Part Two: Cecil Rhodes: The First Proud Boy

Robert is joined by again Propaganda to continue to discuss Cecil Rhodes.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards legally the only podcast. Um,
We've we've achieved our domination of global media, and it
is now a felony to operate any other podcast on
the Internet. So stuck on that, losers. Yeah, we imperialized podcasts.

(00:23):
Hold on, let me just at the period catch. I'm
about to throw you a diamond through the iPad M. Yeah,
that's a flesh. I also just date some potatoes. I apologize.
He also just ate some potatoes. He apologizes properly. How
are you still doing? How are you feeling after part one?

(00:45):
You know, Yeah, I feel the way I think everyone
every guest feels after slightly defeated, feeling like I knew
this but I didn't know it. And my day is
great because I enjoyed talking to y'all. But yeah, but

(01:06):
also like the feeling between part one and part two
of every episode of this podcast, you just know that
it's going to get worse. It's all you get worse. Yeah,
you're just like impending you guys got a two day break, Yes,
impending doom. But also I'm still thinking about him flashing
his diamonds at parties. Just the flex of that, Like

(01:30):
I can't get that image out of my head and
how I feel about it. It's so hard to process
how I feel about that because it's he sucks, but
it's so fucking cool. But like, yeah, got to respect
the hustle sometimes rest like goddamn, okay, yeah so uh.

(01:51):
In that last episode, I didn't go into overwhelming detail
about all of the Cape Colony politicking, but Cecil engaged in.
But he was not just building a business, going to
you know, getting to know people within the sort of
the Empire's political strata. A lot of his friends would
be very influential. Um. The parties that they would go
to when he was back, you know home in in
in England were often held at like a Nancy Astor's house.

(02:13):
Miss Astor, who was like this this fairy fancy. She
was a very big figure and sort of like the
Victorian era of British high society. Uh, and later became
a backer of the Nazis. If you've ever heard that
that story about like Winston Churchill, where like some lady
walks up to him and says, um is that yeah
you uh no, no, it's the um uh. If she

(02:35):
was like if if you were my husband, I would
do something or other and he says like, yeah, I'd
kill you. And if I were if you were my husband,
if you were my wife, I'd let you. Is more
or less how it goes. Yeah, So she's like one
of his confidants when she's younger. Like a lot of
people who go on to run the empire, um are
friends of Cecil's in in his younger life. So he's

(02:56):
politicking with that set of people. And by the way,
a decent chunk of them. Mind up backing the not season,
you know, the whole World War two period, um and uh,
but back in the Cape Colony, he's also he's getting
very directly involved in politics. He's not just meeting people,
he's he's getting he's into he gets he's getting elected
to parliament. He's like he's he's doing politics in the
Cape Colony and he becomes very very successful at it.

(03:19):
He's very good at being a politician. Um. So yeah,
that's that's happening during this whole period that we were
talking about last episode. UM. One of his very first
political forays happened in eighteen eighty three when he was
a member of the Cape Parliament. Boers from the Transvaal
had conquered some of the land of an African chief
named men kurwani Uh, and they proclaimed their conquest to

(03:41):
be a new republic Stella Land. Now they were not
the only white guys out there who were like creating
countries via machine gun. Another group of Boers conquered and
declared a republic nearby a few months earlier. So like
this was happening a number of times, and Cecil hated it,
not because it was wrong for them to steal the
land of African tribes, but because all these new republics

(04:01):
disturbed his dream of a South Africa united under the
English colors or under British colors, whatever um And the
founder Rotberg writes, I saw that this is his speech
to the Parliament. I solemnly wore in this house that
if it departs from the control of the interior, we
shall fall from the position of the paramount state in
South Africa, which is our right in every scheme of

(04:23):
federal union in the future, to that of a minor state.
What we now want, Rhodes urged his colleagues in a
memorable phrase, is to annex land, not natives. That's that's
a key phrase interesting. Yeah. Roads made it clear that

(04:44):
he was quote no negro phillist, like that is a word,
because people accused him because he wasn't like overtly physically
cruel to his workers. He was accused of being a
negro file. That was a term they used. That was
like a word that you like file. Yeah. And here
he's defending himself by saying, I'm not a negro philist,

(05:06):
and I hold the distinct view that we must extend
our civilization beyond our present borders. We don't need any
of them on the land that they currently own. We
just need the land. Um. And I don't want your wallets.
I don't, I don't, I don't want your I just
want to land bro dag. Now he urged the Parliament
to basically carry out a military action against the whites

(05:28):
of Stella Land, the bowers who would who would usurped
Mankawan Land? But he didn't want to give the land back,
and he wrote or he he said, the natives abound
gradually to come under the control of the Europeans. I
feel that it is the duty of this colony. Then,
as it were, her younger and more fiery sons go
out and take land to follow in their steps with
civilized government. That's the purpose of fiery young men is

(05:51):
to go out and take land. Yeah. I still you know,
that's part of like my history that's unclear is like,
you know, I knew those British colonies, that I knew
those Dutch colonies, but it ended up the Dutch end
up getting it. I just don't know how that happened.
Is Yeah, So the first first Bowler war happens, I
think not that long after he comes to Africa in

(06:12):
the first place, and it's pretty small. I think like
three people die. Um, but there is fighting and on
kind of between the British and between the Boers, um,
and they're both really shitty to the natives. I should like,
this isn't a good guy, bad guy. You're fighting over
a house that ain't yours. Yeah, I stole it fair
and square. Yeah. In this instance, like he failed, like

(06:34):
he urged the Cape Colony to basically like send out
a military force to attack these new republics, and he
did not succeed in that. Um. The government of the
Empire from one thing was like we don't really want
to get involved in this. We already have enough land.
Down there, like, and that's one of the things you see.
Cecil once more land than the people actually running the
British Empire wanted to have, because he's getting it too fast.

(06:55):
He's acquiring it too quickly, and they're like, we can't, like,
we can't digest all of this. It's actually kind of
a strain on our resources to try to govern it.
His his attempt to take both these republics by force fails.
But the treaty that comes as a result of this
between the Empire and the Transvaal gives Britain responsibility for
a vast chunk of land north of the Cape Colony uh,

(07:16):
a lot of what would become Zimbabwe um. And this
is obviously land that they get responsibility for in this
treaty that other people live in and are governing themselves
in at the time. So we're already a country, guys, don't, Yeah,
what's happening. Yeah. In eighteen nineties, Cecil was elected Prime
Minister of the Cape Colony. So at this point he's

(07:37):
like he is he is the power in in Southern Africa.
He controls the most powerful political entity in the region
um and he also is again personal owner of most
of the world's diamonds. So he's hit his zenith here.
After almost twenty years of methodically building power, Rhodes is
ready to launch his first major attempt to unine Southern Africa,

(07:59):
which is of course a precursor to taking all of
Africa for the British Empire. So in eighteen ninety he
forms the British South Africa Company, which is an umbrella
business that he uses to coordinate all of his enterprises.
He's one of the first guys to start setting up
shell companies. Um. Some of what he does is to
like make fake false competition over diamonds, to like drive

(08:19):
up the price of diamonds. It also is what he
does if you think back to our Wonga coup episode
or anything on on on Eric Prince. He uses this
company to buy a mercenary army. Um. Yeah, And I
want to read a quote from a book called The
Heartless Stone, which is about the diamond trade by Tom Sohlner.
Quote by Rhodes's own admission, the company aimed to do

(08:41):
more than mine diamonds. In fact, it aimed to annex
other African nations, conduct diplomacy with local chiefs, build railroads,
raise a standing army and even wage war. De Beers
was a law to itself and accountable to no one.
So again, the South British South Africa Company and De
Beers as essentially the same thing in this period because
they're run by the same guy. It's just it's a

(09:03):
shell company, you know, it's it's yeah, it's so crazy too,
like to just like you know why we talked in
the first episode about this, like like these people live
on another planet and in that planet, it's like controlling
all of the money and resources ain't enough. You still

(09:24):
got to become prime minister, you know what I'm saying
Like that, you like how you in college, then you
ain't gotta be in college? You know with pocket diamonds,
do you expect them from pocket diamonds? Guy? This is
this seems on par It's very saying like that is
the we know, like that is the on that is
the next step is you want to get in political power.

(09:46):
It's like why, like do you It's never enough. It's
never ever enough, never enough. Um, now here's the thing.
So he uh, this this period of time, like the
it's not popular or appropriate anymore for a corporation to
have an army in the traditional sense of the word,

(10:08):
because the British East India Company has kind of run
into some a lot of that ended very ugly in
Afghanistan and in chunks of India. Um So, but he
buys an army. He just calls them police. Um So,
he gets about a seven hundred man army with machine guns,
field artillery. It is an army, but he calls them police.
And he puts together a group of two hundred settlers

(10:30):
and he sends them into a place called Mashona Land,
which is roughly present day Zimbabwe, in order to search
for gold. And he sends his army in not to
invade Mashona Land, but to protect the settlers, because that's
what police do is they protect man. There is nothing
new man, nothing. I mean, it's kind of new then.

(10:53):
But yeah, I was just gonna protect you. Yeah, We're
just going to protect, to serve and protect you, not them.
So they picked Mashona Land because it was much more
weakly defended than its neighbor to the south, Mata Belly Land,
which was governed by a king named Loban Goula, who
they to whom the people in Mahona Land owed fealty.

(11:13):
So they were part of Loban Goula's kind of empire.
But this is not really a country in the traditional
sense of the term. It's systems of influence between different
groups of tribes that are mostly autonomous, but like the
Mashona will pay tribute to Loban Goula and he's yeah,
like anyway, it's it's it's yeah. Um. So Rhads in
Great Britain successfully negotiate a treaty with Loban Goula which

(11:35):
guaranteed them mineral rights to the territory. And this is
going on for a couple of years before he becomes
Prime Minister. Um. And the way that the treaty is
negotiated becomes a problem for Rhodes because it's only mineral
rights and his real ambition is to found a new country,
which he doesn't have the right to do, but he
plays along for the sake of legal nicety. And if
you've paid attention to any thing written accurately about colonialism,

(11:58):
you know what a treaty between white people and native Yeah, yeah,
their placeholders for guns. Yeah, except for I guess recently,
we did make good. The Supreme Court made us make
good on exactly one of the treaties we made with
the Native Americans here in the United States, which is
why like half of Oklahoma is now not under federal

(12:18):
law enforcement, juristiction or something. I don't fully understand the situation,
but it's something like that. Like there was a treaty
that they signed and they were like, look, we have
this in the Supreme Court had to be like, yeah,
we have to actually take this series, we have to
do this. Yeah. So good Oklahoma, So yeah, half of
it at least. So the colonists quickly established a capital

(12:41):
h Salisbury Um and they found our Salisbury whatever, and
they found the land to be fertile. But they gradually
realized that there was no gold there, which was a
problem again because they don't have rights to anything else,
only the minerals um. And it meant that because there
wasn't gold, his company is burning through Da Beer's capital
without anything to make up for the losses, and by
the first year they're out by seven hundred thousand pounds.

(13:03):
So they start taking austerity measures. He has to cut
most of the police force and shutters a lot of
the administrative functions, which he shouldn't have been doing. Anyway,
because this isn't allowed to be a country, but he's
treating it as one. You're unnecessary in the first place,
But everything that comes next is very complicated, which is
often the case when the Britain acquired chunks of Africa.
It's it's not often less often is it just naked

(13:25):
force invading, than it is a series of much more
limited military engagements and then extensive treaties, and then settlements
come in and then there's a fight, and then there's
a military engagement more and they just keep eating more
and more. And that's kind of what happens here. Um.
Naked force is always a part of it, but there's
also a lot of political maneuvering and negotiation to make

(13:46):
the rank theft of land seem legal because the British
are like a law loving people. They want to believe
that they're they're going about this properly. Um. The short
of it all is that King Loban Goula basically sold
all of the land, right. It's that he had to
a Boer named Lippert as part of a complex ploy
to try to play the Boers against the British, because

(14:07):
you can't think of any other way to fight them,
and this doesn't work out. It backfires because none of
the white people that loban Goula was negotiating with gave
a shit about abiding by their words. So Lipperts sold
the claim to Rhodes, who starts selling land occupied by
the Mashona to white settlers and then pocketing the profit
for de beers. The Indigenous People's Act obviously got nothing um.
So in eighteen ninety three, this leads to an invasion

(14:29):
of Mashona land by King loban Goula, and his justification
is that they'd stopped paying him tribute because the white
guys had taken taken over. So Rhodes uses this invasion
as a justification to just kind of take everything um.
And the battles that followed were all absolute nightmares. So
he sends an actual British regular Forces to help fight

(14:49):
alongside his police forces. And there you know, these are
armies of modern armies with machine guns and field artillery
uh going up against African armies with the best kind
of antique rifle um. And again it's just a nightmare.
All of these battles at the Battle of they're not
even really battles at the Battle of Ego Dodd, for example, UM,
six thousand African soldiers attacked a column of several hundred whites.

(15:12):
In ten minutes, eight hundred Africans were dead and three
Englishmen were killed. UM and even these profoundly racist colonial
soldiers were shocked by the bravery of African warriors charging
these machine gun lines in the way the British soldiers
would be doing a couple of decades later, during World
War One. UM, one of these soldiers later wrote, it
was a nasty ten minutes, especially as the Matta Bali

(15:35):
shooting with the rifles was much better than it had been,
and they came on with wonderful courage to within eight
yards of the wagons. Because all the fighting they're building
wagons circles and just shooting out. It made one realize
what what those terrible machine guns mean. It must have
required extraordinary courage to come up the hill against the fire.
And again, one of the things that's interesting here is
if you if you read about Western soldiers in this

(15:57):
they there's always there's kind of in satements like this,
you can read this dawning realization that like will be
running into those machine guns. One of these kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
you can't. Yeah, you can't work in that field and
not know someone's there's always a bigger gun. Yeah, which
I'm sure I know a lot of US soldiers who
have been in Afghanistan and Iraq know about drones. Yes, yes, yes, so.

(16:22):
The Times correspondent, who was embedded with the British forces,
also hailed the gallantry of the men he had just
seen die, quote as showing their tenacity. I may mention
that many were found three thousand yards away from the
spot where they had received their death wound. Um, but
you know, toughness, courage, it doesn't really matter when the
other side has yeah. Uh, you know they had the

(16:45):
maximum gun. You know, that's what happened. Whatever happens, we
have got the maxim gun and they have not. So
after several bloody defeats, Loban Goula eventually fled north with
most of his remaining soldiers. And I think he killed himself, um,
you know, poisoned himself. There's some debate about that from
what I can read. And of course, now that all
of this land has been conquered, white settlers flood into

(17:06):
the areas. Uh. They decide early that the original African
names of these places. We're not going to do um.
Starting in eighteen ninety one, the name Rhodesia grew increasingly popular,
and Cecil encouraged this, as there's evidence that had been
his plan for sometimes for years before the invasion, to
name both of these new illegally conquered nations after himself.
By eighteen nine five the term was in regular use,

(17:28):
and in eighteen nineties seven it became official. So there's
two rhodes Is. Actually there's Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia,
and both become the personal property of Cecil rhodes Um.
When asked about this, he told a friend, well, you know,
to have a bit of country named after one is
one of the things a man might be proud of. You.
You know what, Broke likes his pocket diamonds. Now he's

(17:52):
got pocket rhodes Now he's got And I think he
is the only person in history who has ever personally
owned two countries named after him. And you look, not
in his honor is not named after his in his
honor is mad and is he is? And he and
he named it. Lord, I can't oh m, that's just Lord,

(18:19):
give me the confidence and just success of mediocre white guys. Yep,
if I could just be as wow that man anyway,
naked confidence, naked confidence and reckless ambition. Yeah, good stuff.
Who says you can't? Yeah, you like, what do you

(18:42):
tell that guy? What do you talk about me? You can't? Bro?
Like what if? What if you were in seventh says
you can't? Exactly where you can't? Yeah? What are you
in seventh grade with him? And you're just like and
he like beat you in like freaking kickball, and you're like,
I just I just don't. I just want this guy
to lose. And then you run into him at like
a pub in London. He's got two countries. Yeah, He's

(19:06):
like yeah ah, and you're such a piece of ship.
Yeah yeah yeah, and he as racists like to point out,
because again, this guy is beloved by racists. He did.
Rhodes did a lot of lovely things to to connect
and modernize Africa. He had telegraph cables laid from Cape
Town to Cairo. He had train tracks laid across the continent.

(19:28):
There's the most famous illustration of him is a political
cartoon that you've almost certainly seen, where he's he's standing
as like a giant caricature of him is standing in
the center of the continent of Africa with like telegraph
cables across him, and it's called the New Colossus of Rhodes.
Um and yeah, that's like that, that's his reputation in

(19:49):
this period of time. Um. Yeah. And and he's doing this,
he's putting all this together to connect to the continent
because connecting it will prepare it for British control and
prepare it to have a unified culture under the Anglo
Saxon race, which is what he wants for Africa and
everywhere that's not Africa. Um. So he conquers other people,
including them out of l a people. Um and he yeah,

(20:12):
it's it's uh, it's it's horrible. He could. He's doing
a lot of conquering and he's he's in the field
for a significant amount of this. He's not like fighting,
but he's following his armies along. He's in attent. He
loves doing this. He loves being on the ground and
being sort of feeling the dust and his lungs and
being a part of it. Um. Yeah, yeah, it's it's

(20:34):
it's the same as like those people who like sat
up on a hill to watch the battles in the
Civil War, you know, except for he wants to be
directing that ship and he doesn't want there to be
a chance that the people fighting back will win. It's
a movie. Yeah. So while all this is going on,
the Mighty de Beer's company was still chugging right along.
Cecil had gained almost complete control over the Diamonds planets

(20:56):
diamond supply so quickly and improved production so much that
he ran into a problem. There were too many diamonds.
It turned out that the little bastards are actually pretty common.
In order to avoid a collapse in the value of
the mineral that was funding his illegal wars of expansion,
Cecil hatched a scheme. So he starts laying off thousands
and thousands of his workers, and he creates a bunch
of policies that inflated the price of diamonds that restricted

(21:17):
the supply artificially. He's one of the first guys. He
creates artificial scarcity. I shouldn't say he's one of the
first guys, because we talked about in our Birth of
Capitalism episode, the first corporation that ever existed traveled to
the Spice islands, committed genocide and then killed all of
the nutmeg on every island but the one that they
had their farms on in order to that's the scar

(21:41):
This this is the Dutch the Dutch East Um India Company,
I think it was. This is before even that. Yeah,
maybe you listen to the episode, I get it right there. Um.
But yeah, So he creates artificial scarcity for the diamond
for diamonds because he realizes that's the only way to
make diamonds profitable. And this doubles the price of diamonds

(22:02):
in a single year. Um. So he channels, he restricts
the supply. He channels the diamonds into a bunch of
different diamond dealers in London who are willing to make
a cartel with him. He basically he creates a cartel
with the people make digging the diamonds and like the
people selling them and crafting them in order to keep
prices high. Um. And the diamond industry continues to work

(22:24):
this day into like the fucking like like honestly in
some ways to the present day. But it doesn't really
start to get broken up until the middle of last century. Um. Yeah,
So in eighteen nine four Rhodes was elected Prime Minister
a second time. He was forty one years old, the
owner of two private nations, one of the wealthiest men

(22:47):
in history, the sole proprietor of the diamond trade, and
the elected leader of the most powerful colony in South Africa,
almost as big as Europe. Yeah. So he's the Prime
Minister of South Africa quote unquote or the the Cape Colony. Yeah,
the Cape call he's the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony,
like duly elected according to whatever made up laws they have.

(23:12):
At the same time, the owner of other countries. Yeah,
none of the companies of the countries. So you prime
minister one and owned two other. God bastard he is.
And I see how he's like the Ata Turk of Bastard, Like, yeah,
he's here, there's no there's I don't know. We've reached

(23:35):
we've reached pinnacle Bastard. Yeah, peakee Bastard here. It doesn't
it doesn't get it doesn't get much worse than this.
I'm like, I gross under as underestimated this guy. He's
fucking Hitler level, you know, if you're talking about like
the most influential pieces of ship in history. He's there's

(23:56):
not there's a number of folks at his level. There's
not a lot of people i'd put above him, clearly,
I don't know if you could put yeah not it's yeah,
yeah yeah, a lot of time for the top of
that list. Yeah yeah yeah. Anyway, you know what isn't
the sole proprietor of two countries illegally conquered by a

(24:19):
mercenary police force, the products of services, none of them,
none of them until I conquer my own country in
present day Idaho, Um and use it as a basis
from which to declare war on the f d A. M.
That's the plan. I wouldn't mind you redeeming Idaho. Yeah,

(24:41):
pretty beautiful. Do it together. We can harness the power
of Idaho to wipe out the fd I think actually
I would have a lot of support in Idaho for
taking on the f d A, mostly from people who
want to sell brain pills. But anyway, um, we could
probably ally with Utah. Anyway, here's the ads. We're back,

(25:05):
we're back, and we're talking about cecil. So he gets
elected Prime Minister for the second time, and now that
he's at the height of his power, he's really got
everything under control. He's just gotten his second election. He
turns to the thing the party episode where you're like,
here it is, you're at the top of the roller coaster,
and he's about to just like the part we're at,

(25:27):
the part where he invinced apartheid. Um yea. So he
decides that the focus of his second term as Prime
Minister is going to be dealing with what he called
the native question. Now, motherfucker. If you know fascists, you
know that when people have a question about a race

(25:50):
that they keep referring to as the blank question, it
doesn't end well. Ever, the Trajet jury is predictable. Yeah, okay, yeah.
Uh So from the founder quote that biography of Rhodes,
Rhodes employed this skillfully obtained unprecedented and largely unquestioned matter

(26:14):
of measure of decisive political power to continue rearranging relations
between blacks and whites. He had introduced radical notions in
this domain during the legislative years from eighteen ninety to
eighteen ninety two, from eighteen ninety three, and dramatically after
his electoral triumph in eighteen ninety four, must much of
Rhodes's considerable political energy was directed at to rewriting the

(26:34):
Cape Statute books in wage ways which might have appeared
limited and parochial at the time, but which were profoundly
to alter the contours and reach of discrimination throughout South
and even Southern Africa. He viewed burgeoning African numbers as
a clear danger to white superiority and to the emerging
coalition of Dutch and English speaking colonialists. Together, Rhodes and

(26:56):
his allies acted to undercut the established tradition of Cape
liberal him That's what I was talking about earlier. The
liberal is the idea that all men are equal, and
we have to even if we all don't really believe it,
we have to hold to that because it's important. Um,
Even the most antagonistic of the Cape's legislators and the
most die hard leaders of the Bond, which is one
of the political sort of factions there, had hitherto been
hesitant to erode the principle that all persons, irrespective of color,

(27:19):
were equal before the law, one of Britain's priceless nineteenth
century gifts to the Cape and thus to South Africa.
During rhodes premiership, however, other more expedient objectives of achieved precedence,
Yeah Man when I think about like this, it's like
it's hard to not picture Jim Crow and be like, oh,

(27:41):
this is if you carry Jim Crow out to its
logical conclusions and then leave it until the nineties. Yeah,
that's yeah. Yeah, gosh yeah dude. Yeah, and and that
and and it's like you go when yeah, the question,

(28:01):
the native question, it's like, uh, of course this is
what you're gonna come up with. Of course it is. Yeah, yeah,
keep reading Roberts so um yeah he his main objective
here is white supremacy. Um and and again, white supremacy
in a very modern way. And the best thing that

(28:23):
illustrates his drive to white supremacy and everything that, like
how his thought process worked and the way in which
he took action to to further that goal. The best
thing that illustrates that is Rhodes's plan to push through
the passage of what was called the Glenn Gray Act. Now,
Glenn Gray was a district in the Cape Colony that
had essentially been a reservation for for one group of

(28:44):
of African natives. Quote. Like most reservations, Glenn Gray was
overcrowded and overgrazed. Many of its male inhabitants had already
begun to seek work from whites in the colony. Others, meanwhile,
had crowded into Glenn Gray from more distant or less
settled frontier areas. Whites, especially Dutch seeking farmers, coveted its
fertile valleys. In a microcosm, Glen Gray presented most of

(29:07):
the problems found in the recently if only partially assimilated
frontier districts. There was a clear need to remove sources
of friction among Africans and between Africans and whites. Land
was at the root of most disputes, but to grant
individual tenure meant at least the possibility of a flood
of newly entitled black voters, conceivably less pressure on Africans

(29:29):
to seek work, and a host of ancillary questions with
local and cape wide budgetary limitations. There also was the
danger that whites would purchase the newly salable black owned
farms and thus thrust vast numbers of landless black families
onto the colony. So Rhodes was really worried that white
families also would buy up land owned by Africans and
moved there in the middle of land dominated by Africans,

(29:52):
and then you would have communities of white and black
people cohabitating. Rhads also thought was unacceptable because if people
are living in the same communities, they're going to funk eventually.
That's just the ways are like, that's just what's gonna happen, Like,
it's just is the thing that happens with people. Um.
So he had to find a solution to this problem

(30:14):
that achieved a few goals. Number one, it had to
steal back most of the land that African tribes held
in common because at this point before the Glenn Gray Act,
that we're talking about communally owned land that's like this,
this tribe owns this parcel of land. Um. So you
have to stop that because communally owned land is not
good for the kind of world that Cecil Roads wants
to build. Um. So you have to get most of

(30:37):
that land back on the market somehow. You also can't
make it look like naked theft. And so that means
you're going to be parceling at least a lot of
this land up and giving it to individual Black Africans.
But that's a problem because the way the laws and
the Caper crafted, if you own property, you get to vote.
So communally owned property doesn't haunt for that. But if

(30:59):
you're going to be giving a bunch of Africans property,
suddenly that's a bunch of new voters. And Cecil Rhodes
does not want that ship happening. Okay, y'all voting now
because yea, yeah, yeah, So dude, parallel in even in
that that like pickle of like yeah, after reconstruction and
like you know, uh and all of a sudden America

(31:21):
started electing a ton of black people, it was like, okay,
wait a minute, we can't well, yeah to today. A
story just dropped today from the Cambridge Analytical Leaks that
one of the things they were used for by the
Trump administration was to put together a list of between
three and five million black Americans that they wanted to

(31:41):
and considered it critical to discourage from voting. Oh my god,
because again every couple of generations, you're able to be
less naked about the racism. But the goal was the same,
stop them from having a say in their own interests.
Nailed it, yep. So uh yeah. Since Glenn Gray was

(32:03):
representative of so many frontier parts of the colony, it
was evident to Cecil that this new law would lay
the basis for native and white relations across Africa for
the future. This meant, obviously that the new law would
have to be constructed in a way that reinforced white
supremacy and enshrined it into South African law forever, no
matter what Great Britain's enlightened liberal values said. Cecil told

(32:24):
Parliament the legislature must adopt a system of despotism and
its relations with the barbarians of South Africa. The legislature
has got to treat the natives where they are in
a state of barbarism in a different way to ourselves.
We ought to be the lord's over them today desperately.
If you're saying we have to be despots, you are

(32:46):
the bad guys. Yes, yes, like like like just have
just just the just the smidge of self awareness and
like just yeah, that's all I'm asking, Just just just
have a little, just a little self awareness. It's not good,
by and large to be a despot. That's why we
came up with a nasty name for it, like a despot.

(33:08):
I wish that I wish the listeners could hear me,
see me flail in my arms in agreement. Doc the
pretzel Pepe we bend ourselves in to protect power. There's
been a lot of head head nodding, head shaking, arms
flat and yeah, it shall continue. Yes, speaking of things

(33:31):
that shall continue this episode, So uh Rhodes told Parliament
that because of the debate over the Glenn Gray Act,
the colony was in a state of racial emergency with
ballooning numbers. Yeah. Well, because increasing numbers of Black Africans
were either filling land white people wanted even worse, moving

(33:52):
to cities that white people lived in. And if you
have this population of people, this big underclass, you don't
have enough money, I'll live in cities. Some of them
might agitate for better living conditions and that could lead
to a revolution. He was also terrified that if you
gave Africans enough land, you know, enough of the land
that they already owned, Um, they might not get jobs

(34:15):
because they'd be able to take care of themselves. And again,
they are trying to induct Africa into the global capitalist
system at this point. So he's terrified that if they're
able to to see to their own needs in their
own land, what need do they have to get involved
in this system in which they will fundamentally have to
be under us, dude, when like just it's it's not

(34:39):
such a mind bender because I'm like, Okay, we was
taking care of ourselves before you got here. Yeah, we
did it for a long time. We did it for
a long time, a matter of fact, longer than any
other humans because this is Africa, so we was here
the whole time, and now you're worried about us being
able to take care of ours. And it's funny because

(35:02):
again I did read some defenses, modern defenses by modern
conservatives of Cecil Roads, and one thing I pointed as
that like he talked about, you know, he didn't he
wasn't racist. He just believed that, you know, British civilization
was superior, and it was. And it'll list you know
all in all of these tribes that he's conquering and
finding a lot of them do do the things like
female genital mutilation, things that are very horrible. Um, because

(35:22):
all groups of organized human beings do bad things. It's
just the thing that people do, period. And it's like, yes,
it's true, all of those tribes had problems and things
that like we're we're bad that they did. And the
British Empire starved thirty million people to death in order
to make a profit. So let's not fucking get up
on our high horses about the superiority of Anglo brit
like civili fucking exation, like come on yourself. Yeah, basically

(35:45):
you're right, Just you can't say it, yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
When did they start? And when did they start? Important
the Indians to like work? Because I know that that.
I think that's a later period. It does not come
up in my research, and this maybe that's happening in
this period. I'm sorry if I'm I don't want to
make a statement on that one way or the other
because it's not my area of expertise. Um, none of

(36:08):
this really is. But I at least read up on
this ship. Um. So Cecil claims to Parliament that without quote,
without the dignity of labor, Africans would live in sloth
and laziness. It was thus the government's job to give
them some gentle stimulants to go forth and find out
something of the dignity of labors. And he's saying this

(36:30):
about the people that have built his entire fortune with
their blood, sweat and teeth. Yes, that's like the men
who dug my diamonds. Need to understand the dignity of labor. Yes,
piece you piece of shit, like just the largest hole
in the world that we dug for. You tell me

(36:52):
I need to note a dignity of hard labor. Well.
And also it's really interesting to me he doesn't consider
farming to be labor because it doesn't necessarily feed into capitalism,
because you can farm and just live comfortably and share
contint with your neighbors and not need to be a
part of this this global system of money. Uh, because

(37:14):
you have food and shelter, and that's really all you need.
As long as you are able to make a musical
instrument and you've got gourds of ship you can make drums.
Like you've got music. You're fine. Food, shelter, fucket, Like
what else do you need? Nothing? It turns out apparently
apparently his greatest gift was stress, because that's where we needed, apparently,

(37:35):
just to worry about collecting more things we don't need.
Thank you, thank you. So, after months of politicking and debate,
Rhodes finally had a plan for this, the Glen Gray
Act that he presents to Parliament. The basics of it
were this communal lands these reservations would be broken up
in pieces of them given to black families as individual lots. Now,
this had been proposed before by people other than Cecil,

(37:56):
and the legislators who had proposed it before wanted to
give out one the individual plots to be about a
hundred and ten acres, which they thought would be fair,
which is not a tiny chunk of lands. Big Rhodes
cut the allotments down to eight acres because he wanted
it to be impossible for these tiny farms to actually
make a profit. He didn't want them to be able
to compete with white people's farms, which were much larger

(38:16):
and industrial. He also banned partable inheritance, forcing the whole
parcel to be passed on intact. This ensured that only
the firstborn son of any family would get any land,
and other children in the family would have to leave
the family land to go get jobs. When it was
pointed out to him that white people were able to
pass down their property however the funk they wanted, he

(38:37):
replied that giving Africans equal rights quote, was not a
tenable position, which is not if you want the things
he wants, you can't be giving black people equal rights. Yeah,
he's not wrong. You know, he's so good at this.
He's very good at this, maybe the best anyone's ever been.
He's exceptional at this. He's exceptional at this thing. It

(39:00):
is one of those things we do talk about a
lot of mediocre white men who failed upwards. He's not media,
he's he's not he's very intell. He is actually he
knows what he's doing and he's good at it. And
that is of heartbreaking consequence to the entire history of
the human race from this point on. Um So, in
order to ensure that absolutely every single black person in

(39:20):
the colony had to get a job, Rhodes instituted a
labor tax of ten shillings per head for every African,
which means you have to We've conquered your country and
now you have to pay every year to like checks
every bastardly box. It's amazing. I'm no longer I think

(39:40):
he sucks. One of the laws he passes, maybe the
most influential, but one of them he does a bunch
of this ship. So the tax meant that no longer
could Africans just stay unemployed and lived through hunting and farming,
like the way that people had survived for forever. They
couldn't do that anymore. They had to get hard currency somehow. Um,

(40:02):
and the landowners that were created by this were included
in this, so they couldn't just grow their own food
because he didn't think that it was really labor. He
wanted everyone do have to engage with capitalism in some
way and work. And it's so frustrating, so frustrating because
he's so remarkably in charge that like, yeah, there's you
have no recourse because he's like he's freakishly in charge.

(40:25):
One of the things I think Rotberg's a very good biographer.
One of my issues with him as he will repeatedly
talk about sort of cessil's ability to convince people of things,
as he had this kind of remarkable ability to to
convince other men of his vision. And he he talks
about all of the racist things Cecil does, but he
doesn't lay out in a way that I find as
direct as maybe at Auto be and again he wrote
it in Night, but um, he doesn't lay out very

(40:46):
directly the vision was white supremacy. That's why they all
got on board. Yes, I am speaking to the lowest
part of you that wants to believe you're better than
everybody else. Yeah, it's gonna work. So yeah, again and again,
back to sort of his this tax that he institutes
to even force the landowners to work, because he doesn't
consider growing food to be labor. I'm gonna quote from

(41:07):
Rothberg here. Rhodes thought that he he being these small farmers,
would spend only three or four weeks sewing maize and
would truly not be working hard enough. It would be
wise if such a man also went out and worked
for a certain period. Now, one of his political opponents
at the time, another guy in parliament, commented to this sarcastically.
No toil, however, strenuous upon a native's own land was

(41:28):
dignified enough to satisfy the tax collector. So again, there
are white guys in politics who recognize how messed up
this is and do speak out. You know, he's he's
acknowledging that, like, it doesn't matter how hard they work
if it's for themselves. Cecil wants them working for white people.
It's not that they're not working, it's that they're not
working for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna continue

(41:51):
to quote. Stimulated by the labor tax rhads. The social
Darwinis suggested Africans would change for the better. Every black
man could not have three acres and a cow in
the future, he said, Africans would have to change as
a black man could not have three Africans would have
to change as the English had changed. It must be
brought home to them that in the future nine tenths
of them must would have to spend their lives in

(42:13):
manual labor. And the sooner that was brought home to them,
the better spend their lives. Yes, so now see some
of the supremacy stuff is like you you you start
being able to follow their train of logic. He is
well aware that Britannica was at one point a bunch

(42:34):
of feuding tribes that were just hunter gatherers with serfdom
and feudalism, and we have become this. So then when
you look at Africa, you go, oh, yeah, we used
to be like that in the tenth century. We're better
than you, you know, and just so like at least

(42:54):
it's like you following his logic at least, and I
mean that's the same, that's the proud boy logic of like, no,
we used to be like this we're better. No, yeah, no,
you're not. No, And a lot of you were miserable
because like the early industrial Age Victorian England, the cities
are fucking nightmares with factories where children's hands get mangled
and cool mines that killed people by the thousands. It's horrible.

(43:17):
The fucking the air was unbreathable. It would they had
poisoned their own country and had left because they wanted
to poison other people's cousin. Yes, like what was what
was the thing? The great London stink? Was that? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
the stinch blossom or whatever that like made the city
almost unlivable and killed huge numbers of people because it

(43:37):
was a nightmare. There m The fact that they were
able to push their surplus population out to the colonies
and also move a lot of their manufacturing in resource
attraction out to the colonies is why England's pretty nice nowadays.
Yeah yeah. So Additionally, Africans would find that they were

(44:00):
better off when they went to work. Rhoads promised to
spend the funds from the labor tax on industrial schools.
Think back to the residential school episodes that we did
on Canada, because it's the same thing and that the
US had where they put indigenous people, and that Australia
had where they put indigenous people. It is the same
thing where Africans could be caught taught trades and vocations,
not taught history, not taught you know, to, not taught

(44:23):
to seek their dreams out, taught how to be functional
cogs and capitalism. Rhodes thought, quote, South Africa had too
many schools which specialized in turning out a peculiar class
of human beings. The and he uses the K word again, person.
Now the K word person was a most excellent type
of individual, said Rhods. But he belonged to a class

(44:43):
that was overdone. They became agitators and accused the government
of oppressing the common people. They constituted a dangerous class.
Remember that from the police episodes when we were talking
about over here. It's the same mother fucking thing everywhere
it happens thing. Yeah, yo, I as I said, I know,
I know people who went to the American Native schools

(45:08):
and we're yeah, and told horror stories that and it's yeah,
it's just samey kill the Indian to save the man
was the term they used. Totally. Yeah, and that's what
Rhodes would say, and he's not racist, because he's no.
I have nothing against black people. I just want to
kill everything about them culturally that is different from the
way I want them to live. Yeah. So, rhodes Is

(45:29):
new law also banned the sale of Indigenous land to
white people. And this was not for any high minded reason.
It was because the Natives should be in Native reservations
and not mixed up with whites. Yeah, keep them away.
This is the start of apartheid. This is the birth
of sere segregation, legal segregation. Yeah. You have a place
to be and it's not near us. Yeah. Yeah, as

(45:52):
cool as long as they over there. Yeah. So again.
So the and finally, after all that, the Glen Gray
Act in in sured that all of these new landowning
black people would not get the right to vote, as
enshrined by the law. As he told Parliament, it was
really ridiculous to suppose that these poor children could be

(46:12):
taken out of this absolute barbarism and come to a
practical conclusion on politics. So the Act very simply banned
any Native enfranchised by the Glen Gray Bill from voting
in Cape elections. Roads justified this again by saying that
because the government protected their land, they had no real
light right to vote on it. Black people could not

(46:33):
be citizens as they were children. Several roads. Again the
the he wove a store. This is yeah, this is
why I'm saying. He took when a place that had
been caught like that was African land, conquered and dominated
by white people, and he made it worse and more racist.
This is where apartheid comes from. This is the legal

(46:55):
underpinning that all apartheid descends from. Is the ships Cecil
Rhodes was making. Happened in this period and it lasts
up until what like the late eighties, the early nine Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's still like the impacts are still. It's still if
you yeah, every year, like I said, like I performed
there at least once a year. I got a homeboy
on the radio and Cape down my homeboy DJ Easy

(47:17):
and he's he's what they called colored under the system. Right.
So we're driving through Cape Town one of the like
this is the most beautiful like overlooking cliffs beach, like
it's a paradise, and he goes, Yo, my dad used
to work at this beach, but at sundown he had
to leave because colors weren't allowed on this beach, and

(47:39):
I'm like, yo, you still, I'm like, that's your father, bro,
Like that's this this, that's now. You know what I'm saying.
He talked about like people, you know, the police will
come in and stick a pencil in his hair to
make sure because if the pencil falls, then that means
he's black and not color and just all kinds of
just like this is he's on he's a DJ, he's

(48:01):
on the radio. Now, this is now. Yeah, that's why
Trevor no Is biography is title like born a crime,
right because he was he was his his one of
his parents was white and one was black, and yeah
that was colored and that's yeah, that's illegal and it's illegal.
Like Cecil Rhodes is the guy who it's not quite
banned in this period, but he's the guy who starts
that process starts. Why he part of his goal in

(48:24):
this act was to make sure these people can't breed,
because if they breed, then they stop hating each other. Right,
people are falling in love, they don't want lesser rights
for the people they're in loved with. And that's going
to be a fucking problem for me. Cecil, Rhodes, So
you have to stop them from knowing each other. Speaking
of knowing each other, get to know the fine products
and services that support this podcast. All right, uh we're back,

(48:55):
Oh my back, so good product. So the this the
one of the this is the greatest, like white supremacist Vanesse. Yeah,
it's amazing, incredible. The Glen Gray Act did create something
broadly analogous to local councils for these native reservations, so
that they could have an element of self government, but

(49:16):
even letting black people vote for their own local leaders
was too much for cecil. Instead, white people appointed all
of the council members, and the reservations were governed by
a white magistrate. He was supposed to teach them how
to take care of themselves. Yeah, yo, yeah, that's that,
that's the answer their children, you see. Yeah, which is

(49:37):
so such a god damn it and it's unique version
of white supremacy exactly. And Rhodes is, again, other people
are having this idea. You can even probably find some
people earlier who were talking about it. Rhodes is kind
of the first who explains it to other white people
in a way that gets them on board. And then
follows through in a really comprehensive fashion. And again, aspects

(49:57):
of this are are happening in the United States at
the time, aspects of this are happening in other parts
of the world. So he's not alone, but he's part
of the first wave of modern white supremacists, and in
some ways is probably the one who did the best
job of defining and explaining it. So uh Rothberg writes,
quote the Glenn Gray Bill was a forerunner of the
segregationist legislation of the twentieth century and of the combination

(50:21):
of laws which together constitute apartheid. But it was not
so much the content of the bill as it was
rhodes rhetoric and rationalizations which which prefigured the future what
modern readers appreciate as fatuous and solipsistic arguments mere fig
leaves for white supremacy and denials of African rights, where
those that Rhodes and all subsequent rulers in South Africa
have used to justify their departures from the natural law

(50:41):
and political culture of the Western world. It is a
testimony to Rhodes's force of character and quality of persuasion
that he, alone of likely Cape leaders, was able to
Arrange shut such shifts away from previous norms with ease.
It delineates his character too, that he did so with equanimity,
without shame, and with self righteous termination. Got dog when

(51:03):
you when you swear you're right? M m yeah, And
I can't I can't believe how long it lasts? Yeah,
damn ye yeah. And I'm like whatever, like did you
own two other countries? Man? Like, why you gotta do

(51:23):
you own? Man? Like, why you gotta do this way out? They? Yeah, yeah,
And it's it's because it's not enough. It's because the
world is what he wants. Oh, I forgot because the
because this is like manifest destiny only the glow. M
And again, he's the kind of white person who like
is angry because Americans are independent and they filled. But

(51:44):
like he talks a lot about the how the inferior
Italian and Irish races and stuff are dominating in Germans
are dominating in America and that's why it should have
stayed under Anglo control. So he's like he's the kind
of racist who is sees shades of other white people
and like his judgmental it's like, oh, Italians, it's like
if you if you look at if you look at
Nazi propaganda, the degree in which I do. One of

(52:06):
the joking things that they will do is talk about
how the Axis was less racist than the Allies because
Hitler had a black friend. And when they refer to that, right, yeah,
they're talking about Ussolini because Italians aren't white to them. Yes,
I felt so like like knowing that, like once, I yeah,
once I learned that, Like I had to take back
some of my own jokes that I used to feel, like, Yeah,

(52:28):
Italians were the black white people do y? I mean
they're they're like they're they're definitely like close. I mean
it's basically they're almost in the Middle East, right, Like
it's right across that fucking sea. Yes, yeah, that's what
racists are seeing. But that's what roast. So I'm like, dang,
I can't agree with racist, no, no, no, no, because
I'm saying it endearing, like oh man, I like you

(52:50):
got big families, you're a loud ye gangsters. Yeah yeah,
it's great. Yeah. The things we should we should lovingly
make fun of Italians for is all of the hand
and gestures that we do and and and pizza pies. Uh,
that's fine. Don't, don't, don't do the race pizza pies. Yeah,
the pizza pies. No, I will though, but not here.

(53:13):
I think it's funny. Yeah, that's fine. So Cecil Rhods
invented apartheid and the only good news is that he
didn't get a lot more time in the sun after this.
After a very long streaming of successes, Roads got cocky
and he decided to deal with a problem that had
vexed him for years. The existence of the trans Vault,
which is this Boer state, becomes like, yeah, it's it's

(53:36):
a big chunk of like what becomes the culture of
South Africa. These are like the African ors African and
yeah and and and the Transvaal is an independent white
nation in South Africa. And this, the fact that it existed,
fucked up his dream of unifying the whole region under
British control. So, true Cecil Roads fashion, he hatched a
plan to steal the transvall. The basic idea was to

(53:57):
disguise it as an insurrection. Joe Hennisberg had a sizeable
population of British laborers and they were not content with
the Boer government. Through his agent Leander Jamieson, Rhodes convinced
these folks that if they recruited an army, he would
send in his own army and together they could crush
the Boars. And armies the wrong word for Rhodes force here.
He had six hundred policemen armed with field artillery and

(54:21):
machine guns and stuff. Yeah, all paid for by de beers.
So yeah. The invasion, the Jamison Raid, as it's called,
was a ship show from the jump. The British Excats
couldn't agree on what they wanted politically after the insurrection,
and because they had such a disagreement about this, they
asked Jamison to pause the raid because they weren't ready,
and he said, fuck you, I'm going to invade anyway.

(54:41):
And his hope was that this would spur them to act,
but instead it just meant that nobody, none of his
allies were ready when he invaded a sovereign nation um
and then his troops were trying to cut the telegraph
wires to the capitals that no one would know they
were coming, but they cut a fence instead of the
telegraph wires, which let the Boers organize a defense. Jamison's
police were ambushed and a lot of them were shot

(55:01):
to death until they surrendered. Now the whole Jamison Reid
was an unaccountable political disaster. It blackened Cecil's name for
the rest of his life. It forced him out as
Prime Minister. It sparked the end of his political career.
He did try to come back a few times. He
had friends right defenses of him and stuff a couple
of years later, but it didn't work. Old time he canceled. Yeah,

(55:22):
he did get canceled for invading a white nation. Yeah. Yeah,
like for doing what he'd been doing. Yeah, let me
teach you a little thing about white people. White people
don't stand for being challenged, even by other white people.
Let me tell you something, brother, you should have slowed
down Icarus. I'm saying it is one of those things.

(55:44):
You can see. It's just covering the Portland's kind of uprising,
whatever you wanna call it, as I have and watching
my friends cover it. You do tend to see a
big difference when like a black activists gets knocked down
as opposed to win a white person who's not an
activist gets knocked down. You see a different You see
just a clear difference in like the number of views

(56:06):
that that video gets um, and yeah, it's just like
nobody's it's not even a conscious thing. It's just a thing.
It's crazy to me too, Like it just this when
you like, I the one thing I tell any artists
or anybody like trying to start a business or anything,
like the value of taking an l like the value

(56:29):
of a loss. Like if you never lose, if everything
you step into you just all you do is win,
then you it will end. Ever that l is coming.
It's coming, boy. And if you keep stacking and and
and just and just and just doubling down, because you'll
never lose, you don't never lose, You'll never When that

(56:50):
l comes, it is going to be gi enormous. So
I'm like, look, look, man, just be be be aware,
be aware, be always causes is somebody that don't ever
lose because it's coming. Yeah, yeah, stay away from those people.
So the whole Jamison right again, just a horrible political
disaster black and Cecil's name and his political career. It

(57:12):
also played a key role in sparking the Second Boer War,
which is the Boer War that everybody hears about. This
led to the first modern use of concentration camps by
the British Empire against the Boer people and against Black
Africans who lived in Bower Territory. Uh thirty thousand soldiers died,
twenty six thousand Bower civilians were starved to death, and
twenty thousand African natives were starved to death in British

(57:32):
concentration camps, thanks in part to Cecil. So that war
ended in nineteen o two, and so did Cecil Roads.
He was only forty nine years old, but he packed
centuries of being a piece of ship into his life,
and he was ready to go fiship faster. He was
forty nine, forty nine, and he always knew he was

(57:53):
going to die young. He has his first time attack
in like eighteen seventy two. Like yeah, so he's throwing
everything he can into being garbage. Um now. At the
time he died, he was a rather marginalized figure within
the British Empire. The Times wrote in his obituary, he
has done more than any single contemporary to place before
our imagination, before the imagination of his countrymen, a clear

(58:14):
conception of the imperial destinies of our race. But we
wish we could forget the other matters associated with that
is the British answer. I know, he did a lot
of wax stuff. I mean, but he was really good,
but let's not talk about all the bad stuff. Kind
of weird, it kind of kind of weird for a
little bit, but he was great and he died, thank god,

(58:34):
so he doesn't get to funk up anymore. Yeah, man, Yeah,
So the good news for Rhodes is that a number
of people have forgotten all the other matters associated with
his name today, and he's increasingly being praised as a
hero on the right wing. Uh. He was the absolute
archetype of a white supremacist imperialist. He stated at one
point late in his life that I would annex the

(58:56):
planets if I could, And if you read all like
the full quote, he seems really sad that he can't
annex the planets, like space imperialism. Yeah, we're almost there now. Yeah,
we're working on it. We're working on annex and Mars
right now. Yeah. Yeah, and we'll find a way there.
There's not native people on Mars, but we'll find a

(59:18):
way to fun to funk them up. We'll make will
make an indigenous Martian population and then screw them over.
We will we will fight wars over some net come
out the ground in Mars, and we will. Yes, We're
totally going to do it. We're going to draw an
imaginary line on a planet and be like, this side's ours.
Let's be angry about it forever. Let's be angry forever.

(59:41):
God is so freaking species man. I had to read.
I couldn't end this without talking about some defenses of
Cecil Roads. So I found one published back in two
thousand sixteen, not coincidentally by Standpoint magazine. Now, a sizeable
chunk of their defense is related to probably the most
prominently uh the quote most regularly attributed to Cecil Rhodes,

(01:00:04):
I prefer land to inwards. Now, Cecil did not say
this exact quote. It's actually kind of people merging two
things he said, including like you remember that quote I
said earlier that he wants to annex land, not natives.
He said this, He just didn't say it exactly that way,
and he said the in word a lot constantly. He
just didn't say it exactly that way. So it's not

(01:00:25):
much of a defense that he said something slightly different
but meant the same thing in my fucking book. Now, yeah, again,
in the right book Yeah, the defenses get funnier and
funnier from there on that and I'm gonna read one
besides Rhads, besides Rhodes is early arguably racist reference, yes,

(01:00:47):
arguably racist, That the Anglo Saxon race is superior to
all other races and should rule them arguably racist. You
could argue that, maybe you might debate that, but but
they say this has to be weighed against all the
other things he said and did. From first to last.
He had a record of good relations with individual Africans.

(01:01:07):
His primary biographer, Robert Rothberg, who was generally critical of
the subject, writes that as a young man, he had
related directly and well to unlettered Zulu. Throughout his life
he remained sympathetic and responsive to the needs of individual
persons of color. Not your stereotypical racist then, to which
I say, yes, your stereotypical motherfucking racist. And this is
gonna bring me. Yeah, you have black friends. I can't

(01:01:30):
be racist. Yeah, my son has a black friend. This
is gonna bring me to Do you know who Louis
throw is. No, he's He's a British documentarian, very very
popular one, and I quite like a lot of his work.
In the nineties the late nineties, he did a series
called Weird Weekends. We would go spend time and mostly
I think American subculture, so we spent a lot of

(01:01:52):
time with Nazis, and one of the Nazis he hung
out with this guy named Tom Metzker. Now Tom Metzker
was the head of a group called White Arian Resistance
or WAR. He was the guy if you're at Oregonian
who's whose members were responsible for the murder of Mulu
Gettis Raw in Portland, which is like one of the
kind of big, yeah, very important thing to understand. He
is one of the most famous racists there's ever been.

(01:02:14):
Tom Metzer. In the documentary where Louise spends several days
just kind of living with him to get an understanding
for the guy's personality, he notices that Tom has a
Mexican American neighbor and is friendly with him and they'll
like help each other out and stuff. And Tom differentiates
between this individual person who he knows and thinks it's
okay and Mexicans in journal with whom he had nothing

(01:02:37):
but like racist bio and Mexican. The same thing for
the Nazis. If you read Internal Nazi discussions as they
were planning the Holocaust. One of the problems for them
was that in kind of the terms they would use
as everyone has their own their own like favored Jew
that they think is different from the other Jews. And
that's why we have to develop a legal code to

(01:02:57):
oppress these people, because otherwise individuals will be slipping through
the cracks. Even Hitler, even Adolf Hitler, rescued one Jew
from the Holocaust that he orchestrated, the doctor who had
tried to save his mother when he was a child.
He got that guy out of the country because he
knew what he was about to do. So, yes, it
is stereotypically racist to be nice to individual people who

(01:03:20):
are of the races you ate. Ah Ah, it makes racism,
It makes it. It makes it more exhausting and that
much more stupid because it's like, oh, you hate a concept. Yeah,
that's exactly you hate a concept. And the proof that
your concept is wrong is that there are individual people

(01:03:41):
who are part of this concept of yours that you
are able to liken get along with because they're people,
and so are you like it? Just yeah, at what
point do you get tired of being on the wrong
side of history. Yeah, the point at which I don't know.
I don't know, man, I can't get it emotionally. Yeah. Uh.
So to continue this conservative writer of this very bad article, um,

(01:04:08):
I I think it's funny that he uses this argument
that he argues that, like, well, he was nice to
individual Africans. Because this argument that he made to defend
this guy in two thousands sixteen is the same that
Leander Jamison used to defend Rhodes from charges of cruelty
to natives in seven So, after Rhodes has his disastrous raid,
he's trying to do a comeback tour, his friends defend him.

(01:04:30):
They use the same defense, which is that he's nice
to individual Africans. Uh. Leander Jamison noted quote his favorite
Sunday pastime was to go to the de Beers native
compound where he segregated them away from the white workers,
where he had built them a fine swimming pool and
throw in shillings for the natives to dive for. Oh man,

(01:04:50):
just the white nonsense boy. Yeah he was. He loved them,
he threw money at them. This is nonsense. Yeah, and
how you say this? What a straight faced Yeah? Well,
the article is very long, and a lot of it's funny.
I'm just gonna read one more quote trying to justify
Cecil's bigotry, and again this is from that article. Yes,

(01:05:13):
Rhodes thought that Black Africans were generally inferior, but in
terms of cultural development, not biology. He believed they could
become civilized. This is important because important regards that people
is biologically inferior and incapable of development, then that's a
reason to exclude them permanently from participation in their own government.
But that wasn't how Roads saw things. In a speech

(01:05:34):
of eighteen ninety four, he made this quite clear when
he said, now I say the Natives are children. They
are just emerging from barbarism. They have human minds. We
ought to do something for the minds and the brains
that the Almighty has given them. I do not believe
that they are different from ourselves. But you acted that
way and enshrining a set of laws that lasted a
century after your death, enshrining those differences. Yeah, I don't
believe there are any different than us, except you absolutely

(01:05:56):
believe they're different than you. Yeah. There when you're as
a white person, when you're when you're trying to justify
when you're trying to talk about and like equivocate on racism,
you should think about whether or not you would be
comfortable saying that to the face of a person of
that race. So would you what would what do you?

(01:06:17):
How would you feel walking up to a black person
and saying I'm not racist or this guy wasn't racist,
he just thought that your entire race was children, Like,
how do you would you? Would you feel fundamentally guilty
saying that? Would you feel too ashamed to say that?
Then perhaps it's racist as fuck coming out of your mouth.
That didn't sound like you didn't hear yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

(01:06:43):
I don't know. Yeah. So at the end of this
I wanted a little bit of time, not quite yet,
because we need to grapple with the last part of
Cecil's legatory, the thing that he left us that continues
to kill people every year, the blood diamond trade. Now again,
by eighteen eighty eight, he had basically complete monopolistic troll

(01:07:04):
control over the diamond market. He made a monopoly. He
formed a cartel called the London Diamonds Syndicate, which were
all of the biggest people actually selling diamonds to consumers,
and this allowed him to match supply with demand artificially
and keep and keep value high even though they were
actually shipload of extra diamonds. Yeah, they're fucking everywhere, They're
not precious. Um so this provided like yeah, so he

(01:07:28):
builds this thing and it becomes the model of the
diamond industry for forever. Um his descendants, the people who
take over to Beers after him, um, following his footsteps
and continue to maintain the monopoly using these same tactics,
controlling nine plus percent of the global diamond market in
the nineteen thirties. The people who follow after cecil Roads
into Beers start the mining campaign. Diamonds are forever in

(01:07:50):
the United States. Um. Sorry, Nine is when that starts.
Nine is when they start marketing diamonds to the middle
class because they had been like a rich person thing.
They start trying to get across everyone needs a diamond
to show that you love your spouse. Forever starts in
ninety seven and de Beers becomes an even bigger marketing
em party than it had already been. Um so they

(01:08:13):
but will bath them drugs. That's a reference, and it's
it's it's it's yeah. So they just they expand demand
and they also create a permanent They create a permanent
market for diamonds in Africa, and it's not a good market. Um.
In nineteen five, de Beers takes complete control of mining

(01:08:34):
prospects in Sierra Leone and their contract gives them control
for ninety nine years. Now, this opens up a black
market and Lebanese traders in Sierra Leone discovered that you
can make a lot of money by smuggling diamonds out
of the country ilicit mining and training. It increased throughout
Sierra Leone. By the nineteen fifties, the government had given
up any chance of policing the diamond industry. Foreign investors

(01:08:55):
had to supply their own security, which was done generally
by mercenary forces. Uh and yeah, So these by creating
this very very valuable legitimate diamond trade that the government
doesn't control, you also create an illegitimate diamond trade that
the government doesn't control, and that provides a way for
insurgent militaries to fund themselves. And this is what starts

(01:09:17):
happening all over Africa. In this period of time, you
have these massive wars over over minerals, wars funded by minerals.
It with diamond's chief among them. And it's it's it's
a nightmare every single place that it happens. In Sierra Leone,
they're fucking cutting off hands, armless kids. Yeah, they kill

(01:09:38):
seventy five thousand people. Half a million people become refugees.
And that's not the worst that it gets. Um. Have
you you've heard about the Great African War? I think
it starts in some people like and and it's the
biggest war after World War Three. It's the biggest war
we've had since Almost no one in in in the

(01:09:58):
Western world has has ever heard about it. It's also
sometimes called the Congo War. UM. It happens in the
late nineties. It kills five million people, and it is
a war over minerals over gold, diamonds, tin, ivory, and
coal tan, which I think is used to help make computers. Um.
And it's it's one of those wars where there's like

(01:10:20):
millions of people who are raped systematically in like an
industrial fashion. You have millions more who die from lack
of medical care. Um. And again, the war is able
to continue on because rebels are because these different sides
are able to take control of diamonds and mind diamonds
and sell them for guns to commit these massacres and
a lot of other Part of the reason why I'm

(01:10:41):
not going into much to tail about this here is
that a lot of other people, of course, are have
involved in this, like Cecil Rhodes has Medetta Wild. He
starts the chain of events that makes the Great African
War and the Sierra Leon and everything that's happening in
all of these countries over diamonds, over over conflict minerals.
He's the origin point. Uh. I know, if you're in
the hip hop, you've heard the phrase conflict diamonds. Yeah,

(01:11:04):
this is what we're talking about. If you don't know, yeah, yeah.
And it's like it's the among the at least at
least in my opinion, among the African American community. This
is the the cognitive dissonance that we have to deal
with of like our hand in upholding this like diamond trade.

(01:11:27):
You know what I'm saying, Like what if we as
a culture, as American culture, who we love to shine,
I get it, But if we decided, like yo, we're
not touching diamonds anymore. You know what I'm saying In
solidarity to our African brothers and sisters. It's something I
feel like we need to at some point reckon with,
you know. Um, But yeah, yeah, it's it's it's a

(01:11:47):
hard topic man. And that then, and I've made a
reference to a Kanye song from the College Dropout album,
which or not from the Late Registration album called Diamonds
Are Forever Conflict Diamonds. Yeah, and it's it's um. You know.
One of the things I guess I can say to
that is Cecil's goal was to kill the culture the
Africans live under and make them all live under the

(01:12:09):
rules and culture that that Anglo Americans and the Great
African War is some evidence that he succeeded to an
extent because what he did, leading in mercenary armies to
take over mining areas in order to extract minerals and
using that to fund the conquests of more of these
mercenaries is exactly what all these wars what happened. It's

(01:12:31):
what happened. He succeeded. They adopted that part of British culture. Yeah, yeah,
well great, thank you for thanks for that, buddy X.
You know, exporting Western culture. We're now mutilating each other. Yeah.
For more information on the topic, see the war and
Zevon song Rolling the Headless Thompson Gunner. Um, so prop,

(01:12:54):
you you got some plugs to plug in? Now my plugs,
let's do it. Great capitalism. Um, Well, I'm selling music
and coffee. Uh, but it's just prop hip hop dot
com and that's all my app mentions to and it
just all feels so trivial. Um. On the other hand,

(01:13:18):
my children like to eat, so yeah, check out the music,
check out the poetry. I got a coffee collab coming up. Uh,
what's up now? Um? Where this is ethically sourced? I
feel like it's important to say it now. Uh, company
called Onyx who pays higher than market price because we

(01:13:42):
believe in farmers and supporting and yeah, and it's a
good drink. And I'm finishing an album and at some
point I'll give that links to that. Hell yes, hell, yes,
well check all that out. Check me out somewhere on
the internet. No one's quite sure where. Um, and that's
all that's everything. Well, a lot of people do. Because

(01:14:05):
I've seen your followers grow. Okay, well, I'm not even
gonna plug your buggables for you. Robert thank you, Sophie,
I'll plug it for you. You could find him at
I write okay. I think allegedly allegedly cannot you cannot
confirm or deny that I write okayness. Yeah, and you

(01:14:27):
write better than okay. Man, you're a great writer. Oh,
thank you. It was actually, like I think it was.
It's very unclear because I'm uh wasn't always as good
at writing as I am. Now. My meaning was that
was not that I write okay. It was like it
came from uh like years of frustration of explaining what
I did for a living because I had a bunch

(01:14:48):
of different weird freelance jobs online. Yeah, like I write okay. Yeah, Yeah,
that problems that. That was why pun punctuation matters. M alrighty, alright,
it's products late ship probably that's that's capital is I'm
for it could be all right mm hmm