Far-left protesters tried to remove a statue of Lt. Gen. Robert Baden-Powell last week, which was eventually put to a stop when locals demanded that the image stay where it was.
Far-left protesters tried to remove a statue of Lt. Gen. Robert Baden-Powell last week, which was eventually put to a stop when locals demanded that the monument stay where it was. It has since been boarded up after a local council bowed to the demands of activists.
And while this was happening across the Atlantic in Britain, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer were in the US sporting the kente cloth, which belongs to the Akan people of West Africa.
Though Baden-Powell was smeared as homophobic and a "Nazi" by these same far-left protesters, an investigation into Baden-Powell's 1896 diary—written in during the Anglo-Ashanti wars—actually reveals that he and the British forces involved stood for anti-slavery, according to Raheem Kassam via The National Post.
Kassam notes that Baden-Powell writes in his book, The Downfall of Prempeh, about the brutal African King who sold his own people into slavery:
“Briefly, then, we may look on the following as the main reasons and objects for the expedition:–
To put an end to human sacrifice. To put a stop to slave trading and raiding. To ensure peace and security for the neighbouring tribes…"
King Prempeh was among a number of Ashanti leaders who had a proclivity for human sacrifice, which partly spearheaded his slave trade.
Loading this lets X set cookies and collect data.
View on XBaden-Powell continued:
"…in no part of the world does slavery appear to be more detestable than in Ashanti. Slaves other than those obtained by raids into neighbours’ territory, have here to be smuggled through the various “spheres,” French, German, and English, which are beginning to hem the country in on every side. The climate they are brought to is a sickly one for men bred up-country."
"They are not required currency, since gold-dust is the medium here."
"Nor are they required to any considerable extent as labourers, since the Ashanti lives merely on vegetables, which in this country want little or no cultivation."
"And yet there is a strong demand for slaves. They are wanted for human sacrifice. Stop human sacrifice, and you deal a fatal blow to the slave trade, which you render raiding an unprofitable game."
Kassam adds the words of Irish Nationalist Member of Parliament William Redmond and the Liberal Party's Thomas Bayley MP with respect to the King of Ashanti, whose history has been poorly kept.
Kassam notes that British forces were largely ruthless in West Africa due to the region's leader's refusal to draw back their unending support for the slave trade and human sacrifice.
Britain perceived that ending slavery was the prerogative, and accepted the fact that casualties were the collateral damage in ending the savage practice.
In 1923—decades after the Anglo-Ashanti warm concluded—the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, William Ormsby-Gore, declared that "the Secretary of State sees no reason to doubt that Prempeh's deportation was necessary in the interests of Ashanti."
Actions taken by members of the Democratic party in the US played into Prempeh's narrative because the kente cloth belongs to the wider Akan people, which lends itself toward a moment of "visual fealty" with King Prempeh—a man who regularly sold his own people into slavery, and more often than not offered them as human sacrifice.
Questions have been raised as to what the national or global reception would have been if Republicans had worn the kente cloth instead.
Libby’s Desk
Commentary and must-reads from Libby’s desk, straight to your inbox.
TPM Newsletter
The Post Millennial’s top stories, delivered to your inbox.
