0:03

Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here and for the

0:05

last two years, behind the Bastards listeners

0:07

have funded the Portland Diaper Bank,

0:09

which provides diapers for low income

0:12

families. Uh. Last year y'all

0:14

raised more than twenty one thousand dollars,

0:16

which was able to purchase one point one million

0:19

diapers for children and families in need

0:21

in one um.

0:23

And this year we're trying to get two

0:25

dollars raised for the Portland Diaper Bank,

0:28

which is going to allow us to help even

0:31

more kids. So UM, if

0:33

you want to help, you can go to bTB

0:35

fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank

0:37

at go fund me. Just type and go fund me

0:40

b TB Fundraiser for PDX Diaper

0:42

Bank. Again, that's go fund Me bTB Fundraiser

0:44

for PDX Diaper Bank, or find the

0:47

link in the show notes. Thank you all. Oh

0:56

what is viciously executing

0:59

and publicly torturing my son

1:01

of God? It's good Friday.

1:04

Not when you listen to this, you'll listen to this week's

1:07

after Good Friday. UM.

1:10

Hi, Sharene Lonnie Unis, how are

1:12

you doing? Hi? Robert Robert

1:14

Evans, UM, I'm okay.

1:17

Robert's your middle name? Right, Robert, Robert. I'm

1:19

not gonna confirm or deny what my name

1:21

is. There isn't I have a number of names

1:23

like most people, like Jesus, who

1:27

like all exactly exactly

1:29

like our like our Lord and Um

1:32

our sovereign allah

1:34

Um, like Hura, mazda

1:37

uh, like Buddha.

1:39

You know, there's all sorts of everybody's

1:41

this time of year, for whatever reason, all the religions

1:44

are like, we should have a thing, you know. We'll

1:47

have us at Ramadan, we'll have us a passover,

1:49

we'll have us an Easter. We're all or

1:51

at least all of the all of the Abrahamic faiths.

1:53

I don't know if like, I don't think anything Hindus going

1:56

on right now. I don't know anything Zoroastrians

1:58

going on anything, anything Buddhist,

2:00

Probably not any Shinto stuff happening right

2:02

now, but whatever, maybe there is. It is

2:05

like major ones up

2:07

there, you know, although it's also I think it's like the dead of summer

2:09

where a lot of those religions are Southeast

2:12

Asia. This is kind of like the hottest point of that. I don't know. I

2:14

don't know anyway. Religion.

2:17

Do you like religion? Sharine? No,

2:20

please don't hate me the Internet.

2:22

No, I don't. I actually that's fine.

2:24

I'm not a big fan myself. My teenager

2:27

self, I would say, like I despise

2:30

religion. I loathe it. It made me so

2:32

angry. I hated it. And I think I like

2:35

eased up on that language recently. I don't

2:37

want to offend anybody, and like I realized, for

2:39

some people, it's like meditative and depending on the

2:41

religion, it can really help people. It's

2:43

not for me. I just I don't It's not I don't

2:45

like it. Yeah, yeah, I mean, like

2:48

that's completely where I am too sharene

2:51

because like when I was a kid,

2:53

I was really angry atheist,

2:56

you know, after not when I was like when I was like eighteen nine.

2:58

I just like seventeen is kind when I

3:01

decided I was an atheist. But

3:03

yeah, I started to get really angry about

3:05

it as a young

3:07

adult, and I'm I'm not angry

3:10

about it anymore, just because like I've

3:12

realized that all of the things that are shitty about

3:14

religion are shitty about a bunch of stuff, and

3:16

some people just choose to do shitty stuff, and

3:19

whether or not they use a religion to justify

3:21

it. They'll find other things to justify it if

3:23

it's not religion. But that's really beside the point

3:25

today. Um,

3:27

yeah, it's humans,

3:29

I get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not that they're

3:32

shitty. It's just that shitty people will

3:34

find reasons to do shitty things, yes

3:37

or not, Yeah, religion or not, it's

3:40

it's just a thing that we do because we're cool.

3:42

Um, speaking of actually

3:45

this does tie in a bit to what we're talking about.

3:48

There's some religion.

3:50

There's definitely some religious stuff involved

3:52

here. It's gonna be real uncomfortable.

3:55

Um, Sharina, what do you know about Liberia?

3:58

Liberia? Yeah?

4:00

Nothing that

4:02

you are you are more or less in the in the

4:05

where most Americans are then okay,

4:07

great, Yeah I know

4:10

nothing about most things, so I'm excited

4:12

to learn about Liberia today. You are

4:14

you are aware that they had there's been a bunch

4:16

of war there, right, Yeah, you kind of

4:19

there's conflict and

4:22

in tragedy things

4:24

that my brain sometimes turns

4:26

off because I can only handle so

4:29

much trauma. But that's my

4:31

luxury of being privileged,

4:34

asshole, you know what I mean. Well, yeah, it's it's very

4:36

funny because like there's a bunch of places in the world

4:38

where horrible things are going on. UM,

4:41

places like me and mar places

4:43

like the Democratic Republic of the Congo Palestine.

4:47

UM, where people you

4:50

know, don't don't. Americans are

4:52

able not to care because and

4:55

to some of the degree, it's like, yeah, man, the world's fucking

4:57

big. There's a lot of stuff going on, Like I can't,

4:59

No one can about all of the bad things that are

5:01

happening, and you can't. You shouldn't be expected to

5:03

like be aware of every single

5:05

terrible thing happening in the world. There's a particular

5:08

reason why Americans ought to know more

5:10

about Liberia. UM, and it's

5:12

because we made Liberia. Now I'm

5:15

gonna talk sharene today. The main subject

5:18

of our episode is a fellow who went by the

5:20

name General Butt Naked. UM.

5:23

That's a that's a truth. That's

5:25

it's it's pretty fun. It's pretty fun name. Not

5:27

a fun guy. UM,

5:30

not a fun guy. But he's

5:32

one of those dudes. The broad strokes is that like he

5:34

was this warlord, did a bunch of horrible stuff in the Liberian

5:36

Civil War, fought naked, hence the name, and

5:38

then afterwards repented. And there's been a bunch of

5:40

documentaries about how he's he's a Christian

5:43

preacher now and he's apologizing to

5:45

all his victims. He's a grifter in my opinion.

5:48

But in order to properly talk about this guy,

5:50

because a lot of the ship he did, there's a lot of

5:52

witchcraft and sacrificing babies

5:54

and all sorts of fucked up shit. Um.

5:57

Oh yeah, well, but the thing is like that

5:59

all sounds a lot more like, you

6:02

know, there's a problematic history of particularly

6:04

white dudes like me talking about witchcraft

6:08

and occult practices in different

6:10

African countries, uh, and getting all

6:12

like, oh my god, they did this and they did that. Um,

6:14

none of it is exactly the way that it seems

6:17

with like the casual uh

6:19

description of what's going on. So before

6:22

we talk about general butt naked, we're gonna have to spend

6:24

an hour or so talking about the history of conflict

6:26

in Liberia, where it came from,

6:28

and how ship like human sacrifice

6:31

wound up getting kind of ground into the mix there.

6:33

So you're ready, you're ready for this, buckling?

6:36

Yeah, let me buck click, get your

6:38

get your sad pants on? By

6:41

what pants on? Sad pants? Yeah?

6:43

Yeah, they're they're always on. Yeah.

6:47

So the first enslaved

6:49

African people from North America landed

6:51

at Jamestown on August

6:53

nineteen. This is pretty famous because of

6:55

that New York Times thing. Now, most

6:58

of these folks were england who had been

7:00

captured by Portuguese slavers, and the centuries

7:02

that followed, they and the Africans

7:04

who followed them became an integral part

7:06

of agriculture and economic viability in

7:08

the colonies. When the United States became

7:11

a thing, a number of the founding fathers, chiefly

7:13

Thomas Payne, denounced slavery as

7:15

a terrible evil that would one day tear the new nation

7:17

apart. Thomas Jefferson, a slave

7:19

owner himself, realized this when he wrote

7:21

his Notes on the State of Virginia in seventeen

7:24

eighty five. Here's what he had to say.

7:26

Why not retain and incorporate the blacks

7:28

into the state and thus save the expense of supplying

7:31

by importation of white settlers the vacancies

7:33

they will leave deep rooted prejudices

7:35

entertained by the whites. Ten thousand recollections

7:37

by the Blacks of the injuries they have sustained

7:40

new provocations. The real distinctions

7:42

which nature has made, and many other circumstances

7:44

will divide us into parties and produce convulsions

7:46

which will probably never end, but in the extermination

7:49

of one or the other race. So

7:51

what he's he's talking about here is his idea

7:53

that, like, if you're gonna end slavery, you

7:55

should send the black people who were brought here

7:58

back to Africa. Right, That's kind

8:00

of Thomas could because otherwise there will be inevitably

8:02

be a race conflict. You know, you

8:05

can't just keep them here if you're going to free

8:07

them. That's Thomas Jefferson's attitude.

8:09

And there's a number he thinks that black

8:11

people were probably inferior to white

8:13

people. Um. And he thinks

8:15

that again there's just too much anger and whatnot.

8:17

He also like does note that white people are

8:19

probably too bigoted for it. It's a weird mix

8:22

of things. He's a strange man. Um.

8:24

Now, others among his peers disagreed.

8:27

There was an attitude among kind of abolitionists

8:29

in this early period um Some

8:31

felt that black people had just been temporarily

8:33

degraded by slavery and they could be gradually

8:36

uplifted to the point of social responsibility.

8:38

This is still problematic, right, the

8:40

idea that they need to be uplifted rather than

8:43

just freed, but is generally better

8:45

than the idea that they're you know, genetically

8:48

different. Uh So, I don't know.

8:51

Um. As the abolitionist movement picked up steam

8:53

in the mid eighteen hundreds, advocates were often extremely

8:56

racist themselves. Uh. Many abolitionists

8:58

believe that freed black people could not exist

9:01

or keep up in white society. Others

9:03

like Jefferson just felt that there would be too much

9:05

understandable anger over slavery for

9:07

them to live alongside white people, which

9:09

is not like an unreasonable

9:12

attitude to be, like, well, ship, why

9:14

would they want to hang out here? Like after all the fun?

9:17

It's mostly just like they're fearful for their own lives,

9:19

right, Like, Oh, the minute they are able to, they're

9:21

gonna come after us for us treating them like actual

9:24

animals, you know what I mean. I think there's

9:26

a mix of that. I think there's some people who

9:28

are honest abolitionists and for the time

9:30

very racially progressive who just like can't

9:32

imagine them wanting to um

9:35

And obviously, like one of the problems you'll

9:37

here again and again is a lot of people who are abolitionists

9:40

are not great at actually listening to black people.

9:42

That's the problem. The whole abolitionist movement has.

9:45

Um some people are better at it than others,

9:47

but it's like a thing that happens at periods of time.

9:49

Um. So, yeah,

9:52

all of these discussions are going on. Late

9:54

seventeen hundreds, early eighteen hundreds, is this abolitionist

9:56

movement is building up steam, and some

9:59

of the people who are for abolition start

10:01

to advocate for a sort of sponsored

10:04

immigration program to send

10:06

freed black slaves out of the United States

10:08

and back to Africa. And so this is not they're

10:10

they're advocating for abolition in the United States,

10:13

but they're also saying, we've got all these free black people,

10:15

we should create a colony

10:17

in Africa for them to send them back

10:19

to, and that once we start freeing more slaves,

10:22

those people can go to that colony, right.

10:24

Um. One of these men was Pennsylvania

10:27

reformer John Parrish. He advocated

10:29

manumitting that means freeing slaves

10:31

and sending them back home where they could experience

10:33

quote, liberty and the rights of citizenship

10:36

without being particularly near him. His

10:39

hope was that sending over a small number of black

10:41

folks would convince other free black people

10:43

to leave North America, and that this

10:45

would somehow inspire the better nature

10:47

of slave owners to free their own people. Quote,

10:51

many persons of humanity who continue

10:53

to hold slaves would be willing to liberate them

10:55

on condition of their so removing you

10:57

know what he's saying, He's not He's actually kind of saying

10:59

the same thing Jefferson was, because Jefferson was arguing

11:02

like, well, you can't just free him and have him stay here,

11:04

you know, otherwise it will be a problem. So

11:06

Parrish is being like, well, obviously,

11:09

maybe a lot of these slave owners are really good people.

11:11

They just see that they've it's too dangerous to

11:13

let these people be free, so we have to It's

11:15

very racist again, but it's also not

11:17

a kind of racism in America that we talk about

11:20

a lot, because a lot of this history has been kind of brushed

11:22

over. I mean, yeah, it's like kind of backwards because

11:24

you're like, they're not saying like, oh my god,

11:26

controlling another human is terrible because you're

11:28

still controlling them. You're still like, Okay, let's stay am out.

11:31

You know, they are they are saying

11:33

that they're just saying it's not the worst thing exactly.

11:36

That like freeing them would be right, because they are saying

11:38

it's bad to have slaves, but they're just saying it's worse

11:40

to you know. Again, very

11:43

racist, just kind of a type of racism

11:45

we maybe don't talk about enough that existed in this

11:47

period. Um. So he felt

11:50

like a lot of slave owners didn't want slaves,

11:52

they just kind of inherited them, and they were scared

11:54

about what black people would do if they were free. Um,

11:57

which is a very silly thing to think. Um.

11:59

Into number of eighteen sixteen, a mix

12:01

of people with good, bad, racist, and

12:03

only slightly racist intentions formed the

12:05

American Colonization Society.

12:08

Now part of this group, some of these

12:10

people are very legitimately just like again,

12:13

if you're like a civil rights advocate, you're born into

12:15

the mid eighteen hundreds, you see this nightmare system.

12:18

I can see a ways that a decent person would be like, maybe

12:20

this is the best thing. Maybe providing these people

12:23

like it's so racist here, it's so hard for

12:25

them. Maybe if we tried to set them up with

12:27

a place nice back in Africa, this

12:29

would not be This would be a more ethical

12:31

situation than having to live with

12:33

all these fucking horrible racists. Right, Some

12:36

people in the American Colonization Siety

12:38

Society are like that. However, it

12:40

is primarily a dark money organization

12:43

funded by slave owners. Um,

12:45

and what's going on here is that powerful

12:47

slave owners want to push the idea of

12:50

an African colony for freed slaves

12:52

because this will remove free black people

12:54

out of the America's and free black

12:56

people they see as like competition

12:59

for slave labor at that they can profit from. Wait,

13:02

competition for slave they've

13:05

got slaves, which is free labor,

13:08

but free black people because they

13:10

you know, work for less than free white people

13:12

because of racism. Right, that's competition

13:15

for low paying work that otherwise will

13:17

go to their slaves that they just profited. Well,

13:21

yes, yes, I think they also see it as

13:23

like a safety valve because again they're really racist.

13:25

They understand that like some states, black people are going

13:27

to get free, but they don't let them sticking around because

13:30

as long as there are free black people in North

13:32

America, that's a body

13:34

of people who are going to organize to abolish

13:36

slavery. Right. There's a few reasons, right,

13:39

Yes, yeah. So there's a number

13:41

of reasons why slave owners really like the

13:43

idea of a colony in Africa for free

13:45

slaves, and that their dark money is kind

13:47

of funding the American colonization society.

13:51

Um. Yeah, and again this

13:53

group. There are abolitionists

13:55

in this group, but it's not committed to

13:57

abolition. UM. I want

13:59

to quote now from a rite up on the American I

14:02

want to quote now from a rite up on the African American

14:04

Intellectual History Society's Black Perspective's

14:06

blog by by Nicholas

14:08

Guyett. Quote. Its origins

14:10

and trajectory always evinced a watery commitment

14:13

to abolition. Two facts made this commitment supremely

14:15

insidious. First, it placed the burden of ending

14:17

slavery on the benevolent slaveholders themselves,

14:20

who would supposedly free their slaves when provided

14:22

with an outlet for doing so. Second, it

14:24

marked an epic endorsement of racial segregation,

14:26

effectively denying the possibility of coexistence

14:29

while promoting what would later be termed separate

14:31

but equal. So you can see there the

14:33

roots of a couple of really fucked up things in the

14:35

American colonization society.

14:37

Now, before the souring of sectional

14:40

relations, in the eighteen theories and eighteen forties. Colonization

14:43

also supplied a bridge between mainstream

14:45

anti slavery sentiments in both North and South.

14:47

The a c. S opened auxiliary societies

14:49

from New England through North Carolina.

14:51

When upper Southern legislatures engaged with the question

14:54

of ending slavery, invariably they identified

14:56

a black colony as the prerequisite for general

14:58

emancipation. On of the Deep South became

15:00

a Nogo zone for colonization enthusiasts,

15:03

with white politicians, editors, and businessmen mobilizing

15:05

their considerable power against even

15:07

a feather light anti slavery challenge.

15:09

In New England, by contrast, colonization

15:11

retained a considerable appeal through the first years

15:14

of the Civil War. So colonization

15:17

is popular proper in like these

15:19

kind of progressive you might say,

15:21

like liberal chunks of the North where abolition

15:24

is. And that's why slavery

15:27

enthusiasts don't want any discussion of

15:29

this in the South, right, because it's even a

15:31

little bit of of abolitionist tendency

15:34

is too much for them. But they love pushing

15:36

this in the North because it's a lot.

15:38

If you can get people focusing on this, they're not

15:40

focusing on abolishing slavery, which

15:42

would actually hurt them, right, you

15:44

get what's going on here. So

15:46

the chief accomplishment of the American colonization

15:49

Society was the establishment of the colony

15:51

of Liberia on Africa's west coast.

15:54

It was founded in eighteen twenty one by a group of

15:56

roughly ten thousand free black migrants

15:58

who took one look at the U S and the eighteen to one he's

16:00

in figured, well, ship anywhere is better than

16:02

here, right, Like from the part of view

16:04

of these guys who are leaving and ladies who are leaving,

16:06

it's like, yeah, of course, Like I get why

16:08

you wouldn't want to stick around North America Right

16:10

about now, it doesn't seem like there's

16:12

a that's a safe bet um.

16:16

The first big wave of immigration to Liberia

16:18

was yeah, about ten thousand people. And this this

16:20

occurs over a period of time from eighteen

16:22

twenty two to eighteen forty one, and

16:24

several successive waves.

16:27

Uh. And these these migrants formed several

16:29

towns on the coast with names like Robert

16:31

Sport, Monrovia, Buchanan,

16:34

and Greenville. Although I think their initial Monrovia's

16:36

first capital name is Christopolis. Christopolis.

16:40

Ye, that was the first name. Very

16:42

funny, um, although it's

16:44

not going to be funny actually because spoilers

16:47

colonialism. So because

16:49

of racism, these these these black

16:52

people who have gone to Liberia are

16:54

not actually the masters of their own

16:56

domain. At first, Liberia is

16:58

a colony of the United States, and

17:00

the new immigrants are ruled by a white governor

17:02

who appoints white officials. Uh.

17:05

Now, the new residents of the city did have a legislative

17:08

council that they got to vote for and their own

17:10

elected representatives who work with the governor.

17:12

Right, so they do have representation,

17:15

certainly more than they did in the United States at

17:17

the time. Right. But final

17:19

approval for all actions voted for

17:21

by the council pinned it on approval

17:23

by a board of managers for the Colonization

17:26

Society who lived in Washington, d c.

17:28

So if the if the black people living

17:31

there voted for something, they had to

17:33

send it back across the Atlantic to get

17:35

ratified by this council

17:37

who could also annull laws.

17:40

Like they leave these

17:42

plantations, they're enslaved in the States

17:44

and they go to this just dry island plantation.

17:46

Oh boy, you have predicted some of where this is

17:48

going, um, but not

17:51

for them actually, but yeah, there there is

17:53

like this is obviously very fucked up. It's

17:55

in keeping them with their right the idea of some

17:57

of these these dudes that like they

17:59

need to be trained up before they can run their own

18:01

country. Right, That's that's why they're doing

18:03

it this way. That's why the white people are doing

18:05

it this way. Um.

18:08

So now it is the good

18:10

news is that anytime they send a

18:13

dude over there, a white dude over there to help

18:15

govern the colony, that motherfucker dies

18:17

immediately, right because there's all

18:19

sorts of there's all sorts of bugs and ship that are

18:21

biting white people. They get it right, Like, there's all

18:23

sorts of ship that like kills white

18:25

people in Africa in this period because we don't

18:27

have good medicine. They're just dropping

18:29

like flies fucking

18:33

mosquito. But white

18:36

ass motherfucker's um

18:39

no son. Yeah, So these guys

18:42

keep dying, um, which is a

18:44

real problem. It makes it difficult for them to like

18:46

run the colony the way they want to and

18:48

makes it hard for them to have white people

18:50

to report back to d c um

18:52

and beyond that, the society

18:55

after the earliest years runs

18:57

into a funding crunch. Um.

18:59

So part of this is because they stopped getting

19:01

donations because abolitionists wake up

19:03

to the fact that this is a dark money thing for slave

19:05

owners. Part of this is that like the

19:08

conflict over slavery gets nastier

19:10

and slave owners stopped putting like they

19:12

start putting money elsewhere. Right. So,

19:16

starting in the eighteen forties, white oversight

19:18

of Liberia starts to peel away. Liberians

19:21

begin to agitate for total autonomy, and

19:23

when the last white governor dies in eighteen forty

19:26

one, they get it. The society appoints

19:28

a black governor, Joseph Roberts, who became

19:30

the first not white person to run things

19:32

in Liberia. Now

19:34

the colony then at this point, you know, stops

19:36

being a colony, not really a colony after this

19:39

moment, and it's it becomes an independent nation

19:41

in July of eighteen forty seven. And

19:44

if that had been all that happened,

19:46

should be this would be one of the less depressing stories

19:48

in the history of slavery. Here's

19:51

the thing. Now, you

19:54

send ten thousand black

19:56

people in America, pretty much all born

19:59

in the United States as slaves, some

20:02

of them born free. But you take these these

20:04

black Americans and you send

20:06

them to the west coast of Africa

20:09

to set up cities. Now,

20:11

are you seeing any potential problems

20:14

here? Uh? Well, I mean

20:16

are there I'm confused. Were there already people

20:18

online? Yes, they're they're

20:22

absolutely we're people there

20:24

before. Okay, Yeah, we're

20:28

people there. I mean I'm sounding

20:30

like people that don't understand about Palestine.

20:32

Of course, there's a ton of people

20:34

there. Okay. And again, these

20:37

these these dudes, these these

20:39

migrants are obviously these people were

20:41

stolen from somewhere in Africa, or at least

20:43

their ancestors were, right, Um,

20:46

But they're from like potentially

20:48

all over like certainly not Liberia

20:52

in specific generally. And also they were

20:54

they speak English, they're Christian, they

20:56

dress like Americans. There they have been

20:59

living free in US cities.

21:01

Yeah, right, So these are this

21:04

is not a case of like these people returning to their

21:06

homeland. These people are colonizing

21:08

Liberia. Um. And

21:11

if you know anything about colonization,

21:14

it's not nice. Um.

21:18

And and this was not suddenly fine just

21:20

because the guys doing the colonization in

21:23

Africa we're black. It's it's still

21:25

pretty messy. Uh. And I'm gonna quote now from

21:27

an article by In M. B Akpan

21:30

in the Canadian Journal of African Studies

21:32

titled Black Imperialism. Quote.

21:36

The settlers constituted the rulers who

21:38

ran the Liberian government in much the same way

21:40

as the British and French constituted rulers and

21:42

naval it neighboring colonial territories

21:44

like Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast. However,

21:47

actual power rested in the hands of prominent

21:49

members of certain leading settler families

21:52

or lineages, in a manner that retained that maintained

21:54

some balance of power among the families. The

21:56

settlers on whom the government of Liberia that's

21:59

evolved as from eighteen forty one, were essentially

22:01

American rather than African and outlook and

22:03

orientation. They retained a strong sentimental

22:06

attach and attachment to America, which

22:08

they regarded as their native land. They wore

22:10

the Western mode of dress, which they had become accustomed

22:13

in America, However unsuitable this dress

22:15

was to Liberia's tropical weather. A black

22:17

silk topper and a long black frock coat from

22:19

men and a Victorian silk gown for women.

22:22

They built themselves frame stone or brick

22:24

porticoed houses of one and a half to two

22:26

stories, similar to those of the plantation owners

22:28

in the Southern States of America, and they preferred

22:30

American food like flour, corn meal, butter,

22:33

large pickle, beef, bacon, and American grown

22:35

rice, large quantities of which they imported

22:37

annually to African food stuff like cassafa,

22:40

plantain, yams, palm oil, sweet potatoes,

22:42

and country rice grown by Africans and

22:44

the Liberian hinterland. They were Christians,

22:46

spoke English as their mother tongue, and practice

22:48

monogamy. They held land individually, in

22:51

contrast with the communal ownership of the African

22:53

population, and their political institutions

22:55

were modeled on those of America, with an elected

22:57

president and a legislature made up of a Senate

22:59

and a House of Representatives, so that in spite

23:01

of their color, they were as a rule as foreign

23:03

and lacking in sentimental attachment to Africa,

23:06

as we're European colonialists elsewhere

23:08

in Africa, like the British, the French, the Portuguese

23:10

and the Spaniards. Yeah,

23:13

that's a really stir in the pot

23:15

here. I mean, like it just they're

23:18

like conduits are like vessels for still

23:20

like white agendas. It sounds likely even

23:22

if they don't mean to be. I mean, it's not so much

23:24

white as like Western because obviously they're

23:26

not white. For me, it's interchangeable.

23:28

I know that's a mistake, but yeah, yeah, they

23:31

are very much. They are Westerners, and they

23:33

see to a large extent the

23:36

people who had been living in Liberia as like backwards,

23:39

um devil worshiping

23:42

weirdos who don't deserve political

23:44

rights. Right, so the indigenous Liberians

23:47

don't get to vote in the same

23:49

way that like, yeah, like they're all they're

23:51

shut out to a significant extent,

23:54

at least from the franchise, right. Um.

23:56

And if you're thinking, boy, howdy, I bet this coust

23:59

a problem somewhere to on the line, then good news,

24:01

you're right on the money. Over the next half

24:03

century and change, the Americo Liberians

24:06

became an oligarchy, practicing what one

24:09

historian called a quote sort of sub imperialism

24:11

at African expense. By nineteen

24:14

hundred, about fifteen thousand black American immigrants

24:16

had settled in Liberia, along with around three

24:18

hundred immigrants from the West Indies. Liberia

24:21

is often claimed in twentieth century history

24:23

books as one of two African

24:26

states that remained independent during the Scramble

24:28

for Africa, the other being Ethiopia,

24:30

But this is not quite accurate. Ethiopia

24:33

is, for sure, but Liberia was

24:35

a colony that just became independent in

24:37

eighteen forty seven, like certainly a lot earlier

24:40

than other colonies did, because most of Africa

24:42

hadn't been colonized in eighty seven. But

24:44

the fact that it was not recolonized

24:46

doesn't really mean anything because it was already

24:48

a colony um and

24:51

the actual indigenous people in Liberia

24:53

were a sub class within their own homeland

24:56

with very little economic or political power. The

24:58

Americo Liberians held all of the power,

25:00

and their Americo Liberian WIG Party

25:03

was essentially the only legal political

25:05

party in the country from eighteen sixty

25:08

to nineteen eighty. Despite

25:10

the fact that immigrant descended Liberians made

25:12

up only two percent of the population, they

25:14

effectively turned the rest of the country into

25:16

a profit making engine for themselves. In

25:19

nineteen thirty one, an international commission

25:21

found that several prominent Americo librarians

25:23

had enslaved indigenous Africans.

25:27

So yeah, uh, the

25:30

West is pretty pretty pretty

25:33

pretty yeah, it does it does. It does

25:35

work that way sometimes. God, you know what else?

25:38

People? Is a virus, sharid.

25:43

It is a virus. It's a virus that

25:46

keeps our democracy functioning

25:48

in a healthy manner, like the

25:50

epstein bar virus. You know, you can't

25:52

get enough of it? Just nom good

25:55

taste. Uh huh, that's

25:57

what everyone says about the epstein bar virus. Anyway,

26:00

here's some ads. Ah,

26:08

we're back. We're really enjoying

26:11

that message from our sponsors. The epstein

26:13

bar virus. Cat catch it tomorrow

26:16

anyway. Um So, if

26:19

you want a good example of how, like Sophie

26:24

the good the good people at the epstein

26:27

bar virus paid us serious

26:29

money for that plug. Ever

26:32

makes you happy, Robert, that does

26:34

make me happy. I'd be happier

26:36

if everybody went

26:39

and got the epstein bar virus. Let's

26:41

let's move on from the bit I think? I think? Is that? Should

26:44

we move on from the bit? Is it not? You think so?

26:47

I'm gonna look up what the epstein bar virus does because

26:49

I've forgotten. Uh yeah,

26:52

well you know, I just remember the name. I'm

26:54

so lucky or like it's

26:57

like it's the herpes virus. I guess. Oh,

27:00

no, it's mono. Is it moto? I don't know that's

27:02

let's let's yeah. I think it's it's

27:05

Monoe for seven time. Yeah.

27:07

Yeah, that's that's that good ship. Um.

27:10

Yeah, so get motto. Everybody get mono.

27:12

Okay, Sophie, how are you doing?

27:15

You happy? You're happy with me as a podcaster.

27:18

You're glad you made this series of choices in your life

27:20

that led to you sitting here while

27:22

a guy talks about however, once you get mono on a

27:25

podcast about Liberia kind

27:27

of Actually, I

27:32

was gonna say, even though Sophie is like not,

27:35

She's like I wasn't talking, Like, I'm just so

27:37

glad her camera is always on because

27:39

I can just like every time you say something, I can just look

27:41

up and I know. Sophie's like we

27:44

connect, you know, like,

27:46

yes, we connect, and you know what connecting

27:49

is how people get mono. Anyway,

27:51

what move on from the bid okay

27:55

example, So we're talking about like

27:58

mono. Colonization

28:01

spreads, like the colonial mindset

28:03

and the imperial mindset spreads from the United

28:06

States to Liberia as do what's

28:09

really as we noted, like

28:11

some of these America liberians

28:15

take slaves from the Native Africans for

28:17

themselves. They also create

28:19

a plantation I mean several,

28:21

but there's one in particular we're going to talk about right

28:23

now because this

28:26

really high highlights how fucked up some of the

28:28

stuff going on here is. Um. Starting

28:30

in the nineteen twenties, the Firestone

28:33

Corporation starts a massive

28:35

rubber plantation in Liberia,

28:37

which profits obviously the two percent of

28:39

people who are America Liberian that

28:42

sprawls from the coast to like the hills

28:44

of central Liberia. Um. It's

28:46

this like massive thousands and thousands

28:48

of acres UM with people like

28:51

living on it, harvesting

28:53

rubber rubber for very little money,

28:56

um, and have very little control over

28:58

their own lives, like indigenous people laboring

29:00

day in and day out to harvest the rubber

29:02

that makes the tires and like the cars that first

29:05

start filling American streets. Um,

29:07

it's pretty cool. I'm gonna quote from a ride up in pro Publica.

29:10

At the center of this kingdom was House fifty three,

29:13

reserved for the plantation boss. It stood

29:15

up a hill overlooking the rest of the plantation, a

29:17

two story Antebellum style Georgian colonial

29:20

mansion of pink brick. It had a wide porch,

29:22

six white Corinthian columns, and jalucy

29:24

windows. Other homes for expatriates

29:26

featuring verandas and manicured gardens, were

29:28

scattered nearby. In a section of the plantation

29:31

known as Harbor Hills, there was a nine hole

29:33

golf course, tennis courts, and a country club with

29:35

a bar. About three miles down the road

29:37

was Harbor Firestone's Own Company

29:39

Town, a portmanteau form from the names

29:41

of the businesses founder Harveys Firestone

29:43

Senior and his wife Idabell. It held

29:45

Firestone Central Office, industrial garages,

29:48

and a latex practicing plant retlent of ammonia

29:51

and other chemicals. The town itself was a collection

29:53

of tin roofed homes and shops, a grocery store,

29:55

a bank, schools, and brick and cinder

29:57

block bungalows for mid level Liberian

30:00

managers and domestic staff. There were the homes

30:02

of the tappers, the Liberian workers who did the hard

30:04

work of extracting the latex sap from the trees.

30:06

The camps were long, low rows

30:08

of residences, almost like coops. Units

30:11

generally consisted of a single room. The homes

30:13

had wattle and daubed walls and aluminum roofs.

30:15

There were no windows and no kitchens. The

30:18

work camps had communal pumps for water and outdoor

30:20

kitchens for cooking. There was no electricity.

30:22

Bathrooms were outhouses or the nearby

30:24

bush. There was the world. This was the world

30:26

of the Firestone operation, described in a

30:29

night in nineteen ninety by one company

30:31

executive as resembling an old Southern

30:33

plantation. So

30:36

fucking George H. W. Bush is in the

30:38

White House and white people are running

30:40

a plantation in Africa. Um,

30:43

with the collusion of the Americo Liberian

30:45

government, where the workers there

30:48

are just a couple of steps

30:51

above being enslaved. That was like yesterday,

30:53

Yeah, real recent. And

30:56

when the civil war starts, Firestones

30:59

company presentatives are going to make some cool choices

31:02

about how to help.

31:04

Yeah, this Firestone tired rubber.

31:06

Yeah, this is where the rubber comes from plantation

31:09

in Africa. So that's neat.

31:12

Um. Now, you will

31:14

not be surprised to hear that an awful

31:16

lot of Liberians and I mean like indigenous

31:18

librarians were not jazzed with

31:21

the status quo. Right, people have problems

31:23

with it. Um. It was a pretty yeah

31:26

at least yeah, not psyched. It

31:29

was. It was you have to give it a really

31:31

effective system because Liberia kind

31:33

of if you treat the America Liberian

31:36

rule as a colonial project, it

31:38

lasts longer than basically any other African

31:40

colony other than like South Africa.

31:43

Argued with like that, yeahs

31:45

because like people are never taught

31:48

about it or like you know what I mean, went under the radar

31:50

because no one even knew it was there. Well, I don't know.

31:52

I think there's a number of I

31:55

don't know about I mean most

31:57

I think I think very little of this history

32:00

is known to Americans. Like it's not something

32:02

we really talked about. I remember vaguely hearing

32:04

that one of the like I remember in

32:06

like a textbook I had in high school that was

32:08

talking about like abolition

32:11

movement pre Civil War. There was like a little

32:13

box in like one of the pages

32:15

that summarized like the American

32:17

Colonization Society and the colonizing of Liberia,

32:20

and like four paragraphs and like that

32:22

was just kind of like, oh, some people went over there. This is

32:24

one thing that folks tried. Like I don't,

32:27

I didn't I didn't hear this. I didn't learn anything

32:29

about like the they

32:31

again like black imperialism is the title

32:33

of one of the and obviously it's not. I think

32:35

it's I think they're using that to kind

32:37

of, uh illicit

32:39

a reaction. This is still in

32:41

a lot of ways white imperialism. It's just

32:44

using black people because there's

32:46

a huge financial benefit and a military

32:48

benefit which will discuss later to the United States

32:50

because Liberia functions this way.

32:53

Um, so yeah,

32:56

it's a pretty effective system. Uh. The Americo

32:59

Liberians remain in charge until

33:01

nineteen eighty when things begin to go terribly

33:03

wrong. The last president

33:06

that the oligarchy was able to successfully

33:08

keep in power while install in power,

33:10

I should say, was a guy named William

33:12

Tilbert. His administration was

33:14

severely weakened early on due to a series

33:17

of rice riots in the end of

33:19

the nineteen seventies, and by early

33:21

nineteen eighty his ability to

33:23

stay in powder where was teetering on the break because you might

33:25

guess they were like there was a lot of hunger. Poor

33:28

people who are indigenous librarians generally

33:30

are starving the riot because

33:32

they want food. The government cracks down on

33:34

it brutally. They arrest a bunch of organizers.

33:37

Um. But you know they beat

33:39

this down, but their their hold on power

33:42

is not secure. Um. Tober

33:44

does not seem to have been a very bright dude because

33:46

he's not entirely aware of how shaky

33:49

his position is. He and his fellow oligarch's

33:51

um felt like they had control

33:53

mostly locked down because all of

33:56

the officers in the Liberian military

33:58

were Americo Liberia in you could not

34:00

be an indigenous Liberian and be an officer.

34:03

Now here's what's interesting. All of

34:05

the enlisted men are indigenous

34:08

um. And so all of like the sergeants and

34:11

corporals are indigenous men. This

34:13

is exactly the same way we talked about years

34:15

ago. It did an episode on Idi Amine who becomes the dictator

34:17

of Uganda, which is a British colony after

34:20

the British come out, and and Idi Amine was

34:22

like the highest ranking Native

34:24

African military officer in the

34:26

military Uganda when the British left, and he was a

34:28

sergeant. Because the way the British military worked

34:30

in Africa, all of your officers are white dudes.

34:33

All of the enlisted men are are

34:35

black Africans, so the people that could

34:37

die are usually not like

34:40

yes, but also the the

34:42

officers are the ones who are supposed to be able to do

34:44

the coordinating and the actual like executing

34:47

a military operations. Um

34:49

So that's part of why you don't want indigenous

34:51

people to be officers, because then they'll have Sergeants

34:54

are never supposed to have command over big

34:56

units of guys, right Like, that's the thing for for

34:59

for captains and may Jews and colonels and whatnot.

35:02

Um So, you can see that

35:04

the Liberian militaries organized the

35:06

same way that like the British and the French organized

35:08

their colonial militaries. Um And

35:11

because again Idi Amine was a sergeant before

35:13

he became dictator. When Liberia

35:16

has its civil war and the government gets

35:18

overthrown, it's going to be a sergeants who do the overthrowing,

35:20

because that's as high as you can rise in the military

35:23

as an indigenous person. Um

35:26

So, Tibert was so convinced

35:28

that he was in a secure position that he started

35:30

doing the one thing an oligarchic

35:33

leader of what is effectively a US back dictatorship

35:35

should never do. He starts to funk

35:37

with the US. Um See,

35:39

the U S Department of Defense had come to expect

35:42

we, like Liberia in part because

35:44

there's a bunch of benefits. Financial benefits. US

35:46

companies make a lot of money cheap labor, get

35:48

rubber and shipped from Liberia. UM.

35:51

But also the US has a

35:53

bunch of factory we get up to in Africa,

35:55

right, We got a ton of ship going on in Africa,

35:58

specially in this period. UM. In

36:01

Liberia, we say, hey, we need

36:03

to land some fucking planes. We gotta keep some marines

36:05

there, we need to keep like a rapid deployment force

36:07

or whatever. In the past, Liberia

36:09

is always like absolutely, send as many troops as

36:11

you want, say, like, land your planes here, fly out

36:13

of here, you can get to go. We're buddies, you know, because

36:16

intelligent people who are part of this oligarchy

36:19

recognize that the United States being

36:21

in your pocket is basically the best

36:23

thing you could do in terms of staying exactly

36:27

what's what's what is heaping is the benefit of that. Um.

36:30

I I don't think he's a very bright

36:32

dude. I'm gonna admit I'm not the most knowledgeable

36:34

on this, but it's it's generally reviewed regarded

36:37

as kind of a baffling decision. But he's also

36:39

like, um, you know, there's there's the

36:41

the US is kind of like I think, withholding

36:44

some um some aid funding

36:46

and stuff out of civil rights concerns.

36:48

So there's like there's some pressure being

36:50

put on his regime I think by the US, and he

36:53

decides to like push back in

36:55

this way. Um. This proves to

36:57

be a really bad call because when

37:00

basically d C decides we want a new

37:02

US rapid deployment Force in Liberia, um,

37:05

and they asked permission and Toilber is like no.

37:08

So then the CIA and the Department of Defense

37:10

are like, well, why do we want

37:12

this guy in power now? All right? Like this doesn't

37:14

benefit us at all? Um. Who Well,

37:17

they try to It's kind of debatable as

37:19

to how much of an impact they really have on

37:21

this, but they certainly start thinking about

37:23

it, and they start going through some names of like what

37:26

what sergeants and whatnot in the in

37:28

the Liberian military do we think could like overthrow

37:31

the government? Um. It was generally

37:33

assumed Liberia doesn't have much in the way of other

37:35

political parties yet, so there's not really an established

37:38

opposition, So it was assumed the army's

37:40

the best place to actually get some kind of revolutionary

37:43

leader Um, they're not really

37:45

able to move forward unless the situation

37:47

changes, though, and that change starts to come courtesy

37:49

if the Progressive Alliance of Liberia, an

37:52

advocacy group which decides to become a political

37:54

party. In nineteen eighty, they start holding

37:56

events. Uh, and talk spread that Tilbert's

37:59

regime was planning to execute a bunch of the

38:01

organizers of the riots who were still imprisoned

38:03

on the one year anniversary of the Rice

38:05

Riots to like kind of solidified power

38:08

threaten these people. Um. So this

38:10

inspires a lot of local Liberians to

38:13

do something ahead of that date. Uh.

38:15

And it's very likely that the CIA

38:18

had some sort of I don't think we know exactly

38:20

what they were certainly talking about

38:22

overthrowing Tollbear. And then it happens.

38:25

It's again, I can't tell you exactly their role

38:27

here, but what happens is that a group of

38:29

seventeen soldiers, mostly sergeants,

38:32

which is the highest rank that librarians could hold,

38:35

um, attempt to launch a coup ahead of

38:37

that anniversary. And I'm gonna quote now from

38:39

the Liberian Civil Wars by Charles

38:41

River editors the senior ranking

38:43

member of the coup party, although not Its leader was

38:45

Master Sergeant Samuel will Do, and almost

38:47

entirely unknown figure. The decision

38:50

was rather spontaneous and aided by alcohol. The

38:52

party set off on the evening of the eleventh fully

38:54

armed, and made its way to the foot of the Barclay Training

38:56

Center towards Capitol Hill and the Executive

38:59

Mansion. The streets were unlit. An entry

39:01

to the grounds of the mansion was gained without challenge.

39:04

At about ours in the morning

39:06

of the twelfth, the coup party broke into the basement,

39:08

also without encountering any challenge, and cautiously

39:11

entered the upstairs section. Now purely

39:13

by chance. It turns out that President Tolbert

39:16

had been out at a Baptist convention. He was

39:18

a preacher, uh so he had been preaching

39:20

at this convention, and instead of going

39:22

back to his compound, he decides to go back

39:24

and sleep at the Capitol building that night. So

39:26

he's in his bathroom and his pajamas when

39:29

he hears gunfire, which is the coup members

39:31

assaulting his guards. The whole

39:33

thing is very messy. It ends with Tolbar,

39:35

his teenage nephew, and a bunch of guards all executed

39:39

brutally. These are very violent

39:41

killings. Um When Tolbar's

39:43

body is discovered the next day, his corpse was

39:46

found mutilated as best as anyone

39:48

can tell. A corporal named Harrison Penno

39:50

had shot him in the head after Tolbert attempted

39:52

to bribe him. For more detail, I'm gonna

39:54

turn again to the quote from that book, the Liberian

39:57

Civil Wars quote. After

39:59

the shooting, Corporal Pinno was asked what he thought

40:01

he was doing, and his reply was that he wanted to see

40:03

Tolbert die in order to debunk

40:06

a generally held belief that the president was a

40:08

witch doctor. The idea of leadership

40:10

allied to sorcery remains common enough in Africa,

40:12

and most Liberian leaders tended to allow

40:15

mythology of that nature to pass, since

40:17

it added to the mystique of their rule. Tolbert

40:19

habitually carried a short ivory tipped cane,

40:22

and the belief was that it was carved from the femur

40:24

of a human leg bone. It was remarked by

40:26

one soldier that if Tolbert had laid the cane down,

40:28

he would not have been killed, But it is unlikely

40:31

that he was carrying any ceremonial a koutrama.

40:33

At that particular moment, regardless,

40:35

three more bullets were put in his head just to ensure

40:38

the job was done. And with that, the nineteenth

40:40

President of the Liberian Republic lay dead on

40:42

the floor of his bedroom in a pool of blood. So

40:45

he gets disemboweled after this. At some

40:47

point after he's killed, his guts get removed,

40:49

which is again seen as the best way to kill

40:51

a witch doctor. It is hard to

40:53

say who did this because after the coup

40:55

proof successful, these seventeen

40:58

initial dudes are joined by like a U to

41:00

other soldiers. They find the president's

41:02

liquor cabinet, and they all just get ship house

41:04

drunk and go on a killing spree. They just start

41:06

murdering, like anybody associated with the old

41:08

government. Right, well, yeah, so

41:11

this is gnarly. It's also like you're

41:13

part of an oppressed class. You're used as cannon

41:15

fodder by the government, like you have no rights,

41:17

and you get a chance to murder them

41:20

all. Historically, you murder them

41:22

all. Um, this is not the

41:24

only place something like this has happened. Uh,

41:27

So we're going to talk a lot more about disembowment,

41:29

cannibalism, and other similar subjects.

41:32

But you should probably discuss what those

41:34

things mean in a Liberian context,

41:36

because again, a lot of this stuff gets like over

41:39

like focused on by foreigners

41:43

talking about like this conflict and being like, oh my god,

41:45

there's cannibals and witch doctors, and there's like

41:48

talking about why that exists in what that means you

41:50

talk about witch stuff a little bit. Yeah,

41:52

we're going to talk about um. This

41:55

particular, the particular part of West Africa

41:57

where the Liberian colony is established,

41:59

a history of a practice called good

42:01

boyle uh, and good boyle was at practice

42:04

whereby people are killed so that their body

42:06

parts can be used as sacrifices to magically

42:08

obtain certain benefits. Now,

42:11

one like local news source

42:13

is kind of like a West African news source

42:16

described this as an ancient practice and

42:18

notes that Liberian elites, which

42:20

generally means the Americo Liberians,

42:23

never really attempted to like find ways

42:25

to stop this and never really worked on a good

42:27

way for how to do it um.

42:30

And since they tended to be Christian and kind of

42:32

dicks um, indigenous practices

42:34

developed. A degree of gravity is like acts of resistance

42:37

to the oligarchy, a version of this happens

42:39

in Haiti, right, where a lot of these traditional

42:41

practices become associated with resistance

42:44

to the colonial regime. Now also

42:46

that local source I found scholars

42:49

will quibble with aspects of that because, again, as

42:51

was noted above, Tolbert whose

42:53

Americo Liberian and other presidents

42:56

would definitely like signpost

42:58

to some of these kind of belief about much

43:00

craft invincible or like like the

43:02

myste Yeah yeah. Um

43:06

So, anyway, the fact that a lot

43:08

of these these kind of traditional like

43:10

boyo, this traditional practice is seen

43:13

as kind of a resistance practice to

43:15

the Christian and like very western regime.

43:18

Um, this seems to have

43:20

caused what had been very

43:23

fairly uncommon practices spiritual

43:26

practices before colonization to

43:28

grow and mutate. University,

43:30

Yeah, because this is what happens in Liberia

43:33

all of the ship we're going to be talking about that happens

43:35

in the Civil War. Ad. These really fucked up practices.

43:38

These are a lot of people will argue

43:41

did not really exist in the same fashion

43:43

prior to colonization. Yeah, they were. They were like

43:47

in response to being colonized and oppressed,

43:49

they were like, we can match onto these things that are becoming

43:52

this form of resistance, and they're also they're

43:54

going to change over time. So the University

43:56

of Wisconsin professor Florence Burno um

43:59

right that quote. Public rumors depict

44:02

human sacrifice and often related sorceries

44:04

as the most common way to achieve personal success,

44:07

wealth, and prestige in times of economic shortage

44:09

and declining social opportunities. Political

44:12

leaders are widely believed to perform ritual murder

44:14

to ensure electoral success and power, and

44:16

many skillfully use these perceptions to build

44:18

visibility and deference. So people

44:21

like a lot of these these rulers

44:23

in this period, like aren't necessarily doing

44:26

these things, but they are kind of signaling that they

44:28

do, which leads to an increased belief

44:30

that there's some efficacy to this. And

44:33

Burnout notes that rather being a truly

44:35

ancient practice, kaboya and other similar

44:37

practices have roots in the past, but

44:39

are influenced in their modern forms by the extractive

44:42

nature of colonialism. Quote. The

44:44

colonial situation revealed significant

44:47

contradictions in the Western fiction of a modern

44:49

disconnect between body and power. The

44:51

series of political and moral transgressions

44:53

triggered by the conquest made apparent how

44:56

Europeans themselves envisioned political

44:58

survival as a form of positive exchange

45:00

revolving around the body fetish. In the

45:02

colony, black and white bodies became

45:05

re sacrilized as political resources.

45:07

Think about how in the can you explain what

45:10

body fetish? Like? What are saying, like fetish

45:13

is kind of like a religious

45:15

term for like an object of sort of like worship

45:17

or at least of spiritual focus needed

45:20

to Okay, I understand that, but like, so think

45:23

about one of so one of the things people

45:25

talk about, like cannibalism in the Congo, and one

45:27

thing they'll point out is that a lot of these practices

45:29

were influenced to even have their origin and what the

45:31

Belgians were doing and taking the hands of people

45:34

who did not like harvest enough rubber, because

45:36

like what they're pointing out is that, like, well,

45:38

from the perspective of these people living in

45:40

this region, Europeans are engaging

45:42

in the same acts. They're taking pieces

45:45

of human bodies and they are using them

45:47

to gain power in why wouldn't

45:49

that work? Well, it's like you get power

45:52

by taking somebody's hand from them, right, you get

45:54

power over the whole community. You know that as this

45:56

threat how is that any meaningfully

45:58

different than like you kill somebody and

46:00

you take take a part of their body apart and

46:03

like eat it or whatever. Like. You can see a relation

46:05

between those two things, and you can see how like

46:08

the the extractive nature

46:10

of colonial capitalism on these people

46:13

influences these ideas of

46:15

like sacrificing and taking pieces

46:17

of the body in order to gain power. You know,

46:20

it's not this is not evolving in

46:22

the point that these scholars, this doesn't These practices

46:25

aren't They're not. It's not just people doing

46:27

what they've been doing for thousands of years. There they

46:29

have evolved and changed over the period of colonization

46:32

as much as everyone has um and so

46:34

have these practices. And these practices cannot

46:37

be extricated from

46:39

from capitalism or from colonization,

46:42

right. Um, So, by

46:44

the time Sergeant Doan as allies overthrow

46:47

the government, these practices have become quote

46:49

not a marginal but a central dimension

46:51

of the nature of public authority, leadership,

46:54

and popular identities. And

46:56

this is going to cause a lot of real nasty problems.

46:58

But you know what else is going to call some real nasty problem.

47:01

Serene Epstein

47:04

bar Virus. Oh boy, howdy,

47:07

let me tell you, the Epstein I

47:09

should have brought it back, causes the

47:11

problem of having a good time. Look,

47:14

everybody loves a little bit of mono smooch

47:16

smooch. It was very popular

47:18

in my high school me too. Actually, all

47:20

the kids loved it. All Right, here's

47:23

some ads. Uh,

47:30

we're back and and continue to

47:32

be the only podcast with the courage to

47:34

be supported by Mono Nucleus. Yeah,

47:37

that's on me, Sophie, It's on me. It's

47:40

it is it is. Look, fucking

47:43

NPRS whatever thing

47:45

they do the daily, that New York Times podcast,

47:47

Those fucking cowards would never be sponsored by

47:49

the Epstein. Bar virus cowards,

47:52

cowards, all of them. Um.

47:55

I will say that, like there's an impulse that I won't

47:58

I won't entertain like

48:00

this, this fascination with physical

48:03

body and power and like what that means,

48:05

like on a philosophical

48:08

level, I'm so fascinated by that. And I

48:11

said this before another podcast, But there's always

48:13

a tendency I have in any podcast

48:16

I guessed on to just become philosophy

48:18

zz And I won't do that this time. But I will say

48:20

I have the impulse too, because it's very fascinating

48:23

when you think about that overlap

48:25

in that connection, because it's like, so

48:28

I don't know what it is. It's it's

48:31

just sucking. Why I would I

48:33

don't know, I don't know what the thor it is. I would really encourage

48:36

people to read, UM, some

48:38

of what Burno has written on Florence

48:41

Burno B E. R in a U

48:44

L T. I think that's how it's pronounced from

48:46

the University of Wisconsin. UM. Because

48:48

there's a lot of like writing on this, not just in

48:50

Liberia, because like versions of this are are recognized

48:53

in other colonies, but it is really We've

48:55

we talked about it a bit in some of our Congo

48:57

episodes. It is a really fascinating demand.

49:00

And it also you often get from

49:03

not not just from racist because obviously racists

49:05

be racist NG, but from like people who

49:07

don't who are racist but don't want to frame themselves

49:09

that way, talking about like problems in Africa as

49:12

like, well, you do have this problem of like you've

49:14

got this ancient and culture

49:16

that has some really savage dimensions, and you know that

49:18

this is a problem in like labor aria of like attaining

49:21

any kind of peace, and it's like, well, actually

49:23

those practices aren't. They are evolved

49:25

from ancient practices, but they're very much

49:28

rooted in the ship that like was done

49:30

to these people to make them a productive rubber

49:32

plantation. You know. Yeah, it's

49:36

does not get it gets glossed over, you know what I

49:39

mean. Really pices,

49:41

you know, should be discussed like this.

49:44

They are not any more savage than

49:46

slavery and then colonialism. You know,

49:49

they're just nastier looking because

49:51

there's a lot of value put in kind of like

49:54

making the plantations. Is that's why people

49:56

have weddings at plantations, right, Because

49:58

you're a slave owner, you dry sit up more. It's so

50:00

embarrassing how many like friends of friends

50:03

or whatever. Just the photos of like

50:05

having a wedding on a plantation makes me want to vomit.

50:08

But like why why why

50:10

is it glossed over that like blinching happened

50:13

and all these things, and like it's still it's still

50:15

fucking happens, you know what I mean, Like these violent acts

50:17

that are so disgusting. I will

50:20

say it right here. I think killing

50:22

a dude in battle and eating his heart is a thousand

50:24

times less gross than forcing a man to

50:26

labor for you until he dies. Yes,

50:29

way less gross? Ye, God,

50:32

that's I don't know, I fucking

50:35

people, man, I don't know. But like also like body

50:37

power all the stuff. It's also in every

50:39

culture, not every culture, I can like think

50:41

of a few cultures that uh

50:44

still incorporate this fascination

50:46

with like someone like taking

50:49

a part of someone's body to demonstrate

50:52

your power. Over Look, look look at Sam, you

50:54

know what I mean. Like, it's just like there's like I

50:57

can I want on deep dive into this off

50:59

air. There's somebody there's I

51:01

mean, a lot has been written. This is really a fascinating

51:03

thing to read into. We're not gonna, I don't.

51:06

I don't want to pretend we're doing anything

51:08

but scratching the surface. But it is important to scratch

51:10

the surface because when we read these lurid

51:12

stories of like child sacrifice and cannibalism,

51:16

you need to know that it's more complicated

51:19

than just like, look at this fucked up thing they

51:21

do in Liberia, right, the thing these

51:23

non white people have exactly time because

51:25

they're uncivilized or whatever. It's like, it's

51:28

important to understand that it's like it's

51:30

part of a continuum of violence and

51:32

it's not the it's it's an

51:34

ugly it's certainly bad, but it's not like it's

51:37

not the start of it, and it's not the part that has

51:39

caused the most harm at scale. Yeah, by

51:42

the time Sergeant Do and his allies over

51:45

through the government, Uh, these practices

51:47

have become again like central

51:49

to the nature of public authority.

51:52

And guys like Tolbert probably maybe

51:54

aren't actually doing anything, certainly not

51:56

aren't doing some of the stuff that other people will do.

51:59

But when these indigenous folks

52:01

come into power, they have this expectation that, like,

52:03

this is what you do when you're in power. These

52:06

practices are both how you submit your power publicly

52:09

and also how you ensure that you won't lose it.

52:11

So Doe founds a new military

52:14

junta government with himself at the head. Most

52:16

of the people that he let run the country are members

52:18

of the Krawn ethnic group. Because Doe

52:21

is Krawn. They had been traditionally

52:23

a fairly minor group in terms of their like numbers

52:25

in power in the country, but Doe

52:27

puts them at the center of a building ship show.

52:30

The government he headed was at least as brutal

52:32

and violent is the one he'd replaced. And by the way,

52:34

the Firestone Plantation keeps right on shugging

52:37

along because do that for a brief

52:39

moment. But well, Doe comes in in part to be

52:41

pro us, right, he's very he doesn't want he doesn't

52:44

want to funk up things for business, you know, like

52:46

because obviously is

52:49

beneficial to him. Exactly,

52:52

He's all about that. Um so,

52:54

yeah, they do all their nastiest ship one

52:56

of the one of the most

52:58

infamous moments, like after taking power,

53:01

when everyone's still kind of like because again

53:03

Liberia, prior to this had been they were very integrated

53:05

into African the continent.

53:08

Like there's all these different economic and political

53:11

organizations that are four different that all of these

53:13

multiple African states will be a part of. Right even

53:16

before uh, they're

53:19

integrated in Africa. Yeah, but even

53:21

after colonized state, it was still like not

53:24

it wasn't like shitty like

53:26

before they became like like before

53:28

it was black imperialized. It was still a colony,

53:31

right No, no, no, it was established

53:33

by the US like it had just been people living

53:35

in Africa like no, I'm talking,

53:37

I'm sorry, I'm talking about the government. Dough overthrows

53:39

right the Toberian government, the America

53:42

Liberian government. They're integrated into

53:44

the political I was math of Africa,

53:46

right, Yeah, so all of these

53:49

when he overthrows the government, all of

53:51

these he arrests all of these government

53:53

officials who have who are like friends

53:55

with the people running Nigeria and like Kenya

53:58

and all of these other countries. Right. They they're

54:00

in political organizations together.

54:02

They're like managing trade deals, they're

54:05

going on vacation, they're like there are they

54:07

are buds with the other people who are in power

54:10

in Africa, And now they're in prison and

54:13

Dough in a surprise moment,

54:15

has them all executed by drunken soldiers

54:17

on television. So I

54:21

forgot this

54:23

is like the eighties, baby, Oh my god. So

54:26

this this really pisss off

54:28

a lot of other people and like a lot of other African

54:30

governmental leaders, right because like that's my fucking

54:32

buddy, you just shot in the street, Like what the

54:35

funk, dude? Um. So

54:37

this causes a lot of folks in the international

54:39

community to support his ouster. Uh.

54:42

Still though the Reagan administration is

54:44

like, hey, you're willing to let us land

54:46

planes. They're like we'll play ball, you know. Uh.

54:49

They invite Dough to the White House.

54:51

He meets with the President, where Ronald

54:53

Reagan and what it might be an early senior

54:56

moment, refers to him as Chairman Moe instead

54:58

of Chairman Dough and do just kind

55:00

of like goes with it. You know, we

55:04

haven't had to stop having these

55:06

no, but there has to be

55:09

a lock.

55:11

You. Look, there's things we were

55:14

all fine with the idea that you can be too

55:16

young to do certain things. Okay,

55:19

maybe you can't be too old to do certain things exactly

55:22

even now, I mean not whatever. There

55:24

are so many moments where like be in Congress,

55:27

look, yeah, just oh my god,

55:30

we're being governed by

55:32

people that are slowly fading away. And

55:35

you can't be president until thirty

55:38

five, which is an implicit acknowledgement that

55:41

the age you are impacts your

55:43

ability to do to the job property anyway, this

55:45

is this is a rant for else another

55:49

Yeah, so mo, which

55:51

is what Reagan calls him. Uh assures

55:54

the Reagan administration that Liberia is totally

55:57

going to return to democracy December of nineteen

55:59

eighty five. Right, I need a couple of years to get

56:01

stuff into shape, right, get purged

56:04

the government of all these bad people,

56:06

you know, I'm gonna fix stuff up and then I'm gonna stop

56:09

being dictator. Right nineteen eighty five where

56:11

a democracy baby, Um, so

56:14

Mo knows he does have to hold or Doe knows

56:16

he just does have to hold an election. Um

56:20

correct, Yeah, he knows he's

56:22

got to hold an election. Um. But he

56:24

also knows that like I'm not gonna

56:27

have a real election. So he does

56:29

the kind of ship dictators do, right, you know,

56:32

um he and he cracks down. Every

56:34

time political parties will rise up, We'll find excuses

56:36

to arrest them. He's constantly arresting

56:38

and purging people, including other folks he'd carried

56:40

out the coup with um and obviously

56:43

a lot of resistance starts to bubble up to his regime,

56:46

and the nexus of anti dough sentiment forms

56:48

around a woman named Ellen Johnson Surleaf.

56:52

She's an economist who had been educated in the

56:54

US and had worked as an executive for City

56:56

Bank. She decided to run for election

56:58

alongside Jackson f Doe, who is

57:00

not related to Sergeant Dough right separate

57:03

does um and they's

57:06

she comes back. She comes back. That's

57:08

one of the things she gets a lot of, like early

57:11

kind of respect is she like leaves the US

57:13

to go back to Liberia to run. Um,

57:16

So they run for president with

57:19

the Liberian Action Party. Uh.

57:21

The election is held largely so the

57:23

bad Dough. I'm gonna call him good Dough and bad

57:25

Dough from this point on because it's going to get too confusing

57:27

in the ways. Uh. And Doe

57:30

is doing this because there's like ninety three million dollars

57:32

in US AID funds um that he

57:34

wants, but he has to do an election first.

57:37

Uh. He

57:39

wins the election, but like immediately

57:42

in every like independent observer is like, well

57:44

that was completely fraudules us.

57:47

The U S decides to work with Bad Dough anyway,

57:50

because again he's smarter than Tolbert. He's

57:52

not gonna like say no to the U S Military establishment.

57:55

So Doe sets to work carrying out happily

57:57

carrying out an ethnic cleansing in Nimba County

58:00

where Jackson Doe had called home because he gets to see

58:02

where people are voting against him, He

58:04

burns their ballots and then he sends his soldiers

58:07

to massacre them. Um, so

58:09

he most was the way just to see where he's hated

58:11

the most. Yep, yep, hell

58:14

man. So his you

58:16

know, again, the troops carrying out these massacres are

58:18

mostly krawn like him, right, because again he's

58:20

very much and there's other ethnic groups that are kind of allied

58:23

with the Krown. Right. Um, this does

58:25

really break down on like racial lines,

58:27

tribal lines, kind of whatever you want to call it. Um.

58:30

But so he sends his krawn soldiers into this region

58:32

which is inhabited by other other people's

58:35

um, and he massacres a shipload of them because

58:37

he sees them as like enemies of the regime.

58:40

Um. And whenever he captures men who

58:42

he had been like political leaders

58:44

agitating against him, Uh, he'll

58:46

have them mutilated and have their corpses

58:48

paraded through the streets so soldiers can

58:50

cut off pieces to eat or keep his souvenirs.

58:53

Um. This isn't good for the

58:56

economy, Sharine. Now I'm not an

58:58

economic expert, but I I I'm not

59:00

surprised to hear that this was like bad for

59:02

money. Um, you might

59:04

not want to invest in a country where this is

59:06

going on quite as much, you know, Um,

59:10

and versions exists. Remember so this, Yeah,

59:12

tell, this is able to be down. People

59:15

are looking at this and like, well, maybe I'm gonna

59:17

pause on some of those developed those building

59:19

funds for a moment. I might want to wait

59:22

until this parading corpses thing is over.

59:24

Yeah, so you know it shakes out. So

59:26

further economic problems are caused

59:28

by the fact that the Minister of Procurement shoe

59:31

designer Charles Taylor, had embezzled

59:33

something like a million designer. Yeah,

59:35

Chuck Taylor's he's the he's the

59:37

one of what he's the guy who designed the Chuck

59:40

Taylor was Charles Taylor.

59:42

Well, he's the he's the Minister of Procurement

59:44

for Liberia. Yeah. Why did you

59:46

say that? As if it was like, like, well,

59:48

how is that thing? You know? You've heard of Chuck

59:50

Taylor? Yeah, but like I didn't know the

59:53

inventor of fucking converse. Yeah,

59:56

yeah, he's he's going to be He's a Liberian

59:58

warlord. Don't look that up. Is

1:00:00

that something everyone knows? Again? I just

1:00:03

like, yeah, definitely common

1:00:05

knowledge. I'm

1:00:08

willfully ignorant so much of my time, so much

1:00:10

of my my life. I just can't handle this. That

1:00:13

was a lie, Sharine. I'm sorry. I can't do this to you

1:00:15

anymore. Yeah, I was lying. I

1:00:18

just it was just a joke. Well, no, there's

1:00:20

a Charles Taylor and embezzels a million dollars from

1:00:22

Liberry government later. The

1:00:24

world is so fucked up and crazy. I don't believe

1:00:26

anything you say, Like was

1:00:29

going to burn my fucking com first,

1:00:31

after this fucking episode, I can't believe it

1:00:33

was it was it was just a joke because it get like

1:00:35

Chuck Taylor's Charles Taylor. I thought it

1:00:38

was funny. I know, I know I'm

1:00:40

gonna get roads the internet. I don't care

1:00:43

what I mean, Sharine, This is why I tell

1:00:45

everybody one lie. You should never trust

1:00:47

me, never trust Robert, never

1:00:50

trust you. I mean yeah,

1:00:52

maybe maybe there's a level of me that trusts

1:00:54

you. This isn't on you. This is

1:00:56

on me, Sharine. Firestone

1:00:59

like Firestone, it's already like that's

1:01:01

all real. That's why we provide sources.

1:01:03

Look, that's okay, that's a big I know the Firesto

1:01:05

thing is real, but it doesn't mean it's so far out

1:01:07

that another fucking big American brand

1:01:10

is rooted. I know, because like shoes and rubber.

1:01:12

I mean again, this we we could I

1:01:15

could have just gone through with this and just waited

1:01:17

for people on Twitter to get really or ready,

1:01:20

you wouldn't do that. I felt bad, bad

1:01:24

job, I felt bad. I felt that we've

1:01:27

lied to me too. I lied to everybody

1:01:29

once. I mean, I, well,

1:01:31

now I haven't lied to you yet, Shrine, but I'll figure one

1:01:33

out. Lying is the most human quality you

1:01:36

can have. So it's fine. I understand.

1:01:38

Uh, I'm

1:01:41

just so excited. I'm

1:01:44

just gonna it's okay, don't Sharine,

1:01:46

trust me. I'm the one who's going to look bad as it

1:01:49

was. No, it's I mean, because you were

1:01:51

so earnest about being angry about the

1:01:53

converse. Guy lord, It's

1:01:57

okay. This is to all my gullible people

1:01:59

out there. Is that you. I hear you, and

1:02:02

I have to say it would have been really funny if if

1:02:05

the actual Chuck Taylor guy had been a

1:02:07

Liberian warlord like that would have been hilarious.

1:02:10

So Taylor had been born

1:02:12

in Liberia, but his dad was an Americo Liberian

1:02:15

um his mom though he's he's

1:02:17

mixed. He's mixed kind of between Americo

1:02:20

Liberian and his mom is a member of the indigenous

1:02:22

Gola tribe. Now that said, he is

1:02:24

raised as an Americo Liberian. Right,

1:02:26

Like the fact that his dad is means that, Um,

1:02:29

there's obviously one of the things you have to say about

1:02:31

Liberia, like kind of the racial cast system is

1:02:33

not nearly what it is, and like colonies

1:02:35

that are are run by white people. Um,

1:02:38

so Taylor benefits even though his mom is Indigenous

1:02:40

and his dad is Americo Liberian. He's raised Americo

1:02:43

Liberrian. He attends college in the United

1:02:45

States, Bentley College in Massachusetts.

1:02:47

Somebody else will have gone there and be like, holy

1:02:49

shit, once we talk about this guy, Holy ship,

1:02:51

this dude went to my alma mater. Um

1:02:54

he's but but the point is his early life, he's

1:02:56

thoroughly Americanized. He speaks English,

1:02:58

fairy like he I mean obviously, actually I should

1:03:01

I should note here they all speak English.

1:03:03

English is the official language of Liberia.

1:03:05

If you go to Liberia, like you

1:03:08

don't need to learn. And now some of the like there's

1:03:11

a patois like accents are kind of different, like

1:03:13

sort of like it is in in um parts

1:03:15

of Louisiana, but it's English. Like

1:03:17

you listen to these like interviews with

1:03:19

warlords and ship they're they're all speaking in

1:03:21

English and stuff. Um, because again

1:03:23

it's a colony of the United States, right, Um,

1:03:27

but he is he's not just like he's he's

1:03:29

incredibly Americanized. Um.

1:03:31

His previous political experience came from

1:03:33

rising through the ranks of a Liberian ex pact

1:03:36

organization in Philadelphia. Uh.

1:03:38

And when he flies back or so,

1:03:41

he goes back to Liberia

1:03:44

after Doe's revolution and gets a job in

1:03:46

the government, and then he embezzles a bunch of money and he

1:03:48

gets kicked out. So he flees to the US because

1:03:50

he doesn't want to get executed and paraded through the streets.

1:03:53

Doe tries to extradite him because he had

1:03:55

almost certainly actually committed the crimes

1:03:58

he was being accused of. Um. Charles

1:04:00

Taylor is initially arrested by the United

1:04:03

States, and we keep him in a correctional facility

1:04:05

for two years while we're trying to decide what to do

1:04:07

to the man. But then, and I'm gonna quote

1:04:09

again from the Liberian Civil Wars, the

1:04:11

story grows rather murky. Taylor escaped

1:04:13

from Plymouth House on the evening of September

1:04:16

fifteenth, nineteen eighty five, apparently

1:04:18

with the help of the CIA, responding

1:04:20

to an obvious reluctance on the part of the government

1:04:22

to extradite Taylor to face almost certain execution

1:04:24

at the moment he landed. It is also possible

1:04:27

that the CIA felt Taylor might be useful, because

1:04:29

if someone replaced or toppled Dough, Taylor

1:04:32

certainly seemed the most likely to do so. Either

1:04:34

way, The popular version of the story has it that Taylor

1:04:36

and three fellow escape pas cut through prison

1:04:39

bars with hack saws before lowering themselves

1:04:41

to the ground outside on knotted bedsheets.

1:04:43

More realistically, perhaps arrangements were

1:04:45

made for his cell to be left unlocked one night and

1:04:48

he simply walked out. He was picked up

1:04:50

by his wife, Jewel, at a local freeway exit,

1:04:52

after which he dropped out of sight for a few

1:04:54

months. Later, he reappeared in Ghana, having traveled

1:04:56

to Africa via Mexico and Ghana.

1:04:59

He was arrested in me on suspicion that he

1:05:01

was somehow involved with the CIA, which

1:05:03

tends to lean credence to the latter version of his escape.

1:05:05

Taylor's lawyer at the time was Ramsey Clark,

1:05:08

the former U s Attorney General, so

1:05:10

certainly there was money and influence floating

1:05:12

around somewhere no charges were ever brought

1:05:14

against Taylor in America for his escape.

1:05:17

So he gets over to Ghana. Um

1:05:19

and while he's in the US, he spends

1:05:21

two years in custody. Right, he gets the

1:05:24

CIA kind of smuggles him out. Well, all this is happening.

1:05:27

Doe is in power in Liberia, but there are constant

1:05:29

coup attempts, right, or at least attempts

1:05:32

at coup attempts that Doe cracks down

1:05:34

on. And every time there's a threat to his

1:05:36

reign, he does the same thing. He sends

1:05:38

his soldiers to that region of the country and he massacres

1:05:41

all of the men that he can find, you know, um

1:05:44

and often like you know, rapes the women, kills

1:05:46

baby like it's ugly. Ship, it's it's

1:05:48

ethnic cleansing kind of, it's really nasty.

1:05:51

Um. So by nine seven, Doe

1:05:53

has murdered a lot of people, um

1:05:56

and he has repeatedly purged ethnic groups.

1:05:58

Um. So that's around the time

1:06:00

when Charles Taylor makes his way to

1:06:03

the Ivory Coast and he meets

1:06:06

a guy who's like a friend of the Avorian

1:06:08

president who decides to back him

1:06:10

and his plans to overthrow dough. Now

1:06:12

by this point, Doe has made the

1:06:14

major mistake of pissing off Momar Addafi.

1:06:17

Um, because he again he's

1:06:20

on the side of the United States, right, Um,

1:06:23

and he the United

1:06:25

States. I don't know if you're aware of this, not big fans

1:06:27

of momark A Daffi. Yeah,

1:06:30

So Doe expels Libyan

1:06:32

diplomats from his capital. Now this

1:06:35

is a problem because not only is Kaddafi

1:06:37

kind of a petty dude, he also runs a gigantic

1:06:39

pan ideological training camp for insurgents.

1:06:42

Right, if you are an insurgent and you

1:06:44

want to learn how to build bombs and shoot people,

1:06:47

Momarkaddafi's got you. You're the i Ra,

1:06:50

You're the your Palestinian or you're like he don't

1:06:52

give a ship like Momar will take as long as you're

1:06:54

like cool with Momar, He'll he'll train

1:06:56

your dudes, you know, Ummary

1:07:00

one eight hundred momer for all of your insurgent

1:07:02

needs. So he

1:07:05

and he and Taylor. So Momar

1:07:07

Kadafi do pisses him off, and so Kadafi

1:07:10

is like, one, I'm gonna get back at that son of a

1:07:12

bitch. Um and he hears there's this motherfucker

1:07:14

named Taylor who's got connections

1:07:16

to the government of you know, in the

1:07:18

Ivory Coast and ship. Um. And

1:07:21

so he and Taylor get into contact, and in very

1:07:23

short order a number of militants

1:07:26

who are like on Taylor's side. These

1:07:28

are like generally like Liberians who've

1:07:30

had to flee the country because they were also associated

1:07:32

with some sort of rebellion or another that Taylor's

1:07:35

gathering to him, these folks go over and get

1:07:37

trained in Libya, right, um,

1:07:39

and again, good chance there's some CIA

1:07:41

involvement here. It's very murky. Um.

1:07:44

I assume they're everywhere. So yeah, they're always

1:07:46

doing some ship. I mean, they certainly seems to have like

1:07:48

helped Taylor get out right. Kadafi's

1:07:51

maybe more a bigger part of like how he actually

1:07:53

gets to carry out as it's whatever. On

1:07:55

December nine, Charles Taylor

1:07:58

and a hundred and sixty eight insurgents in her

1:08:00

Liberia through uh the Ivory or

1:08:02

yeah, the Ivory Coast. Um Chuck

1:08:05

makes an announcement through the BBC using

1:08:07

a satellite phone he'd been given by somebody

1:08:10

uh again who knows where he gets

1:08:12

this kind of ship, that he has no personal ambitions

1:08:14

for higher office. He just wants to liberate his

1:08:16

people from President dough open

1:08:19

civil war results resulting in bits

1:08:21

in breaking out in kind of bits and pieces

1:08:23

here and there um and gradually, like

1:08:27

Taylor's forces start to make progress. They're

1:08:29

pretty well organized, their competent. They expand

1:08:31

quickly, and more and more of the country

1:08:33

starts to fall out of doze ability to

1:08:36

control because he's not really popular because

1:08:38

of all the massacres, so he starts

1:08:40

having his security forces round up hundreds and

1:08:42

hundreds of residents of the capital from ethnic

1:08:44

groups he viewed as rebellious, and these

1:08:46

people just disappear. Some of them do show back

1:08:48

up headless on the streets, so citizens

1:08:51

of the capital start greeting each other with the phrase

1:08:53

glad to see you've still got your head um.

1:08:57

Members of the yeah and members of the ethnic

1:08:59

groups target by dose purges start flooding into

1:09:01

Taylor's growing army. Right they get away

1:09:03

from wherever the president controls, and a

1:09:06

lot of them pick up guns. As

1:09:08

they won victories, they replaced the initial weapons

1:09:10

that they invade with the armies mostly equipped

1:09:12

with these old Soviet Soviet like World

1:09:15

War two Heiress submachine guns pps

1:09:18

h s, and they gradually

1:09:20

replaced these with U S M sixteens

1:09:22

from Doze dead US backed fighters UM.

1:09:25

And once his regular forces start to

1:09:27

get real rifles, he hands these submachine

1:09:29

guns off to little kids uh and he

1:09:32

uses them to form what he calls his small

1:09:34

boy units. Quote from

1:09:36

the Liberian Civil Wars. The bulk

1:09:38

of advancing forces were locally recruited youth,

1:09:41

handed guns, and fortified by alcohol and cheaply

1:09:43

sourced Chinese amphetamines we known colloquially

1:09:46

as bubbles, and of course a great deal of

1:09:48

local marijuana. In much the same way as the

1:09:50

Kron dominated AFL that's Doze

1:09:52

Party took excruciatingly violent revenge

1:09:54

against g O and Mano. These are other

1:09:56

ethnic groups roving bands of armed youth

1:09:58

singled out Krawn and and Dingo for similar

1:10:01

treatment. Newsreel images of the Liberian

1:10:03

Civil War, as the initial coup of inevitably

1:10:05

be came, came to be characterized by images

1:10:08

of children and young people, both male

1:10:10

and female, dressed in civilian clothes, often

1:10:12

in wigs and bizarre fancy dress, enacting

1:10:15

scenes that might have been extracted from Lord of the

1:10:17

Flies. These were the first high profile

1:10:19

displays of child soldiers at work in the African

1:10:21

context of war and the spectacle was

1:10:23

utterly terrifying. So

1:10:26

that's where we're going to end for today.

1:10:29

What a high note to just leave me on the

1:10:31

vibes. Yeah, um,

1:10:35

well I was hoping, I mean, I was hoping

1:10:37

there's gonna be more more witchy stuff. To be

1:10:39

honest, that stuff has been interesting to me. There

1:10:42

will be next episode. Uh, this is not

1:10:44

going to be an interesting or it'll be interesting.

1:10:46

It's not going to be much of a you'll want to go

1:10:48

elsewhere to learn and detail some more discussion

1:10:50

of that. But we will talk about kind

1:10:53

of one expression of these things from people

1:10:55

who are like power hungry grifters. Um,

1:10:58

you're not going to get a great sense of what the actual

1:11:00

religious practices were among these

1:11:03

people, but you will

1:11:05

see some folks doing fucked up

1:11:07

ship and then deciding to be

1:11:09

born again Christians. Yeah. At this point, I'm

1:11:11

not like, at a certain point

1:11:13

when this is just me theorizing

1:11:17

and not don't take any of these blankets statements

1:11:19

seriously. But I would imagine that at

1:11:22

a certain point, when like a religion or a practice

1:11:24

is just used to gain power, it's more

1:11:26

used for the violence versus the belief you

1:11:28

know, I'm not like, I'm not convinced so many people

1:11:30

believe it. I'm just convinced they're using it to benefit

1:11:33

themselves or like, you know, so that's just like, well,

1:11:35

it's it's one of those things like there's you

1:11:38

know, you talk about cannibalism and another kind

1:11:40

of beliefs that involved taking pieces of the body.

1:11:42

Certainly, thousands of years ago there were groups

1:11:44

doing that in Africa, as there were in many other parts of

1:11:46

the world for different reasons. But the

1:11:48

kind what you're going to see during the Liberian

1:11:51

Civil War has about as much

1:11:53

is related to those those indigenous

1:11:56

belief practices in the same way

1:11:58

that like a modern Baptist

1:12:01

revival meeting is related to

1:12:04

a Christian church meeting in

1:12:06

like eight hundred and fifty a D you

1:12:09

know, to like a church service in Yeah,

1:12:11

there is like a line of descendants from

1:12:14

one to the other, but it's changed

1:12:16

tremendously over time for a variety

1:12:18

of reasons, and someone partaking

1:12:21

in the eight D church service

1:12:23

might look at a modern one and be like, well, I don't really

1:12:25

know what the fuss going on here, you know, Yeah,

1:12:30

anyway, any plugs at the end here?

1:12:32

Shren I'm Sharine

1:12:36

allegedly. Allegedly

1:12:40

I'm on Twitter, show hero six, like six

1:12:43

Instagram, Mr shar Hero. Um,

1:12:45

I'm honestly like, I'm not really on the internet

1:12:48

much these days. I'm

1:12:51

trying have an impulsively

1:12:53

everything all the time. But I think I just need it just

1:12:55

for this kind of stuff. But

1:12:59

follow me you want. I'm posting less

1:13:01

but the stuff I post gold, you know, so

1:13:03

just stick around for that. Yeah,

1:13:06

but I will say I was thinking

1:13:08

about this as you were teaching me all these

1:13:10

terrible things. Um, It's

1:13:13

like, like sometimes I get frustrated,

1:13:16

for example, that no one knows

1:13:19

the history of Palestine or Syria or

1:13:21

whatever, and there's like selective things, as you said,

1:13:23

like people can there's so many there's

1:13:25

so much bullshit and violence and terrible

1:13:27

things in the world. You can only learn so much about

1:13:29

it. You can only handle so much of it. So I,

1:13:31

for one, I am happy I know about this terrible

1:13:34

thing because I maybe

1:13:37

was ignorant before. And I hope people feel that way

1:13:39

when they learn about other child terrible things. Yeah,

1:13:42

you know, context is important, not

1:13:44

because it mitigates bad things, but it's

1:13:46

like it would be fucked up to just

1:13:48

get angry about the I r A bombing

1:13:50

a bar and not recognize

1:13:53

that that act of terrorism was directly

1:13:55

influenced by the genocide of half of the

1:13:58

Irish population, Right, that be

1:14:00

fucked up. Likewise, yes,

1:14:03

it's bad too. It's it's certainly

1:14:05

bad to like shoot missiles into

1:14:07

cities like uh Hamasta's.

1:14:10

But also that's not happening in a vacuum,

1:14:13

and it's happening in response to missiles being shot

1:14:15

into there and a bunch of other fun up this history

1:14:17

of like really horrible things. And likewise,

1:14:20

it is bad to make recruit

1:14:23

child soldiers and carry out human sacrifices.

1:14:26

It's not they didn't just decide to

1:14:28

do that because Liberians are brutal.

1:14:30

All of this occurred as part of a continuum

1:14:33

of things that is heavily influenced by

1:14:35

US policy and is heavily influenced

1:14:38

by colonialism. Um. Again,

1:14:40

it's just it's not a matter of like saying,

1:14:42

well, this isn't bad because of this bad thing. It's

1:14:44

a matter of you don't understand what's happening

1:14:47

if you if you're only focused on one part

1:14:49

of this picture. And the thing is the information

1:14:51

we all receive is usually funneled through a

1:14:54

white supremacist, fucking colonial

1:14:57

you know what I mean, Like, it's all funneled through a different

1:14:59

a certain ends to make us think certain

1:15:01

people are good. So people are bad. So I

1:15:04

don't know, use your brains. I suppose

1:15:06

I will just mind too. I don't think

1:15:08

fucking Converse are evil. Yeah

1:15:11

yeah, destroy your Converse shoes,

1:15:13

UM, light their headquarters on fire,

1:15:17

hunt down their corporate representatives in

1:15:19

the street. No vengeance can be enough

1:15:21

for Converse. Um Robert. On

1:15:23

another note, we should probably plug

1:15:26

two new podcasts on cool Zone Media that

1:15:28

that are recently out, shouldn't We We

1:15:30

have what are now Sophie real

1:15:33

quick sidebar? What

1:15:36

is a podcast? All right? So this

1:15:40

does not know where that's going. I

1:15:42

was like, is he actually doing this? It's like an edit note?

1:15:45

No, okay, no, no, this is this is

1:15:47

a bit. But also this is why I'm in charge. We

1:15:50

have to there's Sophie. This

1:15:52

is like ten of why you're in charge.

1:15:56

We have to podcasts and cool Zone

1:15:58

Media that you should check out if you haven't checked matter already.

1:16:00

We have a Ghost Church by Jamie

1:16:02

Loftus, which is a ghost church,

1:16:05

fascinating podcast about American spiritually,

1:16:08

Yes we are. And we also

1:16:11

have a Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff hosted

1:16:13

by Margaret Killjoy that is in

1:16:15

fact about cool people who did

1:16:17

cool stuff. It's like it's like the allegedly

1:16:21

the uplifting version of whatever. Then this podcast

1:16:23

is you know what I mean? Like, yeah, it's

1:16:26

great. Actually, Sharine,

1:16:28

there's some really cool people who

1:16:30

do some really cool stuff in this next

1:16:34

Are you familiar with the story of Lizza

1:16:36

Strata? I stopped

1:16:38

talking, Robert, okay, um,

1:16:40

but yeah, check check those podcasts out, Sharina.

1:16:42

Sharina actually works on Cool People Who Did Cool

1:16:45

Stuff and she and

1:16:47

both Robert and Sharin are guests

1:16:49

or upcoming guests depending on when this drops

1:16:51

on the show, so check it out. We'm

1:16:54

so happy, Sharine working with Margaret

1:16:56

has taught you the most important thing about being an anarchist,

1:16:58

which is ang allegedly before

1:17:05

ye in my vocab forever, and

1:17:07

that is the episode. H

1:17:30

h H.

1:17:42

Behind the Bastards is a production of cool

1:17:44

Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media,

1:17:46

visit our website cool zone media dot

1:17:48

com, or check us out on the I

1:17:51

Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

1:17:53

you get your podcasts.