Faking parakeets

Red gorillas in the Congo? Yes, red. The Strait of Hormuz sea-serpent? Yes, the Strait of Hormuz. A faked video of surviving Carolina Parakeets, perhaps in the Okefenokee swamp? I admit I never heard *these* particular tall tales before! The parakeet video was the funniest part. The guy who "discovered" it (or rather faked it) was a very colorful character! Would be big on YouTube if he had lived today, LOL. 

The other monkey

 

Something new is always coming out of Africa. Or something old. Primordially old. Muh-hah-hah! 

Uppdrag i Katanga

 

Credit: Aftonbladet

En närmast surrealistisk rubrik. Men det är faktiskt sant. OK, men hur var det med den där flygkraschen då? Ni vet, Dag Hammarskjöld...

Really tall tales

 

Some entertaining tall tales about surviving Tyrannosaurs in various remote parts of the world: Kamchatka, Alaska, the Congo rainforests, the Australian outback. The stories are *very* hard to believe, indeed, there´s less "evidence" than usual even compared to other cryptids. The T-Rex sighted in Belgian Congo was originally not even claimed to be a dinosaur, but a large lizard...hoaxed by a Swedish explorer?! The story (and the faked photos) didn´t lose anything in retelling.

How´s this for Saturday morning fun?

A ghost laid to rest?

 

Are the claims about a full-scale genocide in King Leopold´s so-called Congo Free State really Woke-revisionist history? 

The first link goes to an interesting article in "The American Conservative" which argues that the real threat in the Congo at the time were the Arab slave-raiders and various local warlords (many of them cannibals). The essay is a scathing criticism of the book "King Leopold´s Ghost", which claims that 10 million people were killed in the Congo Free State during Leopold´s rule of the area. 

The second link goes to my old review of a book published in 1897 dealing with precisely this issue.   

King Hochshild´s Hoax

The rise of the Congo cannibals

White boy´s burden

“The Adventures of Tintin” is a world famous Belgian comic, created by Georges Remi (Hergé). “Tintin in the Congo” is considered to be the second volume in the series, and was originally published in 1930-31. A color version was published in 1946. The “canonical” edition seems to be a later revision from 1975. In sharp contrast to later Hergé stories, the plot is wafer thin, and most of the story revolves around various comical or absurd situations involving the brave reporter Tintin and his even braver fox terrier Milou (Snowy in the English translation). The villains are American gangsters working for Al Capone (!) who are smuggling diamonds from the Congo.

The territory referred to as “the Congo” is the Belgian Congo, better known to my generation as Congo-Kinshasa or Zaire and today called the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Thus, Tintin visits an African territory which was at the time a colony of Hergé's native Belgium. Before 1908, Belgian Congo had been the personal colony (!) of the Belgian king Leopold II and the scene of one of the worst genocides in Africa, as Leopold's henchmen unleashed a wave of terror to extract as much profit as possible from the king's colonial subjects. As many as 10 million people are believed to have perished in the hellish “Congo Free State” before international pressure forced the Belgian government to institute a more normal form of colonial rule over the territory.

Which brings me to the main part of my review…

“Tintin in the Congo” is easily the most controversial, criticized and condemned Tintin story. The reason is, of course, its hopelessly racist depiction of Black Africans, only minimally altered in later editions. It's positive view of big game hunting has also been heavily criticized. The conflation of racism and big game hunting strikes me as worthy of criticism in itself! Is the killing of antelope really compatible with King Leopold's hecatomb? I find it amazing that so many reviewers deny or minimize the racism in this story. Imagine the same story with anti-Semitic stereotypes! It would *never* be published or publicly defended, except by (surprise) anti-Semites.

We can discuss what (if anything) should be done about “Tintin in the Congo”. I'm pretty skeptical myself to culture warriors who spend more time campaigning against racist comics than, say, supporting the actual Congolese. That being said, however, Tintin aficionados should at least be brave enough to point out that their little hero comes across as a somewhat burdensome White man in this early story...