Comment: This gruesome story on Spiegel Online International is dedicated to all those in the Finland and the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party who still continue to believe in racial superiority of the white man over other ethnicities. True, white racists in Europe don’t make such a distinction so clearly as in the early part of last century but it is still there behind the true context of their statements.
Instead of saying that such an ethnic group is “inferior” compared with one’s own, they speak of cultural differences. How many times have we heard these groups state that “x” is so barbaric that they could never be part of our society?They are saying, in effect, what some were saying in the early part of last century: We are superior to this group. They can never be like us and therefore are excluded and rejected.
In history there are too many grim example of the barbarism that Europeans carried out on other groups. Certainly World War I and II were rude wake up calls that revealed our potential for barbarism.
The Piltdown Man hoax is another example of academia’s collusion in maintaining myths about our national superiority.
All of the European colonizers committed atrocities in Africa. The story below by Spiegel Online International tells about what the Germans did in modern Namibia.
The German online newsmagazine writes: “The story of how the remains came to be transported back to Germany is horrific. They belonged to the victims of German colonial troops, killed mercilessly following a Herero uprising in January 1904 which left 123 Germans dead. After the decisive Battle of Waterberg in August 1904, the Herero fled into the desert towards Botswana, pursued by German troops. Thousands were killed as they fled; out of a reported 80,000, only around 15,000 reached the neighboring country. The massacre is considered to be among the first genocides of the 20th century.
In October 1904, the German commander in Namibia, General Lothar von Trotha, gave his infamous order to kill any Herero, armed or not, found within the limits of German colonial territory. The skulls in Berlin, which mostly came from Herero who had died in prison camps, were sent back to Germany for supposed scientific studies aimed at underpinning the doctrine of racial superiority of Europeans over Africans.”
What kind of stain is this on our European history and are we still playing the same game today but differently?
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Germany revisits the dark chapter of its brief colonial history this week with the return of 20 skulls belonging to genocide victims in a former colony. A Namibian delegation is in Berlin to take home the remains of those killed more than a century ago. This could be just the beginning of such reconciliations.