THE COMMON FACTOR

 Dear Readers,

These three men all have something in common, but what might that be?

No prizes for anyone saying "they're all men".

The man in the middle is George Floyd, a truck driver and security guard born in 1973, born to a large family in which his parents separated, and grew up in Texas, and became a successful football and basketball player in high school, later moving on into performing Hip Hop.

From the late 1990s and early 2000s, Floyd was frequently in trouble with the law for drug possession and theft as well as trespass. In 2009, he was arrested for a home invasion and armed burglary, and sent to prison for four years, being released in 2013. His experience in prison seemed to have changed him, since he began working with a local missionary, assisted with other charity activities, and cared for his mother while she was recovering from a stroke. In the years between 2014 and 2019, he mostly worked as a security guard.

In 2020, after being accused of paying for cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 in Minneapolis (as well as being allegedly drunk and disorderly, and allegedly not giving them back to the stores), he was arrested. As things started to spiral out of hand - quite possibly because of a medical condition that Floyd, recovering from COVID-19 may have had, police officer Derek Chauvin (also an off-duty security employee at El Nuevo Rodeo Club where Floyd had worked, and whose wife had filed for divorce the day before) proceeded to kneel on his neck despite his complaints already suffering from breathing difficulties. This continued for eight minutes, even when emergency paramedics arrived, and despite consternation and protests from passers by who filmed the event.

The tragic and brutal event was caught on film by the onlookers, who were prevented by other police officers from helping him. He was put in an ambulance where he went into cardiac arrest. Floyd was pronounced dead in hospital.

There was an outcry as a result of the event, and the popularity of the already widespread 'Black Lives Matter' movement erupted. Protests began in Minneapolis in May, and spread most notably across North America and Western Europe against police brutality and systemic racism. The discussion was taken up by numerous media outlets, and in extreme cases from some sides, disintegrated into rioting. 

I actually went to one of these protests, but considering that it was mostly tedious rhetoric about privilege and statues by people who loved the sound of their own voices, I was rather disappointed. I felt that it should've stayed with police brutality and the important issues for black people. Having said that, it was otherwise good to see some positive action by the public for the sake of genuine justice.

Onto the top picture. The man in the 17th Century outfit is in fact a 19th Century Belgian prince clearly play acting or attending a fancy dress ball of some sort. He is the young Prince Leopold, heir to the throne, which he would take on the death of his father in 1865. Obsessed with the acquisition of colonies for his country's greatness, he was frustrated with the lack of enthusiasm within his own government for the idea (Belgium not having as much access to the sea as bigger colonial and imperial players such as Great Britain, France and Spain). 

During the 1884-1885 conference of Berlin where Africa was carved up by the colonial powers to be shared among them (without telling anyone in Africa until it was done, needless to say), King Leopold made claim to the Congo area, over 2 million square kilometres, expressing the wish to stamp out the arab slave trade, and introduce western civilisation and commerce to the area. 

What actually happened was that after some deceptive treaties, the king established a totalitarian despotism in which the locals were enslaved and coerced into harvesting ivory, and rubber for bicycle tyres and insulation for new telephone wires. This labour was forced through violence, rape, destruction of villages, torture (such as floggings) and murder on such a huge scale, that it is estimated that half of the population of the Congo was decimated. The most notorious atrocities were the amputation of the hands of victims so that soldiers could account for bullets fired and missed, and sometimes for rubber quotas.

Word began to get out to the world outside, since King Leopold had kept security rather tight. The first was an African American called George Washington Williams, but supporters of the king began a smear campaign to silence him, and succeeded. The next figure to publish reports on the Congo atrocities were English journalist, clerk and future Labour politician, Edmund Morel, who after looking at the books in Liverpool, realised that the accounts for the cargo traffic to and from the Congo could only be accounted for by murderous slave labour.

Finally, the last person to establish the horrors of the Congo Free State was British Consul (later Irish nationalist) Roger Casement, who travelled on behalf of the British government around the congo, interviewing locals, missionaries, boat pilots and railway workers. He also obtained a number of photographs of the victims of hand amputations, with their injuries shown up against white backgrounds to make them clearer in black and white photography.

When the photographs of the violence were published in Britain, the world was outraged, and the King was forced to give up his Colony just before his death (though by that time he had a huge personal fortune, and the problems and tragedies of the Congo continued, even to this day).

The last man in the pictures is, of course, Johnny Depp. A Hollywood star (and rock musician) known for roles such as 'A Nightmare on Elm Street', 'Edward Scissorhands', 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape', 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas', to name but a few, as well as numerous Tim Burton movies, Gellert Grindelwald in the Harry Potter Prequels, and of course, Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean.

In 2009, Depp met actress and model Amber Heard (23 years his junior) on set of 'The Rum Diaries'. Before this, he was married to French actress and model Vanessa Paradis, with whom he'd had a couple of children. In 2012, Depp and his wife separated, and he began dating Heard.

The marriage didn't last long, and Heard filed for divorce from Depp in 2016, obtaining a restraining order on the grounds that he'd been "physically and emotionally abusive" during their relationship. The alleged "proof" that Heard presented was broadcast in the media, and Depp paid her $7,000,000 which she claimed to have donated to charity.

In early 2019, Depp presented explosive - and far more credible - evidence, that she had been the true abuser in the relationship, and sued her and News Group Newspapers Ltd to the tune of $50,000,000 for defamation. His case rested on the foundation that she had lied about him being abusive to cover up her own actions. More problematic allegations came out, such as Amber Heard having assaulted her previous partner in an airport before she began her relationship with Johnny Depp. There is also evidence that she defecated in Johnny Depp's bed, left bruises on his face, and early on in 2020, the Daily Mail newspaper in the UK released recordings of Heard admitting to abusing Depp, verbally abusing him and taunting him that nobody would believe him because he's a man.

TW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aca0KWoHtqQ&t=2923s

(See 27:05 and 47:47)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg9SvQSMnoE&t=1033s

(See 17:01)

The trial is still ongoing, but there has been an outpouring of support for Johnny Depp among the public, which is particularly noticeable on Twitter (though news outlets have been less successful at responding as appropriately).

The answer to the question is that each of these three men has been caught up in some sort of injustice, either as the perpetrator in the case of King Leopold, or the victim in the different cases of George Floyd and Johnny Depp. What distinguishes these particular examples is every time, the injustice in question whether the colonial despotism and atrocities, police racism and brutality, or domestic violence and abuse had been recorded in some way. 

Whether by photographs of innocent Congolese being permanently maimed, a man being fatally victimised by lethal police aggression, or voice recording of a woman verbally abusing her husband, admitting to domestic assault and telling him nobody will believe him, these are all injustices that have been broadcast to the population of the world. Their response?

Anger.

Anger at injustice, because most people - despite their flaws, despite our cynicisms - will recognise injustice when they see it. They hate it, and they demand to the powers that be that such things are changed for the better.

In the Congo it did - sort of - change for the better. While cruel injustices continued and the country has been racked with poverty and civil war as a result of King Leopold's selfish and despotic actions, he was forced to give up his fiefdom, and his abuses of human rights were - to the best of my knowledge - either largely curtailed or at the very least reduced so that the human suffering became lessened.

With George Floyd, people responded with anger and the already existent B.L.M. movement exploded in popularity. (Granted, the protest I went to was mostly tedious and irrelevant wibble about statues as I said earlier on, but there has still been popular movement for positive change).

As for Johnny Depp? Well, if social media is anything to go by, Amber Heard's popularity has plummeted. There has been outcry against her continuation of her career, while Johnny Depp's has remained stuck in a ditch. The news media has steadfastly refused to cotton on, but the popular sentiment - particularly from abuse survivors, particularly (but not exclusively) from female survivors - has been overwhelmingly in support of Depp. Heard has even been referred to as a "horrible cow" by a bystanding member of the public after her court proceedings.

What the result will be on Monday is yet to be seen, and I and my followers wish to see Depp exonerated. However, even in a worst case scenario, it's time to make a hard and unrelenting push for positive change for male survivors.

It shows that we can do this.

We can.

And we will.

Sincerely,

The Invisible Man