Posted on 09/02/2009 9:05:38 PM PDT by paudio
Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo, 41, is taking legal action claiming Hergé's controversial Tintin In The Congo is propaganda for colonialism and amounts to "racism and xenophobia".
"Tintin's little (black) helper is seen as stupid and without qualities. It makes people think that blacks have not evolved," he said.
Mr Mbutu Mondondo launched a case in Belgium two years ago for symbolic damages of one euro from Tintin's Belgian publishers Moulinsart, and demanded the book be withdrawn from the market.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
We have that one (along with most of the rest of them).
Recently, Congo sued Norway for $500 billion US dollars!
http://stormen.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/congo-sues-norway-for-500-billion-dollars/
Last year, a certain Mr. Jean-Dadou Monya tried to get “Tintin in Congo” banned over here in Sweden. Hardly surprising, he wasn't successful and few people cared.
http://www.thelocal.se/8271/20070823/
In the 1940s and earlier, the attitudes most white people shared towards Africans often was condescending and full of prejudice, yes.
BUT; By banning books, films etc made in those days that bear testimony to this, we run the risk of this historic fact falling into oblivion.
Is that what we should strive for?
To me, the adventures of Tintin are a wonderful part of my childhood.
My father read the Tintin stories to me and my brother before we were able of reading them ourselves.
I would like to say Tintin and his friends have contributed to making me the man I am today.
For instance, Le capitaine Archibald Haddock is a great source of inspiration to me.
Seriously speaking.
I can think of more profane invectives than his “Freshwater pirates!” (don't recall what album this expression is from, I'll have to google a bit), but not of a more degrading one.
I'm not easily offended myself.
People can call me whatever they want as long as they don't compare me to complete losers like actual freshwater pirates:D
The “journalist”, Henry Samuel, is informing us that “TinTin in the Congo” is “controversial”. This is, yet again, opinion disguised as reporting. I thought better of The Telegraph.
Africa has some serious problems, not the least of which is the commodization of everything. It's a mindset that places a value on money rather than skills and is a direct result of colonial policies. You don't get to blame Islam for everything.
I think you can substitute just about any noun for "Africa" in that sentence.
Coincidentally, I'm reading this book right now. Not a happy story.
I recommend you read about the author.
Very interesting link. A good chunk of my ancestry is “Native” American (personally, I like the Canadian phrase “First Nations” better) and I have long been fascinated by the possible links between First Nations peoples and Asian peoples.
Sorry bud, when I have had to buy goats for sacrifices for voodoo... and islam is very much alive in the communities...
that comes straight from islamic tradition not african
Their other largest problem aside from being either voodeo christian or muslim is the simple thing of education. Western education... dare I say it! OOOOhhhhh thats racist...
Face it they as a people are still 2000 years behind the rest of the world. They are in a difficult place. They have never had a civilization.
Sure we can claim egyptians... other than that nothing. So they are in fact lost so to speak and having to find their way.
Look at central america... evidence abound of meso america where they had full civilizations.
Africa? nothing, nada, zip. They never had a start other than their tribal feudal thing and they havent been able to get past it. Their system will not allow it at grass roots level.
Ah, he’s a leftist. So there was no forced labor system in the Belgian Congo, no mass amputation of hands, no mass starvation. The population of the Congo didn’t drop by half over 40 years. It’s all a lie. Is that what you’re saying?
Not just a leftist, a dedicated Communist, self-hating, West hating rich Jew. Credible source? Is Congo better off today? Is he interested in comparisons? Would he ever compare Congo to the gulags? Do you enjoy Western self-flaggelation?
Be specific. What is incorrect in his story? Were all the contemporary reports of atrocities coming out of the Belgian Congo from missionaries and others the work of dedicated Communist, self-hating, West hating rich Jews, too? Were all those photographs of people holding up their amputated stumps just some primitive Photoshop work?
Is Congo better off today? Is he interested in comparisons? Would he ever compare Congo to the gulags?
You haven't read the book, have you? He brings the story up to the present, talking about the corruption of the country under Mobutu, which basically continued the kleptocracy of the colonial system, with merely a differently colored guy with a penchant for naming everything after himself at the top. He also very specifically compares the colonial forced labor system to the gulag system in a couple of places.
From page 162:
Hostage-taking set the Congo apart from most other forced-labor regimes. But in other ways it resembled them. As would be true decades later of the Soviet gulag, another slave labor system for harvesting raw materials, the Congo operated by quotas.
From page 233:
Why then, did the killings go on for so long? The same irrationality lies at the heart of many other mass murders. In the Soviet Union, for example, shooting or jailing political opponents at first helped the Communist Party and then Josef Stalin gain absolute power. But after there were no visible opponents left, seven million more people were executed, and many millions more died in the far-flung camps of the gulag.... In the Congo, as in Russia, mass murder had a momentum of its own.There are a couple of others, as well.
Rummel had to adjust his 20th Century numbers in a major way, with King Leopold being a main cause.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
I'll take that bet.
You win.
Have you read Mark Twain’s _King Leopold’s Soliloquy_? Worth your while, if you haven’t.
http://diglib1.amnh.org/articles/kls/index.html
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