If you think ‘a bit of my statue broke’ is even a rounding error compared to their legacy in the Congo, I suggest you go look into it and let me know once you’ve done the research if you think I’m wrong. I’m open to hearing your counter-argument, but from my view the two do not compare.

I disagree. The rich got richer, there’s no doubt about that, but (using England as an example), a massive amount of infrastructure was built and paid for through colonial income in part of not whole. Roads, trains, factories, ships, universities. Much of the money that went into long lasting projects like that depended on the continual income from the colonies.

That infrastructure benefits the entire country, even though the poor are still poor. They are poor with trains to take them places and roads to drive on. They are poor with universities to create new medicines to treat them. That benefit is meaningful, it is pervasive, and it didn’t just materialize spontaneously – another group of people somewhere do not have something today as a result of that transfer of resources.

I agree that Germany’s hand was forced because they lost the war, but as a counter-example, the Japanese also lost the war, and they have done very little to acknowledge any of the negative actions they committed during WWII – so losing the war wasn’t the only variable here. Turkey lost, but continue to deny their role in the Armenian genocide. Both those nations have made a choice where others have not.

I agree with you that this is not how things have been forever. It probably does go back to the Holocaust. That’s not a reason to not do things. We are constantly changing things about human societal structure. Why not include an understanding of how destructive colonialism was and how it impacts the economic and cultural variances between nations today?

Much of how Germany handles their role in WWII in terms of public consciousness was not placed upon them by the Allies. Initially Germany tried to distance itself from responsibility by blaming what happened only on the Nazi party and not on those who were not party members or high ranking party members.

It took time for them to start to instill in their culture the idea that they had to grapple with the Holocaust meaningfully, not because any of them were at fault, but because they still had a responsibility to know and prevent. It’s not perfect, and like I said before, nothing is, but it’s more than doing nothing.

That culture of ownership, in my mind, is far better than reparations. The resources are gone. You can’t (or perhaps, shouldn’t) unbuild a railway system. But to ignore the past and pretend nothing happened and that (mostly) European nations have no long lasting responsibility for the state of much of the developing world is, in my opinion, totally wrong.

To your point, do you think the average teenager in England understands how the policies of their leadership caused the Potato Famine? More importantly, do you think it’s a good thing that they should never have to learn that and recognize that England has something today because Ireland does not?

Returning to Belgium, statues of Leopold were still present and commemorated until they were attacked by fringe activists fairly recently. That’s a signal to me that they don’t know their history. I’m sure if they did, it wouldn’t be a group of radicals trying to bring attention to this subject, it would be a more widely and normally accepted conversation with their past selves.

Not sure where I suggested destroying the statue would even the karmic scales, I just said I didn’t feel bad for them (due to their current karmic bank balance). Those are two totally different things.

Sorry I don’t understand your comment.

Firstly, I said nothing of reparations. I talked about owning the responsibility. That can take the form of education, it can take the form of reparations, it has many forms. All those forms are imperfect, but they are each better than doing nothing because ‘hey, it was a long time ago, man.’

Second, to this point:

The rank and file who pay the taxes in the western countries were being subjugated also and certainly did not gain from the moneys raised in the colonies.

That’s just not true, friend. Just because economic injustice exists in colonizing counties today and existed then, doesn’t mean their rank and file aren’t still benefitting from the actions of their prodecessors. Their infrastructure, their economies, their sociopolitical systems – stuff that the enables the rank and file to worry about paying taxes instead of, for example, starving and dying in a civil war – that is the benefit that has been created. To take that for granted is to bury how that got built.

I agree with that, but a culture needs to own its heritage, both the good and the bad. From what I can tell, that hasn’t happened compared, for example, to how German society has handled the Holocaust (an extreme example, but illustrates a point).

Part of me is like, poor statue, how terrible.

Part of me is like, screw Belgium. Until they even the karmic scales for what they did to the Congo, they deserve everything they get.