r/AskEurope • u/Volume2KVorochilov • Feb 27 '25

History What's the most taboo historical debate in your country ?

As a frenchman, I would argue ours is to this day the Algerian war of independence.

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u/Remote_Section2313 Feb 27 '25

For Belgium:

  1. Leopold II and the Congo: he ran it as personal domain for a while, where he organized a genocide of the local population, working them extremely hard in rubber plantations. We know he did bad things, but we put an explanation next to a statue of him being adored by Africans, rather than removing the statue.

  2. Collaboration in WWII, especially within Flemish nationalist circles. The issue is some Flemish nationalist saw Nazi Germany as the liberator from the French speaking elite. Flemish nationalists are now the biggest party in Belgium and Flanders, though and their historical ties to this are very clear, but nobody mentions it.

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u/littlebighuman in Feb 27 '25

I moved to Belgium about 20 years ago and learned about Congo on Wikipedia. Holy shit. The photos of mountains of chopped kids hands.

> We know he did bad things, but we put an explanation next to a statue of him being adored by Africans, rather than removing the statue.

I kind of prefer this, although I think they should make the statue red, or have some other clear marker that the person in question is not to be celebrated.

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u/Remote_Section2313 Feb 27 '25

I know removing all statues of him might not be the answer, but there is a famous one in Ostend where there are "sub Sahara African" children adoring him.

But removing the statues also removes the history and the knowledge of the genocide, so it is also not the best option. We could replace it by a statue of the Congolese that were killed and tortured for example, to still teach the history. Or something like that.

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u/SeapracticeRep Feb 27 '25

I was looking for Congo, and the more I kept scrolling the more I was like confirmed in my idea that it’s still a big taboo. I thought it would be at the top of the comments 🥲

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u/ActualDW Croatia Feb 27 '25

I personally like the reframing his statue with more accurate context. I'm not a fan of erasing things. Let's talk it out, let's not run from it.

Respect.

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u/mitoma333 Mar 02 '25

Are either really taboo?