visited the Congo by that time but not one had spoken out. It was li - PDF document

1 4 visited the Congo by that time but not one had spoken out. It was like the US Congress voting on going to war in Iraq. Only two senators out of one hundred said No! One was a black man, Barack Obama. Their vote had no impact whatsoever at the time. And now, all that is past history. I had my own letter of course. Or rather two of them. One was to the learned society bringing civilization to Africa, the other was to my fiancŽe in Belgium. The first was full of lofty sentiments. But I was unable to mail it off before I died by the Congo River aboard a paddle steamer, yet at least I saw through what nonsense I was writing and in pencil in a fit of pique and desperation was able to scribble at the bottom, ÒExterminate all the brutes.Ó The other letter was equally full of pious sentiments but on that I did not scribble anything. I maintained the lie so as to maintain the idea of a purer than pure love in this sordid world in which nothing made sense any more. And now all about me in the Congo and throughout this blessed continent what do I see from my less than lofty perch in my muddy grave? I see much the same violence and lies being exercised but now in the name of anti-colonialism as if Leopold, King of the Belgians, Billiard Balls, and False Teeth, has been miraculously transformed into not one but a swarm of African dictators dealing in rigged votes, oil, diamonds, and Swiss bank accounts. Which brings me now to this exhibition in 2008 in Belgium, wondering about what Adam Hochschild in his book, LeopoldÕs Ghost, calls Òthe great forgetting.Ó As early as 1908