Once upon a time the British Army fought Nazis. Now it is training them to fight Russia

Britain’s King Charles visiting Ukrainian soldiers being trained by British armed forces in the UK

There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the times comes. Ernest Hemingway

History is littered with seemingly insurmountable contradictions — events that leave you pondering the lack of consistency and constancy on the part of its most famous figures.

One such example was French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s decision to reinstate slavery in 1802. Not only was this a betrayal of the ideals of the French Revolution, it ensured that 300,000 human beings were kept in bondage by the French until this vile trade in human flesh was finally and definitively abolished by Paris in 1848.

The most grievous consequence of this unseemly aspect of Napoleon’s legacy was the brutal treatment meted out to the great Haitian leader Toussaint Louverture.

Louverture led his people to national and racial liberation against first the French while under the reign of Louis XVI, then the Spanish and the British when both attempted to seize the former French colony for themselves. The end result after many years of hard fought struggle was Haiti becoming the first slave state to liberate itself. That Louverture had been man inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution in leading his people to national liberation…