Speaker 1: Based in record recording, test test test test print all
Speaker 1: of this christ topic. We've already introduced the show. It
Speaker 1: started behind the bastards. We have we we we we
Speaker 1: we have a dark one today. We have a bad
Speaker 1: one today. I'm Robert Evans, Matt Leeb my guest, Matt.
Speaker 1: How are you doing today? You know I was doing
Speaker 1: well until you guys started talking real ominous about what
Speaker 1: the subject. Boy, Matt, you are going to be a
Speaker 1: very unhappy person. Oh fun, I love Yeah, as we
Speaker 1: as we get into this three hours, Yeah, that's about right, Matt.
Speaker 1: So let me let me start this with a simple,
Speaker 1: humble question, Matt, a very simple question. How do you
Speaker 1: feel about the Boy Scouts of America? Oh? Fuck, I
Speaker 1: have very like I don't have feelings one way or
Speaker 1: the other because I never I never did it. I
Speaker 1: know you weren't. Yeah, I know people who did, like,
Speaker 1: uh you know they there was like a jew Scouts, um,
Speaker 1: but they were that's a funny name for something to be. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I and I knew some people were like Cub
Speaker 1: Scouts and Eagle Scouts and stuff like that, but I never,
Speaker 1: I never was in that club. So I feel excluded
Speaker 1: That's how I feel about it. You know, as a kid,
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a part of it. Why couldn't you, Um,
Speaker 1: I think, because like you know, you have to like
Speaker 1: apply and stuff, and then you know, you know, you
Speaker 1: gotta like tell your dad and he's got to not
Speaker 1: be he's got to be in a good mood and
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, I mean yeah, so you know, I
Speaker 1: never I never got a chance to do it. So
Speaker 1: it's weird. I mean, so this is gonna be a
Speaker 1: weird one for me because like I was in the
Speaker 1: Boy Scouts for years and years and years and I
Speaker 1: loved it. I had a really good time. I learned
Speaker 1: where I learned a lot of like the first lessons
Speaker 1: I learned about like woodcraft and like hiking, and I
Speaker 1: had a lot of relief when I'm like a twenty
Speaker 1: mile river rafting trip on the Brasos for days and
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, uh, like primitive kind of like
Speaker 1: you have like the contents of a matchbox and a
Speaker 1: pocket knife and I have to go for two days
Speaker 1: or whatever like some really cool shit. UM had some
Speaker 1: great experiences, like I really to be like I personally
Speaker 1: have nothing but positive memories of the Boy Scouts of
Speaker 1: America and my time in them. End of podcast for listening.
Speaker 1: So it's it's it's fucked up, Like I played like
Speaker 1: my very first games of Dungeons and Dragons, I played
Speaker 1: it like Cub Scouts Campouts, which is like a huge
Speaker 1: part of my my life, and like, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's weird. Um, I can confidently say my life would
Speaker 1: have been very different if I had not been a
Speaker 1: Boy Scout, and I can also confidently say that that
Speaker 1: is true of a hundred thousands or so other boys
Speaker 1: for a much worse reason. Um, because as we're going
Speaker 1: to discuss the Boy Scouts of America, despite you know,
Speaker 1: my and I'm sure a number of people listening can
Speaker 1: think back to positive experiences they had in the b
Speaker 1: s A. I know my dad can, Um, he was
Speaker 1: an Eagle Scout, like I know a lot of people
Speaker 1: who could who felt very fondly about their time in
Speaker 1: the Scouts. But despite all of that, the Boy Scouts
Speaker 1: from the beginning is an organization that was poisoned in
Speaker 1: a fundamentally inescapable way, and that poison led to its
Speaker 1: evolution into an organization that facilitated the rape and molestation
Speaker 1: of like a city's worth of young boys. Um, it's
Speaker 1: it's this is a dark one, my man, this is
Speaker 1: a dark one. Yeah. God, I love going in cold,
Speaker 1: you know, probably really regretting that email you Sami. I
Speaker 1: would love to come back up. Yeah, I'll be back
Speaker 1: any motherfucker you want to come on our show? Were
Speaker 1: gonna talking about nazis A yeah, yeah baby, Oh yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I'm excited. Man, it sounds like a lot of fun. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it sounds like Boy Scouts you know, uh
Speaker 1: are gonna be a great organization to learn more about.
Speaker 1: So let's strap in. Yeah. Well I might not want
Speaker 1: to say that, give him what comes in part two,
Speaker 1: but yeah, let's let's see the episode. Um spoilers. So,
Speaker 1: do you know anything about the founder of the Boy Scouts,
Speaker 1: at least the guy most often credited as founding the
Speaker 1: Boy Scouts, Robert Maiden Powell. I did not know him. Okay,
Speaker 1: Well that part one we're largely going to be talking
Speaker 1: about the founder of the Boy Scouts, and then part
Speaker 1: two we're gonna be talking about all of the rapes
Speaker 1: and how the organization facilitated them over a century. Um,
Speaker 1: but let's talk about Robert first. The other Robert so
Speaker 1: Robert Baden Powell. His full name at the end of
Speaker 1: his life gives you a pretty clear idea of the
Speaker 1: kind of social position this guy enjoyed. Uh. When he died,
Speaker 1: his full title was Lieutenant General Robert Stevenson smythe Baden Powell,
Speaker 1: first Baron Baden Powell, oh M G C MG G
Speaker 1: C V O K C b K S T J
Speaker 1: d L, which are all like different orders and awards
Speaker 1: and like nightly ship that you. He was. He was
Speaker 1: English as fuck. That could not be more Enguish than
Speaker 1: this motherfucker the whole alphabet. Yeah, he's he had all
Speaker 1: these scot damn titles. Um. Yeah. And he was born high,
Speaker 1: like he was born to rule, be one of the
Speaker 1: people who helped run the British Empire, like that was
Speaker 1: his Yeah. He was born on February eighteen fifty seven
Speaker 1: in Paddington, London, inguland his father was the Reverend Professor
Speaker 1: Baden Powell, and was a pro motherfucking reverend professor. The
Speaker 1: line of people who were like, we must have multiple
Speaker 1: titles like these. Everyone in his family has has a
Speaker 1: thousand fucking titles and they're all very fancy people. So
Speaker 1: his dad, the Reverend Professor, is a geometry professor at
Speaker 1: Oxford University and a priest at the Church of England's.
Speaker 1: Yeah you know those geometry priests. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: you get one degree and then you're like, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: just throw on a little yeah, little but another hat
Speaker 1: from my hat. Yeah. Yeah. So his mother was Henrietta
Speaker 1: Grace Smith and she was the oldest daughter of Admiral
Speaker 1: William Henry Smythe Um, I don't who was a famous admiral,
Speaker 1: you know, like and that's like the biggest thing you
Speaker 1: can be in the British Empires, a admiral, Like that's
Speaker 1: like the top of of cool British ship to be
Speaker 1: in this period. And yeah, well people said it was
Speaker 1: a good one. Yeah. So Reverend Professor Baden Powell UM
Speaker 1: was an old man when he married Henrietta Grace Smithe
Speaker 1: she was his third wife, and he was again not
Speaker 1: a young man when he had Robert. And in fact,
Speaker 1: Robert's born in eighteen fifty seven and his dad dies
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixties, so our Baden Powell never really knows
Speaker 1: his father um. And this brings to an interesting note.
Speaker 1: So Professor Robert Baden Powell, the founder of the Boy Scout.
Speaker 1: His name is Baden hyphen Powell. Right, his dad's first
Speaker 1: name is Baden, and his dad's last name is Powe.
Speaker 1: His mom's his name is Smithe So why does he
Speaker 1: Why is his last name Baiden hyphen Powell. That's an
Speaker 1: interesting question. So when he died, when his dad died,
Speaker 1: his mom changed the family last name after his death
Speaker 1: to be their father's full name with a hyphen in it,
Speaker 1: in order to distinguish the children she had had with
Speaker 1: him to the kids he'd had in previous marriages. So
Speaker 1: petty ship, Yeah, it's like petty weird English bullshit. Um
Speaker 1: so yeah, like Baiden Pale. You would think with the
Speaker 1: name like Biden pal Oh, his dad was a Baiden
Speaker 1: and his mom was a Powell, and they just did
Speaker 1: the thing that you know, fancy people do when they
Speaker 1: hyphen ate their names. But no, it's much dumber than that.
Speaker 1: So Robert was raised by his mother. She was a
Speaker 1: forceful person and he later recalled that quote the whole
Speaker 1: secret of my getting on was in his mother's very
Speaker 1: powerful personality. She was described by one writer as either
Speaker 1: a great motivator or simply overbearing, depending on who was
Speaker 1: talking about her. Since the family had money and the
Speaker 1: upper crust British kids inevitably went way to private schools
Speaker 1: while they were public schools. But we call them private
Speaker 1: schools like a public school in England is like a
Speaker 1: fancy private school. You know. Oh I didn't know that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's weird. Everything's wrong over there, right, yeah yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: and Robert spent his youth in a series of fancy
Speaker 1: all boys schools. He was very intelligent and was given
Speaker 1: to throwing himself completely into any task set before him.
Speaker 1: He particularly pushed himself to succeed at tasks that were
Speaker 1: likely to make him popular, so he became an excellent singer.
Speaker 1: He became a skilled sketch artist and an actor in
Speaker 1: the school's drama productions. Holidays back home, Yeah, holidays back
Speaker 1: home were spent on yachting expeditions with his again quite
Speaker 1: wealthy family. Um. He first came to the practices of
Speaker 1: scouting while he was at school, though these are boarding schools,
Speaker 1: and the forests near his school, which occupied an old monastery,
Speaker 1: were filled with game animals, and so he would escape
Speaker 1: from school. He wasn't supposed to be doing this and
Speaker 1: hunt in butcher game meat. Um, this was like his
Speaker 1: hobby when he was in school with with what like
Speaker 1: a knife? I assume he had a gun or something
Speaker 1: like like English shotgun. Yeah, I really that is unclear
Speaker 1: to me. Probably it's just knifeing deer in the woods.
Speaker 1: That's what a scout would do. That's one of the
Speaker 1: merit badges I have always assumed. Yeah, stabbed fucking deer
Speaker 1: in the neck. Yeah, just mass murder stags with a
Speaker 1: single pocket knife. A gun ain't fair. Look, the deer's
Speaker 1: got a knife. You got a knife, you got in
Speaker 1: your head. I got knives on my hand. It's perfect now.
Speaker 1: In the British Jackson in eighteen seventy six, he graduated
Speaker 1: school and he found himself somewhat adrift and uncertain of
Speaker 1: what he wanted to do with his life. His mother
Speaker 1: pushed him to join the military, and he quickly fell
Speaker 1: in love with the adventure and camaraderie of that life.
Speaker 1: He particularly enjoyed spending all of his time in close
Speaker 1: proximity with other young men separated from mainstream British society.
Speaker 1: He was, yeah, he's he's definitely. His sexuality is something
Speaker 1: we'll discuss in a bit sure. There's a lot going
Speaker 1: on here, a decent amount of it's uncomfortable. He became
Speaker 1: an officer because that's the role men in his part
Speaker 1: of English society were born to occupy. A right up
Speaker 1: in the book Scouts Honor notes as an officer, he
Speaker 1: was known for his teaching skills, sense of discipline, and
Speaker 1: obsession with physical and moral cleanliness. He must have seemed
Speaker 1: a bit of a square. He tried to sway his
Speaker 1: men from using brothels and advised them to beat the
Speaker 1: type who could be trusted on their honor to do
Speaker 1: a thing, who were guided by a sense of what
Speaker 1: is their duty rather than by their own inclination, who
Speaker 1: are helpful and kind, especially to the weak, and who,
Speaker 1: by their personal self respect and avoidance of bad habits,
Speaker 1: give themselves a manliness and dignity which no humbug can
Speaker 1: attain to. So, well, that's a he's a stickler. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it sounds like, you know, perfectly good rules
Speaker 1: to live your life by, you know, I mean, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yea here great, yeah, kind of kind of a little
Speaker 1: bit like uptight. You get the sense that, like he
Speaker 1: would have been kind of frustrating if you're a young
Speaker 1: man in the military. Oh, he's not very fun but
Speaker 1: certainly not you know, like very distinctly not about like
Speaker 1: cavorting and going out and like drinking and whrring and
Speaker 1: doing stuff that soldiers do, you know, because soldiers are
Speaker 1: all all dirty, dirty bastards. So um. He first served
Speaker 1: as a hussar in India, which is like a mounted soldier.
Speaker 1: He was sent to Africa in the eighteen eighties, where
Speaker 1: he fought as a scout officer against the Zulu in
Speaker 1: what is today South Africa. His courage and competence earned
Speaker 1: him repeated commendations. In eighteen ninety, he was promoted to
Speaker 1: major and made senior aide de camp to the governor
Speaker 1: of Malta, who also happened to be his uncle. Because again,
Speaker 1: that's how everything works in this empire, a lot of nepotism.
Speaker 1: He's very good at what he does that everyone seems
Speaker 1: to agree with that, but he's also there's a lot
Speaker 1: of nepotism that he benefits from. For the next three
Speaker 1: years he did this job, and he also worked a
Speaker 1: part time as an intelligence officer, and among other things,
Speaker 1: he would like disguise himself as a butterfly collector, so
Speaker 1: he could travel around to foreign military installations and bring
Speaker 1: back intelligence to the British. He would just show up
Speaker 1: as like a butterfly guy and be like, yeah, looking
Speaker 1: at for some butterflies about check out your cannons? Might
Speaker 1: if I read these documents, I'm just gonna I'm trying
Speaker 1: to see if there's butterflies. Yeah, And this is the
Speaker 1: period if you read about, like, um, the British invasions
Speaker 1: of Afghanistan and the Great Game between the Great Britain
Speaker 1: and Russia, which is happening in like this period spying
Speaker 1: at this point, there's not like intelligence agencies. It's a
Speaker 1: bunch of like rich fancy boys on both sides who
Speaker 1: travel around enough fancy together and they bring back intelligence
Speaker 1: and it's yeah, they just it's just basically just gossip
Speaker 1: from like you know, the Yeah. In eighteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: he returned to Africa and he fought in the Second
Speaker 1: Mattabelli War. This was a revolt of the indigenous Mattabelli
Speaker 1: people against the British South Africa Company. So again, corporations
Speaker 1: are running all of these colonies at this time, and
Speaker 1: the British Empire exists to like enforce their right to
Speaker 1: control large chunks of continent. Um. The Matta belly are
Speaker 1: like it kind of a raw deal for us, and
Speaker 1: they try to fight back, and Baden Powell is among
Speaker 1: the soldiers sent into brutally crush them. This is like
Speaker 1: three now, this is three different uh like colonial like
Speaker 1: wars that he's been part of. He fights in a
Speaker 1: lot of colonial wars. He sees a lot of combat,
Speaker 1: and it is all in the name of of furthering
Speaker 1: the British Empire and the economic interests of British corporations. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: And he understands it this way. He is an unrepentant imperialist.
Speaker 1: Baden Powell had no issue deploying industrial armed might against
Speaker 1: a subject people who had starved due in part to
Speaker 1: cattle pests brought over by the British colonizers. This campaign
Speaker 1: was important to the Boy Scouts for two reasons. One,
Speaker 1: it was there that Baden Powell met an American scout
Speaker 1: who introduced him to the concept of woodcraft, the stetson
Speaker 1: cowboy hat, which becomes as an icon of the Boy Scouts,
Speaker 1: and the neckerchief, which is another icon of the Boy Scout.
Speaker 1: So he's very impressed by this. American Scout, and he
Speaker 1: adopted a lot of these aspects of his dress, which
Speaker 1: later become things that the boy Scouts do. Secondly, this
Speaker 1: is where Lord Baden Powell committed his first war crime,
Speaker 1: or at least the first war crime we have documentation of.
Speaker 1: The gist of it was that there was an indigenous
Speaker 1: Matta Belli chief named Weenie. He was thought to be
Speaker 1: a major inspiration for the uprising and was accused of
Speaker 1: murdering white settlers. We might say that those white settlers
Speaker 1: were trying to steal land in the ability to produce
Speaker 1: food from indigenous people, and they fought back. Um a
Speaker 1: number of ways you murder self defense, self defense from
Speaker 1: an invasion. Yeah, um. So Weenie gets wounded in battle, um,
Speaker 1: and he surrenders under the promise that his safety would
Speaker 1: be guaranteed that like he won't be like murdered. For surrendering,
Speaker 1: Baden Powell has him executed, which was definitely illegal. We
Speaker 1: called that the old Baden switch. I was waiting for
Speaker 1: that that was destined to happen. It was. So the
Speaker 1: simple summary of what happened is that, yeah, he committed
Speaker 1: a war crime against black man fighting for the freedom
Speaker 1: of his people Um. Baden Powell's biographer, though, a guy
Speaker 1: named Tim gel Um we'll talk about Tim in a second,
Speaker 1: defends it this way because the chief was wounded during
Speaker 1: capture and Baden Powell doubted he would survive a long
Speaker 1: journey to the Cape to face a civil court. He
Speaker 1: court martialed him on the spot. The verdict was death,
Speaker 1: so he was shot. Baden Powell had exceeded his orders.
Speaker 1: So Tim Gill acknowledges this was illegal, but he also
Speaker 1: was like, well, the guy was wounded. He was it
Speaker 1: was like a mercy killing. You know. That's why we're
Speaker 1: decimating this village because we stole all of the They're
Speaker 1: gonna starve because of the things. What do you want
Speaker 1: to do? You want to watch him software that's no
Speaker 1: get the get the flamethrower over here. Um. So Tim
Speaker 1: gel who you're going to hear from a lot in
Speaker 1: this because he's he's Baden Powell's biggest, best, probably best biographer.
Speaker 1: Regular listeners will recognize him because he also wrote a
Speaker 1: biography we used of Henry Morton Stanley, who was one
Speaker 1: of the artist imperialists in the history of imperialism. This
Speaker 1: is a guy who's scout quote unquote, discovered a shipload
Speaker 1: of Africa, murdered just a tremendous number of people, and
Speaker 1: basically was responsible for conquering the Congo for King Leopold
Speaker 1: via like a series of fake treaties, like he tricked
Speaker 1: them basically on behalf of level. One of the worst
Speaker 1: people who's ever lived. Jim Gill wrote a biography about
Speaker 1: him that's very positive and Tim Geil this is what
Speaker 1: he does. So Jeal is definitely kind of right wing.
Speaker 1: He loves the British Empire. He is frustratingly good at
Speaker 1: the technical aspects of writing biography. So he's really good
Speaker 1: at going through thousands of pages of people's notes and
Speaker 1: diaries and and and synthesizing them and provide so you
Speaker 1: actually get really good information from his books. His the information,
Speaker 1: the facts he provides are generally pretty solid. But you
Speaker 1: also get it with Tim's framing of the facts, which
Speaker 1: is always like ludicrously positive and forgiving of these nightmarish
Speaker 1: war criminals, imperialism stand who's primary source. It's just three
Speaker 1: other pages, yes, literal young, Yeah, he is deeply frustrating.
Speaker 1: Tim Jeel. Now in this case he calls Baden Powell's
Speaker 1: execution of this guy. Quote the most damaging charge made
Speaker 1: against Baden Powell's honor. Now, this is in spite of
Speaker 1: the fact that in eight Robert Baden Powell was in
Speaker 1: charge of an operation to track down Zulu rebels and
Speaker 1: he lost control of his men, who murdered at least
Speaker 1: three people. Geille defends this by arguing, quote, even if
Speaker 1: he had given orders to spare the rebels lives, it's
Speaker 1: incredibly unlikely that his Zulu mercenaries would have obeyed. A
Speaker 1: lot of trouble stemmed from this, and he was lucky
Speaker 1: not to lose his career. It's like, well, Whitey, how
Speaker 1: how do you know that? How do you know that
Speaker 1: he couldn't have stopped this? How do you know they
Speaker 1: were actually rebels? Like you? You just know what this
Speaker 1: guy wrote and is like Jill never actually like he's
Speaker 1: great at giving you what these people were writing and
Speaker 1: saying to each other. He's not so great at like
Speaker 1: seeing the people they were doing violence to as human
Speaker 1: beings and made investigating their side of the case and
Speaker 1: being it is this true? Was It's like not my job.
Speaker 1: I'm a biographer for people who've done nothing wrong. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The most famous moment of Biden Powell's military career came
Speaker 1: the next year, in eighteen nine, with the outbreak of
Speaker 1: the Second Bower War. This is one of those rare
Speaker 1: colonial wars where there's not really anyone who's like a
Speaker 1: good guy here because the Bowers horrible people, like a
Speaker 1: lot of them, horrible people, very racist. This is where
Speaker 1: we get apartheid South Africa. A chunk of that comes
Speaker 1: from this um. But also they're fighting the British Empire
Speaker 1: who put them in concentration camps and kill a huge
Speaker 1: number of women and children. So my sympathy overall is
Speaker 1: with the Bowers, I guess because they're the people putting
Speaker 1: deck camps. But technically I'm like, well, I do hate imperialism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess they're both kind of imperialists. That's a more
Speaker 1: powerful one. Yeah. It's not a fun war to read about.
Speaker 1: The gist of it is that the Bowers, who are
Speaker 1: kind of Dutch, were fighting the British who didn't like
Speaker 1: the idea of Bower's like running ship in South Anyway, whatever,
Speaker 1: you don't need to know too much about this. The
Speaker 1: war is most noteworthy because it was where the British
Speaker 1: first deployed concentration camps and idea they had kind of
Speaker 1: cribbed from the Spanish who had kind of cribbed it
Speaker 1: from what the Americans did to the indigenous people. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, this led to the death of a lot
Speaker 1: of Bowers, but also many more Black Africans. A lot
Speaker 1: of Bowers do starve, that's worth noting. But like a
Speaker 1: huge number of the people who starve as a result
Speaker 1: of British policies in this war are Black Africans. Um.
Speaker 1: But at the time this becomes kind of the most
Speaker 1: famous fallout of the Boer War because the Nazis pay
Speaker 1: attention to the British use of concentration camps and it
Speaker 1: has a big inspiration on that. But anyway, um, at
Speaker 1: the time, the most famous battle of the war back
Speaker 1: home in Merry Old Ingleland was the siege of MafA King.
Speaker 1: Robert Baden Powell, who was by this point of colonel,
Speaker 1: was the man in charge of the garrison there and
Speaker 1: basically he's got about fift men, a mix of British
Speaker 1: soldiers and like local African auxiliaries, and he gets besieged
Speaker 1: by a force of eight thousand bow um. And this
Speaker 1: battle lasts close to a year. It's like two hundreds
Speaker 1: something days that they're under siege. So it is it
Speaker 1: is this horrifically bloody battle. By the end of the fighting,
Speaker 1: like two thirds of a year's worth of fighting, Biden
Speaker 1: Pale's lost more than half of his men, the Bowers
Speaker 1: lose two thousand men, a shipload of people starved to death,
Speaker 1: and it is front page news the whole time. This
Speaker 1: is like the most like the biggest story in the
Speaker 1: British Empire back in the Aisles for the better part
Speaker 1: of a year, and it makes Robert Baden Powell into
Speaker 1: a celebrity because he's the heroic commander of this this
Speaker 1: scrappy defense under incredible odds to like defend Maficking from
Speaker 1: the Bowers. Um. And he's also he's handsome, right, Like
Speaker 1: he's he's generally noted by women at the time of
Speaker 1: having been a good looking man. Um. And so you've
Speaker 1: got this like handsome young war hero in the siege
Speaker 1: that's front page news from months. Um. It makes him
Speaker 1: into one of the most famous people in the entire
Speaker 1: British Empire. And he's only getting more handsome because you know,
Speaker 1: as the food runs out, he's just getting skinnier. He's
Speaker 1: just getting skinnier and skinny, right, those cheek bones are
Speaker 1: just getting like prominenter yeah sharp now. The siege held
Speaker 1: several influential moments in the development of scouting. For one thing,
Speaker 1: in order to free up men for the fight, he
Speaker 1: deputized a bunch of teenage and preteen boys to act
Speaker 1: as messengers. The Mayficking Cadet core, consisting of twelve to
Speaker 1: fifteen year old boys, is often seen as a precursor
Speaker 1: to the Boy Scouts. So that's one thing um not
Speaker 1: by child soldiers, because he's not trying to have these
Speaker 1: guys fight. He's using them to free up soldiers who
Speaker 1: can hold a rifle and stuff um. In addition, from
Speaker 1: the book Scouts on or quote, one key to victory
Speaker 1: at Mafeking was scouting. Always fond of the outdoors as
Speaker 1: a boy, Baden Powell, as a soldier, had developed a
Speaker 1: passion for tracking animals and people, sneaking up on the enemy,
Speaker 1: and living off nature. He wrote scouting books for adults
Speaker 1: and trained soldiers for a scouting unit. He found the
Speaker 1: business of survival in the wild not just a necessity
Speaker 1: but an intriguing science. Geel rights. Once, when desperately short
Speaker 1: of water, he had seen a buck scratching in the
Speaker 1: sand and by digging at the same spot had found water. Um.
Speaker 1: So he's he's this is like all kind of coming
Speaker 1: together for for Robert Baden how um. And he's maybe
Speaker 1: the only guy who could have like pulled off this
Speaker 1: defense for the British because he has a lot of
Speaker 1: this experience. He actually is not. He's not you get
Speaker 1: a lot of these aristocratic officers are like useless in
Speaker 1: a hard situation. He's not. He is legitimately good at
Speaker 1: being a soldier. I think most historians day agree that
Speaker 1: he was. He was a very competent combat commander. Another
Speaker 1: thing that Baden Powell did at Mayficking was arguably commit
Speaker 1: another war crime. Now this is a in fairness, is
Speaker 1: a more muddled story than the others, which in my
Speaker 1: mind are very clear war crimes. The short of this
Speaker 1: story is that, allegedly, when food stores ran low, he
Speaker 1: chose to feed white people and let black residents in
Speaker 1: May Pickings starved to death. Um. This exerpt from the
Speaker 1: Irish Times gives a good overview of the war criminal allegations.
Speaker 1: Faced with foods shortages, he simply chose to deprive most
Speaker 1: Africans in the town of any food whatsoever, even their own,
Speaker 1: which he had earlier forcibly requisitioned. A few vital African
Speaker 1: laborers were allowed to buy rations. Others were reduced to
Speaker 1: scavenging dog corpses in rub sheeps. So that is that
Speaker 1: is the that is the war crime allegation against kind
Speaker 1: of what he does here. Um, he ordered one group
Speaker 1: of thirty three Africans out on a cattle drive of
Speaker 1: bower herds, otherwise to be flogged. The bowers captured and
Speaker 1: murdered all but one of the poor devil's unperturbed, Biden
Speaker 1: Powell then evicted several hundred African women from the town.
Speaker 1: Many were murdered by the bowers, and a few pitiful
Speaker 1: survivors were stripped, naked, flogged, and sent back. Yet their
Speaker 1: shameful fate troubled him not the least. And you'll hear
Speaker 1: a couple of different death tolls for this. I think
Speaker 1: two thousand is kind of like the upper number of
Speaker 1: like how many people die as a result of Biden
Speaker 1: Powell making these calls. Now, Tim Gel, true to form
Speaker 1: has a ready defense for Biden Powell. Here he says
Speaker 1: of these allegations, quote, this is an absolute lie. He
Speaker 1: opened soup kitchens and shot all of his cavalry horses
Speaker 1: so he could feed them. And in this case, jeal
Speaker 1: is not entirely wrong. Here again, how you what exactly,
Speaker 1: how exactly you come down on this is messy. Um.
Speaker 1: He is an actual biographer, so he's not. Biden Pell
Speaker 1: did have his horses slaughtered in order to provide like
Speaker 1: soup for for the people in may fick Ing. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Historians debate whether or not Baden Powell intentionally starved black
Speaker 1: residents at Mayficking. One South African historian said in nine
Speaker 1: this can only be described as a crime against humanity,
Speaker 1: for which he deserves to be reappraised as a war criminal.
Speaker 1: But in two thousands, a pair of military historians, Edmund
Speaker 1: York and Malcolm flower Smith of the Royal Military Academy
Speaker 1: at Sandhurst, analyzed diaries from soldiers and civilians during the siege,
Speaker 1: including Baden Powell's diaries, and they came to a different conclusion.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote from the Guardian here. Biden Powell
Speaker 1: had based garrison rations on a prospect of relief within
Speaker 1: two months Kitchener, who's the High General in charge of
Speaker 1: the whole war, ordered him to send as many women
Speaker 1: and children and natives as possible a way to save rations.
Speaker 1: So kitchen Or orders him get the noncombatants out of
Speaker 1: the city so you don't have to feed as many people.
Speaker 1: But the authors say the papers indicate that this harsh
Speaker 1: policy was not aimed at the townships. Seven thousand st
Speaker 1: wrong majority of Blacks the bar Along tribe, who were
Speaker 1: valued soldiers and boosted foodstocks by rustling Bower cattle. It's
Speaker 1: victims were two thousand outside Africans, including Shangans, who was
Speaker 1: like so a different tribe of Africans, a smaller subset
Speaker 1: of the population. Their food rations in Mayficking were cut off.
Speaker 1: Biden Poal negotiated safe passage for them. For this, the
Speaker 1: Shangans with the besieging Bowers to British held territory, supplying
Speaker 1: a military escort and food wagon, but the truce was broken.
Speaker 1: The first attempt to drive nine dred Blacks out at
Speaker 1: night was scattered by Boer snipers. The second by day
Speaker 1: saw them decimated by Bower attacks. The policy of forced
Speaker 1: evacuation was a blunder. Dr York said Baden Powe was
Speaker 1: the reluctant victim of external military imperatives. He realized his
Speaker 1: errors and dropped it. So that's complicated. Yeah, that's complicated
Speaker 1: because like, yeah, he his calls get a bunch of
Speaker 1: people killed, he's also acting on orders. He's not trying
Speaker 1: necessarily to get people killed. He's trying to get them
Speaker 1: out of there so they can go to British territory
Speaker 1: where there's more more food. The bowers attack ac these people,
Speaker 1: like you could argue he didn't like, it's unclike. And
Speaker 1: I'm not a historian because obviously these scholars who are
Speaker 1: saying no, no, what he did was understandable, he wasn't
Speaker 1: trying to kill anybody are British military historians from the
Speaker 1: Royal Military Academy at Sanders um so have have a bias. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I feel like, you know, I'm inclined to
Speaker 1: not give him the benefit of the doubt and just
Speaker 1: say he probably did that ship. So I think what's
Speaker 1: probably true is that he was not trying to get
Speaker 1: anybody killed. But also the fact that these these people
Speaker 1: not just that they're black, but they're black members of
Speaker 1: this tribe. That is not valuable to him. He's not
Speaker 1: troubled by what happens to them, really, and it's not
Speaker 1: he He probably could have done a lot more to
Speaker 1: to not get them killed. Um, it is true that
Speaker 1: after this happens, he he kills all his horses. He
Speaker 1: creates soup kitchens to feed starving people, but distribution of
Speaker 1: food from those kitchens was biased towards Europeans and elite
Speaker 1: members of the Barolong tribe. Um. These British military scholars
Speaker 1: like note this, but say, quote, he was no more
Speaker 1: racially prejudiced than the vast maturity of his generation, which
Speaker 1: isn't wrong, but doesn't make it not like a war crime. Also,
Speaker 1: to be fair, yeah, to be fair black, Yeah, every
Speaker 1: he wasn't racist or than everyone else. Yeah, but did
Speaker 1: his policies get more of them killed because he like
Speaker 1: gave food to white people? And say, well, yeah, but
Speaker 1: he didn't do it because he was more any racist
Speaker 1: person back then, which was everyone would have done this.
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, okay, yeah, but like that doesn't do
Speaker 1: you see why that's not good. I love the idea
Speaker 1: of just well, you know, relative to the time period,
Speaker 1: but you don't know what a piece of shit everybody
Speaker 1: was back on. That's I mean, give him a pass.
Speaker 1: This is not to give him a pass, but it
Speaker 1: is fair to describe the war crimes he committed that
Speaker 1: way as in And again this is not to give
Speaker 1: him a pass. This is actually just to condemn the
Speaker 1: British Empire as a war criminal. Within the context of
Speaker 1: British officers in his time, he was more restrained and
Speaker 1: respectful of the life of non white people than most
Speaker 1: of his colleagues, who again had often committed genocides. Like like,
Speaker 1: that's what like in saying that, like the s S
Speaker 1: commander who just starves Jewish people rather than driving them
Speaker 1: to the gas chambers, Like, well, he was more restrained
Speaker 1: than the other cool. Yeah, it's like yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's not. Again, this is not too This is not
Speaker 1: to to to defend Baiden Pound. This is to put
Speaker 1: him in the context of the British Empire. He does
Speaker 1: count as like relatively mild based on the other military
Speaker 1: officers of his generation in that position. And again, what
Speaker 1: he does in mayficking is mild compared to the fucking
Speaker 1: concentration camps that the Kitchen setting up. Yeah. Um, not again,
Speaker 1: not to whitewash the man to put him in context,
Speaker 1: because for one thing, you should always you can never
Speaker 1: be emphatic enough about how bad the British Empire was,
Speaker 1: and another part because there there actually is a lot
Speaker 1: of inaccurate anti Baiden Powell propaganda out there. Um. One
Speaker 1: of the things people sent me before I did this,
Speaker 1: because they wanted me to do this, was like a
Speaker 1: book that had been written by this guy in which
Speaker 1: he alleges that Robert Baden Powell and Kitchener were both
Speaker 1: like pedophiles on like a grand massively abuse of scale,
Speaker 1: and among other things, alleges that Robert Baden Powell early
Speaker 1: in his career, authorized the execution of two sixteen year
Speaker 1: old Irish soldiers who he's sodomized before murdering, which, like,
Speaker 1: that's pretty bad. That's the thing that happened. Here's the
Speaker 1: thing the book that that allegation comes from, and I
Speaker 1: found it nowhere else. That book was written by a
Speaker 1: guy who also wrote a book alleging that Adolf Hitler
Speaker 1: was a British spy. So well, there is a chain
Speaker 1: of people who are unreasonably anti like it's not unreasonably
Speaker 1: anti British Empire. But who are like anti British Empire
Speaker 1: in a way that's not Yeah, that's like, you know,
Speaker 1: the evil of the British empires and that invented Hitler.
Speaker 1: It's all of the genesize. There's a lot to hate
Speaker 1: about the British Empire. Kitchener didn't like train Adolf Hitler
Speaker 1: to create World War Two to further British profits or
Speaker 1: whatever the funk this guy believes. It's I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's it's in general, it's always okay to
Speaker 1: hate the British Empire. But uh, you know, if your
Speaker 1: sources someone who's like and therefore really Nazism, Brits look
Speaker 1: at it. So yeah, Baden pal probably didn't execute and
Speaker 1: sodomized two sixteen year old Irish soldiers, and you know
Speaker 1: who else probably didn't. It's Sophie. Is that a bad
Speaker 1: way to good ads? It's really bad, I said, probably didn't.
Speaker 1: Probably Somebody somebody on Twitter this week asked me if
Speaker 1: we've ever gone a complaint from sponsors about your transition
Speaker 1: to ads, and like, no, but maybe now, maybe now
Speaker 1: we can just bleep it out. That'll leave people one dring.
Speaker 1: Like the last time we breap something out. Every time
Speaker 1: we've bleeped something out, which is always done just as
Speaker 1: a joke, people get like really conspiratory, like, oh they
Speaker 1: must have gotten the legal threat from this person or
Speaker 1: that person. Know, I thought it was funny. It's funny
Speaker 1: if you bleep things out sometimes than saying them, because
Speaker 1: the mystery box is always funny. Yeah, but yeah, let's
Speaker 1: bleep out that, Sophie and then never explain it. Um,
Speaker 1: other fucker's all right, we're back, Sophie. Come on, professionalism, jesus,
Speaker 1: get it together. You gotta be professional, Sophie. People come
Speaker 1: to us expecting a degree of of of of professitude.
Speaker 1: I think it's yeah, come on, at the very least,
Speaker 1: all my elementary school friends who have reached out to
Speaker 1: say they listened to the show, they told me they
Speaker 1: listened to it for the professionalism. For the professionalism, right,
Speaker 1: that's what we all has ever given me that feedback, Well, well,
Speaker 1: you have the wrong elementary school friends, that's right. So
Speaker 1: I've been saying that for years. Um So, when it
Speaker 1: comes to aspects of Robert baden Pal's early life that
Speaker 1: are relevant to his founding of the Boy Scouts, we
Speaker 1: should probably get into his his sexuality, which is there's
Speaker 1: a lot that's messy here. From one thing, he was
Speaker 1: almost certainly homosexual, that's not questionable. Um. Tim Jail even
Speaker 1: agrees like this, this he was almost certainly gay, right like,
Speaker 1: and this is not uncommon. A significant number of the
Speaker 1: men who build the British Empire. There's a really good
Speaker 1: argument to made that they may have been and possibly
Speaker 1: like celibate home like gay men, because again, it is
Speaker 1: illegal to be gay at this period, Like people go
Speaker 1: to prison for for having homosexual like relationships and stuff.
Speaker 1: It is extremely for and so a lot of these
Speaker 1: guys would I mean, I doubt Biden pal considered himself homosexual,
Speaker 1: but like a lot of the guys who build the Empire,
Speaker 1: are these men who have these who don't like human
Speaker 1: Morton Stanley doesn't like women, is kind of disgusted by
Speaker 1: like the female body, and has all these incredibly intense,
Speaker 1: like loving relationships with men that are probably not sexual like.
Speaker 1: We really don't know, because obviously they wouldn't have written
Speaker 1: about it if it was, because it was a felony. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of this going on in the British Empire.
Speaker 1: And and Baden Powell is almost certainly one of those guys,
Speaker 1: one of those guys who maybe like again I'm certain
Speaker 1: would never have accepted to himself that he was gay,
Speaker 1: probably never had gay sex. We certainly don't have any
Speaker 1: evidence of that. Um. But he loved, he loved, He
Speaker 1: found the male body beautiful and the female body disgusting,
Speaker 1: which like, what what do you like? Take what you
Speaker 1: will out of that. Um. The big debate isn't around
Speaker 1: like was this a guy with like some homosexual like inclinations?
Speaker 1: It is was he also a pedophile? Um? And I
Speaker 1: should be clear upfront because this is going to get
Speaker 1: real murky. We do not have any evidence that he
Speaker 1: was a child molester, and I think I think that's
Speaker 1: unlikely that he ever. But the question is was he
Speaker 1: attracted to kids or was he attracted to just kids?
Speaker 1: Like we really it's it's messy. Um. He definitely had
Speaker 1: some very intense romantic relationships with young men who were adults,
Speaker 1: So it wasn't like whatever his attraction was, it wasn't
Speaker 1: exclusively to kids. If he was attracted to kids, um,
Speaker 1: he seems to have preferred men in their teens like
Speaker 1: sixteen to nineteen, was like his his kind of sweet
Speaker 1: spot I think about, like, well, technically that's not pedophilia,
Speaker 1: no no, but also you can join the military at
Speaker 1: like sixteen, so like it is, there are some I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to like I'm trying to explain this is
Speaker 1: a different kind of culture, and I don't think he
Speaker 1: actually does anything with anything boys like, which also does matter. Um,
Speaker 1: so we'll talk more about this later. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of this is a very murky and and anytime you're
Speaker 1: talking about the sexuality of a man in a period
Speaker 1: in which his likely sexuality was criminalized from what you
Speaker 1: have in his diaries, that's going to be imperfect. But
Speaker 1: it is necessary to discuss because of how the Boy
Speaker 1: Scouts has made in his image and the story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he returns and like the early nine he gets
Speaker 1: back from from the Boer War, and he's a hero,
Speaker 1: one of the most famous men in in the British
Speaker 1: Empire and also just like in the Western world, he's
Speaker 1: incredibly prominent at this point and he is seen as
Speaker 1: a man's man, like he's he's considered handsome. He's this
Speaker 1: war hero, he's like been through a bunch of shit.
Speaker 1: He's legitimately like hard man like he's he's just gone
Speaker 1: through some stuff. Um. One government minister even creates the
Speaker 1: Baden Powell League of Health and Manliness in his honor,
Speaker 1: which is absolutely that is, I think we can all agree,
Speaker 1: the straightest name and organization has ever had. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: incredible after what is most likely a game man. It's
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, the Health and Manliness, Yeah, it's very funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very funny technically civil rights like Yeah, UM members
Speaker 1: were quote expected to do good turns a shoe tobacco
Speaker 1: until they were twenty one, and lead healthy and physically
Speaker 1: strenuous lives. This is according to Tim gel Lead members
Speaker 1: wore badges with pictures of Baden Powell on them. It
Speaker 1: was a huge success. A lot of guys get interested
Speaker 1: in this, uh, and this fact helps to convince Baden
Speaker 1: Powell after he returns home from the war that the
Speaker 1: young men of England are desperate for an organization that
Speaker 1: can give their lives structure and train them up for
Speaker 1: a grand purpose. Yeah, a little bit of that, I
Speaker 1: mean not, but this is really focused on because it's
Speaker 1: not about her. It's not like a really paramilitary it's
Speaker 1: not about like it's about teaching them useful life skills,
Speaker 1: and yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean a big part of
Speaker 1: it is you have England and industrialized rapidly in this period,
Speaker 1: this huge population of young men, many of whom don't
Speaker 1: have fathers because their dad's died in some sort of
Speaker 1: like industrial accident accident, yes, shimney accident. And a bunch
Speaker 1: of them are like, um, they've they've lived in cities
Speaker 1: their whole if they don't know anything about the outdoors,
Speaker 1: They don't know anything about like survival and stuff. And
Speaker 1: he wants to he wants to like teach these people
Speaker 1: useful skills, to give them to like deal with this
Speaker 1: kind of the malaise that's growing under capitalism. You see
Speaker 1: in the US too, like all of these like angry, disaffected,
Speaker 1: miserable urban populations. He sees this, and his answers like, well,
Speaker 1: give them some sort of structure, teach them useful skills,
Speaker 1: get them out of the city, you know, which is
Speaker 1: not a bad idea. Um. Yeah, from Scouts Honor the
Speaker 1: book quote Biden Pale had always gotten along with children.
Speaker 1: His love for children is perhaps his ruling passion. One
Speaker 1: journalist wrote of his work in Africa, he is never
Speaker 1: happier than when surrounded by them. They surrounded him back
Speaker 1: home as well, as he stepped into the effort to
Speaker 1: strengthen England's young men physically, mentally and spiritually. Youth brigades
Speaker 1: and clubs were sprouting all over. In n Baden, Powell
Speaker 1: rewrote aids to Scouting for n c O S and Men,
Speaker 1: which he had originally written for soldiers, to make it
Speaker 1: suitable for boys. Several of Baiden Pal's friends had been
Speaker 1: suggesting the rewrite as well as the creation of an
Speaker 1: outdoor boys club, so that summer, Biden Powell and an
Speaker 1: army friend ran the first boy scout camp to see
Speaker 1: how the idea would work. So this is kind of
Speaker 1: the genesis of this, and it's happening. A lot of
Speaker 1: stuff is happening in culture these and there's other boys
Speaker 1: clubs kind of starting up. And he has this idea
Speaker 1: to take these scouting guides that he wrote for soldiers
Speaker 1: in Africa, rewrite them for little kids and give them
Speaker 1: a place to actually get out of the city and
Speaker 1: learn this stuff. Yeah, I mean just uh so not
Speaker 1: the proud boys, but more like uh like the Hitler youth. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in fact Biden Pale is really interested in the
Speaker 1: Hitler Youth. Now there's a lot of arguments like whether
Speaker 1: or not, and he said a lot of nasty stuff
Speaker 1: about Hitler. I don't know that. I don't think I
Speaker 1: wouldn't call him a Nazi, but there's certainly elements of
Speaker 1: his belief system that we're like friendly with some early
Speaker 1: aspects of fascism, Like he was very intrigued by the
Speaker 1: Hitler youth. Though in fairness, the Nazis considered the Boy
Speaker 1: Scouts a subversive organization, so like there's a lot going
Speaker 1: on there. We're not gonna get into that much. You
Speaker 1: can find a lot written about it. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: like Delvin and take a side on this like historical
Speaker 1: debate of how sympathetic was he like with whatever. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: that account from a book written critical The Scout's Honor
Speaker 1: is written about sexual abuse within the Boy Scouts. Like
Speaker 1: based on the title, you might think it was like
Speaker 1: a pro Boy Scouts history. It is not assumed. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was written in ninete I think it was the
Speaker 1: early nineties, And that account of like how the Boy
Speaker 1: Scouts get started is generally in line with the story
Speaker 1: that I heard growing up but the actual origins of
Speaker 1: the Boy Scouts are a bit more complex and more
Speaker 1: rooted in cultural appropriation and also outright theft. Biden Powell
Speaker 1: is not the only founder of the Boy Scouts. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go into too much to tail about
Speaker 1: this because it's not relevant to the actual story we're telling,
Speaker 1: but it is worth noting that in nineteen o two,
Speaker 1: so that's like five years before Biden Powell rewrites his
Speaker 1: book about Scouting, an American named Ernest Thompson Seaton had
Speaker 1: some property vandalized by rambunctious boys, and instead of punishing them,
Speaker 1: he invited them onto his land for the weekend, and
Speaker 1: he taught them like some camping stuff, and he claimed
Speaker 1: all of these like this, like woodcraft he was teaching.
Speaker 1: He claimed like Native American like wilderness lore and whatnot.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of it's just stuff he'd learned.
Speaker 1: And he was like making up stories that weren't true,
Speaker 1: because like stories about Native America, and he would tell
Speaker 1: them like folk stories about Native Americans. Again, I don't
Speaker 1: know how much of any of this was accurate. He's
Speaker 1: certainly appropriating it because again he's as white as they come. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: I don't know how accurate any of this was. In
Speaker 1: any case, the weekend was a hit. This is like
Speaker 1: really successful, and he thinks it helps these boys out,
Speaker 1: so he keeps doing it and he eventually forms an
Speaker 1: organization that he called the Woodcraft Indians. This was so
Speaker 1: successful it gets very popular. I think it's particularly like
Speaker 1: the eastern chunk of the US that after a couple
Speaker 1: of years he writes a book called The Birch Bark Role,
Speaker 1: which lays out his lessons and boys, and it's all
Speaker 1: routed like here's Native American wisdom for you know, white
Speaker 1: boys who want to learn how to be woodsman. Seaton
Speaker 1: was successful enough that this this word of what he
Speaker 1: was doing across the pond. And in nineteen o six
Speaker 1: Seaton traveled to England to give Robert Baden Powell a
Speaker 1: copy of his book, and Baden Powell may have gone
Speaker 1: to the United States to attend one of his um
Speaker 1: his birch Bark gatherings. It was a huge influence on
Speaker 1: scouting for boys. We have letters from Baden Powell saying
Speaker 1: like I'm taking a lot of what like you put
Speaker 1: in this book into like the thing that I'm writing. UM.
Speaker 1: And when the Boy Scouts as an organization were created
Speaker 1: in nineteen ten. They were heavily influenced by the structure
Speaker 1: of the Woodcraft tribe. Seton was angry for years. He
Speaker 1: gets really angry that the idea has been stolen, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of debate as to how true that was.
Speaker 1: People will point out that Baden Powell, he'd had boys
Speaker 1: organizations that he'd been involved with before. He'd clearly been
Speaker 1: playing with this idea before. Yeah, I've been hanging out
Speaker 1: with little boys. I love happened hanging out with boys
Speaker 1: before you were born exactly. Um. But today Seton is
Speaker 1: recognized even by the b s A as one of
Speaker 1: the founders of the Boy Scouts, and it's there's some
Speaker 1: people who argue that, like, he was kind of more
Speaker 1: left wing and that like the Boy Scouts wind up
Speaker 1: being kind of right wing because Baden Powell dominates it.
Speaker 1: I don't know how accurate I think that is. Kaseton
Speaker 1: is like, again a ton of cultural appropriation here. I
Speaker 1: think that people have a tendency to kind of like
Speaker 1: idolize him over much. Um. Yeah. I will note that
Speaker 1: while Seton definitely like did a lot of cultural appropriation
Speaker 1: to make his organization. I don't have any evidence that
Speaker 1: he deliberately enabled a culture of child sex abuse, which
Speaker 1: Robert Biden Pale absolutely did. So if you've got to
Speaker 1: pick a favorite Boy Scout founder, I do think I
Speaker 1: I pick cultural appropriation over child molestation. I think I
Speaker 1: think I'm gonna give it to that. Yeah, there are levels.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're both problematic. We can say that they're
Speaker 1: they're they're definitely both problemat Bullbard grounds for a cancelation,
Speaker 1: but one more so than a yeah. I think if
Speaker 1: i'm if I'm if I'm prepping the cancel canon, I'm
Speaker 1: going for the guy who enabled child molestation on a
Speaker 1: massive scale first. Probably good speaking of child molestation and
Speaker 1: a massive scale, that shouldn't be an ad break, should it.
Speaker 1: So um, back to Baden Powell. Let's get back to
Speaker 1: Baden Pale. So he writes aids to Scouting for n
Speaker 1: c O S and Men in nineteen oh seven, and
Speaker 1: shortly thereafter that same summer they start the first boy
Speaker 1: Scout camp, and the Boy Scouts aren't an organization, is
Speaker 1: to in nineteen ten, they're kind of like testing out, Like,
Speaker 1: let's get a bunch of boys on the land. Let's
Speaker 1: teach him. Let's see if this is like actually a
Speaker 1: good idea, if kids like it, if it's if it's
Speaker 1: got legs. Basically, um, this is their beta test um.
Speaker 1: So they bring a bunch of boys to the land,
Speaker 1: this land they've got. They spend a week with them hiking,
Speaker 1: teaching them how to make tents, and according to the
Speaker 1: book Scouts Honor quote, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: there were rubbed downs and stories around the campfire. So
Speaker 1: that's that's potentially problematic and potentially problematic. The stories around
Speaker 1: the campfire was fine. It was just like it's the rubdowns.
Speaker 1: It's the rub down, rubdowns, rubdowns and stories maybe no
Speaker 1: rubdowns bars and like running hands through the hair of children.
Speaker 1: And then also like looking at the stars. I think
Speaker 1: a couple of things can be true. One is that
Speaker 1: we currently have a problem in our culture where like
Speaker 1: men who feel like called to teach young boys things
Speaker 1: like mentor young boys, they get like unfairly accused, and
Speaker 1: like people get suspicious as like I would a man
Speaker 1: like carabouit, which is it's actually good for for men
Speaker 1: to like care about the mental ring and child not
Speaker 1: bad having actually rubbed downs rub downs is a line,
Speaker 1: is a line that has been crossed when you're doing
Speaker 1: rub downs of the boys in your care things have
Speaker 1: things have crossed the line in my opinion, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: rub downs cross that line on the head little yeah,
Speaker 1: And I guess yeah, I don't. You could argue that
Speaker 1: the rub downs were not like necessarily sexualist all because
Speaker 1: I don't know, like what, but certainly you're on a
Speaker 1: line there, you're you're, you're, you're, you're at an uncomfortable point.
Speaker 1: It's a gray area, that rubbed down area. However far
Speaker 1: these went, Biden Powell seemed to get something intensely powerful
Speaker 1: out of the experience. His widow would later tell an
Speaker 1: interviewer that though he'd spoken at many youth groups since
Speaker 1: his return from the war, quote, this was different. These
Speaker 1: boys were his his for a week, to work with,
Speaker 1: to play with, to learn from, and if his ideas
Speaker 1: were right, to guide, to influence, to mold. So again,
Speaker 1: I know, like, I know, playing with kids it's good,
Speaker 1: it is, it's good. It's good to care about seconds
Speaker 1: sentence I'd like you to delete it. Just you can't
Speaker 1: say these problematic play with like activities do act do
Speaker 1: activities with kids? Yeah? God, the language around it is
Speaker 1: very difficult. He took his strong feelings during this week
Speaker 1: as a sign that his new calling was to mentor boys.
Speaker 1: In nineteen o eight, he published his rewritten book as
Speaker 1: Scouting for Boys, and this included within the Scout Oath,
Speaker 1: which is on my honor, I will do my best
Speaker 1: to do my duty for God in my country and
Speaker 1: to obey the Scout law to help other people at
Speaker 1: all times times to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake,
Speaker 1: and morally straight. Um, that's a famous and the scout
Speaker 1: law is uh that a bunch of ships about the helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave,
Speaker 1: clean reverend like all that ship that's like this is
Speaker 1: still like rubbed downs. Morally straight baby, Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: if there's one person who screams straight to me, it's
Speaker 1: Robert Paton, a straight manly guy. That's a straight manly
Speaker 1: man right there. You will generally run into a few
Speaker 1: different theories as to what the overall purpose of scouting was.
Speaker 1: The sinister theory is best summarized by this passage from
Speaker 1: an Irish Times article quote. For him, the boy Scout
Speaker 1: movement was an unarmed, paramilitary expression of the empire. So
Speaker 1: that's one angle that he's trying to train up the
Speaker 1: soldiers of the future, right, He's getting boys ready to
Speaker 1: fight for the British Empire. Biographer Michael Rosenthal shares this opinion, writing,
Speaker 1: all of Scouting can be properly understood as Baden Powell
Speaker 1: himself understood it as an organization expressly designed to churn
Speaker 1: out admirable obedient lads. Scouting sought to guarantee for society
Speaker 1: the complete submission of its members. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: to be said. We won't get into enough about like
Speaker 1: World War One's impact on Scouting, because a huge chunk
Speaker 1: of the British soldiers who die in World War One
Speaker 1: were former Boy Scouts and kind of one of the
Speaker 1: It had been very British up to World War One,
Speaker 1: and it becomes much more international after that point and
Speaker 1: much less kind of dedicated to specifically British imperialism. And
Speaker 1: I don't I don't really know enough about like did
Speaker 1: Biden Powell look at like how gung ho all these
Speaker 1: young men were to go have an adventure overseas that
Speaker 1: lead in getting mowed down by machine guns, fire and
Speaker 1: sucked into mud and be like shit because other people
Speaker 1: who were like are like Teddy Roosevelt is like horrified
Speaker 1: by world. Like one of his kids dies there who
Speaker 1: he like really pushes to go fight and like dies
Speaker 1: horribly and he's like a Jesus. A lot of people
Speaker 1: have I thought this is gonna be simple, like the
Speaker 1: Philippines or whatever. Yeah, Ruard Kipling has kind of a
Speaker 1: similar like like it has this like profoundly almost radicalizing
Speaker 1: experience at Kipling. Kipling's a fascinating guy wrote some really
Speaker 1: like some of the most imperialist ship ever written, and
Speaker 1: also some like really profoundly anti imperialist stuff about like
Speaker 1: you know, groups of of of like indigenous people like
Speaker 1: destroying empires and stuff and like all this like fascinating dude,
Speaker 1: so um. Tim Gel, on the other hand, writes that
Speaker 1: biden Pal's purpose was more protective than this uh quote.
Speaker 1: Adult life was full of dangers. Women could deprave them,
Speaker 1: politicians mislead them, and gambling and drunkenness could wreck their lives.
Speaker 1: But in his boy's only world, he would counteract these
Speaker 1: dangers with hiking, camping, cheery, sing songs, and other safe activities.
Speaker 1: And I think both these views are probably accurate. I
Speaker 1: think biden Pal did legitimately care about the health and
Speaker 1: well being of boys, and he wanted to help them
Speaker 1: grow up healthy. He was fiercely protective of them. I
Speaker 1: also think he wanted them to become good little soldiers
Speaker 1: of empire because he was an imperial. Um. He probably
Speaker 1: because he thought that was a good thing. It's not
Speaker 1: like that that wasn't sinister for him now. And I
Speaker 1: was like, yes, you know, this is what men are
Speaker 1: supposed to do. You will, yeah, men, men are supposed
Speaker 1: to learn how to like carve things into would make
Speaker 1: macaroni pictures and uh fucking you know in depressed indigenous
Speaker 1: people's right exactly for the wealth of you know whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: It's also kind of worth noting here that um biden
Speaker 1: Peal grew up fatherless. As we stated, he never had
Speaker 1: a father, and he a big part of his angles.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of kids in in Great Britain in
Speaker 1: this period who who don't have fathers. And part of
Speaker 1: his goal for the Boy Scouts, which is an admirable
Speaker 1: goal for an organization, is to provide He wanted to
Speaker 1: train up hundreds of Scout masters who could act as
Speaker 1: like surrogate fathers two children, um, who didn't have them.
Speaker 1: So like, okay, if you're a single mom, you're kind
Speaker 1: of struggling to figure out how to raise a boy.
Speaker 1: This organization will provide him with healthy male mentorship, right, Um,
Speaker 1: which is certainly the Boys and Girls Club. There's kind
Speaker 1: of similar themes in a bunch of good organizations. It's
Speaker 1: not a bad idea. Um. However, Um, there's also problematic
Speaker 1: aspects of this um because one of the reasons he
Speaker 1: thinks that he needs to train up scout masters to
Speaker 1: be surrogate fathers for the boys of Britain's um is
Speaker 1: that because quote except where the scout masters take the
Speaker 1: father's place, the boys have no one to consult on
Speaker 1: intimate subjects. So from the beginning he's like, well, what
Speaker 1: you know, obviously they need they need a man in
Speaker 1: their lives to teach them, you know, manly things, but
Speaker 1: also like to talk about sex. This is from the beginning, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is not again, yes, not necessary, but maybe not
Speaker 1: this way. Yeah, I think it's nothing wrong with talking
Speaker 1: to your kids about fucking. But having said that sentence,
Speaker 1: an adult and generally an adult of the these semigen
Speaker 1: gender identity, they have to talk to them about sex.
Speaker 1: That's a good thing, I think, I mean, yeah, it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just depends on where we're going. But there it
Speaker 1: can go very wrong, is the point. And so like yeah, again,
Speaker 1: all of the all of the family is this stuff
Speaker 1: where it's like, yeah, but where are we going? Where?
Speaker 1: Which where are you gonna take this? Because and this
Speaker 1: is one of the things some scholars will point is
Speaker 1: that one of the groundbreaking things about the Boy Scouts
Speaker 1: is that it was the only really organization of its
Speaker 1: size and popular culture that explicit was like, we are
Speaker 1: one of the things we're here to do is to
Speaker 1: talk to young men about sex, about their sexual development, right,
Speaker 1: which is progressive. But and we're going to get to
Speaker 1: the butt. But first, you know what else is sexually progressive,
Speaker 1: matt You know what else gets straight to the butt?
Speaker 1: The products and services that support this guest. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think what the funniest add it could be? Right now?
Speaker 1: For sure, the means days it is fun to like
Speaker 1: chart the growth of podcasts in the areas of ads,
Speaker 1: like I came of age during the during the mattress. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: remember when we used to get free things. I got
Speaker 1: two free mattresses. It was rad Ah. We're back and
Speaker 1: we're all just having a great time talking about a
Speaker 1: guy who's not at all deeply problematic. They're going to
Speaker 1: be able to cut out snippets of this podcast and
Speaker 1: cancel me for generations. Oh yeah, no, you you are
Speaker 1: going to be canceled well into the twenty third century. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when the Federation of Planets starts up, there's going to
Speaker 1: be a Galaxy class starship named the Cancelation of matt Leeb.
Speaker 1: Just where I think it's good to play with kids,
Speaker 1: that's the noise it makes when it goes into warp.
Speaker 1: Good times. So, the fact that one of the purposes
Speaker 1: of scouting is to provide boys with male mentors who
Speaker 1: can talk to them about intimate issues, one of the
Speaker 1: things that this means is that naturally the Scout masters,
Speaker 1: who are mostly volunteers that Biden Powell is bringing in,
Speaker 1: are going to have to talk to boys about sexual
Speaker 1: issues like masturbation. Um. And again, this was somewhat revolutionary
Speaker 1: for its day, but it's also worth knowing that, like
Speaker 1: the fact that they're talking about this is revolutionary, their
Speaker 1: attitude towards it is profoundly conservative. Abstinence is the only
Speaker 1: thing ever encouraged. But at the same time, the mere
Speaker 1: fact that their literature addressed masturbation as a topic was
Speaker 1: kind of progressive for the era. Yeah, they talked about
Speaker 1: the existence of it. Yeah, this is not a good
Speaker 1: thing necessarily, As we discussed Baden Pal's impulse to discuss
Speaker 1: boys sexuality came from a really problematic place. But I
Speaker 1: want to read you his advice on masturbation as it
Speaker 1: was written for the first draft of his book on Scouting,
Speaker 1: because I know this is something you need in your life. Please,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be fun to list. Let me get
Speaker 1: my my old timmy voice got ready. You all know
Speaker 1: what it is to have, at times a pleasant feeling
Speaker 1: in your private parts, and there comes an inclination to
Speaker 1: work it up with your hand. The result of self abuses.
Speaker 1: Always mind you, always that the boy after a time
Speaker 1: becomes weak and nervous and shy. He gets headaches and
Speaker 1: probably palpitations of the heart, and if he carries it
Speaker 1: on too far, he very often goes out of his
Speaker 1: mind and becomes an idiot. A very large number of
Speaker 1: lunatics and our asylums have made themselves mad by indulging
Speaker 1: in this vice, although at one time they were sensible,
Speaker 1: cheery boys like you. Jesus. First of all, that was
Speaker 1: like the carnival carnival barker from hell me not to
Speaker 1: jerk off. I do. I do love the idea of
Speaker 1: like the well, you know, if you jerk off too
Speaker 1: much you become insane, because it's a theory so easily disproven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just generated by the sanest man in the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to figure out what the funny yeah, Madly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there we go. I mean it's it's also we should
Speaker 1: I should note. I'm sure our regular listeners will caught
Speaker 1: this if he listened. Like the Kellogg episodes, He's not
Speaker 1: inventing this stuff. He is when he talks about masturbation
Speaker 1: in this way, he is actually like sharing mainstream medical conclusions,
Speaker 1: Like the mainstream of the medical establishment in this period
Speaker 1: broadly agrees with everything he said. Um so this is
Speaker 1: not like Biden. Pal isn't introducing this, although he is.
Speaker 1: It is unique that he is as like a youth
Speaker 1: group leader talking trying to talk about this so openly.
Speaker 1: Now that passage I just read doesn't get published in
Speaker 1: the first boy Scout Manual. His publisher is like, wait
Speaker 1: a second, why are you talking about masturbating so much
Speaker 1: of this book? Um, I have some notes? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: have some note is good? The whole section about about
Speaker 1: it coming jerking off. Maybe trim that down quick. It's
Speaker 1: going to affect book sales. Yeah, So they rework it
Speaker 1: to make this much vaguer, simply cautioning children not to
Speaker 1: touch themselves and noting that if they feel an urge
Speaker 1: to do so, this is critical quote, go to your
Speaker 1: father or your scout master and talk it over with him,
Speaker 1: and all will come right. So that could be problematic
Speaker 1: right there. Yeah, having these children, If you want to masturbate,
Speaker 1: go to your volunteer unvetted scout master and he'll teach
Speaker 1: you how to come right. You can see this is
Speaker 1: a situation which if the wrong kind of people become
Speaker 1: Scout masters, this could be a profoundly abusive situation. A
Speaker 1: lot of trust, a lot of trust in these scout masters. Probably, yes, yea,
Speaker 1: So it's here we should probably again discuss the sexuality
Speaker 1: of Robert Baden Powell in a little more detail. So
Speaker 1: again Tim gel is convinced that he was gay and
Speaker 1: the strongest piece of evidence for this is that when
Speaker 1: he was in the army, he falls madly in love
Speaker 1: with a young army officer, again, an adult named Kenneth McLaren,
Speaker 1: who he called the Boy. Now again, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like we might have called I think I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if Kenneth was like eighteen, but like he was, he
Speaker 1: was an officer in the army. He was an adult
Speaker 1: kind of by the standards of the time, right, Um,
Speaker 1: calling him the boy is just probably that's a term
Speaker 1: of endearment people who were like in their mid thirties.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, those kids over there, Yeah, those fucking kids. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's probably fine. Yeah. Geal calls this Baden Powell's
Speaker 1: only close friendship in his entire life, like this is
Speaker 1: like a really unique relationship with him, which right there
Speaker 1: says something. The two bunked together, which also says something
Speaker 1: they vacation together, they exchanged gifts, and when the boy
Speaker 1: was captured by Bowers during the siege of maf King,
Speaker 1: Baden Powell had to be stopped from trying to rescue him.
Speaker 1: Jeal calls this an emotionally homosexual relationship because there's no
Speaker 1: actual evidence that these two funcked and again, given a
Speaker 1: lot of this is not an uncommon kind of relationship,
Speaker 1: maybe they did. That's also total I'm sure a lot
Speaker 1: of these guys that we just don't know if it
Speaker 1: was just emotional or if they actually, like I'm sure
Speaker 1: a lot of them did and just couldn't say anything
Speaker 1: because you'd go to prison maybe, like I don't. But
Speaker 1: also that you can't overstate how repressed they are, like
Speaker 1: would they even have known? How? Like really would they
Speaker 1: even have known? How? You can't you can't entirely the
Speaker 1: impulses because human beings are human beings are the same
Speaker 1: as they've always been. Their understanding of like ways in
Speaker 1: which to handle those impulses that is cultural and like
Speaker 1: it is you you can't entirely get in their heads
Speaker 1: just given the fact that like you know that, like
Speaker 1: you know, like the basics of like how sodomy works, right,
Speaker 1: Like that that's like a thing you can do. Like
Speaker 1: who knows what these guys know? Um, it is true,
Speaker 1: like even straight British people are just edging at like
Speaker 1: like who knows what these people know about fucking kissing?
Speaker 1: Like like this is an incredibly repressed not just time,
Speaker 1: but like class, because these are the upper crust. These
Speaker 1: have only ever like I don't know what, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Like again, it's it's it's hard to get too much
Speaker 1: in anybody's head here because like, um, their understanding of
Speaker 1: like what is possible in a relationship between two men
Speaker 1: physically is just at such a different level. There's no internet,
Speaker 1: you know, not that there's not ways, there is pornography,
Speaker 1: there are like wait, Oscar Wilde exists in this period,
Speaker 1: Like it's not impossible to figure it out. There's some
Speaker 1: books on it. You can in fact figure this ship out.
Speaker 1: But I don't know what these guys knew. Um. And
Speaker 1: these are very common, you know, among kinds of the
Speaker 1: imperialist class who are actually like doing the ship overseas. Um.
Speaker 1: Biden Powe did get married kind of later in life.
Speaker 1: He had a couple of kids, but among other things,
Speaker 1: he was noted to regularly sleep outside on the porch
Speaker 1: because he couldn't bear to be near his wife. So
Speaker 1: again that it could because he's gay, it could be
Speaker 1: because she's just sucked. I don't know. I mean so
Speaker 1: like I've seen British people, it's just a yeah, it's
Speaker 1: an island full of Jesus Christ. Wow. Wow, every British
Speaker 1: person is ugly as except for like wow, Chris throw
Speaker 1: in three or four random bleeps in that sentence just
Speaker 1: to make it even even more mysterious. So Gill concludes
Speaker 1: that Biden Powell's intimate diaries reveal a revotion towards naked
Speaker 1: women and a fascination with naked male bodies. Quote from
Speaker 1: the book Scouts Honor. In his advice to boys, Biden
Speaker 1: Powell treated women as a hazard to be avoided, again
Speaker 1: not uncommon for the time. He mocked boys for girlitis
Speaker 1: if they paired off with young ladies, and wrote that
Speaker 1: young fellows are apt to excite their lust by talking
Speaker 1: about love or toying about with girls. But this is
Speaker 1: all bad for you, rovering for to success. One of
Speaker 1: his books for boys includes a apter titled Women, in
Speaker 1: which he warns about the rutting season, that time when
Speaker 1: a boy is growing to manhood and finds himself obsessed
Speaker 1: by lust. He was writing about puberty, but compared it
Speaker 1: to an illness. He said it would last only a
Speaker 1: few months, sometimes a couple of years, and told boys
Speaker 1: to get over it, just as they would get over
Speaker 1: the measles or any other youthful complaint. Boy. An entire
Speaker 1: chapter just dedicated to talking about how girls have cooties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and girls have cooties and you don't need to fuck
Speaker 1: yeah exactly. He noted, with remarkably little excitement, that most
Speaker 1: boys would get married at some point, and like he
Speaker 1: was kind of like, yeah, like you want to delay
Speaker 1: this as long as possible. You'll probably get married because
Speaker 1: it's the only way to carry out the creator's law,
Speaker 1: that is to make children. Right. But that's all that
Speaker 1: women are, Like, they're not a partner, they're not there's
Speaker 1: nothing attractive about this. It's just the only way. That's
Speaker 1: his attitude. Um, and yeah. He repeatedly stated that women's
Speaker 1: bodies were repellent, just as he wrote about how wonderfully
Speaker 1: made the bodies of young men and boys were. As
Speaker 1: the boy Scouts got off the ground, he engineered many
Speaker 1: opportunities to watch naked boys. Much of this happened at
Speaker 1: scout camps, where nude swimming was traditional. And this is
Speaker 1: normal in swimming in general, Like there's a lot of
Speaker 1: nude swimming in England. Um, but he liked this a lot.
Speaker 1: He repeatedly described naked boys at the swimming hole as
Speaker 1: a delightful sight, as yummy. This did start to like
Speaker 1: I said, this was kind of normal in the world.
Speaker 1: He grew up and it started to change in this period,
Speaker 1: and in fact, during this period the police in London
Speaker 1: band boys from swimming naked in Hyde Park Lake. Um
Speaker 1: Baden Powell is enraged by this and he writes, how
Speaker 1: my boy, he writes, fersct dog, I will build my
Speaker 1: own lake. And they were all women. A woman walks
Speaker 1: by in a in a long erson He's like, oh God,
Speaker 1: get that away from me. In human creature woman. He's
Speaker 1: probably he was as a younger man at least at
Speaker 1: least people at the time consider that everybody always gives
Speaker 1: me shit if they don't find like I'm just saying.
Speaker 1: People at the time wrote that he was, and in
Speaker 1: fact there are women at the time who right, he's
Speaker 1: very handsome, but women like he seems to have no
Speaker 1: interest in women like other people note this about him, yeah,
Speaker 1: and also some of his like if you look at
Speaker 1: into like this guy, I don't see why people would
Speaker 1: find this handsome. He's a war hero, which has an
Speaker 1: impact on people. Um So when the police in London
Speaker 1: band boys from swimming naked in Hyde Park Lake. Baden
Speaker 1: Powe writes a column for Scout magazine suggesting that Scout
Speaker 1: masters quote educate the boy by encouraging his self expression
Speaker 1: instead of disciplining him by police methods of repression. It's
Speaker 1: because it's self expression is naked bathing. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: there's like part of me where it's just like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's ridiculous to, you know, penalize people for skin
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to arrest to someone for skinny dipping.
Speaker 1: But like, you're not coming at this from a holy place, Robert,
Speaker 1: He's not at all about self expression. No, no, well
Speaker 1: there goes my fucking shotter day. I was gonna put
Speaker 1: on my loosest pants and walk down to hide bark.
Speaker 1: I got a plate everything. So he's just a crab.
Speaker 1: This is what gets him. A cat's then bringing out
Speaker 1: bathing suits for the boys on the Mommies. So one
Speaker 1: of one of Baden Pale's friends at this time is
Speaker 1: a teacher named A. H. Todd. H Todd's hobby was
Speaker 1: taking pictures of nude boys. He called them figure studies.
Speaker 1: But the library he donated his album too after his
Speaker 1: death destroyed all of these photographs in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: to quote protect Todd's reputation, because these pictures were not
Speaker 1: in fact artistic figure studies. They were child pornography. Um
Speaker 1: gal I think fall short of calling them child porn.
Speaker 1: But he does note that the poses of the nude
Speaker 1: boys and these photos were quote contrived and artificial, And
Speaker 1: he notes that they're artificial and contrived in the same
Speaker 1: way as the poses of naked women at the time
Speaker 1: that were sold as art. But we're really softcore pornography, right.
Speaker 1: Porn you couldn't get, but you could get these art
Speaker 1: photos that were based that functioned as born That's kind
Speaker 1: of what this guy is doing. But for little boy, well,
Speaker 1: I think they're like young boys at least certainly definitely
Speaker 1: drind of some store. I don't know the exact atrians.
Speaker 1: In all cases, Baden Pale spent quite a lot of
Speaker 1: time with Todd. In nineteen nineteen, he stayed at the
Speaker 1: man's home and wrote Todd's photos of naked boys and trees,
Speaker 1: etcetera excellent. He has people swimming in ponds, he has
Speaker 1: a boy playing with himself, he has a bag, he
Speaker 1: has fruit sitting on a table he has two boys
Speaker 1: playing with himselfs oh god. So he goes to hang
Speaker 1: out with todd for a night or two and he
Speaker 1: looks at his his his picture book, and he immediately
Speaker 1: as soon as he gets home, he sends Toddle a
Speaker 1: letter asking if he can visit again, and noting, possibly
Speaker 1: I might get a further look at those wonderful photographs
Speaker 1: of yours. It's pretty fucked up. Christ. Yeah, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I'm imagining that dude sliding into people's d m s
Speaker 1: because sometimes on Twitter, just see like people will post
Speaker 1: screen caps of of like thirsty dudes sliding into other
Speaker 1: d m s, and it sounds very similar. Do I
Speaker 1: have to be a subscriber to only fans to see
Speaker 1: the little Boy pictures? Again? Yeah? And again, there's no
Speaker 1: evidence or even allegations whatsoever that Robert baden Pell himself
Speaker 1: assaulted any boys. Um. I think there was a lot
Speaker 1: of gross lasciviousness going on. I think there's evidence he
Speaker 1: enjoyed child pornography. I don't think he physically. Again, I
Speaker 1: don't know that he ever had sex other than the
Speaker 1: three times necessary with his wife to conceive children. Um,
Speaker 1: because he was a repressed motherfucker. So like right, Um,
Speaker 1: in this case, maybe that was good because it doesn't
Speaker 1: it seems likely he never personally abused any boys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like like with repression, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: largely bad except in very few except for maybe in
Speaker 1: this case it helped out. But although not really because
Speaker 1: while he personally probably didn't, I can obviously category orically
Speaker 1: say anything. Um. He absolutely encouraged the nudity of young boys.
Speaker 1: He also in Scouts, and he encouraged those young boys
Speaker 1: to go to their Scout masters to discuss sex, nakedness
Speaker 1: and masturbation. A not insignificant number of those men turned
Speaker 1: out to be child molesters, and how Robert Baden Powell
Speaker 1: dealt with those men was telling. Scouting rapidly grew larger.
Speaker 1: It became an international organization like a decade or so.
Speaker 1: It spreads all over the world. It gets very big,
Speaker 1: very quickly. This brought up a need for an ever
Speaker 1: expanding pool of men to work as Scout masters. These
Speaker 1: were volunteers, unpaid volunteers, which is quite a lot of
Speaker 1: work to ask if someone who has no ulterior motives
Speaker 1: for doing the job. Right, My scout masters were just
Speaker 1: like really nice people who who loved the outdoors and
Speaker 1: wanted to teach kids. I don't think there's ever been
Speaker 1: any allegations against them. I certainly never experienced anything. Those
Speaker 1: people are happen um. But also there are people who
Speaker 1: joined the Boy Scouts because like, oh, I can be
Speaker 1: alone with a lot of naked boys and I can
Speaker 1: do things. You know, that is a major thing happening now. Again,
Speaker 1: as propresses the time was, people are not ignorant of
Speaker 1: the fact that there are child molesters in the world.
Speaker 1: There are people within the Boy Scouts and within like
Speaker 1: the government who are like interface with the Voice Outs,
Speaker 1: who recognized this as a risk, who see what Biden
Speaker 1: pals are like, well, if the wrong person became a
Speaker 1: Scout master, he could really hurt a lot of boys. Um.
Speaker 1: And they go to Baiden Powell and they're like, the
Speaker 1: Boy Scouts need to set up a way to screen
Speaker 1: volunteers in order to protect kids. We have to have
Speaker 1: something right. We have to attempt to stop people who
Speaker 1: might hurt these kids. And crucially, Robert Baden Powell said
Speaker 1: no quote and this is from a letter he wrote,
Speaker 1: I don't think we ought to make the test of
Speaker 1: Scout masters too stringent for fear of putting them off again.
Speaker 1: It's expanding rapidly. It can only expand as much as
Speaker 1: there are adult volunteers. He doesn't want to He doesn't
Speaker 1: want to slow the expansion of the organization by making
Speaker 1: sure that there are pedophiles in the rings. And obviously,
Speaker 1: how do you do a pedophile test? Though you know,
Speaker 1: even if he had cared, I'm sure it would have
Speaker 1: it would have fallen short people and it was a
Speaker 1: net able. And this is the kind of thing. The
Speaker 1: Voice Scouts are not evil because some men who got
Speaker 1: into the organization mollisted kids. That in an organization that
Speaker 1: it is peak has like seven million kids, some of
Speaker 1: the adult volunteers are going to molest some of those kids.
Speaker 1: That is inevitable, just it's scaled. It in a town
Speaker 1: of seven million people, some of the adults will molest children.
Speaker 1: That is inevitable. That is not doesn't mean the organizations evil.
Speaker 1: What is evil is the way that they deal with it,
Speaker 1: or rather fail to deal with it. And that his
Speaker 1: evil is that like again, if he had attempted to
Speaker 1: screen for this and just failed, that would been like,
Speaker 1: well he tried and what like yeah, how could you?
Speaker 1: How do you screen for this? Right? This is an
Speaker 1: ongoing conversation we as a civilization continue to have. The
Speaker 1: problem is not that he failed in screening them. The
Speaker 1: problem is, like, I don't think screening is a good
Speaker 1: idea because it's going to slow down our expansion. Right,
Speaker 1: that's the issue. Um, sound now like an imperialist mindset
Speaker 1: and I love Yeah exactly, Yeah, yeah, it's all about
Speaker 1: that growth. Yep. Now, the fact that damn near any
Speaker 1: adult man could become a Scout man master becomes an
Speaker 1: issue as the organization ages and expands. In a nineteen
Speaker 1: book about Scouting in British schools, one headmaster said quote,
Speaker 1: one of the weak spots in the Scout movement generally,
Speaker 1: it seems to me, is that there is no guarantee
Speaker 1: of the capacity or character of the scout master. Any
Speaker 1: man or callow youth could get together a number of boys,
Speaker 1: formed them into a Scout troop and become their scout master,
Speaker 1: and there was no safeguard whatsoever against his being a
Speaker 1: man of most pernicious influence. So again, when we talk
Speaker 1: about like damning people by the standards of their time,
Speaker 1: people raise the alarm from the beginning of the Boy Scouts,
Speaker 1: people are telling Robert Baden Powell, you were not being
Speaker 1: careful enough with these boys, and he does not listen.
Speaker 1: These concerns proved absolutely valid within biden Pal's lifetime. In
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty three, a Scout master was caught molesting a
Speaker 1: boy at the camp that Baden But like Baden Pal's camp,
Speaker 1: he gets sentenced. He gets caught by the police and
Speaker 1: he is sentenced to three years in prison. Now, when
Speaker 1: this had this big story, obviously right like this gets out.
Speaker 1: This isn't like hushed up. And biden Pal writes a
Speaker 1: column in The Scouter, which is like the adult Boy Scout.
Speaker 1: It's a magazine for the adult leaders within the Boy Scouts.
Speaker 1: And in this column he is effusive in his condemnation
Speaker 1: of the man. He noted that if the law had
Speaker 1: let him, he would have punished the man by flogging.
Speaker 1: In the same article, he correctly notes that the abuse
Speaker 1: of these children by the Scout master was a failure
Speaker 1: of the Boy Scouts to honor their grave responsibility of
Speaker 1: ensuring the safety of boys, But at the same time
Speaker 1: he describes the sexual abuse of a child by a
Speaker 1: Scout master as a man going too far in quote sentimentalism,
Speaker 1: what the fuck? What the fuck? Indeed? That what the fuck? Indeed,
Speaker 1: I think that is him covertly acknowledging, Yes, a number
Speaker 1: of us are attracted to the boys, but you don't
Speaker 1: touch them. I think the reality is like it is.
Speaker 1: There's a very complicated conversation to have about people who
Speaker 1: are attracted to children and do not molest them. But
Speaker 1: I think one thing that is clear is that if
Speaker 1: you are that kind of person, is it is imperative
Speaker 1: that you do everything in your power to not go
Speaker 1: anywhere in your children, Like don't like like, that's that's critical.
Speaker 1: Don't fucking near kids. If you're attracted kid, If you
Speaker 1: don't want to be a monster, you're not a monster
Speaker 1: just because you grow up with like this thing in
Speaker 1: your fucking head. As long as you don't put yourself
Speaker 1: in a position where you're going to hurt anybody, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you know, just that, make that your number
Speaker 1: one priority. Um, yeah, not being near fucking kids, right
Speaker 1: right above eating and drinking. Yeah, and stay away from
Speaker 1: children children, brush your teeth, yeah. Yeah. And Biden pal
Speaker 1: is being like, well, of course, it's fine that a
Speaker 1: lot of us are attracted to the boys, but this
Speaker 1: guy went too far and his sentimentalism, which reveals a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount about him. Right yeah, So, as the book
Speaker 1: Scouts on Or notes, Biden pal was even more problematic
Speaker 1: in his attitudes towards the sexual assault of boys in
Speaker 1: his care during his private conversations than he wasn't again
Speaker 1: this public column in a doctor named Patterson was put
Speaker 1: in charge of the main camping field at Gilwell, which
Speaker 1: is the first and chief Scout camp. So Dr Patterson
Speaker 1: is responsible for the health of all these boys. He
Speaker 1: sleeps in a medical hut that's near the field where
Speaker 1: the boys camp, so he can be near the boys
Speaker 1: to watch over them. Because he's again he's the doctor.
Speaker 1: He was extremely trusted. For years. Mothers would often write
Speaker 1: to Lord Baden Powell asking if he could pare their
Speaker 1: sons with Dr Patterson so he could talk to them
Speaker 1: about sex, and Robert would send them to Patterson right
Speaker 1: like they would be like, my son, I'm a single mom,
Speaker 1: my son needs a man to talk to about sex,
Speaker 1: and like I'll send them to the doctor, which, again,
Speaker 1: on the surface, if this guy isn't a child molester,
Speaker 1: perfectly reasonable. Like a boy asked questions about sex. Send
Speaker 1: him to the doctor. Doctor right right, here's the problem.
Speaker 1: Dude's a child molester. In August nineteen, several boys complained
Speaker 1: that Dr. Patterson had given them painfully thorough physical examinations
Speaker 1: at night in his medical hut. An investigation commenced, and
Speaker 1: Baden Powell allowed Patterson to be quietly fired rather than
Speaker 1: going to the authorities or taking any kind of punitive
Speaker 1: action beyond kicking him out. So they do not go
Speaker 1: to the police. They do not make this a criminal
Speaker 1: matter because they don't want this to blow up. This
Speaker 1: is the first time that happens. This is will become
Speaker 1: the pattern for more than a century of the Voice
Speaker 1: Scouts of America. It is established by Robert Baden Powell.
Speaker 1: Um Now again, when cases of sexual abuse did go public,
Speaker 1: as that one did in that we talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: Baden Powe was very loud in public about decrying the abuse.
Speaker 1: But as the book Scouts Honor notes, however, Patterson's successor
Speaker 1: the doctor who follows after he gets quietly pushed out,
Speaker 1: HD Burne, proved to be no different. After a decade
Speaker 1: in charge of the camping field, someone picked up quote
Speaker 1: a fat diary and Burns room and discovered it to
Speaker 1: be filled with detailed descriptions of sexual encounters with boys. He, too,
Speaker 1: was dismissed quietly. Geal Rights Headquarters evidently preferred not to
Speaker 1: let it be known that for almost fifteen years, the
Speaker 1: one job in the movement requiring men of unimpeachable integrity
Speaker 1: had been occupied by a succession of active petterists. God, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole section of them. Huh yeah, that's that's that's
Speaker 1: a grip. That's a grip of periss that's too many pederists,
Speaker 1: I think I would say one probably too man. But
Speaker 1: again and again, to be fairy, the evil is not
Speaker 1: that like a pedophile, especially in a new organization, wound
Speaker 1: up in a position and heard boys. It's that their
Speaker 1: answer to it was to hide it and then promote
Speaker 1: another pedophile to that position, because they don't take any
Speaker 1: care to actually screen these fucking people. And again, if
Speaker 1: they're screening had been imperfect, at least, what's the thing
Speaker 1: that happens? At least they tried, they didn't, and there
Speaker 1: Biden Pale's instinct was to try to cover it up
Speaker 1: and not to punish these people, to treat it as
Speaker 1: a moral slip rather than an act of profound evil.
Speaker 1: That is how he seems like, as these men slipped,
Speaker 1: It's like, no, no, they abused children. Firing them, it's
Speaker 1: not a slip. You showed up late to work twice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, no, it's not. This is not a firing thing.
Speaker 1: This is a These people need to be removed from society. Things.
Speaker 1: They have harmed children, the worst thing you can do.
Speaker 1: Some justice needs to be served. Yeah. Yeah. The founder
Speaker 1: of the Boy Scouts would die in nineteen forty one,
Speaker 1: but the patterns he established would follow the organization as
Speaker 1: it aged. They are, in brief, an avowed refusal to
Speaker 1: properly check the men who volunteered to watch over boys,
Speaker 1: a willingness to overlook problematic behavior, and a commitment to
Speaker 1: hiding the cases of abuse that they are forced to acknowledge. So,
Speaker 1: oh fuck. We're going to talk, yeah, in part two
Speaker 1: about the modern b ESA. But it is just very
Speaker 1: important to note that everything we'll be talking about in
Speaker 1: part two, that stuff that goes up to two fifteen
Speaker 1: two right now, really starts with Baden Powell. This is
Speaker 1: not a case of a man founding a beautiful organization
Speaker 1: that later people fail on from the beginning, everything problematic
Speaker 1: that has led to mass sexual assaults in the Boy
Speaker 1: Scouts was present from its founding. Yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's founded by a guy who kind of wanted to kids,
Speaker 1: kind of wanted to kids. Uh, you know that's a
Speaker 1: recipe for disaster. That's a little bit of a Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not great, not great. Probably again, I had a
Speaker 1: great time in Boy Scouts. I think an organization with
Speaker 1: the broad goal of teaching kids self reliance and survival
Speaker 1: in the woods is wonder and absolutely necessary. I think
Speaker 1: damn near a hundred percent of kids can benefit from
Speaker 1: something like that. Probably shouldn't be founded and formed by
Speaker 1: a succession of pedophiles. Probably a bad idea, Probably a
Speaker 1: bad idea. My note on the Boy Scouts less pedophiles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if I had one, like four star Yelp review, everything's good,
Speaker 1: But the the pedophiles and perpetuating pedophilia throughout the United
Speaker 1: States and the world is Yeah. Yeah, it's one of
Speaker 1: those things. I'm sure there are people who be like,
Speaker 1: why didn't you do the Catholic Church. We have talked
Speaker 1: about the Catholic Church a couple of times, including like
Speaker 1: the all of the horrible abuses in the of the
Speaker 1: the residential schools in Ireland and whatnot. But like, one
Speaker 1: of the things that is worth noting here is that,
Speaker 1: like when you talk about the pedophilia problem in the
Speaker 1: Boy Scouts, it's on the same scale as the Catholic Church, Like,
Speaker 1: at least in modern times, right, Catholic Church goes back
Speaker 1: a lot, Like we're talking again at the present time,
Speaker 1: at least a hundred thousand alleged victims just to have
Speaker 1: come forward in a couple of years, Like we're this
Speaker 1: is an enormous scale of problem. Like this is not
Speaker 1: We're not talking about a kid hearing a kid here,
Speaker 1: We're talking about cities full of children who were molested
Speaker 1: by their Scout masters and other adult leaders. Fun cool,
Speaker 1: it's a fun, fun time. So, Matt, this seems like
Speaker 1: a good time to ask if you've got any pluggables
Speaker 1: to plug. Oh sure, dude, Yeah, not totally. I do
Speaker 1: UH to podcasts Pod Yourself a Gun a Sopranos podcast
Speaker 1: which UH is about the Sopranos, and we go through
Speaker 1: an episode by episode, me and Vince Fancini, And then
Speaker 1: we also do UM a film podcast where we just
Speaker 1: shoot the ship kind of talk about movies called the
Speaker 1: film Drunk Frodcast, So check those out. We rarely talk
Speaker 1: about pedophilia, but you know, it's still fun. It's still
Speaker 1: fun time, So check those out and follow me on
Speaker 1: Instagram at matt leap Jokes. Yeah, follow him on Instagram
Speaker 1: at matt Leap Jokes. And follow your heart unless your
Speaker 1: heart says to create an organization for boys and have
Speaker 1: them swim naked in the field so that you can
Speaker 1: watch them. Um, then don't follow your heart. Maybe listen
Speaker 1: to a single fucking word your heart says. Move if
Speaker 1: that's If that's what your heart says, move alone to
Speaker 1: the woods. Yeah like friends like a bear and bear.
Speaker 1: Fine to make friends with a bear in that case,
Speaker 1: Yeah they can fight back. Yeah yeah, oh boy, Okay,