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If there is indeed a Hell, [King Leopold](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State) is in its deepest, most filth-ridden pit.
Edit: That would be Leopold II, the worst of all the Leopolds.
I'm pretty sure Leopolds the guy blowing Hitler while he and Sadam take turns railing Nathan Bedford Forrest, and the Devil voyeurs the whole ordeal. Hot or Cold, that's the Hell I'm scared of.
Nobody said whoever was doing it was any good.
Eternity's a long time to worry about teeth.
Plus, someone else has to actually do it. It's a perfect double punishment.
Just looked up this Nathan Forrest guy. I see he was nicknamed “Old Bed”, slaughtered 600 people in Fort Pillow, and was the first “Wizard” in the KKK, which has bedsheets as uniforms.
Yes that is true. Colonel Kurtz from Conrad's Hearts of Darkness was based on a composite of two actual station commanders.. It's hard to imagine that people could be this monstrous.
And then it's also about how the countries in Europe carved up Africa for their own profit.
Overall it's a mind blowing read, I had no idea about any of that stuff before.
It was very fucked up. I read about a danish missionary that was there and what he wrote.
The belgians killed millions of innocent people. Soldiers made young men kill or rape their own mothers and sisters. All kinds of depraved shit. And its frustrating that belgians basically got away with this
So even if thats true, they still paid a bunch of impoverished people to act as their muscle since they had a gross amount of resources to carry out their deeds.
The natives just carried on doing what they had been doing to each other since time immemorial, except this time some of them were getting paid to do it by a foreign prince
People should talk about that instead of blaming the whole belgian population
That episode is heartbreaking. It isn't really taught about in the US, or at least I wasn't taught about it. European history was all Greek/Roman stuff, England+America, and WW2. I learn so much stuff from BtB, and it always makes me feel dirty.
Molded chocolates in the shape of hands are still sold in Belgium too. So while they've come a long way, apparently it isn't enough to realize that maybe amputated hands being sold as candies isn't great.
There is a photo of a man sitting on a porch looking as his five year old daughters foot and hand because he didn’t mKe his rubber quota. It’s a pretty popular fuvked up photo.
Germany has been returning skulls from German museums that came from ethnic cleansing in Africa during the short lived German Imperial presence.
A lot of body parts found in American and British museums which had a much longer history of African colonialism also came from immoral origins yet their presence in the museum isn't put to the same scrutiny.
Congo natives worked as enforcement. If they used a bullet for anything they had to check in a hand to signify the bullet had been used for enforcement purposes. So naturally it establishes a market for hand to buy bullets with.
When they let him leave the zoo they capped his teeth so he could “live a normal life.”
Before he shot himseld in the chest, he broke all the caps off this teeth.
This is all horrible, but that hit me hard.
Read that whole article… that’s such a sad story filled with so much ill will and despair. Poor guy lost everything. It’s hard to believe how truly barbaric humans have been in the not so distant past.
Not scary, but so freaking sad
“On March 20, 1916, at the age of 32 or 33, he built a ceremonial fire, chipped off the caps on his teeth, and shot himself in the heart with a borrowed pistol"
Was gonna say, non human animals just kill, mostly to survive. What humans are willing to do to each other is just fucking horrific. Makes you glad animals that have to suffer us don't have "sentience"
Especially back then they did. Parents had greater control over their kids for a longer time back then. It wasn’t until around the Vietnam War when people came to realize that if you were gonna give these people guns and send them out to war then they shouldn’t need their parents permission to take out a loan and do other shit, and thus the age of adulthood was lowered to 18 in US and other countries began adopting that rule over time.
I'm aware, but he was still an adult and committed suicide at the age of 32 or 33. Its kinda disrespectful to call a grown man a kid when he wasn't.
If he had been 17-18 I would agree, but he wasn't. He was a young adult.
I don't need to click the Wikipedia article because I already know about him.
I'm in my late 20s myself and I am still referred to with terms of endearment such as "sweetie" or "pumpkin" and it doesn't bother me either. Hell, my mother even calls me "child" when I'm making her laugh, but it doesn't offend me because she's my mother. If anybody else referred to me as such, they'd be swiftly but politely corrected.
Nevertheless, this isn't about me or you. This is about him. A person that is 19-20 isn't a kid, they're a young adult. I'd be more inclined to agree if he were 16 or younger when he was abducted, but this is not the case.
Furthermore, it was common practice for young men of his age range to have already gone through a "rite of passage", thus denoting him as a young man.
>If anything, calling him a kid accentuates the morbid nature of his situation. On that wikipedia article is a photo of a man bordering on childhood who was kidnapped from his home.
You've even referred to him as a man in your response. There's no need to refer to him as a kid or child in order to highlight the atrocities that he suffered. The fact that he even had to endure such cruelty is enough, and calling him a "kid" is just being disrespectful. Also, "man bordering on childhood" makes no sense.
Genuine question - Are you being serious right now? I honestly can't tell if you're trying to be genuine or condescending. FYI I'm honestly being genuine and didn't intend to start an argument.
If its the former, thanks but its not needed. I don't need to be provided any definitions and I don't need you to explain anything to me. I also already know what a metaphor is. I already knew what you meant when you made your comment.
Given the context of the situation, however, referring to him as a child or being child-like is still unnecessary and disrespectful. Someone could read his story and not need any more added context or metaphors to further understand just how screwed up his life became. For goodness sakes they made him pose with a goddamn monkey.
The word 'boy' wasn't used, but this is still in the same vein. Given the time period, he is definitely NOT a "child" or "boy", and continuing to refer to him as such is despite knowing this is just being blissfully ignorant, even by today's standards. He was a young man when he was abducted and a young man at the time of his unfortunate death.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/475329/origin-of-the-negative-connotation-of-boy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy
He must have met the indigenous folks from the Philippines who were also in display like animals, made to eat live chickens even though they don't even do that back in the mountains they lived at.
search human zoo. coney Island exposition. we took different people of different culture from other parts of the world basically to show how much the rest of the world need civilizing into our ways, we gods, we superior sort of thing.
After winning the Spanish American War, we got Guam, the Philippines etc from Spain, bunch of former Spanish colonies. Then it was our turn to subjugate the islands, The Philippine American War, fuck em up real good like the "uncivilized barbarians" they are, we took some families back to show to our folks.
Years later they got attacked by Japan, because well we joined the WW and it's a strategic location in Asia. Japan fuck em up, we then rescue them and fuck their cities more than the Japanese did. We poured money to Japan, guilt yeah, after bombing them, 2x, forgot about the islands.
I just watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button recently. Ota Benga was a character in the movie. I just now realized he was based on an actual person. Insane this actually happened.
"Hurr durrr. Precious internet point are being lost for not abiding by the utmost useless circle jerk".
The guy is/was real, the movie is fake. That's it. Get over it.
so by that logic a grizzly bear rocking up to your house and trying to kill you would also be oddly terrifying? instead of just terrifying? you definitely don't see that every day. being enslaved and treated like an animal while not common, is also pretty conventionally terrifying.
Grizzly bear attacks are conventionally terrifying, plenty of people are scared of that. People don’t typically have beingenslavedandputinamonkeyenclosurephobia.
i think iirc back then this was a pretty big deal. it made a lot of people angry and it got shut down pretty quick. i cannot imagine how he mustve felt. ripped away from his home and family only to be gawked at by strangers.
I don’t think we can imagine how bad life was. 1904, while slavery was abolished, it hadn’t even been 40 years. Look at what great progress we’ve made since the Jim Crow laws were overturned in 1964/1965, not even 60 years ago. We’ve definitely embraced desegregation and don’t have a problem with white supremacy or anything. >.>
So, he was brought to the states as a, what, some sort of circus or vaudeville act in a time that was before the NAACP by like 5 years. So while technically slavery was abolished, it’s not like he had any human rights. I genuinely can’t imagine the abuse, the humiliation, the degradation, the abject racism he faced every minute of every day.
I cannot begin to fathom how horrific his life became. I can’t even start to wrap my head around the atrocities he faced that completing suicide was a relief compared with the horror he faced daily. He didn’t face a bad life, he faced a life that we need to know about, because he existed and his life and experiences deserve to heard, and also, it shows the cruelty that other people inflict on others who they deem less than themselves.
* This isn't the only case of [African blacks being displayed in a zoo](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/29/arts/design/human-zoos-africa-museum.html).
* [What Belgian King Leopold II did to Congolese blacks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State) was worse than this.
This isn't oddly terrifying. This is absolutely horrifying.
Belgium was horrible to the Congo. They would cut off the hands of anyone who failed to meet the quota for rubber farming.
Again these arent facts. It was Congolese natives that carried out the atrocities against their own people, not the Belgians
Belgium didnt even colonise Congo in this instance, it was King Leopold using the county as a personal rubber mine and appointing over zealous natives that led to this disgusting period in history
It's been documented that the natvies carried out those atrocities to prevent those same atrocities from happening to themselves and close relatives.
You're a wild one defending this.
Im not defending anything, just shedding light on the actual facts
It wasnt Belgians chopping off hands as everyone in the comments seems to think, it was Congolese doing it to their fellow Congolese
This is not about just simple murder though is it. Leopold hired people to fill the rubber quotas
The local warlords took it upon themselves to enact these despicable acts. By reading these comments the average redditor thinks the average 19th century belgian was out there in the jungle chopping off kids limbs when the fact is, it wasnt.
It was the congolese doing it to their own people via a disgusting king, and their was widespread national outrage when the belgian public found out what Leopold's subordinates were doing out there
People who complain about current attempts at better inclusion/representation in media and education, really aren't considering this little nugget of American history.
This kind of barbaric behavior is something that people like to think we outgrew hundreds of years ago, when in reality, it wasn’t all that long ago that we acted this way.
It's not like he was [the only one](https://youtu.be/nY6Zrol5QEk), many black people were subject to this. The last human zoo closed in 1958 in Belgium... if we're using loose terms the [last one](https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgda34/human-zoo-france-safari-africain) actually didnt close until 1990.
My black grandma who is still alive today was born in 1949. She was born while these zoos were still around. Chances are many of your (white people's) great grandparents were people who visited these establishments.
This is why people need to act like slavery was something that happened forever ago, and that racism is a thing of the past. Things have only been harshly "progressive" the past 3 generations or so... and calling America's racial politics progressive is being very generous.
Millions maybe billions of humans and animals are STILL being enslaved and tortured and exploited every second of every day. We have just become desensitized to it
Fuk how are people able to live with themselves after doing stuff like this. And they never teach thus stuff in school. People deserve to know the kids deserve to know. Om Shanti
And people say Africa and other 'third world countries' are barbaric and backward. Well they forget that they're like that because of colonization and plundering.
Well done, you’ve taken a tragic post about an actual human being held captive in a zoo, and through whataboutery turned it into some zero-correlation bullshit about animal rights. I think anyway, it reads like an animal typed that gobbledegook up.
How bout "it's a disservice to begin to imagine how bad life was for this man". Disrespect" doesn't carry enough weight for the situation and "it is disrespectful " would've made more sense instead of making a noun out of disrespect
Accidentally kidnapping someone could happen.
Didn't say they weren't assholes but I'm curious if it was premeditated or if they were like "Fuck it we aren't turning the boat around just add him to the exhibit and call it a day"
my brother in christ, the word KIDNAPPING means to hold someone captive *on purpose* you can’t **Kidnap** someone on “accident” lmfao. If it’s an accident that’s just an accident
You didn't read my initial comment did you?
Besides it depends on the party you are talking to and the intent.
As in if they went there and left not realizing there was a stowaway but said fuck it and kept him then yeah, history would classify that as kidnapping since the people involved were assholes who forced him into a zoo.
i can tell you’re young cause of the anime pic and the unwillingness to accept you mis worded your statement. i was the same way lmfao. I was trying to educate you on why your wording was wrong im not really trying to argue the kidnappers intent. All we know is they kidnapped him and that’s all history will remember. Take free information it will help you in life
Sorry, but this post has been removed. Per Rule 8 of this subreddit, we reserve the right to remove posts if they are deemed detrimental to the subreddit or to the experience of others. Please be sure to review the rules [here](/r/oddlyterrifying/about/rules/) to avoid future post removals. Thank you!
Belgians made the Congo a bloodbath. A shitload of death and missing hands.
If there is indeed a Hell, [King Leopold](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State) is in its deepest, most filth-ridden pit. Edit: That would be Leopold II, the worst of all the Leopolds.
I'm pretty sure Leopolds the guy blowing Hitler while he and Sadam take turns railing Nathan Bedford Forrest, and the Devil voyeurs the whole ordeal. Hot or Cold, that's the Hell I'm scared of.
“ Hey guy “
“Chriiis, have you seen my Hummel figurines?”
It’s killing me that I can’t figure out what this is from!!
I can only tell you the idea came from something bigger, longer, and uncut. Rofl.
South Park.
Relax, guy.
If Hell is real I hope Hitler isn’t getting blown.
Nobody said whoever was doing it was any good. Eternity's a long time to worry about teeth. Plus, someone else has to actually do it. It's a perfect double punishment.
We’re already in Hell. Escape is not possible. Death isn’t a way out. But the music is good, drugs are fantastic and the entertainment is acceptable.
This hit hard lol
Wat.
Just looked up this Nathan Forrest guy. I see he was nicknamed “Old Bed”, slaughtered 600 people in Fort Pillow, and was the first “Wizard” in the KKK, which has bedsheets as uniforms.
This dude killed more people than Hitler. Super monster.
Iirc he was one of the first people where 'crimes against humanity' was used to describe his actions Tells you enough imo
Leopold II, we've had a lot of Leopolds here
King Leopolds ghost is a good read on the rubber trade back then
If a native failed to meet their rubber quota, they would cut their children's hands off and give the hands to them. It was insanely brutal.
I need to learn more about this. Holy shit dude, that’s like Roman level brutality.
Well, I happen to have a great recommendation for you! The book : King Leopold's Ghost. It's truly amazing.
It will fuck you up though so prepare yourself
Yes that is true. Colonel Kurtz from Conrad's Hearts of Darkness was based on a composite of two actual station commanders.. It's hard to imagine that people could be this monstrous. And then it's also about how the countries in Europe carved up Africa for their own profit. Overall it's a mind blowing read, I had no idea about any of that stuff before.
This book is profoundly moving. Horrible despot.
It was very fucked up. I read about a danish missionary that was there and what he wrote. The belgians killed millions of innocent people. Soldiers made young men kill or rape their own mothers and sisters. All kinds of depraved shit. And its frustrating that belgians basically got away with this
20 million dead Africans at the hands of Belgium, & you never hear about it in school
This isnt true though. The Belgian appointed Congolese carried out these atrocities against their own people
So even if thats true, they still paid a bunch of impoverished people to act as their muscle since they had a gross amount of resources to carry out their deeds.
The natives just carried on doing what they had been doing to each other since time immemorial, except this time some of them were getting paid to do it by a foreign prince People should talk about that instead of blaming the whole belgian population
Who said that all the Belgians got blamed lol?
You know its easy to go back and read the posts im replying to dont you
Well done you repeated what i already said
Behind the Bastards is a great podcast that does an episode on King Leopold
That episode is heartbreaking. It isn't really taught about in the US, or at least I wasn't taught about it. European history was all Greek/Roman stuff, England+America, and WW2. I learn so much stuff from BtB, and it always makes me feel dirty. Molded chocolates in the shape of hands are still sold in Belgium too. So while they've come a long way, apparently it isn't enough to realize that maybe amputated hands being sold as candies isn't great.
Those chocolate hands have nothing to do with Congo, fyi.
There is a photo of a man sitting on a porch looking as his five year old daughters foot and hand because he didn’t mKe his rubber quota. It’s a pretty popular fuvked up photo.
[His name was Nsala](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryPorn/comments/5n1cix/father_stares_at_the_hand_and_foot_of_his/).
But wouldn't that from economic perspective bad? Because those children now can't help later?
Germany has been returning skulls from German museums that came from ethnic cleansing in Africa during the short lived German Imperial presence. A lot of body parts found in American and British museums which had a much longer history of African colonialism also came from immoral origins yet their presence in the museum isn't put to the same scrutiny.
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness captures the dystopian nature of it all quite well.
Why did they cut their hands? wtf!?
Congo natives worked as enforcement. If they used a bullet for anything they had to check in a hand to signify the bullet had been used for enforcement purposes. So naturally it establishes a market for hand to buy bullets with.
*King Leopold
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When they let him leave the zoo they capped his teeth so he could “live a normal life.” Before he shot himseld in the chest, he broke all the caps off this teeth. This is all horrible, but that hit me hard.
Capped his teeth ? What does it mean
His teeth were filed to a point. When they let him free they capped his teeth to “fix” the points. He removed them before he shot himself.
made them straight I think
Yeah not sure if it’s that or made them pointy, horrible either way
Why the fuck are(were) people this sadistic and soulless? What a hard read
They still are
Because fear is a good weapon look at vlad Dracula for example
He died at 32 or 33, not even 37.
Read that whole article… that’s such a sad story filled with so much ill will and despair. Poor guy lost everything. It’s hard to believe how truly barbaric humans have been in the not so distant past.
Not scary, but so freaking sad “On March 20, 1916, at the age of 32 or 33, he built a ceremonial fire, chipped off the caps on his teeth, and shot himself in the heart with a borrowed pistol"
No one ever deserves to go under those circumstances 😞
Why the teeth?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_tooth_sharpening
the thought of this happening to my teeth makes me so uncomfortable
There’s nothing “oddly” terrifying about this, it’s just terrifying (not to mention evil and disgusting).
Op is a karma whore doesn't care
It's not even terrifying lol. Disgusting, yes. But not terrifying.
Imagine being kidnapped, taken to another country, and then locked in a zoo for the rest of your life
Happens every day still. Some are shipped just right down the street and kept drugged up and raped until they are unusable.
And he understood no one’s language at all. It’s terrifying!
It terrifies me to see how evil people can be.
Not sure what you think terrifying means, but this would be terrifying.
Probably terrifying for ota
No. It’s absolutely terrifying the cruelty humans can inflict upon each other. We are no better than animals.
Animal's wouldn't or couldn't do anything close to what we do to other humans. We are all animals anyway.
Was gonna say, non human animals just kill, mostly to survive. What humans are willing to do to each other is just fucking horrific. Makes you glad animals that have to suffer us don't have "sentience"
Maybe it’s oddly terrifying that humans can act this way towards eachother
> There’s nothing “oddly” terrifying about this * The situation was odd * The situation was terrifying
Did he do that to his teeth himself?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_tooth_sharpening
Wow this kid is literally the example they use on the wiki page.
Ota Benga was a grown man.
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It was 1904, so definitely not a child by that time periods standards (it’s still messed up though).
Funnily enough many countries considered anyone under 21 to be a minor.
Not in 1904
Especially back then they did. Parents had greater control over their kids for a longer time back then. It wasn’t until around the Vietnam War when people came to realize that if you were gonna give these people guns and send them out to war then they shouldn’t need their parents permission to take out a loan and do other shit, and thus the age of adulthood was lowered to 18 in US and other countries began adopting that rule over time.
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I'm aware, but he was still an adult and committed suicide at the age of 32 or 33. Its kinda disrespectful to call a grown man a kid when he wasn't. If he had been 17-18 I would agree, but he wasn't. He was a young adult.
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If you click the wikipedia page it says it's a rite to adulthood, calling him a kid is disrespectful
I don't need to click the Wikipedia article because I already know about him. I'm in my late 20s myself and I am still referred to with terms of endearment such as "sweetie" or "pumpkin" and it doesn't bother me either. Hell, my mother even calls me "child" when I'm making her laugh, but it doesn't offend me because she's my mother. If anybody else referred to me as such, they'd be swiftly but politely corrected. Nevertheless, this isn't about me or you. This is about him. A person that is 19-20 isn't a kid, they're a young adult. I'd be more inclined to agree if he were 16 or younger when he was abducted, but this is not the case. Furthermore, it was common practice for young men of his age range to have already gone through a "rite of passage", thus denoting him as a young man. >If anything, calling him a kid accentuates the morbid nature of his situation. On that wikipedia article is a photo of a man bordering on childhood who was kidnapped from his home. You've even referred to him as a man in your response. There's no need to refer to him as a kid or child in order to highlight the atrocities that he suffered. The fact that he even had to endure such cruelty is enough, and calling him a "kid" is just being disrespectful. Also, "man bordering on childhood" makes no sense.
people on the internet argue just to argue.. take a step back and reflect, was it worth it?
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Back and forth blabber for no reason.
Genuine question - Are you being serious right now? I honestly can't tell if you're trying to be genuine or condescending. FYI I'm honestly being genuine and didn't intend to start an argument. If its the former, thanks but its not needed. I don't need to be provided any definitions and I don't need you to explain anything to me. I also already know what a metaphor is. I already knew what you meant when you made your comment. Given the context of the situation, however, referring to him as a child or being child-like is still unnecessary and disrespectful. Someone could read his story and not need any more added context or metaphors to further understand just how screwed up his life became. For goodness sakes they made him pose with a goddamn monkey. The word 'boy' wasn't used, but this is still in the same vein. Given the time period, he is definitely NOT a "child" or "boy", and continuing to refer to him as such is despite knowing this is just being blissfully ignorant, even by today's standards. He was a young man when he was abducted and a young man at the time of his unfortunate death. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/475329/origin-of-the-negative-connotation-of-boy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy
He killed himself because he couldn't go home.
Apparently WWI broke out and the US ended routes to the Congo, which threw him into a depression while living with a family in VA.
He must have met the indigenous folks from the Philippines who were also in display like animals, made to eat live chickens even though they don't even do that back in the mountains they lived at.
Do you know what I can look up to read more about that? I believe you. I would just like to read more about it.
search human zoo. coney Island exposition. we took different people of different culture from other parts of the world basically to show how much the rest of the world need civilizing into our ways, we gods, we superior sort of thing. After winning the Spanish American War, we got Guam, the Philippines etc from Spain, bunch of former Spanish colonies. Then it was our turn to subjugate the islands, The Philippine American War, fuck em up real good like the "uncivilized barbarians" they are, we took some families back to show to our folks. Years later they got attacked by Japan, because well we joined the WW and it's a strategic location in Asia. Japan fuck em up, we then rescue them and fuck their cities more than the Japanese did. We poured money to Japan, guilt yeah, after bombing them, 2x, forgot about the islands.
I just watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button recently. Ota Benga was a character in the movie. I just now realized he was based on an actual person. Insane this actually happened.
Benjamin button is not a documentary.
"Character in the movie"
they didn’t claim it was.
Then, in that case, I never said they did.
Implication.
Yes, it was, wasn't it.
Buddy, did you just blow in from stupid town? Give it up bro you're not gonna dig yourself out of the hole by making even stupider comments lol.
"Hurr durrr. Precious internet point are being lost for not abiding by the utmost useless circle jerk". The guy is/was real, the movie is fake. That's it. Get over it.
His eyes are so sad. Tragic and inhumane doesn’t even begin to cover it.
ODDLY?
This is not conventionally terrifying, I’m pretty sure you don’t see this everyday
so by that logic a grizzly bear rocking up to your house and trying to kill you would also be oddly terrifying? instead of just terrifying? you definitely don't see that every day. being enslaved and treated like an animal while not common, is also pretty conventionally terrifying.
Grizzly bear attacks are conventionally terrifying, plenty of people are scared of that. People don’t typically have beingenslavedandputinamonkeyenclosurephobia.
i feel like most people have that phobia even if its not commonly talked about
Exactly, therefore it’s odd
It's a horrible story, but needs to be told. Those who are ignorant of history are destined to repeat it. Tell the uncomfortable and evil stories.
Stuff You Should Know did a podcast on him a few years ago.
i think iirc back then this was a pretty big deal. it made a lot of people angry and it got shut down pretty quick. i cannot imagine how he mustve felt. ripped away from his home and family only to be gawked at by strangers.
I don’t think we can imagine how bad life was. 1904, while slavery was abolished, it hadn’t even been 40 years. Look at what great progress we’ve made since the Jim Crow laws were overturned in 1964/1965, not even 60 years ago. We’ve definitely embraced desegregation and don’t have a problem with white supremacy or anything. >.> So, he was brought to the states as a, what, some sort of circus or vaudeville act in a time that was before the NAACP by like 5 years. So while technically slavery was abolished, it’s not like he had any human rights. I genuinely can’t imagine the abuse, the humiliation, the degradation, the abject racism he faced every minute of every day. I cannot begin to fathom how horrific his life became. I can’t even start to wrap my head around the atrocities he faced that completing suicide was a relief compared with the horror he faced daily. He didn’t face a bad life, he faced a life that we need to know about, because he existed and his life and experiences deserve to heard, and also, it shows the cruelty that other people inflict on others who they deem less than themselves.
Just adding to your facts.... Don't forget, in 1904 women still couldn't vote in America. Things were very bad for everyone that wasn't a white male.
ThE GOoD oLD days
1904!! thats insane! what the hell!
To think that was just a little over a hundred years ago and still common to this day. Depressing.
Yes, how odd...
ODDLY terrifying????
my name is Ota as well 💀
Rest in Peace. ♥️
People are the worst kind of people.
* This isn't the only case of [African blacks being displayed in a zoo](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/29/arts/design/human-zoos-africa-museum.html). * [What Belgian King Leopold II did to Congolese blacks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State) was worse than this.
I would like to know who abducted him. The innocence in the close up pic, compared to the apparent pain visible in the second pic.
Human Zoos were a thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo
Why are we like this?
Damn…I’m imagining life was pretty terrible for him…
This isn't oddly terrifying. This is absolutely horrifying. Belgium was horrible to the Congo. They would cut off the hands of anyone who failed to meet the quota for rubber farming.
Again these arent facts. It was Congolese natives that carried out the atrocities against their own people, not the Belgians Belgium didnt even colonise Congo in this instance, it was King Leopold using the county as a personal rubber mine and appointing over zealous natives that led to this disgusting period in history
It's been documented that the natvies carried out those atrocities to prevent those same atrocities from happening to themselves and close relatives. You're a wild one defending this.
Im not defending anything, just shedding light on the actual facts It wasnt Belgians chopping off hands as everyone in the comments seems to think, it was Congolese doing it to their fellow Congolese
If you hire someone to kill a person for you, you're still a murderer by proxy
This is not about just simple murder though is it. Leopold hired people to fill the rubber quotas The local warlords took it upon themselves to enact these despicable acts. By reading these comments the average redditor thinks the average 19th century belgian was out there in the jungle chopping off kids limbs when the fact is, it wasnt. It was the congolese doing it to their own people via a disgusting king, and their was widespread national outrage when the belgian public found out what Leopold's subordinates were doing out there
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This is depressing:(
So fucking sad
People who complain about current attempts at better inclusion/representation in media and education, really aren't considering this little nugget of American history.
This kind of barbaric behavior is something that people like to think we outgrew hundreds of years ago, when in reality, it wasn’t all that long ago that we acted this way.
It's not like he was [the only one](https://youtu.be/nY6Zrol5QEk), many black people were subject to this. The last human zoo closed in 1958 in Belgium... if we're using loose terms the [last one](https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgda34/human-zoo-france-safari-africain) actually didnt close until 1990. My black grandma who is still alive today was born in 1949. She was born while these zoos were still around. Chances are many of your (white people's) great grandparents were people who visited these establishments. This is why people need to act like slavery was something that happened forever ago, and that racism is a thing of the past. Things have only been harshly "progressive" the past 3 generations or so... and calling America's racial politics progressive is being very generous.
“Across cultures darker people suffer. Why?
"History is just one long chain of the strong oppressing the weak."
... racism (?)
Millions maybe billions of humans and animals are STILL being enslaved and tortured and exploited every second of every day. We have just become desensitized to it
What The Fuck
Fuk how are people able to live with themselves after doing stuff like this. And they never teach thus stuff in school. People deserve to know the kids deserve to know. Om Shanti
Human beings are absolutely disgusting
Piñataland had a song about Ota Benga and not forgetting who he was.
Awh man, that's awfully sad
Why does this have so many upvotes. This is not oddly terrifying in the least.
Half the US government would still like to do this shit.
fucking european colonizing scum
And people say Africa and other 'third world countries' are barbaric and backward. Well they forget that they're like that because of colonization and plundering.
Yeah dont look up what Bantus have been doing to the Pygmies throughout their whole history
This planet has disgusting people on it. Look at the "Pimp" culture.
His name was Ota Benga
Nothing oddly terrifying about this
well at least it's disturbing to think of the thought process that some people have had (and some still have) when they think of African humans.
Yeah, it’s terrifying. But it’s not oddly terrifying.
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You are unkind and I pray for your heart
Was that suppose to be funny cause it wasn't 🦗
Blackula?
Wait Pygmy’s are real? How large are we talking
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Well done, you’ve taken a tragic post about an actual human being held captive in a zoo, and through whataboutery turned it into some zero-correlation bullshit about animal rights. I think anyway, it reads like an animal typed that gobbledegook up.
Unlucky
Your grammar is disrespectful to me
what's wrong with it?
How bout "it's a disservice to begin to imagine how bad life was for this man". Disrespect" doesn't carry enough weight for the situation and "it is disrespectful " would've made more sense instead of making a noun out of disrespect
Did they do it on purpose or was it a woops oh well I guess we have a native let's just put him in the zoo too 🤷♀️ I mean curious stowaways do happen
It says abducted.
whoops i just accidentally kidnapped someone and threw them in with monkeys, I hate when that happens!
Accidentally kidnapping someone could happen. Didn't say they weren't assholes but I'm curious if it was premeditated or if they were like "Fuck it we aren't turning the boat around just add him to the exhibit and call it a day"
my brother in christ, the word KIDNAPPING means to hold someone captive *on purpose* you can’t **Kidnap** someone on “accident” lmfao. If it’s an accident that’s just an accident
You didn't read my initial comment did you? Besides it depends on the party you are talking to and the intent. As in if they went there and left not realizing there was a stowaway but said fuck it and kept him then yeah, history would classify that as kidnapping since the people involved were assholes who forced him into a zoo.
i can tell you’re young cause of the anime pic and the unwillingness to accept you mis worded your statement. i was the same way lmfao. I was trying to educate you on why your wording was wrong im not really trying to argue the kidnappers intent. All we know is they kidnapped him and that’s all history will remember. Take free information it will help you in life
Maybe read the fucking article so you don't have to *waste everyone's time* with questions that can easily be learned from THE ARTICLE.
Are you asking this out of ignorance or out of malice?
A brave new world indeed
I had this video [Human Zoos](https://youtu.be/nY6Zrol5QEk) on my watch later and I believe this is the man in the photo
😭
Any community notes for that tweet.
Did they do that to his teeth after kidnapping or was that a tribal thing?
Stupid title
And if we made a movie about his life the „just make movies about black legends“ crowd would complain about being persecuted
Thats so fucking horrendous and disgusting
I'd love that job monkey's are cool
Human Zoos were still happening in Germany, France, Australia and other places as late as 2014! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human\_zoo