Part One: General Butt-Naked and the Liberian Civil War

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here and for the last two years,
behind the Bastards listeners have funded the Portland Diaper Bank,
which provides diapers for low income families. Uh. Last year
y'all raised more than twenty one thousand dollars, which was
able to purchase one point one million diapers for children
and families in need in one um. And this year

(00:24):
we're trying to get two dollars raised for the Portland
Diaper Bank, which is going to allow us to help
even more kids. So UM, if you want to help,
you can go to bTB fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank
at go fund me. Just type and go fund me
b TB Fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank. Again, that's go
fund Me bTB Fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank, or find

(00:46):
the link in the show notes. Thank you all. Oh
what is viciously executing and publicly torturing my son of God?
It's good Friday. Not when you listen to this, you'll
listen to this week's after Good Friday. UM. Hi, Sharene

(01:11):
Lonnie Unis, how are you doing? Hi? Robert Robert Evans, UM,
I'm okay. Robert's your middle name? Right, Robert, Robert. I'm
not gonna confirm or deny what my name is. There
isn't I have a number of names like most people,
like Jesus, who like all exactly exactly like our like
our Lord and Um our sovereign allah Um, like Hura,

(01:36):
mazda uh, like Buddha. You know, there's all sorts of
everybody's this time of year, for whatever reason, all the
religions are like, we should have a thing, you know.
We'll have us at Ramadan, we'll have us a passover,
we'll have us an Easter. We're all or at least
all of the all of the Abrahamic faiths. I don't
know if like, I don't think anything Hindus going on
right now. I don't know anything Zoroastrians going on anything,

(01:59):
anything Buddhist, Probably not any Shinto stuff happening right now,
but whatever, maybe there is. It is like major ones
up there, you know, although it's also I think it's
like the dead of summer where a lot of those
religions are Southeast Asia. This is kind of like the
hottest point of that. I don't know. I don't know anyway. Religion.
Do you like religion? Sharine? No, please don't hate me

(02:22):
the Internet. No, I don't. I actually that's fine. I'm
not a big fan myself. My teenager self, I would say,
like I despise religion. I loathe it. It made me
so angry. I hated it. And I think I like
eased up on that language recently. I don't want to
offend anybody, and like I realized, for some people, it's
like meditative and depending on the religion, it can really

(02:42):
help people. It's not for me. I just I don't
It's not I don't like it. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
like that's completely where I am too sharene because like
when I was a kid, I was really angry atheist,
you know, after not when I was like when I
was like eighteen nine. I just like seventeen is kind
when I decided I was an atheist. But yeah, I

(03:03):
started to get really angry about it as a young adult,
and I'm I'm not angry about it anymore, just because
like I've realized that all of the things that are
shitty about religion are shitty about a bunch of stuff,
and some people just choose to do shitty stuff, and
whether or not they use a religion to justify it.
They'll find other things to justify it if it's not religion.

(03:24):
But that's really beside the point today. Um, yeah, it's humans,
I get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not that they're shitty.
It's just that shitty people will find reasons to do
shitty things, yes or not, Yeah, religion or not, it's
it's just a thing that we do because we're cool. Um,
speaking of actually this does tie in a bit to

(03:46):
what we're talking about. There's some religion. There's definitely some
religious stuff involved here. It's gonna be real uncomfortable. Um, Sharina,
what do you know about Liberia? Liberia? Yeah? Nothing that
you are you are more or less in the in
the where most Americans are then okay, great, Yeah I

(04:09):
know nothing about most things, so I'm excited to learn
about Liberia today. You are you are aware that they
had there's been a bunch of war there, right, Yeah,
you kind of there's conflict and in tragedy things that
my brain sometimes turns off because I can only handle
so much trauma. But that's my luxury of being privileged, asshole,

(04:34):
you know what I mean. Well, yeah, it's it's very
funny because like there's a bunch of places in the
world where horrible things are going on. UM, places like
me and mar places like the Democratic Republic of the
Congo Palestine. UM, where people you know, don't don't. Americans
are able not to care because and to some of

(04:55):
the degree, it's like, yeah, man, the world's fucking big.
There's a lot of stuff going on, Like I can't,
No one can about all of the bad things that
are happening, and you can't. You shouldn't be expected to
like be aware of every single terrible thing happening in
the world. There's a particular reason why Americans ought to
know more about Liberia. UM, and it's because we made Liberia.
Now I'm gonna talk sharene today. The main subject of

(05:18):
our episode is a fellow who went by the name
General Butt Naked. UM. That's a that's a truth. That's
it's it's pretty fun. It's pretty fun name. Not a
fun guy. UM, not a fun guy. But he's one
of those dudes. The broad strokes is that like he
was this warlord, did a bunch of horrible stuff in
the Liberian Civil War, fought naked, hence the name, and

(05:38):
then afterwards repented. And there's been a bunch of documentaries
about how he's he's a Christian preacher now and he's
apologizing to all his victims. He's a grifter in my opinion.
But in order to properly talk about this guy, because
a lot of the ship he did, there's a lot
of witchcraft and sacrificing babies and all sorts of fucked
up shit. Um. Oh yeah, well, but the thing is
like that all sounds a lot more like, you know,

(06:02):
there's a problematic history of particularly white dudes like me
talking about witchcraft and occult practices in different African countries, uh,
and getting all like, oh my god, they did this
and they did that. Um, none of it is exactly
the way that it seems with like the casual uh
description of what's going on. So before we talk about

(06:22):
general butt naked, we're gonna have to spend an hour
or so talking about the history of conflict in Liberia,
where it came from, and how ship like human sacrifice
wound up getting kind of ground into the mix there.
So you're ready, you're ready for this, buckling? Yeah, let
me buck click, get your get your sad pants on?
By what pants on? Sad pants? Yeah? Yeah, they're they're

(06:44):
always on. Yeah. So the first enslaved African people from
North America landed at Jamestown on August nineteen. This is
pretty famous because of that New York Times thing. Now,
most of these folks were england who had been captured
by Portuguese slavers, and the centuries that followed, they and
the Africans who followed them became an integral part of

(07:06):
agriculture and economic viability in the colonies. When the United
States became a thing, a number of the founding fathers,
chiefly Thomas Payne, denounced slavery as a terrible evil that
would one day tear the new nation apart. Thomas Jefferson,
a slave owner himself, realized this when he wrote his
Notes on the State of Virginia in seventeen eighty five.
Here's what he had to say. Why not retain and

(07:27):
incorporate the blacks into the state and thus save the
expense of supplying by importation of white settlers the vacancies
they will leave deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites.
Ten thousand recollections by the Blacks of the injuries they
have sustained new provocations. The real distinctions which nature has made,
and many other circumstances will divide us into parties and
produce convulsions which will probably never end, but in the

(07:48):
extermination of one or the other race. So what he's
he's talking about here is his idea that, like, if
you're gonna end slavery, you should send the black people
who were brought here back to Africa. Right, That's kind
of Thomas could because otherwise there will be inevitably be
a race conflict. You know, you can't just keep them
here if you're going to free them. That's Thomas Jefferson's attitude.

(08:09):
And there's a number he thinks that black people were
probably inferior to white people. Um. And he thinks that
again there's just too much anger and whatnot. He also
like does note that white people are probably too bigoted
for it. It's a weird mix of things. He's a
strange man. Um. Now, others among his peers disagreed. There
was an attitude among kind of abolitionists in this early

(08:30):
period um Some felt that black people had just been
temporarily degraded by slavery and they could be gradually uplifted
to the point of social responsibility. This is still problematic, right,
the idea that they need to be uplifted rather than
just freed, but is generally better than the idea that
they're you know, genetically different. Uh So, I don't know. Um.

(08:51):
As the abolitionist movement picked up steam in the mid
eighteen hundreds, advocates were often extremely racist themselves. Uh. Many
abolitionists believe that freed black people could not exist or
keep up in white society. Others like Jefferson just felt
that there would be too much understandable anger over slavery
for them to live alongside white people, which is not
like an unreasonable attitude to be, like, well, ship, why

(09:14):
would they want to hang out here? Like after all
the fun? It's mostly just like they're fearful for their
own lives, right, Like, Oh, the minute they are able to,
they're gonna come after us for us treating them like
actual animals, you know what I mean. I think there's
a mix of that. I think there's some people who
are honest abolitionists and for the time very racially progressive
who just like can't imagine them wanting to um And obviously,

(09:36):
like one of the problems you'll here again and again
is a lot of people who are abolitionists are not
great at actually listening to black people. That's the problem.
The whole abolitionist movement has. Um some people are better
at it than others, but it's like a thing that
happens at periods of time. Um. So, yeah, all of
these discussions are going on. Late seventeen hundreds, early eighteen hundreds,
is this abolitionist movement is building up steam, and some

(09:59):
of the people who are for abolition start to advocate
for a sort of sponsored immigration program to send freed
black slaves out of the United States and back to Africa.
And so this is not they're they're advocating for abolition
in the United States, but they're also saying, we've got
all these free black people, we should create a colony
in Africa for them to send them back to, and

(10:19):
that once we start freeing more slaves, those people can
go to that colony, right. Um. One of these men
was Pennsylvania reformer John Parrish. He advocated manumitting that means
freeing slaves and sending them back home where they could
experience quote, liberty and the rights of citizenship without being
particularly near him. His hope was that sending over a

(10:40):
small number of black folks would convince other free black
people to leave North America, and that this would somehow
inspire the better nature of slave owners to free their
own people. Quote, many persons of humanity who continue to
hold slaves would be willing to liberate them on condition
of their so removing you know what he's saying, He's
not He's actually kind of saying the same thing Jefferson was,

(11:00):
because Jefferson was arguing like, well, you can't just free
him and have him stay here, you know, otherwise it
will be a problem. So Parrish is being like, well, obviously,
maybe a lot of these slave owners are really good people.
They just see that they've it's too dangerous to let
these people be free, so we have to It's very
racist again, but it's also not a kind of racism
in America that we talk about a lot, because a
lot of this history has been kind of brushed over.

(11:22):
I mean, yeah, it's like kind of backwards because you're like,
they're not saying like, oh my god, controlling another human
is terrible because you're still controlling them. You're still like, Okay,
let's stay am out. You know, they are they are
saying that they're just saying it's not the worst thing exactly.
That like freeing them would be right, because they are
saying it's bad to have slaves, but they're just saying
it's worse to you know. Again, very racist, just kind

(11:44):
of a type of racism we maybe don't talk about
enough that existed in this period. Um. So he felt
like a lot of slave owners didn't want slaves, they
just kind of inherited them, and they were scared about
what black people would do if they were free. Um,
which is a very silly thing to think. Um. Into
number of eighteen sixteen, a mix of people with good, bad, racist,
and only slightly racist intentions formed the American Colonization Society.

(12:08):
Now part of this group, some of these people are
very legitimately just like again, if you're like a civil
rights advocate, you're born into the mid eighteen hundreds, you
see this nightmare system. I can see a ways that
a decent person would be like, maybe this is the
best thing. Maybe providing these people like it's so racist here,
it's so hard for them. Maybe if we tried to
set them up with a place nice back in Africa,

(12:29):
this would not be This would be a more ethical
situation than having to live with all these fucking horrible racists. Right,
Some people in the American Colonization Siety Society are like that. However,
it is primarily a dark money organization funded by slave owners. Um,
and what's going on here is that powerful slave owners
want to push the idea of an African colony for

(12:51):
freed slaves because this will remove free black people out
of the America's and free black people they see as
like competition for slave labor at that they can profit from. Wait,
competition for slave they've got slaves, which is free labor,
but free black people because they you know, work for
less than free white people because of racism. Right, that's

(13:14):
competition for low paying work that otherwise will go to
their slaves that they just profited. Well, yes, yes, I
think they also see it as like a safety valve
because again they're really racist. They understand that like some states,
black people are going to get free, but they don't
let them sticking around because as long as there are
free black people in North America, that's a body of

(13:34):
people who are going to organize to abolish slavery. Right.
There's a few reasons, right, Yes, yeah. So there's a
number of reasons why slave owners really like the idea
of a colony in Africa for free slaves, and that
their dark money is kind of funding the American colonization society. Um. Yeah,
and again this group. There are abolitionists in this group,

(13:56):
but it's not committed to abolition. UM. I want to
quote now from a rite up on the American I
want to quote now from a rite up on the
African American Intellectual History Society's Black Perspective's blog by by
Nicholas Guyett. Quote. Its origins and trajectory always evinced a
watery commitment to abolition. Two facts made this commitment supremely insidious. First,

(14:16):
it placed the burden of ending slavery on the benevolent
slaveholders themselves, who would supposedly free their slaves when provided
with an outlet for doing so. Second, it marked an
epic endorsement of racial segregation, effectively denying the possibility of
coexistence while promoting what would later be termed separate but equal.
So you can see there the roots of a couple
of really fucked up things in the American colonization society. Now,

(14:38):
before the souring of sectional relations, in the eighteen theories
and eighteen forties. Colonization also supplied a bridge between mainstream
anti slavery sentiments in both North and South. The a c.
S opened auxiliary societies from New England through North Carolina.
When upper Southern legislatures engaged with the question of ending slavery,
invariably they identified a black colony as the prerequisite for
general emancipation. On of the Deep South became a Nogo

(15:01):
zone for colonization enthusiasts, with white politicians, editors, and businessmen
mobilizing their considerable power against even a feather light anti
slavery challenge. In New England, by contrast, colonization retained a
considerable appeal through the first years of the Civil War.
So colonization is popular proper in like these kind of
progressive you might say, like liberal chunks of the North

(15:23):
where abolition is. And that's why slavery enthusiasts don't want
any discussion of this in the South, right, because it's
even a little bit of of abolitionist tendency is too
much for them. But they love pushing this in the
North because it's a lot. If you can get people
focusing on this, they're not focusing on abolishing slavery, which
would actually hurt them, right, you get what's going on here.

(15:46):
So the chief accomplishment of the American colonization Society was
the establishment of the colony of Liberia on Africa's west coast.
It was founded in eighteen twenty one by a group
of roughly ten thousand free black migrants who took one
look at the U S and the eighteen to one
he's in figured, well, ship anywhere is better than here, right,
Like from the part of view of these guys who
are leaving and ladies who are leaving, it's like, yeah,

(16:07):
of course, Like I get why you wouldn't want to
stick around North America Right about now, it doesn't seem
like there's a that's a safe bet um. The first
big wave of immigration to Liberia was yeah, about ten
thousand people. And this this occurs over a period of
time from eighteen twenty two to eighteen forty one, and
several successive waves. Uh. And these these migrants formed several

(16:29):
towns on the coast with names like Robert Sport, Monrovia, Buchanan,
and Greenville. Although I think their initial Monrovia's first capital
name is Christopolis. Christopolis. Ye, that was the first name.
Very funny, um, although it's not going to be funny
actually because spoilers colonialism. So because of racism, these these

(16:51):
these black people who have gone to Liberia are not
actually the masters of their own domain. At first, Liberia
is a colony of the United States, and the new
immigrants are ruled by a white governor who appoints white officials. Uh. Now,
the new residents of the city did have a legislative
council that they got to vote for and their own
elected representatives who work with the governor. Right, so they

(17:13):
do have representation, certainly more than they did in the
United States at the time. Right. But final approval for
all actions voted for by the council pinned it on
approval by a board of managers for the Colonization Society
who lived in Washington, d c. So if the if
the black people living there voted for something, they had
to send it back across the Atlantic to get ratified

(17:36):
by this council who could also annull laws. Like they
leave these plantations, they're enslaved in the States and they
go to this just dry island plantation. Oh boy, you
have predicted some of where this is going, um, but
not for them actually, but yeah, there there is like
this is obviously very fucked up. It's in keeping them
with their right the idea of some of these these

(17:58):
dudes that like they need to be trained up before
they can run their own country. Right, That's that's why
they're doing it this way. That's why the white people
are doing it this way. Um. So now it is
the good news is that anytime they send a dude
over there, a white dude over there to help govern
the colony, that motherfucker dies immediately, right because there's all

(18:19):
sorts of there's all sorts of bugs and ship that
are biting white people. They get it right, Like, there's
all sorts of ship that like kills white people in
Africa in this period because we don't have good medicine.
They're just dropping like flies fucking mosquito. But white ass
motherfucker's um no son. Yeah, So these guys keep dying, um,

(18:44):
which is a real problem. It makes it difficult for
them to like run the colony the way they want
to and makes it hard for them to have white
people to report back to d c um and beyond that,
the society after the earliest years runs into a funding crunch. Um.
So part of this is because they stopped getting donations
because abolitionists wake up to the fact that this is

(19:04):
a dark money thing for slave owners. Part of this
is that like the conflict over slavery gets nastier and
slave owners stopped putting like they start putting money elsewhere. Right. So,
starting in the eighteen forties, white oversight of Liberia starts
to peel away. Liberians begin to agitate for total autonomy,
and when the last white governor dies in eighteen forty one,

(19:26):
they get it. The society appoints a black governor, Joseph Roberts,
who became the first not white person to run things
in Liberia. Now the colony then at this point, you know,
stops being a colony, not really a colony after this moment,
and it's it becomes an independent nation in July of
eighteen forty seven. And if that had been all that happened,

(19:46):
should be this would be one of the less depressing
stories in the history of slavery. Here's the thing. Now,
you send ten thousand black people in America, pretty much
all born in the United States as slaves, some of
them born free. But you take these these black Americans
and you send them to the west coast of Africa

(20:09):
to set up cities. Now, are you seeing any potential
problems here? Uh? Well, I mean are there I'm confused.
Were there already people online? Yes, they're they're absolutely we're
people there before. Okay, Yeah, we're people there. I mean

(20:29):
I'm sounding like people that don't understand about Palestine. Of course,
there's a ton of people there. Okay. And again, these
these these dudes, these these migrants are obviously these people
were stolen from somewhere in Africa, or at least their
ancestors were, right, Um, But they're from like potentially all
over like certainly not Liberia in specific generally. And also

(20:53):
they were they speak English, they're Christian, they dress like Americans.
There they have been living free in US cities. Yeah, right,
So these are this is not a case of like
these people returning to their homeland. These people are colonizing Liberia. Um.
And if you know anything about colonization, it's not nice. Um.

(21:18):
And and this was not suddenly fine just because the
guys doing the colonization in Africa we're black. It's it's
still pretty messy. Uh. And I'm gonna quote now from
an article by In M. B Akpan in the Canadian
Journal of African Studies titled Black Imperialism. Quote. The settlers
constituted the rulers who ran the Liberian government in much

(21:39):
the same way as the British and French constituted rulers
and naval it neighboring colonial territories like Sierra Leone and
the Ivory Coast. However, actual power rested in the hands
of prominent members of certain leading settler families or lineages,
in a manner that retained that maintained some balance of
power among the families. The settlers on whom the government
of Liberia that's evolved as from eighteen forty one, were

(22:01):
essentially American rather than African and outlook and orientation. They
retained a strong sentimental attach and attachment to America, which
they regarded as their native land. They wore the Western
mode of dress, which they had become accustomed in America,
However unsuitable this dress was to Liberia's tropical weather. A
black silk topper and a long black frock coat from
men and a Victorian silk gown for women. They built

(22:22):
themselves frame stone or brick porticoed houses of one and
a half to two stories, similar to those of the
plantation owners in the Southern States of America, and they
preferred American food like flour, corn meal, butter, large pickle, beef, bacon,
and American grown rice, large quantities of which they imported
annually to African food stuff like cassafa, plantain, yams, palm oil,
sweet potatoes, and country rice grown by Africans and the

(22:44):
Liberian hinterland. They were Christians, spoke English as their mother tongue,
and practice monogamy. They held land individually, in contrast with
the communal ownership of the African population, and their political
institutions were modeled on those of America, with an elected
president and a legislature made up of a Senate and
a House of Representatives, so that in spite of their color,
they were as a rule as foreign and lacking in
sentimental attachment to Africa, as we're European colonialists elsewhere in Africa,

(23:08):
like the British, the French, the Portuguese and the Spaniards. Yeah,
that's a really stir in the pot here. I mean,
like it just they're like conduits are like vessels for
still like white agendas. It sounds likely even if they
don't mean to be. I mean, it's not so much
white as like Western because obviously they're not white. For me,
it's interchangeable. I know that's a mistake, but yeah, yeah,

(23:31):
they are very much. They are Westerners, and they see
to a large extent the people who had been living
in Liberia as like backwards, um devil worshiping weirdos who
don't deserve political rights. Right, so the indigenous Liberians don't
get to vote in the same way that like, yeah,
like they're all they're shut out to a significant extent,

(23:54):
at least from the franchise, right. Um. And if you're thinking, boy, howdy,
I bet this coust a problem somewhere to on the line,
then good news, you're right on the money. Over the
next half century and change, the Americo Liberians became an oligarchy,
practicing what one historian called a quote sort of sub
imperialism at African expense. By nineteen hundred, about fifteen thousand

(24:15):
black American immigrants had settled in Liberia, along with around
three hundred immigrants from the West Indies. Liberia is often
claimed in twentieth century history books as one of two
African states that remained independent during the Scramble for Africa,
the other being Ethiopia, But this is not quite accurate.
Ethiopia is, for sure, but Liberia was a colony that

(24:36):
just became independent in eighteen forty seven, like certainly a
lot earlier than other colonies did, because most of Africa
hadn't been colonized in eighty seven. But the fact that
it was not recolonized doesn't really mean anything because it
was already a colony um and the actual indigenous people
in Liberia were a sub class within their own homeland
with very little economic or political power. The Americo Liberians

(24:59):
held all of the power, and their Americo Liberian WIG
Party was essentially the only legal political party in the
country from eighteen sixty to nineteen eighty. Despite the fact
that immigrant descended Liberians made up only two percent of
the population, they effectively turned the rest of the country
into a profit making engine for themselves. In nineteen thirty one,

(25:20):
an international commission found that several prominent Americo librarians had
enslaved indigenous Africans. So yeah, uh, the West is pretty
pretty pretty pretty yeah, it does it does. It does
work that way sometimes. God, you know what else? People?
Is a virus, sharid. It is a virus. It's a

(25:44):
virus that keeps our democracy functioning in a healthy manner,
like the epstein bar virus. You know, you can't get
enough of it? Just nom good taste. Uh huh, that's
what everyone says about the epstein bar virus. Anyway, here's
some ads. Ah, we're back. We're really enjoying that message

(26:11):
from our sponsors. The epstein bar virus. Cat catch it
tomorrow anyway. Um So, if you want a good example
of how, like Sophie the good the good people at
the epstein bar virus paid us serious money for that plug.
Ever makes you happy, Robert, that does make me happy.

(26:35):
I'd be happier if everybody went and got the epstein
bar virus. Let's let's move on from the bit I think?
I think? Is that? Should we move on from the bit?
Is it not? You think so? I'm gonna look up
what the epstein bar virus does because I've forgotten. Uh yeah,
well you know, I just remember the name. I'm so
lucky or like it's like it's the herpes virus. I guess. Oh, no,

(27:00):
it's mono. Is it moto? I don't know that's let's
let's yeah. I think it's it's Monoe for seven time. Yeah. Yeah,
that's that's that good ship. Um. Yeah, so get motto.
Everybody get mono. Okay, Sophie, how are you doing? You happy?
You're happy with me as a podcaster. You're glad you
made this series of choices in your life that led

(27:21):
to you sitting here while a guy talks about however,
once you get mono on a podcast about Liberia kind
of Actually, I was gonna say, even though Sophie is
like not, She's like I wasn't talking, Like, I'm just
so glad her camera is always on because I can
just like every time you say something, I can just

(27:41):
look up and I know. Sophie's like we connect, you know, like, yes,
we connect, and you know what connecting is how people
get mono. Anyway, what move on from the bid okay example,
So we're talking about like mono. Colonization spreads, like the

(28:02):
colonial mindset and the imperial mindset spreads from the United
States to Liberia as do what's really as we noted,
like some of these America liberians take slaves from the
Native Africans for themselves. They also create a plantation I
mean several, but there's one in particular we're going to

(28:22):
talk about right now because this really high highlights how
fucked up some of the stuff going on here is. Um.
Starting in the nineteen twenties, the Firestone Corporation starts a
massive rubber plantation in Liberia, which profits obviously the two
percent of people who are America Liberian that sprawls from

(28:43):
the coast to like the hills of central Liberia. Um.
It's this like massive thousands and thousands of acres UM
with people like living on it, harvesting rubber rubber for
very little money, um, and have very little control over
their own lives, like indigenous people laboring day in and
day out to harvest the rubber that makes the tires

(29:03):
and like the cars that first start filling American streets. Um,
it's pretty cool. I'm gonna quote from a ride up
in pro Publica. At the center of this kingdom was
House fifty three, reserved for the plantation boss. It stood
up a hill overlooking the rest of the plantation, a
two story Antebellum style Georgian colonial mansion of pink brick.
It had a wide porch, six white Corinthian columns, and

(29:24):
jalucy windows. Other homes for expatriates featuring verandas and manicured gardens,
were scattered nearby. In a section of the plantation known
as Harbor Hills, there was a nine hole golf course,
tennis courts, and a country club with a bar. About
three miles down the road was Harbor Firestone's Own Company Town,
a portmanteau form from the names of the businesses founder
Harveys Firestone Senior and his wife Idabell. It held Firestone

(29:46):
Central Office, industrial garages, and a latex practicing plant retlent
of ammonia and other chemicals. The town itself was a
collection of tin roofed homes and shops, a grocery store,
a bank, schools, and brick and cinder block bungalows for
mid level Liberian managers and domestic staff. There were the
homes of the tappers, the Liberian workers who did the
hard work of extracting the latex sap from the trees.

(30:06):
The camps were long, low rows of residences, almost like coops.
Units generally consisted of a single room. The homes had
wattle and daubed walls and aluminum roofs. There were no
windows and no kitchens. The work camps had communal pumps
for water and outdoor kitchens for cooking. There was no electricity.
Bathrooms were outhouses or the nearby bush. There was the world.
This was the world of the Firestone operation, described in

(30:28):
a night in nineteen ninety by one company executive as
resembling an old Southern plantation. So fucking George H. W.
Bush is in the White House and white people are
running a plantation in Africa. Um, with the collusion of
the Americo Liberian government, where the workers there are just

(30:49):
a couple of steps above being enslaved. That was like yesterday, Yeah,
real recent. And when the civil war starts, Firestones company
presentatives are going to make some cool choices about how
to help. Yeah, this Firestone tired rubber. Yeah, this is
where the rubber comes from plantation in Africa. So that's neat. Um. Now,

(31:13):
you will not be surprised to hear that an awful
lot of Liberians and I mean like indigenous librarians were
not jazzed with the status quo. Right, people have problems
with it. Um. It was a pretty yeah at least yeah,
not psyched. It was. It was you have to give
it a really effective system because Liberia kind of if

(31:34):
you treat the America Liberian rule as a colonial project,
it lasts longer than basically any other African colony other
than like South Africa. Argued with like that, yeahs because
like people are never taught about it or like you
know what I mean, went under the radar because no
one even knew it was there. Well, I don't know.
I think there's a number of I don't know about

(31:56):
I mean most I think I think very little of
this history is known to Americans. Like it's not something
we really talked about. I remember vaguely hearing that one
of the like I remember in like a textbook I
had in high school that was talking about like abolition
movement pre Civil War. There was like a little box
in like one of the pages that summarized like the

(32:17):
American Colonization Society and the colonizing of Liberia, and like
four paragraphs and like that was just kind of like, oh,
some people went over there. This is one thing that
folks tried. Like I don't, I didn't I didn't hear this.
I didn't learn anything about like the they again like
black imperialism is the title of one of the and
obviously it's not. I think it's I think they're using
that to kind of, uh illicit a reaction. This is

(32:41):
still in a lot of ways white imperialism. It's just
using black people because there's a huge financial benefit and
a military benefit which will discuss later to the United
States because Liberia functions this way. Um, so yeah, it's
a pretty effective system. Uh. The Americo Liberians remain in
charge until nineteen eighty when things begin to go terribly wrong.

(33:04):
The last president that the oligarchy was able to successfully
keep in power while install in power, I should say,
was a guy named William Tilbert. His administration was severely
weakened early on due to a series of rice riots
in the end of the nineteen seventies, and by early
nineteen eighty his ability to stay in powder where was
teetering on the break because you might guess they were

(33:26):
like there was a lot of hunger. Poor people who
are indigenous librarians generally are starving the riot because they
want food. The government cracks down on it brutally. They
arrest a bunch of organizers. Um. But you know they
beat this down, but their their hold on power is
not secure. Um. Tober does not seem to have been
a very bright dude because he's not entirely aware of

(33:48):
how shaky his position is. He and his fellow oligarch's
um felt like they had control mostly locked down because
all of the officers in the Liberian military were Americo
Liberia in you could not be an indigenous Liberian and
be an officer. Now here's what's interesting. All of the
enlisted men are indigenous um. And so all of like

(34:10):
the sergeants and corporals are indigenous men. This is exactly
the same way we talked about years ago. It did
an episode on Idi Amine who becomes the dictator of Uganda,
which is a British colony after the British come out,
and and Idi Amine was like the highest ranking Native
African military officer in the military Uganda when the British left,
and he was a sergeant. Because the way the British

(34:30):
military worked in Africa, all of your officers are white dudes.
All of the enlisted men are are black Africans, so
the people that could die are usually not like yes,
but also the the officers are the ones who are
supposed to be able to do the coordinating and the
actual like executing a military operations. Um So that's part

(34:50):
of why you don't want indigenous people to be officers,
because then they'll have Sergeants are never supposed to have
command over big units of guys, right Like, that's the
thing for for for captains and may Jews and colonels
and whatnot. Um So, you can see that the Liberian
militaries organized the same way that like the British and
the French organized their colonial militaries. Um And because again

(35:12):
Idi Amine was a sergeant before he became dictator. When
Liberia has its civil war and the government gets overthrown,
it's going to be a sergeants who do the overthrowing,
because that's as high as you can rise in the
military as an indigenous person. Um So, Tibert was so
convinced that he was in a secure position that he
started doing the one thing an oligarchic leader of what

(35:33):
is effectively a US back dictatorship should never do. He
starts to funk with the US. Um See, the U
S Department of Defense had come to expect we, like
Liberia in part because there's a bunch of benefits. Financial benefits.
US companies make a lot of money cheap labor, get
rubber and shipped from Liberia. UM. But also the US
has a bunch of factory we get up to in Africa, right,

(35:55):
We got a ton of ship going on in Africa,
specially in this period. UM. In Liberia, we say, hey,
we need to land some fucking planes. We gotta keep
some marines there, we need to keep like a rapid
deployment force or whatever. In the past, Liberia is always
like absolutely, send as many troops as you want, say, like,
land your planes here, fly out of here, you can
get to go. We're buddies, you know, because intelligent people

(36:17):
who are part of this oligarchy recognize that the United
States being in your pocket is basically the best thing
you could do in terms of staying exactly what's what's
what is heaping is the benefit of that. Um. I
I don't think he's a very bright dude. I'm gonna
admit I'm not the most knowledgeable on this, but it's
it's generally reviewed regarded as kind of a baffling decision.

(36:38):
But he's also like, um, you know, there's there's the
the US is kind of like I think, withholding some
um some aid funding and stuff out of civil rights concerns.
So there's like there's some pressure being put on his
regime I think by the US, and he decides to
like push back in this way. Um. This proves to
be a really bad call because when basically d C

(37:01):
decides we want a new US rapid deployment Force in Liberia, um,
and they asked permission and Toilber is like no. So
then the CIA and the Department of Defense are like, well,
why do we want this guy in power now? All right?
Like this doesn't benefit us at all? Um. Who Well,
they try to It's kind of debatable as to how
much of an impact they really have on this, but

(37:22):
they certainly start thinking about it, and they start going
through some names of like what what sergeants and whatnot
in the in the Liberian military do we think could
like overthrow the government? Um. It was generally assumed Liberia
doesn't have much in the way of other political parties yet,
so there's not really an established opposition, So it was
assumed the army's the best place to actually get some
kind of revolutionary leader Um, they're not really able to

(37:45):
move forward unless the situation changes, though, and that change
starts to come courtesy if the Progressive Alliance of Liberia,
an advocacy group which decides to become a political party.
In nineteen eighty, they start holding events. Uh, and talk
spread that Tilbert's regime was planning to execute a bunch
of the organizers of the riots who were still imprisoned
on the one year anniversary of the Rice Riots to

(38:06):
like kind of solidified power threaten these people. Um. So
this inspires a lot of local Liberians to do something
ahead of that date. Uh. And it's very likely that
the CIA had some sort of I don't think we
know exactly what they were certainly talking about overthrowing Tollbear.
And then it happens. It's again, I can't tell you

(38:26):
exactly their role here, but what happens is that a
group of seventeen soldiers, mostly sergeants, which is the highest
rank that librarians could hold, um, attempt to launch a
coup ahead of that anniversary. And I'm gonna quote now
from the Liberian Civil Wars by Charles River editors the
senior ranking member of the coup party, although not Its
leader was Master Sergeant Samuel will Do, and almost entirely

(38:48):
unknown figure. The decision was rather spontaneous and aided by alcohol.
The party set off on the evening of the eleventh
fully armed, and made its way to the foot of
the Barclay Training Center towards Capitol Hill and the Executive Mansion.
The streets were unlit. An entry to the grounds of
the mansion was gained without challenge. At about ours in
the morning of the twelfth, the coup party broke into
the basement, also without encountering any challenge, and cautiously entered

(39:11):
the upstairs section. Now purely by chance. It turns out
that President Tolbert had been out at a Baptist convention.
He was a preacher, uh so he had been preaching
at this convention, and instead of going back to his compound,
he decides to go back and sleep at the Capitol
building that night. So he's in his bathroom and his
pajamas when he hears gunfire, which is the coup members

(39:31):
assaulting his guards. The whole thing is very messy. It
ends with Tolbar, his teenage nephew, and a bunch of
guards all executed brutally. These are very violent killings. Um
When Tolbar's body is discovered the next day, his corpse
was found mutilated as best as anyone can tell. A
corporal named Harrison Penno had shot him in the head
after Tolbert attempted to bribe him. For more detail, I'm

(39:54):
gonna turn again to the quote from that book, the
Liberian Civil Wars quote. After the shooting, Corporal Pinno was
asked what he thought he was doing, and his reply
was that he wanted to see Tolbert die in order
to debunk a generally held belief that the president was
a witch doctor. The idea of leadership allied to sorcery
remains common enough in Africa, and most Liberian leaders tended
to allow mythology of that nature to pass, since it

(40:17):
added to the mystique of their rule. Tolbert habitually carried
a short ivory tipped cane, and the belief was that
it was carved from the femur of a human leg bone.
It was remarked by one soldier that if Tolbert had
laid the cane down, he would not have been killed,
But it is unlikely that he was carrying any ceremonial
a koutrama. At that particular moment, regardless, three more bullets
were put in his head just to ensure the job

(40:38):
was done. And with that, the nineteenth President of the
Liberian Republic lay dead on the floor of his bedroom
in a pool of blood. So he gets disemboweled after this.
At some point after he's killed, his guts get removed,
which is again seen as the best way to kill
a witch doctor. It is hard to say who did
this because after the coup proof successful, these seventeen initial
dudes are joined by like a U to other soldiers.

(41:01):
They find the president's liquor cabinet, and they all just
get ship house drunk and go on a killing spree.
They just start murdering, like anybody associated with the old government. Right, well, yeah,
so this is gnarly. It's also like you're part of
an oppressed class. You're used as cannon fodder by the government,
like you have no rights, and you get a chance
to murder them all. Historically, you murder them all. Um,

(41:23):
this is not the only place something like this has happened. Uh,
So we're going to talk a lot more about disembowment, cannibalism,
and other similar subjects. But you should probably discuss what
those things mean in a Liberian context, because again, a
lot of this stuff gets like over like focused on
by foreigners talking about like this conflict and being like,

(41:45):
oh my god, there's cannibals and witch doctors, and there's
like talking about why that exists in what that means
you talk about witch stuff a little bit. Yeah, we're
going to talk about um. This particular, the particular part
of West Africa where the Liberian colony is established, a
history of a practice called good boyle uh, and good
boyle was at practice whereby people are killed so that

(42:05):
their body parts can be used as sacrifices to magically
obtain certain benefits. Now, one like local news source is
kind of like a West African news source described this
as an ancient practice and notes that Liberian elites, which
generally means the Americo Liberians, never really attempted to like
find ways to stop this and never really worked on

(42:27):
a good way for how to do it um. And
since they tended to be Christian and kind of dicks um,
indigenous practices developed. A degree of gravity is like acts
of resistance to the oligarchy, a version of this happens
in Haiti, right, where a lot of these traditional practices
become associated with resistance to the colonial regime. Now also
that local source I found scholars will quibble with aspects

(42:50):
of that because, again, as was noted above, Tolbert whose
Americo Liberian and other presidents would definitely like signpost to
some of these kind of belief about much craft invincible
or like like the myste Yeah yeah. Um So, anyway,
the fact that a lot of these these kind of
traditional like boyo, this traditional practice is seen as kind

(43:13):
of a resistance practice to the Christian and like very
western regime. Um, this seems to have caused what had
been very fairly uncommon practices spiritual practices before colonization to
grow and mutate. University, Yeah, because this is what happens
in Liberia all of the ship we're going to be

(43:34):
talking about that happens in the Civil War. Ad. These
really fucked up practices. These are a lot of people
will argue did not really exist in the same fashion
prior to colonization. Yeah, they were. They were like in
response to being colonized and oppressed, they were like, we
can match onto these things that are becoming this form
of resistance, and they're also they're going to change over time.

(43:55):
So the University of Wisconsin professor Florence Burno um right
that quote. Public rumors depict human sacrifice and often related
sorceries as the most common way to achieve personal success, wealth,
and prestige in times of economic shortage and declining social opportunities.
Political leaders are widely believed to perform ritual murder to
ensure electoral success and power, and many skillfully use these

(44:18):
perceptions to build visibility and deference. So people like a
lot of these these rulers in this period, like aren't
necessarily doing these things, but they are kind of signaling
that they do, which leads to an increased belief that
there's some efficacy to this. And Burnout notes that rather
being a truly ancient practice, kaboya and other similar practices

(44:38):
have roots in the past, but are influenced in their
modern forms by the extractive nature of colonialism. Quote. The
colonial situation revealed significant contradictions in the Western fiction of
a modern disconnect between body and power. The series of
political and moral transgressions triggered by the conquest made apparent
how Europeans themselves envisioned political survival as a form of

(44:59):
positive exchange revolving around the body fetish. In the colony,
black and white bodies became re sacrilized as political resources.
Think about how in the can you explain what body fetish? Like?
What are saying, like fetish is kind of like a
religious term for like an object of sort of like
worship or at least of spiritual focus needed to Okay,

(45:20):
I understand that, but like, so think about one of
so one of the things people talk about, like cannibalism
in the Congo, and one thing they'll point out is
that a lot of these practices were influenced to even
have their origin and what the Belgians were doing and
taking the hands of people who did not like harvest
enough rubber, because like what they're pointing out is that, like, well,
from the perspective of these people living in this region,

(45:41):
Europeans are engaging in the same acts. They're taking pieces
of human bodies and they are using them to gain
power in why wouldn't that work? Well, it's like you
get power by taking somebody's hand from them, right, you
get power over the whole community. You know that as
this threat how is that any meaningfully different than like
you kill somebody and you take take a part of

(46:02):
their body apart and like eat it or whatever. Like.
You can see a relation between those two things, and
you can see how like the the extractive nature of
colonial capitalism on these people influences these ideas of like
sacrificing and taking pieces of the body in order to
gain power. You know, it's not this is not evolving
in the point that these scholars, this doesn't These practices

(46:25):
aren't They're not. It's not just people doing what they've
been doing for thousands of years. There they have evolved
and changed over the period of colonization as much as
everyone has um and so have these practices. And these
practices cannot be extricated from from capitalism or from colonization, right. Um, So,
by the time Sergeant Doan as allies overthrow the government,

(46:48):
these practices have become quote not a marginal but a
central dimension of the nature of public authority, leadership, and
popular identities. And this is going to cause a lot
of real nasty problems. But you know what else is
going to call some real nasty problem. Serene Epstein bar Virus.
Oh boy, howdy, let me tell you, the Epstein I

(47:09):
should have brought it back, causes the problem of having
a good time. Look, everybody loves a little bit of
mono smooch smooch. It was very popular in my high
school me too. Actually, all the kids loved it. All Right,
here's some ads. Uh, we're back and and continue to

(47:32):
be the only podcast with the courage to be supported
by Mono Nucleus. Yeah, that's on me, Sophie, It's on me.
It's it is it is. Look, fucking NPRS whatever thing
they do the daily, that New York Times podcast, Those
fucking cowards would never be sponsored by the Epstein. Bar
virus cowards, cowards, all of them. Um. I will say that,

(47:56):
like there's an impulse that I won't I won't entertain
like this, this fascination with physical body and power and
like what that means, like on a philosophical level, I'm
so fascinated by that. And I said this before another podcast,
But there's always a tendency I have in any podcast

(48:16):
I guessed on to just become philosophy zz And I
won't do that this time. But I will say I
have the impulse too, because it's very fascinating when you
think about that overlap in that connection, because it's like,
so I don't know what it is. It's it's just sucking.
Why I would I don't know, I don't know what
the thor it is. I would really encourage people to read, UM,

(48:38):
some of what Burno has written on Florence Burno B E.
R in a U L T. I think that's how
it's pronounced from the University of Wisconsin. UM. Because there's
a lot of like writing on this, not just in Liberia,
because like versions of this are are recognized in other colonies,
but it is really We've we talked about it a
bit in some of our Congo episodes. It is a

(48:58):
really fascinating demand. And it also you often get from
not not just from racist because obviously racists be racist NG,
but from like people who don't who are racist but
don't want to frame themselves that way, talking about like
problems in Africa as like, well, you do have this
problem of like you've got this ancient and culture that
has some really savage dimensions, and you know that this

(49:19):
is a problem in like labor aria of like attaining
any kind of peace, and it's like, well, actually those
practices aren't. They are evolved from ancient practices, but they're
very much rooted in the ship that like was done
to these people to make them a productive rubber plantation.
You know. Yeah, it's does not get it gets glossed over,
you know what I mean. Really pices, you know, should

(49:42):
be discussed like this. They are not any more savage
than slavery and then colonialism. You know, they're just nastier
looking because there's a lot of value put in kind
of like making the plantations. Is that's why people have
weddings at plantations, right, Because you're a slave owner, you
dry sit up more. It's so embarrassing how many like

(50:02):
friends of friends or whatever. Just the photos of like
having a wedding on a plantation makes me want to vomit.
But like why why why is it glossed over that
like blinching happened and all these things, and like it's
still it's still fucking happens, you know what I mean,
Like these violent acts that are so disgusting. I will
say it right here. I think killing a dude in

(50:22):
battle and eating his heart is a thousand times less
gross than forcing a man to labor for you until
he dies. Yes, way less gross? Ye, God, that's I
don't know, I fucking people, man, I don't know. But
like also like body power all the stuff. It's also
in every culture, not every culture, I can like think
of a few cultures that uh still incorporate this fascination

(50:46):
with like someone like taking a part of someone's body
to demonstrate your power. Over Look, look look at Sam,
you know what I mean. Like, it's just like there's
like I can I want on deep dive into this
off air. There's somebody there's I mean, a lot has
been written. This is really a fascinating thing to read into.
We're not gonna, I don't. I don't want to pretend

(51:07):
we're doing anything but scratching the surface. But it is
important to scratch the surface because when we read these
lurid stories of like child sacrifice and cannibalism, you need
to know that it's more complicated than just like, look
at this fucked up thing they do in Liberia, right,
the thing these non white people have exactly time because
they're uncivilized or whatever. It's like, it's important to understand

(51:29):
that it's like it's part of a continuum of violence
and it's not the it's it's an ugly it's certainly bad,
but it's not like it's not the start of it,
and it's not the part that has caused the most
harm at scale. Yeah, by the time Sergeant Do and
his allies over through the government, Uh, these practices have
become again like central to the nature of public authority.

(51:52):
And guys like Tolbert probably maybe aren't actually doing anything,
certainly not aren't doing some of the stuff that other
people will do. But when these indigenous folks come into power,
they have this expectation that, like, this is what you
do when you're in power. These practices are both how
you submit your power publicly and also how you ensure
that you won't lose it. So Doe founds a new

(52:13):
military junta government with himself at the head. Most of
the people that he let run the country are members
of the Krawn ethnic group. Because Doe is Krawn. They
had been traditionally a fairly minor group in terms of
their like numbers in power in the country, but Doe
puts them at the center of a building ship show.
The government he headed was at least as brutal and
violent is the one he'd replaced. And by the way,

(52:34):
the Firestone Plantation keeps right on shugging along because do
that for a brief moment. But well, Doe comes in
in part to be pro us, right, he's very he
doesn't want he doesn't want to funk up things for business,
you know, like because obviously is beneficial to him. Exactly,
He's all about that. Um so, yeah, they do all

(52:55):
their nastiest ship one of the one of the most
infamous moments, like after taking power, when everyone's still kind
of like because again Liberia, prior to this had been
they were very integrated into African the continent. Like there's
all these different economic and political organizations that are four
different that all of these multiple African states will be
a part of. Right even before uh, they're integrated in Africa. Yeah,

(53:20):
but even after colonized state, it was still like not
it wasn't like shitty like before they became like like
before it was black imperialized. It was still a colony,
right No, no, no, it was established by the US
like it had just been people living in Africa like no,
I'm talking, I'm sorry, I'm talking about the government. Dough
overthrows right the Toberian government, the America Liberian government. They're

(53:43):
integrated into the political I was math of Africa, right, Yeah,
so all of these when he overthrows the government, all
of these he arrests all of these government officials who
have who are like friends with the people running Nigeria
and like Kenya and all of these other countries. Right.
They they're in political organizations together. They're like managing trade deals,

(54:04):
they're going on vacation, they're like there are they are
buds with the other people who are in power in Africa,
And now they're in prison and Dough in a surprise moment,
has them all executed by drunken soldiers on television. So
I forgot this is like the eighties, baby, Oh my god.

(54:25):
So this this really pisss off a lot of other
people and like a lot of other African governmental leaders,
right because like that's my fucking buddy, you just shot
in the street, Like what the funk, dude? Um. So
this causes a lot of folks in the international community
to support his ouster. Uh. Still though the Reagan administration
is like, hey, you're willing to let us land planes.

(54:46):
They're like we'll play ball, you know. Uh. They invite
Dough to the White House. He meets with the President,
where Ronald Reagan and what it might be an early
senior moment, refers to him as Chairman Moe instead of
Chairman Dough and do just kind of like goes with it.
You know, we haven't had to stop having these no,

(55:08):
but there has to be a lock. You. Look, there's
things we were all fine with the idea that you
can be too young to do certain things. Okay, maybe
you can't be too old to do certain things exactly
even now, I mean not whatever. There are so many
moments where like be in Congress, look, yeah, just oh

(55:29):
my god, we're being governed by people that are slowly
fading away. And you can't be president until thirty five,
which is an implicit acknowledgement that the age you are
impacts your ability to do to the job property anyway,
this is this is a rant for else another Yeah,

(55:49):
so mo, which is what Reagan calls him. Uh assures
the Reagan administration that Liberia is totally going to return
to democracy December of nineteen eighty five. Right, I need
a couple of years to get stuff into shape, right,
get purged the government of all these bad people, you know,
I'm gonna fix stuff up and then I'm gonna stop
being dictator. Right nineteen eighty five where a democracy baby, Um,

(56:13):
so Mo knows he does have to hold or Doe
knows he just does have to hold an election. Um correct, Yeah,
he knows he's got to hold an election. Um. But
he also knows that like I'm not gonna have a
real election. So he does the kind of ship dictators do, right,
you know, um he and he cracks down. Every time

(56:34):
political parties will rise up, We'll find excuses to arrest them.
He's constantly arresting and purging people, including other folks he'd
carried out the coup with um and obviously a lot
of resistance starts to bubble up to his regime, and
the nexus of anti dough sentiment forms around a woman
named Ellen Johnson Surleaf. She's an economist who had been
educated in the US and had worked as an executive

(56:55):
for City Bank. She decided to run for election alongside
Jackson f Doe, who is not related to Sergeant Dough
right separate does um and they's she comes back. She
comes back. That's one of the things she gets a
lot of, like early kind of respect is she like
leaves the US to go back to Liberia to run. Um,

(57:16):
So they run for president with the Liberian Action Party. Uh.
The election is held largely so the bad Dough. I'm
gonna call him good Dough and bad Dough from this
point on because it's going to get too confusing in
the ways. Uh. And Doe is doing this because there's
like ninety three million dollars in US AID funds um
that he wants, but he has to do an election first. Uh.

(57:39):
He wins the election, but like immediately in every like
independent observer is like, well that was completely fraudules us.
The U S decides to work with Bad Dough anyway,
because again he's smarter than Tolbert. He's not gonna like
say no to the U S Military establishment. So Doe
sets to work carrying out happily carrying out an ethnic
cleansing in Nimba County where Jackson Doe had called home

(58:01):
because he gets to see where people are voting against him,
He burns their ballots and then he sends his soldiers
to massacre them. Um, so he most was the way
just to see where he's hated the most. Yep, yep,
hell man. So his you know, again, the troops carrying
out these massacres are mostly krawn like him, right, because
again he's very much and there's other ethnic groups that

(58:22):
are kind of allied with the Krown. Right. Um, this
does really break down on like racial lines, tribal lines,
kind of whatever you want to call it. Um. But
so he sends his krawn soldiers into this region which
is inhabited by other other people's um, and he massacres
a shipload of them because he sees them as like
enemies of the regime. Um. And whenever he captures men
who he had been like political leaders agitating against him, Uh,

(58:46):
he'll have them mutilated and have their corpses paraded through
the streets so soldiers can cut off pieces to eat
or keep his souvenirs. Um. This isn't good for the economy, Sharine.
Now I'm not an economic expert, but I I I'm
not surprised to hear that this was like bad for money. Um,
you might not want to invest in a country where

(59:06):
this is going on quite as much, you know, Um,
and versions exists. Remember so this, Yeah, tell, this is
able to be down. People are looking at this and like, well,
maybe I'm gonna pause on some of those developed those
building funds for a moment. I might want to wait
until this parading corpses thing is over. Yeah, so you
know it shakes out. So further economic problems are caused

(59:28):
by the fact that the Minister of Procurement shoe designer
Charles Taylor, had embezzled something like a million designer. Yeah,
Chuck Taylor's he's the he's the one of what he's
the guy who designed the Chuck Taylor was Charles Taylor. Well,
he's the he's the Minister of Procurement for Liberia. Yeah.
Why did you say that? As if it was like, like, well,
how is that thing? You know? You've heard of Chuck Taylor? Yeah,

(59:52):
but like I didn't know the inventor of fucking converse. Yeah, yeah,
he's he's going to be He's a Liberian warlord. Don't
look that up. Is that something everyone knows? Again? I
just like, yeah, definitely common knowledge. I'm willfully ignorant so
much of my time, so much of my my life.
I just can't handle this. That was a lie, Sharine.

(01:00:14):
I'm sorry. I can't do this to you anymore. Yeah,
I was lying. I just it was just a joke. Well, no,
there's a Charles Taylor and embezzels a million dollars from
Liberry government later. The world is so fucked up and crazy.
I don't believe anything you say, Like was going to
burn my fucking com first, after this fucking episode, I
can't believe it was it was it was just a

(01:00:34):
joke because it get like Chuck Taylor's Charles Taylor. I
thought it was funny. I know, I know I'm gonna
get roads the internet. I don't care what I mean, Sharine,
This is why I tell everybody one lie. You should
never trust me, never trust Robert, never trust you. I
mean yeah, maybe maybe there's a level of me that
trusts you. This isn't on you. This is on me, Sharine.

(01:00:58):
Firestone like Firestone, it's already like that's all real. That's
why we provide sources. Look, that's okay, that's a big
I know the Firesto thing is real, but it doesn't
mean it's so far out that another fucking big American
brand is rooted. I know, because like shoes and rubber.
I mean again, this we we could I could have
just gone through with this and just waited for people
on Twitter to get really or ready, you wouldn't do that.

(01:01:21):
I felt bad, bad job, I felt bad. I felt
that we've lied to me too. I lied to everybody once.
I mean, I, well, now I haven't lied to you yet, Shrine,
but I'll figure one out. Lying is the most human
quality you can have. So it's fine. I understand. Uh,
I'm just so excited. I'm just gonna it's okay, don't Sharine,

(01:01:46):
trust me. I'm the one who's going to look bad
as it was. No, it's I mean, because you were
so earnest about being angry about the converse. Guy lord,
It's okay. This is to all my gullible people out there.
Is that you. I hear you, and I have to
say it would have been really funny if if the
actual Chuck Taylor guy had been a Liberian warlord like

(01:02:08):
that would have been hilarious. So Taylor had been born
in Liberia, but his dad was an Americo Liberian um
his mom though he's he's mixed. He's mixed kind of
between Americo Liberian and his mom is a member of
the indigenous Gola tribe. Now that said, he is raised
as an Americo Liberian. Right, Like the fact that his
dad is means that, Um, there's obviously one of the

(01:02:30):
things you have to say about Liberia, like kind of
the racial cast system is not nearly what it is,
and like colonies that are are run by white people. Um,
so Taylor benefits even though his mom is Indigenous and
his dad is Americo Liberian. He's raised Americo Liberrian. He
attends college in the United States, Bentley College in Massachusetts.
Somebody else will have gone there and be like, holy shit,
once we talk about this guy, Holy ship, this dude

(01:02:52):
went to my alma mater. Um he's but but the
point is his early life, he's thoroughly Americanized. He speaks English,
fairy like he I mean obviously, actually I should I
should note here they all speak English. English is the
official language of Liberia. If you go to Liberia, like
you don't need to learn. And now some of the
like there's a patois like accents are kind of different,

(01:03:13):
like sort of like it is in in um parts
of Louisiana, but it's English. Like you listen to these
like interviews with warlords and ship they're they're all speaking
in English and stuff. Um, because again it's a colony
of the United States, right, Um, but he is he's
not just like he's he's incredibly Americanized. Um. His previous
political experience came from rising through the ranks of a

(01:03:34):
Liberian ex pact organization in Philadelphia. Uh. And when he
flies back or so, he goes back to Liberia after
Doe's revolution and gets a job in the government, and
then he embezzles a bunch of money and he gets
kicked out. So he flees to the US because he
doesn't want to get executed and paraded through the streets.
Doe tries to extradite him because he had almost certainly

(01:03:56):
actually committed the crimes he was being accused of. Um.
Charles Taylor is initially arrested by the United States, and
we keep him in a correctional facility for two years
while we're trying to decide what to do to the man.
But then, and I'm gonna quote again from the Liberian
Civil Wars, the story grows rather murky. Taylor escaped from
Plymouth House on the evening of September fifteenth, nineteen eighty five,

(01:04:17):
apparently with the help of the CIA, responding to an
obvious reluctance on the part of the government to extradite
Taylor to face almost certain execution at the moment he landed.
It is also possible that the CIA felt Taylor might
be useful, because if someone replaced or toppled Dough, Taylor
certainly seemed the most likely to do so. Either way,
The popular version of the story has it that Taylor
and three fellow escape pas cut through prison bars with

(01:04:39):
hack saws before lowering themselves to the ground outside on
knotted bedsheets. More realistically, perhaps arrangements were made for his
cell to be left unlocked one night and he simply
walked out. He was picked up by his wife, Jewel,
at a local freeway exit, after which he dropped out
of sight for a few months. Later, he reappeared in Ghana,
having traveled to Africa via Mexico and Ghana. He was
arrested in me on suspicion that he was somehow involved

(01:05:02):
with the CIA, which tends to lean credence to the
latter version of his escape. Taylor's lawyer at the time
was Ramsey Clark, the former U s Attorney General, so
certainly there was money and influence floating around somewhere no
charges were ever brought against Taylor in America for his escape.
So he gets over to Ghana. Um and while he's
in the US, he spends two years in custody. Right,

(01:05:23):
he gets the CIA kind of smuggles him out. Well,
all this is happening. Doe is in power in Liberia,
but there are constant coup attempts, right, or at least
attempts at coup attempts that Doe cracks down on. And
every time there's a threat to his reign, he does
the same thing. He sends his soldiers to that region
of the country and he massacres all of the men
that he can find, you know, um and often like

(01:05:44):
you know, rapes the women, kills baby like it's ugly. Ship,
it's it's ethnic cleansing kind of, it's really nasty. Um.
So by nine seven, Doe has murdered a lot of people,
um and he has repeatedly purged ethnic groups. Um. So
that's around the time when Charles Taylor makes his way
to the Ivory Coast and he meets a guy who's

(01:06:06):
like a friend of the Avorian president who decides to
back him and his plans to overthrow dough. Now by
this point, Doe has made the major mistake of pissing
off Momar Addafi. Um, because he again he's on the
side of the United States, right, Um, and he the
United States. I don't know if you're aware of this,
not big fans of momark A Daffi. Yeah, So Doe

(01:06:31):
expels Libyan diplomats from his capital. Now this is a
problem because not only is Kaddafi kind of a petty dude,
he also runs a gigantic pan ideological training camp for insurgents. Right,
if you are an insurgent and you want to learn
how to build bombs and shoot people, Momarkaddafi's got you.
You're the i Ra, You're the your Palestinian or you're

(01:06:51):
like he don't give a ship like Momar will take
as long as you're like cool with Momar, He'll he'll
train your dudes, you know, Ummary one eight hundred momer
for all of your insurgent needs. So he and he
and Taylor. So Momar Kadafi do pisses him off, and
so Kadafi is like, one, I'm gonna get back at
that son of a bitch. Um and he hears there's

(01:07:13):
this motherfucker named Taylor who's got connections to the government
of you know, in the Ivory Coast and ship. Um.
And so he and Taylor get into contact, and in
very short order a number of militants who are like
on Taylor's side. These are like generally like Liberians who've
had to flee the country because they were also associated
with some sort of rebellion or another that Taylor's gathering

(01:07:35):
to him, these folks go over and get trained in Libya, right, um,
and again, good chance there's some CIA involvement here. It's
very murky. Um. I assume they're everywhere. So yeah, they're
always doing some ship. I mean, they certainly seems to
have like helped Taylor get out right. Kadafi's maybe more
a bigger part of like how he actually gets to
carry out as it's whatever. On December nine, Charles Taylor

(01:07:58):
and a hundred and sixty eight insurgents in her Liberia
through uh the Ivory or yeah, the Ivory Coast. Um
Chuck makes an announcement through the BBC using a satellite
phone he'd been given by somebody uh again who knows
where he gets this kind of ship, that he has
no personal ambitions for higher office. He just wants to
liberate his people from President dough open civil war results

(01:08:20):
resulting in bits in breaking out in kind of bits
and pieces here and there um and gradually, like Taylor's
forces start to make progress. They're pretty well organized, their competent.
They expand quickly, and more and more of the country
starts to fall out of doze ability to control because
he's not really popular because of all the massacres, so
he starts having his security forces round up hundreds and

(01:08:42):
hundreds of residents of the capital from ethnic groups he
viewed as rebellious, and these people just disappear. Some of
them do show back up headless on the streets, so
citizens of the capital start greeting each other with the
phrase glad to see you've still got your head um.
Members of the yeah and members of the ethnic groups
target by dose purges start flooding into Taylor's growing army.

(01:09:02):
Right they get away from wherever the president controls, and
a lot of them pick up guns. As they won victories,
they replaced the initial weapons that they invade with the
armies mostly equipped with these old Soviet Soviet like World
War two Heiress submachine guns pps h s, and they
gradually replaced these with U S M sixteens from Doze

(01:09:23):
dead US backed fighters UM. And once his regular forces
start to get real rifles, he hands these submachine guns
off to little kids uh and he uses them to
form what he calls his small boy units. Quote from
the Liberian Civil Wars. The bulk of advancing forces were
locally recruited youth, handed guns, and fortified by alcohol and
cheaply sourced Chinese amphetamines we known colloquially as bubbles, and

(01:09:47):
of course a great deal of local marijuana. In much
the same way as the Kron dominated AFL that's Doze
Party took excruciatingly violent revenge against g O and Mano.
These are other ethnic groups roving bands of armed youth
singled out Krawn and and Dingo for similar treatment. Newsreel
images of the Liberian Civil War, as the initial coup
of inevitably be came, came to be characterized by images

(01:10:08):
of children and young people, both male and female, dressed
in civilian clothes, often in wigs and bizarre fancy dress,
enacting scenes that might have been extracted from Lord of
the Flies. These were the first high profile displays of
child soldiers at work in the African context of war
and the spectacle was utterly terrifying. So that's where we're
going to end for today. What a high note to

(01:10:30):
just leave me on the vibes. Yeah, um, well I
was hoping, I mean, I was hoping there's gonna be
more more witchy stuff. To be honest, that stuff has
been interesting to me. There will be next episode. Uh,
this is not going to be an interesting or it'll
be interesting. It's not going to be much of a
you'll want to go elsewhere to learn and detail some

(01:10:50):
more discussion of that. But we will talk about kind
of one expression of these things from people who are
like power hungry grifters. Um, you're not going to get
a great sense of what the actual religious practices were
among these people, but you will see some folks doing
fucked up ship and then deciding to be born again Christians. Yeah.

(01:11:10):
At this point, I'm not like, at a certain point
when this is just me theorizing and not don't take
any of these blankets statements seriously. But I would imagine
that at a certain point, when like a religion or
a practice is just used to gain power, it's more
used for the violence versus the belief you know, I'm
not like, I'm not convinced so many people believe it.

(01:11:31):
I'm just convinced they're using it to benefit themselves or like,
you know, so that's just like, well, it's it's one
of those things like there's you know, you talk about
cannibalism and another kind of beliefs that involved taking pieces
of the body. Certainly, thousands of years ago there were
groups doing that in Africa, as there were in many
other parts of the world for different reasons. But the
kind what you're going to see during the Liberian Civil

(01:11:51):
War has about as much is related to those those
indigenous belief practices in the same way that like a
modern Baptist revival meeting is related to a Christian church
meeting in like eight hundred and fifty a D you know,
to like a church service in Yeah, there is like

(01:12:12):
a line of descendants from one to the other, but
it's changed tremendously over time for a variety of reasons,
and someone partaking in the eight D church service might
look at a modern one and be like, well, I
don't really know what the fuss going on here, you know, Yeah, anyway,
any plugs at the end here? Shren I'm Sharine allegedly.

(01:12:38):
Allegedly I'm on Twitter, show hero six, like six Instagram,
Mr shar Hero. Um, I'm honestly like, I'm not really
on the internet much these days. I'm trying have an
impulsively everything all the time. But I think I just
need it just for this kind of stuff. But follow

(01:12:59):
me you want. I'm posting less but the stuff I
post gold, you know, so just stick around for that. Yeah,
but I will say I was thinking about this as
you were teaching me all these terrible things. Um, It's like,
like sometimes I get frustrated, for example, that no one
knows the history of Palestine or Syria or whatever, and

(01:13:21):
there's like selective things, as you said, like people can
there's so many there's so much bullshit and violence and
terrible things in the world. You can only learn so
much about it. You can only handle so much of it.
So I, for one, I am happy I know about
this terrible thing because I maybe was ignorant before. And
I hope people feel that way when they learn about
other child terrible things. Yeah, you know, context is important,

(01:13:44):
not because it mitigates bad things, but it's like it
would be fucked up to just get angry about the
I r A bombing a bar and not recognize that
that act of terrorism was directly influenced by the genocide
of half of the Irish population, Right, that be fucked up. Likewise, yes,
it's bad too. It's it's certainly bad to like shoot

(01:14:06):
missiles into cities like uh Hamasta's. But also that's not
happening in a vacuum, and it's happening in response to
missiles being shot into there and a bunch of other
fun up this history of like really horrible things. And likewise,
it is bad to make recruit child soldiers and carry
out human sacrifices. It's not they didn't just decide to

(01:14:28):
do that because Liberians are brutal. All of this occurred
as part of a continuum of things that is heavily
influenced by US policy and is heavily influenced by colonialism. Um. Again,
it's just it's not a matter of like saying, well,
this isn't bad because of this bad thing. It's a
matter of you don't understand what's happening if you if
you're only focused on one part of this picture. And

(01:14:50):
the thing is the information we all receive is usually
funneled through a white supremacist, fucking colonial you know what
I mean, Like, it's all funneled through a different a
certain ends to make us think certain people are good.
So people are bad. So I don't know, use your brains.
I suppose I will just mind too. I don't think
fucking Converse are evil. Yeah yeah, destroy your Converse shoes, UM,

(01:15:14):
light their headquarters on fire, hunt down their corporate representatives
in the street. No vengeance can be enough for Converse.
Um Robert. On another note, we should probably plug two
new podcasts on cool Zone Media that that are recently out,
shouldn't We We have what are now Sophie real quick sidebar?

(01:15:36):
What is a podcast? All right? So this does not
know where that's going. I was like, is he actually
doing this? It's like an edit note? No, okay, no, no,
this is this is a bit. But also this is
why I'm in charge. We have to there's Sophie. This
is like ten of why you're in charge. We have

(01:15:56):
to podcasts and cool Zone Media that you should check
out if you haven't checked matter already. We have a
Ghost Church by Jamie Loftus, which is a ghost church,
fascinating podcast about American spiritually, Yes we are. And we
also have a Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff hosted
by Margaret Killjoy that is in fact about cool people
who did cool stuff. It's like it's like the allegedly

(01:16:21):
the uplifting version of whatever. Then this podcast is you
know what I mean? Like, yeah, it's great. Actually, Sharine,
there's some really cool people who do some really cool
stuff in this next Are you familiar with the story
of Lizza Strata? I stopped talking, Robert, okay, um, but yeah,
check check those podcasts out, Sharina. Sharina actually works on

(01:16:44):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff and she and both
Robert and Sharin are guests or upcoming guests depending on
when this drops on the show, so check it out.
We'm so happy, Sharine working with Margaret has taught you
the most important thing about being an anarchist, which is
ang allegedly before ye in my vocab forever, and that

(01:17:08):
is the episode. H h H. Behind the Bastards is

(01:17:43):
a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool
Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Behind the Bastards News

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Robert Evans

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: General Butt-Naked and the Liberian Civil War