Anyone who grew up in the 1990s is surprised to see Belgian King...
Pope Respecter@poperespecter1
32 views
Feb 06, 2026
~3 min read
Advertisement
1
Anyone who grew up in the 1990s is surprised to see Belgian King Leopold II on the list of worst genocides in history. This is because his "genocide" is a fraud invented by Adam Hochschild in 1998. 🧵
2
The claim in Hochschild's 1998 book, "Leopold's Ghost" is Leopold did a forgotten Holocaust in which - out of a ravenous desire for money from the rubber industry - enslaved millions in the Congo. He chopped off hands, slaughtered, and was indifferent to disease and starvation.
3
But the narrative is completely fake. Here are the facts. First, Leopold and the Belgians went to the Congo with the stated goal of suppressing already widespread Arab slave trade and tribal wars, not to exploit the Congo.
4
Only about 20,000 troops went to Congo making it absolutely impossible to properly manage such a chaotic country. To the extent that there was abuse, most was either from the Arab slavers or from local Congo soldiers and was the result of poor oversight not a deliberate policy.
5
The biggest fake claim was the false population decline claims. Hochschild's 10 million number was based on a pre-Leo census-less estimate and comparing that to more accurate estimates afterwards. This absolute reckless use of numbers is refuted when you consider:
6
Modern estimates show a slight INCREASE in the Congo population from 1885 to 1908. To the extent that there were deaths, they were due to slavery, disease, and warfare, not EIC policies, which saved lives through interventions.
7
Another thing that often gets people is the many photos of Belgians standing next to Congo citizens with hands chopped off. The implications of these photos is that it was the Belgians doing the chopping.
8
In reality, the Belgians were staging these photos to show the horrors of the Arab slave trade (where they did chop off hands) and tribal warfare. There was no evidence of widespread use of hand chopping by the Belgian authorities.
9
Further, Hochschild omits to tell his readers that Belgium had a huge Anti-Slavery effort. Slavery prior to the arrival of the Belgians was widespread and brutal - enforced by Arab slavers. Belgium worked hard to end this practice.
10
In short, the entire claim is fake. At worst, you could accuse Leopold of mismanagement. At best you could say he helped end the slave trade and bring some order to a chaotic nation. The 10 million dead number is absolutely fake.
11
BTW, Grok is in my comments trying to blue pill people on this so I asked Grok separately (outside this thread) what the population of Congo Free State was before and after Leopold II. Grok confirmed recent population estimates show no drop.
So Grok agrees 10 mil dead is fake.
So Grok agrees 10 mil dead is fake.
12
For those calling Grok not a source (I agree but remember I was correcting Grok here), you can check out Statistica that estimates the population of Congo based on scholarly consensus. The red box is the time of Leopold.
13
Also, for everyone saying "this or that writer spoke about the Belgians' Congo atrocities before Hochschild", my claim is not that Hochschild was literally the first person to talk about the Belgian occupation of Congo (obviously not) but just that he gave academic credibility and popularity to some of the most outlandish accounts and death totals. This is what I mean by him being the genesis of this hoax.