The entire reparations argument is like the Energizer Bunny with a brain affliction: It just keeps getting dumber, and dumber, and dumber. In the latest round of dumb, a foundation affiliated with the notorious leftist shouter George Soros is supporting a campaign demanding that one nation pay reparations for its part in the 17th and 18th century African slave trade. Now, let’s set aside just for the moment that there is nobody alive today who was a victim of this trade, and that there is nobody alive today who took part in this trade. No, that’s not the dumbest part of this story; the really stupid part is that the reparations campaign is focused on the one nation of Europe that did more than any other to end the trans-Atlantic slave trade: Great Britain.
Funding from a group founded by George Soros has supported the slavery reparations campaign against Britain, The Telegraph can reveal.
The Open Society Foundations (OSF), established by Hungarian investor Mr Soros and now led by his son, Alex Soros, has donated vast sums from its $23bn (£17.2bn) endowment to progressive causes.
The foundation has provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to groups seeking to claim reparations from Britain for slavery and colonialism.
The OSF helped to found a joint Caribbean and African campaign, and supported organisations that are now considering international litigation that could heap pressure on the British Government.
This right here is stupid on steroids.
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Britain, which in those long-ago days could still be rightly considered to be Great Britain, did more to stop the international slave trade than any other nation. In 1807, the British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act, forbidding any British subject from having any part of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The Royal Navy established the Preventive Squadron, the sole purpose of which was to intercept slave ships. From 1808 to 1860 this squadron intercepted 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 captives. The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 abolished slavery throughout the British Empire, freeing almost a million people in bondage. Adults were made “apprenticed laborors” for four to six years, during which time they learned a trade.
In short, Britain, up to 1860, did more than any other nation to end, then prevent, the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
The stupid just keeps getting more stupid:
Oxfam, which has also worked alongside the campaigners, told The Telegraph: “It is important to acknowledge the lasting consequences of historical injustices, including colonialism and slavery, which continue to shape inequality today.
“Discussions around reparations form part of a wider global conversation about fairness, accountability, and poverty.”
The primary consequence of these historical injustices is this: All of those people are dead now. There is nobody alive today who bears any responsibility for those injustices – and yet this Soros-funded group and others, similarly leftist groups, want to hold people who are alive today to account. Rich, poor, none of that matters, except that one way or another, they intend for the modern British taxpayers to pay a price for this strange original sin committed by their great-great-great grandparents.
The Soros family, their foundations, and this entire movement should be cordially invited to, as my British friend would say, sod off.
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