Daniel Muresan

“The history of central Africa before the European arrival was as filled with wars and conquests as Europe’s own, and even during Leopold’s rule not all the Congo’s violence was between colonizer and colonized. Because so many Congo peoples had earlier fought among themselves, the Force Publique was often able to ally itself with one ethnic group to defeat another. But sooner or later the first group found itself subdued as well. With their forces stretched thin over a huge territory, Leopold’s commanders made clever use of this shifting pattern of alliances. In the end, though, their superior firepower guaranteed victory—and a history written by the victors.”
― Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

“Queen Victoria’s government limited food aid, lest charity foster idleness and other vices in what was deemed an inferior race, as if evolution had taken a wrong turn with these backward Celts in contrast to the eminently superior Anglo-Saxons. English publications caricatured the Irish as apelike brawlers, drinkers, and layabouts, a race predisposed to superstition, savagery, and indolence.”
― Rory Carroll, There Will Be Fire: Margaret Thatcher, the IRA, and Two Minutes That Changed History

“He also brought home a new and abiding anger about race. “The white man in Europe or America is our number-one enemy,” he declared. “The white man crushes us underfoot while we teach our children about his civilization, his universal principles and noble objectives…. We are endowing our children with amazement and respect for the master who tramples our honor and enslaves us. Let us instead plant the seeds of hatred, disgust, and revenge in the souls of these children. Let us teach these children from the time their nails are soft that the white man is the enemy of humanity, and that they should destroy him at the first opportunity.”
― Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

“Over the past three years, I have heard a lot of stories about other Yazidi women who were captured and enslaved by ISIS. For the most part, we were all victims of the same violence. We would be bought at the market, or given as a gift to a new recruit or a high-ranking commander, and then taken back to his home, where we would be raped and humiliated, most of us beaten as well. Then we would be sold or given as a gift again, and again raped and beaten, then sold or given to another militant, and raped and beaten by him, and sold or given, and raped and beaten, and it went this way for as long as we were desirable enough and not yet dead. If we tried to escape, we would be punished severely.”
― Nadia Murad, The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State