Why do we always focus on the same ole same ole? I feel like that is how history is taught. We just consistently reexamine the same people. It's important to know all the influencers, and crazies. And how they were influenced to spread their bile. That's how you study history.
Leo
america analogy GIFGiphy"Leopold II of Belgium."
"Am Belgian. Can confirm. I'm 33 and the horror that monster inflicted on the people of the Congo wasn't in any school books. BeCaUsE tHe kInG."
PP
"Pol Pot wasn't talked about in my history classes."
"Possibly the worst dictatorship to live under as a regular middle class person."
"I remember learning about him in my 8th grade World History class. Shout out to Dr. Pierce - one of my favorite teachers in all my school years. What blew my mind, though, was when a decade or so ago I realized that the monster had been alive and free until 1998!!! I had just assumed he was dead and had spent time in jail or at least exiled, of not executed at some point."
- arcinva
The General
"Surgeon General Shirō Ishii, commander of Unit 731."
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731"
"I can't believe we were never taught about this in school. Instead, everything we learned re!ated to WWII was about the Nazis. Sure, they mentioned the war in the Pacific, but it was only glanced over."
- arcinva
Qi...
"Empress Lu Zhi. She wanted her son to become the emperor's heir but he preferred the son of his consort, a woman named Qi. So she had Qi shaved, placed in chains and had her eyes gouged out, her ears cut off and her tongue removed, then cut off her arms and legs and threw her in a pigsty."
Bad Gov
Plotting Mr Burns GIFGiphy"Wilson Lumpkin. Governor of Georgia way back when. He played a big role in the Indian Removal and trail of tears. Though blame usually just goes to Andrew Jackson."
- user deleted
New names and lots of info. Info that won't help me sleep at night, but it's good to know the who's who of history. Especially when it comes to my country.
Strangest Things Seen In A Contract's Terms And Conditions | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
Traitors
The Color Purple GIFGiphy"The slavers in Africa who sold their own people to the Europeans."
"Not just the Europeans, they were slaving to each other for a long time. They eventually taught the modern slave trade to Europeans."
The Worst
"Francisco Macias Nguema was dictator of Equatorial Guinea in the 1970s, and was absolutely freaking brutal. Like, Pol Pot levels of violence. Learnt about him from a podcast that I can't remember the name of, and I was shocked that I simply had never heard of this man. One of the most brutal dictators of all time."
Cecil
"Cecil Rhodes, the architect of apartheid. He ran the British South African Company, cofounded deBeers creating a diamond monopoly, and mined the sh*t out of Africa in the name of the Crown. He started the second Boer War, and set in place several laws and taxes that gave white settlers land rights in Southern Africa. Super racist and thought whites were destined to rule the world and he wanted the British to control Africa."
"Eventually the colonies he oversaw named after him, Rhodesia. He died young because underneath all the white superiority was a frail body and a weak heart. When he died, Rhodesia turned into a white supremacist state until civil wars broke it up into Zambia and Zimbabwe. The Rhodes scholarship at Oxford is named in his honor."
The Banality of Evil
"There's a book on Eichmann called The Banality of Evil. It perfectly describes what I think is the creepiest thing about the Holocaust. I can get hateful, racist people, even though I don't subscribe to it. But I can't wrap my head around the hundreds of people who processed people for death like they were recycling bottles or milling logs."
"They reviewed efficiency reports, thought up new ways to improve processes, promoted people for doing it well. There was a whole group of middle managers who seemed to go from, "Oh we are machining sprockets," to "Oh we are sending Jews to gas Chambers," like it was just another job."
- kjm16216
Rafael
Pure. Evil."Rafael Trujillo Molina. Not a lot of people know about him. Pretty much the evilest guy to come to power in the Americas."
Evil is as evil does, and it walks amongst us, and it has power. It's so unfair. People who don't deserve it garner power. That's why we have to learn more, to avoid.
Want to "know" more? Never miss another big, odd, funny, or heartbreaking moment again. Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.