Who is Belgium's Leopold II? History 102 episode Elon Musk found "interesting" claims king's Congo casualties were "falsified by a leftist academic"

By Anupal Sraban Neog

Modified Apr 18, 2025 21:47 GMT

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Elon Musk has created headlines for his latest social media post, in which he reacted to an episode of History 102 that aired last month on March 8, 2025. Titled Explaining African Colonialism, it featured the hosts, Rudyard Lynch and Austin Padgett, speaking about the time when King Leopold II occupied the Congo.

According to the official website of National Geographic, Leopold was known for forming the Congo Free State after taking over the African land. He received financial support from the Belgian government, which was used in the development of different projects, and the residents of Congo were forced to work as labor for items like rubber, which made Leopold rich.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk added a link to History 102’s episode on Apple Podcasts in a post shared through X (formerly Twitter) on April 18, 2025, and wrote:

“Interesting episode.”

In the episode, Austin and Rudyard were discussing colonialism when the former referred to King Leopold II’s reign as one of the “most horrifying abuses of colonialism.” Rudyard said that he wanted to bring up the same story and opened up on the reasons for the same by saying:

“I read statistics that 8 million people died in Leopold’s atrocities in the Congo, and I read other stats that the Congo’s total population was 11 million at the time. And I was looking at that and I thought, that doesn’t add up. It doesn’t add up that Leopold’s killed ¾ of the Congo’s population. So I studied more and then I realized those numbers were completely falsified by a leftist academic.”

Although Elon Musk has not opened up on the reasons behind sharing the post with the episode link, he has previously shared similar opinions on a few occasions in the past, which also led to controversy.

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Elon Musk addressed the positive impact left by the British Empire

The Tesla CEO started trending on different platforms after he defended the British Empire in a social media post. Back in October last year, Elon Musk reshared a post by Thinking West, which claimed that the British Empire did not entirely leave a negative impact.

Thinking West’s post also stated that the British Empire helped to end slavery in most parts of the world and continued:

“In many places it occupied it: – raised the standard of living – developed infrastructure – promoted education.”

In his tweet, Elon Musk agreed to everything that was said in the tweet, writing that the British Empire helped to end a huge portion of the “global slavery.” He further stated:

“Slavery or de facto slavery was standard practice throughout the world from the dawn of civilization until a few hundred years ago. It is even discussed at length in the Bible, for example.”

The London Economic stated that Musk’s post was specifically criticized by the Indians since many people lost their lives from starvation during the British rule, and that the figure of Indians who died during British colonialism is reported to be almost 100 million.