Belgium, even Julius Caesar in the crosshairs of monument attackers: vandalized statue in Flanders

Julius Caesar also enters the crosshairs of monument assailants. After all, it is well known that the leader in Gaul was anything but tender with the local population, indeed: he was often guilty of indiscriminate massacres of entire tribes, which did not spare women and children, and which he himself recounted in De Bello Gallico. Caesar also applied in Gaul the Roman strategy of parcere subiectis et debellare superbos: in fact, the Romans treated conquered peoples who subjugated themselves very well, but they knew how to be ferocious with those who, on the other hand, manifested a desire to regain their lost independence.

Thus, in the lands that were once the lands of the Gauls, today Caesar is not forgiven the cruelties of two thousand years ago, and in Zottegem, in Flanders (Belgium), a statue of theimperator has been vandalized: unknown persons detached Caesar’s spear (and in doing so, the fingers of his hand were shattered), erased the name from the base, and in its place affixed the inscription “krapuul” (“scum”).

At the moment, the names of the perpetrators are not yet known: the mayor of Zottegem, Jeanne de Potter, has let it be known that investigations have already begun and that the cost of repairing the damage will be borne by the perpetrators when they are discovered. At the moment it is not known whether this gesture is to be related to the protests of the Black Lives Matter movement: in the town of Zottegem, twenty-five thousand inhabitants halfway between Ghent and Brussels, no protests have been reported. In Belgium, however, activists and supporters of the cause have focused heavily on monuments to King Leopold II, who was responsible for a brutal colonial policy against the Congo, where the memory of the ferocity of the Belgian colonizers is still strong.

Belgium, even Julius Caesar in the crosshairs of monument attackers: vandalized statue in Flanders

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