Part One: Robert Baden-Powell: Founder Of The Boy Scouts

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Based in record recording, test test test test print all
of this christ topic. We've already introduced the show. It
started behind the bastards. We have we we we we
we have a dark one today. We have a bad

(00:21):
one today. I'm Robert Evans, Matt Leeb my guest, Matt.
How are you doing today? You know I was doing
well until you guys started talking real ominous about what
the subject. Boy, Matt, you are going to be a
very unhappy person. Oh fun, I love Yeah, as we
as we get into this three hours, Yeah, that's about right, Matt.
So let me let me start this with a simple,

(00:43):
humble question, Matt, a very simple question. How do you
feel about the Boy Scouts of America? Oh? Fuck, I
have very like I don't have feelings one way or
the other because I never I never did it. I
know you weren't. Yeah, I know people who did, like,

(01:04):
uh you know they there was like a jew Scouts, um,
but they were that's a funny name for something to be. Yeah, yeah,
but I and I knew some people were like Cub
Scouts and Eagle Scouts and stuff like that, but I never,
I never was in that club. So I feel excluded
That's how I feel about it. You know, as a kid,
I wanted to be a part of it. Why couldn't you, Um,

(01:27):
I think, because like you know, you have to like
apply and stuff, and then you know, you know, you
gotta like tell your dad and he's got to not
be he's got to be in a good mood and
you know. Yeah, I mean yeah, so you know, I
never I never got a chance to do it. So
it's weird. I mean, so this is gonna be a
weird one for me because like I was in the

(01:47):
Boy Scouts for years and years and years and I
loved it. I had a really good time. I learned
where I learned a lot of like the first lessons
I learned about like woodcraft and like hiking, and I
had a lot of relief when I'm like a twenty
mile river rafting trip on the Brasos for days and
it's like, you know, uh, like primitive kind of like
you have like the contents of a matchbox and a

(02:09):
pocket knife and I have to go for two days
or whatever like some really cool shit. UM had some
great experiences, like I really to be like I personally
have nothing but positive memories of the Boy Scouts of
America and my time in them. End of podcast for listening.
So it's it's it's fucked up, Like I played like

(02:30):
my very first games of Dungeons and Dragons, I played
it like Cub Scouts Campouts, which is like a huge
part of my my life, and like, yeah, it's it's
it's weird. Um, I can confidently say my life would
have been very different if I had not been a
Boy Scout, and I can also confidently say that that
is true of a hundred thousands or so other boys
for a much worse reason. Um, because as we're going

(02:51):
to discuss the Boy Scouts of America, despite you know,
my and I'm sure a number of people listening can
think back to positive experiences they had in the b
s A. I know my dad can, Um, he was
an Eagle Scout, like I know a lot of people
who could who felt very fondly about their time in
the Scouts. But despite all of that, the Boy Scouts
from the beginning is an organization that was poisoned in

(03:12):
a fundamentally inescapable way, and that poison led to its
evolution into an organization that facilitated the rape and molestation
of like a city's worth of young boys. Um, it's
it's this is a dark one, my man, this is
a dark one. Yeah. God, I love going in cold,

(03:33):
you know, probably really regretting that email you Sami. I
would love to come back up. Yeah, I'll be back
any motherfucker you want to come on our show? Were
gonna talking about nazis A yeah, yeah baby, Oh yeah, no,
I'm excited. Man, it sounds like a lot of fun. Um,
you know, it sounds like Boy Scouts you know, uh

(03:55):
are gonna be a great organization to learn more about.
So let's strap in. Yeah. Well I might not want
to say that, give him what comes in part two,
but yeah, let's let's see the episode. Um spoilers. So,
do you know anything about the founder of the Boy Scouts,
at least the guy most often credited as founding the
Boy Scouts, Robert Maiden Powell. I did not know him. Okay,

(04:19):
Well that part one we're largely going to be talking
about the founder of the Boy Scouts, and then part
two we're gonna be talking about all of the rapes
and how the organization facilitated them over a century. Um,
but let's talk about Robert first. The other Robert so
Robert Baden Powell. His full name at the end of
his life gives you a pretty clear idea of the
kind of social position this guy enjoyed. Uh. When he died,

(04:42):
his full title was Lieutenant General Robert Stevenson smythe Baden Powell,
first Baron Baden Powell, oh M G C MG G
C V O K C b K S T J
d L, which are all like different orders and awards
and like nightly ship that you. He was. He was
English as fuck. That could not be more Enguish than
this motherfucker the whole alphabet. Yeah, he's he had all

(05:05):
these scot damn titles. Um. Yeah. And he was born high,
like he was born to rule, be one of the
people who helped run the British Empire, like that was
his Yeah. He was born on February eighteen fifty seven
in Paddington, London, inguland his father was the Reverend Professor
Baden Powell, and was a pro motherfucking reverend professor. The

(05:31):
line of people who were like, we must have multiple
titles like these. Everyone in his family has has a
thousand fucking titles and they're all very fancy people. So
his dad, the Reverend Professor, is a geometry professor at
Oxford University and a priest at the Church of England's.
Yeah you know those geometry priests. You know, it's like

(05:56):
you get one degree and then you're like, I'm gonna
just throw on a little yeah, little but another hat
from my hat. Yeah. Yeah. So his mother was Henrietta
Grace Smith and she was the oldest daughter of Admiral
William Henry Smythe Um, I don't who was a famous admiral,
you know, like and that's like the biggest thing you

(06:17):
can be in the British Empires, a admiral, Like that's
like the top of of cool British ship to be
in this period. And yeah, well people said it was
a good one. Yeah. So Reverend Professor Baden Powell UM
was an old man when he married Henrietta Grace Smithe
she was his third wife, and he was again not
a young man when he had Robert. And in fact,

(06:39):
Robert's born in eighteen fifty seven and his dad dies
in eighteen sixties, so our Baden Powell never really knows
his father um. And this brings to an interesting note.
So Professor Robert Baden Powell, the founder of the Boy Scout.
His name is Baden hyphen Powell. Right, his dad's first
name is Baden, and his dad's last name is Powe.
His mom's his name is Smithe So why does he

(07:01):
Why is his last name Baiden hyphen Powell. That's an
interesting question. So when he died, when his dad died,
his mom changed the family last name after his death
to be their father's full name with a hyphen in it,
in order to distinguish the children she had had with
him to the kids he'd had in previous marriages. So

(07:23):
petty ship, Yeah, it's like petty weird English bullshit. Um
so yeah, like Baiden Pale. You would think with the
name like Biden pal Oh, his dad was a Baiden
and his mom was a Powell, and they just did
the thing that you know, fancy people do when they
hyphen ate their names. But no, it's much dumber than that.
So Robert was raised by his mother. She was a
forceful person and he later recalled that quote the whole

(07:45):
secret of my getting on was in his mother's very
powerful personality. She was described by one writer as either
a great motivator or simply overbearing, depending on who was
talking about her. Since the family had money and the
upper crust British kids inevitably went way to private schools
while they were public schools. But we call them private
schools like a public school in England is like a
fancy private school. You know. Oh I didn't know that. Yeah,

(08:07):
it's weird. Everything's wrong over there, right, yeah yeah. Um,
and Robert spent his youth in a series of fancy
all boys schools. He was very intelligent and was given
to throwing himself completely into any task set before him.
He particularly pushed himself to succeed at tasks that were
likely to make him popular, so he became an excellent singer.

(08:30):
He became a skilled sketch artist and an actor in
the school's drama productions. Holidays back home, Yeah, holidays back
home were spent on yachting expeditions with his again quite
wealthy family. Um. He first came to the practices of
scouting while he was at school, though these are boarding schools,
and the forests near his school, which occupied an old monastery,
were filled with game animals, and so he would escape

(08:51):
from school. He wasn't supposed to be doing this and
hunt in butcher game meat. Um, this was like his
hobby when he was in school with with what like
a knife? I assume he had a gun or something
like like English shotgun. Yeah, I really that is unclear
to me. Probably it's just knifeing deer in the woods.
That's what a scout would do. That's one of the

(09:11):
merit badges I have always assumed. Yeah, stabbed fucking deer
in the neck. Yeah, just mass murder stags with a
single pocket knife. A gun ain't fair. Look, the deer's
got a knife. You got a knife, you got in
your head. I got knives on my hand. It's perfect now.
In the British Jackson in eighteen seventy six, he graduated

(09:32):
school and he found himself somewhat adrift and uncertain of
what he wanted to do with his life. His mother
pushed him to join the military, and he quickly fell
in love with the adventure and camaraderie of that life.
He particularly enjoyed spending all of his time in close
proximity with other young men separated from mainstream British society.
He was, yeah, he's he's definitely. His sexuality is something

(09:56):
we'll discuss in a bit sure. There's a lot going
on here, a decent amount of it's uncomfortable. He became
an officer because that's the role men in his part
of English society were born to occupy. A right up
in the book Scouts Honor notes as an officer, he
was known for his teaching skills, sense of discipline, and
obsession with physical and moral cleanliness. He must have seemed

(10:16):
a bit of a square. He tried to sway his
men from using brothels and advised them to beat the
type who could be trusted on their honor to do
a thing, who were guided by a sense of what
is their duty rather than by their own inclination, who
are helpful and kind, especially to the weak, and who,
by their personal self respect and avoidance of bad habits,
give themselves a manliness and dignity which no humbug can

(10:36):
attain to. So, well, that's a he's a stickler. Yeah.
I mean it sounds like, you know, perfectly good rules
to live your life by, you know, I mean, yeah, yeah,
yea here great, yeah, kind of kind of a little
bit like uptight. You get the sense that, like he
would have been kind of frustrating if you're a young

(10:58):
man in the military. Oh, he's not very fun but
certainly not you know, like very distinctly not about like
cavorting and going out and like drinking and whrring and
doing stuff that soldiers do, you know, because soldiers are
all all dirty, dirty bastards. So um. He first served
as a hussar in India, which is like a mounted soldier.

(11:20):
He was sent to Africa in the eighteen eighties, where
he fought as a scout officer against the Zulu in
what is today South Africa. His courage and competence earned
him repeated commendations. In eighteen ninety, he was promoted to
major and made senior aide de camp to the governor
of Malta, who also happened to be his uncle. Because again,
that's how everything works in this empire, a lot of nepotism.

(11:40):
He's very good at what he does that everyone seems
to agree with that, but he's also there's a lot
of nepotism that he benefits from. For the next three
years he did this job, and he also worked a
part time as an intelligence officer, and among other things,
he would like disguise himself as a butterfly collector, so
he could travel around to foreign military installations and bring
back intelligence to the British. He would just show up

(12:01):
as like a butterfly guy and be like, yeah, looking
at for some butterflies about check out your cannons? Might
if I read these documents, I'm just gonna I'm trying
to see if there's butterflies. Yeah, And this is the
period if you read about, like, um, the British invasions
of Afghanistan and the Great Game between the Great Britain
and Russia, which is happening in like this period spying

(12:24):
at this point, there's not like intelligence agencies. It's a
bunch of like rich fancy boys on both sides who
travel around enough fancy together and they bring back intelligence
and it's yeah, they just it's just basically just gossip
from like you know, the Yeah. In eighteen ninety six,
he returned to Africa and he fought in the Second

(12:45):
Mattabelli War. This was a revolt of the indigenous Mattabelli
people against the British South Africa Company. So again, corporations
are running all of these colonies at this time, and
the British Empire exists to like enforce their right to
control large chunks of continent. Um. The Matta belly are
like it kind of a raw deal for us, and
they try to fight back, and Baden Powell is among

(13:06):
the soldiers sent into brutally crush them. This is like
three now, this is three different uh like colonial like
wars that he's been part of. He fights in a
lot of colonial wars. He sees a lot of combat,
and it is all in the name of of furthering
the British Empire and the economic interests of British corporations. Yeah. Um,

(13:29):
And he understands it this way. He is an unrepentant imperialist.
Baden Powell had no issue deploying industrial armed might against
a subject people who had starved due in part to
cattle pests brought over by the British colonizers. This campaign
was important to the Boy Scouts for two reasons. One,
it was there that Baden Powell met an American scout
who introduced him to the concept of woodcraft, the stetson

(13:51):
cowboy hat, which becomes as an icon of the Boy Scouts,
and the neckerchief, which is another icon of the Boy Scout.
So he's very impressed by this. American Scout, and he
adopted a lot of these aspects of his dress, which
later become things that the boy Scouts do. Secondly, this
is where Lord Baden Powell committed his first war crime,
or at least the first war crime we have documentation of.

(14:11):
The gist of it was that there was an indigenous
Matta Belli chief named Weenie. He was thought to be
a major inspiration for the uprising and was accused of
murdering white settlers. We might say that those white settlers
were trying to steal land in the ability to produce
food from indigenous people, and they fought back. Um a
number of ways you murder self defense, self defense from
an invasion. Yeah, um. So Weenie gets wounded in battle, um,

(14:35):
and he surrenders under the promise that his safety would
be guaranteed that like he won't be like murdered. For surrendering,
Baden Powell has him executed, which was definitely illegal. We
called that the old Baden switch. I was waiting for
that that was destined to happen. It was. So the

(14:56):
simple summary of what happened is that, yeah, he committed
a war crime against black man fighting for the freedom
of his people Um. Baden Powell's biographer, though, a guy
named Tim gel Um we'll talk about Tim in a second,
defends it this way because the chief was wounded during
capture and Baden Powell doubted he would survive a long
journey to the Cape to face a civil court. He
court martialed him on the spot. The verdict was death,

(15:18):
so he was shot. Baden Powell had exceeded his orders.
So Tim Gill acknowledges this was illegal, but he also
was like, well, the guy was wounded. He was it
was like a mercy killing. You know. That's why we're
decimating this village because we stole all of the They're
gonna starve because of the things. What do you want
to do? You want to watch him software that's no

(15:41):
get the get the flamethrower over here. Um. So Tim
gel who you're going to hear from a lot in
this because he's he's Baden Powell's biggest, best, probably best biographer.
Regular listeners will recognize him because he also wrote a
biography we used of Henry Morton Stanley, who was one
of the artist imperialists in the history of imperialism. This

(16:03):
is a guy who's scout quote unquote, discovered a shipload
of Africa, murdered just a tremendous number of people, and
basically was responsible for conquering the Congo for King Leopold
via like a series of fake treaties, like he tricked
them basically on behalf of level. One of the worst

(16:23):
people who's ever lived. Jim Gill wrote a biography about
him that's very positive and Tim Geil this is what
he does. So Jeal is definitely kind of right wing.
He loves the British Empire. He is frustratingly good at
the technical aspects of writing biography. So he's really good
at going through thousands of pages of people's notes and
diaries and and and synthesizing them and provide so you

(16:45):
actually get really good information from his books. His the information,
the facts he provides are generally pretty solid. But you
also get it with Tim's framing of the facts, which
is always like ludicrously positive and forgiving of these nightmarish
war criminals, imperialism stand who's primary source. It's just three

(17:05):
other pages, yes, literal young, Yeah, he is deeply frustrating.
Tim Jeel. Now in this case he calls Baden Powell's
execution of this guy. Quote the most damaging charge made
against Baden Powell's honor. Now, this is in spite of
the fact that in eight Robert Baden Powell was in
charge of an operation to track down Zulu rebels and

(17:27):
he lost control of his men, who murdered at least
three people. Geille defends this by arguing, quote, even if
he had given orders to spare the rebels lives, it's
incredibly unlikely that his Zulu mercenaries would have obeyed. A
lot of trouble stemmed from this, and he was lucky
not to lose his career. It's like, well, Whitey, how
how do you know that? How do you know that
he couldn't have stopped this? How do you know they
were actually rebels? Like you? You just know what this

(17:49):
guy wrote and is like Jill never actually like he's
great at giving you what these people were writing and
saying to each other. He's not so great at like
seeing the people they were doing violence to as human
beings and made investigating their side of the case and
being it is this true? Was It's like not my job.
I'm a biographer for people who've done nothing wrong. Yeah.

(18:11):
The most famous moment of Biden Powell's military career came
the next year, in eighteen nine, with the outbreak of
the Second Bower War. This is one of those rare
colonial wars where there's not really anyone who's like a
good guy here because the Bowers horrible people, like a
lot of them, horrible people, very racist. This is where
we get apartheid South Africa. A chunk of that comes

(18:32):
from this um. But also they're fighting the British Empire
who put them in concentration camps and kill a huge
number of women and children. So my sympathy overall is
with the Bowers, I guess because they're the people putting
deck camps. But technically I'm like, well, I do hate imperialism. Yeah,
I guess they're both kind of imperialists. That's a more

(18:52):
powerful one. Yeah. It's not a fun war to read about.
The gist of it is that the Bowers, who are
kind of Dutch, were fighting the British who didn't like
the idea of Bower's like running ship in South Anyway, whatever,
you don't need to know too much about this. The
war is most noteworthy because it was where the British
first deployed concentration camps and idea they had kind of
cribbed from the Spanish who had kind of cribbed it

(19:14):
from what the Americans did to the indigenous people. Um.
And yeah, this led to the death of a lot
of Bowers, but also many more Black Africans. A lot
of Bowers do starve, that's worth noting. But like a
huge number of the people who starve as a result
of British policies in this war are Black Africans. Um.
But at the time this becomes kind of the most
famous fallout of the Boer War because the Nazis pay

(19:35):
attention to the British use of concentration camps and it
has a big inspiration on that. But anyway, um, at
the time, the most famous battle of the war back
home in Merry Old Ingleland was the siege of MafA King.
Robert Baden Powell, who was by this point of colonel,
was the man in charge of the garrison there and
basically he's got about fift men, a mix of British
soldiers and like local African auxiliaries, and he gets besieged

(19:58):
by a force of eight thousand bow um. And this
battle lasts close to a year. It's like two hundreds
something days that they're under siege. So it is it
is this horrifically bloody battle. By the end of the fighting,
like two thirds of a year's worth of fighting, Biden
Pale's lost more than half of his men, the Bowers
lose two thousand men, a shipload of people starved to death,
and it is front page news the whole time. This

(20:18):
is like the most like the biggest story in the
British Empire back in the Aisles for the better part
of a year, and it makes Robert Baden Powell into
a celebrity because he's the heroic commander of this this
scrappy defense under incredible odds to like defend Maficking from
the Bowers. Um. And he's also he's handsome, right, Like
he's he's generally noted by women at the time of
having been a good looking man. Um. And so you've

(20:40):
got this like handsome young war hero in the siege
that's front page news from months. Um. It makes him
into one of the most famous people in the entire
British Empire. And he's only getting more handsome because you know,
as the food runs out, he's just getting skinnier. He's
just getting skinnier and skinny, right, those cheek bones are
just getting like prominenter yeah sharp now. The siege held

(21:02):
several influential moments in the development of scouting. For one thing,
in order to free up men for the fight, he
deputized a bunch of teenage and preteen boys to act
as messengers. The Mayficking Cadet core, consisting of twelve to
fifteen year old boys, is often seen as a precursor
to the Boy Scouts. So that's one thing um not
by child soldiers, because he's not trying to have these
guys fight. He's using them to free up soldiers who

(21:25):
can hold a rifle and stuff um. In addition, from
the book Scouts on or quote, one key to victory
at Mafeking was scouting. Always fond of the outdoors as
a boy, Baden Powell, as a soldier, had developed a
passion for tracking animals and people, sneaking up on the enemy,
and living off nature. He wrote scouting books for adults
and trained soldiers for a scouting unit. He found the
business of survival in the wild not just a necessity

(21:46):
but an intriguing science. Geel rights. Once, when desperately short
of water, he had seen a buck scratching in the
sand and by digging at the same spot had found water. Um.
So he's he's this is like all kind of coming
together for for Robert Baden how um. And he's maybe
the only guy who could have like pulled off this
defense for the British because he has a lot of
this experience. He actually is not. He's not you get

(22:07):
a lot of these aristocratic officers are like useless in
a hard situation. He's not. He is legitimately good at
being a soldier. I think most historians day agree that
he was. He was a very competent combat commander. Another
thing that Baden Powell did at Mayficking was arguably commit
another war crime. Now this is a in fairness, is
a more muddled story than the others, which in my

(22:28):
mind are very clear war crimes. The short of this
story is that, allegedly, when food stores ran low, he
chose to feed white people and let black residents in
May Pickings starved to death. Um. This exerpt from the
Irish Times gives a good overview of the war criminal allegations.
Faced with foods shortages, he simply chose to deprive most

(22:49):
Africans in the town of any food whatsoever, even their own,
which he had earlier forcibly requisitioned. A few vital African
laborers were allowed to buy rations. Others were reduced to
scavenging dog corpses in rub sheeps. So that is that
is the that is the war crime allegation against kind
of what he does here. Um, he ordered one group
of thirty three Africans out on a cattle drive of

(23:09):
bower herds, otherwise to be flogged. The bowers captured and
murdered all but one of the poor devil's unperturbed, Biden
Powell then evicted several hundred African women from the town.
Many were murdered by the bowers, and a few pitiful
survivors were stripped, naked, flogged, and sent back. Yet their
shameful fate troubled him not the least. And you'll hear
a couple of different death tolls for this. I think
two thousand is kind of like the upper number of

(23:33):
like how many people die as a result of Biden
Powell making these calls. Now, Tim Gel, true to form
has a ready defense for Biden Powell. Here he says
of these allegations, quote, this is an absolute lie. He
opened soup kitchens and shot all of his cavalry horses
so he could feed them. And in this case, jeal
is not entirely wrong. Here again, how you what exactly,

(23:55):
how exactly you come down on this is messy. Um.
He is an actual biographer, so he's not. Biden Pell
did have his horses slaughtered in order to provide like
soup for for the people in may fick Ing. Um. Yeah.
Historians debate whether or not Baden Powell intentionally starved black
residents at Mayficking. One South African historian said in nine

(24:17):
this can only be described as a crime against humanity,
for which he deserves to be reappraised as a war criminal.
But in two thousands, a pair of military historians, Edmund
York and Malcolm flower Smith of the Royal Military Academy
at Sandhurst, analyzed diaries from soldiers and civilians during the siege,
including Baden Powell's diaries, and they came to a different conclusion.
And I'm gonna quote from the Guardian here. Biden Powell

(24:38):
had based garrison rations on a prospect of relief within
two months Kitchener, who's the High General in charge of
the whole war, ordered him to send as many women
and children and natives as possible a way to save rations.
So kitchen Or orders him get the noncombatants out of
the city so you don't have to feed as many people.
But the authors say the papers indicate that this harsh
policy was not aimed at the townships. Seven thousand st

(25:00):
wrong majority of Blacks the bar Along tribe, who were
valued soldiers and boosted foodstocks by rustling Bower cattle. It's
victims were two thousand outside Africans, including Shangans, who was
like so a different tribe of Africans, a smaller subset
of the population. Their food rations in Mayficking were cut off.
Biden Poal negotiated safe passage for them. For this, the

(25:20):
Shangans with the besieging Bowers to British held territory, supplying
a military escort and food wagon, but the truce was broken.
The first attempt to drive nine dred Blacks out at
night was scattered by Boer snipers. The second by day
saw them decimated by Bower attacks. The policy of forced
evacuation was a blunder. Dr York said Baden Powe was
the reluctant victim of external military imperatives. He realized his

(25:42):
errors and dropped it. So that's complicated. Yeah, that's complicated
because like, yeah, he his calls get a bunch of
people killed, he's also acting on orders. He's not trying
necessarily to get people killed. He's trying to get them
out of there so they can go to British territory
where there's more more food. The bowers attack ac these people,
like you could argue he didn't like, it's unclike. And

(26:05):
I'm not a historian because obviously these scholars who are
saying no, no, what he did was understandable, he wasn't
trying to kill anybody are British military historians from the
Royal Military Academy at Sanders um so have have a bias. Um. Yeah,
I mean I feel like, you know, I'm inclined to
not give him the benefit of the doubt and just

(26:25):
say he probably did that ship. So I think what's
probably true is that he was not trying to get
anybody killed. But also the fact that these these people
not just that they're black, but they're black members of
this tribe. That is not valuable to him. He's not
troubled by what happens to them, really, and it's not
he He probably could have done a lot more to

(26:47):
to not get them killed. Um, it is true that
after this happens, he he kills all his horses. He
creates soup kitchens to feed starving people, but distribution of
food from those kitchens was biased towards Europeans and elite
members of the Barolong tribe. Um. These British military scholars
like note this, but say, quote, he was no more
racially prejudiced than the vast maturity of his generation, which

(27:11):
isn't wrong, but doesn't make it not like a war crime. Also,
to be fair, yeah, to be fair black, Yeah, every
he wasn't racist or than everyone else. Yeah, but did
his policies get more of them killed because he like
gave food to white people? And say, well, yeah, but
he didn't do it because he was more any racist

(27:33):
person back then, which was everyone would have done this.
I'm like, well, okay, yeah, but like that doesn't do
you see why that's not good. I love the idea
of just well, you know, relative to the time period,
but you don't know what a piece of shit everybody
was back on. That's I mean, give him a pass.

(27:55):
This is not to give him a pass, but it
is fair to describe the war crimes he committed that
way as in And again this is not to give
him a pass. This is actually just to condemn the
British Empire as a war criminal. Within the context of
British officers in his time, he was more restrained and
respectful of the life of non white people than most

(28:16):
of his colleagues, who again had often committed genocides. Like like,
that's what like in saying that, like the s S
commander who just starves Jewish people rather than driving them
to the gas chambers, Like, well, he was more restrained
than the other cool. Yeah, it's like yeah, I mean
it's not. Again, this is not too This is not

(28:36):
to to to defend Baiden Pound. This is to put
him in the context of the British Empire. He does
count as like relatively mild based on the other military
officers of his generation in that position. And again, what
he does in mayficking is mild compared to the fucking
concentration camps that the Kitchen setting up. Yeah. Um, not again,
not to whitewash the man to put him in context,

(28:57):
because for one thing, you should always you can never
be emphatic enough about how bad the British Empire was,
and another part because there there actually is a lot
of inaccurate anti Baiden Powell propaganda out there. Um. One
of the things people sent me before I did this,
because they wanted me to do this, was like a
book that had been written by this guy in which

(29:18):
he alleges that Robert Baden Powell and Kitchener were both
like pedophiles on like a grand massively abuse of scale,
and among other things, alleges that Robert Baden Powell early
in his career, authorized the execution of two sixteen year
old Irish soldiers who he's sodomized before murdering, which, like,
that's pretty bad. That's the thing that happened. Here's the

(29:38):
thing the book that that allegation comes from, and I
found it nowhere else. That book was written by a
guy who also wrote a book alleging that Adolf Hitler
was a British spy. So well, there is a chain
of people who are unreasonably anti like it's not unreasonably
anti British Empire. But who are like anti British Empire
in a way that's not Yeah, that's like, you know,
the evil of the British empires and that invented Hitler.

(30:01):
It's all of the genesize. There's a lot to hate
about the British Empire. Kitchener didn't like train Adolf Hitler
to create World War Two to further British profits or
whatever the funk this guy believes. It's I mean, you know,
it's uh, it's it's in general, it's always okay to
hate the British Empire. But uh, you know, if your

(30:24):
sources someone who's like and therefore really Nazism, Brits look
at it. So yeah, Baden pal probably didn't execute and
sodomized two sixteen year old Irish soldiers, and you know
who else probably didn't. It's Sophie. Is that a bad
way to good ads? It's really bad, I said, probably didn't.

(30:48):
Probably Somebody somebody on Twitter this week asked me if
we've ever gone a complaint from sponsors about your transition
to ads, and like, no, but maybe now, maybe now
we can just bleep it out. That'll leave people one dring.
Like the last time we breap something out. Every time
we've bleeped something out, which is always done just as
a joke, people get like really conspiratory, like, oh they
must have gotten the legal threat from this person or

(31:09):
that person. Know, I thought it was funny. It's funny
if you bleep things out sometimes than saying them, because
the mystery box is always funny. Yeah, but yeah, let's
bleep out that, Sophie and then never explain it. Um,
other fucker's all right, we're back, Sophie. Come on, professionalism, jesus,

(31:36):
get it together. You gotta be professional, Sophie. People come
to us expecting a degree of of of of professitude.
I think it's yeah, come on, at the very least,
all my elementary school friends who have reached out to
say they listened to the show, they told me they
listened to it for the professionalism. For the professionalism, right,
that's what we all has ever given me that feedback, Well, well,

(32:00):
you have the wrong elementary school friends, that's right. So
I've been saying that for years. Um So, when it
comes to aspects of Robert baden Pal's early life that
are relevant to his founding of the Boy Scouts, we
should probably get into his his sexuality, which is there's
a lot that's messy here. From one thing, he was
almost certainly homosexual, that's not questionable. Um. Tim Jail even

(32:22):
agrees like this, this he was almost certainly gay, right like,
and this is not uncommon. A significant number of the
men who build the British Empire. There's a really good
argument to made that they may have been and possibly
like celibate home like gay men, because again, it is
illegal to be gay at this period, Like people go
to prison for for having homosexual like relationships and stuff.

(32:44):
It is extremely for and so a lot of these
guys would I mean, I doubt Biden pal considered himself homosexual,
but like a lot of the guys who build the Empire,
are these men who have these who don't like human
Morton Stanley doesn't like women, is kind of disgusted by
like the female body, and has all these incredibly intense,
like loving relationships with men that are probably not sexual like.

(33:06):
We really don't know, because obviously they wouldn't have written
about it if it was, because it was a felony. Um.
There's a lot of this going on in the British Empire.
And and Baden Powell is almost certainly one of those guys,
one of those guys who maybe like again I'm certain
would never have accepted to himself that he was gay,
probably never had gay sex. We certainly don't have any

(33:27):
evidence of that. Um. But he loved, he loved, He
found the male body beautiful and the female body disgusting,
which like, what what do you like? Take what you
will out of that. Um. The big debate isn't around
like was this a guy with like some homosexual like inclinations?
It is was he also a pedophile? Um? And I

(33:49):
should be clear upfront because this is going to get
real murky. We do not have any evidence that he
was a child molester, and I think I think that's
unlikely that he ever. But the question is was he
attracted to kids or was he attracted to just kids?
Like we really it's it's messy. Um. He definitely had
some very intense romantic relationships with young men who were adults,

(34:12):
So it wasn't like whatever his attraction was, it wasn't
exclusively to kids. If he was attracted to kids, um,
he seems to have preferred men in their teens like
sixteen to nineteen, was like his his kind of sweet
spot I think about, like, well, technically that's not pedophilia,
no no, but also you can join the military at
like sixteen, so like it is, there are some I'm

(34:34):
not trying to like I'm trying to explain this is
a different kind of culture, and I don't think he
actually does anything with anything boys like, which also does matter. Um,
so we'll talk more about this later. There's a lot
of this is a very murky and and anytime you're
talking about the sexuality of a man in a period
in which his likely sexuality was criminalized from what you

(34:55):
have in his diaries, that's going to be imperfect. But
it is necessary to discuss because of how the Boy
Scouts has made in his image and the story. Yeah,
so he returns and like the early nine he gets
back from from the Boer War, and he's a hero,
one of the most famous men in in the British
Empire and also just like in the Western world, he's

(35:17):
incredibly prominent at this point and he is seen as
a man's man, like he's he's considered handsome. He's this
war hero, he's like been through a bunch of shit.
He's legitimately like hard man like he's he's just gone
through some stuff. Um. One government minister even creates the
Baden Powell League of Health and Manliness in his honor,
which is absolutely that is, I think we can all agree,

(35:41):
the straightest name and organization has ever had. Yeah, that's
incredible after what is most likely a game man. It's
just like, yeah, the Health and Manliness, Yeah, it's very funny. Yeah,
it's very funny technically civil rights like Yeah, UM members
were quote expected to do good turns a shoe tobacco

(36:04):
until they were twenty one, and lead healthy and physically
strenuous lives. This is according to Tim gel Lead members
wore badges with pictures of Baden Powell on them. It
was a huge success. A lot of guys get interested
in this, uh, and this fact helps to convince Baden
Powell after he returns home from the war that the
young men of England are desperate for an organization that
can give their lives structure and train them up for

(36:26):
a grand purpose. Yeah, a little bit of that, I
mean not, but this is really focused on because it's
not about her. It's not like a really paramilitary it's
not about like it's about teaching them useful life skills,
and yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean a big part of
it is you have England and industrialized rapidly in this period,

(36:48):
this huge population of young men, many of whom don't
have fathers because their dad's died in some sort of
like industrial accident accident, yes, shimney accident. And a bunch
of them are like, um, they've they've lived in cities
their whole if they don't know anything about the outdoors,
They don't know anything about like survival and stuff. And
he wants to he wants to like teach these people
useful skills, to give them to like deal with this

(37:08):
kind of the malaise that's growing under capitalism. You see
in the US too, like all of these like angry, disaffected,
miserable urban populations. He sees this, and his answers like, well,
give them some sort of structure, teach them useful skills,
get them out of the city, you know, which is
not a bad idea. Um. Yeah, from Scouts Honor the
book quote Biden Pale had always gotten along with children.

(37:31):
His love for children is perhaps his ruling passion. One
journalist wrote of his work in Africa, he is never
happier than when surrounded by them. They surrounded him back
home as well, as he stepped into the effort to
strengthen England's young men physically, mentally and spiritually. Youth brigades
and clubs were sprouting all over. In n Baden, Powell
rewrote aids to Scouting for n c O S and Men,

(37:52):
which he had originally written for soldiers, to make it
suitable for boys. Several of Baiden Pal's friends had been
suggesting the rewrite as well as the creation of an
outdoor boys club, so that summer, Biden Powell and an
army friend ran the first boy scout camp to see
how the idea would work. So this is kind of
the genesis of this, and it's happening. A lot of
stuff is happening in culture these and there's other boys

(38:12):
clubs kind of starting up. And he has this idea
to take these scouting guides that he wrote for soldiers
in Africa, rewrite them for little kids and give them
a place to actually get out of the city and
learn this stuff. Yeah, I mean just uh so not
the proud boys, but more like uh like the Hitler youth. Yeah.
And in fact Biden Pale is really interested in the

(38:34):
Hitler Youth. Now there's a lot of arguments like whether
or not, and he said a lot of nasty stuff
about Hitler. I don't know that. I don't think I
wouldn't call him a Nazi, but there's certainly elements of
his belief system that we're like friendly with some early
aspects of fascism, Like he was very intrigued by the
Hitler youth. Though in fairness, the Nazis considered the Boy
Scouts a subversive organization, so like there's a lot going

(38:54):
on there. We're not gonna get into that much. You
can find a lot written about it. I'm not gonna
like Delvin and take a side on this like historical
debate of how sympathetic was he like with whatever. Um. Now,
that account from a book written critical The Scout's Honor
is written about sexual abuse within the Boy Scouts. Like
based on the title, you might think it was like
a pro Boy Scouts history. It is not assumed. Yeah, yeah,

(39:15):
it was written in ninete I think it was the
early nineties, And that account of like how the Boy
Scouts get started is generally in line with the story
that I heard growing up but the actual origins of
the Boy Scouts are a bit more complex and more
rooted in cultural appropriation and also outright theft. Biden Powell
is not the only founder of the Boy Scouts. I'm
not going to go into too much to tail about

(39:36):
this because it's not relevant to the actual story we're telling,
but it is worth noting that in nineteen o two,
so that's like five years before Biden Powell rewrites his
book about Scouting, an American named Ernest Thompson Seaton had
some property vandalized by rambunctious boys, and instead of punishing them,
he invited them onto his land for the weekend, and
he taught them like some camping stuff, and he claimed

(39:57):
all of these like this, like woodcraft he was teaching.
He claimed like Native American like wilderness lore and whatnot.
I think a lot of it's just stuff he'd learned.
And he was like making up stories that weren't true,
because like stories about Native America, and he would tell
them like folk stories about Native Americans. Again, I don't
know how much of any of this was accurate. He's
certainly appropriating it because again he's as white as they come. Um. Again,

(40:21):
I don't know how accurate any of this was. In
any case, the weekend was a hit. This is like
really successful, and he thinks it helps these boys out,
so he keeps doing it and he eventually forms an
organization that he called the Woodcraft Indians. This was so
successful it gets very popular. I think it's particularly like
the eastern chunk of the US that after a couple
of years he writes a book called The Birch Bark Role,
which lays out his lessons and boys, and it's all

(40:43):
routed like here's Native American wisdom for you know, white
boys who want to learn how to be woodsman. Seaton
was successful enough that this this word of what he
was doing across the pond. And in nineteen o six
Seaton traveled to England to give Robert Baden Powell a
copy of his book, and Baden Powell may have gone
to the United States to attend one of his um
his birch Bark gatherings. It was a huge influence on

(41:05):
scouting for boys. We have letters from Baden Powell saying
like I'm taking a lot of what like you put
in this book into like the thing that I'm writing. UM.
And when the Boy Scouts as an organization were created
in nineteen ten. They were heavily influenced by the structure
of the Woodcraft tribe. Seton was angry for years. He
gets really angry that the idea has been stolen, and
there's a lot of debate as to how true that was.
People will point out that Baden Powell, he'd had boys

(41:28):
organizations that he'd been involved with before. He'd clearly been
playing with this idea before. Yeah, I've been hanging out
with little boys. I love happened hanging out with boys
before you were born exactly. Um. But today Seton is
recognized even by the b s A as one of
the founders of the Boy Scouts, and it's there's some
people who argue that, like, he was kind of more

(41:49):
left wing and that like the Boy Scouts wind up
being kind of right wing because Baden Powell dominates it.
I don't know how accurate I think that is. Kaseton
is like, again a ton of cultural appropriation here. I
think that people have a tendency to kind of like
idolize him over much. Um. Yeah. I will note that
while Seton definitely like did a lot of cultural appropriation
to make his organization. I don't have any evidence that

(42:11):
he deliberately enabled a culture of child sex abuse, which
Robert Biden Pale absolutely did. So if you've got to
pick a favorite Boy Scout founder, I do think I
I pick cultural appropriation over child molestation. I think I
think I'm gonna give it to that. Yeah, there are levels.
I mean, they're both problematic. We can say that they're
they're they're definitely both problemat Bullbard grounds for a cancelation,

(42:34):
but one more so than a yeah. I think if
i'm if I'm if I'm prepping the cancel canon, I'm
going for the guy who enabled child molestation on a
massive scale first. Probably good speaking of child molestation and
a massive scale, that shouldn't be an ad break, should it.
So um, back to Baden Powell. Let's get back to

(42:58):
Baden Pale. So he writes aids to Scouting for n
c O S and Men in nineteen oh seven, and
shortly thereafter that same summer they start the first boy
Scout camp, and the Boy Scouts aren't an organization, is
to in nineteen ten, they're kind of like testing out, Like,
let's get a bunch of boys on the land. Let's
teach him. Let's see if this is like actually a
good idea, if kids like it, if it's if it's
got legs. Basically, um, this is their beta test um.

(43:20):
So they bring a bunch of boys to the land,
this land they've got. They spend a week with them hiking,
teaching them how to make tents, and according to the
book Scouts Honor quote, at the end of the day,
there were rubbed downs and stories around the campfire. So
that's that's potentially problematic and potentially problematic. The stories around
the campfire was fine. It was just like it's the rubdowns.

(43:41):
It's the rub down, rubdowns, rubdowns and stories maybe no
rubdowns bars and like running hands through the hair of children.
And then also like looking at the stars. I think
a couple of things can be true. One is that
we currently have a problem in our culture where like
men who feel like called to teach young boys things
like mentor young boys, they get like unfairly accused, and

(44:06):
like people get suspicious as like I would a man
like carabouit, which is it's actually good for for men
to like care about the mental ring and child not
bad having actually rubbed downs rub downs is a line,
is a line that has been crossed when you're doing
rub downs of the boys in your care things have

(44:28):
things have crossed the line in my opinion, Yeah, and
rub downs cross that line on the head little yeah,
And I guess yeah, I don't. You could argue that
the rub downs were not like necessarily sexualist all because
I don't know, like what, but certainly you're on a
line there, you're you're, you're, you're, you're at an uncomfortable point.

(44:51):
It's a gray area, that rubbed down area. However far
these went, Biden Powell seemed to get something intensely powerful
out of the experience. His widow would later tell an
interviewer that though he'd spoken at many youth groups since
his return from the war, quote, this was different. These
boys were his his for a week, to work with,
to play with, to learn from, and if his ideas
were right, to guide, to influence, to mold. So again,

(45:16):
I know, like, I know, playing with kids it's good,
it is, it's good. It's good to care about seconds
sentence I'd like you to delete it. Just you can't
say these problematic play with like activities do act do
activities with kids? Yeah? God, the language around it is

(45:40):
very difficult. He took his strong feelings during this week
as a sign that his new calling was to mentor boys.
In nineteen o eight, he published his rewritten book as
Scouting for Boys, and this included within the Scout Oath,
which is on my honor, I will do my best
to do my duty for God in my country and
to obey the Scout law to help other people at
all times times to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake,

(46:02):
and morally straight. Um, that's a famous and the scout
law is uh that a bunch of ships about the helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave,
clean reverend like all that ship that's like this is
still like rubbed downs. Morally straight baby, Yeah. I mean,

(46:23):
if there's one person who screams straight to me, it's
Robert Paton, a straight manly guy. That's a straight manly
man right there. You will generally run into a few
different theories as to what the overall purpose of scouting was.
The sinister theory is best summarized by this passage from
an Irish Times article quote. For him, the boy Scout

(46:45):
movement was an unarmed, paramilitary expression of the empire. So
that's one angle that he's trying to train up the
soldiers of the future, right, He's getting boys ready to
fight for the British Empire. Biographer Michael Rosenthal shares this opinion, writing,
all of Scouting can be properly understood as Baden Powell
himself understood it as an organization expressly designed to churn
out admirable obedient lads. Scouting sought to guarantee for society

(47:08):
the complete submission of its members. And there's a lot
to be said. We won't get into enough about like
World War One's impact on Scouting, because a huge chunk
of the British soldiers who die in World War One
were former Boy Scouts and kind of one of the
It had been very British up to World War One,
and it becomes much more international after that point and
much less kind of dedicated to specifically British imperialism. And

(47:32):
I don't I don't really know enough about like did
Biden Powell look at like how gung ho all these
young men were to go have an adventure overseas that
lead in getting mowed down by machine guns, fire and
sucked into mud and be like shit because other people
who were like are like Teddy Roosevelt is like horrified
by world. Like one of his kids dies there who
he like really pushes to go fight and like dies

(47:53):
horribly and he's like a Jesus. A lot of people
have I thought this is gonna be simple, like the
Philippines or whatever. Yeah, Ruard Kipling has kind of a
similar like like it has this like profoundly almost radicalizing
experience at Kipling. Kipling's a fascinating guy wrote some really
like some of the most imperialist ship ever written, and
also some like really profoundly anti imperialist stuff about like

(48:17):
you know, groups of of of like indigenous people like
destroying empires and stuff and like all this like fascinating dude,
so um. Tim Gel, on the other hand, writes that
biden Pal's purpose was more protective than this uh quote.
Adult life was full of dangers. Women could deprave them,
politicians mislead them, and gambling and drunkenness could wreck their lives.

(48:38):
But in his boy's only world, he would counteract these
dangers with hiking, camping, cheery, sing songs, and other safe activities.
And I think both these views are probably accurate. I
think biden Pal did legitimately care about the health and
well being of boys, and he wanted to help them
grow up healthy. He was fiercely protective of them. I
also think he wanted them to become good little soldiers
of empire because he was an imperial. Um. He probably

(49:02):
because he thought that was a good thing. It's not
like that that wasn't sinister for him now. And I
was like, yes, you know, this is what men are
supposed to do. You will, yeah, men, men are supposed
to learn how to like carve things into would make
macaroni pictures and uh fucking you know in depressed indigenous
people's right exactly for the wealth of you know whatever. Um.

(49:24):
It's also kind of worth noting here that um biden
Peal grew up fatherless. As we stated, he never had
a father, and he a big part of his angles.
There's a bunch of kids in in Great Britain in
this period who who don't have fathers. And part of
his goal for the Boy Scouts, which is an admirable
goal for an organization, is to provide He wanted to

(49:45):
train up hundreds of Scout masters who could act as
like surrogate fathers two children, um, who didn't have them.
So like, okay, if you're a single mom, you're kind
of struggling to figure out how to raise a boy.
This organization will provide him with healthy male mentorship, right, Um,
which is certainly the Boys and Girls Club. There's kind
of similar themes in a bunch of good organizations. It's
not a bad idea. Um. However, Um, there's also problematic

(50:09):
aspects of this um because one of the reasons he
thinks that he needs to train up scout masters to
be surrogate fathers for the boys of Britain's um is
that because quote except where the scout masters take the
father's place, the boys have no one to consult on
intimate subjects. So from the beginning he's like, well, what
you know, obviously they need they need a man in

(50:31):
their lives to teach them, you know, manly things, but
also like to talk about sex. This is from the beginning, Yeah,
which is not again, yes, not necessary, but maybe not
this way. Yeah, I think it's nothing wrong with talking
to your kids about fucking. But having said that sentence,

(50:53):
an adult and generally an adult of the these semigen
gender identity, they have to talk to them about sex.
That's a good thing, I think, I mean, yeah, it is. Yeah,
it just depends on where we're going. But there it
can go very wrong, is the point. And so like yeah, again,

(51:13):
all of the all of the family is this stuff
where it's like, yeah, but where are we going? Where?
Which where are you gonna take this? Because and this
is one of the things some scholars will point is
that one of the groundbreaking things about the Boy Scouts
is that it was the only really organization of its

(51:35):
size and popular culture that explicit was like, we are
one of the things we're here to do is to
talk to young men about sex, about their sexual development, right,
which is progressive. But and we're going to get to
the butt. But first, you know what else is sexually progressive,
matt You know what else gets straight to the butt?

(51:58):
The products and services that support this guest. I'm trying
to think what the funniest add it could be? Right now?
For sure, the means days it is fun to like
chart the growth of podcasts in the areas of ads,
like I came of age during the during the mattress. Yeah, yeah,

(52:19):
remember when we used to get free things. I got
two free mattresses. It was rad Ah. We're back and
we're all just having a great time talking about a
guy who's not at all deeply problematic. They're going to

(52:41):
be able to cut out snippets of this podcast and
cancel me for generations. Oh yeah, no, you you are
going to be canceled well into the twenty third century. Yeah,
when the Federation of Planets starts up, there's going to
be a Galaxy class starship named the Cancelation of matt Leeb.

(53:02):
Just where I think it's good to play with kids,
that's the noise it makes when it goes into warp.
Good times. So, the fact that one of the purposes
of scouting is to provide boys with male mentors who

(53:22):
can talk to them about intimate issues, one of the
things that this means is that naturally the Scout masters,
who are mostly volunteers that Biden Powell is bringing in,
are going to have to talk to boys about sexual
issues like masturbation. Um. And again, this was somewhat revolutionary
for its day, but it's also worth knowing that, like
the fact that they're talking about this is revolutionary, their

(53:45):
attitude towards it is profoundly conservative. Abstinence is the only
thing ever encouraged. But at the same time, the mere
fact that their literature addressed masturbation as a topic was
kind of progressive for the era. Yeah, they talked about
the existence of it. Yeah, this is not a good
thing necessarily, As we discussed Baden Pal's impulse to discuss
boys sexuality came from a really problematic place. But I

(54:07):
want to read you his advice on masturbation as it
was written for the first draft of his book on Scouting,
because I know this is something you need in your life. Please,
this is gonna be fun to list. Let me get
my my old timmy voice got ready. You all know
what it is to have, at times a pleasant feeling
in your private parts, and there comes an inclination to
work it up with your hand. The result of self abuses.

(54:29):
Always mind you, always that the boy after a time
becomes weak and nervous and shy. He gets headaches and
probably palpitations of the heart, and if he carries it
on too far, he very often goes out of his
mind and becomes an idiot. A very large number of
lunatics and our asylums have made themselves mad by indulging
in this vice, although at one time they were sensible,

(54:51):
cheery boys like you. Jesus. First of all, that was
like the carnival carnival barker from hell me not to
jerk off. I do. I do love the idea of
like the well, you know, if you jerk off too
much you become insane, because it's a theory so easily disproven. Yeah,

(55:18):
just generated by the sanest man in the world. Yeah,
I'm trying to figure out what the funny yeah, Madly, Yeah,
there we go. I mean it's it's also we should
I should note. I'm sure our regular listeners will caught
this if he listened. Like the Kellogg episodes, He's not
inventing this stuff. He is when he talks about masturbation
in this way, he is actually like sharing mainstream medical conclusions,

(55:39):
Like the mainstream of the medical establishment in this period
broadly agrees with everything he said. Um so this is
not like Biden. Pal isn't introducing this, although he is.
It is unique that he is as like a youth
group leader talking trying to talk about this so openly.
Now that passage I just read doesn't get published in
the first boy Scout Manual. His publisher is like, wait

(56:00):
a second, why are you talking about masturbating so much
of this book? Um, I have some notes? Yeah, I
have some note is good? The whole section about about
it coming jerking off. Maybe trim that down quick. It's
going to affect book sales. Yeah, So they rework it

(56:23):
to make this much vaguer, simply cautioning children not to
touch themselves and noting that if they feel an urge
to do so, this is critical quote, go to your
father or your scout master and talk it over with him,
and all will come right. So that could be problematic
right there. Yeah, having these children, If you want to masturbate,

(56:43):
go to your volunteer unvetted scout master and he'll teach
you how to come right. You can see this is
a situation which if the wrong kind of people become
Scout masters, this could be a profoundly abusive situation. A
lot of trust, a lot of trust in these scout masters. Probably, yes, yea,
So it's here we should probably again discuss the sexuality

(57:04):
of Robert Baden Powell in a little more detail. So
again Tim gel is convinced that he was gay and
the strongest piece of evidence for this is that when
he was in the army, he falls madly in love
with a young army officer, again, an adult named Kenneth McLaren,
who he called the Boy. Now again, I don't know,
like we might have called I think I'm not sure
if Kenneth was like eighteen, but like he was, he
was an officer in the army. He was an adult

(57:25):
kind of by the standards of the time, right, Um,
calling him the boy is just probably that's a term
of endearment people who were like in their mid thirties.
I'm like, oh, those kids over there, Yeah, those fucking kids. Yeah,
so it's probably fine. Yeah. Geal calls this Baden Powell's
only close friendship in his entire life, like this is

(57:46):
like a really unique relationship with him, which right there
says something. The two bunked together, which also says something
they vacation together, they exchanged gifts, and when the boy
was captured by Bowers during the siege of maf King,
Baden Powell had to be stopped from trying to rescue him.
Jeal calls this an emotionally homosexual relationship because there's no
actual evidence that these two funcked and again, given a

(58:08):
lot of this is not an uncommon kind of relationship,
maybe they did. That's also total I'm sure a lot
of these guys that we just don't know if it
was just emotional or if they actually, like I'm sure
a lot of them did and just couldn't say anything
because you'd go to prison maybe, like I don't. But
also that you can't overstate how repressed they are, like
would they even have known? How? Like really would they

(58:28):
even have known? How? You can't you can't entirely the
impulses because human beings are human beings are the same
as they've always been. Their understanding of like ways in
which to handle those impulses that is cultural and like
it is you you can't entirely get in their heads
just given the fact that like you know that, like
you know, like the basics of like how sodomy works, right,

(58:50):
Like that that's like a thing you can do. Like
who knows what these guys know? Um, it is true,
like even straight British people are just edging at like
like who knows what these people know about fucking kissing?
Like like this is an incredibly repressed not just time,
but like class, because these are the upper crust. These

(59:11):
have only ever like I don't know what, I don't know.
Like again, it's it's it's hard to get too much
in anybody's head here because like, um, their understanding of
like what is possible in a relationship between two men
physically is just at such a different level. There's no internet,
you know, not that there's not ways, there is pornography,
there are like wait, Oscar Wilde exists in this period,

(59:31):
Like it's not impossible to figure it out. There's some
books on it. You can in fact figure this ship out.
But I don't know what these guys knew. Um. And
these are very common, you know, among kinds of the
imperialist class who are actually like doing the ship overseas. Um.
Biden Powe did get married kind of later in life.
He had a couple of kids, but among other things,

(59:53):
he was noted to regularly sleep outside on the porch
because he couldn't bear to be near his wife. So
again that it could because he's gay, it could be
because she's just sucked. I don't know. I mean so
like I've seen British people, it's just a yeah, it's
an island full of Jesus Christ. Wow. Wow, every British

(01:00:16):
person is ugly as except for like wow, Chris throw
in three or four random bleeps in that sentence just
to make it even even more mysterious. So Gill concludes
that Biden Powell's intimate diaries reveal a revotion towards naked
women and a fascination with naked male bodies. Quote from

(01:00:38):
the book Scouts Honor. In his advice to boys, Biden
Powell treated women as a hazard to be avoided, again
not uncommon for the time. He mocked boys for girlitis
if they paired off with young ladies, and wrote that
young fellows are apt to excite their lust by talking
about love or toying about with girls. But this is
all bad for you, rovering for to success. One of
his books for boys includes a apter titled Women, in

(01:01:01):
which he warns about the rutting season, that time when
a boy is growing to manhood and finds himself obsessed
by lust. He was writing about puberty, but compared it
to an illness. He said it would last only a
few months, sometimes a couple of years, and told boys
to get over it, just as they would get over
the measles or any other youthful complaint. Boy. An entire

(01:01:23):
chapter just dedicated to talking about how girls have cooties. Yeah,
and girls have cooties and you don't need to fuck
yeah exactly. He noted, with remarkably little excitement, that most
boys would get married at some point, and like he
was kind of like, yeah, like you want to delay
this as long as possible. You'll probably get married because
it's the only way to carry out the creator's law,

(01:01:44):
that is to make children. Right. But that's all that
women are, Like, they're not a partner, they're not there's
nothing attractive about this. It's just the only way. That's
his attitude. Um, and yeah. He repeatedly stated that women's
bodies were repellent, just as he wrote about how wonderfully
made the bodies of young men and boys were. As
the boy Scouts got off the ground, he engineered many

(01:02:06):
opportunities to watch naked boys. Much of this happened at
scout camps, where nude swimming was traditional. And this is
normal in swimming in general, Like there's a lot of
nude swimming in England. Um, but he liked this a lot.
He repeatedly described naked boys at the swimming hole as
a delightful sight, as yummy. This did start to like
I said, this was kind of normal in the world.

(01:02:28):
He grew up and it started to change in this period,
and in fact, during this period the police in London
band boys from swimming naked in Hyde Park Lake. Um
Baden Powell is enraged by this and he writes, how
my boy, he writes, fersct dog, I will build my

(01:03:01):
own lake. And they were all women. A woman walks
by in a in a long erson He's like, oh God,
get that away from me. In human creature woman. He's
probably he was as a younger man at least at
least people at the time consider that everybody always gives

(01:03:21):
me shit if they don't find like I'm just saying.
People at the time wrote that he was, and in
fact there are women at the time who right, he's
very handsome, but women like he seems to have no
interest in women like other people note this about him, yeah,
and also some of his like if you look at
into like this guy, I don't see why people would
find this handsome. He's a war hero, which has an
impact on people. Um So when the police in London

(01:03:43):
band boys from swimming naked in Hyde Park Lake. Baden
Powe writes a column for Scout magazine suggesting that Scout
masters quote educate the boy by encouraging his self expression
instead of disciplining him by police methods of repression. It's
because it's self expression is naked bathing. Yeah, I mean

(01:04:06):
there's like part of me where it's just like, you know,
it's it's ridiculous to, you know, penalize people for skin
I wouldn't want to arrest to someone for skinny dipping.
But like, you're not coming at this from a holy place, Robert,
He's not at all about self expression. No, no, well

(01:04:26):
there goes my fucking shotter day. I was gonna put
on my loosest pants and walk down to hide bark.
I got a plate everything. So he's just a crab.

(01:04:53):
This is what gets him. A cat's then bringing out
bathing suits for the boys on the Mommies. So one
of one of Baden Pale's friends at this time is
a teacher named A. H. Todd. H Todd's hobby was
taking pictures of nude boys. He called them figure studies.

(01:05:15):
But the library he donated his album too after his
death destroyed all of these photographs in the nineteen sixties
to quote protect Todd's reputation, because these pictures were not
in fact artistic figure studies. They were child pornography. Um
gal I think fall short of calling them child porn.

(01:05:36):
But he does note that the poses of the nude
boys and these photos were quote contrived and artificial, And
he notes that they're artificial and contrived in the same
way as the poses of naked women at the time
that were sold as art. But we're really softcore pornography, right.
Porn you couldn't get, but you could get these art
photos that were based that functioned as born That's kind
of what this guy is doing. But for little boy, well,

(01:05:57):
I think they're like young boys at least certainly definitely
drind of some store. I don't know the exact atrians.
In all cases, Baden Pale spent quite a lot of
time with Todd. In nineteen nineteen, he stayed at the
man's home and wrote Todd's photos of naked boys and trees,
etcetera excellent. He has people swimming in ponds, he has

(01:06:22):
a boy playing with himself, he has a bag, he
has fruit sitting on a table he has two boys
playing with himselfs oh god. So he goes to hang
out with todd for a night or two and he
looks at his his his picture book, and he immediately
as soon as he gets home, he sends Toddle a
letter asking if he can visit again, and noting, possibly

(01:06:43):
I might get a further look at those wonderful photographs
of yours. It's pretty fucked up. Christ. Yeah, Oh my god,
I'm imagining that dude sliding into people's d m s
because sometimes on Twitter, just see like people will post
screen caps of of like thirsty dudes sliding into other

(01:07:06):
d m s, and it sounds very similar. Do I
have to be a subscriber to only fans to see
the little Boy pictures? Again? Yeah? And again, there's no
evidence or even allegations whatsoever that Robert baden Pell himself
assaulted any boys. Um. I think there was a lot
of gross lasciviousness going on. I think there's evidence he

(01:07:26):
enjoyed child pornography. I don't think he physically. Again, I
don't know that he ever had sex other than the
three times necessary with his wife to conceive children. Um,
because he was a repressed motherfucker. So like right, Um,
in this case, maybe that was good because it doesn't
it seems likely he never personally abused any boys. Yeah,
it seems like like with repression, you know, it's it's

(01:07:49):
largely bad except in very few except for maybe in
this case it helped out. But although not really because
while he personally probably didn't, I can obviously category orically
say anything. Um. He absolutely encouraged the nudity of young boys.
He also in Scouts, and he encouraged those young boys
to go to their Scout masters to discuss sex, nakedness

(01:08:11):
and masturbation. A not insignificant number of those men turned
out to be child molesters, and how Robert Baden Powell
dealt with those men was telling. Scouting rapidly grew larger.
It became an international organization like a decade or so.
It spreads all over the world. It gets very big,
very quickly. This brought up a need for an ever
expanding pool of men to work as Scout masters. These

(01:08:32):
were volunteers, unpaid volunteers, which is quite a lot of
work to ask if someone who has no ulterior motives
for doing the job. Right, My scout masters were just
like really nice people who who loved the outdoors and
wanted to teach kids. I don't think there's ever been
any allegations against them. I certainly never experienced anything. Those
people are happen um. But also there are people who
joined the Boy Scouts because like, oh, I can be

(01:08:52):
alone with a lot of naked boys and I can
do things. You know, that is a major thing happening now. Again,
as propresses the time was, people are not ignorant of
the fact that there are child molesters in the world.
There are people within the Boy Scouts and within like
the government who are like interface with the Voice Outs,
who recognized this as a risk, who see what Biden
pals are like, well, if the wrong person became a

(01:09:14):
Scout master, he could really hurt a lot of boys. Um.
And they go to Baiden Powell and they're like, the
Boy Scouts need to set up a way to screen
volunteers in order to protect kids. We have to have
something right. We have to attempt to stop people who
might hurt these kids. And crucially, Robert Baden Powell said
no quote and this is from a letter he wrote,
I don't think we ought to make the test of

(01:09:35):
Scout masters too stringent for fear of putting them off again.
It's expanding rapidly. It can only expand as much as
there are adult volunteers. He doesn't want to He doesn't
want to slow the expansion of the organization by making
sure that there are pedophiles in the rings. And obviously,
how do you do a pedophile test? Though you know,
even if he had cared, I'm sure it would have

(01:09:57):
it would have fallen short people and it was a
net able. And this is the kind of thing. The
Voice Scouts are not evil because some men who got
into the organization mollisted kids. That in an organization that
it is peak has like seven million kids, some of
the adult volunteers are going to molest some of those kids.
That is inevitable, just it's scaled. It in a town
of seven million people, some of the adults will molest children.

(01:10:18):
That is inevitable. That is not doesn't mean the organizations evil.
What is evil is the way that they deal with it,
or rather fail to deal with it. And that his
evil is that like again, if he had attempted to
screen for this and just failed, that would been like,
well he tried and what like yeah, how could you?
How do you screen for this? Right? This is an
ongoing conversation we as a civilization continue to have. The

(01:10:39):
problem is not that he failed in screening them. The
problem is, like, I don't think screening is a good
idea because it's going to slow down our expansion. Right,
that's the issue. Um, sound now like an imperialist mindset
and I love Yeah exactly, Yeah, yeah, it's all about
that growth. Yep. Now, the fact that damn near any
adult man could become a Scout man master becomes an

(01:11:00):
issue as the organization ages and expands. In a nineteen
book about Scouting in British schools, one headmaster said quote,
one of the weak spots in the Scout movement generally,
it seems to me, is that there is no guarantee
of the capacity or character of the scout master. Any
man or callow youth could get together a number of boys,
formed them into a Scout troop and become their scout master,

(01:11:20):
and there was no safeguard whatsoever against his being a
man of most pernicious influence. So again, when we talk
about like damning people by the standards of their time,
people raise the alarm from the beginning of the Boy Scouts,
people are telling Robert Baden Powell, you were not being
careful enough with these boys, and he does not listen.
These concerns proved absolutely valid within biden Pal's lifetime. In

(01:11:42):
nineteen twenty three, a Scout master was caught molesting a
boy at the camp that Baden But like Baden Pal's camp,
he gets sentenced. He gets caught by the police and
he is sentenced to three years in prison. Now, when
this had this big story, obviously right like this gets out.
This isn't like hushed up. And biden Pal writes a
column in The Scouter, which is like the adult Boy Scout.
It's a magazine for the adult leaders within the Boy Scouts.

(01:12:03):
And in this column he is effusive in his condemnation
of the man. He noted that if the law had
let him, he would have punished the man by flogging.
In the same article, he correctly notes that the abuse
of these children by the Scout master was a failure
of the Boy Scouts to honor their grave responsibility of
ensuring the safety of boys, But at the same time
he describes the sexual abuse of a child by a

(01:12:25):
Scout master as a man going too far in quote sentimentalism,
what the fuck? What the fuck? Indeed? That what the fuck? Indeed,
I think that is him covertly acknowledging, Yes, a number
of us are attracted to the boys, but you don't
touch them. I think the reality is like it is.

(01:12:49):
There's a very complicated conversation to have about people who
are attracted to children and do not molest them. But
I think one thing that is clear is that if
you are that kind of person, is it is imperative
that you do everything in your power to not go
anywhere in your children, Like don't like like, that's that's critical.
Don't fucking near kids. If you're attracted kid, If you

(01:13:09):
don't want to be a monster, you're not a monster
just because you grow up with like this thing in
your fucking head. As long as you don't put yourself
in a position where you're going to hurt anybody, right, yeah,
I mean you know, just that, make that your number
one priority. Um, yeah, not being near fucking kids, right
right above eating and drinking. Yeah, and stay away from
children children, brush your teeth, yeah. Yeah. And Biden pal

(01:13:34):
is being like, well, of course, it's fine that a
lot of us are attracted to the boys, but this
guy went too far and his sentimentalism, which reveals a
tremendous amount about him. Right yeah, So, as the book
Scouts on Or notes, Biden pal was even more problematic
in his attitudes towards the sexual assault of boys in
his care during his private conversations than he wasn't again

(01:13:55):
this public column in a doctor named Patterson was put
in charge of the main camping field at Gilwell, which
is the first and chief Scout camp. So Dr Patterson
is responsible for the health of all these boys. He
sleeps in a medical hut that's near the field where
the boys camp, so he can be near the boys
to watch over them. Because he's again he's the doctor.
He was extremely trusted. For years. Mothers would often write

(01:14:17):
to Lord Baden Powell asking if he could pare their
sons with Dr Patterson so he could talk to them
about sex, and Robert would send them to Patterson right
like they would be like, my son, I'm a single mom,
my son needs a man to talk to about sex,
and like I'll send them to the doctor, which, again,
on the surface, if this guy isn't a child molester,
perfectly reasonable. Like a boy asked questions about sex. Send
him to the doctor. Doctor right right, here's the problem.

(01:14:41):
Dude's a child molester. In August nineteen, several boys complained
that Dr. Patterson had given them painfully thorough physical examinations
at night in his medical hut. An investigation commenced, and
Baden Powell allowed Patterson to be quietly fired rather than
going to the authorities or taking any kind of punitive
action beyond kicking him out. So they do not go

(01:15:01):
to the police. They do not make this a criminal
matter because they don't want this to blow up. This
is the first time that happens. This is will become
the pattern for more than a century of the Voice
Scouts of America. It is established by Robert Baden Powell.
Um Now again, when cases of sexual abuse did go public,
as that one did in that we talked about earlier,
Baden Powe was very loud in public about decrying the abuse.

(01:15:24):
But as the book Scouts Honor notes, however, Patterson's successor
the doctor who follows after he gets quietly pushed out,
HD Burne, proved to be no different. After a decade
in charge of the camping field, someone picked up quote
a fat diary and Burns room and discovered it to
be filled with detailed descriptions of sexual encounters with boys. He, too,

(01:15:44):
was dismissed quietly. Geal Rights Headquarters evidently preferred not to
let it be known that for almost fifteen years, the
one job in the movement requiring men of unimpeachable integrity
had been occupied by a succession of active petterists. God, well, yeah,
the whole section of them. Huh yeah, that's that's that's

(01:16:07):
a grip. That's a grip of periss that's too many pederists,
I think I would say one probably too man. But
again and again, to be fairy, the evil is not
that like a pedophile, especially in a new organization, wound
up in a position and heard boys. It's that their
answer to it was to hide it and then promote
another pedophile to that position, because they don't take any

(01:16:27):
care to actually screen these fucking people. And again, if
they're screening had been imperfect, at least, what's the thing
that happens? At least they tried, they didn't, and there
Biden Pale's instinct was to try to cover it up
and not to punish these people, to treat it as
a moral slip rather than an act of profound evil.
That is how he seems like, as these men slipped,

(01:16:48):
It's like, no, no, they abused children. Firing them, it's
not a slip. You showed up late to work twice. Yeah,
it's like, no, it's not. This is not a firing thing.
This is a These people need to be removed from society. Things.
They have harmed children, the worst thing you can do.

(01:17:09):
Some justice needs to be served. Yeah. Yeah. The founder
of the Boy Scouts would die in nineteen forty one,
but the patterns he established would follow the organization as
it aged. They are, in brief, an avowed refusal to
properly check the men who volunteered to watch over boys,
a willingness to overlook problematic behavior, and a commitment to
hiding the cases of abuse that they are forced to acknowledge. So,

(01:17:34):
oh fuck. We're going to talk, yeah, in part two
about the modern b ESA. But it is just very
important to note that everything we'll be talking about in
part two, that stuff that goes up to two fifteen
two right now, really starts with Baden Powell. This is
not a case of a man founding a beautiful organization
that later people fail on from the beginning, everything problematic

(01:17:57):
that has led to mass sexual assaults in the Boy
Scouts was present from its founding. Yeah, I mean, you know,
it's founded by a guy who kind of wanted to kids,
kind of wanted to kids. Uh, you know that's a
recipe for disaster. That's a little bit of a Yeah,
it's not great, not great. Probably again, I had a
great time in Boy Scouts. I think an organization with

(01:18:18):
the broad goal of teaching kids self reliance and survival
in the woods is wonder and absolutely necessary. I think
damn near a hundred percent of kids can benefit from
something like that. Probably shouldn't be founded and formed by
a succession of pedophiles. Probably a bad idea, Probably a
bad idea. My note on the Boy Scouts less pedophiles. Yeah,

(01:18:40):
if I had one, like four star Yelp review, everything's good,
But the the pedophiles and perpetuating pedophilia throughout the United
States and the world is Yeah. Yeah, it's one of
those things. I'm sure there are people who be like,
why didn't you do the Catholic Church. We have talked
about the Catholic Church a couple of times, including like
the all of the horrible abuses in the of the
the residential schools in Ireland and whatnot. But like, one

(01:19:03):
of the things that is worth noting here is that,
like when you talk about the pedophilia problem in the
Boy Scouts, it's on the same scale as the Catholic Church, Like,
at least in modern times, right, Catholic Church goes back
a lot, Like we're talking again at the present time,
at least a hundred thousand alleged victims just to have
come forward in a couple of years, Like we're this

(01:19:24):
is an enormous scale of problem. Like this is not
We're not talking about a kid hearing a kid here,
We're talking about cities full of children who were molested
by their Scout masters and other adult leaders. Fun cool,
it's a fun, fun time. So, Matt, this seems like
a good time to ask if you've got any pluggables
to plug. Oh sure, dude, Yeah, not totally. I do

(01:19:49):
UH to podcasts Pod Yourself a Gun a Sopranos podcast
which UH is about the Sopranos, and we go through
an episode by episode, me and Vince Fancini, And then
we also do UM a film podcast where we just
shoot the ship kind of talk about movies called the
film Drunk Frodcast, So check those out. We rarely talk
about pedophilia, but you know, it's still fun. It's still

(01:20:12):
fun time, So check those out and follow me on
Instagram at matt leap Jokes. Yeah, follow him on Instagram
at matt Leap Jokes. And follow your heart unless your
heart says to create an organization for boys and have
them swim naked in the field so that you can
watch them. Um, then don't follow your heart. Maybe listen
to a single fucking word your heart says. Move if

(01:20:35):
that's If that's what your heart says, move alone to
the woods. Yeah like friends like a bear and bear.
Fine to make friends with a bear in that case,
Yeah they can fight back. Yeah yeah, oh boy, Okay,

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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: Robert Baden-Powell: Founder Of The Boy Scouts