April 5, 2019 - Steve Pieczenik
03:59
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Hi, Dr. | |
| Chinook. | |
| I want to talk about Belgium today. | |
| Why Belgium? | |
| Because Belgium is the headquarters of the EU. There are 30,000 bureaucrats, and they're monitoring all of the behavior over Germany, France, Spain, and the rest of Europe. | |
| But the history of Belgium is far more revealing about its character. | |
| Let me talk about King Leopold II, who was the leader of the Free Congo State in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo. | |
| And what he did was to use a theory or policy he called the red rubber. | |
| He was extracting rubber from all of these countries as well as diamonds and ivory. | |
| And how did he do it? | |
| He called it the tripartite theory. | |
| First, he used the Catholic and Protestant churches to sanctify the brutality and terror that he imposed on all the African men, women, and children. | |
| Secondly, he used mercenaries to cut off the legs of children and their hands, as well as men and women. | |
| It is horrendous to see these pictures. | |
| And if you want to see them, I don't recommend it. | |
| You would have to look at a book by Morel, M-O-R-E-L, who published it in 1903 called The Horrors of the Congo. | |
| Then having done that, He legitimized his authority by saying, this is the Free Congo State and they belong to me, Leopold II. The only people who criticized Leopold because he was very effective in using the media were Mark Twain, Teddy Roosevelt, and a man by the name of Joseph Conrad who wrote a novel called The Heart of Darkness, which I read and got me interested in the history of Belgium. | |
| Eventually, Leopold II died in 1908. | |
| But he was never reprimanded and Belgium never apologized for this horrendous, horrendous history. | |
| In World War I, they were defeated. | |
| And in the 1930s, what happened is Belgium had a huge unemployment problem. | |
| And as a result of that unemployment problem, they shifted their nationalism to the right. | |
| So the Flemish within Belgium became the Walloons, and the French, it went to the right, called Rexus State, and both the French and the Walloons joined the Waffen-SS when Hitler invaded the so-called neutral state of Belgium, and then eventually Leopold III, the son of Leopold II, collaborated with Hitler. | |
| And the United States, England and France had to attack them. | |
| So what do we have here? | |
| We have a country which has a mystery in history, which has never really apologized for the atrocities they committed, which now feels that because of their former isolation, they have to compensate by going into NATO, the UN and becoming the headquarters of the EU. There's something very paradoxical about it and something very eerie about it. | |
| I don't particularly like it. | |
| I think Belgium has a long way to go before it becomes the center of any nationalism or any accommodation among different states. | |
| Let me quote the president of Hungary who said, I may have problems with the Muslims, but my real problems are with the 30,000 bureaucrats in the EU. Then let me end with a note that Leopold II had, and he said, I am so proud of the modernization of Belgium, because with the red rubber, we were able to accomplish a lot, and I found joy in it. | |
| With that note, I leave you. |
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