Brainrot: Marching on Pretoria
1900s Skibidi Toilet, The First Concentration Camps, and Elon Musk
I normally try not to publish too much in one day to bury my posts, though I should probably publish more often since I just have the sense that I have nothing to do and people probably have nothing to do but read them, so:
The fact that South Africa is legitimately trying to take over the world with the help of the rest of the BRICS intermittently reminds me of this song. The lyrics to this song, when you look at them, are absolute brainrot. This is like 1900s Skibidi Toilet. It’s literally just saying that we’re marching to Pretoria, Pretoria, Pretoria, we’re together, we’re English, we’ve won, we’ve won because we are English, Canadians and Australians are also English because they’ve fought and won, we’re marching to Pretoria, we’re English, we’re victorious, we’re together. Umm, OK? What exactly happened in Pretoria besides a bunch of English and Commonwealth people being together, marching, and winning? What does Pretoria even look like? If you didn’t know it was in South Africa, would you even know based on this song? It makes Pretoria sound like a nice place with all that r-rolling, but it really shouldn’t, because that’s the place they just invaded and killed tens of thousands of people in. The song is altogether ridiculous. I guess it’s supposed to numb people out so they feel like marching to Pretoria? But they already marched to Pretoria. It’s so dumb, and it makes people dumber, and I’m sure making people dumber is the point, because how else are you going to fill those concentration camps with tens of thousands of people if they’re not really stupid?
British expeditionary efforts were aided significantly by colonial forces from the Cape Colony, the Natal, Rhodesia,[19] and many volunteers from the British Empire worldwide, particularly Australia, Canada, India and New Zealand. Black African recruits contributed increasingly to the British war effort. International public opinion was sympathetic to the Boers and hostile to the British. Even within the UK, there existed significant opposition to the war. As a result, the Boer cause attracted thousands of volunteers from neutral countries, including the German Empire, United States, Russia and even some parts of the British Empire such as Australia and Ireland.[20] Some consider the war the beginning of questioning the British Empire's veneer of impenetrable global dominance, due to the war's surprising duration and the unforeseen losses suffered by the British.[21] A trial for British war crimes committed during the war, including the killings of civilians and prisoners, was opened in January 1901.
And no, the British weren’t trying to help the black people or anything. The war was literally racist white South Africans vs. other racist white South Africans. Remember, Elon Musk is an Anglo white South African, and Peter Thiel is a German white South African (South West Africa/Namibia.)
The policy on both sides was to minimise the role of nonwhites, but the need for manpower continuously stretched those resolves. At the battle of Spion Kop in Ladysmith, Mohandas K. Gandhi with 300 free burgher Indians and 800 indentured Indian labourers started the Ambulance Corps serving the British side. As the war raged across African farms and their homes were destroyed, many became refugees and they, like the Boers, moved to the towns where the British hastily created internment camps. Subsequently, the British scorched earth policies were applied to both Boers and Africans. Although most black Africans were not considered by the British to be hostile, many tens of thousands were also forcibly removed from Boer areas and also placed in concentration camps.[citation needed] Africans were held separately from Boer internees.[citation needed] Eventually there were a total of 64 tented camps for Africans. Conditions were as bad as in the camps for the Boers, but even though, after the Fawcett Commission report, conditions improved in the Boer camps, "improvements were much slower in coming to the black camps"; 20,000 died there.[84]
The word “concentration camp” was literally invented to describe what the British did during the Boer War, not what Hitler did during the Holocaust. People singing “Marching on/to Pretoria” might as well be singing the Horst-Wessel Lied. I’m not saying you aren’t allowed to sing the Horst-Wessel Lied, I have an understanding of artistic context, we all like when Monty Python makes fun of Hitler for example (though they don’t sing the Horst-Wessel Lied there,) but it’s ridiculous people don’t know the context of this song. Except you could never guess the context of this song from the lyrics itself, which are basically just vapid brainrot, so not that ridiculous.
The term "concentration camp" was used to describe camps operated by the British in South Africa during this conflict in the years 1900–1902, and the term grew in prominence during this period.
The camps had originally been set up by the British Army as "refugee camps" to provide refuge for civilian families who had been forced to abandon their homes for whatever reason related to the war. However, when Kitchener took over in late 1900, he introduced new tactics in an attempt to break the guerrilla campaign and the influx of civilians grew dramatically as a result. Disease and starvation killed thousands.[15][86][87] Kitchener initiated plans to
... flush out guerrillas in a series of systematic drives, organised like a sporting shoot, with success defined in a weekly 'bag' of killed, captured and wounded, and to sweep the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas, including women and children ... It was the clearance of civilians—uprooting a whole nation—that would come to dominate the last phase of the war.
— Pakenham, The Boer War[22]: 493
As Boer farms were destroyed by the British under their "Scorched Earth" policy—including the systematic destruction of crops and slaughtering of livestock, the burning down of homesteads and farms—to prevent the Boers from resupplying from a home base, many tens of thousands of women and children were forcibly moved into the concentration camps. This was not the first appearance of internment camps, as the Spanish had used internment in Cuba in the Ten Years' War, and the Americans in the Philippine–American War,[88] but the Boer War concentration camp system was the first time that a whole nation had been systematically targeted, and the first in which whole regions had been depopulated.
Eventually, there were a total of 45 tented camps built for Boer internees and 64 for black Africans. Of the 28,000 Boer men captured as prisoners of war, 25,630 were sent overseas to prisoner-of-war camps throughout the British Empire. The vast majority of Boers remaining in the local camps were women and children. Around 26,370 Boer women and children were to perish in these concentration camps.[89] Of the more than 120,000 Blacks (and Coloureds) imprisoned too, around 20,000 died.[90][87][91]
The camps were poorly administered from the outset and became increasingly overcrowded when Kitchener's troops implemented the internment strategy on a vast scale. Conditions were terrible for the health of the internees, mainly due to neglect, poor hygiene and bad sanitation. The supply of all items was unreliable, partly because of the constant disruption of communication lines by the Boers. The food rations were meagre and there was a two-tier allocation policy, whereby families of men who were still fighting were routinely given smaller rations than others.[22]: 505 The inadequate shelter, poor diet, bad hygiene and overcrowding led to malnutrition and endemic contagious diseases such as measles, typhoid, and dysentery, to which the children were particularly vulnerable.[92] Coupled with a shortage of modern medical facilities, many of the internees died. While much of the British press, including The Times, played down the problems in the camps, Emily Hobhouse helped raise public awareness in Britain of the atrocious conditions, as well as being instrumental in bringing relief to the concentration camps.[93]
The Boer War was also the first time war crimes were ever tried in the British military!
The Boer War also saw the first war crimes prosecutions in British military history. They centered around the Bushveldt Carbineers (BVC), a British Army irregular regiment of mounted rifles active in the Northern Transvaal. Originally raised in February 1901, the BVC was composed mainly of British and Commonwealth servicemen with a generous admixture of defectors from the Boer Commandos.[97] On 4 October 1901, a letter signed by 15 members of the Bushveldt Carbineers (BVC) garrison at Fort Edward was secretly dispatched to Col. F.H. Hall, the British Army Officer Commanding at Pietersburg. Written by BVC Trooper Robert Mitchell Cochrane, a former justice of the peace from Western Australia,[98][99] the letter accused members of the Fort Edward garrison of six "disgraceful incidents":
1. The shooting of six surrendered Afrikaner men and boys and the theft of their money and livestock at Valdezia on 2 July 1901. The orders had been given by Captains Alfred Taylor and James Huntley Robertson, and relayed by Sgt. Maj. K.C.B. Morrison to Sgt. D.C. Oldham. The actual killing was alleged to have been carried out by Sgt. Oldham and BVC Troopers Eden, Arnold, Brown, Heath, and Dale.[100]
2. The shooting of BVC Trooper B.J. van Buuren by BVC Lt. Peter Handcock on 4 July 1901. Trooper van Buuren, an Afrikaner, had "disapproved" of the killings at Valdezia, and had informed the victims' wives and children, who were imprisoned at Fort Edward, of what had happened.[101]
3. The revenge killing of Floris Visser, a wounded prisoner of war, near the Koedoes River on 11 August 1901. Visser had been captured by a BVC patrol led by Lieut. Harry Morant two days before his death. After Visser had been exhaustively interrogated and conveyed for 15 miles by the patrol, Lt. Morant had ordered his men to form a firing squad and shoot him. The squad consisted of BVC Troopers A.J. Petrie, J.J. Gill, Wild, and T.J. Botha. A coup de grâce was delivered by BVC Lt. Harry Picton. The slaying of Floris Visser was in retaliation for the combat death of Morant's close friend, BVC Captain Percy Frederik Hunt, at Duivelskloof on 6 August 1901.[102]
4. The shooting, ordered by Capt. Taylor and Lt. Morant, of four surrendered Afrikaners and four Dutch schoolteachers, who had been captured at the Elim Hospital in Valdezia, on the morning of 23 August 1901. The firing squad consisted of BVC Lt. George Witton, Sgt. D.C. Oldham, and Troopers J.T. Arnold, Edward Brown, T. Dale, and A. Heath. Although Trooper Cochrane's letter made no mention of the fact, three Native South African witnesses were also shot dead.[103]
The ambush and fatal shooting of the Reverend Carl August Daniel Heese of the Berlin Missionary Society near Bandolierkop on the afternoon of 23 August 1901. Rev. Heese had spiritually counseled the Dutch and Afrikaner victims that morning and had angrily protested to Lt. Morant at Fort Edward upon learning of their deaths. Trooper Cochrane alleged that the killer of Rev. Heese was BVC Lt. Peter Handcock. Although Cochrane made no mention of the fact, Rev. Heese's driver, a member of the Southern Ndebele people, was also killed.[104]
5. The orders, given by BVC Lt. Charles H.G. Hannam, to open fire on a wagon train containing Afrikaner women and children who were coming in to surrender at Fort Edward, on 5 September 1901. The ensuing gunfire led to the deaths of two boys, aged 5- and 13-years, and the wounding of a 9-year-old girl.[105]
6. The shooting of Roelf van Staden and his sons Roelf and Christiaan, near Fort Edward on 7 September 1901. All were coming in to surrender in the hope of gaining medical treatment for teenaged Christiaan, who was suffering from recurring bouts of fever. Instead, they were met at the Sweetwaters Farm near Fort Edward by a party consisting of Lts. Morant and Handcock, joined by BVC Sgt. Maj. Hammet, Corp. MacMahon, and Troopers Hodds, Botha, and Thompson. Roelf van Staden and both his sons were then shot, allegedly after being forced to dig their own graves.[106]
Remember, if we didn’t make people dig their own graves and then shoot them so they fell into them, how would we have an excuse to roll our r’s? We don’t roll our r’s in English, except like, this song! Marching on Prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrretoria! Prrrrrrrretoria! Totally worth all the war crimes for, right?
This is also way before the Nazis, though technically Hitler was born, he was like eleven years old at this point. So if anyone wants to blame British imperialism for the Nazis, this is possibly evidence. I would think Darwin and Thomas Henry Huxley did the most to start the eugenic stuff, though. Incidentally, they were called… the X Club. Like X Corp? Has to just be a coincidence. I read Aleister Crowley had something to do with the X thing too and we all know that has to do with British imperialism, Churchill got his V gesture straight from Crowley actually.
Beyond belief | Books | The Guardian
It was also Crowley who gave Churchill his famous victory sign, a magickal gesture to counteract the Nazi's use of the swastika. Indeed, his hand appears in many unexpected places - there is even a story that he aligned Stamford Bridge and gave Chelsea its team colours - but his hidden influence was not restricted to the British war effort or the Premiere League. In the 1940s, one of his closest followers was a young Californian adept, Jack Parsons, one of the founding fathers of the American space programme. His work at the fledgling Jet Propulsion Laboratories lay the groundwork for the Apollo moon missions.
Nick Land, the philosopher behind accelerationism, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin, etc. was also a Crowley follower. It’s not really a battle between countries at this point, it’s literally a bunch of Satanists, basically. That’s how everyone can be racist: everyone knows evil fights itself all the time, and that’s basically how it’s undone and always loses.
It’s still ridiculous the boors (pun intended) would rather sit on the world’s supply of dielectric materials (diamonds) and other things and just use them for tacky jewelry instead of technology, especially since Elon Musk pretends he was interested in materials science. I was never interested in getting a PhD in materials science and even I know the properties of the South African gems and how they should be used for technology, not tacky rings. No, that doesn’t mean they’d be freely and equally distributed to everyone, that goes back to Richard Rorty’s interpretations of Nietzsche. Just because they should be affordable doesn’t mean everyone would be willing or able to use them for technology, just that if they weren’t being hoarded by a bunch of dummies who don’t actually know anything about technology, they would be used in tech. That’s the ultimate proof Elon knows nothing about tech: he made his fortune on South African gems, pretends to study materials science, should know that South African gems are a huge untapped resource for tech, but prefers to sell tacky overpriced jewelry and kill black people instead.
But we’re marching on Prrrrrrrrrrrrrretoria! Prrrrrrrrrrrrrretoria! It looks like whatever a rolled r in a British accent looks like I guess. It just rolls. Prrrrrrrrrrrrrretoria! Hoorrrrrrrrrrrah! Hoorrrrrrrrrrrrah! March march marching on Prrrrrrrretoria!
