Speaker 1: Mmm, Hello friends, I am Robert Evans, and this is
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you everything
Speaker 1: you don't know about the very worst people in all
Speaker 1: of history. Now, my guest today is a personal friend
Speaker 1: of mine, former roommate, UH, current and former colleague, David
Speaker 1: Christopher Bell. Hello, Robert. David is a writer, a podcaster,
Speaker 1: one of the two heads of the Gamefully Unemployed Network,
Speaker 1: which you can find on Patrion Dave. Anything else you
Speaker 1: want to introduce about yourself? No, you got it right.
Speaker 1: I also have been writing for bunny Ers dot Com,
Speaker 1: which is mcaulay culkins uh lifestyle website. David is McCauley
Speaker 1: Culkin's personal biographer. Yeah. Now, I am his spiritual guru
Speaker 1: though fantastic. He's also been taking care of my cat
Speaker 1: for months, which I feel like readers should know. Great cat,
Speaker 1: really solid cat. UH. Now, today, David, we are going
Speaker 1: to talk about a gentleman and a scholar UH named
Speaker 1: momark At Daffi. Great name. What do you know about
Speaker 1: momarkt Daffi, great name. That's pretty much I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this a lot since you asked me to be
Speaker 1: on this. Momar is like a great name, solid name right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Kaddafi is a solid last name. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. Um,
Speaker 1: he did stuff in Libya and it didn't well for him.
Speaker 1: It did not Yeah, that's about it. I know his
Speaker 1: country once uh asked a scientist to make him a
Speaker 1: bomb in ve and the scientists to make a time
Speaker 1: machine instead. Um, really really screwed over the Libyans there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were very angry. Yeah, Doc Brown. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: a that's the extent of my knowledge. Well, yeah, Momar
Speaker 1: was the leader of Libya for forty years. Uh. He
Speaker 1: was executed in the street in two thousand eleven by
Speaker 1: a partisan mob. And that's uh, that's that's what I
Speaker 1: would I would guess most people listening right now know
Speaker 1: about Momarkadaffi. Um. The more detailed story, which a bit
Speaker 1: we're about to get into, is the tale of probably
Speaker 1: the craziest person to ever run a country, and not
Speaker 1: not like Hitler crazy, where you have like this very
Speaker 1: cohesive idea about the world and history and you're trying
Speaker 1: to like make this like like crazy. Isn't he Probably
Speaker 1: I don't even know, Like I don't I don't even
Speaker 1: know how to. I'm just gonna read you twenty one
Speaker 1: pages about the guy. Uh. So you know, we live
Speaker 1: in a time with political extremes right now in the
Speaker 1: United States. That fact is obvious enough that even saying
Speaker 1: it is like yielding to cliche. And in times like these,
Speaker 1: extreme men with extreme plans and very little relevant experience
Speaker 1: can wind up in charge of the destiny of millions.
Speaker 1: That basic story has played out a lot of times
Speaker 1: throughout history, but never quite like it did during the
Speaker 1: reign of Momarkadafi. He was a dictator and, like Saddam Hussein,
Speaker 1: a writer as well. But while Saddam used his novels
Speaker 1: to imagine a fantasy world far away from a rax
Speaker 1: troubled reality, Kaddafi actually based the Libyan state entirely on
Speaker 1: his favored fantasies. Now. Momar Mohammed Abu Minya Kaddafi was
Speaker 1: born in nineteen forty one or perhaps nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: in a little hamlet of tents near a town called
Speaker 1: Certain in the deserts of western Libya. No one knows
Speaker 1: exactly when he was born, because he lied about every
Speaker 1: aspect of his past, and also probably lied about his
Speaker 1: birthday so that he could join the military. Seems like
Speaker 1: a running theme. Having listened to this show. They like
Speaker 1: to they like to make their own history. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: never really know anything about these they're all they're all
Speaker 1: a little like Kudini, like they really they like the
Speaker 1: razzle dazzle there, or like the joker who was actually
Speaker 1: kind of a good way to look at Momar Kaddafi
Speaker 1: when I say he's crazy, he's like Heath Ledgers joke. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, like Hitler had a plan. Yeah, Momar was
Speaker 1: just he just was gonna see what happens. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: had a plan, but it was not wasn't a great plan.
Speaker 1: It kept changing. It was yeah, we'll we'll get into that.
Speaker 1: I'm getting ahead of myself. Uh so he was a
Speaker 1: better one. Um which are like sort of wandering nomadic
Speaker 1: desert people, kind of the original Arabs. Uh. He was
Speaker 1: the only son of a goat hurder named Abu Minyar
Speaker 1: and his wife Ayesha. Neither of Aaddafi's parents could read.
Speaker 1: He had three older sisters, but otherwise the fictional figure
Speaker 1: his childhood most resembled would probably be Ray from Star Wars.
Speaker 1: Because Libya had been an Italian colony right up until
Speaker 1: World War Two, when it became a battle ground between
Speaker 1: the Axis and the Allies. So as a child, Kadafi
Speaker 1: and his family would wander the desert, finding empty mm
Speaker 1: O casings, pieces of downed planes, destroyed tanks, and like
Speaker 1: taking scrap off of them and selling it like that
Speaker 1: was his his early childhood. So yeah, like Ray from
Speaker 1: Star Wars basic to Simon Pagan, Yeah, costume exactly exactly. Yes,
Speaker 1: Simon Pegg does come into the story a number of times. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: aside from occasionally rooting through crash stucas in p. Fifty
Speaker 1: one Mustangs, Kadafi's early life was basically the same as
Speaker 1: the life of a Libyan born a thousand years earlier.
Speaker 1: His family mostly lived in tents around an oasis. His
Speaker 1: early education was given by a wandering priest who taught
Speaker 1: him to memorize versus of the Koran. So that's, you know,
Speaker 1: young sounds kind of awesome. No, do your education, but
Speaker 1: wandering anything like I'm picturing something very probably way more
Speaker 1: like magical than what it actually was. It was probably
Speaker 1: more boring. But yeah, I mean, I wish, I wish
Speaker 1: if I could change one thing in time for Momar Kadaffi,
Speaker 1: it would be to have that wandering priest had been
Speaker 1: a wandering karate master, and then it's a very different story. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: changed a lot of history. Yeah. Uh So. In nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four, young Momar Kadafi convinced his dad to let
Speaker 1: him go to school, which is something he has in
Speaker 1: common with Saddan Hussein, having to beg his family to
Speaker 1: let him learn how to read and stuff. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: just want to learn. Um. The school was so far
Speaker 1: away from his home that he had to live in
Speaker 1: town while he attended classes. He slept at a mosque
Speaker 1: every night and went back home on the weekends, walking
Speaker 1: fifteen miles each way. That sucks. Yeah, that's really rough.
Speaker 1: That's less. I I like the wandering priests like he
Speaker 1: comes to you. I don't wanna. I don't want to
Speaker 1: travel that much to learn. You have to commute every
Speaker 1: week to get to school. No, no, I would not
Speaker 1: have gone to school under the circumstances. So school was tough,
Speaker 1: but it gave Momar a chance to develop his first, last,
Speaker 1: and greatest love. Ranting about politics. In nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: the Egyptian government had been overthrown by a group of
Speaker 1: Arab nationalist army officers headed by a guy named Gamal
Speaker 1: Abdul nas Kadafi fell in love with NASA's politics, which
Speaker 1: is like Arab panner of nationalism. All the Arab states
Speaker 1: need to form one new country again like there was
Speaker 1: in the days of the Ottoman Like, that's the idea
Speaker 1: that Kadafi loved as a kid. Um. So he started
Speaker 1: memorizing NASA's speeches and reciting them to other kids at school.
Speaker 1: Rather than beating him up, his classmates started carrying around
Speaker 1: a small wooden stool so he could stand on it
Speaker 1: and speak. Um. That's Kadafi's version of the story. That
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like children. It doesn't sound like kids. Having
Speaker 1: been a child, I think we would have thrown rocks
Speaker 1: at him. Yeah, but who knows. He was a charismatic guy.
Speaker 1: The fifties and sixties were a time of growing and
Speaker 1: exploding and rest across Africa at the unjustnice of colonialism.
Speaker 1: Kadafi organized protests, including a general strike every second of
Speaker 1: December to protest against the Balfour Declaration, which was that's
Speaker 1: the thing where Britain was like, there's going to be
Speaker 1: in Israel, and then there was an Israel was yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not a fan of Israel. Yeah. It's important to
Speaker 1: note that Our number one source on the life of
Speaker 1: young Kadafi is yeah, adult Kadafi. Um. It's also important
Speaker 1: to note though, that everybody that's been interviewed from his
Speaker 1: childhood in early life says that he was like electrifying
Speaker 1: to listen to, very charismatic, good looking young guy. There's
Speaker 1: older pictures I saw of him. I quickly, yeah, went
Speaker 1: on Wikipedia, and he seems like a good looking guy.
Speaker 1: He was a handsome fellow. He looked good in the uniform.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, his his dressing. We'll get into his
Speaker 1: fashion choices a little later. His his sense of style
Speaker 1: really evolved over the years. So yeah, it's not hard
Speaker 1: to imagine that young Kadafi might have actually been an
Speaker 1: anti colonial rabble rouser and popular speaker. Now when he
Speaker 1: grew up, one of his earliest memories is just being
Speaker 1: terrified of the sea because the Libyan people for the
Speaker 1: last three thousand years had just been invaded by an
Speaker 1: endless series of empire. So like that was a thing
Speaker 1: that he was scared of. He hated the ocean and
Speaker 1: he loved the desert with him on that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you are very on the record. Ocean it doesn't want
Speaker 1: us there. We have no reason to be there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't drink it, you can't breathe in it. It's
Speaker 1: there's nothing there for us. Stay out of the ocean
Speaker 1: filled with monsters. Momarkadafi would not disagree with you on
Speaker 1: any point there. Yeah, so far, I'm getting along. Um So,
Speaker 1: when he was a kid, or when he when he
Speaker 1: had been a little little kid, the Italians had been
Speaker 1: in charge of his country. Uh, and you know they
Speaker 1: had invaded in nineteen eleven and killed his grandfather. Then
Speaker 1: they'd carried out a brutal anti insurgency operation against Libyan
Speaker 1: civilians in ninety nine. They put two thirds of Libya's
Speaker 1: population into concentration camps. A lot of them died, we
Speaker 1: don't know how many. But yeah, that's just we just
Speaker 1: did an episode about concentration. Yeah, is it just yet
Speaker 1: one more country that in Europeans? Very em good God,
Speaker 1: it's easier to pick the countries that didn't ever have
Speaker 1: a concentrate camp in them, because there's like three. Um So. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Under Italian rule, Libyans couldn't receive anything beyond an elementary
Speaker 1: school education. Most of that education was dedicated to civilizing
Speaker 1: these savages with Italian values, which I assume are mostly
Speaker 1: based around Macaronian plumbing. I'm kissing, kissing your fingers when
Speaker 1: something is good, Yes, yes, And I can say that
Speaker 1: because my family is Italian. That is of our culture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty Italian. When this caused unrest, you know, they're
Speaker 1: not letting them get educated or talk thing. Dictator Benito
Speaker 1: Mussolini tried to charm the Libyans by declaring himself the
Speaker 1: Protector of Islam was one of his titles. Ah. He
Speaker 1: had a sword made in Tuscany and engraved by Libyan
Speaker 1: Jewish goldsmiths that he claimed was the Sword of Islam.
Speaker 1: When he declared himself Protector of Islam, Benito gave himself
Speaker 1: the sword in a huge ceremony. Just the whitest man
Speaker 1: thing to do. Yeah, like that is that is peak
Speaker 1: colonial as him. Oh yeah, that's that's top notch. It's
Speaker 1: really really something I'm doing, that Italian KISSI finger thing
Speaker 1: I just described. So yeah. Uh so Libya gained its
Speaker 1: independence from uh well, I mean obviously the Italians. It
Speaker 1: was taken over by the Italians in World War Two
Speaker 1: by the Allied forces. Uh. The new United Nation gave
Speaker 1: Libya it's independence in nineteen fifty one, the Western Powers
Speaker 1: appointed a king named Address to rule over the country
Speaker 1: because they trusted him to be their man in Libya. Uh.
Speaker 1: It just banned political parties and was sort of repressive,
Speaker 1: but his heart wasn't really in ruling. He didn't really
Speaker 1: care about being king. Okay, yeah, um. So Libya's new
Speaker 1: National Assembly wrote their first constitution that same year. Libya
Speaker 1: had never been a country before nineteen fifty one, so
Speaker 1: there wasn't any precedent for them being united. It had
Speaker 1: just been like there's some cities on the coast that
Speaker 1: kind of kept to themselves and people in the desert
Speaker 1: who kind of kept to themselves. It was just a place.
Speaker 1: It was just a place that's charming. I didn't know
Speaker 1: we could have that. Well, yeah, I mean it had
Speaker 1: been parts of other countries, a bunch of but yeah,
Speaker 1: and nobody had said like, you're you're part of this
Speaker 1: empire now. You're part of this empire now. But it
Speaker 1: was never like the people in the desert in the
Speaker 1: middle of Libya had never viewed themselves as the same
Speaker 1: thing as the people in Benghazi or Tripoli, and for
Speaker 1: that matter, the people in Tripoli and Benghazi didn't consider
Speaker 1: themselves all part of there was no I'm fucking Tripoli,
Speaker 1: it was they just had no history of being a thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so no one could agree where the capital would be,
Speaker 1: so they decided to rotate capitals every two years, between
Speaker 1: Tripli and Benghazi. This meant that every two years the
Speaker 1: whole federal government in diplomatic corps had to pack up
Speaker 1: and move across thousands of miles of brutal desert. So
Speaker 1: they chose the least convenient let's just do this the worst,
Speaker 1: the worst way, which makes our pick of d C
Speaker 1: as the American capital seem less dumb, where there's like,
Speaker 1: let's just pick a swamp in the middle of everyone,
Speaker 1: Like a lot of people died of malayre you. But
Speaker 1: it's smarter than switching capitals. And we committed, and yeah,
Speaker 1: we stuck to it. Yeah I'm sure now like now
Speaker 1: that we expanded the country and stuff, there's some better candidates,
Speaker 1: but no, we're sticking to d C. Yeah, now it's
Speaker 1: got history. Um okay. So for his part, King Addris
Speaker 1: did not want to be king. He refused to put
Speaker 1: his face on the money or have any landmark other
Speaker 1: than the airport named after him. So this was like
Speaker 1: a hobby. It was like just he was king, but
Speaker 1: he was like, I'm not really into it. He was
Speaker 1: like a high up leader in one of the cities,
Speaker 1: and the British were like, he had a lot of
Speaker 1: power in a region and he was friendly to the West,
Speaker 1: and the West was like, if we make this guy king,
Speaker 1: he'll let us take oil out and he'll let us
Speaker 1: keep air Force bass and in return we'll train up
Speaker 1: his army and we'll have British soldiers. They're protecting his reign.
Speaker 1: But the king didn't really give a ship about He
Speaker 1: didn't He liked running his area, the city he was in,
Speaker 1: but he had no ambition to run all of Libya. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he refused to have anything but the airport
Speaker 1: named after him. He spent most of his time at home,
Speaker 1: Uh and his sort of absence from the public sphere
Speaker 1: opened up opportunities for young, ambitious, politically minded men, young
Speaker 1: men like Momar Kadafi. Uh Kadafi was not happy with
Speaker 1: the status quo in his country. As a strict Muslim,
Speaker 1: he was outraged that foreigners lived there, brought alcohol into
Speaker 1: Libya and partied. As a teen, he led his fellow
Speaker 1: children to smash the windows of a hotel that had
Speaker 1: a bar in it. Uh King andres kept the company
Speaker 1: open to American and British basis. Kadafi had nothing but
Speaker 1: contempt for this and for westerners. Here's an anecdote about
Speaker 1: him from Allison parjetors Libya, The Rise and Fall of Kaddafi,
Speaker 1: which was one of the major sources for this podcast quote.
Speaker 1: One target for his invective was the English school inspector
Speaker 1: Mr Johnson, whom Kadafi dismissed as no more than an
Speaker 1: agent of imperialism. On one occasion, Kadafi refused to stand
Speaker 1: up when Mr Johnson entered the room and, in a
Speaker 1: provocative gesture, waived a key chain bearing the image of
Speaker 1: President Naser at the haughty inspector. Upon being ordered to
Speaker 1: leave the room, Kadafi coldly told the inspector, you are
Speaker 1: the one who should leave for good, not this room,
Speaker 1: but the whole country. Damn. Yeah. How old was he?
Speaker 1: It's like sixteen or something. Yeah, it's a classic teenager. Yeah. So.
Speaker 1: Kadafi's activism earned him a small but dedicated following other boys,
Speaker 1: Rather than convinced them to sell drugs for him like
Speaker 1: a decent American school child. He organized them into a
Speaker 1: revolutionary cell to overthrow the king. This is when he's
Speaker 1: in like the equivalent of high school. Recruits in the
Speaker 1: Kadafi's group had to be Arab nationalists and weren't allowed
Speaker 1: to drink alcohol or quote run after women. Kaddafi recounted,
Speaker 1: we used to meet under a palm tree near the
Speaker 1: seb Off Fortress using a light we had made with
Speaker 1: our hands. Under this light, I used to give my
Speaker 1: lessons in secret revolutionary organizations. Wow. Yeah, they're like they're
Speaker 1: like the straight edge kids in high school, um, who
Speaker 1: are like fun the government, but they're actually like planning
Speaker 1: to distrib the government. They're they're way more active and
Speaker 1: it's they they stick with it, you know. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean you gotta respect that I gave up most of
Speaker 1: the stuff I was believed in as a teenager when
Speaker 1: I was sixteen. Yeah, this is like his junior high
Speaker 1: school band. But he keeps keeps it rolling. And also
Speaker 1: he really does doesn't he commitment? It's important? Um so
Speaker 1: uh in nineteen oh, yeah, none of the young revolutionaries
Speaker 1: in Kadafi's cell were allowed to do anything fun while
Speaker 1: there was a government to overthrow nightclubs and gambling were
Speaker 1: banned for the members. Secrecy had to be total. Everyone
Speaker 1: was required to be all in for the revolution. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one, Kadafi attended a protest in Seba, the
Speaker 1: town where he went to school. He gave a speech
Speaker 1: attacking the British and American military bases in Libya. It
Speaker 1: was apparently an aggressive enough speech that the regime had
Speaker 1: him expelled from school entirely. This was a mistake. It
Speaker 1: only made Kadafe more dangerous. He left his family behind,
Speaker 1: walked to the coastal town of Misrata, and enrolled in
Speaker 1: school there. Then he started to recruit more young students.
Speaker 1: By the time he was an adult and old enough
Speaker 1: to join the military academy young Momart, Kadafi had built
Speaker 1: revolutionary cells in five cities. As a newly minted adult,
Speaker 1: he went to military school in Benghazi. Since the Libyan
Speaker 1: military at this point was basically just a Western puppet,
Speaker 1: his training was conducted mostly by a British soldiers. Kadafi
Speaker 1: refused to earn to learn English. One of his teachers,
Speaker 1: They're a guy named Colonel Ted Law, described him as
Speaker 1: inherently cruel. He claims Kaddafi murdered a fellow cadet, probably
Speaker 1: for being gay. This is a quote from that book Libya.
Speaker 1: The terrified cadet, his hands and feet bound, was dragged
Speaker 1: to a firing point where Kadafi in a group of
Speaker 1: other students began shooting at him before Libyan officer finished
Speaker 1: him off with a Kuda gras while the others laughed. So, okay,
Speaker 1: so I no longer like him, You're no longer on
Speaker 1: yet the turning point, right, because until this moment he
Speaker 1: didn't no hate crimes um crime free. Until this part.
Speaker 1: Kadafi's whole story is like that. There will be two
Speaker 1: things he'll do in a row. And you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: I agree with what you said. There's real self starters
Speaker 1: in the murders, and then yes, murder someone for being gay.
Speaker 1: That's that's real fucked up dai. Yeah, yeah, you're listening.
Speaker 1: Kadafi's lost the David Bell vote at this yas good
Speaker 1: to know, uh So Kadafi discipline was violent for everybody
Speaker 1: in the military school. At one point, Kadafi got in
Speaker 1: trouble for not keeping his mouth shut, and he was
Speaker 1: forced to crawl in his hands and knees over gravel
Speaker 1: wearing a backpack filled with sand in the hot desert
Speaker 1: sun so military schools rough for everybody, but roughest for
Speaker 1: the gay kids who get executed. H Throughout the whole period,
Speaker 1: Kadafi continued to work through work towards his revolution. He
Speaker 1: and his fellow cadets viewed the military as their gateway
Speaker 1: into power. But there was a problem. They were all
Speaker 1: just a bunch of cadets who would when they graduated
Speaker 1: to be low ranking officers. Known with any real power
Speaker 1: or knowledge wanted a thing to do with them. Their
Speaker 1: operational security was very bad, bad enough that the CIA
Speaker 1: had started to hear about them by nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 1: The CIA did not take Kadafi seriously because he just
Speaker 1: seemed like a dumb kid. So the West continued to
Speaker 1: suck out Libya's oil to you and use it as
Speaker 1: one big airstrip. Kadafi later recalled, our souls were in
Speaker 1: revolt against the back hardness enveloping our country and its land,
Speaker 1: whose best gifts and riches were being lost through plunder,
Speaker 1: and against the isolation imposed on our people in a
Speaker 1: vain attempt to hold it back from the path of
Speaker 1: the Arab people and from its greatest cause. So Uh
Speaker 1: Kadafie graduated military school, so did the kids he'd grown
Speaker 1: up with and turned into the members of his revolutionary cell. Uh.
Speaker 1: They named themselves the Free Unionist Officers Movement, and at
Speaker 1: first their ability to overthrow the government did not seem
Speaker 1: to be very good. It's they were as good a
Speaker 1: naming themselves as they were overthrowing the government. Um. They
Speaker 1: tried to hold meetings, but it was difficult to get
Speaker 1: everyone in the same place at the same time. Most
Speaker 1: of them didn't have cars, so it's like having a band.
Speaker 1: It is like yeah, yeah, having a band when you're
Speaker 1: all teenagers. Uh. They tried to get some senior officers
Speaker 1: on board with their plan, but none of those people
Speaker 1: wanted anything to do with them, and so for a
Speaker 1: while their revolutionary activities were mostly limited to stealing ammo
Speaker 1: and hidling, hiding it under piles of rocks and inside trees.
Speaker 1: There's one story one of the guys in Khadafi's group
Speaker 1: who went on to be his secretary of defense. Basically
Speaker 1: when he was a kid, had to his mom had
Speaker 1: to hide a bunch of AMMO that he'd stashed in
Speaker 1: the sewers because the police came looking for him. So like,
Speaker 1: that's the level of these guys are on were like
Speaker 1: their moms are helping them hide bullets. Um adorable, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is, it's cute. Um. Kadafi and his revolutionaries tried
Speaker 1: to schedule the overthrow of the government in early nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine. This got called off because of a concert.
Speaker 1: Um oh man. They set a new date, but this
Speaker 1: one got sucked up because someone in the military found
Speaker 1: out and put you know, the king on warned, warned
Speaker 1: the king. Um Kadafi and several of his friends were questioned,
Speaker 1: but nothing came of it. So the history of their
Speaker 1: revolution is basically an endless prate of near missus h.
Speaker 1: There was the time that Kadafi was driving back to
Speaker 1: Benghazi with a friend who got so into reciting verses
Speaker 1: from the Koran that he didn't see a giant cow
Speaker 1: had stepped in the middle of the road. The car
Speaker 1: rammed the cow, which somehow survived, but the car was totaled.
Speaker 1: So this is like a team comedy. Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like a team comedy about trying to overthrow the government.
Speaker 1: The occasional hate crime. Yeah, with sprinkling the occasional hate
Speaker 1: So basically American pie, just that movie. Yeah, Kaddafi's childhood
Speaker 1: was a lot like a Libyan American Libyan pie, which
Speaker 1: I think is baklava. Okay, yeah, seem right, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh So it turned out that all their many failures
Speaker 1: had helped him. Um. Colonel Aziz Shinnib, the third in
Speaker 1: command of the Libyan army, later said that he and
Speaker 1: his fellow senior officers knew about Kadafi's group and their
Speaker 1: plans and just ignored them. We always thought it was
Speaker 1: rubbish that Kaddafi and his group would never be able
Speaker 1: to do anything, which is not an unfair thing to
Speaker 1: assume based on what we've heard so far. Eventually, though,
Speaker 1: Kadafi and his revolutionary friends got their ship together enough
Speaker 1: to set a totally for real this time coup date
Speaker 1: September one, nineteen sixty nine. So we're going to get
Speaker 1: into that coup and of course the madness that came after.
Speaker 1: But first we have to sell some products and services.
Speaker 1: And you love things that I love the purchase, yeah, yeah, receipts,
Speaker 1: items just object objects in general. Well, the objects that
Speaker 1: are about to come on in through your earbuds are
Speaker 1: objects that if you buy them, it will support the show.
Speaker 1: So there, there we go, and we're back. We're talking
Speaker 1: about Momar Kadafi. We just got through his childhood, the
Speaker 1: formation of his revolutionary cell, and the setting of their
Speaker 1: final date to overthrow the king of Libya. I do
Speaker 1: want to note at this point, you know, there's a
Speaker 1: number of sources for this, including that great book Libya,
Speaker 1: a documentary from the BBC called Mad Dog about Kaddafi UH,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of others. So you can find all
Speaker 1: the sources for this podcast on our website, behind the
Speaker 1: Bastards dot com. I always encourage people to check up
Speaker 1: on us and read further. Um. So the date has
Speaker 1: been set, the coup has been planned for September one,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine. UH. Kadafi distributed plans for the revolution
Speaker 1: to all of the members in his revolutionary group. UH.
Speaker 1: He handed them out in envelope sealed with at wax.
Speaker 1: How how big is this group at this point? I
Speaker 1: think it's dozens and dozens of people. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: sizeable group. They're all over the country, not like hundreds
Speaker 1: though I don't think hundreds, but it's there's no I
Speaker 1: never found like an exact number of how many people
Speaker 1: were involved. So the coup had been postponed and delayed
Speaker 1: so many times that a lot of key members of
Speaker 1: the conspiracy did not believe it. When they got their letters,
Speaker 1: they thought it was a trap. So Kaddafi spent the
Speaker 1: last moments before starting the coup driving all around Libya
Speaker 1: convincing his men that yes, we're still planning to overthrow
Speaker 1: the king. So the whole thing was a comedy of
Speaker 1: errors mixed with a ship show, right, But he really
Speaker 1: wanted it to work. He really wanted to take aside
Speaker 1: from that hate crime. Like this is like an underdog
Speaker 1: story almost. It really is of like these group group
Speaker 1: of chuckle fox trying to have a revolution and this
Speaker 1: one guy who's like, really he just wants to overthrow
Speaker 1: the king and they're not good at it, but everyone
Speaker 1: else is so bad at everything that it works out,
Speaker 1: Which was again, this all has to start with aside
Speaker 1: from the hate cross side from I can't really just
Speaker 1: like throw away the hate crime. No, no, there will
Speaker 1: be more hate crimes as the story lengthens. So revolution
Speaker 1: day comes on the day one of his men there
Speaker 1: were radio stations they were supposed to take over in
Speaker 1: Tripoli and Benghazi. The guy who was supposed to take
Speaker 1: over the Tripoli radio station um and occupy it, couldn't
Speaker 1: find it, so several other revolutionaries helped him find it,
Speaker 1: and once they got there, they were shot at mistakenly
Speaker 1: by the soldiers who thought they were Israeli's invading the country.
Speaker 1: A tank commanded by one of the conspirators caught on
Speaker 1: fire while it was filled with explosives and AMMO. The
Speaker 1: driver barely managed to disconnect a wire in time to
Speaker 1: stop it from exploding. Well, all this went down, Kadafi
Speaker 1: was tearing us through the desert and a jeep to
Speaker 1: take over the Benghazi radio station. They came to a
Speaker 1: fork in the road, and here's a quote from the
Speaker 1: book Libya on what happened next. Kadafi took the left
Speaker 1: turn as planned, expecting the train of vehicles to follow him. However,
Speaker 1: in the excitement of the moment, the other drivers went
Speaker 1: hurtling down the right fork. He later recounted, I had
Speaker 1: stopped my jeep to await the rest of the column
Speaker 1: when I suddenly saw all the other vehicles tearing like
Speaker 1: demons towards the main road. Then it dawned on me
Speaker 1: that the entire guard units barracks were streaming along in
Speaker 1: one direction, and that the drivers, in their enthusiasm, were
Speaker 1: following one another without worrying much where they were supposed
Speaker 1: to be going. So this entire revolution could have been
Speaker 1: scored to Yaka exactly and then it litt it. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's probably all I can say before we get pulled
Speaker 1: for your infringement. Yeah, but it worked. The revolution worked
Speaker 1: despite not really knowing what they were doing. It just
Speaker 1: happened that the king was out of the country when
Speaker 1: this went down. None of the officers were prepared to
Speaker 1: defend a coup, and the Libyan military was not really
Speaker 1: a functional service at this point, so Kadafi and his
Speaker 1: young friends wound up overthrowing the government with very little
Speaker 1: bloodshed or fighting. Uh So let that. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: there's a lot of there's a lot to say about
Speaker 1: like leadership that start where it's just so dumb and
Speaker 1: like it can't possibly get better from here, when like
Speaker 1: there was like all every condition had to be perfect
Speaker 1: for them to do this, and it was basically everybody
Speaker 1: else's fault. It sounds like it was everybody else's fault.
Speaker 1: A minimally competent government and military would have stopped this
Speaker 1: in seconds. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Nobody was good at their job.
Speaker 1: This is like like the apocalypse now of revolutions, where
Speaker 1: everything goes wrong and yet it somehow works out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. And yeah, I think it's a good lesson.
Speaker 1: Other than the hate crime, there's a great lesson in
Speaker 1: this for kids, which is that you can sometimes succeed
Speaker 1: in rebelling against the state if you just show up. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which okay uh. At six thirty am on September one,
Speaker 1: nine Libyans with radios woke up to the sound of
Speaker 1: moll Mark Hutoffi's voice for the very first time, People
Speaker 1: of Libya, in response to your own you will fulfilling
Speaker 1: your most heartfelt wishes and answering your incessant demands for
Speaker 1: change and regeneration, and your longing to strive towards these ends.
Speaker 1: Listening to your incitement to rebel, your armed forces have
Speaker 1: undertaken the overthrow of the reactionary and corrupt regime, the
Speaker 1: stinch of which has sickened and horrified us all. From
Speaker 1: this day forward, Libya is a free, self governing republic.
Speaker 1: She will advance on the road to freedom, the path
Speaker 1: to unity and social justice, guaranteeing equality to all her citizens,
Speaker 1: and throwing wide in front of them the gates of
Speaker 1: honest employment, where injustice and exploitation will be banished, where
Speaker 1: no one will count himself master or servant, where he
Speaker 1: will be free brothers within a society in which, with
Speaker 1: God's help, prosperity and equality will be seen to rule us.
Speaker 1: All one exhausting thing to hear. Yeah, just get up
Speaker 1: the morning, there's been a revolution. I only had my
Speaker 1: fucking coffee. This is such a bullshit. Who is this guy?
Speaker 1: You want? So the forty year reign, if Momar Kadaffi
Speaker 1: had begun, well, I really expected it to be something
Speaker 1: more grand than what you've described, just a bunch of
Speaker 1: dumb kids who got lucky. Uh. If you were a
Speaker 1: regular Libyan at this time, you might have felt optimistic.
Speaker 1: The Western powers hadn't exactly done any good for the
Speaker 1: regular people, and the king had clearly sucked, So maybe
Speaker 1: you'd figure new he's an outsider, you know. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I have similar feelings right now. If we got
Speaker 1: read donned, part of me would be like, okay, let's
Speaker 1: try this alright, because yeah, like a bunch of people
Speaker 1: parachuting in like, oh, can't do they have Like how
Speaker 1: much worse could it be? Do they have healthcare? Like?
Speaker 1: Can I go to the doctor now? Yeah? Um? So
Speaker 1: you know. The bad news about the new regime was
Speaker 1: that Kadafi and his crew were a bunch of young
Speaker 1: men in their twenties and early thirties. They had very
Speaker 1: little experience of any kind. None of them had better
Speaker 1: than a high school education. Um. One of mom Marketoff's
Speaker 1: first sex in power was to promote himself to colonel
Speaker 1: and declare himself commandant of the Libyan army. Um. This
Speaker 1: makes him part of my favorite historical tradition, which is
Speaker 1: the fact that almost no one who's been called colonel
Speaker 1: in all of history has actually been a colonel. It's
Speaker 1: just something people call themselves. Can we be colonels? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's all it takes. You're a colonel. Now, colonel,
Speaker 1: I'm putting it on on a business card. You gotta
Speaker 1: get a cool hat. That is a requirements. You gotta
Speaker 1: get a sick ass hat to start calling yourself colonel.
Speaker 1: But I can do that. Yeah. So yeah, Kaddafi promotes
Speaker 1: himself to colonel. He's in charge of the Libyan army.
Speaker 1: Now you know, what would you do, Dave, if when
Speaker 1: you had been a teenager you and your friends had
Speaker 1: suddenly been in charge of the whole country. I feel
Speaker 1: like there'd be a point where I'd realize something over
Speaker 1: my head. Um, well, you're a humble man, that's true.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be a humble man if I successfully because
Speaker 1: I was a terrible person as a teenager. Yeh, teenagers
Speaker 1: are generally terrible. They're all monsters, and like I was
Speaker 1: all into punk rock and like, yeah, anarchy take it
Speaker 1: all day. So if I was in a position where
Speaker 1: I took over the government, I probably think I was
Speaker 1: real hot ship yeah, and be like, yeah, I'm going
Speaker 1: to run things away. I want to and have just
Speaker 1: the worst ideas. But I would never grow out of it.
Speaker 1: And I assume that's similar to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Like this is if you go through your life never
Speaker 1: being told hey, cut the ship. Um, you just stay
Speaker 1: a teenagerer your whole life. Yeah, if by the time
Speaker 1: you're barely where a normal person will be out of college,
Speaker 1: you run the country. Uh, you don't grow up? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's it's a little Joffrey. Yeah, he's yeah, he's
Speaker 1: he's he's a little got some Joffrey going on. Uh. So.
Speaker 1: One of Kadafi's first acts was to ban all political
Speaker 1: parties and all political activity outside of the government itself.
Speaker 1: This was not a big deal because the king had
Speaker 1: banned that sort of thing too. Uh In nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: he made party politics a crime punishable by death. Um,
Speaker 1: which doesn't sound as bad of decision right now as
Speaker 1: it as it was. Yeah. So, at first a revolutionary
Speaker 1: counsel took control of the country, with Momar sort of
Speaker 1: at its head. There was great excitement among the population,
Speaker 1: but it quickly became clear that the new leaders knew
Speaker 1: even less than the old ones. Kadafi immediately turned on
Speaker 1: his friends, attacking them for their incompetence and telling his
Speaker 1: comrades they didn't understand anything. He would insult his colleagues
Speaker 1: in front of their staff and canceled decisions as soon
Speaker 1: as they were made. This started before the regime was
Speaker 1: even a month old. So this is like if someone
Speaker 1: came along in like this country and said, like all
Speaker 1: the experts and elitists they don't know how to run
Speaker 1: this place. I'm gonna even though I have very little
Speaker 1: experience and then they buy some insane away they became
Speaker 1: running the country. Yeah, and it became very evident that
Speaker 1: they don't know how to do that. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: they attack the people around them who they had previously
Speaker 1: supported in order to deflect blame from the fact that
Speaker 1: they just don't know how to run. Again. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine such a thing. No, this is the only time
Speaker 1: it's ever happened. Um so uh Kadafi developed your reputation
Speaker 1: for making meetings, like setting up meetings and then making
Speaker 1: everyone else in the council wait for hours before he
Speaker 1: showed up. Often he wouldn't even show up. He would
Speaker 1: regularly schedule meetings for two am because he was a
Speaker 1: night owl. Because he was in his twenties, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is all a thing just a twenty year old
Speaker 1: person would be doing. We don't he might have been
Speaker 1: a little older than that, because we don't know his
Speaker 1: exact but he was very a young guy. But there's
Speaker 1: a reason, like in this country where like you have
Speaker 1: to be like thirty five to be president, Like, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a very clear reason and also a reason
Speaker 1: no thirty five year old has ever been elected because
Speaker 1: you're still probably not. I'm still not ready. I'm nearing
Speaker 1: that age and it's like, way, no, sir, Yeah, no, no.
Speaker 1: Just a couple of years ago, we were driving to
Speaker 1: our apartment and you guys were in the back of
Speaker 1: a truck and I kept slamming my foot on the
Speaker 1: break just to make you fly forward. Fun was that
Speaker 1: when we were like, had that weird keg? Yeah? Yeah
Speaker 1: that was fun. Yeah. Yeah. I shouldn't be president, is
Speaker 1: what I'm getting. Or we should both be president. Well,
Speaker 1: now there's a different idea. You could be my Pence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll be your puns fantastic. Our producer Sophie is shaking
Speaker 1: her head angrily. We're gonna do it, which she does regularly.
Speaker 1: We're gonna make America. Okay, pretty okay, just okay. I
Speaker 1: feel like those hats and sell too. So. Kadafi became
Speaker 1: famous for going a wall for days at a time
Speaker 1: whenever he got angry. He would threaten to resign if
Speaker 1: anyone argued with him about anything. At one point, he
Speaker 1: decided that all members of the Revolutionary Council ought to
Speaker 1: wear military uniforms and carry pistols at all times. One
Speaker 1: of his friends in the council didn't like this rule
Speaker 1: and showed up to a meeting in street close. Kadafi's
Speaker 1: totally reasonable reaction was to hide in the desert for
Speaker 1: a week. During another argument, he threatened to leave and
Speaker 1: fight with the Palestinians in Jordan's hold on Kadafi hid
Speaker 1: in the desert, in the desert, that's taking a non
Speaker 1: dictator thing, like I thought you're gonna he's like had
Speaker 1: him eaten by dogs or something. He got upset and
Speaker 1: just went off. Did his friend have to like go
Speaker 1: find him an apologize. I feel like that's probably what happened.
Speaker 1: Come up to him like a tent in the desert, like,
Speaker 1: hey man, I get a gun. I don't really know why,
Speaker 1: but here it is. What an amazingly passive, aggressive way
Speaker 1: to run a country. It's incredible. Oh my goodness. So
Speaker 1: by nine seventy three things weren't going great with the
Speaker 1: new Libya. Kaddafi was so disenchanted with ruling that he
Speaker 1: decided to resign and funck back off to the desert,
Speaker 1: but for real this time. He told his comrades on
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary Council that he would announce his resignation to
Speaker 1: the people of Libya on April sixteen, but surprise, Kadafi
Speaker 1: had no intention of resigning. Instead, he announced the Popular Revolution,
Speaker 1: an entirely new domestic program that no one else in
Speaker 1: the government had been warned about. They all found out
Speaker 1: about at the same time as the people of Libya.
Speaker 1: During the speech. Under this program, Kaddafi urged the repeal
Speaker 1: of all existing laws and their replacement by revolutionary enactments.
Speaker 1: The weeding out of anti revolutionary elements by taking appropriate
Speaker 1: measures against perverts and deviators. The staging of an administrative
Speaker 1: revolution to destroy all forms of bourgeoisie and bureaucracy. The
Speaker 1: arming of the people in order to make a people's militia,
Speaker 1: the staging of a cultural revolution to get rid of
Speaker 1: all important and poisonous ideas contrary to the Koran so
Speaker 1: Kadafi promised at the end of the speech that he
Speaker 1: was going to take the Livian people to paradise in
Speaker 1: chains if he had to. Exhausting. It sounds really tiring,
Speaker 1: like you're working in the desert. It's anything you do
Speaker 1: if you live in the desert is probably exhausting, and
Speaker 1: like you've just gotten over the fact that a new
Speaker 1: government's taken over. And then some guys like I'm gonna
Speaker 1: drag you to paradise and chains and all the laws
Speaker 1: are different today. It's like that really doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: paradise by God damn it. Um. So this would all
Speaker 1: be a pretty full plate for most world leaders, right um.
Speaker 1: But Kadafi wasn't done innovating. He started to work on
Speaker 1: what he called the Third Universal Theory, which was a
Speaker 1: new political theory he believed was destined to sweep not
Speaker 1: just Libya, but the entire world. Here's how one member
Speaker 1: of his inner circle recalled the brainstorming process for creating
Speaker 1: this Universal theory. Quote, Whenever new intellectuals arrived, Kadafi would
Speaker 1: tell me to invite them to visit him. Then as
Speaker 1: we talked, he would take notes. He would ask them
Speaker 1: how to remedy this or that problem. The trouble for
Speaker 1: him was that he couldn't digest their ideas. He didn't
Speaker 1: have a basic scientific approach. When he himself offered an opinion,
Speaker 1: he came out with immature and confused analyzes, such as
Speaker 1: were later to form the basis of his Third Universal Theory.
Speaker 1: So Kadafi described his theory as a middle way between
Speaker 1: communism and capitalism. Destined to replace them both. Capitalism, he said,
Speaker 1: led to sin into generacy. It was far too individualistic
Speaker 1: to be healthy. Communism treated human beings like property of
Speaker 1: the state, and that wasn't good either, so he needed
Speaker 1: to find a middle way. Eventually, Kaddafi codified all of
Speaker 1: his thoughts about how the world ought to be run
Speaker 1: into his magnum opus, The Green Book. In it, he
Speaker 1: argued that democracy he could not flourish in republican systems
Speaker 1: such as society, was destined to ignore the will of
Speaker 1: huge junks of the population. Accurate so far. Instead, the
Speaker 1: states should be abolished entirely, and the people should take
Speaker 1: charge of their own lives and rule themselves directly. So far,
Speaker 1: nothing he said is inherently crazy sounding, but the system
Speaker 1: he set up didn't actually work that way. The lowest
Speaker 1: level of the new government were the People's Congresses. Everyone
Speaker 1: was supposed to take part in them, debating and voting
Speaker 1: on policies. The People's Congressmen's Congresses would funnel their decisions
Speaker 1: up to a General People's Congress, which was kind of
Speaker 1: like a parliament or our congress. Their decisions would be
Speaker 1: passed up to a General People's Committee, which was basically
Speaker 1: a presidential cabinet which was then implement the decisions. But
Speaker 1: here's the catch. The actual center of decision making was
Speaker 1: just Momar Kadafi. None of the People's Congresses were allowed
Speaker 1: to talk to each other about anything. They had to
Speaker 1: go through this like line of things that always ended
Speaker 1: up at Kaddafi, So no decisions could actually be implemented
Speaker 1: without Kadafi's sign off, and he mostly just did whatever
Speaker 1: seemed good to him the time and ignored the congresses.
Speaker 1: So it was basically like, man, we should all just
Speaker 1: govern ourselves and and figure it out, and then I
Speaker 1: make the decision and I decide what we do. Still, yeah,
Speaker 1: the green Book was filled with other fun stuff besides
Speaker 1: blueprints for the government, quotes like this, sport is like praying,
Speaker 1: eating and the feeling of warmth and coolness. It is
Speaker 1: stupid for crowds to enter a restaurant just to look
Speaker 1: at a person or group of persons eating. It is
Speaker 1: stupid for people to let a person or group of
Speaker 1: persons get warmed or enjoy ventilation on their behalf. It
Speaker 1: is equally illogical for the society to allow an individual
Speaker 1: or team to monopolize sports while the people as a
Speaker 1: whole pay the costs of such a monopoly for the
Speaker 1: benefit of one person or a team. So we hated
Speaker 1: sports teams. Yeah, I mean I'm not a big sports sports,
Speaker 1: but people like sports. Yeah, people like sports. We need sports, Yeah,
Speaker 1: people like sports. Nobody likes watching someone else eat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like but we know people. Well now there's and there's
Speaker 1: those videos avidus So Kadathi was just wrong. Um. The
Speaker 1: Green Book also bans being a landlord. No one has
Speaker 1: the right to build a house additional to his own
Speaker 1: and that of his heirs for the purpose of renting it,
Speaker 1: because the house represents another person's need, and building it
Speaker 1: for the purpose of rent is an attempt to have
Speaker 1: control over the need of that man, which not inherently crazy.
Speaker 1: I'm not totally against. It's really that that coming boiling
Speaker 1: down to and I make the decision and I that's
Speaker 1: where it all gets sucked up. Yeah, it's great to
Speaker 1: say all these things, like we should be reducing the
Speaker 1: amount of power one individual can hold over the another
Speaker 1: up until you demand to be in charge. And maybe,
Speaker 1: I mean people listening might have different opinions about this,
Speaker 1: but like maybe even if like if he tried to
Speaker 1: do it right, it might not work out. Still, it
Speaker 1: might just be you know, him dreaming, but like that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're really like he didn't give it a chance here.
Speaker 1: He was always he was always it sounds like a dictator.
Speaker 1: He was always wanting it to be about himself and
Speaker 1: he always had to be the center of it. He
Speaker 1: couldn't stand. He was never going to let any counsel
Speaker 1: make a decision that he didn't agree with. He's Jaden Smith, Like,
Speaker 1: he has a bunch of he nobody told him no
Speaker 1: he doesn't. Yeah, and he has a bunch of crazy
Speaker 1: ideas how the world should work, but he doesn't have
Speaker 1: like the background to, yeah, to actually understand how to
Speaker 1: implement that. Yeah, it's like that's exactly what's going on here.
Speaker 1: So it's also important to note, if you're one of
Speaker 1: the people for whom the other stuff I've said from
Speaker 1: the Green Book sounds kind of good, that Kaddafi was
Speaker 1: also super misogynistic. Um, I'm gonna read this quote. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna apologize to our producer first because it's it's pretty bad.
Speaker 1: But it's important that we be balanced about who Kadafi was.
Speaker 1: According to a gynecologist, women menstrates or suffers feebleness every month,
Speaker 1: while man being a male does not. When a woman
Speaker 1: does not menstrate, she's pregnant. If she is pregnant, she
Speaker 1: becomes due to pregnancy feeble for about a year. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: woman breastfeeds the baby she bore. Breastfeeding means that a
Speaker 1: woman is so inseparable from her baby her activity is
Speaker 1: seriously reduced. She becomes directly responsible for another person, whom
Speaker 1: she helps to carry out his biological functions, without which
Speaker 1: it would die. All these innate characteristics form differences of
Speaker 1: which man and women cannot be equal. That's such a misunderstanding.
Speaker 1: And it's one of those like pregnant, Like this person
Speaker 1: just launched a human out of their body and yeah,
Speaker 1: really freaking painful after carrying it for months and then
Speaker 1: has has to keep it alive. What a what a weakling?
Speaker 1: AND's it's like, no, you idiot, No, I mean, if anything,
Speaker 1: the conclusion to be yeah, I mean we can't be
Speaker 1: equal because men can't make human beings. But oh my god. Anyway,
Speaker 1: so again you got to balance this ship out because
Speaker 1: if you read just the stuff about everyone should be equal,
Speaker 1: Kadafi sounds like not the piece of ship that he
Speaker 1: was right. I mean, here's going back to the only
Speaker 1: thing I know about Kadafi is that he was murdered
Speaker 1: horribly in the streets by his people. I kind of
Speaker 1: assumed he did something to deserve. Oh, and we are
Speaker 1: going to get into all of the some things he did.
Speaker 1: So now the Kaddafi rain is up and running in
Speaker 1: the utter madness is about to start. We have not
Speaker 1: even dug into the craziest of the crazy yet. But
Speaker 1: before we dig into that crazy, we have to dig
Speaker 1: into some ass. So get out your credit card, pull
Speaker 1: out a wad of cash, vier your car off of
Speaker 1: the road, and pull out your laptop and prepare to
Speaker 1: order things. And we're back, mom Marca. Dafi has taken control.
Speaker 1: He has launched his second revolution in a couple of
Speaker 1: years and elucidated his plans for a perfect society in
Speaker 1: the Green Book. Um so yeah, now now here we are,
Speaker 1: mom Marca. Dafi starts releasing his Green Book chapter by
Speaker 1: chapter rather than all at once. I think he was
Speaker 1: releasing it as he wrote it. Um, because he just
Speaker 1: didn't have the ability to delay his gratification by that much.
Speaker 1: And he said, as he dropped the first chapter, with
Speaker 1: the establishment of this unique democratic experiment. All political theories
Speaker 1: in the world have collapsed. So Kadafi changed Libya's name
Speaker 1: to the Socialist People's Libyan arab Jamahiria, which is means
Speaker 1: like the People's Republic, basically uh and the flag was
Speaker 1: changed to the color green. Now, Kadafi had no official
Speaker 1: role in this new people state. He was still in
Speaker 1: charge of the army, of course, but he was not
Speaker 1: technically in charge on paper. He demanded to be called
Speaker 1: Leader of the Revolution or brother leader, but he didn't
Speaker 1: actually have a job, so that whenever there was a problem,
Speaker 1: he could be like, I'm not in charge of Libya.
Speaker 1: It's these other guys. It's this council here that fucked up,
Speaker 1: or it's this guy here who fucked up. Don't get
Speaker 1: angry at me. I'm not in charge. So that was
Speaker 1: that was his whole tactic, solid being in charge of
Speaker 1: the country and pretending you're not for forty years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So Kadafi's like, I don't actually have a job. It's
Speaker 1: me who's in charge, so that you know, he can't
Speaker 1: be blamed for anything. He's in charge. It's a good plan.
Speaker 1: It's like, um, it's like if if you were like president,
Speaker 1: and you were blaming like the rival party or like yeah,
Speaker 1: like a like a special deep state all your problems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not unlike that if that were to ever happen
Speaker 1: somewhere in the globe. Yeah. Um. And for all of
Speaker 1: his rhetoric about like freedom and liberty and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: the people of Libya were brutally repressed whenever they spoke out.
Speaker 1: One month after declaring the people state, some students protested
Speaker 1: in Tripoli. They were hung in front of their classmates,
Speaker 1: and the executions were broadcast on state television. Kadafi established
Speaker 1: a series of revolutionary committeees across the nation, made up
Speaker 1: of loyal young men who got super high off of
Speaker 1: having a little bit of power. The official purpose of
Speaker 1: the committees were it was to protect the revolution and
Speaker 1: remove any obstacles to Colonel Kadafi's vision. This had the
Speaker 1: dual advantage of helping Kadafi solidify his power while freeing
Speaker 1: him from any possible blame, because hey, it's not his fault.
Speaker 1: If these kids hurt the wrong people, which they did,
Speaker 1: they would just like rob people, take their stuff, throw
Speaker 1: them in prison, execute their own personal enemies. You know,
Speaker 1: the kind of things do when you let young people
Speaker 1: uh established paramilitary committees. Yeah yeah, uh so. Kadafi was
Speaker 1: basically a master at outsourcing his methods of oppression and control.
Speaker 1: When a TV news presenter in Tripoli became too popular
Speaker 1: for the colonel's comfort, he ordered the people to take
Speaker 1: over the job of presenting the news. Random Libyans would
Speaker 1: line up every day for a chance to read the
Speaker 1: news live on television. That's amazing. TV got really weird
Speaker 1: under mo market. Oh my god, that sounds like a blast.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. For most of his reign, there was only
Speaker 1: one official channel, the State Television channel, that ran like
Speaker 1: six or eight hours a day. One day it broadcast
Speaker 1: hours worth of just a picture of army boots with
Speaker 1: the caption from a viewer to the broadcasting house. Another
Speaker 1: day it played hours of footage of a dirt road
Speaker 1: shout out the moot window of a moving vehicle. For
Speaker 1: the most part, State TV broadcast speeches by Kaddafi in
Speaker 1: conferences where people talked about the brilliance of his green book.
Speaker 1: This is like public television. Yeah yeah, well, they'll be
Speaker 1: like six hours of old people dancing. Yeah, it's like that.
Speaker 1: But he's the only one deciding who's going to be
Speaker 1: on it so as it always does. Repression in Libya
Speaker 1: bread descent. Uh. Not all of those dissenters were arrested
Speaker 1: before they could flee Libya. Some of them made it
Speaker 1: out of the country. Kaddafi made use of an international
Speaker 1: network of assassins to murder political enemies who managed to
Speaker 1: make it to the safety of a country like Britain.
Speaker 1: This did not always work out well for him. In
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, there were a bunch of angry Libyan
Speaker 1: dissidents protesting in front of the Libyan government office in London.
Speaker 1: People inside of the office started shooting into the crowd,
Speaker 1: but they missed and hit and killed a British policewoman
Speaker 1: named Yvonne Fletcher. Britain suspended their diplomatic relations with Libya
Speaker 1: as a result of the shootings. Kadafi was known to
Speaker 1: demand that his assassins bring back all or part of
Speaker 1: his murdered enemies. He would often keep the corpses of
Speaker 1: his murdered foes and refrigerators. A member of his inner
Speaker 1: circle said that he did this to see them once
Speaker 1: in a while to speak with them when they were dead.
Speaker 1: He kept some corpses stored this way for more than
Speaker 1: twenty years, things have taken a turn with Momar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, there's there's been a hate crime. There's
Speaker 1: been a hate crime, um and he was described as cruel.
Speaker 1: But this, this is now Hannibal elector territory. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: have it ramps up, you know. Yeah, yeah, And this
Speaker 1: is like a thing you see with with dictators. Like
Speaker 1: when we talk about these guys being pure evil, most
Speaker 1: of them really weren't until they would have some dark moments.
Speaker 1: But they're dark moments that might make them like a criminal.
Speaker 1: They always feel like they have something to prove, yeah,
Speaker 1: and power. Yeah, but like in the sense that they
Speaker 1: would kill someone and then then at their corpse for
Speaker 1: forty years. Yeah, like they couldn't. They can never walk
Speaker 1: away from a disagreement, or that's what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: They like this guy. If this guy's never in charge
Speaker 1: of Libya, he's the dude where somebody insults him and
Speaker 1: it burrows into his heart for years and he starts
Speaker 1: a fistfight over it, or maybe even murders somebody in
Speaker 1: a crime of passion. Because he's the dictator. It morphs
Speaker 1: into keeping corpses in a fridge from twenty something. He
Speaker 1: has a support system. Yeah, he has a way more resources. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the terrible dick. Yeah, it's it's just what happens when
Speaker 1: you have power mixed with whatever the hell is going
Speaker 1: on inside Momar's head, when you mix power, when you
Speaker 1: mix unlimited power with the weird damage that we all
Speaker 1: have inside of us. Everybody has their version of keeping
Speaker 1: their political enemies in a fridge, right yeah, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it's just banning a stony. I have a fridge
Speaker 1: in my heart that I keep people in. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't like squash and yeah, we have people in
Speaker 1: our lives to tell us to cut the ship, which
Speaker 1: is something he does not have. Yeah. It's like anything
Speaker 1: that you feel strongly about. If you were a dicta,
Speaker 1: later you could turn into something terrible. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: what Kaddafi did. Ah. He also had a secret rape
Speaker 1: chamber in his compound. Yeah yeah, um he would. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is where he would violate women that his henchmen
Speaker 1: abducted for him. I say women, but that's not accurate.
Speaker 1: He would visit schools and pick out girls and indicate
Speaker 1: which one he wanted by patting her on the head.
Speaker 1: His men would pick the girl up after school and
Speaker 1: bring her to him. One teacher recalled during a BBC documentary,
Speaker 1: the girl they wanted, they would simply take her and
Speaker 1: treat her like a rag doll in their hands. They
Speaker 1: had no conscience, no morals, not an ounce of mercy,
Speaker 1: even though the girl might be fifteen or sixteen years
Speaker 1: of age, a mere child. If the child was a virgin,
Speaker 1: Kadafi's staff would show her porn movies until she understood
Speaker 1: what he wanted. He was apparently turned on by violence.
Speaker 1: It's hard to know how much of all of this
Speaker 1: to believe exactly, because these particular interviews came from a
Speaker 1: BBC documentary UM called mad Dog Kadafi's Secret World UM.
Speaker 1: And obviously the BBC is one of the NATO nations
Speaker 1: that helped to post Kadafi, so it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where and they're interviewing actual Libyans, but those Libyans
Speaker 1: are people with a grudge against the administration. They definitely
Speaker 1: like they found the rape room. There's like pictures of
Speaker 1: it and stuff. So it's hard to say how much
Speaker 1: of everything is true, but it seems like most horrified. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if this is true, it's it's awful. Yeah, exactly, and
Speaker 1: that's kind of where I land on this. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Nori al miss Mari, Kadafi's former chief of protocol,
Speaker 1: also claimed that he molested young boys in addition to
Speaker 1: young girls. Quote, he had his own boys. They used
Speaker 1: to be called the Services Group. All of them were
Speaker 1: boys and bodyguards, a harem for his pleasure. Some of
Speaker 1: the women he used were tossed out on the street basically,
Speaker 1: but others claim they were sent to mental institutions so
Speaker 1: no one would believe them. So, yeah, it's dark now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The colonel's rule was idiosyncratic, by which I mean he
Speaker 1: turned on a dime and demanded insane things from his followers.
Speaker 1: At one point, he ordered all of the Camel's and
Speaker 1: Tripoli shot dead. The only explanation given was brother leader
Speaker 1: has decided that camels have no place in a modern society. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't disagree with that one. Yeah, they don't have
Speaker 1: any place in modern society. I don't like camels. They're terrible.
Speaker 1: They're fucking assholes. Um, that doesn't justify the other horrible things. No, Yeah, again,
Speaker 1: there's there's things belief that aligned with my beliefs in
Speaker 1: terms of ocean and Camels. Yeah. Um, but I at
Speaker 1: this point, I think it's safe to say that I
Speaker 1: would not like Momar Kadafi. Yeah, I would not get
Speaker 1: along with him. It's just that even a rape clock
Speaker 1: is right twice a day, exactly. Yeah. Um. So it's
Speaker 1: possible that Momar Kaddafi had anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt, murdered.
Speaker 1: Some of his former insiders alleged this, and Kaddafi did
Speaker 1: claim after the relationship soured that Sadat had been quote
Speaker 1: an agent of Hitler since which there's a lot to
Speaker 1: unpack in those few words, because he's very specific that
Speaker 1: Sadat became an agent of the Nazis after nineteen which, yeah,
Speaker 1: you get. There's there's a lot that needs to be
Speaker 1: expanded on in that sentence. Yeah. Um. I wish there
Speaker 1: was more. I wish Kaddafi had spoke at length about
Speaker 1: how he thought World War two ended, but I have
Speaker 1: not found that. Yeah, I bet that's a really special Yeah.
Speaker 1: It does seem like he thinks Hitler survived into the
Speaker 1: late forties at least, so that's fun. Um. For the
Speaker 1: first half of Kaddafi's reign, basically all private enterprise was
Speaker 1: banned by the government. Kadafi and his people decided what
Speaker 1: could be imported. They ran state supermarkets to distribute these
Speaker 1: goods to their citizens. In nineteen eight six, a journalist
Speaker 1: found that the main floor of one such supermarket had
Speaker 1: only g which is butter, with the milk fat removed
Speaker 1: and powdered milk. In eight seven, another foreigner reported that
Speaker 1: the markets in two cities held nothing but Dutch milk powder,
Speaker 1: Italian suits, and Chinese Teah. Yeah, you can really live
Speaker 1: on that stuff? You can have? Would you do with
Speaker 1: Dutch milk powder? Italians? Okay? Hold on? You boiled down
Speaker 1: the Italian suits to get into their components again, the
Speaker 1: Italian chef kicking, kissing fingers. Um, you boil that down
Speaker 1: to it's nice and stuff. You add the tea. I
Speaker 1: want to say it with the tea. Yeah, that feels right.
Speaker 1: I think you strain it from the tea. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: and then mix it with what's the last one, milk powder.
Speaker 1: Dutch milk powder. Okay, so you don't straight it all
Speaker 1: the way, but you add the milk powder and it
Speaker 1: thickens like mac and cheese. That's basically macaroni. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you cut it up. Yeah. Yeah, I assume Italian suits
Speaker 1: are made out of pasta. Yeah, yeah, fantastic. Uh. Some
Speaker 1: of this was, you know that some of the absence
Speaker 1: of goods in the supermarkets was a result of sanctions,
Speaker 1: which we will get too later, but a decent amount
Speaker 1: of it was just Kaddafi fucking with people. He's quoted
Speaker 1: as having said, sometimes we make items disappear to force
Speaker 1: people to work harder and produce them, which is a
Speaker 1: dick move move. Uh. It's all so true that the
Speaker 1: entire Libyan government was hilariously corrupt. Public supermarkets were regularly
Speaker 1: burned down by their managers so that the managers could
Speaker 1: steal all the goods inside before lighting them on fire
Speaker 1: and then sell the goods on the black market. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I mean, they're they're creating a situation where I
Speaker 1: feel like, what are you gonna do? Yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: managing that supermarket and you're like, oh god, like this
Speaker 1: is just milk powder, Yeah, just burning this place to
Speaker 1: the ground. Yeah, I have trouble, Like anyone who's worked
Speaker 1: in a place like a grocery store has wanted to
Speaker 1: just burn it down. Yeah. Yeah, it's a very burnable structure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hard to blame anyone for doing that. Um. So
Speaker 1: it's important to note that the Libyan state Underdo was
Speaker 1: not a total ship show, and in some ways was
Speaker 1: more functional than the king's government that had come before it.
Speaker 1: Kadafie did establish a successful social safety net when none
Speaker 1: had existed before. Everyone in Libya was guaranteed a home, healthcare, education,
Speaker 1: and a car, all provided by the state and paid
Speaker 1: for by the billion dollars a day in oil revenue
Speaker 1: that poured through Kaddafi's hands. Okay, so yeah, he had
Speaker 1: this ideology and some of it throughout this we've said like, well,
Speaker 1: he's not completely ye wrong, It's like the ideology didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily not work. He's a broken person. He's a broken
Speaker 1: person because like the idea of okay, the state's kind
Speaker 1: of provide a bunch of ship for people, and we
Speaker 1: have more oil than almost anyone in the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that can work. Other countries have done that for close
Speaker 1: to a century now. Yeah, Um, you can absolutely run
Speaker 1: a state that way, but not with a guy like
Speaker 1: Khadafi in charge. Not for long, well actually for forty years.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's that's a pretty good run. Romaniac. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for a fucking nut. Um, uh. Speaking of schools, which
Speaker 1: were paid for by the oil money, in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: Kadafi replaced school uniforms with military uniforms and mandated that
Speaker 1: all students take military science courses. Military officers took over
Speaker 1: for school administrators and for many teachers. They were authorized
Speaker 1: to carry out military punishments, including forcing students to stand
Speaker 1: out in the desert sun for hours at a time,
Speaker 1: which is pretty sick. Yeah, this seems like a real
Speaker 1: This is like he's just asking to be overthrown at
Speaker 1: that point. Yeah, the moment you start like a whole
Speaker 1: generation of people that you just torture and teach them
Speaker 1: how military side. So you're you're you're you're begging for
Speaker 1: them to overthrow. Yeah. In retrospect, you can see the
Speaker 1: short sightedness. Yeah. Uh, that's like it's like having having
Speaker 1: like a dog that you that you like only let
Speaker 1: out side and like our dick too, but also attached
Speaker 1: like lasers too. It's exactly like that. It's like teaching
Speaker 1: your dog to understand the concept of slavery and then
Speaker 1: giving it right. Yeah, just generally, Yeah, just telling an
Speaker 1: animal what the score is not a great idea. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, David uh no self respecting tyrant would be
Speaker 1: complete without his elite bodyguard unit. Saddam had the Republican Guard,
Speaker 1: Hitler had the s S. Mussolini had someone the Macaroni Troopers.
Speaker 1: Probably we are really beating rough on Italy. We are well.
Speaker 1: We wrote the stylus that we have Italian blood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so that like released the flood games. So it's fine,
Speaker 1: it's fine, it's a fine. And Momar Kadafi of course
Speaker 1: had the horis Ajas. In Europe, they were known as
Speaker 1: the Amazons, an all female unit of elite, highly trained
Speaker 1: bodyguards who protected Momarkadafi for more than twenty years. We
Speaker 1: got some pictures in these they're going to be up
Speaker 1: on the site, but just take a gander there. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's that's wonderful. They're all young, they're all like evntionally
Speaker 1: attractive bond villain type of thing. It's exactly called the Amazon's,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, and they're He is in the second
Speaker 1: picture in his fucking ridiculous colonel's uniform next to that lady.
Speaker 1: It's he. He is a bond villain. He's the most
Speaker 1: bond villain that a dictator has ever. He's like well,
Speaker 1: I would say he's more like an Austin Powers villa.
Speaker 1: He's a spoof of a Bond villain. He wears the
Speaker 1: Doctor Evil outfit from the first There's a picture that
Speaker 1: will come to later where he's dressed like Dr Evil
Speaker 1: and it's like, look, and this is like right after
Speaker 1: Austin Powers had come out, So it almost makes you think, like,
Speaker 1: did you just watch the movie and dressed like Dr Evil?
Speaker 1: Market might he might watch and he was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty that's a pretty smart. You guys gotta
Speaker 1: go it on. Uh So. Kadafi got a lot of
Speaker 1: bad press for his all lady bodyguards the reality, you know,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the press was like how cool
Speaker 1: it was that he had how badass These women were
Speaker 1: fucking awesome. But the pictures are awesome, Yeah, they are awesome.
Speaker 1: The reality was less awesome. Most of the women were
Speaker 1: Most of the women in his bodyguard unit were press
Speaker 1: ganged into the job with very little choice as to
Speaker 1: whether to join. Girls were often sent to act as
Speaker 1: entertainment for Kaddafi family parties, and the whole thing sounds
Speaker 1: kind of gross, gross and very exploitative. That said some
Speaker 1: of his former guards when interview did report loving the
Speaker 1: work and loving Kaddafi Um. There's also evidence that they
Speaker 1: acted as sort of a secret state police within his
Speaker 1: inner circle. I've also read reports that suggest the job
Speaker 1: was terrifying for most of the Amazon's One former bodyguard,
Speaker 1: now in hiding, was quoted by the BBC is saying,
Speaker 1: one night we were going to witness the execution of
Speaker 1: seventeen students. That they did not hang them, they shot them.
Speaker 1: We were forbidden to scream, we were ordered to cheer.
Speaker 1: M So. So again this is going back to he's
Speaker 1: just asking for it. You don't if you have personal bodyguards,
Speaker 1: you get the people who like want the job. You
Speaker 1: don't force someone to do that job. You don't want
Speaker 1: someone half asking that job. But if you're only going
Speaker 1: to have like comb the country for pretty girls and
Speaker 1: put them in uniforms and teach them how to shoot,
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily going to love you, like because you're
Speaker 1: just abducting them from their exactly. It feels like the
Speaker 1: moment things get rough, they're just gonna like quietly back away,
Speaker 1: yeah and just yeah, find new employment. Like it's bad.
Speaker 1: He's he's really asking for it. You should also, And
Speaker 1: I feel like they should go without saying. I don't
Speaker 1: support being a gender discriminatory with your bodyguards. Women can
Speaker 1: bodyguard very well, I'm sure, but you don't pick your
Speaker 1: bodyguard entirely by how they look. That's not a good move.
Speaker 1: You pick your bodyguard by how good they are at
Speaker 1: guarding your body Yeah. Um yeah. Even even if you're
Speaker 1: trying to find like the most badass looking people, they
Speaker 1: could be cowards. Like you don't know. Resume is matter? Um,
Speaker 1: that's important. Sit down an interview these people. One of
Speaker 1: the through lines in Kadafi's regime is that there were
Speaker 1: no resumes. Yeah. I'm not surprised to hear that, because
Speaker 1: his resume when he became in charge of the country
Speaker 1: was guy. Um. So we have we've we've talked about
Speaker 1: some crazy stuff and we have a lot more crazy
Speaker 1: stuff to get to. So much that this is going
Speaker 1: to be another two parter because I wound up writing
Speaker 1: like nine thousand words on Momar Kadafi. Uh So, Dave,
Speaker 1: We're going to break for right now and come back
Speaker 1: on Thursday to tell the good people the rest of
Speaker 1: the legendary story of Momar Kadafi. Um. When we get back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about what Kadafi did with all
Speaker 1: of his oil money, his career, sponsoring insane amounts of terrorism,
Speaker 1: and the speech he delivered to the UN which I'm
Speaker 1: going to go ahead and say is the greatest speech
Speaker 1: that anyone has ever delivered, maybe to anything. Oh man,
Speaker 1: that's gonna be fun. All right, before we roll out,
Speaker 1: do you have any plug doubles to plug? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean find me at Twitter at movie Hooligan. Um. As
Speaker 1: you mentioned at the beginning of this, I am um
Speaker 1: one of two people running a podcast and streaming network
Speaker 1: called game Fully Unemployed. We have a Patreon right now.
Speaker 1: It's patreon dot com slash Gamefully Unemployed g A M
Speaker 1: E f U l O Y unemployed. So yeah, check
Speaker 1: us out. We got tons of podcasts and we streamline
Speaker 1: twitch and we're starting to roll out like videos and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Yeah. They do really wonderful stuff, really
Speaker 1: fun podcast Robert. Yeah, I'm on. I'm regularly on your
Speaker 1: dn D podcast, so you can catch me there as well.
Speaker 1: Gamefully Unemployed you can find me at I right okay
Speaker 1: on Twitter, you can find this podcast at Bastard's Pod
Speaker 1: on Twitter. You can also find us on the internet
Speaker 1: at www dot behind the Bastards dot com, but we
Speaker 1: will have all of the sources for this episode and
Speaker 1: all of the pictures that Dave and I have discussed today.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna be back on Thursday with more craziness
Speaker 1: from the life of Momarkadafi, the craziest guy to ever
Speaker 1: wind up in charge of the country. Um, But until then, uh,
Speaker 1: please enjoy your lives, stay happy, and check back in
Speaker 1: on Thursday. M HM.