if your name includes "von der": either EU bueraucrat ghoul, german aristocrat ghoul or afrikaaner ghoul. opinion discarded
The von der Leyen family (German pronunciation: [fɔn deːɐ̯ ˈlaɪən] is a German noble family which made its fortune as silk merchants and silk weaving industrialists.
The family was ennobled in 1786 and one branch raised to Baronial rank by Napoleon in 1813 and by the King of Prussia in 1816.
Heiko von der Leyen, husband of politician Ursula von der Leyen (former German Federal Minister for Defence and current President of the European Commission), belongs to an ennobled (but not the baronial Bloemersheim) branch of the family.
So 2/3.
Edit:
The [von der Leyen] family built many factory and residential buildings in Krefeld some of which survived World War II bombardments.
I wonder what those factories were used for during World War II
[Ursula von der Leyen's grandfather] belonged to a family of wealthy cotton merchants; his father was the cotton merchant Carl Albrecht (1875–1952) and his mother was the American-born Mary Ladson Robertson (1883–1960), who belonged to a prominent planter family from South Carolina. His father was a grandson of Baron Ludwig Knoop, one of the leading industrialists of the Russian Empire in his lifetime.
lmao it gets worse.
James Henry Ladson (1795–1868) was an American planter and businessman from Charleston, South Carolina. He was the owner of James H. Ladson & Co., a major Charleston firm that was active in the rice and cotton business, and owned over 200 slaves.
Among Ladson's descendants is Ursula von der Leyen, who briefly lived under the alias Rose Ladson.
"I need a pseudonym, what should I go with? I know, the family name of my slaver ancestors!"
The Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader–Meinhof Group or Baader–Meinhof Gang, was a West German far-left militant group founded in 1970. The RAF described itself as a communist, anti-imperialist, and urban guerrilla group which was engaged in armed resistance against what it considered a fascist state.
Hmm, why did she move to London and take a pseudonym to escape a far-left militant group? You'd only do something like that if you or your family were being specifically targeted, right?
In 1828, the workers at the von der Leyen factories rebelled against their employers and the 11th Hussar Regiment put down the rebellion. Karl Marx described it as the "first workers' uprising in German history."
Interesting trivia.
In 1976, Albrecht [Ursula's father, Premier of Lower Saxony] made Hans Puvogel his minister of justice. During his tenure, Puvogel was particularly active in combatting notions of more liberal penal and rehabilitation systems. He had already set out justification for his stance in a 1935-1936 doctoral thesis. There, he wrote of the “inheritance of criminal tendencies”, of “constitutionally predisposed criminals” and “inferior people”, who would have to be “eliminated from the community”. “Only a person of value to the race” would have “a right to exist within the national community”.
And it gets even worse, though indirectly.
A far left militant group specifically dedicated to hunting down and kill Nazis.
I just wanted to say I appreciate the effort what went into this post.
Thanks for this. Would have never been able to do this sleuthing myself.
I wonder what those factories were used for during World War II
"What was (person) up to/talking about during WW2" is always the wildest rabbit hole.
For example the creator of Tin tin, or Henry Ford receiving a....German award in 1938.
Holland was the first bourgeois state, nobility wasn't much of an influence on its institutions. In dutch van (der) usually refers to small villages their family presumably came from at some point.
Von Der is not Afrikaans, but Van Der is.
Also, Apartheid ended 30 years ago and was the politicians' doing, not the citizens'. South Africa wasn't a democracy, remember?
I think it's fair to say that at least 90% of white South Africans agree that Apartheid was a bad thing.
I think it's fair to say that at least 90% of white South Africans agree that Apartheid was a bad thing.
In much the same way 90% of Germans suddenly had very negative opinions about Nazism in 1945.
I think it's fair to say that at least 90% of white South Africans agree that Apartheid was a bad thing.
I wish. In my personal experience it's simply not true beyond a surface level "apartheid bad". Any deeper conversation or questioning reveals the truth.
do you know any good history books about apartheid SA? I embarrassingly don't know much about it myself
I learnt most of it at school, but Max Coleman's analysis of apartheid as a crime against humanity should be a good book explaining just how horrific it was. I think it's available for free here. The same website has lots of good articles too, including a basic summary of what apartheid was .
https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/crime-against-humanity-analysing-repression-apartheid-state-edited-max-coleman
This summary, and the content in the "articles" section at the bottom of the page, is also pretty good.
https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa
going to check this out, thanks. I think it's literally not even covered in US schools, I don't remember ever learning about it.
Wow they don't cover it at all? Here in South Africa, we even learn about MLK Jr and Malcolm X, the Vietnam war and cold war in general in history. And of course we learn about our own country.
I've been out of school for a long time so I could be remembering wrong, but I don't remember ever learning about it. everything I do know is from what I've read/watched/heard and it's all very cursory. I mean, we barely even learn about slavery in our own country, so I guess it makes sense.
Beneficiaries of Apartheid saying it was bad now that it is over means very little. Ghouls like the Musks still run roughshod over the world with the spoils they took and still exploit minorities wherever it benefits them.
All those unfortunate H1B visa people that have to put up with his shit. Fuckin bleak.
South Africa wasn't a democracy, remember?
I tried googling for this but I'm finding that while the elected government was extremely oppressive, it still held elections.
these are acts of pure terror
Hmm and would you consider any nation partaking in such acts to be terrorist states?
Unsearchable, lemme guess you have to know some ancient lore post to get that
Dumb
if you encounter something hard to find, search using the picker (the little smiley above the text box) not the shortcode with colon. Then it uses the tags to search, which include things like "skin, color, okay, not okay".
for some reason the shortcode autocomplete is a completely different codepath (probably because the picker is a separate library)
It's Chomsky's definition of terrorism.
When they do it it's terrorism. When we do it it's fine.
I don't know who the poster is. I was just nodding along like "Yes, that is true why is it a hot take"
US Foreign Policy
