Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here and for the last two years,
Speaker 1: behind the Bastards listeners have funded the Portland Diaper Bank,
Speaker 1: which provides diapers for low income families. Uh. Last year
Speaker 1: y'all raised more than twenty one thousand dollars, which was
Speaker 1: able to purchase one point one million diapers for children
Speaker 1: and families in need in one um. And this year
Speaker 1: we're trying to get two dollars raised for the Portland
Speaker 1: Diaper Bank, which is going to allow us to help
Speaker 1: even more kids. So UM, if you want to help,
Speaker 1: you can go to bTB fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank
Speaker 1: at go fund me. Just type and go fund me
Speaker 1: b TB Fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank. Again, that's go
Speaker 1: fund Me bTB Fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank, or find
Speaker 1: the link in the show notes. Thank you all. Oh
Speaker 1: what is viciously executing and publicly torturing my son of God?
Speaker 1: It's good Friday. Not when you listen to this, you'll
Speaker 1: listen to this week's after Good Friday. UM. Hi, Sharene
Speaker 1: Lonnie Unis, how are you doing? Hi? Robert Robert Evans, UM,
Speaker 1: I'm okay. Robert's your middle name? Right, Robert, Robert. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna confirm or deny what my name is. There
Speaker 1: isn't I have a number of names like most people,
Speaker 1: like Jesus, who like all exactly exactly like our like
Speaker 1: our Lord and Um our sovereign allah Um, like Hura,
Speaker 1: mazda uh, like Buddha. You know, there's all sorts of
Speaker 1: everybody's this time of year, for whatever reason, all the
Speaker 1: religions are like, we should have a thing, you know.
Speaker 1: We'll have us at Ramadan, we'll have us a passover,
Speaker 1: we'll have us an Easter. We're all or at least
Speaker 1: all of the all of the Abrahamic faiths. I don't
Speaker 1: know if like, I don't think anything Hindus going on
Speaker 1: right now. I don't know anything Zoroastrians going on anything,
Speaker 1: anything Buddhist, Probably not any Shinto stuff happening right now,
Speaker 1: but whatever, maybe there is. It is like major ones
Speaker 1: up there, you know, although it's also I think it's
Speaker 1: like the dead of summer where a lot of those
Speaker 1: religions are Southeast Asia. This is kind of like the
Speaker 1: hottest point of that. I don't know. I don't know anyway. Religion.
Speaker 1: Do you like religion? Sharine? No, please don't hate me
Speaker 1: the Internet. No, I don't. I actually that's fine. I'm
Speaker 1: not a big fan myself. My teenager self, I would say,
Speaker 1: like I despise religion. I loathe it. It made me
Speaker 1: so angry. I hated it. And I think I like
Speaker 1: eased up on that language recently. I don't want to
Speaker 1: offend anybody, and like I realized, for some people, it's
Speaker 1: like meditative and depending on the religion, it can really
Speaker 1: help people. It's not for me. I just I don't
Speaker 1: It's not I don't like it. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: like that's completely where I am too sharene because like
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, I was really angry atheist,
Speaker 1: you know, after not when I was like when I
Speaker 1: was like eighteen nine. I just like seventeen is kind
Speaker 1: when I decided I was an atheist. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: started to get really angry about it as a young adult,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm not angry about it anymore, just because
Speaker 1: like I've realized that all of the things that are
Speaker 1: shitty about religion are shitty about a bunch of stuff,
Speaker 1: and some people just choose to do shitty stuff, and
Speaker 1: whether or not they use a religion to justify it.
Speaker 1: They'll find other things to justify it if it's not religion.
Speaker 1: But that's really beside the point today. Um, yeah, it's humans,
Speaker 1: I get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not that they're shitty.
Speaker 1: It's just that shitty people will find reasons to do
Speaker 1: shitty things, yes or not, Yeah, religion or not, it's
Speaker 1: it's just a thing that we do because we're cool. Um,
Speaker 1: speaking of actually this does tie in a bit to
Speaker 1: what we're talking about. There's some religion. There's definitely some
Speaker 1: religious stuff involved here. It's gonna be real uncomfortable. Um, Sharina,
Speaker 1: what do you know about Liberia? Liberia? Yeah? Nothing that
Speaker 1: you are you are more or less in the in
Speaker 1: the where most Americans are then okay, great, Yeah I
Speaker 1: know nothing about most things, so I'm excited to learn
Speaker 1: about Liberia today. You are you are aware that they
Speaker 1: had there's been a bunch of war there, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you kind of there's conflict and in tragedy things that
Speaker 1: my brain sometimes turns off because I can only handle
Speaker 1: so much trauma. But that's my luxury of being privileged, asshole,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Well, yeah, it's it's very
Speaker 1: funny because like there's a bunch of places in the
Speaker 1: world where horrible things are going on. UM, places like
Speaker 1: me and mar places like the Democratic Republic of the
Speaker 1: Congo Palestine. UM, where people you know, don't don't. Americans
Speaker 1: are able not to care because and to some of
Speaker 1: the degree, it's like, yeah, man, the world's fucking big.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff going on, Like I can't,
Speaker 1: No one can about all of the bad things that
Speaker 1: are happening, and you can't. You shouldn't be expected to
Speaker 1: like be aware of every single terrible thing happening in
Speaker 1: the world. There's a particular reason why Americans ought to
Speaker 1: know more about Liberia. UM, and it's because we made Liberia.
Speaker 1: Now I'm gonna talk sharene today. The main subject of
Speaker 1: our episode is a fellow who went by the name
Speaker 1: General Butt Naked. UM. That's a that's a truth. That's
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty fun. It's pretty fun name. Not a
Speaker 1: fun guy. UM, not a fun guy. But he's one
Speaker 1: of those dudes. The broad strokes is that like he
Speaker 1: was this warlord, did a bunch of horrible stuff in
Speaker 1: the Liberian Civil War, fought naked, hence the name, and
Speaker 1: then afterwards repented. And there's been a bunch of documentaries
Speaker 1: about how he's he's a Christian preacher now and he's
Speaker 1: apologizing to all his victims. He's a grifter in my opinion.
Speaker 1: But in order to properly talk about this guy, because
Speaker 1: a lot of the ship he did, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of witchcraft and sacrificing babies and all sorts of fucked
Speaker 1: up shit. Um. Oh yeah, well, but the thing is
Speaker 1: like that all sounds a lot more like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a problematic history of particularly white dudes like me
Speaker 1: talking about witchcraft and occult practices in different African countries, uh,
Speaker 1: and getting all like, oh my god, they did this
Speaker 1: and they did that. Um, none of it is exactly
Speaker 1: the way that it seems with like the casual uh
Speaker 1: description of what's going on. So before we talk about
Speaker 1: general butt naked, we're gonna have to spend an hour
Speaker 1: or so talking about the history of conflict in Liberia,
Speaker 1: where it came from, and how ship like human sacrifice
Speaker 1: wound up getting kind of ground into the mix there.
Speaker 1: So you're ready, you're ready for this, buckling? Yeah, let
Speaker 1: me buck click, get your get your sad pants on?
Speaker 1: By what pants on? Sad pants? Yeah? Yeah, they're they're
Speaker 1: always on. Yeah. So the first enslaved African people from
Speaker 1: North America landed at Jamestown on August nineteen. This is
Speaker 1: pretty famous because of that New York Times thing. Now,
Speaker 1: most of these folks were england who had been captured
Speaker 1: by Portuguese slavers, and the centuries that followed, they and
Speaker 1: the Africans who followed them became an integral part of
Speaker 1: agriculture and economic viability in the colonies. When the United
Speaker 1: States became a thing, a number of the founding fathers,
Speaker 1: chiefly Thomas Payne, denounced slavery as a terrible evil that
Speaker 1: would one day tear the new nation apart. Thomas Jefferson,
Speaker 1: a slave owner himself, realized this when he wrote his
Speaker 1: Notes on the State of Virginia in seventeen eighty five.
Speaker 1: Here's what he had to say. Why not retain and
Speaker 1: incorporate the blacks into the state and thus save the
Speaker 1: expense of supplying by importation of white settlers the vacancies
Speaker 1: they will leave deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites.
Speaker 1: Ten thousand recollections by the Blacks of the injuries they
Speaker 1: have sustained new provocations. The real distinctions which nature has made,
Speaker 1: and many other circumstances will divide us into parties and
Speaker 1: produce convulsions which will probably never end, but in the
Speaker 1: extermination of one or the other race. So what he's
Speaker 1: he's talking about here is his idea that, like, if
Speaker 1: you're gonna end slavery, you should send the black people
Speaker 1: who were brought here back to Africa. Right, That's kind
Speaker 1: of Thomas could because otherwise there will be inevitably be
Speaker 1: a race conflict. You know, you can't just keep them
Speaker 1: here if you're going to free them. That's Thomas Jefferson's attitude.
Speaker 1: And there's a number he thinks that black people were
Speaker 1: probably inferior to white people. Um. And he thinks that
Speaker 1: again there's just too much anger and whatnot. He also
Speaker 1: like does note that white people are probably too bigoted
Speaker 1: for it. It's a weird mix of things. He's a
Speaker 1: strange man. Um. Now, others among his peers disagreed. There
Speaker 1: was an attitude among kind of abolitionists in this early
Speaker 1: period um Some felt that black people had just been
Speaker 1: temporarily degraded by slavery and they could be gradually uplifted
Speaker 1: to the point of social responsibility. This is still problematic, right,
Speaker 1: the idea that they need to be uplifted rather than
Speaker 1: just freed, but is generally better than the idea that
Speaker 1: they're you know, genetically different. Uh So, I don't know. Um.
Speaker 1: As the abolitionist movement picked up steam in the mid
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, advocates were often extremely racist themselves. Uh. Many
Speaker 1: abolitionists believe that freed black people could not exist or
Speaker 1: keep up in white society. Others like Jefferson just felt
Speaker 1: that there would be too much understandable anger over slavery
Speaker 1: for them to live alongside white people, which is not
Speaker 1: like an unreasonable attitude to be, like, well, ship, why
Speaker 1: would they want to hang out here? Like after all
Speaker 1: the fun? It's mostly just like they're fearful for their
Speaker 1: own lives, right, Like, Oh, the minute they are able to,
Speaker 1: they're gonna come after us for us treating them like
Speaker 1: actual animals, you know what I mean. I think there's
Speaker 1: a mix of that. I think there's some people who
Speaker 1: are honest abolitionists and for the time very racially progressive
Speaker 1: who just like can't imagine them wanting to um And obviously,
Speaker 1: like one of the problems you'll here again and again
Speaker 1: is a lot of people who are abolitionists are not
Speaker 1: great at actually listening to black people. That's the problem.
Speaker 1: The whole abolitionist movement has. Um some people are better
Speaker 1: at it than others, but it's like a thing that
Speaker 1: happens at periods of time. Um. So, yeah, all of
Speaker 1: these discussions are going on. Late seventeen hundreds, early eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: is this abolitionist movement is building up steam, and some
Speaker 1: of the people who are for abolition start to advocate
Speaker 1: for a sort of sponsored immigration program to send freed
Speaker 1: black slaves out of the United States and back to Africa.
Speaker 1: And so this is not they're they're advocating for abolition
Speaker 1: in the United States, but they're also saying, we've got
Speaker 1: all these free black people, we should create a colony
Speaker 1: in Africa for them to send them back to, and
Speaker 1: that once we start freeing more slaves, those people can
Speaker 1: go to that colony, right. Um. One of these men
Speaker 1: was Pennsylvania reformer John Parrish. He advocated manumitting that means
Speaker 1: freeing slaves and sending them back home where they could
Speaker 1: experience quote, liberty and the rights of citizenship without being
Speaker 1: particularly near him. His hope was that sending over a
Speaker 1: small number of black folks would convince other free black
Speaker 1: people to leave North America, and that this would somehow
Speaker 1: inspire the better nature of slave owners to free their
Speaker 1: own people. Quote, many persons of humanity who continue to
Speaker 1: hold slaves would be willing to liberate them on condition
Speaker 1: of their so removing you know what he's saying, He's
Speaker 1: not He's actually kind of saying the same thing Jefferson was,
Speaker 1: because Jefferson was arguing like, well, you can't just free
Speaker 1: him and have him stay here, you know, otherwise it
Speaker 1: will be a problem. So Parrish is being like, well, obviously,
Speaker 1: maybe a lot of these slave owners are really good people.
Speaker 1: They just see that they've it's too dangerous to let
Speaker 1: these people be free, so we have to It's very
Speaker 1: racist again, but it's also not a kind of racism
Speaker 1: in America that we talk about a lot, because a
Speaker 1: lot of this history has been kind of brushed over.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it's like kind of backwards because you're like,
Speaker 1: they're not saying like, oh my god, controlling another human
Speaker 1: is terrible because you're still controlling them. You're still like, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's stay am out. You know, they are they are
Speaker 1: saying that they're just saying it's not the worst thing exactly.
Speaker 1: That like freeing them would be right, because they are
Speaker 1: saying it's bad to have slaves, but they're just saying
Speaker 1: it's worse to you know. Again, very racist, just kind
Speaker 1: of a type of racism we maybe don't talk about
Speaker 1: enough that existed in this period. Um. So he felt
Speaker 1: like a lot of slave owners didn't want slaves, they
Speaker 1: just kind of inherited them, and they were scared about
Speaker 1: what black people would do if they were free. Um,
Speaker 1: which is a very silly thing to think. Um. Into
Speaker 1: number of eighteen sixteen, a mix of people with good, bad, racist,
Speaker 1: and only slightly racist intentions formed the American Colonization Society.
Speaker 1: Now part of this group, some of these people are
Speaker 1: very legitimately just like again, if you're like a civil
Speaker 1: rights advocate, you're born into the mid eighteen hundreds, you
Speaker 1: see this nightmare system. I can see a ways that
Speaker 1: a decent person would be like, maybe this is the
Speaker 1: best thing. Maybe providing these people like it's so racist here,
Speaker 1: it's so hard for them. Maybe if we tried to
Speaker 1: set them up with a place nice back in Africa,
Speaker 1: this would not be This would be a more ethical
Speaker 1: situation than having to live with all these fucking horrible racists. Right,
Speaker 1: Some people in the American Colonization Siety Society are like that. However,
Speaker 1: it is primarily a dark money organization funded by slave owners. Um,
Speaker 1: and what's going on here is that powerful slave owners
Speaker 1: want to push the idea of an African colony for
Speaker 1: freed slaves because this will remove free black people out
Speaker 1: of the America's and free black people they see as
Speaker 1: like competition for slave labor at that they can profit from. Wait,
Speaker 1: competition for slave they've got slaves, which is free labor,
Speaker 1: but free black people because they you know, work for
Speaker 1: less than free white people because of racism. Right, that's
Speaker 1: competition for low paying work that otherwise will go to
Speaker 1: their slaves that they just profited. Well, yes, yes, I
Speaker 1: think they also see it as like a safety valve
Speaker 1: because again they're really racist. They understand that like some states,
Speaker 1: black people are going to get free, but they don't
Speaker 1: let them sticking around because as long as there are
Speaker 1: free black people in North America, that's a body of
Speaker 1: people who are going to organize to abolish slavery. Right.
Speaker 1: There's a few reasons, right, Yes, yeah. So there's a
Speaker 1: number of reasons why slave owners really like the idea
Speaker 1: of a colony in Africa for free slaves, and that
Speaker 1: their dark money is kind of funding the American colonization society. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again this group. There are abolitionists in this group,
Speaker 1: but it's not committed to abolition. UM. I want to
Speaker 1: quote now from a rite up on the American I
Speaker 1: want to quote now from a rite up on the
Speaker 1: African American Intellectual History Society's Black Perspective's blog by by
Speaker 1: Nicholas Guyett. Quote. Its origins and trajectory always evinced a
Speaker 1: watery commitment to abolition. Two facts made this commitment supremely insidious. First,
Speaker 1: it placed the burden of ending slavery on the benevolent
Speaker 1: slaveholders themselves, who would supposedly free their slaves when provided
Speaker 1: with an outlet for doing so. Second, it marked an
Speaker 1: epic endorsement of racial segregation, effectively denying the possibility of
Speaker 1: coexistence while promoting what would later be termed separate but equal.
Speaker 1: So you can see there the roots of a couple
Speaker 1: of really fucked up things in the American colonization society. Now,
Speaker 1: before the souring of sectional relations, in the eighteen theories
Speaker 1: and eighteen forties. Colonization also supplied a bridge between mainstream
Speaker 1: anti slavery sentiments in both North and South. The a c.
Speaker 1: S opened auxiliary societies from New England through North Carolina.
Speaker 1: When upper Southern legislatures engaged with the question of ending slavery,
Speaker 1: invariably they identified a black colony as the prerequisite for
Speaker 1: general emancipation. On of the Deep South became a Nogo
Speaker 1: zone for colonization enthusiasts, with white politicians, editors, and businessmen
Speaker 1: mobilizing their considerable power against even a feather light anti
Speaker 1: slavery challenge. In New England, by contrast, colonization retained a
Speaker 1: considerable appeal through the first years of the Civil War.
Speaker 1: So colonization is popular proper in like these kind of
Speaker 1: progressive you might say, like liberal chunks of the North
Speaker 1: where abolition is. And that's why slavery enthusiasts don't want
Speaker 1: any discussion of this in the South, right, because it's
Speaker 1: even a little bit of of abolitionist tendency is too
Speaker 1: much for them. But they love pushing this in the
Speaker 1: North because it's a lot. If you can get people
Speaker 1: focusing on this, they're not focusing on abolishing slavery, which
Speaker 1: would actually hurt them, right, you get what's going on here.
Speaker 1: So the chief accomplishment of the American colonization Society was
Speaker 1: the establishment of the colony of Liberia on Africa's west coast.
Speaker 1: It was founded in eighteen twenty one by a group
Speaker 1: of roughly ten thousand free black migrants who took one
Speaker 1: look at the U S and the eighteen to one
Speaker 1: he's in figured, well, ship anywhere is better than here, right,
Speaker 1: Like from the part of view of these guys who
Speaker 1: are leaving and ladies who are leaving, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, Like I get why you wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: stick around North America Right about now, it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like there's a that's a safe bet um. The first
Speaker 1: big wave of immigration to Liberia was yeah, about ten
Speaker 1: thousand people. And this this occurs over a period of
Speaker 1: time from eighteen twenty two to eighteen forty one, and
Speaker 1: several successive waves. Uh. And these these migrants formed several
Speaker 1: towns on the coast with names like Robert Sport, Monrovia, Buchanan,
Speaker 1: and Greenville. Although I think their initial Monrovia's first capital
Speaker 1: name is Christopolis. Christopolis. Ye, that was the first name.
Speaker 1: Very funny, um, although it's not going to be funny
Speaker 1: actually because spoilers colonialism. So because of racism, these these
Speaker 1: these black people who have gone to Liberia are not
Speaker 1: actually the masters of their own domain. At first, Liberia
Speaker 1: is a colony of the United States, and the new
Speaker 1: immigrants are ruled by a white governor who appoints white officials. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: the new residents of the city did have a legislative
Speaker 1: council that they got to vote for and their own
Speaker 1: elected representatives who work with the governor. Right, so they
Speaker 1: do have representation, certainly more than they did in the
Speaker 1: United States at the time. Right. But final approval for
Speaker 1: all actions voted for by the council pinned it on
Speaker 1: approval by a board of managers for the Colonization Society
Speaker 1: who lived in Washington, d c. So if the if
Speaker 1: the black people living there voted for something, they had
Speaker 1: to send it back across the Atlantic to get ratified
Speaker 1: by this council who could also annull laws. Like they
Speaker 1: leave these plantations, they're enslaved in the States and they
Speaker 1: go to this just dry island plantation. Oh boy, you
Speaker 1: have predicted some of where this is going, um, but
Speaker 1: not for them actually, but yeah, there there is like
Speaker 1: this is obviously very fucked up. It's in keeping them
Speaker 1: with their right the idea of some of these these
Speaker 1: dudes that like they need to be trained up before
Speaker 1: they can run their own country. Right, That's that's why
Speaker 1: they're doing it this way. That's why the white people
Speaker 1: are doing it this way. Um. So now it is
Speaker 1: the good news is that anytime they send a dude
Speaker 1: over there, a white dude over there to help govern
Speaker 1: the colony, that motherfucker dies immediately, right because there's all
Speaker 1: sorts of there's all sorts of bugs and ship that
Speaker 1: are biting white people. They get it right, Like, there's
Speaker 1: all sorts of ship that like kills white people in
Speaker 1: Africa in this period because we don't have good medicine.
Speaker 1: They're just dropping like flies fucking mosquito. But white ass
Speaker 1: motherfucker's um no son. Yeah, So these guys keep dying, um,
Speaker 1: which is a real problem. It makes it difficult for
Speaker 1: them to like run the colony the way they want
Speaker 1: to and makes it hard for them to have white
Speaker 1: people to report back to d c um and beyond that,
Speaker 1: the society after the earliest years runs into a funding crunch. Um.
Speaker 1: So part of this is because they stopped getting donations
Speaker 1: because abolitionists wake up to the fact that this is
Speaker 1: a dark money thing for slave owners. Part of this
Speaker 1: is that like the conflict over slavery gets nastier and
Speaker 1: slave owners stopped putting like they start putting money elsewhere. Right. So,
Speaker 1: starting in the eighteen forties, white oversight of Liberia starts
Speaker 1: to peel away. Liberians begin to agitate for total autonomy,
Speaker 1: and when the last white governor dies in eighteen forty one,
Speaker 1: they get it. The society appoints a black governor, Joseph Roberts,
Speaker 1: who became the first not white person to run things
Speaker 1: in Liberia. Now the colony then at this point, you know,
Speaker 1: stops being a colony, not really a colony after this moment,
Speaker 1: and it's it becomes an independent nation in July of
Speaker 1: eighteen forty seven. And if that had been all that happened,
Speaker 1: should be this would be one of the less depressing
Speaker 1: stories in the history of slavery. Here's the thing. Now,
Speaker 1: you send ten thousand black people in America, pretty much
Speaker 1: all born in the United States as slaves, some of
Speaker 1: them born free. But you take these these black Americans
Speaker 1: and you send them to the west coast of Africa
Speaker 1: to set up cities. Now, are you seeing any potential
Speaker 1: problems here? Uh? Well, I mean are there I'm confused.
Speaker 1: Were there already people online? Yes, they're they're absolutely we're
Speaker 1: people there before. Okay, Yeah, we're people there. I mean
Speaker 1: I'm sounding like people that don't understand about Palestine. Of course,
Speaker 1: there's a ton of people there. Okay. And again, these
Speaker 1: these these dudes, these these migrants are obviously these people
Speaker 1: were stolen from somewhere in Africa, or at least their
Speaker 1: ancestors were, right, Um, But they're from like potentially all
Speaker 1: over like certainly not Liberia in specific generally. And also
Speaker 1: they were they speak English, they're Christian, they dress like Americans.
Speaker 1: There they have been living free in US cities. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: So these are this is not a case of like
Speaker 1: these people returning to their homeland. These people are colonizing Liberia. Um.
Speaker 1: And if you know anything about colonization, it's not nice. Um.
Speaker 1: And and this was not suddenly fine just because the
Speaker 1: guys doing the colonization in Africa we're black. It's it's
Speaker 1: still pretty messy. Uh. And I'm gonna quote now from
Speaker 1: an article by In M. B Akpan in the Canadian
Speaker 1: Journal of African Studies titled Black Imperialism. Quote. The settlers
Speaker 1: constituted the rulers who ran the Liberian government in much
Speaker 1: the same way as the British and French constituted rulers
Speaker 1: and naval it neighboring colonial territories like Sierra Leone and
Speaker 1: the Ivory Coast. However, actual power rested in the hands
Speaker 1: of prominent members of certain leading settler families or lineages,
Speaker 1: in a manner that retained that maintained some balance of
Speaker 1: power among the families. The settlers on whom the government
Speaker 1: of Liberia that's evolved as from eighteen forty one, were
Speaker 1: essentially American rather than African and outlook and orientation. They
Speaker 1: retained a strong sentimental attach and attachment to America, which
Speaker 1: they regarded as their native land. They wore the Western
Speaker 1: mode of dress, which they had become accustomed in America,
Speaker 1: However unsuitable this dress was to Liberia's tropical weather. A
Speaker 1: black silk topper and a long black frock coat from
Speaker 1: men and a Victorian silk gown for women. They built
Speaker 1: themselves frame stone or brick porticoed houses of one and
Speaker 1: a half to two stories, similar to those of the
Speaker 1: plantation owners in the Southern States of America, and they
Speaker 1: preferred American food like flour, corn meal, butter, large pickle, beef, bacon,
Speaker 1: and American grown rice, large quantities of which they imported
Speaker 1: annually to African food stuff like cassafa, plantain, yams, palm oil,
Speaker 1: sweet potatoes, and country rice grown by Africans and the
Speaker 1: Liberian hinterland. They were Christians, spoke English as their mother tongue,
Speaker 1: and practice monogamy. They held land individually, in contrast with
Speaker 1: the communal ownership of the African population, and their political
Speaker 1: institutions were modeled on those of America, with an elected
Speaker 1: president and a legislature made up of a Senate and
Speaker 1: a House of Representatives, so that in spite of their color,
Speaker 1: they were as a rule as foreign and lacking in
Speaker 1: sentimental attachment to Africa, as we're European colonialists elsewhere in Africa,
Speaker 1: like the British, the French, the Portuguese and the Spaniards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a really stir in the pot here. I mean,
Speaker 1: like it just they're like conduits are like vessels for
Speaker 1: still like white agendas. It sounds likely even if they
Speaker 1: don't mean to be. I mean, it's not so much
Speaker 1: white as like Western because obviously they're not white. For me,
Speaker 1: it's interchangeable. I know that's a mistake, but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they are very much. They are Westerners, and they see
Speaker 1: to a large extent the people who had been living
Speaker 1: in Liberia as like backwards, um devil worshiping weirdos who
Speaker 1: don't deserve political rights. Right, so the indigenous Liberians don't
Speaker 1: get to vote in the same way that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like they're all they're shut out to a significant extent,
Speaker 1: at least from the franchise, right. Um. And if you're thinking, boy, howdy,
Speaker 1: I bet this coust a problem somewhere to on the line,
Speaker 1: then good news, you're right on the money. Over the
Speaker 1: next half century and change, the Americo Liberians became an oligarchy,
Speaker 1: practicing what one historian called a quote sort of sub
Speaker 1: imperialism at African expense. By nineteen hundred, about fifteen thousand
Speaker 1: black American immigrants had settled in Liberia, along with around
Speaker 1: three hundred immigrants from the West Indies. Liberia is often
Speaker 1: claimed in twentieth century history books as one of two
Speaker 1: African states that remained independent during the Scramble for Africa,
Speaker 1: the other being Ethiopia, But this is not quite accurate.
Speaker 1: Ethiopia is, for sure, but Liberia was a colony that
Speaker 1: just became independent in eighteen forty seven, like certainly a
Speaker 1: lot earlier than other colonies did, because most of Africa
Speaker 1: hadn't been colonized in eighty seven. But the fact that
Speaker 1: it was not recolonized doesn't really mean anything because it
Speaker 1: was already a colony um and the actual indigenous people
Speaker 1: in Liberia were a sub class within their own homeland
Speaker 1: with very little economic or political power. The Americo Liberians
Speaker 1: held all of the power, and their Americo Liberian WIG
Speaker 1: Party was essentially the only legal political party in the
Speaker 1: country from eighteen sixty to nineteen eighty. Despite the fact
Speaker 1: that immigrant descended Liberians made up only two percent of
Speaker 1: the population, they effectively turned the rest of the country
Speaker 1: into a profit making engine for themselves. In nineteen thirty one,
Speaker 1: an international commission found that several prominent Americo librarians had
Speaker 1: enslaved indigenous Africans. So yeah, uh, the West is pretty
Speaker 1: pretty pretty pretty yeah, it does it does. It does
Speaker 1: work that way sometimes. God, you know what else? People?
Speaker 1: Is a virus, sharid. It is a virus. It's a
Speaker 1: virus that keeps our democracy functioning in a healthy manner,
Speaker 1: like the epstein bar virus. You know, you can't get
Speaker 1: enough of it? Just nom good taste. Uh huh, that's
Speaker 1: what everyone says about the epstein bar virus. Anyway, here's
Speaker 1: some ads. Ah, we're back. We're really enjoying that message
Speaker 1: from our sponsors. The epstein bar virus. Cat catch it
Speaker 1: tomorrow anyway. Um So, if you want a good example
Speaker 1: of how, like Sophie the good the good people at
Speaker 1: the epstein bar virus paid us serious money for that plug.
Speaker 1: Ever makes you happy, Robert, that does make me happy.
Speaker 1: I'd be happier if everybody went and got the epstein
Speaker 1: bar virus. Let's let's move on from the bit I think?
Speaker 1: I think? Is that? Should we move on from the bit?
Speaker 1: Is it not? You think so? I'm gonna look up
Speaker 1: what the epstein bar virus does because I've forgotten. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: well you know, I just remember the name. I'm so
Speaker 1: lucky or like it's like it's the herpes virus. I guess. Oh, no,
Speaker 1: it's mono. Is it moto? I don't know that's let's
Speaker 1: let's yeah. I think it's it's Monoe for seven time. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's that good ship. Um. Yeah, so get motto.
Speaker 1: Everybody get mono. Okay, Sophie, how are you doing? You happy?
Speaker 1: You're happy with me as a podcaster. You're glad you
Speaker 1: made this series of choices in your life that led
Speaker 1: to you sitting here while a guy talks about however,
Speaker 1: once you get mono on a podcast about Liberia kind
Speaker 1: of Actually, I was gonna say, even though Sophie is
Speaker 1: like not, She's like I wasn't talking, Like, I'm just
Speaker 1: so glad her camera is always on because I can
Speaker 1: just like every time you say something, I can just
Speaker 1: look up and I know. Sophie's like we connect, you know, like, yes,
Speaker 1: we connect, and you know what connecting is how people
Speaker 1: get mono. Anyway, what move on from the bid okay example,
Speaker 1: So we're talking about like mono. Colonization spreads, like the
Speaker 1: colonial mindset and the imperial mindset spreads from the United
Speaker 1: States to Liberia as do what's really as we noted,
Speaker 1: like some of these America liberians take slaves from the
Speaker 1: Native Africans for themselves. They also create a plantation I
Speaker 1: mean several, but there's one in particular we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about right now because this really high highlights how
Speaker 1: fucked up some of the stuff going on here is. Um.
Speaker 1: Starting in the nineteen twenties, the Firestone Corporation starts a
Speaker 1: massive rubber plantation in Liberia, which profits obviously the two
Speaker 1: percent of people who are America Liberian that sprawls from
Speaker 1: the coast to like the hills of central Liberia. Um.
Speaker 1: It's this like massive thousands and thousands of acres UM
Speaker 1: with people like living on it, harvesting rubber rubber for
Speaker 1: very little money, um, and have very little control over
Speaker 1: their own lives, like indigenous people laboring day in and
Speaker 1: day out to harvest the rubber that makes the tires
Speaker 1: and like the cars that first start filling American streets. Um,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. I'm gonna quote from a ride up
Speaker 1: in pro Publica. At the center of this kingdom was
Speaker 1: House fifty three, reserved for the plantation boss. It stood
Speaker 1: up a hill overlooking the rest of the plantation, a
Speaker 1: two story Antebellum style Georgian colonial mansion of pink brick.
Speaker 1: It had a wide porch, six white Corinthian columns, and
Speaker 1: jalucy windows. Other homes for expatriates featuring verandas and manicured gardens,
Speaker 1: were scattered nearby. In a section of the plantation known
Speaker 1: as Harbor Hills, there was a nine hole golf course,
Speaker 1: tennis courts, and a country club with a bar. About
Speaker 1: three miles down the road was Harbor Firestone's Own Company Town,
Speaker 1: a portmanteau form from the names of the businesses founder
Speaker 1: Harveys Firestone Senior and his wife Idabell. It held Firestone
Speaker 1: Central Office, industrial garages, and a latex practicing plant retlent
Speaker 1: of ammonia and other chemicals. The town itself was a
Speaker 1: collection of tin roofed homes and shops, a grocery store,
Speaker 1: a bank, schools, and brick and cinder block bungalows for
Speaker 1: mid level Liberian managers and domestic staff. There were the
Speaker 1: homes of the tappers, the Liberian workers who did the
Speaker 1: hard work of extracting the latex sap from the trees.
Speaker 1: The camps were long, low rows of residences, almost like coops.
Speaker 1: Units generally consisted of a single room. The homes had
Speaker 1: wattle and daubed walls and aluminum roofs. There were no
Speaker 1: windows and no kitchens. The work camps had communal pumps
Speaker 1: for water and outdoor kitchens for cooking. There was no electricity.
Speaker 1: Bathrooms were outhouses or the nearby bush. There was the world.
Speaker 1: This was the world of the Firestone operation, described in
Speaker 1: a night in nineteen ninety by one company executive as
Speaker 1: resembling an old Southern plantation. So fucking George H. W.
Speaker 1: Bush is in the White House and white people are
Speaker 1: running a plantation in Africa. Um, with the collusion of
Speaker 1: the Americo Liberian government, where the workers there are just
Speaker 1: a couple of steps above being enslaved. That was like yesterday, Yeah,
Speaker 1: real recent. And when the civil war starts, Firestones company
Speaker 1: presentatives are going to make some cool choices about how
Speaker 1: to help. Yeah, this Firestone tired rubber. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: where the rubber comes from plantation in Africa. So that's neat. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: you will not be surprised to hear that an awful
Speaker 1: lot of Liberians and I mean like indigenous librarians were
Speaker 1: not jazzed with the status quo. Right, people have problems
Speaker 1: with it. Um. It was a pretty yeah at least yeah,
Speaker 1: not psyched. It was. It was you have to give
Speaker 1: it a really effective system because Liberia kind of if
Speaker 1: you treat the America Liberian rule as a colonial project,
Speaker 1: it lasts longer than basically any other African colony other
Speaker 1: than like South Africa. Argued with like that, yeahs because
Speaker 1: like people are never taught about it or like you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, went under the radar because no
Speaker 1: one even knew it was there. Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think there's a number of I don't know about
Speaker 1: I mean most I think I think very little of
Speaker 1: this history is known to Americans. Like it's not something
Speaker 1: we really talked about. I remember vaguely hearing that one
Speaker 1: of the like I remember in like a textbook I
Speaker 1: had in high school that was talking about like abolition
Speaker 1: movement pre Civil War. There was like a little box
Speaker 1: in like one of the pages that summarized like the
Speaker 1: American Colonization Society and the colonizing of Liberia, and like
Speaker 1: four paragraphs and like that was just kind of like, oh,
Speaker 1: some people went over there. This is one thing that
Speaker 1: folks tried. Like I don't, I didn't I didn't hear this.
Speaker 1: I didn't learn anything about like the they again like
Speaker 1: black imperialism is the title of one of the and
Speaker 1: obviously it's not. I think it's I think they're using
Speaker 1: that to kind of, uh illicit a reaction. This is
Speaker 1: still in a lot of ways white imperialism. It's just
Speaker 1: using black people because there's a huge financial benefit and
Speaker 1: a military benefit which will discuss later to the United
Speaker 1: States because Liberia functions this way. Um, so yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a pretty effective system. Uh. The Americo Liberians remain in
Speaker 1: charge until nineteen eighty when things begin to go terribly wrong.
Speaker 1: The last president that the oligarchy was able to successfully
Speaker 1: keep in power while install in power, I should say,
Speaker 1: was a guy named William Tilbert. His administration was severely
Speaker 1: weakened early on due to a series of rice riots
Speaker 1: in the end of the nineteen seventies, and by early
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty his ability to stay in powder where was
Speaker 1: teetering on the break because you might guess they were
Speaker 1: like there was a lot of hunger. Poor people who
Speaker 1: are indigenous librarians generally are starving the riot because they
Speaker 1: want food. The government cracks down on it brutally. They
Speaker 1: arrest a bunch of organizers. Um. But you know they
Speaker 1: beat this down, but their their hold on power is
Speaker 1: not secure. Um. Tober does not seem to have been
Speaker 1: a very bright dude because he's not entirely aware of
Speaker 1: how shaky his position is. He and his fellow oligarch's
Speaker 1: um felt like they had control mostly locked down because
Speaker 1: all of the officers in the Liberian military were Americo
Speaker 1: Liberia in you could not be an indigenous Liberian and
Speaker 1: be an officer. Now here's what's interesting. All of the
Speaker 1: enlisted men are indigenous um. And so all of like
Speaker 1: the sergeants and corporals are indigenous men. This is exactly
Speaker 1: the same way we talked about years ago. It did
Speaker 1: an episode on Idi Amine who becomes the dictator of Uganda,
Speaker 1: which is a British colony after the British come out,
Speaker 1: and and Idi Amine was like the highest ranking Native
Speaker 1: African military officer in the military Uganda when the British left,
Speaker 1: and he was a sergeant. Because the way the British
Speaker 1: military worked in Africa, all of your officers are white dudes.
Speaker 1: All of the enlisted men are are black Africans, so
Speaker 1: the people that could die are usually not like yes,
Speaker 1: but also the the officers are the ones who are
Speaker 1: supposed to be able to do the coordinating and the
Speaker 1: actual like executing a military operations. Um So that's part
Speaker 1: of why you don't want indigenous people to be officers,
Speaker 1: because then they'll have Sergeants are never supposed to have
Speaker 1: command over big units of guys, right Like, that's the
Speaker 1: thing for for for captains and may Jews and colonels
Speaker 1: and whatnot. Um So, you can see that the Liberian
Speaker 1: militaries organized the same way that like the British and
Speaker 1: the French organized their colonial militaries. Um And because again
Speaker 1: Idi Amine was a sergeant before he became dictator. When
Speaker 1: Liberia has its civil war and the government gets overthrown,
Speaker 1: it's going to be a sergeants who do the overthrowing,
Speaker 1: because that's as high as you can rise in the
Speaker 1: military as an indigenous person. Um So, Tibert was so
Speaker 1: convinced that he was in a secure position that he
Speaker 1: started doing the one thing an oligarchic leader of what
Speaker 1: is effectively a US back dictatorship should never do. He
Speaker 1: starts to funk with the US. Um See, the U
Speaker 1: S Department of Defense had come to expect we, like
Speaker 1: Liberia in part because there's a bunch of benefits. Financial benefits.
Speaker 1: US companies make a lot of money cheap labor, get
Speaker 1: rubber and shipped from Liberia. UM. But also the US
Speaker 1: has a bunch of factory we get up to in Africa, right,
Speaker 1: We got a ton of ship going on in Africa,
Speaker 1: specially in this period. UM. In Liberia, we say, hey,
Speaker 1: we need to land some fucking planes. We gotta keep
Speaker 1: some marines there, we need to keep like a rapid
Speaker 1: deployment force or whatever. In the past, Liberia is always
Speaker 1: like absolutely, send as many troops as you want, say, like,
Speaker 1: land your planes here, fly out of here, you can
Speaker 1: get to go. We're buddies, you know, because intelligent people
Speaker 1: who are part of this oligarchy recognize that the United
Speaker 1: States being in your pocket is basically the best thing
Speaker 1: you could do in terms of staying exactly what's what's
Speaker 1: what is heaping is the benefit of that. Um. I
Speaker 1: I don't think he's a very bright dude. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: admit I'm not the most knowledgeable on this, but it's
Speaker 1: it's generally reviewed regarded as kind of a baffling decision.
Speaker 1: But he's also like, um, you know, there's there's the
Speaker 1: the US is kind of like I think, withholding some
Speaker 1: um some aid funding and stuff out of civil rights concerns.
Speaker 1: So there's like there's some pressure being put on his
Speaker 1: regime I think by the US, and he decides to
Speaker 1: like push back in this way. Um. This proves to
Speaker 1: be a really bad call because when basically d C
Speaker 1: decides we want a new US rapid deployment Force in Liberia, um,
Speaker 1: and they asked permission and Toilber is like no. So
Speaker 1: then the CIA and the Department of Defense are like, well,
Speaker 1: why do we want this guy in power now? All right?
Speaker 1: Like this doesn't benefit us at all? Um. Who Well,
Speaker 1: they try to It's kind of debatable as to how
Speaker 1: much of an impact they really have on this, but
Speaker 1: they certainly start thinking about it, and they start going
Speaker 1: through some names of like what what sergeants and whatnot
Speaker 1: in the in the Liberian military do we think could
Speaker 1: like overthrow the government? Um. It was generally assumed Liberia
Speaker 1: doesn't have much in the way of other political parties yet,
Speaker 1: so there's not really an established opposition, So it was
Speaker 1: assumed the army's the best place to actually get some
Speaker 1: kind of revolutionary leader Um, they're not really able to
Speaker 1: move forward unless the situation changes, though, and that change
Speaker 1: starts to come courtesy if the Progressive Alliance of Liberia,
Speaker 1: an advocacy group which decides to become a political party.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty, they start holding events. Uh, and talk
Speaker 1: spread that Tilbert's regime was planning to execute a bunch
Speaker 1: of the organizers of the riots who were still imprisoned
Speaker 1: on the one year anniversary of the Rice Riots to
Speaker 1: like kind of solidified power threaten these people. Um. So
Speaker 1: this inspires a lot of local Liberians to do something
Speaker 1: ahead of that date. Uh. And it's very likely that
Speaker 1: the CIA had some sort of I don't think we
Speaker 1: know exactly what they were certainly talking about overthrowing Tollbear.
Speaker 1: And then it happens. It's again, I can't tell you
Speaker 1: exactly their role here, but what happens is that a
Speaker 1: group of seventeen soldiers, mostly sergeants, which is the highest
Speaker 1: rank that librarians could hold, um, attempt to launch a
Speaker 1: coup ahead of that anniversary. And I'm gonna quote now
Speaker 1: from the Liberian Civil Wars by Charles River editors the
Speaker 1: senior ranking member of the coup party, although not Its
Speaker 1: leader was Master Sergeant Samuel will Do, and almost entirely
Speaker 1: unknown figure. The decision was rather spontaneous and aided by alcohol.
Speaker 1: The party set off on the evening of the eleventh
Speaker 1: fully armed, and made its way to the foot of
Speaker 1: the Barclay Training Center towards Capitol Hill and the Executive Mansion.
Speaker 1: The streets were unlit. An entry to the grounds of
Speaker 1: the mansion was gained without challenge. At about ours in
Speaker 1: the morning of the twelfth, the coup party broke into
Speaker 1: the basement, also without encountering any challenge, and cautiously entered
Speaker 1: the upstairs section. Now purely by chance. It turns out
Speaker 1: that President Tolbert had been out at a Baptist convention.
Speaker 1: He was a preacher, uh so he had been preaching
Speaker 1: at this convention, and instead of going back to his compound,
Speaker 1: he decides to go back and sleep at the Capitol
Speaker 1: building that night. So he's in his bathroom and his
Speaker 1: pajamas when he hears gunfire, which is the coup members
Speaker 1: assaulting his guards. The whole thing is very messy. It
Speaker 1: ends with Tolbar, his teenage nephew, and a bunch of
Speaker 1: guards all executed brutally. These are very violent killings. Um
Speaker 1: When Tolbar's body is discovered the next day, his corpse
Speaker 1: was found mutilated as best as anyone can tell. A
Speaker 1: corporal named Harrison Penno had shot him in the head
Speaker 1: after Tolbert attempted to bribe him. For more detail, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna turn again to the quote from that book, the
Speaker 1: Liberian Civil Wars quote. After the shooting, Corporal Pinno was
Speaker 1: asked what he thought he was doing, and his reply
Speaker 1: was that he wanted to see Tolbert die in order
Speaker 1: to debunk a generally held belief that the president was
Speaker 1: a witch doctor. The idea of leadership allied to sorcery
Speaker 1: remains common enough in Africa, and most Liberian leaders tended
Speaker 1: to allow mythology of that nature to pass, since it
Speaker 1: added to the mystique of their rule. Tolbert habitually carried
Speaker 1: a short ivory tipped cane, and the belief was that
Speaker 1: it was carved from the femur of a human leg bone.
Speaker 1: It was remarked by one soldier that if Tolbert had
Speaker 1: laid the cane down, he would not have been killed,
Speaker 1: But it is unlikely that he was carrying any ceremonial
Speaker 1: a koutrama. At that particular moment, regardless, three more bullets
Speaker 1: were put in his head just to ensure the job
Speaker 1: was done. And with that, the nineteenth President of the
Speaker 1: Liberian Republic lay dead on the floor of his bedroom
Speaker 1: in a pool of blood. So he gets disemboweled after this.
Speaker 1: At some point after he's killed, his guts get removed,
Speaker 1: which is again seen as the best way to kill
Speaker 1: a witch doctor. It is hard to say who did
Speaker 1: this because after the coup proof successful, these seventeen initial
Speaker 1: dudes are joined by like a U to other soldiers.
Speaker 1: They find the president's liquor cabinet, and they all just
Speaker 1: get ship house drunk and go on a killing spree.
Speaker 1: They just start murdering, like anybody associated with the old government. Right, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is gnarly. It's also like you're part of
Speaker 1: an oppressed class. You're used as cannon fodder by the government,
Speaker 1: like you have no rights, and you get a chance
Speaker 1: to murder them all. Historically, you murder them all. Um,
Speaker 1: this is not the only place something like this has happened. Uh,
Speaker 1: So we're going to talk a lot more about disembowment, cannibalism,
Speaker 1: and other similar subjects. But you should probably discuss what
Speaker 1: those things mean in a Liberian context, because again, a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff gets like over like focused on
Speaker 1: by foreigners talking about like this conflict and being like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, there's cannibals and witch doctors, and there's
Speaker 1: like talking about why that exists in what that means
Speaker 1: you talk about witch stuff a little bit. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about um. This particular, the particular part
Speaker 1: of West Africa where the Liberian colony is established, a
Speaker 1: history of a practice called good boyle uh, and good
Speaker 1: boyle was at practice whereby people are killed so that
Speaker 1: their body parts can be used as sacrifices to magically
Speaker 1: obtain certain benefits. Now, one like local news source is
Speaker 1: kind of like a West African news source described this
Speaker 1: as an ancient practice and notes that Liberian elites, which
Speaker 1: generally means the Americo Liberians, never really attempted to like
Speaker 1: find ways to stop this and never really worked on
Speaker 1: a good way for how to do it um. And
Speaker 1: since they tended to be Christian and kind of dicks um,
Speaker 1: indigenous practices developed. A degree of gravity is like acts
Speaker 1: of resistance to the oligarchy, a version of this happens
Speaker 1: in Haiti, right, where a lot of these traditional practices
Speaker 1: become associated with resistance to the colonial regime. Now also
Speaker 1: that local source I found scholars will quibble with aspects
Speaker 1: of that because, again, as was noted above, Tolbert whose
Speaker 1: Americo Liberian and other presidents would definitely like signpost to
Speaker 1: some of these kind of belief about much craft invincible
Speaker 1: or like like the myste Yeah yeah. Um So, anyway,
Speaker 1: the fact that a lot of these these kind of
Speaker 1: traditional like boyo, this traditional practice is seen as kind
Speaker 1: of a resistance practice to the Christian and like very
Speaker 1: western regime. Um, this seems to have caused what had
Speaker 1: been very fairly uncommon practices spiritual practices before colonization to
Speaker 1: grow and mutate. University, Yeah, because this is what happens
Speaker 1: in Liberia all of the ship we're going to be
Speaker 1: talking about that happens in the Civil War. Ad. These
Speaker 1: really fucked up practices. These are a lot of people
Speaker 1: will argue did not really exist in the same fashion
Speaker 1: prior to colonization. Yeah, they were. They were like in
Speaker 1: response to being colonized and oppressed, they were like, we
Speaker 1: can match onto these things that are becoming this form
Speaker 1: of resistance, and they're also they're going to change over time.
Speaker 1: So the University of Wisconsin professor Florence Burno um right
Speaker 1: that quote. Public rumors depict human sacrifice and often related
Speaker 1: sorceries as the most common way to achieve personal success, wealth,
Speaker 1: and prestige in times of economic shortage and declining social opportunities.
Speaker 1: Political leaders are widely believed to perform ritual murder to
Speaker 1: ensure electoral success and power, and many skillfully use these
Speaker 1: perceptions to build visibility and deference. So people like a
Speaker 1: lot of these these rulers in this period, like aren't
Speaker 1: necessarily doing these things, but they are kind of signaling
Speaker 1: that they do, which leads to an increased belief that
Speaker 1: there's some efficacy to this. And Burnout notes that rather
Speaker 1: being a truly ancient practice, kaboya and other similar practices
Speaker 1: have roots in the past, but are influenced in their
Speaker 1: modern forms by the extractive nature of colonialism. Quote. The
Speaker 1: colonial situation revealed significant contradictions in the Western fiction of
Speaker 1: a modern disconnect between body and power. The series of
Speaker 1: political and moral transgressions triggered by the conquest made apparent
Speaker 1: how Europeans themselves envisioned political survival as a form of
Speaker 1: positive exchange revolving around the body fetish. In the colony,
Speaker 1: black and white bodies became re sacrilized as political resources.
Speaker 1: Think about how in the can you explain what body fetish? Like?
Speaker 1: What are saying, like fetish is kind of like a
Speaker 1: religious term for like an object of sort of like
Speaker 1: worship or at least of spiritual focus needed to Okay,
Speaker 1: I understand that, but like, so think about one of
Speaker 1: so one of the things people talk about, like cannibalism
Speaker 1: in the Congo, and one thing they'll point out is
Speaker 1: that a lot of these practices were influenced to even
Speaker 1: have their origin and what the Belgians were doing and
Speaker 1: taking the hands of people who did not like harvest
Speaker 1: enough rubber, because like what they're pointing out is that, like, well,
Speaker 1: from the perspective of these people living in this region,
Speaker 1: Europeans are engaging in the same acts. They're taking pieces
Speaker 1: of human bodies and they are using them to gain
Speaker 1: power in why wouldn't that work? Well, it's like you
Speaker 1: get power by taking somebody's hand from them, right, you
Speaker 1: get power over the whole community. You know that as
Speaker 1: this threat how is that any meaningfully different than like
Speaker 1: you kill somebody and you take take a part of
Speaker 1: their body apart and like eat it or whatever. Like.
Speaker 1: You can see a relation between those two things, and
Speaker 1: you can see how like the the extractive nature of
Speaker 1: colonial capitalism on these people influences these ideas of like
Speaker 1: sacrificing and taking pieces of the body in order to
Speaker 1: gain power. You know, it's not this is not evolving
Speaker 1: in the point that these scholars, this doesn't These practices
Speaker 1: aren't They're not. It's not just people doing what they've
Speaker 1: been doing for thousands of years. There they have evolved
Speaker 1: and changed over the period of colonization as much as
Speaker 1: everyone has um and so have these practices. And these
Speaker 1: practices cannot be extricated from from capitalism or from colonization, right. Um, So,
Speaker 1: by the time Sergeant Doan as allies overthrow the government,
Speaker 1: these practices have become quote not a marginal but a
Speaker 1: central dimension of the nature of public authority, leadership, and
Speaker 1: popular identities. And this is going to cause a lot
Speaker 1: of real nasty problems. But you know what else is
Speaker 1: going to call some real nasty problem. Serene Epstein bar Virus.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, howdy, let me tell you, the Epstein I
Speaker 1: should have brought it back, causes the problem of having
Speaker 1: a good time. Look, everybody loves a little bit of
Speaker 1: mono smooch smooch. It was very popular in my high
Speaker 1: school me too. Actually, all the kids loved it. All Right,
Speaker 1: here's some ads. Uh, we're back and and continue to
Speaker 1: be the only podcast with the courage to be supported
Speaker 1: by Mono Nucleus. Yeah, that's on me, Sophie, It's on me.
Speaker 1: It's it is it is. Look, fucking NPRS whatever thing
Speaker 1: they do the daily, that New York Times podcast, Those
Speaker 1: fucking cowards would never be sponsored by the Epstein. Bar
Speaker 1: virus cowards, cowards, all of them. Um. I will say that,
Speaker 1: like there's an impulse that I won't I won't entertain
Speaker 1: like this, this fascination with physical body and power and
Speaker 1: like what that means, like on a philosophical level, I'm
Speaker 1: so fascinated by that. And I said this before another podcast,
Speaker 1: But there's always a tendency I have in any podcast
Speaker 1: I guessed on to just become philosophy zz And I
Speaker 1: won't do that this time. But I will say I
Speaker 1: have the impulse too, because it's very fascinating when you
Speaker 1: think about that overlap in that connection, because it's like,
Speaker 1: so I don't know what it is. It's it's just sucking.
Speaker 1: Why I would I don't know, I don't know what
Speaker 1: the thor it is. I would really encourage people to read, UM,
Speaker 1: some of what Burno has written on Florence Burno B E.
Speaker 1: R in a U L T. I think that's how
Speaker 1: it's pronounced from the University of Wisconsin. UM. Because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of like writing on this, not just in Liberia,
Speaker 1: because like versions of this are are recognized in other colonies,
Speaker 1: but it is really We've we talked about it a
Speaker 1: bit in some of our Congo episodes. It is a
Speaker 1: really fascinating demand. And it also you often get from
Speaker 1: not not just from racist because obviously racists be racist NG,
Speaker 1: but from like people who don't who are racist but
Speaker 1: don't want to frame themselves that way, talking about like
Speaker 1: problems in Africa as like, well, you do have this
Speaker 1: problem of like you've got this ancient and culture that
Speaker 1: has some really savage dimensions, and you know that this
Speaker 1: is a problem in like labor aria of like attaining
Speaker 1: any kind of peace, and it's like, well, actually those
Speaker 1: practices aren't. They are evolved from ancient practices, but they're
Speaker 1: very much rooted in the ship that like was done
Speaker 1: to these people to make them a productive rubber plantation.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, it's does not get it gets glossed over,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Really pices, you know, should
Speaker 1: be discussed like this. They are not any more savage
Speaker 1: than slavery and then colonialism. You know, they're just nastier
Speaker 1: looking because there's a lot of value put in kind
Speaker 1: of like making the plantations. Is that's why people have
Speaker 1: weddings at plantations, right, Because you're a slave owner, you
Speaker 1: dry sit up more. It's so embarrassing how many like
Speaker 1: friends of friends or whatever. Just the photos of like
Speaker 1: having a wedding on a plantation makes me want to vomit.
Speaker 1: But like why why why is it glossed over that
Speaker 1: like blinching happened and all these things, and like it's
Speaker 1: still it's still fucking happens, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like these violent acts that are so disgusting. I will
Speaker 1: say it right here. I think killing a dude in
Speaker 1: battle and eating his heart is a thousand times less
Speaker 1: gross than forcing a man to labor for you until
Speaker 1: he dies. Yes, way less gross? Ye, God, that's I
Speaker 1: don't know, I fucking people, man, I don't know. But
Speaker 1: like also like body power all the stuff. It's also
Speaker 1: in every culture, not every culture, I can like think
Speaker 1: of a few cultures that uh still incorporate this fascination
Speaker 1: with like someone like taking a part of someone's body
Speaker 1: to demonstrate your power. Over Look, look look at Sam,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Like, it's just like there's
Speaker 1: like I can I want on deep dive into this
Speaker 1: off air. There's somebody there's I mean, a lot has
Speaker 1: been written. This is really a fascinating thing to read into.
Speaker 1: We're not gonna, I don't. I don't want to pretend
Speaker 1: we're doing anything but scratching the surface. But it is
Speaker 1: important to scratch the surface because when we read these
Speaker 1: lurid stories of like child sacrifice and cannibalism, you need
Speaker 1: to know that it's more complicated than just like, look
Speaker 1: at this fucked up thing they do in Liberia, right,
Speaker 1: the thing these non white people have exactly time because
Speaker 1: they're uncivilized or whatever. It's like, it's important to understand
Speaker 1: that it's like it's part of a continuum of violence
Speaker 1: and it's not the it's it's an ugly it's certainly bad,
Speaker 1: but it's not like it's not the start of it,
Speaker 1: and it's not the part that has caused the most
Speaker 1: harm at scale. Yeah, by the time Sergeant Do and
Speaker 1: his allies over through the government, Uh, these practices have
Speaker 1: become again like central to the nature of public authority.
Speaker 1: And guys like Tolbert probably maybe aren't actually doing anything,
Speaker 1: certainly not aren't doing some of the stuff that other
Speaker 1: people will do. But when these indigenous folks come into power,
Speaker 1: they have this expectation that, like, this is what you
Speaker 1: do when you're in power. These practices are both how
Speaker 1: you submit your power publicly and also how you ensure
Speaker 1: that you won't lose it. So Doe founds a new
Speaker 1: military junta government with himself at the head. Most of
Speaker 1: the people that he let run the country are members
Speaker 1: of the Krawn ethnic group. Because Doe is Krawn. They
Speaker 1: had been traditionally a fairly minor group in terms of
Speaker 1: their like numbers in power in the country, but Doe
Speaker 1: puts them at the center of a building ship show.
Speaker 1: The government he headed was at least as brutal and
Speaker 1: violent is the one he'd replaced. And by the way,
Speaker 1: the Firestone Plantation keeps right on shugging along because do
Speaker 1: that for a brief moment. But well, Doe comes in
Speaker 1: in part to be pro us, right, he's very he
Speaker 1: doesn't want he doesn't want to funk up things for business,
Speaker 1: you know, like because obviously is beneficial to him. Exactly,
Speaker 1: He's all about that. Um so, yeah, they do all
Speaker 1: their nastiest ship one of the one of the most
Speaker 1: infamous moments, like after taking power, when everyone's still kind
Speaker 1: of like because again Liberia, prior to this had been
Speaker 1: they were very integrated into African the continent. Like there's
Speaker 1: all these different economic and political organizations that are four
Speaker 1: different that all of these multiple African states will be
Speaker 1: a part of. Right even before uh, they're integrated in Africa. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but even after colonized state, it was still like not
Speaker 1: it wasn't like shitty like before they became like like
Speaker 1: before it was black imperialized. It was still a colony,
Speaker 1: right No, no, no, it was established by the US
Speaker 1: like it had just been people living in Africa like no,
Speaker 1: I'm talking, I'm sorry, I'm talking about the government. Dough
Speaker 1: overthrows right the Toberian government, the America Liberian government. They're
Speaker 1: integrated into the political I was math of Africa, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so all of these when he overthrows the government, all
Speaker 1: of these he arrests all of these government officials who
Speaker 1: have who are like friends with the people running Nigeria
Speaker 1: and like Kenya and all of these other countries. Right.
Speaker 1: They they're in political organizations together. They're like managing trade deals,
Speaker 1: they're going on vacation, they're like there are they are
Speaker 1: buds with the other people who are in power in Africa,
Speaker 1: And now they're in prison and Dough in a surprise moment,
Speaker 1: has them all executed by drunken soldiers on television. So
Speaker 1: I forgot this is like the eighties, baby, Oh my god.
Speaker 1: So this this really pisss off a lot of other
Speaker 1: people and like a lot of other African governmental leaders,
Speaker 1: right because like that's my fucking buddy, you just shot
Speaker 1: in the street, Like what the funk, dude? Um. So
Speaker 1: this causes a lot of folks in the international community
Speaker 1: to support his ouster. Uh. Still though the Reagan administration
Speaker 1: is like, hey, you're willing to let us land planes.
Speaker 1: They're like we'll play ball, you know. Uh. They invite
Speaker 1: Dough to the White House. He meets with the President,
Speaker 1: where Ronald Reagan and what it might be an early
Speaker 1: senior moment, refers to him as Chairman Moe instead of
Speaker 1: Chairman Dough and do just kind of like goes with it.
Speaker 1: You know, we haven't had to stop having these no,
Speaker 1: but there has to be a lock. You. Look, there's
Speaker 1: things we were all fine with the idea that you
Speaker 1: can be too young to do certain things. Okay, maybe
Speaker 1: you can't be too old to do certain things exactly
Speaker 1: even now, I mean not whatever. There are so many
Speaker 1: moments where like be in Congress, look, yeah, just oh
Speaker 1: my god, we're being governed by people that are slowly
Speaker 1: fading away. And you can't be president until thirty five,
Speaker 1: which is an implicit acknowledgement that the age you are
Speaker 1: impacts your ability to do to the job property anyway,
Speaker 1: this is this is a rant for else another Yeah,
Speaker 1: so mo, which is what Reagan calls him. Uh assures
Speaker 1: the Reagan administration that Liberia is totally going to return
Speaker 1: to democracy December of nineteen eighty five. Right, I need
Speaker 1: a couple of years to get stuff into shape, right,
Speaker 1: get purged the government of all these bad people, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna fix stuff up and then I'm gonna stop
Speaker 1: being dictator. Right nineteen eighty five where a democracy baby, Um,
Speaker 1: so Mo knows he does have to hold or Doe
Speaker 1: knows he just does have to hold an election. Um correct, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he knows he's got to hold an election. Um. But
Speaker 1: he also knows that like I'm not gonna have a
Speaker 1: real election. So he does the kind of ship dictators do, right,
Speaker 1: you know, um he and he cracks down. Every time
Speaker 1: political parties will rise up, We'll find excuses to arrest them.
Speaker 1: He's constantly arresting and purging people, including other folks he'd
Speaker 1: carried out the coup with um and obviously a lot
Speaker 1: of resistance starts to bubble up to his regime, and
Speaker 1: the nexus of anti dough sentiment forms around a woman
Speaker 1: named Ellen Johnson Surleaf. She's an economist who had been
Speaker 1: educated in the US and had worked as an executive
Speaker 1: for City Bank. She decided to run for election alongside
Speaker 1: Jackson f Doe, who is not related to Sergeant Dough
Speaker 1: right separate does um and they's she comes back. She
Speaker 1: comes back. That's one of the things she gets a
Speaker 1: lot of, like early kind of respect is she like
Speaker 1: leaves the US to go back to Liberia to run. Um,
Speaker 1: So they run for president with the Liberian Action Party. Uh.
Speaker 1: The election is held largely so the bad Dough. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call him good Dough and bad Dough from this
Speaker 1: point on because it's going to get too confusing in
Speaker 1: the ways. Uh. And Doe is doing this because there's
Speaker 1: like ninety three million dollars in US AID funds um
Speaker 1: that he wants, but he has to do an election first. Uh.
Speaker 1: He wins the election, but like immediately in every like
Speaker 1: independent observer is like, well that was completely fraudules us.
Speaker 1: The U S decides to work with Bad Dough anyway,
Speaker 1: because again he's smarter than Tolbert. He's not gonna like
Speaker 1: say no to the U S Military establishment. So Doe
Speaker 1: sets to work carrying out happily carrying out an ethnic
Speaker 1: cleansing in Nimba County where Jackson Doe had called home
Speaker 1: because he gets to see where people are voting against him,
Speaker 1: He burns their ballots and then he sends his soldiers
Speaker 1: to massacre them. Um, so he most was the way
Speaker 1: just to see where he's hated the most. Yep, yep,
Speaker 1: hell man. So his you know, again, the troops carrying
Speaker 1: out these massacres are mostly krawn like him, right, because
Speaker 1: again he's very much and there's other ethnic groups that
Speaker 1: are kind of allied with the Krown. Right. Um, this
Speaker 1: does really break down on like racial lines, tribal lines,
Speaker 1: kind of whatever you want to call it. Um. But
Speaker 1: so he sends his krawn soldiers into this region which
Speaker 1: is inhabited by other other people's um, and he massacres
Speaker 1: a shipload of them because he sees them as like
Speaker 1: enemies of the regime. Um. And whenever he captures men
Speaker 1: who he had been like political leaders agitating against him, Uh,
Speaker 1: he'll have them mutilated and have their corpses paraded through
Speaker 1: the streets so soldiers can cut off pieces to eat
Speaker 1: or keep his souvenirs. Um. This isn't good for the economy, Sharine.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not an economic expert, but I I I'm
Speaker 1: not surprised to hear that this was like bad for money. Um,
Speaker 1: you might not want to invest in a country where
Speaker 1: this is going on quite as much, you know, Um,
Speaker 1: and versions exists. Remember so this, Yeah, tell, this is
Speaker 1: able to be down. People are looking at this and like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm gonna pause on some of those developed those
Speaker 1: building funds for a moment. I might want to wait
Speaker 1: until this parading corpses thing is over. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: know it shakes out. So further economic problems are caused
Speaker 1: by the fact that the Minister of Procurement shoe designer
Speaker 1: Charles Taylor, had embezzled something like a million designer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Chuck Taylor's he's the he's the one of what he's
Speaker 1: the guy who designed the Chuck Taylor was Charles Taylor. Well,
Speaker 1: he's the he's the Minister of Procurement for Liberia. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Why did you say that? As if it was like, like, well,
Speaker 1: how is that thing? You know? You've heard of Chuck Taylor? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but like I didn't know the inventor of fucking converse. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's going to be He's a Liberian warlord. Don't
Speaker 1: look that up. Is that something everyone knows? Again? I
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, definitely common knowledge. I'm willfully ignorant so
Speaker 1: much of my time, so much of my my life.
Speaker 1: I just can't handle this. That was a lie, Sharine.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I can't do this to you anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was lying. I just it was just a joke. Well, no,
Speaker 1: there's a Charles Taylor and embezzels a million dollars from
Speaker 1: Liberry government later. The world is so fucked up and crazy.
Speaker 1: I don't believe anything you say, Like was going to
Speaker 1: burn my fucking com first, after this fucking episode, I
Speaker 1: can't believe it was it was it was just a
Speaker 1: joke because it get like Chuck Taylor's Charles Taylor. I
Speaker 1: thought it was funny. I know, I know I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get roads the internet. I don't care what I mean, Sharine,
Speaker 1: This is why I tell everybody one lie. You should
Speaker 1: never trust me, never trust Robert, never trust you. I
Speaker 1: mean yeah, maybe maybe there's a level of me that
Speaker 1: trusts you. This isn't on you. This is on me, Sharine.
Speaker 1: Firestone like Firestone, it's already like that's all real. That's
Speaker 1: why we provide sources. Look, that's okay, that's a big
Speaker 1: I know the Firesto thing is real, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it's so far out that another fucking big American
Speaker 1: brand is rooted. I know, because like shoes and rubber.
Speaker 1: I mean again, this we we could I could have
Speaker 1: just gone through with this and just waited for people
Speaker 1: on Twitter to get really or ready, you wouldn't do that.
Speaker 1: I felt bad, bad job, I felt bad. I felt
Speaker 1: that we've lied to me too. I lied to everybody once.
Speaker 1: I mean, I, well, now I haven't lied to you yet, Shrine,
Speaker 1: but I'll figure one out. Lying is the most human
Speaker 1: quality you can have. So it's fine. I understand. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm just so excited. I'm just gonna it's okay, don't Sharine,
Speaker 1: trust me. I'm the one who's going to look bad
Speaker 1: as it was. No, it's I mean, because you were
Speaker 1: so earnest about being angry about the converse. Guy lord,
Speaker 1: It's okay. This is to all my gullible people out there.
Speaker 1: Is that you. I hear you, and I have to
Speaker 1: say it would have been really funny if if the
Speaker 1: actual Chuck Taylor guy had been a Liberian warlord like
Speaker 1: that would have been hilarious. So Taylor had been born
Speaker 1: in Liberia, but his dad was an Americo Liberian um
Speaker 1: his mom though he's he's mixed. He's mixed kind of
Speaker 1: between Americo Liberian and his mom is a member of
Speaker 1: the indigenous Gola tribe. Now that said, he is raised
Speaker 1: as an Americo Liberian. Right, Like the fact that his
Speaker 1: dad is means that, Um, there's obviously one of the
Speaker 1: things you have to say about Liberia, like kind of
Speaker 1: the racial cast system is not nearly what it is,
Speaker 1: and like colonies that are are run by white people. Um,
Speaker 1: so Taylor benefits even though his mom is Indigenous and
Speaker 1: his dad is Americo Liberian. He's raised Americo Liberrian. He
Speaker 1: attends college in the United States, Bentley College in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: Somebody else will have gone there and be like, holy shit,
Speaker 1: once we talk about this guy, Holy ship, this dude
Speaker 1: went to my alma mater. Um he's but but the
Speaker 1: point is his early life, he's thoroughly Americanized. He speaks English,
Speaker 1: fairy like he I mean obviously, actually I should I
Speaker 1: should note here they all speak English. English is the
Speaker 1: official language of Liberia. If you go to Liberia, like
Speaker 1: you don't need to learn. And now some of the
Speaker 1: like there's a patois like accents are kind of different,
Speaker 1: like sort of like it is in in um parts
Speaker 1: of Louisiana, but it's English. Like you listen to these
Speaker 1: like interviews with warlords and ship they're they're all speaking
Speaker 1: in English and stuff. Um, because again it's a colony
Speaker 1: of the United States, right, Um, but he is he's
Speaker 1: not just like he's he's incredibly Americanized. Um. His previous
Speaker 1: political experience came from rising through the ranks of a
Speaker 1: Liberian ex pact organization in Philadelphia. Uh. And when he
Speaker 1: flies back or so, he goes back to Liberia after
Speaker 1: Doe's revolution and gets a job in the government, and
Speaker 1: then he embezzles a bunch of money and he gets
Speaker 1: kicked out. So he flees to the US because he
Speaker 1: doesn't want to get executed and paraded through the streets.
Speaker 1: Doe tries to extradite him because he had almost certainly
Speaker 1: actually committed the crimes he was being accused of. Um.
Speaker 1: Charles Taylor is initially arrested by the United States, and
Speaker 1: we keep him in a correctional facility for two years
Speaker 1: while we're trying to decide what to do to the man.
Speaker 1: But then, and I'm gonna quote again from the Liberian
Speaker 1: Civil Wars, the story grows rather murky. Taylor escaped from
Speaker 1: Plymouth House on the evening of September fifteenth, nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: apparently with the help of the CIA, responding to an
Speaker 1: obvious reluctance on the part of the government to extradite
Speaker 1: Taylor to face almost certain execution at the moment he landed.
Speaker 1: It is also possible that the CIA felt Taylor might
Speaker 1: be useful, because if someone replaced or toppled Dough, Taylor
Speaker 1: certainly seemed the most likely to do so. Either way,
Speaker 1: The popular version of the story has it that Taylor
Speaker 1: and three fellow escape pas cut through prison bars with
Speaker 1: hack saws before lowering themselves to the ground outside on
Speaker 1: knotted bedsheets. More realistically, perhaps arrangements were made for his
Speaker 1: cell to be left unlocked one night and he simply
Speaker 1: walked out. He was picked up by his wife, Jewel,
Speaker 1: at a local freeway exit, after which he dropped out
Speaker 1: of sight for a few months. Later, he reappeared in Ghana,
Speaker 1: having traveled to Africa via Mexico and Ghana. He was
Speaker 1: arrested in me on suspicion that he was somehow involved
Speaker 1: with the CIA, which tends to lean credence to the
Speaker 1: latter version of his escape. Taylor's lawyer at the time
Speaker 1: was Ramsey Clark, the former U s Attorney General, so
Speaker 1: certainly there was money and influence floating around somewhere no
Speaker 1: charges were ever brought against Taylor in America for his escape.
Speaker 1: So he gets over to Ghana. Um and while he's
Speaker 1: in the US, he spends two years in custody. Right,
Speaker 1: he gets the CIA kind of smuggles him out. Well,
Speaker 1: all this is happening. Doe is in power in Liberia,
Speaker 1: but there are constant coup attempts, right, or at least
Speaker 1: attempts at coup attempts that Doe cracks down on. And
Speaker 1: every time there's a threat to his reign, he does
Speaker 1: the same thing. He sends his soldiers to that region
Speaker 1: of the country and he massacres all of the men
Speaker 1: that he can find, you know, um and often like
Speaker 1: you know, rapes the women, kills baby like it's ugly. Ship,
Speaker 1: it's it's ethnic cleansing kind of, it's really nasty. Um.
Speaker 1: So by nine seven, Doe has murdered a lot of people,
Speaker 1: um and he has repeatedly purged ethnic groups. Um. So
Speaker 1: that's around the time when Charles Taylor makes his way
Speaker 1: to the Ivory Coast and he meets a guy who's
Speaker 1: like a friend of the Avorian president who decides to
Speaker 1: back him and his plans to overthrow dough. Now by
Speaker 1: this point, Doe has made the major mistake of pissing
Speaker 1: off Momar Addafi. Um, because he again he's on the
Speaker 1: side of the United States, right, Um, and he the
Speaker 1: United States. I don't know if you're aware of this,
Speaker 1: not big fans of momark A Daffi. Yeah, So Doe
Speaker 1: expels Libyan diplomats from his capital. Now this is a
Speaker 1: problem because not only is Kaddafi kind of a petty dude,
Speaker 1: he also runs a gigantic pan ideological training camp for insurgents. Right,
Speaker 1: if you are an insurgent and you want to learn
Speaker 1: how to build bombs and shoot people, Momarkaddafi's got you.
Speaker 1: You're the i Ra, You're the your Palestinian or you're
Speaker 1: like he don't give a ship like Momar will take
Speaker 1: as long as you're like cool with Momar, He'll he'll
Speaker 1: train your dudes, you know, Ummary one eight hundred momer
Speaker 1: for all of your insurgent needs. So he and he
Speaker 1: and Taylor. So Momar Kadafi do pisses him off, and
Speaker 1: so Kadafi is like, one, I'm gonna get back at
Speaker 1: that son of a bitch. Um and he hears there's
Speaker 1: this motherfucker named Taylor who's got connections to the government
Speaker 1: of you know, in the Ivory Coast and ship. Um.
Speaker 1: And so he and Taylor get into contact, and in
Speaker 1: very short order a number of militants who are like
Speaker 1: on Taylor's side. These are like generally like Liberians who've
Speaker 1: had to flee the country because they were also associated
Speaker 1: with some sort of rebellion or another that Taylor's gathering
Speaker 1: to him, these folks go over and get trained in Libya, right, um,
Speaker 1: and again, good chance there's some CIA involvement here. It's
Speaker 1: very murky. Um. I assume they're everywhere. So yeah, they're
Speaker 1: always doing some ship. I mean, they certainly seems to
Speaker 1: have like helped Taylor get out right. Kadafi's maybe more
Speaker 1: a bigger part of like how he actually gets to
Speaker 1: carry out as it's whatever. On December nine, Charles Taylor
Speaker 1: and a hundred and sixty eight insurgents in her Liberia
Speaker 1: through uh the Ivory or yeah, the Ivory Coast. Um
Speaker 1: Chuck makes an announcement through the BBC using a satellite
Speaker 1: phone he'd been given by somebody uh again who knows
Speaker 1: where he gets this kind of ship, that he has
Speaker 1: no personal ambitions for higher office. He just wants to
Speaker 1: liberate his people from President dough open civil war results
Speaker 1: resulting in bits in breaking out in kind of bits
Speaker 1: and pieces here and there um and gradually, like Taylor's
Speaker 1: forces start to make progress. They're pretty well organized, their competent.
Speaker 1: They expand quickly, and more and more of the country
Speaker 1: starts to fall out of doze ability to control because
Speaker 1: he's not really popular because of all the massacres, so
Speaker 1: he starts having his security forces round up hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds of residents of the capital from ethnic groups he
Speaker 1: viewed as rebellious, and these people just disappear. Some of
Speaker 1: them do show back up headless on the streets, so
Speaker 1: citizens of the capital start greeting each other with the
Speaker 1: phrase glad to see you've still got your head um.
Speaker 1: Members of the yeah and members of the ethnic groups
Speaker 1: target by dose purges start flooding into Taylor's growing army.
Speaker 1: Right they get away from wherever the president controls, and
Speaker 1: a lot of them pick up guns. As they won victories,
Speaker 1: they replaced the initial weapons that they invade with the
Speaker 1: armies mostly equipped with these old Soviet Soviet like World
Speaker 1: War two Heiress submachine guns pps h s, and they
Speaker 1: gradually replaced these with U S M sixteens from Doze
Speaker 1: dead US backed fighters UM. And once his regular forces
Speaker 1: start to get real rifles, he hands these submachine guns
Speaker 1: off to little kids uh and he uses them to
Speaker 1: form what he calls his small boy units. Quote from
Speaker 1: the Liberian Civil Wars. The bulk of advancing forces were
Speaker 1: locally recruited youth, handed guns, and fortified by alcohol and
Speaker 1: cheaply sourced Chinese amphetamines we known colloquially as bubbles, and
Speaker 1: of course a great deal of local marijuana. In much
Speaker 1: the same way as the Kron dominated AFL that's Doze
Speaker 1: Party took excruciatingly violent revenge against g O and Mano.
Speaker 1: These are other ethnic groups roving bands of armed youth
Speaker 1: singled out Krawn and and Dingo for similar treatment. Newsreel
Speaker 1: images of the Liberian Civil War, as the initial coup
Speaker 1: of inevitably be came, came to be characterized by images
Speaker 1: of children and young people, both male and female, dressed
Speaker 1: in civilian clothes, often in wigs and bizarre fancy dress,
Speaker 1: enacting scenes that might have been extracted from Lord of
Speaker 1: the Flies. These were the first high profile displays of
Speaker 1: child soldiers at work in the African context of war
Speaker 1: and the spectacle was utterly terrifying. So that's where we're
Speaker 1: going to end for today. What a high note to
Speaker 1: just leave me on the vibes. Yeah, um, well I
Speaker 1: was hoping, I mean, I was hoping there's gonna be
Speaker 1: more more witchy stuff. To be honest, that stuff has
Speaker 1: been interesting to me. There will be next episode. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is not going to be an interesting or it'll
Speaker 1: be interesting. It's not going to be much of a
Speaker 1: you'll want to go elsewhere to learn and detail some
Speaker 1: more discussion of that. But we will talk about kind
Speaker 1: of one expression of these things from people who are
Speaker 1: like power hungry grifters. Um, you're not going to get
Speaker 1: a great sense of what the actual religious practices were
Speaker 1: among these people, but you will see some folks doing
Speaker 1: fucked up ship and then deciding to be born again Christians. Yeah.
Speaker 1: At this point, I'm not like, at a certain point
Speaker 1: when this is just me theorizing and not don't take
Speaker 1: any of these blankets statements seriously. But I would imagine
Speaker 1: that at a certain point, when like a religion or
Speaker 1: a practice is just used to gain power, it's more
Speaker 1: used for the violence versus the belief you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not like, I'm not convinced so many people believe it.
Speaker 1: I'm just convinced they're using it to benefit themselves or like,
Speaker 1: you know, so that's just like, well, it's it's one
Speaker 1: of those things like there's you know, you talk about
Speaker 1: cannibalism and another kind of beliefs that involved taking pieces
Speaker 1: of the body. Certainly, thousands of years ago there were
Speaker 1: groups doing that in Africa, as there were in many
Speaker 1: other parts of the world for different reasons. But the
Speaker 1: kind what you're going to see during the Liberian Civil
Speaker 1: War has about as much is related to those those
Speaker 1: indigenous belief practices in the same way that like a
Speaker 1: modern Baptist revival meeting is related to a Christian church
Speaker 1: meeting in like eight hundred and fifty a D you know,
Speaker 1: to like a church service in Yeah, there is like
Speaker 1: a line of descendants from one to the other, but
Speaker 1: it's changed tremendously over time for a variety of reasons,
Speaker 1: and someone partaking in the eight D church service might
Speaker 1: look at a modern one and be like, well, I
Speaker 1: don't really know what the fuss going on here, you know, Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: any plugs at the end here? Shren I'm Sharine allegedly.
Speaker 1: Allegedly I'm on Twitter, show hero six, like six Instagram,
Speaker 1: Mr shar Hero. Um, I'm honestly like, I'm not really
Speaker 1: on the internet much these days. I'm trying have an
Speaker 1: impulsively everything all the time. But I think I just
Speaker 1: need it just for this kind of stuff. But follow
Speaker 1: me you want. I'm posting less but the stuff I
Speaker 1: post gold, you know, so just stick around for that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I will say I was thinking about this as
Speaker 1: you were teaching me all these terrible things. Um, It's like,
Speaker 1: like sometimes I get frustrated, for example, that no one
Speaker 1: knows the history of Palestine or Syria or whatever, and
Speaker 1: there's like selective things, as you said, like people can
Speaker 1: there's so many there's so much bullshit and violence and
Speaker 1: terrible things in the world. You can only learn so
Speaker 1: much about it. You can only handle so much of it.
Speaker 1: So I, for one, I am happy I know about
Speaker 1: this terrible thing because I maybe was ignorant before. And
Speaker 1: I hope people feel that way when they learn about
Speaker 1: other child terrible things. Yeah, you know, context is important,
Speaker 1: not because it mitigates bad things, but it's like it
Speaker 1: would be fucked up to just get angry about the
Speaker 1: I r A bombing a bar and not recognize that
Speaker 1: that act of terrorism was directly influenced by the genocide
Speaker 1: of half of the Irish population, Right, that be fucked up. Likewise, yes,
Speaker 1: it's bad too. It's it's certainly bad to like shoot
Speaker 1: missiles into cities like uh Hamasta's. But also that's not
Speaker 1: happening in a vacuum, and it's happening in response to
Speaker 1: missiles being shot into there and a bunch of other
Speaker 1: fun up this history of like really horrible things. And likewise,
Speaker 1: it is bad to make recruit child soldiers and carry
Speaker 1: out human sacrifices. It's not they didn't just decide to
Speaker 1: do that because Liberians are brutal. All of this occurred
Speaker 1: as part of a continuum of things that is heavily
Speaker 1: influenced by US policy and is heavily influenced by colonialism. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: it's just it's not a matter of like saying, well,
Speaker 1: this isn't bad because of this bad thing. It's a
Speaker 1: matter of you don't understand what's happening if you if
Speaker 1: you're only focused on one part of this picture. And
Speaker 1: the thing is the information we all receive is usually
Speaker 1: funneled through a white supremacist, fucking colonial you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like, it's all funneled through a different a
Speaker 1: certain ends to make us think certain people are good.
Speaker 1: So people are bad. So I don't know, use your brains.
Speaker 1: I suppose I will just mind too. I don't think
Speaker 1: fucking Converse are evil. Yeah yeah, destroy your Converse shoes, UM,
Speaker 1: light their headquarters on fire, hunt down their corporate representatives
Speaker 1: in the street. No vengeance can be enough for Converse.
Speaker 1: Um Robert. On another note, we should probably plug two
Speaker 1: new podcasts on cool Zone Media that that are recently out,
Speaker 1: shouldn't We We have what are now Sophie real quick sidebar?
Speaker 1: What is a podcast? All right? So this does not
Speaker 1: know where that's going. I was like, is he actually
Speaker 1: doing this? It's like an edit note? No, okay, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is this is a bit. But also this is
Speaker 1: why I'm in charge. We have to there's Sophie. This
Speaker 1: is like ten of why you're in charge. We have
Speaker 1: to podcasts and cool Zone Media that you should check
Speaker 1: out if you haven't checked matter already. We have a
Speaker 1: Ghost Church by Jamie Loftus, which is a ghost church,
Speaker 1: fascinating podcast about American spiritually, Yes we are. And we
Speaker 1: also have a Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff hosted
Speaker 1: by Margaret Killjoy that is in fact about cool people
Speaker 1: who did cool stuff. It's like it's like the allegedly
Speaker 1: the uplifting version of whatever. Then this podcast is you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like, yeah, it's great. Actually, Sharine,
Speaker 1: there's some really cool people who do some really cool
Speaker 1: stuff in this next Are you familiar with the story
Speaker 1: of Lizza Strata? I stopped talking, Robert, okay, um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: check check those podcasts out, Sharina. Sharina actually works on
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff and she and both
Speaker 1: Robert and Sharin are guests or upcoming guests depending on
Speaker 1: when this drops on the show, so check it out.
Speaker 1: We'm so happy, Sharine working with Margaret has taught you
Speaker 1: the most important thing about being an anarchist, which is
Speaker 1: ang allegedly before ye in my vocab forever, and that
Speaker 1: is the episode. H h H. Behind the Bastards is
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.