WEBVTT - CZM Rewind: Part Two: King Leopold II: The First Modern Bastard 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:05.520 Also media. Hey everyone, Robert Evans here, and you know 0:00:05.640 --> 0:00:09.119 it's another holiday week. This is not a holiday I 0:00:09.160 --> 0:00:11.360 tend to celebrate, but it is a holiday that our 0:00:11.400 --> 0:00:14.240 company gives us off. And I like my team not 0:00:14.360 --> 0:00:17.560 having to work. It's also good to not have to work. 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:20.520 And when we drop episodes on weeks like this, it 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:23.120 means you basically have to double up during the week 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:26.799 before the week after, which causes a lot of stress 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:30.280 that isn't necessary when you're trying to have everyone be 0:00:30.280 --> 0:00:32.800 able to relax. So this week we are doing another 0:00:32.840 --> 0:00:37.199 rewind our infamous and beloved episodes on King Leopold, the 0:00:37.280 --> 0:00:42.760 Second of Belgium. So tuck in and enjoy yourselves and 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:47.040 enjoy a real terrible story of a real terrible piece 0:00:47.080 --> 0:00:49.600 of shit. I hope you all have a good week, 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:55.000 regardless of what you do during it. Hello friends, I'm 0:00:55.080 --> 0:00:57.240 Robert Evans and this is Behind the Bastards, the show 0:00:57.240 --> 0:00:59.000 where we tell you everything you don't know about the 0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:01.640 very worst people in his And this is part two 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:04.800 of our episode on Leopold, the Second, King of Belgium. 0:01:05.240 --> 0:01:08.160 In part one, we sort of went over how Leopold 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:11.560 conned his way into becoming king of the Congo, how 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:14.320 he tricked the locals into signing over their rights to 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:17.960 their land, and how he conscripted thousands of them into 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:21.520 a slave army. So now we're going to get back 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:24.520 into all that and the rest of the terrible, terrible 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:27.320 story of the Belgian Congo. So the first five or 0:01:27.360 --> 0:01:29.400 so years of the Congo project are great for Leopold. 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:31.440 He's in total control, richer than God, and most of 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:34.479 Europe still believes he's improving a lot of the Congolese people. 0:01:34.840 --> 0:01:37.720 But in around eighteen ninety, a black journalist named Colonel 0:01:37.800 --> 0:01:41.400 and he's not really a colonel, George Washington Williams saw 0:01:41.440 --> 0:01:43.920 the actual Congo. So he didn't like take the tour 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:46.720 where you get led through the nice parts of the Congo, like, 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:49.160 he went on foot and he got in there and 0:01:49.200 --> 0:01:52.080 he saw the fucking nightmare that Leopold had built. And 0:01:52.120 --> 0:01:55.440 he wrote an article called an open Letter to King Leopold, 0:01:56.280 --> 0:01:59.000 and it was the first expos of Leopold's blood soak, 0:01:59.080 --> 0:02:03.160 rubber regime. William's document is remarkable because he's basically the 0:02:03.160 --> 0:02:05.520 only person up to that point who actually sat down 0:02:05.560 --> 0:02:08.040 with African people and asked them what was going on 0:02:08.120 --> 0:02:10.480 in the Congo. He retraced a lot of Stanley's rat 0:02:10.520 --> 0:02:12.359 along the Congo and actually talked to some of the 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:15.280 people who'd signed treaties giving their land to Leopold. He 0:02:15.360 --> 0:02:17.320 learned that a great number of chiefs had been tricked 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:20.400 into signing things with magic tricks. One of the tricks 0:02:20.480 --> 0:02:22.799 was that, like Stanley, had bought a bunch of electric 0:02:22.880 --> 0:02:26.720 batteries in London, and when when attached to the arm 0:02:26.800 --> 0:02:29.280 under the coat, communicated with a band of ribbon which 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:31.880 passed over the palm of the white brother's hand, And 0:02:31.919 --> 0:02:34.400 when he gave the black brother a cordial grasp of 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:36.840 the hand, the black brother was greatly surprised to find 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:39.560 his white brother was so strong that he nearly knocked 0:02:39.600 --> 0:02:42.280 him off his feet. When the native inquired about the 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:44.640 disparity of strength between himself and his white brother, he 0:02:44.720 --> 0:02:46.560 was told that the white man could pull up trees 0:02:46.600 --> 0:02:49.440 and perform the most prodigious feats of strength. So he 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:51.880 did a hand buzzer, He did a hand buzzer, and 0:02:51.960 --> 0:02:54.760 these like, if you don't know what electricity is, yeah, 0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:58.040 he's just some sort of superman. Let's sign the peace treaty. 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:00.920 Yeah, yeah, oh, shit. 0:03:01.360 --> 0:03:01.720 Yeah. 0:03:01.760 --> 0:03:04.200 Another trick was to use a magnifying glass to light 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:07.120 a cigar and then claim that white people had sun 0:03:07.160 --> 0:03:10.200 powers and he'll burn up your villain, basically like I 0:03:10.280 --> 0:03:11.799 have power of the sun and a lake. 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:15.480 Riloge on fire. Yeah yeah, God, what a fucking bluff. 0:03:15.760 --> 0:03:21.600 Yeah yeah, yeah. So Williams writes this open letter. He 0:03:21.680 --> 0:03:25.040 frames it as like presuming Leopold doesn't know how terrible 0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:27.080 things are. He writes about the taking of hands and 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:29.120 like all of the death and the people who are 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:31.520 being like starved to death as porters carrying. Is this 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:34.120 like sort of like modest proposal style, like of course, 0:03:34.160 --> 0:03:36.240 you know, but it's an indictment or do I think 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:36.440 it is. 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:39.760 There's a little bit of a satirical bent. Yeah, yeah, 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:43.280 and yeah. So Williams publishes this that but unfortunately he 0:03:43.400 --> 0:03:46.320 dies not long after writing the letter, and Leopold's able 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:48.680 to clamp down on any kind of outrage after for 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:51.240 a little while. But seven or eight years later, another 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:54.880 guy who's an amateur journalist named Morel stumbles upon the conspiracy. 0:03:55.120 --> 0:03:57.320 So he was working as a mid level employee for 0:03:57.360 --> 0:03:59.480 a shipping line that had the contract to handle all 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:02.000 shipping in the Congo Free State, and so every so 0:04:02.120 --> 0:04:04.320 often Morell would get sent over to Belgium and he 0:04:04.320 --> 0:04:06.120 would report on what's going into and out of the 0:04:06.120 --> 0:04:08.760 port of Antwerp. And so he realizes that the only 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:11.480 thing coming out of the Congo into Europe is rubber, 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:15.960 just shitloads of rubber, impossible quantities of it, larger quantities 0:04:15.960 --> 0:04:18.200 than have been reported in fact. And the only thing 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:20.720 that's going being sent out to the Congo rather than 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:24.200 trade are just guns and money, and a lot more 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:27.160 guns than you'd need for any kind of philanthropic enterprise. 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:32.880 O man, Yeah, so a wire, exactly exactly. So he 0:04:33.000 --> 0:04:34.680 starts he never actually goes to the Congo, but he 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:37.119 just starts digging, and he starts talking to other people 0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:41.039 who have worked there, and basically he starts a newspaper 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:44.840 that is focused entirely on exposing King Leopold's crimes to 0:04:44.880 --> 0:04:48.120 the world and starts publishing it all throughout Europe. He's 0:04:48.160 --> 0:04:50.599 active all over the world and basically becomes like the 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:53.280 Congo equivalent of Wiki Leagues. So all these guys who 0:04:53.279 --> 0:04:55.960 had worked in Leopold's Congo and felt bad were running 0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:57.480 to him and be like, I saw this, this is 0:04:57.520 --> 0:05:00.120 what happened. Here's some documents I managed. 0:04:59.800 --> 0:05:03.000 To Well, it's also like you're like, yeah, this is 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:05.599 what wikloks was supposed to be, Like this is what 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:08.880 it could be. And this is also why people like 0:05:08.960 --> 0:05:13.719 that have legitimacy because and why conspiracies have legitimacy because 0:05:13.720 --> 0:05:17.920 guess what there have been Yeah, big complex conspiracy. 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:21.800 Gi gantic conspiracies. So Morrell starts this newspaper and he 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:25.760 winds up creating was probably the first modern human rights organization, 0:05:25.920 --> 0:05:29.720 the Congo Reform Association, which is dedicated to stopping this 0:05:29.720 --> 0:05:33.760 this fucking nightmare in the Congo. King Leopold responded by 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:37.280 inventing the first modern international pr campaign. He bought a 0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:39.280 shitload of journalists of his own, and he had them 0:05:39.279 --> 0:05:42.000 all right puff pieces about how great the Congo actually was. 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:44.839 He would pay for journalists to go on lavish, carefully 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:47.600 controlled trips through the Congo. He'd give them exclusive interviews 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:49.599 when they got back, and he'd use his network of 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:52.479 agents to help them place their articles in newspapers. He 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:54.880 got journalists in the New York Times to write quotes 0:05:54.960 --> 0:05:57.960 like I have witnessed more atrocities in London streets than 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:00.480 I have ever seen in the Congo. He would pay 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:03.480 for journalists to give public speeches, and he would lobby politicians. 0:06:03.839 --> 0:06:07.520 Leopold's regime was heavily criticized for its widespread use of 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:10.320 something called the jacote, which is a hippo hyde whip, 0:06:10.400 --> 0:06:13.520 which was used to punish laborers. Prisoners were often lashed 0:06:13.520 --> 0:06:16.000 to death by it, and it's possible that, like literally 0:06:16.040 --> 0:06:20.039 several million people were killed with this whip. So Leopold 0:06:20.040 --> 0:06:22.520 starts catching flak for this, and he decides to distract 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:24.600 attention from his whipping millions of people to death by 0:06:24.600 --> 0:06:27.360 sending journalists to British colonies and having them write lyrist 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:31.360 exposees of abuses in British colonies. So his pet reporters 0:06:31.360 --> 0:06:33.640 would write stories about like how the British were using 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:36.640 whips on prisoners in South Africa or something terrible they'd 0:06:36.640 --> 0:06:39.320 done to people in India, and then yeah. 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:42.440 Exactly Hilary style, that's exactly it. 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:45.880 Like I said, he invented the modern art of being shitty, 0:06:46.120 --> 0:06:49.240 like he's he's doing, Like what about ism on a 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:50.240 massive scale? 0:06:50.320 --> 0:06:53.960 Did he have like an antecedent for like the media, 0:06:54.200 --> 0:06:56.200 like playing the media, or did he just make all this. 0:06:56.400 --> 0:07:01.160 I think he invented this playbook because other people had. Obviously, 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:03.240 every the media is existed for a while, other people 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:06.279 have used the media to one agree or other. But 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:08.559 he is the first person that I've ever run across 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:11.880 who's using it in the same way politicians use it today, 0:07:12.320 --> 0:07:14.120 in the same way world leaders use it today, Like 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:18.000 this is a very modern pr campaign. He buys he 0:07:18.080 --> 0:07:20.440 uses his Congo earnings to buy the editors of a 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:24.320 bunch of newspapers, including the London Times. So he's spending 0:07:24.320 --> 0:07:28.120 like thousands of dollars on just yeah, owning editors so 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:30.440 that number one, they'll kill stories that are negative to 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:33.040 the Congo Free State, and so that he can place 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:36.640 his positive stories once he gets like positive journalists to go, 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:38.400 you know, have a tour of the Congo and then 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:41.440 come and write about it. And this is all basically 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:44.400 a delaying action. Leopold knows eventually the truth is going 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:46.680 to get out, but he's playing for time. He's got 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:49.240 twenty years before rubber stops being as profits. 0:07:49.280 --> 0:07:51.040 He doesn't need to do this forever, he just needs 0:07:51.040 --> 0:07:51.840 to do it for a little while. 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:53.640 He just wants to suck as much money as he 0:07:53.720 --> 0:07:56.960 can out of the situation, and eventually the sheer way 0:07:57.000 --> 0:07:59.480 to facts did change public opinion against him, but it 0:07:59.480 --> 0:08:02.720 took like twenty years. At one point, Leopold is said 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:05.400 to have seen a cartoon of himself in a German newspaper, 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:08.080 and in the cartoon he's cutting the hands off of Africans, 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:11.240 and he reportedly laughed at that and said, cut off hands. 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:13.480 That's idiotic. I'd cut off all the rest of them, 0:08:13.480 --> 0:08:15.480 but not the hands. That's the thing I need in 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:21.040 the Congo. So he's a real piece of work. Now, 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:24.480 in eighteen ninety five, Leopold had started dating a sixteen 0:08:24.560 --> 0:08:27.920 year old prostitute, Nade Caroline. This is when the Congo 0:08:27.960 --> 0:08:30.400 is that at the height of its rubber production, so 0:08:30.560 --> 0:08:33.320 he'd been hooked up to her via a pimp named Durou, 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:36.000 who was a former officer in the French army. We 0:08:36.040 --> 0:08:39.280 know now that Caroline's whole relationship with Leopold was likely 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:42.640 a con game, an incredibly successful scheme to snatch his inheritance. 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:47.160 But at the time, King Leopold, blood drenched, absolute ruler 0:08:47.160 --> 0:08:50.440 of the Congo, was smitten with this teenage prostitute Adam 0:08:50.440 --> 0:08:53.319 Hoschild writes that quote to the extent that someone like 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:56.600 Leopold was capable of love. This teenage prostitute proved to 0:08:56.640 --> 0:09:00.080 be the love of his life, So he's really he 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:02.760 got it for this girl hard. He names her. The 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:07.920 barrenness of Vaughan and the unseemliness of their relationship isn't 0:09:07.920 --> 0:09:11.120 really acknowledged in the nineteen ten biography. It just calls 0:09:11.120 --> 0:09:14.080 her one of the king's quote favorites, and it dances 0:09:14.080 --> 0:09:15.800 around the fact that they got together while the Queen 0:09:15.880 --> 0:09:18.959 was still alive. In general, it refers to the King's 0:09:18.960 --> 0:09:24.559 constant parade of mistresses as distractions. So yeah, Carolyn went 0:09:24.600 --> 0:09:26.400 on to write a bit about their life together, and 0:09:26.400 --> 0:09:28.480 she gives this additional insight into the kind of man 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:32.120 Leopold was. Quote every evening a steam launch took the 0:09:32.200 --> 0:09:35.520 King to appear, leading to my villa through a subterranean passage. 0:09:35.760 --> 0:09:38.839 Speaking about this, I can't help remarking on the extraordinary 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:41.360 taste of the King for everything which had a secret 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:44.599 and mysterious character, anyone who could sell him anyhow, so 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:46.120 long as it was built on the site of an 0:09:46.160 --> 0:09:49.320 abandoned quarry, or if it had a secret staircase. So 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:53.120 basically he's gone from being too cheap to rinse his 0:09:53.480 --> 0:09:55.280 fucking like a handkerchief. 0:09:55.320 --> 0:09:56.640 He's like a cartoon villain. 0:09:56.760 --> 0:09:59.120 Yeah, to like a cartoon ville with like lairs built 0:09:59.120 --> 0:10:02.640 into mountain side. It's a hidden boat like grottos and stuff. 0:10:02.760 --> 0:10:03.319 Jesus. 0:10:03.480 --> 0:10:07.720 Yeah, but Carolyn seems to have his number, so she's 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:09.960 both got him on madly in love with her, but 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:13.679 she also like she takes advantage of his hypochondriasm or 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:16.040 whatever you call that, Like whenever she wanted him to 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:18.240 leave her alone, she'd pretend to have a cough, right, 0:10:18.280 --> 0:10:21.280 and then he'd hide for days because he was scared 0:10:21.280 --> 0:10:23.600 of She's she's my favorite person in this story. 0:10:23.679 --> 0:10:25.360 She's Yeah, this gy locked down. 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:30.439 So the King is sort of the nineteen hundreds come around, 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:34.720 is in his late sixties, and he takes to visiting 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:39.160 his teenage mistress in a large tricycle because again, yeah, 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:40.000 he's getting. 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:41.280 More and more to get. 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:45.839 Yeah for the geno tidle murderer. Yeah, he's riding a 0:10:45.840 --> 0:10:48.880 big tricycle to hang out with his teenage girlfriend. 0:10:50.559 --> 0:10:53.200 Just as bad everyone who every white guy riding a 0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:55.080 tricycle with big old mustache. 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:58.160 You are all as bad as king shit. Yeah, so 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:00.760 he's riding a big tricycle, he drinks enough but hot water, 0:11:01.400 --> 0:11:03.680 and he starts referring to himself in the third person 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:07.440 at this point in time. So, yeah, he's a weirdo. 0:11:08.760 --> 0:11:11.360 He's not entirely past his old ways at this point. 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:13.800 There's like a story of the time his mistress bought 0:11:13.800 --> 0:11:16.760 a new hat for him and gives it to him, 0:11:16.760 --> 0:11:19.800 and he like flies into a rage, and he only 0:11:19.840 --> 0:11:22.280 calms down when she explains him that she got it 0:11:22.320 --> 0:11:23.920 for a bargain, that it was like a deal, that 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:25.560 she bought it a quarter of its value. So like 0:11:25.600 --> 0:11:27.199 he's still he's just he's. 0:11:27.000 --> 0:11:27.520 Just a weirdo. 0:11:27.720 --> 0:11:30.600 Yeah, he's a weird guy. He's like a weird old 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:36.400 rich letcher who's just knows what's going on in the 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:37.719 congo but doesn't like. 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:40.520 I mean, look, here's the other part. The other way 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:42.679 to look at that, I suppose is maybe not in 0:11:42.760 --> 0:11:45.320 such a direct degree, but as Americans, we all have 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:48.240 similar types of blood on our hands that we're electing 0:11:48.320 --> 0:11:52.000 to not think about. Yeah, but we're not we're not 0:11:52.120 --> 0:11:53.959 driving it in the same way, but. 0:11:54.320 --> 0:11:57.120 We absolutely like we all have these phones that we know, 0:11:57.200 --> 0:11:59.920 are made by people who hate the work that they're doing, 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:02.800 and they're like include minerals that are mined from like 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:05.720 conflict ridden nations and often use slave labor in one 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:07.680 And we know that, like the fabric in our clothes 0:12:07.760 --> 0:12:09.480 is often there's slave labor at some point in the 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:14.319 production line. Leopold knows that because he's signing the orders 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:17.160 and saying no, cut off more hands, cut off more hands, 0:12:17.559 --> 0:12:20.040 and he's just it's just amazing to me that he's 0:12:20.080 --> 0:12:22.679 able to do that all day, every day and then 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:25.120 write a tricycle to his teenage girlfriend's house. 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:30.520 Yeah, but that's it's amazing what you're saying. But to me, 0:12:30.600 --> 0:12:33.120 I'm like, it's a little bit just degrees. I mean, look, 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:34.800 we're all able to. 0:12:35.200 --> 0:12:38.880 It is degrees. We're all able to compartmentalize the misery 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:40.400 that's necessary for our comfort. 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:44.920 Oh yea, but fuck this guy, Yeah, fuck this guy. 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:48.400 One of the things that was interesting to me reading 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:51.240 that pro Leopold biography is that, well it does talk 0:12:51.240 --> 0:12:54.400 about ten yeah, nineteen ten, the air after he died. 0:12:54.440 --> 0:12:58.520 He's a spoiler, So this biography of him, it's very positive. 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:00.920 It talks about how there's atrocity, but it always kind 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:02.760 of doesn't talk about the detail. It just said, yeah, 0:13:02.760 --> 0:13:06.439 he definitely committed atrocities, but look at this or look 0:13:06.440 --> 0:13:10.800 at how he was. Look at how and everyone did. 0:13:11.600 --> 0:13:14.319 Is like everyone did, and we'll get to that in 0:13:14.360 --> 0:13:17.360 a little. What is interesting to me is that this 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:21.760 biography does condemn his mistress for capitalizing on the Congo. 0:13:22.000 --> 0:13:23.559 Sure, it notes. 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:26.920 That she was called the Queen of the Congo by 0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:29.320 the people of Belgium, for she was to benefit largely 0:13:29.360 --> 0:13:32.120 by the atrocities committed in the Free State, where sweating 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:35.160 and bleeding natives labored so as to accumulate millions for 0:13:35.240 --> 0:13:38.480 the royal favorite. So like he again, he doesn't really 0:13:38.559 --> 0:13:41.600 attack Leopold ever, Like he's like, yeah, he did some 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:44.960 bad stuff. But this biographer goes off on her mistress 0:13:45.000 --> 0:13:48.120 for like taking money from him. That's that's blood money, 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:50.440 which like it is blood money. But like she's the 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:53.319 least objectionable person in this situation. 0:13:56.040 --> 0:13:58.880 So yeah, yeah she has a little milania. Ask I 0:13:58.920 --> 0:14:02.079 suppose she is, and she maybe knew more what she 0:14:02.160 --> 0:14:03.360 was getting into at the top. 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:06.960 Yeah, she probably knew less about the Congo because, like 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:09.920 I doubt just a rich guy. Yeah, she just wanted 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:12.120 to marry a rich guy like I doubt he doesn't 0:14:12.120 --> 0:14:14.040 seem like kind of guy. We've talked to his mistress 0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:17.440 about the hands or the riks that they were murdering 0:14:17.440 --> 0:14:20.400 people with, and it's at the time, especially probably easy 0:14:20.440 --> 0:14:23.120 to ignore. Yeah, forget about it. Yeah, you don't share 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:25.120 a lot of that stuff with your yeah, especially not 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:26.680 your teenage child bride. 0:14:26.760 --> 0:14:29.720 No. No, And as the teenage child bride to just feel like, 0:14:30.040 --> 0:14:32.840 I don't read those books. Yeah, I don't read that article. Yeah. 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:36.000 Yeah. So in the early nineteen hundreds, more and more 0:14:36.040 --> 0:14:38.240 stories of abuse in the Congo hit the world press. 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:41.040 People actually started to take notice and care. They read 0:14:41.080 --> 0:14:43.520 about things like an entire towns worth of boys being 0:14:43.520 --> 0:14:46.800 giving fifty lashes each, which is a fatal sentence for 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:50.000 laughing in the presence of a white man. In nineteen 0:14:50.000 --> 0:14:51.920 oh four, one of the rubber companies in the Congo 0:14:51.960 --> 0:14:53.840 put one of its own men on trial, mostly to 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:55.680 show that they were trying to do something about all 0:14:55.720 --> 0:14:59.240 of the horrible crimes. The guy, Charles Cadron, was accused 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:01.400 of murdering at least one hundred and twenty two Africans. 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:03.440 The case wound up revealing a bunch of fucked up 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:05.840 details about like how all the hostage taking and the 0:15:05.880 --> 0:15:09.880 handtaking and stuff actually worked. But Caudrone was released due 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:13.400 to quote extenuating circumstances. The court said that he'd had 0:15:13.400 --> 0:15:17.040 to contend with quote great difficulties under which Caudron found 0:15:17.120 --> 0:15:19.840 himself accomplishing his mission in the midst of a population 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:23.320 absolutely resistant to any idea of work in which respects 0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:25.600 no other law than force and knows no other means 0:15:25.600 --> 0:15:31.640 of persuasion than terror. So yeah, yeah, they were asking 0:15:31.680 --> 0:15:34.200 for it defense. They were asking for it works. 0:15:34.640 --> 0:15:37.080 It also still works today, Kainda. 0:15:37.040 --> 0:15:39.720 It does, but it was it was stopping. This is 0:15:39.760 --> 0:15:41.440 at the point where it was working less and less 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:45.120 in the Congo, and in the early nineteen hundreds, Leopold 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:47.520 starts dealing with more and more resistance to his ideas, 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:51.600 both in the Congo and at home. So this is 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:53.720 also kind of the point of which socialism is starting 0:15:53.720 --> 0:15:56.240 to rise. And socialists obviously aren't big fans of kings. 0:15:57.280 --> 0:16:00.320 Leopold declared himself a mortal enemy of socialism. He fought 0:16:00.320 --> 0:16:02.840 against the universal right to vote for all Belgians. 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:05.680 Still on the playbook yeah, both of those things. Yep. 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:07.960 In nineteen oh two, the Belgian Labor Party called a 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:10.760 general strike and Leopold called for it to be brutally stopped. 0:16:10.760 --> 0:16:13.120 The strikers were fired upon by city guards and eight 0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:16.360 people were killed. The massacre was a calculated message to 0:16:16.400 --> 0:16:19.400 the socialists, don't fuck with the money train. Leopold was 0:16:19.440 --> 0:16:20.680 willing to kill a hell of a lot more than 0:16:20.720 --> 0:16:23.600 eight people to keep the money coming. In Hashchild's book 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:26.280 relates one six week campaign in the Congo that killed 0:16:26.360 --> 0:16:29.280 quote over nine hundred natives, men, women, and children in 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:31.320 order to add twenty tons of rubber a month to 0:16:31.360 --> 0:16:33.520 one region's productivity. So that gives you an idea of 0:16:33.560 --> 0:16:34.920 the kind of calculus he's making. 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:38.400 Yeah, Yeah, that's how I mean. Right, it's just lives 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:41.080 for rubber. Yeah, it just lives for rubber has a 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:41.960 commodity price. 0:16:42.120 --> 0:16:44.360 Yeah. I have to point out that none of the 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:47.840 revelations brutality did much to hurt Leopold's popularity at home 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:50.640 in Belgium. He was growing less popular and even hated 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:52.840 in a lot of Europe. But even today there are 0:16:52.880 --> 0:16:56.000 Belgian museums that proudly talk about his anti slavery campaigns 0:16:56.000 --> 0:16:59.400 that ignore the whole genocide thing. The crimes against humanity 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:02.520 didn't hurt Leeopold's legacy. The only thing Belgium couldn't forgive 0:17:02.600 --> 0:17:05.440 him for was being a shitty dad and having a mistress. 0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:09.080 In nineteen oh four, Leopold's daughter Stephanie sued her father, 0:17:09.160 --> 0:17:11.639 the king, for keeping her chunk of her mother's inheritance. 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:14.359 Leopold fought in court for the right to deny his 0:17:14.520 --> 0:17:17.240 children their inheritance, and in fact denied them any wealth 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:20.399 or property even after his death. Around this time, a 0:17:20.440 --> 0:17:23.679 Belgian cabinet minister noted that quote, the king has but 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:27.240 two dreams, to die a billionaire and to disinherit his daughters. 0:17:28.040 --> 0:17:31.239 I mean, what father doesn't want that? 0:17:31.320 --> 0:17:34.640 Yeah, yeah, a lot ways kind of cool, always kind 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:36.640 of cool. Wow. 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:40.440 So in nineteen oh six, King Leopold finally marries the Baroness. 0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:43.320 They have two sons. His second son was born with 0:17:43.359 --> 0:17:45.560 a malformed arm that just sort of ended in a 0:17:45.600 --> 0:17:49.120 stump with no hand. Obviously, some people suggested this might 0:17:49.119 --> 0:17:50.919 be a judgment from God for all the millions of 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:53.960 hands that Leopold ordered severed, which is almost more fucked 0:17:54.000 --> 0:17:56.520 up if you think about the morality behind Like, Okay, 0:17:56.840 --> 0:17:59.760 this guy cut off millions of people's hands, let's fuck 0:17:59.840 --> 0:18:01.160 up his innocent baby's hand. 0:18:01.280 --> 0:18:05.679 Yeah, that's not how you do that, if you got well. 0:18:05.520 --> 0:18:08.200 First of all, that is definitely how God do that. 0:18:10.320 --> 0:18:12.560 God is a little punchy on the messages. 0:18:12.720 --> 0:18:16.320 Yeah, God, God ain't great with making sure these people 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:19.800 get their just desserts. Yeah, yeah, because right, because it's 0:18:19.800 --> 0:18:22.440 so funny. It's like all these like just so kind 0:18:22.440 --> 0:18:27.040 of stories where God is just a little like tricky metaphor, man, Like, well, 0:18:27.119 --> 0:18:28.600 you didn't expect this, did. 0:18:28.520 --> 0:18:30.239 You didn't think God would do that? 0:18:30.400 --> 0:18:33.760 Yeah? Oh, just God, get it right, man. 0:18:34.040 --> 0:18:39.000 Yeah, Hey, speaking of hands, why don't you use both 0:18:39.040 --> 0:18:42.480 of them to order the products that we are about 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:43.439 to advertise. 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:44.280 Here they go. 0:18:50.160 --> 0:18:50.879 And we're back. 0:18:51.480 --> 0:18:55.119 So the general and seemliness of the king's young bride 0:18:55.160 --> 0:18:57.600 and the disinheritance of his daughters meant the public sort 0:18:57.640 --> 0:19:00.359 of deserted Leopold. Once the human rights campaign against his 0:19:00.359 --> 0:19:03.560 atrocities really took off. In nineteen oh eight, King Leopold 0:19:03.600 --> 0:19:05.960 was forced to bequeath his control of the Congo to 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:08.919 the Belgian government. In exchange, they paid for the colonies 0:19:08.920 --> 0:19:11.440 one hundred and ten million francs worth of debt, most 0:19:11.440 --> 0:19:13.560 of which had been accrued because Leopold used the Free 0:19:13.560 --> 0:19:15.720 State as a bank to buy gifts for his mistresses. 0:19:17.000 --> 0:19:19.400 Before he hands over control of the colony, he'd ruled 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:21.680 with an iron fist for more than twenty years. Leopold 0:19:21.760 --> 0:19:24.800 has all of the Congo state records burned. I will 0:19:24.800 --> 0:19:27.040 give them my Congo, he said, But they have no 0:19:27.200 --> 0:19:28.560 right to know what I did there. 0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:31.680