP again: 'Historians generally agree that a dramatic reduction in the overall size of the Congolese population occurred during the two decades of Free State rule in the Congo. It is argued that the reduction in the Congo was atypical and can be attributed to the direct and indirect effects of colonial rule, including disease and falling birthrate'. ie. the numbers come partially from making up people who may possibly have existed if the natives had more sex, which I'm pretty sure is the same place the 10 million genocided American Indians number comes from, ie. absolute crapola. One wonders what the people who come out with this stuff think of (a) abortion and (b) the ongoing demographic collapse in every European nation. Or rather one doesn't because it's obvious what they think of these things.
Well, I say that, so who makes these sorts of claims anyway? Well, I googled a few of the names in the cites section of the Atrocities article and got some not-very-surprising results. AH mentions Adam Hochschild in his article, who claims a depopulation of about 10 mil and who is a co-founder of Mother Jones and generally a lifelong hard leftist. He has a WP page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Hochschild
The aforementioned Peter Forbath was harder to find information on. He seems to be a now-deceased foreign correspondent for the New York Times, so, while I couldn't find any information on his specific beliefs, it's likely that he was also somewhat left-wing in orientation: www.nytimes.com/1996/03/02/nyregion/peter-forbath-65-an-author-journalist-and-producer-dies.html
I googled a few more names and, while most, like Forbath, had no obvious political leanings but are in occupations typical of lefties (esp. academics). Then there's this guy, who gets cited a few times: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Renton
Who was a member of the Socialist Worker's Party until some sex scandal in 2013 (lefties being sexually coercive, shocking)! Do you, Kontra, consider these people reliable and unbiased?

Alright I'm sick of thinking about this. I'm not saying the Congo Free State was a great place to be, there absolutely were killings and mutilations, but IN NO WAY are the numbers you, Kontra again, cited reliable. Stop enabling leftist bullshit.

dmdr

You're wrong, leftards will be the first to face the wall.

Weeeel, it's complicated. In my country, the EXTREMELY corrupt socialist party bribe old people with higher pensions and goverment workers with higher salaries because they are their main voting base. You wouldn't believe the shit they pulled off. They sabotaged the revolution of 1989. When the national resources were privatized it was done in an EXTREMELY shady and corrupt manner. You probably don't know this but we have lots of oil in my country. It is one of the reasons Hitler wanted us to be his "ally". So he pillaged a big chunk of it THEN in 2004 the Social Democrat party privatized the oil company Petrom in a truly dastardly and despicable way by selling it to the Austrians for like 10% of the value!!! So now our most precious resources are the property of foreigners...IN OUR OWN COUNTRY. The guy responsible barely got 2 years in jail. This is just the tip of the iceberg, they also tried to decriminalize "small" acts of corruption under 10k euros 2 years ago. The only way we can get rid of this people is if we rounded them all up and publicly executed them for treason to make sure they are gone for good.

We could have been a rich country that is not dependent on others for oil and gas but all this happened because after the revolution Russia wanted to sabotage us because we have a very strategic position, have lots of resources and will likely be the front line of NATO if WW3 breaks out. We have American bases and an anti-missle shield. The man responsible for this sabotage is Ion Iliescu, the criminal, who founded the Social Democrat Party and was president 3 times. 

The young people, especially the woke people, hate the old form of communism that is similar to North Korea and China BUT I am not sure how they will react to the corporate, rainbow wokeism side of communism. It's coming through popular culture, the internet and foreign corporations. The pro-eu party comprised of young people who hate the old guard might be the catalyst for this. They are basically the new leftists who although have good intentions might harm us in the future. We have no real right wing party in my country and Socialism is not going away around here, sadly. It will simply metamorphosize from the old system to corporate wokeism.

So yeah, whenever I see the word socialism, my mental immune system goes completely ballistic, whether it's National Socialism or "Democratic" Socialism. What we need right now is a Right Wing party made of younger people that will look after the interests of our own country. We need less taxes, need to bring our countrymen back through by helping them open businesses and exempt them from paying taxes for a few years. We are better than caregivers who wash the asses of old boomers from abroad or pick strawberries in the field. When the virus broke out, these people were desperate to come home. They don't want to leave their country but a lot of them have no choice. This is also why this kind of globalism doesn't work. You simply can't replace home, language and culture, no matter how awesome countries like Germany are. We also need to become less reliant on other countries. I do NOT like that we are getting money from the EU (which is being stolen when it comes here anyway or if it's not disappears under bureaucracy). I do not like that tax money from other countries is coming here, it's not right. We are better than that.