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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,

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Speaker 1: a show about people and movements and such that I

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Speaker 1: think are cool. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and with

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Speaker 1: me today is my guest Rent Awry, a writer whose

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Speaker 1: work kind of got me excited about the ways that

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Speaker 1: we can write history. So I'm excited to have them

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Speaker 1: on the podcast. Bren, How are you doing, I'm doing good.

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Speaker 1: How are you doing? I'm okay, I'm um. My dog

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Speaker 1: is running around outside and hopefully we'll stay doing so

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Speaker 1: for the next while. Uh So, when you have a

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Speaker 1: book coming out that is about what is about? What's

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Speaker 1: your book? Was happening? So it's actually an anthology that

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Speaker 1: I edited, UM and it's called Nourishing Resistance Stories of Food,

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Speaker 1: Protests and Mutual Aid UM and it's out. It's going

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Speaker 1: to be out from PM Press sometime next early winter

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Speaker 1: or spring. They're still kind of figuring that out. UM

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Speaker 1: And it's a collection of about twenty one pieces that

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Speaker 1: talk about the relationship between food and food culture and UM,

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Speaker 1: street protest, street movements, mutual aid history, all that sorts

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Speaker 1: of stuff. Yeah, which is why I have you wanted

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Speaker 1: to talk about something that has nothing to do about

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Speaker 1: but I thought that the topic of your book would

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Speaker 1: be interesting to people who listen to this podcast. So cool. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we also have Sophie on the call. Who is our

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Speaker 1: our mean overlord? How are you doing Today's Sophie feeling? Next?

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Speaker 1: Your mean today? Margaret? What you do? Oh? And Ian

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Speaker 1: does our editing? And a woman wrote our theme music. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you better say that. I'm just overlording what I mean

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Speaker 1: because I was three walks so much us that was

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Speaker 1: so funny. I was mean and Margaret couldn't handle it. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So today we are not talking about food. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I guess we'll probably talk about food a little bit,

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Speaker 1: but it's not the main topic. And instead I thought

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Speaker 1: I would pigeonhole you to talk about some Irish ship instead. Um,

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Speaker 1: so today you're talking about a guy who Okay, here's

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Speaker 1: some of the things that I've heard him called Ireland's

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Speaker 1: first gay icon, the man who brought down King Leopold,

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Speaker 1: the world's most important humanitarian, at least while he was alive.

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Speaker 1: He was this colonialist turned anti colonialist. He's one of

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Speaker 1: the martyrs of Ireland. He was hanged for treason for

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Speaker 1: the Easter Rising of nineteen sixteen and Okay, So, author

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Speaker 1: Rebecca Solnett once said quote, most of his biographers have

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Speaker 1: openly disliked him in a way that is almost unique

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Speaker 1: in the genre. A lot of people who wrote about

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Speaker 1: him wrote about him kind of like hate wrote about

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Speaker 1: him because he's a trader to England and he's not

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Speaker 1: the same as the other Easter Rising rebels, and or

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Speaker 1: he likes having sex with men. Yeah, all of good

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Speaker 1: reasons to hate right about someone. Yeah, exactly, you know. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's funny because, um, I don't know if this will

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Speaker 1: make it into the podcast, but I interview people kind

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Speaker 1: of a lot, and so I used to listening to

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Speaker 1: people and like smiling and nodding and trying not to

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Speaker 1: say anything. So this is gonna be a really good

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Speaker 1: challenge of like actually responding to what you're saying. Ah, yes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: because I'm used to being like, oh, yes, not smile,

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Speaker 1: not like get the person to keep talking about whatever

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Speaker 1: they're talking about. Yes, no, you should interrupt me instead

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Speaker 1: of just I'm gonna work on that. Yeah. Okay, So

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Speaker 1: today we are talking about Sir Roger casement Um, and

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Speaker 1: I'm not going to be on the list of biographers

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Speaker 1: who dislike him. When have you. Have you heard of

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Speaker 1: Sir Roger Casement before? Only the name? Okay, cool or

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Speaker 1: you're gonna learn a lot about him, including some of

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Speaker 1: his sexual preferences. Sounds great, great. So Roger David Casement,

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Speaker 1: he was Roddy to his to his family, was born

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Speaker 1: on September one, eighteen sixty four, outside of Dublin, to

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Speaker 1: a Protestant family in I guess what guess called teal poverty.

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Speaker 1: I don't really know how this relates to regular poverty.

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Speaker 1: But they have like a good name and they think

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Speaker 1: really highly of themselves, but they don't actually have any

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Speaker 1: money or property because they're you know, I don't understand England.

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Speaker 1: They have like the status, but not the economic cloud

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Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, that's the best I can tell. Like, okay,

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Speaker 1: so um. His grandfather had briefly been really rich. He

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Speaker 1: was a shipping merchant, uh and then he went bankrupt

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Speaker 1: and then died in Australia on one of his trips.

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Speaker 1: And his father, his father is kind of interesting. His father,

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Speaker 1: also Roger Casement, which is probably why he got called Roddy,

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Speaker 1: was a soldier who had resigned from soldiering in order

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Speaker 1: to fight in when, like all of Europe decided to

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Speaker 1: have different various types of revolutions, so he volunteered to

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Speaker 1: help Hungary free itself from Austria. I cannot find any reasoning,

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Speaker 1: Like no one's like, oh yeah, this is why it

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Speaker 1: is random irishman like went and joined Hungary. But he did.

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Speaker 1: And he was really big into democracy and not kings,

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Speaker 1: which was a big part of the eight thing, was

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Speaker 1: preferring not kings. He was also into not holding down

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Speaker 1: a job. And his family moved around constantly to England,

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Speaker 1: to France, to Italy, but not like as like rich

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Speaker 1: people bombing around, but like literally just as like Dad

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Speaker 1: was trying to find jobs. Totally took different jobs in

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Speaker 1: different places. He went off. He kept trying to go

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Speaker 1: off and join various revolutions. This is dad. Still we're

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Speaker 1: talking about elder Roger. He wanted to go yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: which is probably whateveryone called him. Uh So he wanted

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Speaker 1: to go off and join various revolutions. But his wife

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Speaker 1: basically is like, you can't actually do that. You need

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Speaker 1: a job. You need what you need to do is

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Speaker 1: get a job and pay for your kids. And he's like,

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Speaker 1: but what if I go join the French as they

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Speaker 1: fight against the Prussians or whatever, and his wife's like,

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Speaker 1: you probably shouldn't. And then he's like, okay, but what

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Speaker 1: if I joined in Irish rebellion And she's like, once again,

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Speaker 1: it's not I you think that's what you should do.

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Speaker 1: So that's dad. He was a very mixed message kind

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Speaker 1: of dad. He used to chase the kids around the

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Speaker 1: house with a rod in order to beat them with

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Speaker 1: the rod. Uh yeah, which is the style at the time,

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Speaker 1: but also not great. He also taught his kids to

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Speaker 1: be kind to animals and how to splint up the

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Speaker 1: broken wings of birds, so yeah, very both and here

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Speaker 1: yeah yeah um, which I have a feeling that this

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Speaker 1: is a major impact. I try not to, like always

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Speaker 1: just read into the people I'm writing about, being like

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Speaker 1: they're basically just what their parents made them to be.

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Speaker 1: But well you'll see, Okay, mom was Catholic sort of.

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Speaker 1: She was probably a convert, and supposedly she snuck the

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Speaker 1: kids off and had them secretly baptized when they were kids.

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Speaker 1: It is completely possible that this is part of the

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Speaker 1: myth making of Roger Casement, because Irish heroes aren't supposed

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Speaker 1: to be Protestant um, but they were raised somewhere between

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Speaker 1: Protestant and not very religious. They saw themselves as Protestant.

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Speaker 1: Dad for a while got into spiritualism, which everyone should

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Speaker 1: go and listen to Jamie Loftus's podcast Ghost Church to

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Speaker 1: learn about spiritualism. It's a very good podcast. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's so good. Yeah. I mean, there's no other history podcast.

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Speaker 1: This is the only history podcast, um ghost Churches, only

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Speaker 1: about contemporary matters. No, it's a really good history podcast. Okay.

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Speaker 1: So Roddy, as his family calls him, is the youngest

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Speaker 1: of four. This is the nineteenth century, so his parents

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Speaker 1: don't last very long. Sources argue exactly about when everyone died,

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Speaker 1: but probably his mom died when Roger was nine of

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Speaker 1: liver failure, probably in part because they couldn't afford proper

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Speaker 1: medical care like hers could have been treated. I think

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Speaker 1: that one of the things that kind of comes up

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Speaker 1: a lot in this stuff is that people sort of

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Speaker 1: forget that nineteenth century Ireland was it really fucking poor place,

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Speaker 1: like a place thrown into poverty by colonization. Yeah. So

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Speaker 1: after that, the kids go off and live with Dad's

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Speaker 1: family in Northern Ireland Ulster, and Dad does not live

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Speaker 1: with the kids. Dad lives nearby in a hotel that

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Speaker 1: just kind of further give you the idea of what

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Speaker 1: Dad is like weird, and Dad dies four years later.

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Speaker 1: He's laid low by friend of the Pod, the killer

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Speaker 1: of basically everyone who isn't killed by states or war suberculosis.

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Speaker 1: So his parents are dead and the kids are living

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Speaker 1: with an aunt. And instead of this going like wicked

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Speaker 1: step family, here he loves his his new family. Um,

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Speaker 1: he becomes a mama's boy, but for his aunt and

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Speaker 1: his cousins all remember him fondly. And also, this guy's

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Speaker 1: basically a folk hero, so everyone's like, oh, yeah, he

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Speaker 1: was great. I loved everything about him. So it's like,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, like it's really hard to tell, right,

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Speaker 1: And there's that mythologizing. Yeah, as a kid, he liked

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Speaker 1: to tell stories, especially stories about fairies. He loved reading

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Speaker 1: history and poetry. He sang and played piano and wrote

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Speaker 1: plays and acted. And I honestly cannot believe that people

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Speaker 1: are struggling to believe that he's gay. I just everything

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Speaker 1: about like all of the stories are like, he had

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Speaker 1: so many emotions and he loved his sisters, and like

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Speaker 1: it's just I mean you could be a heterosexual man

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Speaker 1: to do all of those things. I'm more power to

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Speaker 1: every heterosexual man who does these things. But I can't

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Speaker 1: believe people are surprised. But isn't this like history over

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Speaker 1: and over again, It's like very clear that some historical

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Speaker 1: figure was likely gay or queer in some way, and

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Speaker 1: people are like, no, no, no, he was just like

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Speaker 1: married to God or something. Yeah, yeah, totally totally, And

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Speaker 1: and then I almost feel bad for the people in

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Speaker 1: history who were just like straight up married to God

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Speaker 1: and we're like, no, I actually wasn't a lesbian. I

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Speaker 1: mean nothing against him, but yeah, like I feel like

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Speaker 1: a in history has also written out you know, um,

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Speaker 1: this man is not ace, he's a size queen. But

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Speaker 1: we'll get to that later. So I'm just gonna keep

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Speaker 1: dropping these hints, just really excited for when we start

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Speaker 1: talking about the measurements of various people's sticks or make

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Speaker 1: people really excited. Okay, so he he does well in school,

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Speaker 1: but it's this Northern Irish super colonized education, so they

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Speaker 1: doesn't they don't teach him anything about his own country, Ireland.

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Speaker 1: But he's really interested in Irish history, so he learns

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Speaker 1: that by going around and talking to old folks and

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Speaker 1: people who have been alive in the previous century, and um,

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Speaker 1: and he starts writing as a teenager. He starts starts

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Speaker 1: writing all this like nationalist poetry about Irish resistance to England.

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Speaker 1: And here I think it's probably worth pointing out for

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Speaker 1: anyone's listening who's not familiar. When I say nationalists in

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Speaker 1: this context, I don't mean like America were number one.

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Speaker 1: I mean like people who are like, wouldn't it be

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Speaker 1: cool if Ireland wasn't being colonized by England? Totally? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: important distinction, Yeah yeah, um yeah. It's also the whole

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Speaker 1: thing is kind of funny, right because Ireland is this

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Speaker 1: land of like nationalists being mostly left wing, not inherently,

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Speaker 1: and then like Republicans being like very actively left wing. Um,

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Speaker 1: and it doesn't map very well too us ignorance. But

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Speaker 1: then it also gets weirdly like all over the map

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Speaker 1: at times, right, Like there's there are certain contingents of

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Speaker 1: Irish nationalists and Republicans while most of them were left

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Speaker 1: wing that like do become fascists during World War Two

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Speaker 1: and stuff. Yeah, there's like all sorts of really weird. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's like doesn't map at all. Yeah yeah, and even

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Speaker 1: even this guy Casement, I have not found a like

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Speaker 1: a normal mapping to his politics or a mapping that

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Speaker 1: makes sense in twenty one century totally. Um yeah yeah.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, so now he's growing up. He is a

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Speaker 1: handsome lad. Everyone like that is kind of one of

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Speaker 1: the especially because he's in a lot of like gay

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Speaker 1: history podcasts and gay are articles and ship and they're like, Okay,

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Speaker 1: we're just gonna show you a lot of pictures of

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Speaker 1: this guy. He's real, he's nice to look at. Uh.

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Speaker 1: He's six ft three, is curly black hair, is gray,

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Speaker 1: blue eyes, and everyone's really charmed by him all the time.

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Speaker 1: And he gets a job and as a clerk in

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Speaker 1: England at some shipping company through an uncle who works

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Speaker 1: in shipping. And he's like, I am not sucking doing this.

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Speaker 1: Or rather, he writes his sister and says, I must

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Speaker 1: have an open air life or I shall die. He's

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Speaker 1: not a not dramatic guy in his way, he writes.

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Speaker 1: So he gets himself and so so he's raised right,

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Speaker 1: like I mean, he's like on this, like already's on

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Speaker 1: his Irish nationalist kick a little bit as a kid.

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Speaker 1: But He is raised in the era of like colonizing

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Speaker 1: Africa is where adventure is, and it's like how to

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Speaker 1: prove your life and have an interesting life or whatever.

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Speaker 1: So he's like, hell, yeah, I'm gonna go colonize Africa.

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Speaker 1: He gets himself onto one of his company's ships, and

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Speaker 1: he had down there and you know, a land of

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Speaker 1: adventure or whatever. The fuck. He gets really sick, as

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Speaker 1: post white people do at the time if they go

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Speaker 1: to Africa. He comes home and then he's like, no,

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Speaker 1: I'm going back. I'm going right back as soon as

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Speaker 1: he's better. In four he's nineteen or twenty, and he

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Speaker 1: goes off to the Congo, which means I get to

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Speaker 1: talk about one of the worst people in all of

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Speaker 1: history today, King fucking Leopold the Second Um. Sophie is

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Speaker 1: expressing her lack of interest in Leopold's well being um

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Speaker 1: through hand gestures that are employed. I My hypothesis is

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Speaker 1: the second is in his name because it's a reference

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Speaker 1: to second only to Hitler in terms of genocide numbers,

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Speaker 1: satisfactorally accurate. Yeah. Um, so if you're doing fact checking

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Speaker 1: for us, so let's talk about the Congo and Leopold.

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Speaker 1: When have you heard much about the ongoing Leopold I've

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Speaker 1: heard a little bit, um, but not as much as

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Speaker 1: I probably should know about it, um, considering it seems

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Speaker 1: like one of the worst atrocities in history. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: it's I mean, that is one of the like absolute

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Speaker 1: things about this right, and that is so damning too,

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Speaker 1: especially white educations and like Western educations. It's like, I

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Speaker 1: am reasonably certain I learned about King Leopold as an adult.

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Speaker 1: If he was in my like high school history classes,

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Speaker 1: there was not so much attention to pay to it

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Speaker 1: that I like, it's stuck with me, you know, and

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Speaker 1: he is. I mean, this is like one of the

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Speaker 1: most evil things that's ever happened in history. I will,

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Speaker 1: for anyone's listening, I'm going to, like, um, describe some atrocities,

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Speaker 1: but I'm not going to linger avoid graphic detail all

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Speaker 1: of that kind of stuff. That's so King Leopold a

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Speaker 1: second is a creepy piece of ship guy who was

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Speaker 1: king of Belgium from eighteen sixty ninet No. Nine. He

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Speaker 1: got his kingdom from his dad, King Leopold the First,

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Speaker 1: who was not just the first King Leopold, but was

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Speaker 1: also the first King of Belgium since Belgium only became

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Speaker 1: independent and king Leopold. I think the best way to

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Speaker 1: understand him is that he hates music and loves money. Uh.

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Speaker 1: He also is like running around fucking preteen sex workers.

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Speaker 1: His wife, the Queen is terrified of him and spends

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Speaker 1: as much time as possible nowhere near him. But Leopold

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Speaker 1: has a problem not these things. Leopold has a problem

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Speaker 1: from his own perspective, which is that he's not an

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Speaker 1: autocrat um, and he's really bummed about that Parliament is

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Speaker 1: doing most of the ruling. And if only there were

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Speaker 1: somewhere for Leopold to rule autocratically. Let's talk about the Congo.

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Speaker 1: There's this guy. He's another not nice guy. His name

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Speaker 1: is Henry Morton Stanley. He's an explorer. Explorers are like

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Speaker 1: the rock stars of the era, only instead of making

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Speaker 1: music and being creeps and doing lots of drugs, explorers

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Speaker 1: shoot their way across Africa and murder everyone in their

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Speaker 1: bath and gets sick from tropical diseases. Not all the

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Speaker 1: explorers are equally murderous. Henry Morton Stanley is one of

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Speaker 1: the most murderous. I don't know if he's number one

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Speaker 1: I haven't done a he's up there. I don't know

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Speaker 1: if he's number one either, but he's definitely up there.

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Speaker 1: He's definitely on the on the top charts. Yeah yeah,

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Speaker 1: And they're probably all just really horrible. All the degrees

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Speaker 1: of murderous, any degree of murderous. It's true, Yeah, it's true.

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Speaker 1: Reason Yeah, fair enough. And as I was writing this,

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Speaker 1: I was thinking to myself, I don't want to linger

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Speaker 1: too long in these people. If only there was some

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Speaker 1: sort of podcast that explored the bastards of history. So

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Speaker 1: there's this podcast called Behind the Bastards. It's really good.

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Speaker 1: They talked about all this ship. No one would listen

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Speaker 1: to that kind of podcast. Yeah, it's it's really bash

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Speaker 1: for your mental health. But the host is really nice. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: totally very charming. So Okay, In eighteen seventy six, is

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Speaker 1: eight years before Casement heads to Africa, Henry Stanley was

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Speaker 1: off being a fucking Africa. He and three other white

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Speaker 1: people along with two hundred plus black people across the continent.

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Speaker 1: They took nine days to do it. I have a

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Speaker 1: feeling they were like rushing just to get that to

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Speaker 1: come in across the three digit line and along the

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Speaker 1: way the three other white people die, which is cool. Um,

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Speaker 1: he almost died, which is almost cool. And more than

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Speaker 1: a hundred of the black people who came with them

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Speaker 1: died and I can't speak to that one where or

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Speaker 1: the other. They all did all kinds of really horrific

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Speaker 1: ship everyone they ran across along the way. What an

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Speaker 1: adventure story. Everyone was very excited about it. He made

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Speaker 1: his living off of going around and telling about how

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Speaker 1: he would um kidnap people's families and say I will

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Speaker 1: give you back your children if you give us food.

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Speaker 1: But fortunately for every nobody, now they have maps of

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Speaker 1: the Congo River. And this is the first time that

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Speaker 1: Europe realizes that they can access Central Africa from the

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Speaker 1: west coast instead of the east coast, because the East

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Speaker 1: coast is dominated by Arab influences. And so this is

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Speaker 1: the first time Europe is like, hell, yeah, we can

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Speaker 1: rob the ship out of this place without have to

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Speaker 1: go through people who also have firearms. And so Stanley

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Speaker 1: is like, hey, I got this map to treasure a

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Speaker 1: k A exploitable land. He goes to Britain and he's like, hey,

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Speaker 1: develop the Congo River basin and Britain is like, oh,

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Speaker 1: that sounds kind of hard. We don't want to it.

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Speaker 1: So he's like, where will I find some piece of

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Speaker 1: ship who will give me money to develop this region,

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Speaker 1: and low and behold, he meets King Leopold the Second,

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Speaker 1: who had been hoping you to get into the colonization game.

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Speaker 1: So he's excited and he's like, hey, Stanley, let's talk.

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Speaker 1: I would like to this country that you're selling, which

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Speaker 1: is twice the size of Texas. It's like, I've heard

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Speaker 1: a bunch of different comparisons of the size of territory

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Speaker 1: that's being talked about, but it is like the size

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Speaker 1: of Western Europe. It is a not small trunk of

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Speaker 1: place and has millions of people living there. I mean

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Speaker 1: it's empty. So Stanley gets tasked with developing the means

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Speaker 1: to access the river, such as riverboat stops and a

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Speaker 1: road to bypass the worst of the rapids because at

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Speaker 1: the very base of the rivers a bunch of rapids.

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Speaker 1: And they're like, oh, we can't send a riverboat up.

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Speaker 1: But you'll be happy to know that none of this

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Speaker 1: is colonization. This is philanthropy. Uh, it's not presented as

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Speaker 1: colonization at all. Interesting perspective. Yeah, and it's not even

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Speaker 1: quite like white man's burden, like colonization. They like it's

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Speaker 1: like straight up at this point, it's like no, no, no,

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Speaker 1: we're just um, we're helping, he says. Leopold doesn't go

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Speaker 1: in there as Leopold at first. He goes in there

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Speaker 1: with all of these shell companies that are these philanthropic entities,

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Speaker 1: and he like fund raises. He doesn't put his own

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Speaker 1: money into this. He like goes around and he's like, um,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to bring them civilization. I'm going to bring

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Speaker 1: them free trade, which a ka means bring the rest

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Speaker 1: of Europe free trade. So please give me money, and

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Speaker 1: I'm going to end the slave trade was his big

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Speaker 1: pitch to the rabble, to the public opinion, because parts

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Speaker 1: of Africa that are under Arab influence at this time

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Speaker 1: were heavily involved in slave trade, and so this part

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Speaker 1: sounds great, right, ending the slave trade, drive out the slavers.

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Speaker 1: And I am impressed that Leopold managed to make things

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Speaker 1: even worse by several orders of magnitude um and managed

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Speaker 1: to be wildly racist against both Africans and Middle Eastern

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Speaker 1: folks in the process. So Stanley is down there building

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Speaker 1: roads and ports. He doesn't even know he's working directly

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Speaker 1: for Leopold, because these shall companies are all like fucking companies.

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Speaker 1: I don't think you would have cared. I don't think

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Speaker 1: you had any morals. I'm not sure. I haven't done

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Speaker 1: a ton of research about him. I just know he

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Speaker 1: did absolutely terrible things and I hate him. They go

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Speaker 1: around and they trick all the tribal chiefs into signing

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Speaker 1: the way their land. They use the essential kindness of

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Speaker 1: the the different tribes that they meet against them. Basically,

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Speaker 1: they say, hey, come sign a non aggression treaty and

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Speaker 1: we can all be friends. And they were like, great,

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Speaker 1: I will sign that nonaggression treaty, which was actually a

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Speaker 1: treaty that's like, henceforth, all your land is my land,

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Speaker 1: fuck you forever or whatever. But you know who else

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Speaker 1: is trying to steal everything that everyone has. I don't

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Speaker 1: actually know the products and services that support this podcast.

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Speaker 1: Ah those beautiful Margaret. Thanks, here's some advertisers, and we

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Speaker 1: are back, okay, and we are talking about all the

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Speaker 1: terrible tricks you can pull to get people to give

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Speaker 1: up things like he like they like make handbuzzers out

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Speaker 1: of a battery and like run wires up to their hands,

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Speaker 1: and so then when they shake people's hands, they like

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Speaker 1: electrocute them very slightly, and so people are like, holy ship,

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Speaker 1: these people are so strong, and their friends like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that guy can like rip trees up out of the ground,

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Speaker 1: and there's like no particular reason to disbelieve someone who's

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Speaker 1: just like shaking your handle, like you know, it's yeah,

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00:22:23,960 --> 00:22:29,760
Speaker 1: that's so creepy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's so Europe. The

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Speaker 1: rest of Europe sees all this, and it's like, oh,

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Speaker 1: should we better hurry up and steal all the rest

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Speaker 1: of Africa? And you get what's called the Scramble for Africa.

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Speaker 1: They all meet up in Berlin, all the different countries

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Speaker 1: and they come up with some rules for their gentlemanly

395
00:22:41,359 --> 00:22:45,359
Speaker 1: competition to see who can rob Africa most effectively. Leopold

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Speaker 1: is actually kind of an evil genius and he's a

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Speaker 1: master of diplomacy, and he gets the country. He gets

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Speaker 1: Congo by playing Portugal in England off of each other.

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Speaker 1: In February, he declares the free state of Congo because

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Speaker 1: he and I have different definitions of what I was

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Speaker 1: going to say, free of what? Yeah, um, And ironically

402
00:23:09,000 --> 00:23:10,600
Speaker 1: you would be like, well, it just means free trade.

403
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Speaker 1: Oh no, he's completely lying about the free trade things

404
00:23:15,359 --> 00:23:18,560
Speaker 1: they pulled sucks, Like, I can't even emphasize they pulled

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Speaker 1: sex and we're not even we're not even into it yet.

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Speaker 1: Oh yes, yeah. So this new state needs a ruler,

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Speaker 1: and King Leopold is like, oh, I could be a ruler.

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Speaker 1: And he becomes the private owner of the Congo. It's

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Speaker 1: not under Belgian rule. It's something called personal union. I

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Speaker 1: had never heard of this before. It turns out you

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Speaker 1: can be the king of more than one distinct country

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Speaker 1: without the countries having anything legally to do with each other.

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Speaker 1: So he's two countries now and the Congo. He gets

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Speaker 1: to rule as an autocrat. Um and I think he

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Speaker 1: never once steps foot into this country that he rules autocratically.

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Speaker 1: He he owns this place for twenty three years and

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Speaker 1: he never fucking sees it with his own eyes. What

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Speaker 1: a good system, monarchy. So Roger Caseman, he's twenty and

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Speaker 1: he wants adventure and he's down. He heads on down

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Speaker 1: to the Congo to help Stanley out. This is a

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Speaker 1: year before is a year before the Free State is founded,

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Speaker 1: and he becomes like a major player. But not in

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Speaker 1: this like he's not second in command to Stanley or

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Speaker 1: anything like that. And he's like, but he's he's like

425
00:24:31,520 --> 00:24:33,680
Speaker 1: a manager. I think he's like a mid level guy

426
00:24:33,760 --> 00:24:37,399
Speaker 1: most of his career, and I think at this point

427
00:24:37,840 --> 00:24:41,879
Speaker 1: he's a true believer in this, uh, the philanthropic side

428
00:24:41,920 --> 00:24:46,520
Speaker 1: of colonization. Um, He's like, we'll bring the world to them,

429
00:24:46,600 --> 00:24:49,040
Speaker 1: they'll get to trade, they'll get to be a country,

430
00:24:49,400 --> 00:24:52,040
Speaker 1: will open them up to missionaries and make them all

431
00:24:52,119 --> 00:24:55,880
Speaker 1: Christian and say, if their souls will stop slavery, we're

432
00:24:55,880 --> 00:25:00,560
Speaker 1: the good guys. And he's like, basically, surely the things

433
00:25:00,560 --> 00:25:02,960
Speaker 1: that I'm down here doing building roads in the Congo

434
00:25:03,080 --> 00:25:06,040
Speaker 1: will win me a place on Margaret Kiljoy's hit podcast

435
00:25:06,080 --> 00:25:12,320
Speaker 1: series Cool People Did Cool Stuff. Yeah, Yeah, totally, there's

436
00:25:12,359 --> 00:25:14,920
Speaker 1: some it feels like there's some going back before your

437
00:25:15,280 --> 00:25:18,240
Speaker 1: joke right there. It feels like there's some true definition

438
00:25:18,280 --> 00:25:23,040
Speaker 1: of white saviorism happening. Yeah with Roger Casement at this point. Yeah,

439
00:25:23,640 --> 00:25:26,600
Speaker 1: so yeah, yeah, and a lot of the other people

440
00:25:26,640 --> 00:25:29,040
Speaker 1: at kind of his level, I believe are getting into

441
00:25:29,080 --> 00:25:34,080
Speaker 1: it for but also the wrong reasons totally, you know,

442
00:25:34,160 --> 00:25:37,320
Speaker 1: but yeah, what they think are the right reasons, but

443
00:25:37,320 --> 00:25:41,000
Speaker 1: but yeah, so Stanley heads back to Europe, Roger Casement,

444
00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:42,600
Speaker 1: a ton of the others stay by and they work

445
00:25:42,680 --> 00:25:45,520
Speaker 1: to expand territorial control within the congo Um. And one

446
00:25:45,520 --> 00:25:48,000
Speaker 1: of the reasons it's so interesting is because he's he

447
00:25:48,000 --> 00:25:50,800
Speaker 1: helps set up the infrastructure for this ship that's going

448
00:25:50,840 --> 00:25:55,439
Speaker 1: to be happening, right He's building transportation infrastructure, he's building

449
00:25:55,840 --> 00:25:59,440
Speaker 1: railroads to bypass part of the rivers. He's um and

450
00:26:00,640 --> 00:26:03,359
Speaker 1: you know, he's down there setting it all up. Everyone

451
00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:05,600
Speaker 1: writes at the time that he is the sweetest, most

452
00:26:05,640 --> 00:26:09,280
Speaker 1: gentleman who got upset at every injustice. Like they're kind

453
00:26:09,280 --> 00:26:11,200
Speaker 1: of pointed it out because they're kind of annoyed by him.

454
00:26:11,200 --> 00:26:12,920
Speaker 1: Everyone was like, oh, he's so great, but it's like

455
00:26:13,000 --> 00:26:16,240
Speaker 1: kind of this like forced smile. He's so great. He

456
00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:18,879
Speaker 1: doesn't let me get away with all the horrible things

457
00:26:20,880 --> 00:26:23,960
Speaker 1: and uh. And apparently he spends the whole time also

458
00:26:24,000 --> 00:26:26,440
Speaker 1: talking ship on England while he's like down there doing

459
00:26:26,480 --> 00:26:31,080
Speaker 1: fucking dirty work for colonization. At one point, one observer

460
00:26:31,160 --> 00:26:33,480
Speaker 1: talks about how oddly gentle he was among the rest

461
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:35,439
Speaker 1: of his company, kind of implying almost like this, like

462
00:26:36,720 --> 00:26:39,480
Speaker 1: he's very athletic and strong or whatever. Right, but he's like,

463
00:26:39,520 --> 00:26:41,080
Speaker 1: people are kind of like, what the funk are you

464
00:26:41,080 --> 00:26:44,000
Speaker 1: doing down here? After all? This is how weak he is.

465
00:26:44,880 --> 00:26:47,840
Speaker 1: When his favorite dog is gutted in front of him

466
00:26:47,880 --> 00:26:54,680
Speaker 1: by a boar, he cries like a girl. And just

467
00:26:54,760 --> 00:26:56,720
Speaker 1: in case you thought I was going to mention dead

468
00:26:56,760 --> 00:27:03,280
Speaker 1: dogs on this podcast, the dog survives amazing. His friends

469
00:27:03,359 --> 00:27:05,480
Speaker 1: pick up the dog, put his insides back inside of it,

470
00:27:05,520 --> 00:27:08,639
Speaker 1: stitch it up. But yeah, so that's that's what a

471
00:27:08,960 --> 00:27:11,800
Speaker 1: weakling he is. He's down there, he starts figuring out

472
00:27:11,800 --> 00:27:14,639
Speaker 1: that something is wrong, and he's like, the whole place

473
00:27:14,760 --> 00:27:16,679
Speaker 1: is kind of being run as a private enterprise. This

474
00:27:16,720 --> 00:27:18,520
Speaker 1: is the first stuff he picks up on. We don't know.

475
00:27:18,760 --> 00:27:21,119
Speaker 1: He doesn't know about the worst stuff yet, right, but

476
00:27:21,200 --> 00:27:23,879
Speaker 1: he's like, why is my salary being paid by Americans

477
00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:28,840
Speaker 1: not the Belgian government? Um? And why are like and

478
00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:31,000
Speaker 1: the locals don't want to work, why are we making

479
00:27:31,040 --> 00:27:36,080
Speaker 1: them work? Um? You know. Basically he gets this like, hey, guys,

480
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:39,520
Speaker 1: you could join the European economy and they're like, we're good.

481
00:27:42,720 --> 00:27:45,760
Speaker 1: The reason why we would do that. He learns a

482
00:27:45,800 --> 00:27:48,080
Speaker 1: bunch of indigenous languages. He makes friends with locals. Ever,

483
00:27:48,200 --> 00:27:52,000
Speaker 1: he went, or at least so go the biographies. Um, Like,

484
00:27:52,040 --> 00:27:53,880
Speaker 1: I literally and all of the stuff I read about

485
00:27:53,920 --> 00:27:57,960
Speaker 1: him did not find like one negative statement from about

486
00:27:58,000 --> 00:28:00,840
Speaker 1: how he interacted with indigenous fall everywhere he went. But

487
00:28:00,880 --> 00:28:07,119
Speaker 1: I don't know whether that is true. Yeah, totally, besides,

488
00:28:07,119 --> 00:28:09,199
Speaker 1: of course the fact that he helped build the infrastructure

489
00:28:09,200 --> 00:28:12,439
Speaker 1: of that. Okay, anyway, he gets fired for being an idealist,

490
00:28:13,520 --> 00:28:15,240
Speaker 1: and he starts moving from job to job and he's

491
00:28:15,280 --> 00:28:18,280
Speaker 1: basically private contractor down there. Eventually starts working for a

492
00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:21,359
Speaker 1: local mission, and he gets in trouble because he's actually

493
00:28:21,400 --> 00:28:24,080
Speaker 1: paying the locals well for food, and they're like, no,

494
00:28:24,080 --> 00:28:25,639
Speaker 1: no, no no, you gotta pay them as little as you

495
00:28:25,640 --> 00:28:26,720
Speaker 1: can get away with. And he was like, no, I

496
00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:29,480
Speaker 1: should pay them as much as we can afford. Like, no, no, no,

497
00:28:29,560 --> 00:28:30,920
Speaker 1: as little as you can get away with. He's like,

498
00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:33,760
Speaker 1: as much as we can afford. Uh. And he's like, oh,

499
00:28:33,840 --> 00:28:36,480
Speaker 1: even the fucking missions down here are just Leopold's private

500
00:28:36,480 --> 00:28:40,200
Speaker 1: evil thing, which was completely true, as we learned later.

501
00:28:40,440 --> 00:28:42,840
Speaker 1: Well we all learned right now because I'm about to

502
00:28:42,840 --> 00:28:45,360
Speaker 1: read the quote, but the world learned a little bit later.

503
00:28:46,600 --> 00:28:51,440
Speaker 1: In a speech to the Belgian missions Leopold said, they

504
00:28:51,480 --> 00:28:53,760
Speaker 1: know that to kill, to sleep with someone else's wife,

505
00:28:53,800 --> 00:28:56,760
Speaker 1: to lie and insult is bad. Have courage to admit it.

506
00:28:56,960 --> 00:28:59,240
Speaker 1: You are not going to teach them what they know already.

507
00:28:59,640 --> 00:29:02,360
Speaker 1: You're a central role is to facilitate the task of

508
00:29:02,360 --> 00:29:06,480
Speaker 1: administrators and industrials, which means you will go to interpret

509
00:29:06,520 --> 00:29:09,280
Speaker 1: the Gospel in the way that it will best protect

510
00:29:09,360 --> 00:29:12,640
Speaker 1: your interests in that part of the world. So he's

511
00:29:12,640 --> 00:29:15,840
Speaker 1: basically just naming what um, what the religious role in

512
00:29:15,920 --> 00:29:19,320
Speaker 1: colonization has always been, which is to just be a

513
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:25,160
Speaker 1: tool of of subjugation and genocide and and conquest and

514
00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:30,280
Speaker 1: all of those really really terrible things. Yeah, I almost

515
00:29:30,320 --> 00:29:36,080
Speaker 1: appreciate how honest it is, almost, And so he hangs out.

516
00:29:36,360 --> 00:29:39,720
Speaker 1: He's like, he keeps quitting job after job, but he

517
00:29:39,720 --> 00:29:42,000
Speaker 1: he keeps not totally leaving because it's the only thing

518
00:29:42,040 --> 00:29:45,040
Speaker 1: he knows how to do. Um And around this time

519
00:29:45,080 --> 00:29:48,720
Speaker 1: he starts seeing some of the horrors, which means now

520
00:29:48,760 --> 00:29:51,320
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the horrors of the congo.

521
00:29:53,640 --> 00:29:55,920
Speaker 1: Leopold ran the congo basically is a big place to

522
00:29:55,920 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 1: extract rubber from. There's other stuff too, like ivory, but

523
00:29:59,440 --> 00:30:03,240
Speaker 1: mostly rob he managed to kill between a third to

524
00:30:03,360 --> 00:30:05,480
Speaker 1: half of the population of the place, and the process

525
00:30:05,520 --> 00:30:07,960
Speaker 1: of extracting as much rubber as possible over about twenty

526
00:30:08,000 --> 00:30:12,040
Speaker 1: years up somewhere between eight and thirteen million people by

527
00:30:12,040 --> 00:30:14,280
Speaker 1: most estimates, and the estimates are very hard to come

528
00:30:14,280 --> 00:30:18,760
Speaker 1: by for reasons that will continue to talk about throughout UM.

529
00:30:18,800 --> 00:30:22,920
Speaker 1: He essentially enslaved the entire country. Ah, what he did

530
00:30:23,040 --> 00:30:26,560
Speaker 1: was he demanded the extraction of taxes from the population.

531
00:30:27,040 --> 00:30:28,800
Speaker 1: But they didn't use currency, not all of them. Some

532
00:30:28,840 --> 00:30:32,320
Speaker 1: of them use currency mostly. I think brass rods was

533
00:30:32,440 --> 00:30:35,000
Speaker 1: the primary currency at the time, but most of them

534
00:30:35,080 --> 00:30:38,680
Speaker 1: weren't using currency, so everyone could just pay taxes in labor.

535
00:30:38,680 --> 00:30:41,760
Speaker 1: What a deal. So he set up an elaborate hierarchy

536
00:30:41,800 --> 00:30:45,720
Speaker 1: to extract the resources while shifting blame around UM and

537
00:30:46,080 --> 00:30:48,320
Speaker 1: it's one of the most brilliantly evil things that's ever

538
00:30:48,360 --> 00:30:51,200
Speaker 1: been set up in the world. So, okay, here's what works.

539
00:30:51,720 --> 00:30:53,560
Speaker 1: Rubber grows and vines, and the grows in trees. The

540
00:30:53,600 --> 00:30:55,800
Speaker 1: congo is full of the vines. The trees are more

541
00:30:55,880 --> 00:30:59,760
Speaker 1: from the in the Amazon, but and the vines are

542
00:30:59,760 --> 00:31:01,800
Speaker 1: hard to get rubber out of. But it doesn't matter.

543
00:31:01,800 --> 00:31:03,640
Speaker 1: If you could just murder everyone who doesn't do the

544
00:31:03,720 --> 00:31:07,840
Speaker 1: hard work right. So he sets up a system. You've

545
00:31:07,880 --> 00:31:10,239
Speaker 1: got an army, the Force Publique, and it's run by

546
00:31:10,240 --> 00:31:14,560
Speaker 1: white people, Belgians, I think exclusively Belgians. And then you've

547
00:31:14,560 --> 00:31:17,560
Speaker 1: got the rest of the army pretty much exclusively African,

548
00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:21,600
Speaker 1: mostly from uh many from there in the Congo, and

549
00:31:21,640 --> 00:31:25,040
Speaker 1: many from elsewhere including um West Africa. And a lot

550
00:31:25,080 --> 00:31:27,800
Speaker 1: of these people are also essentially a slave army. It's

551
00:31:27,840 --> 00:31:31,360
Speaker 1: a little bit complicated, but there's a lot of forced

552
00:31:31,400 --> 00:31:34,960
Speaker 1: labor going on everywhere. Then you have everyone else. Every

553
00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:38,080
Speaker 1: village has a rubber quota. The guys who are running

554
00:31:38,120 --> 00:31:41,040
Speaker 1: the area, the white officers. They get a commission for

555
00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:43,680
Speaker 1: all the rubber and so they and they have zero

556
00:31:43,760 --> 00:31:46,520
Speaker 1: oversight and all the incentive in the world to do

557
00:31:46,560 --> 00:31:48,800
Speaker 1: this as dirty as possible and as quick as possible.

558
00:31:49,400 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 1: So they make people work by kidnapping their kids and families.

559
00:31:51,880 --> 00:31:53,880
Speaker 1: They burned down whole villages. They wi people to death

560
00:31:53,920 --> 00:31:57,120
Speaker 1: with whips made out of rhino hyde. Some of this stuff.

561
00:31:57,160 --> 00:31:59,400
Speaker 1: They got the idea for it from what they did

562
00:31:59,400 --> 00:32:01,080
Speaker 1: when they were first setting up, which is the thing

563
00:32:01,120 --> 00:32:03,400
Speaker 1: that I actually think that Casement must have known about

564
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:05,640
Speaker 1: at least on some level. I can't see anyone acknowledging

565
00:32:05,680 --> 00:32:07,600
Speaker 1: this one way or the other. But I I struggled

566
00:32:07,600 --> 00:32:10,000
Speaker 1: to see how he didn't, which was that they needed

567
00:32:10,640 --> 00:32:12,920
Speaker 1: first tens of thousands and eventually, I think, like a

568
00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:16,640
Speaker 1: million porters to move all of this stuff on these roads,

569
00:32:16,680 --> 00:32:20,320
Speaker 1: because the steamboats only take you so far. Um. And

570
00:32:20,360 --> 00:32:22,400
Speaker 1: what they would do is that they would kidnap women

571
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:25,280
Speaker 1: and children and say we'll let them go one for one,

572
00:32:25,880 --> 00:32:30,040
Speaker 1: or men who can work as porters. So all this

573
00:32:30,080 --> 00:32:32,920
Speaker 1: would be bad enough. Right, He's enslaved the entire country.

574
00:32:33,240 --> 00:32:35,600
Speaker 1: That would be up there on the list of worst

575
00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:38,800
Speaker 1: things that's ever happened. The officers are worried that the

576
00:32:38,840 --> 00:32:42,200
Speaker 1: soldiers are going to stockpile AMMO to murder them, which

577
00:32:42,240 --> 00:32:44,760
Speaker 1: is a reasonable worry because it is a reasonable thing

578
00:32:44,760 --> 00:32:48,920
Speaker 1: that the soldiers. Yeah, And they also didn't want the

579
00:32:48,920 --> 00:32:51,680
Speaker 1: soldiers hunting and wasting their precious AMMO that had to

580
00:32:51,720 --> 00:32:54,680
Speaker 1: come all the way from Belgium. So all of the

581
00:32:54,680 --> 00:32:57,200
Speaker 1: bullets go out on one condition. You only get so

582
00:32:57,240 --> 00:32:59,840
Speaker 1: many bullets, and for every bullet you fire, you have

583
00:33:00,000 --> 00:33:02,320
Speaker 1: to bring back the right hand of whomever you shot.

584
00:33:02,400 --> 00:33:08,840
Speaker 1: What the fuck? Yeah, which which creates a market for hands. Sorry,

585
00:33:08,840 --> 00:33:11,080
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to interrupt you. No, no, no, sorry,

586
00:33:11,120 --> 00:33:13,880
Speaker 1: I'm just taking in how how absolutely horrific this is.

587
00:33:14,240 --> 00:33:20,920
Speaker 1: He's he's like, he's like the evilest of the evil. Yeah,

588
00:33:21,080 --> 00:33:23,760
Speaker 1: so he creates a market for hands. If you shoot

589
00:33:23,760 --> 00:33:26,400
Speaker 1: an animal because you're hungry, you just go find a

590
00:33:26,400 --> 00:33:29,720
Speaker 1: living person and cut off their hand. Um, the hands

591
00:33:29,760 --> 00:33:32,840
Speaker 1: are smoked to preserve them, and then they're just so

592
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:35,160
Speaker 1: that they could be counted at like counting houses, and

593
00:33:35,200 --> 00:33:39,000
Speaker 1: they're basically currency at this point. Uh. Some soldiers were

594
00:33:39,000 --> 00:33:41,160
Speaker 1: told they could go home if they hit hit certain

595
00:33:41,200 --> 00:33:45,720
Speaker 1: quotas of hands. So baskets of hands was as much

596
00:33:45,760 --> 00:33:49,440
Speaker 1: the resource that was extracted from the congo. And what

597
00:33:49,560 --> 00:33:52,000
Speaker 1: was interesting is a strange word to use for this.

598
00:33:52,400 --> 00:33:55,040
Speaker 1: This wasn't legal even by like the rules of like

599
00:33:55,840 --> 00:33:59,440
Speaker 1: the very loose rules of colonization, right, and even the

600
00:33:59,440 --> 00:34:02,840
Speaker 1: ostensible rules of the congo. But there's no oversight, and

601
00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:06,000
Speaker 1: that's very intentional, and no one from outside the congo

602
00:34:06,120 --> 00:34:07,920
Speaker 1: was going to go up into the congo to find

603
00:34:07,920 --> 00:34:10,960
Speaker 1: out what was happening. Almost nobody And we'll get to

604
00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:13,080
Speaker 1: some of the people who did that soon. But first

605
00:34:13,080 --> 00:34:14,920
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the real histories of this

606
00:34:15,080 --> 00:34:17,440
Speaker 1: the heroes of this podcast more even more than Casement.

607
00:34:17,520 --> 00:34:20,440
Speaker 1: I like Casement a lot. The real heroes of this

608
00:34:20,560 --> 00:34:23,799
Speaker 1: history I struggled to find a lot of information about.

609
00:34:23,840 --> 00:34:25,520
Speaker 1: So it's gonna be a little bit of a shorter section.

610
00:34:25,560 --> 00:34:27,200
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the resistance to all this

611
00:34:27,280 --> 00:34:31,800
Speaker 1: from within the Congo itself. Awesome, Um one kingdom in

612
00:34:31,840 --> 00:34:33,520
Speaker 1: the Congo. And there's the other thing too, write there's

613
00:34:33,640 --> 00:34:37,200
Speaker 1: entire kingdoms. This is not a wherever I guess so

614
00:34:37,239 --> 00:34:40,160
Speaker 1: mad at my own bad education, where everything I've learned

615
00:34:40,200 --> 00:34:44,399
Speaker 1: about Africa, you know, when I'm like, oh that like anyway, Okay,

616
00:34:44,400 --> 00:34:46,560
Speaker 1: So there's entire kingdoms in the Congo. One of them,

617
00:34:47,200 --> 00:34:52,040
Speaker 1: Cuba repels three separate attacks and only fell in nine.

618
00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:57,560
Speaker 1: And they repelled three separate attacks without guns against people

619
00:34:57,560 --> 00:35:01,279
Speaker 1: who have maximum guns like machine guns, you know. And

620
00:35:01,280 --> 00:35:03,839
Speaker 1: there's a there's a Congolese fight song that I want

621
00:35:03,840 --> 00:35:07,680
Speaker 1: to quote. We are tired of living under tyranny. We

622
00:35:07,719 --> 00:35:10,600
Speaker 1: cannot endure are that our women and children are taken

623
00:35:10,600 --> 00:35:13,839
Speaker 1: away and dealt with by white savages. We shall make war.

624
00:35:14,280 --> 00:35:16,520
Speaker 1: We know that we shall die. We want to die.

625
00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:22,759
Speaker 1: We want to die. So yeah, it's just they were

626
00:35:22,840 --> 00:35:26,920
Speaker 1: fucking playing around. You know. Revolts spread across the entire country,

627
00:35:27,719 --> 00:35:29,040
Speaker 1: which is actually, I mean, one of the things that's

628
00:35:29,080 --> 00:35:31,440
Speaker 1: so complicated is that they did not conceive of themselves

629
00:35:31,440 --> 00:35:36,320
Speaker 1: as a country that was a European imposition. And you

630
00:35:36,360 --> 00:35:38,040
Speaker 1: know there's a lot of like shared culture and stuff.

631
00:35:38,040 --> 00:35:39,680
Speaker 1: And I'm not an expert in this. I read as

632
00:35:39,760 --> 00:35:42,919
Speaker 1: much as I could find, but um, the revolts spread

633
00:35:42,960 --> 00:35:46,560
Speaker 1: across the country. One medicine man at Chilly Capilli, he

634
00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:49,120
Speaker 1: spreads around a charm called the Tonga Tonga that was

635
00:35:49,120 --> 00:35:51,440
Speaker 1: supposed to protect his bear from the white man's bullets.

636
00:35:51,960 --> 00:35:54,240
Speaker 1: But it only worked if you refuse the white man's

637
00:35:54,280 --> 00:35:58,400
Speaker 1: food and other goods, which is I mean, it's it's clever,

638
00:35:58,600 --> 00:36:02,320
Speaker 1: right because it it sort of obviously doesn't successfully stop bullets.

639
00:36:02,360 --> 00:36:05,920
Speaker 1: But what it does is it disinvests people from the

640
00:36:06,000 --> 00:36:10,560
Speaker 1: system of colonization. Um. And it spreads insurrection because people

641
00:36:10,600 --> 00:36:13,040
Speaker 1: start refusing to trade because they no longer want the

642
00:36:13,040 --> 00:36:17,839
Speaker 1: white man's goods, and rebellion spreads because it gives people courage. Um,

643
00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:20,960
Speaker 1: they burn entire rubber factories and missions to the ground.

644
00:36:21,640 --> 00:36:24,439
Speaker 1: There's like reports from missionaries that are like, we came

645
00:36:24,480 --> 00:36:27,239
Speaker 1: home and our whole place was ashes, and I'm like,

646
00:36:27,360 --> 00:36:31,680
Speaker 1: oh no, I feel so bad for you. You survived,

647
00:36:32,120 --> 00:36:38,160
Speaker 1: That's all you could ask for. Across the whole of

648
00:36:38,160 --> 00:36:40,239
Speaker 1: the country. This is mostly a little bit later, This

649
00:36:40,280 --> 00:36:43,840
Speaker 1: is like nineteen o four, but they laid siege to

650
00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:47,200
Speaker 1: cities and they did all of this again without guns

651
00:36:47,200 --> 00:36:50,839
Speaker 1: in the English at the maximum gun um by n five,

652
00:36:51,000 --> 00:36:53,799
Speaker 1: that particular rebellion was crushed. And then the other form

653
00:36:53,880 --> 00:36:58,240
Speaker 1: that resistance took is people fled tens of thousands, hundreds

654
00:36:58,239 --> 00:37:03,520
Speaker 1: of thousands, maybe millions of people. Again I couldn't totally

655
00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:07,800
Speaker 1: find out. Um, they just moved entire villages of tens

656
00:37:07,800 --> 00:37:10,600
Speaker 1: of thousands of people which just disappear into the jungle

657
00:37:11,120 --> 00:37:14,200
Speaker 1: rather than do this work. So yeah, when the Belgians

658
00:37:14,200 --> 00:37:17,120
Speaker 1: threat a village, the entire village will suck off. And

659
00:37:17,160 --> 00:37:20,360
Speaker 1: my my realization after reading um some of this stuff

660
00:37:20,360 --> 00:37:23,320
Speaker 1: about the resistance was like that that the Congo wasn't

661
00:37:23,480 --> 00:37:27,840
Speaker 1: really conquered by Leopold. It was like fucked up by Leopold,

662
00:37:28,239 --> 00:37:34,040
Speaker 1: but it it never became this like stable structure that

663
00:37:34,120 --> 00:37:37,640
Speaker 1: was conquered, you know, mm hmmm. There was enough resistance

664
00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:42,480
Speaker 1: happening from within. Yeah, and I don't you know again,

665
00:37:42,680 --> 00:37:46,759
Speaker 1: like I don't know, but okay. And then earlier when

666
00:37:46,800 --> 00:37:49,839
Speaker 1: I said that no one would go investigate, I talk

667
00:37:49,840 --> 00:37:52,480
Speaker 1: about the people who did investigate. And the first person

668
00:37:52,520 --> 00:37:55,880
Speaker 1: to go investigate was a black American named George Washington

669
00:37:55,920 --> 00:37:59,000
Speaker 1: Williams Um. And he was fucking cool. So I'm gonna

670
00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:01,960
Speaker 1: tell you about him. Cool. I got really excited when I, like,

671
00:38:02,400 --> 00:38:05,080
Speaker 1: I don't know whatever, whenever I'm doing this and I'm like,

672
00:38:05,080 --> 00:38:07,200
Speaker 1: I read about a bastard, and I'm like, there's a

673
00:38:07,200 --> 00:38:10,399
Speaker 1: reason I run the podcast I run. So I'm like, oh,

674
00:38:10,440 --> 00:38:12,960
Speaker 1: I get to read about Stanley right now. Okay, that's fine.

675
00:38:13,040 --> 00:38:15,640
Speaker 1: And then I'm like, oh, ship the first fucking guy

676
00:38:15,640 --> 00:38:18,880
Speaker 1: who went there. He's like George Washington Williams. He was

677
00:38:18,920 --> 00:38:21,799
Speaker 1: born free in Pennsylvania. When he was fourteen, he ran

678
00:38:21,840 --> 00:38:23,799
Speaker 1: away from home. He used a fake name to enlist

679
00:38:23,840 --> 00:38:27,600
Speaker 1: in the Union Army because he's fucking cool. And then

680
00:38:28,040 --> 00:38:31,120
Speaker 1: as soon as the Union wins, Um he goes to

681
00:38:31,200 --> 00:38:34,160
Speaker 1: Mexico and he joins the Republicans. They're fighting against the

682
00:38:34,200 --> 00:38:37,839
Speaker 1: Emperor of Mexico. Uh so he's he's two for two

683
00:38:37,880 --> 00:38:42,120
Speaker 1: in my book at this point, right his his okay,

684
00:38:42,200 --> 00:38:44,799
Speaker 1: the one move, okay whatever, I'm not starting to sit

685
00:38:44,840 --> 00:38:46,680
Speaker 1: in judgment. But he comes back to the US in

686
00:38:46,760 --> 00:38:49,080
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty seven and he joins the U. S Army

687
00:38:49,120 --> 00:38:52,680
Speaker 1: and he fights in the Indian wars Okaya, which is

688
00:38:52,719 --> 00:38:55,719
Speaker 1: not as cool. He gets shot through the lung for

689
00:38:55,840 --> 00:38:58,440
Speaker 1: his trouble, which is sort of like, well, I mean,

690
00:38:58,480 --> 00:39:01,240
Speaker 1: I like you, but you're fighting in the Indian Wars

691
00:39:01,840 --> 00:39:05,720
Speaker 1: um But he survives. He becomes a Baptist preacher, a lawyer,

692
00:39:05,760 --> 00:39:09,800
Speaker 1: and he's the first black person in the Ohio State Legislature, UM,

693
00:39:09,800 --> 00:39:13,400
Speaker 1: and he wrote the first overall history of black Americans,

694
00:39:13,760 --> 00:39:15,759
Speaker 1: which is called The History of the Negro Race in

695
00:39:15,800 --> 00:39:20,959
Speaker 1: America six nine eight eight, UM and A. In that book,

696
00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:23,000
Speaker 1: he's one of the first people to use the phrase

697
00:39:23,040 --> 00:39:26,760
Speaker 1: crimes against humanity and the modern sense. And it seems

698
00:39:26,760 --> 00:39:28,560
Speaker 1: to me to be very fitting that that phrase comes

699
00:39:28,560 --> 00:39:31,840
Speaker 1: from the US treatment of black people. Mm hmm. So

700
00:39:31,960 --> 00:39:35,359
Speaker 1: he's this huge anti slavery guy, right, So he goes

701
00:39:35,960 --> 00:39:39,480
Speaker 1: to go meet Leopold because Leopold is also a huge

702
00:39:39,520 --> 00:39:42,920
Speaker 1: anti slavery guy. He's fighting this whole war against slavers

703
00:39:42,960 --> 00:39:46,880
Speaker 1: in Central Africa, and so he's like, hell, yeah, I'm

704
00:39:46,920 --> 00:39:48,719
Speaker 1: going to go down to the Congo and check it out.

705
00:39:48,760 --> 00:39:51,879
Speaker 1: After he means Leopold, and then he goes down there

706
00:39:52,200 --> 00:39:55,920
Speaker 1: and then he checks it out and he's like oh no,

707
00:39:56,880 --> 00:40:03,160
Speaker 1: m hm, oh no, not this, um. And so he

708
00:40:03,200 --> 00:40:05,759
Speaker 1: writes his findings up for the world to scene. He

709
00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:08,640
Speaker 1: frames it as an open letter to Leopold, as if

710
00:40:08,680 --> 00:40:11,600
Speaker 1: the atrocities would be like a surprise. It's like, boy,

711
00:40:11,719 --> 00:40:13,520
Speaker 1: but you didn't know what's going down in your country

712
00:40:13,520 --> 00:40:16,239
Speaker 1: while you're at you're at home, you know. I think

713
00:40:16,239 --> 00:40:21,320
Speaker 1: he knew that. Leopold now, um, And so he starts

714
00:40:21,360 --> 00:40:26,280
Speaker 1: the European movement to free the Congo from Leopold UM,

715
00:40:26,280 --> 00:40:29,840
Speaker 1: and Leopold puts his pr powers and demotion to counter

716
00:40:29,880 --> 00:40:37,160
Speaker 1: all of this. And it's the nineteenth century. So a

717
00:40:37,239 --> 00:40:40,200
Speaker 1: year after he gets back from the Congo, George Washington

718
00:40:40,200 --> 00:40:44,720
Speaker 1: Williams dies in England of fucking tuberculosis. Mm hmm okay,

719
00:40:45,719 --> 00:40:50,319
Speaker 1: like everyone else unfortunately. Yeah, basically, UM, there's a couple

720
00:40:50,360 --> 00:40:53,000
Speaker 1: of people throughout the story who die kind of mysteriously

721
00:40:53,120 --> 00:40:57,880
Speaker 1: after like fucking with Leopold. MM. I don't think I

722
00:40:57,920 --> 00:41:01,359
Speaker 1: think he just died of tuberculosis. Okay, let's talk about

723
00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:07,000
Speaker 1: Caseman again. His life gets boring for a while, or

724
00:41:07,120 --> 00:41:08,920
Speaker 1: rather full of adventures that I don't have time for.

725
00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:12,120
Speaker 1: He he's no longer in the Congo. He was only

726
00:41:12,120 --> 00:41:13,920
Speaker 1: in the Congo at the very beginning of the Congo

727
00:41:14,320 --> 00:41:18,720
Speaker 1: um or the Congo Free State, right. He starts working

728
00:41:18,719 --> 00:41:21,600
Speaker 1: for the British Console Service in various countries around Africa,

729
00:41:21,960 --> 00:41:25,200
Speaker 1: which is basically this weird job where you're like really

730
00:41:25,239 --> 00:41:27,759
Speaker 1: badly paid and in terrible conditions, but you're a mix

731
00:41:27,760 --> 00:41:31,400
Speaker 1: of a bureaucrat and an administrator and a spy like.

732
00:41:31,480 --> 00:41:33,600
Speaker 1: He gets sent to like a Portuguese colony for a

733
00:41:33,600 --> 00:41:37,520
Speaker 1: few years to run an office to um keep track

734
00:41:37,560 --> 00:41:40,080
Speaker 1: of what the Portuguese are up, to make sure that

735
00:41:40,080 --> 00:41:42,640
Speaker 1: the British ships get in and out of the colony okay,

736
00:41:42,760 --> 00:41:46,440
Speaker 1: and that all British citizens and subjects aren't being mistreated

737
00:41:46,440 --> 00:41:49,879
Speaker 1: by the Portuguese. And he spends most of his time

738
00:41:50,080 --> 00:41:54,240
Speaker 1: complaining about his ill health, writing poetry, having his poetry

739
00:41:54,320 --> 00:41:57,720
Speaker 1: rejected by everyone he sends it to. It's probably rejected

740
00:41:57,719 --> 00:42:00,920
Speaker 1: because it's not particularly good. Um. It's kind of like

741
00:42:00,960 --> 00:42:04,799
Speaker 1: the almost running joke about this guy just like he

742
00:42:04,920 --> 00:42:09,560
Speaker 1: really he wrote a lot of poetry. It's it's fine, um.

743
00:42:09,600 --> 00:42:11,200
Speaker 1: But also I actually think one of the things that

744
00:42:11,239 --> 00:42:13,160
Speaker 1: might have been working against him was how political it was,

745
00:42:13,200 --> 00:42:16,200
Speaker 1: and like he's working for the British Console Service and

746
00:42:16,200 --> 00:42:20,120
Speaker 1: he's just writing these poems about how like any African

747
00:42:20,160 --> 00:42:24,920
Speaker 1: who trust England is going to die, England is terrible.

748
00:42:25,400 --> 00:42:29,359
Speaker 1: What's happening? And that's like kind of the essential thing

749
00:42:29,480 --> 00:42:33,239
Speaker 1: that I sort of like, that's like the mystery of

750
00:42:33,360 --> 00:42:35,680
Speaker 1: Roger Casement, I think, is this time period where he

751
00:42:35,719 --> 00:42:38,680
Speaker 1: knows what's wrong, but he also still works for the wrong.

752
00:42:39,640 --> 00:42:44,080
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, there's still like this very strong complicity and

753
00:42:44,920 --> 00:42:47,840
Speaker 1: what's happening. Yeah yeah, although it weirdly gives me a

754
00:42:47,920 --> 00:42:51,680
Speaker 1: certain amount of hope about um, the people who interact

755
00:42:51,680 --> 00:42:57,640
Speaker 1: with really bad infrastructure today, um that like might actually

756
00:42:58,200 --> 00:43:02,640
Speaker 1: uh have a little Roger Caseman in them, which could

757
00:43:02,680 --> 00:43:04,640
Speaker 1: be a sex joke, except he's a bottom, so really

758
00:43:04,680 --> 00:43:10,080
Speaker 1: it be them having a little bit in Roger Casements. Funny,

759
00:43:10,320 --> 00:43:18,759
Speaker 1: think you've ever said yes, yes, I win, you do

760
00:43:18,840 --> 00:43:27,839
Speaker 1: you do win? Okay? And so this is the time

761
00:43:27,880 --> 00:43:29,960
Speaker 1: period that a lot of the biographies argue about also

762
00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:31,799
Speaker 1: the most because everyone's kind of trying to figure out

763
00:43:31,800 --> 00:43:33,920
Speaker 1: what the funk is up with this guy, and some

764
00:43:34,000 --> 00:43:36,279
Speaker 1: of the Anglo focused ones. A lot of his biographies

765
00:43:36,320 --> 00:43:40,480
Speaker 1: come out from like mid twentieth century British people, right,

766
00:43:40,640 --> 00:43:43,800
Speaker 1: or like maybe some Irish people but loyalists and stuff,

767
00:43:43,840 --> 00:43:46,439
Speaker 1: you know, with people who are unsure if they're loyal

768
00:43:46,520 --> 00:43:48,960
Speaker 1: whatever anyway, so a lot of them are like, he

769
00:43:49,000 --> 00:43:51,240
Speaker 1: was a good royal subject until one day his mind

770
00:43:51,280 --> 00:43:54,799
Speaker 1: was broken by the tropical heat into like evil air

771
00:43:54,880 --> 00:43:58,960
Speaker 1: of Africa um, or you have a he was a

772
00:43:59,000 --> 00:44:02,360
Speaker 1: good loyal British citizen until he saw the atrocities and

773
00:44:02,400 --> 00:44:07,920
Speaker 1: finally realized colonialism was bad, or you have the really

774
00:44:08,000 --> 00:44:11,040
Speaker 1: Irish focused biographies will all focus on how he was

775
00:44:11,160 --> 00:44:15,000
Speaker 1: always a true believer in Ireland, always an Irish nationalist.

776
00:44:15,320 --> 00:44:17,240
Speaker 1: It's just a little bit weird. He worked for Britain

777
00:44:17,680 --> 00:44:20,840
Speaker 1: and he uh and he wanted to die while charging

778
00:44:20,880 --> 00:44:23,879
Speaker 1: an English castle in Ireland is actually something he said

779
00:44:23,880 --> 00:44:26,360
Speaker 1: to his friends at first points. Okay, they were like,

780
00:44:26,400 --> 00:44:27,680
Speaker 1: how are you gonna die? And he's like, I'm gonna

781
00:44:27,680 --> 00:44:31,600
Speaker 1: get hanged by the British. Um. It seems like maybe

782
00:44:31,680 --> 00:44:35,560
Speaker 1: his dreams maybe came true. Is this a spoiler alert?

783
00:44:36,360 --> 00:44:39,799
Speaker 1: I'm not going to tell you one way or the other. RN.

784
00:44:39,800 --> 00:44:41,279
Speaker 1: Do you have any good things that you would like

785
00:44:41,320 --> 00:44:45,160
Speaker 1: the show to be sponsored? You know, I was trying

786
00:44:45,160 --> 00:44:47,200
Speaker 1: to think about that because I thought this might come up.

787
00:44:47,560 --> 00:44:50,759
Speaker 1: I think that maybe when you go to a community

788
00:44:50,800 --> 00:44:56,400
Speaker 1: dinner and the food is not like, um, really mediocre

789
00:44:56,760 --> 00:45:00,480
Speaker 1: like burned lentils, but actually like really delicious, exciting food,

790
00:45:01,480 --> 00:45:03,760
Speaker 1: I would like to be sponsored by that in general.

791
00:45:03,800 --> 00:45:05,720
Speaker 1: So maybe the show would also like to be sponsored

792
00:45:05,719 --> 00:45:08,360
Speaker 1: by that. Like, it's just such a delight, the concept

793
00:45:08,440 --> 00:45:11,920
Speaker 1: of delicious communal food. Yeah, like I you know, the

794
00:45:11,960 --> 00:45:15,400
Speaker 1: occasional burn lentils. It happens if I'm invited and I

795
00:45:15,480 --> 00:45:18,440
Speaker 1: actually cook. We all have a little bit of acceptance

796
00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:21,640
Speaker 1: for burned lentils, for burn lentils, but there's other roles

797
00:45:21,760 --> 00:45:25,040
Speaker 1: or dishes to be washed. Yeah, okay, maybe that would

798
00:45:25,160 --> 00:45:31,600
Speaker 1: usually bring the seltzer. Yeah, perfect, Okay, I like that. Um,

799
00:45:31,719 --> 00:45:34,239
Speaker 1: we are sponsored by that and only that, And if

800
00:45:34,239 --> 00:45:38,400
Speaker 1: anything else interrupts this podcast, it was entirely a mistake,

801
00:45:45,040 --> 00:45:47,319
Speaker 1: and we are back from talking about all of the

802
00:45:47,360 --> 00:45:51,560
Speaker 1: delicious meals that we all will share together with no

803
00:45:51,640 --> 00:45:56,520
Speaker 1: other interruptions. So speaking of back, Roger Casement wants to

804
00:45:56,560 --> 00:46:00,560
Speaker 1: go back to Ireland. Okay, He's like, I don't know

805
00:46:00,560 --> 00:46:03,120
Speaker 1: whether he's just like done or whether he's just like

806
00:46:03,680 --> 00:46:07,000
Speaker 1: he feels stuck. He kind of can't quit a little bit.

807
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:09,480
Speaker 1: He like, I think literally can't quit. I think he

808
00:46:09,520 --> 00:46:13,239
Speaker 1: does not have a ton of um autonomy over his

809
00:46:13,280 --> 00:46:16,600
Speaker 1: own life at this point. Um. And he's constantly like

810
00:46:16,719 --> 00:46:19,640
Speaker 1: faking sick to get to go home and also being

811
00:46:19,719 --> 00:46:23,040
Speaker 1: actually sick to get to go home. And he goes

812
00:46:23,080 --> 00:46:24,920
Speaker 1: home for surgeries and then kind of like takes a

813
00:46:25,000 --> 00:46:27,160
Speaker 1: little bit longer to recover than anyone wants them to

814
00:46:27,280 --> 00:46:31,200
Speaker 1: and stuff. And because he I think he increasingly hates

815
00:46:31,239 --> 00:46:33,839
Speaker 1: this work he does. And then he also does this

816
00:46:33,880 --> 00:46:37,319
Speaker 1: thing that I don't have the time or really I didn't.

817
00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:39,440
Speaker 1: I didn't have the time to really wrap my head around,

818
00:46:39,480 --> 00:46:43,000
Speaker 1: because it's really complicated. And he sticks his head into

819
00:46:43,040 --> 00:46:46,760
Speaker 1: the Boer War war the Boer War in South Africa.

820
00:46:47,280 --> 00:46:50,040
Speaker 1: He shows up on the British side, which is basically

821
00:46:50,040 --> 00:46:53,000
Speaker 1: when British imperialists fought against the Bowers, who are white

822
00:46:53,040 --> 00:46:57,240
Speaker 1: colonists who wanted independence. And he felt good about siding

823
00:46:57,239 --> 00:46:59,319
Speaker 1: with the British in this because he had seen how

824
00:46:59,320 --> 00:47:04,960
Speaker 1: the Bowers eat Africans. But later he was like, actually

825
00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:07,880
Speaker 1: fun both sides, and he never wore He like won

826
00:47:07,960 --> 00:47:09,920
Speaker 1: a medal for his service as a spy in the

827
00:47:10,200 --> 00:47:13,600
Speaker 1: Boer War, and I think he lad some ship um

828
00:47:13,640 --> 00:47:17,080
Speaker 1: and he he never wears the medal. And while he's

829
00:47:17,120 --> 00:47:20,160
Speaker 1: doing all of this, uh, and his entire fucking life,

830
00:47:20,719 --> 00:47:25,280
Speaker 1: he is just fucking people men, just and he's keeping

831
00:47:25,280 --> 00:47:29,279
Speaker 1: a journal about all of it, and he's like, fuck

832
00:47:29,360 --> 00:47:32,560
Speaker 1: these three guys today, a little bit tired. Um. And

833
00:47:32,600 --> 00:47:36,320
Speaker 1: it's very sexual, and he keeps in his journal exactly

834
00:47:36,320 --> 00:47:39,839
Speaker 1: how big everyone's dicks are. He is very excited when

835
00:47:39,840 --> 00:47:42,320
Speaker 1: he gets to funk the biggest dicks that he's ever gotten.

836
00:47:42,320 --> 00:47:46,600
Speaker 1: The fuck um. He feels completely uncomplicated about paining for sex,

837
00:47:46,640 --> 00:47:49,719
Speaker 1: which rules he um. He says pain for sex is

838
00:47:49,760 --> 00:47:52,000
Speaker 1: no worse than pain for a game game of billiards.

839
00:47:53,360 --> 00:47:56,080
Speaker 1: And it's It's interesting some of the more gay historians

840
00:47:56,239 --> 00:48:02,239
Speaker 1: talk about this about how it basically only experienced casual sex.

841
00:48:02,280 --> 00:48:04,520
Speaker 1: It seems like or we only have evidence of him

842
00:48:04,560 --> 00:48:09,000
Speaker 1: exploring casual sex because he's a very romantic soul right, okay,

843
00:48:10,280 --> 00:48:14,000
Speaker 1: and poetry and stuff. Yeah, I'm like crying when I

844
00:48:14,000 --> 00:48:17,839
Speaker 1: can't believe he cried when dog almost died, um right

845
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:19,279
Speaker 1: in front of him. What a what a whimp? And

846
00:48:20,360 --> 00:48:22,800
Speaker 1: so some people have argued that maybe his casual affairs

847
00:48:22,800 --> 00:48:25,280
Speaker 1: were because he had to keep his homosexuality a secret.

848
00:48:25,560 --> 00:48:29,839
Speaker 1: A sustained relationship causes more of a stir, right, Yeah, absolutely,

849
00:48:31,280 --> 00:48:33,840
Speaker 1: I don't know. I could go either way, Like I

850
00:48:33,840 --> 00:48:36,720
Speaker 1: think a sweet romantic man could also just like sucking around.

851
00:48:37,440 --> 00:48:40,799
Speaker 1: And also the reason it's important is its basically makes

852
00:48:40,840 --> 00:48:42,880
Speaker 1: him a gay James Bond who then later turns on

853
00:48:42,920 --> 00:48:50,000
Speaker 1: his employers m m like he's sex christ handsome, charming,

854
00:48:50,360 --> 00:48:56,600
Speaker 1: chivalrous and speaks a million languages spy for the British. Um,

855
00:48:57,840 --> 00:49:00,880
Speaker 1: but then he fucking goes to war against the British

856
00:49:00,920 --> 00:49:05,360
Speaker 1: spoiler alert to second half of this. So I don't know,

857
00:49:05,520 --> 00:49:07,439
Speaker 1: I kind of like this, this is how James Bond

858
00:49:07,440 --> 00:49:10,400
Speaker 1: should be. That's what I'm saying. Totally. They're going to

859
00:49:10,560 --> 00:49:14,360
Speaker 1: really have to rewrite on that, you know. Absolutely, he

860
00:49:14,480 --> 00:49:18,160
Speaker 1: also saw homosexuality as a disease, but it was a

861
00:49:18,239 --> 00:49:21,560
Speaker 1: misfortune that was not the person's fault, and it should

862
00:49:21,560 --> 00:49:25,160
Speaker 1: probably be cured, but in the meantime everything's fine. And

863
00:49:26,000 --> 00:49:29,600
Speaker 1: you know, I I can't tell him how he should

864
00:49:29,640 --> 00:49:33,840
Speaker 1: have felt. You know. Yeah, he also drank and smoked

865
00:49:33,840 --> 00:49:37,080
Speaker 1: and danced and gambled, but all in very moderation, like

866
00:49:38,200 --> 00:49:40,120
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff gets used against him later,

867
00:49:40,200 --> 00:49:42,720
Speaker 1: but he's like he tracks all of his gambling winnings

868
00:49:42,719 --> 00:49:45,799
Speaker 1: and losings. He only drinks in moderation, like he is

869
00:49:45,840 --> 00:49:49,360
Speaker 1: the like, you know, all things in moderation, including moderation.

870
00:49:49,440 --> 00:49:55,360
Speaker 1: That is this guy, mm hmm. And he starts hearing

871
00:49:55,400 --> 00:49:57,600
Speaker 1: more about what's going on in the Congo while he's

872
00:49:57,880 --> 00:50:00,319
Speaker 1: while he's doing the spy ship in other countries, and

873
00:50:00,360 --> 00:50:03,240
Speaker 1: he doesn't like what he's hearing. There's almost no trade

874
00:50:03,280 --> 00:50:05,800
Speaker 1: happening in the Congo, like everywhere else, there's at least

875
00:50:05,840 --> 00:50:10,960
Speaker 1: some vestiges of of European trade happening, right, but the

876
00:50:11,000 --> 00:50:14,600
Speaker 1: Congo rubber goes out, nice stuff does not go back in,

877
00:50:14,960 --> 00:50:20,960
Speaker 1: just guns and ammo. Another explorer, Edward Glave, who has

878
00:50:21,000 --> 00:50:23,919
Speaker 1: a cool name, decides to go and check out what's

879
00:50:23,920 --> 00:50:26,240
Speaker 1: going on in the Congo. Or maybe he's just off exploring.

880
00:50:26,280 --> 00:50:28,720
Speaker 1: It's hard to tell. I'm not super sure. Of his motives.

881
00:50:29,120 --> 00:50:32,879
Speaker 1: He dies mysteriously while he's off exploring the Congo. He's

882
00:50:32,880 --> 00:50:35,640
Speaker 1: a he's a white guy, and the Congo Free State

883
00:50:35,719 --> 00:50:39,239
Speaker 1: tries to destroy all of his journals. But they I mean,

884
00:50:39,280 --> 00:50:41,359
Speaker 1: they probably killed him, is what. I will go ahead

885
00:50:41,360 --> 00:50:46,480
Speaker 1: and on the record, come at me for slander, libel,

886
00:50:46,560 --> 00:50:49,200
Speaker 1: whatever I think. Probably if the Free State of Congo

887
00:50:49,239 --> 00:50:53,200
Speaker 1: wants to come at me. Um. Some of his journals

888
00:50:53,200 --> 00:50:56,000
Speaker 1: got out even though they destroyed a lot of them,

889
00:50:56,560 --> 00:50:59,919
Speaker 1: and his journals are basically, oh my god, oh my god,

890
00:51:00,040 --> 00:51:01,200
Speaker 1: my god, oh my god, oh my god, what the

891
00:51:01,200 --> 00:51:05,200
Speaker 1: fund is happening here? Um? Because it's really bad and

892
00:51:05,239 --> 00:51:07,040
Speaker 1: I don't want to linger. We went over the like

893
00:51:07,160 --> 00:51:09,759
Speaker 1: system of bad and I'm kind of choosing not to

894
00:51:11,120 --> 00:51:15,120
Speaker 1: linger on the bad but really fucking bad. So Casement,

895
00:51:15,680 --> 00:51:19,359
Speaker 1: a good civil servant, starts writing letters to the Free State,

896
00:51:19,400 --> 00:51:22,040
Speaker 1: being like, I think something bad is happening and you

897
00:51:22,080 --> 00:51:25,880
Speaker 1: should check it out and investigate yourself. You will be

898
00:51:25,880 --> 00:51:28,600
Speaker 1: shocked to know. This does not work, so he he

899
00:51:28,640 --> 00:51:32,880
Speaker 1: starts writing to England about it. England, they don't really

900
00:51:32,920 --> 00:51:35,920
Speaker 1: care about the mutilation and the slavery. They get upset

901
00:51:36,160 --> 00:51:42,360
Speaker 1: because the Congo isn't allowing free trade. Okay, the Belgians

902
00:51:42,360 --> 00:51:44,759
Speaker 1: in the Congo start murdering even white people who try

903
00:51:44,800 --> 00:51:47,759
Speaker 1: to set up shop, which is like and they're all like, wait,

904
00:51:47,800 --> 00:51:51,520
Speaker 1: that's illegal. You're not allowed to murder people for setting

905
00:51:51,600 --> 00:51:54,399
Speaker 1: up a store. You're killing white people. What's going on?

906
00:51:54,880 --> 00:51:57,799
Speaker 1: All of a sudden Now it's a political issue for

907
00:51:57,800 --> 00:52:00,000
Speaker 1: for for just the British, for the rest of Europe

908
00:52:00,080 --> 00:52:03,759
Speaker 1: bar at this point, I think it is starting to

909
00:52:03,760 --> 00:52:05,560
Speaker 1: become more of a thing for everyone. But I think

910
00:52:05,600 --> 00:52:08,120
Speaker 1: the I think the first couple of people who died

911
00:52:08,440 --> 00:52:13,239
Speaker 1: were English, and then also Casement very much cares, and

912
00:52:13,280 --> 00:52:15,719
Speaker 1: he's half able to get Britain to care that some

913
00:52:15,840 --> 00:52:19,680
Speaker 1: of it's uh, not its citizens, but its subjects from

914
00:52:19,880 --> 00:52:24,440
Speaker 1: British West Africa are being forced into forced labor or

915
00:52:24,480 --> 00:52:27,440
Speaker 1: being enslaved, being sent over there to work as centuries

916
00:52:27,480 --> 00:52:29,920
Speaker 1: because they can't get enough local people to do the murdering.

917
00:52:30,560 --> 00:52:33,360
Speaker 1: And theoretically Britain is supposed to His job is to

918
00:52:33,400 --> 00:52:39,560
Speaker 1: make Britain care about what's happening to British subjects. And

919
00:52:39,640 --> 00:52:44,080
Speaker 1: so Leopold does what any monarch would do, and he

920
00:52:44,120 --> 00:52:46,800
Speaker 1: sets up the Commission for the Protection of the Natives,

921
00:52:47,200 --> 00:52:50,400
Speaker 1: and it's full of Catholics and Protestants, and it tasks

922
00:52:50,440 --> 00:52:54,120
Speaker 1: them with basically never meeting and never doing anything, and

923
00:52:54,160 --> 00:52:57,840
Speaker 1: being an a thing in which if anyone complains about anything,

924
00:52:57,920 --> 00:53:01,080
Speaker 1: they can send it away to this commission to die. Okay,

925
00:53:01,680 --> 00:53:04,240
Speaker 1: you know, oh that's terrible that this bad thing happened.

926
00:53:04,239 --> 00:53:06,680
Speaker 1: We will send it to the Commission for the Protection

927
00:53:06,719 --> 00:53:09,960
Speaker 1: of the Natives. And then you know, and the whole

928
00:53:09,960 --> 00:53:12,359
Speaker 1: time in this pr he's like, you're right, terrible things

929
00:53:12,360 --> 00:53:15,640
Speaker 1: are happening because those slavers are still in there and

930
00:53:15,680 --> 00:53:20,040
Speaker 1: we've got to get them out. Give me more money. Yeah,

931
00:53:20,320 --> 00:53:24,080
Speaker 1: not all of the missionaries are there for well, okay,

932
00:53:24,120 --> 00:53:26,279
Speaker 1: once again, there's multiple as we talked about, there's more

933
00:53:26,320 --> 00:53:28,840
Speaker 1: than one bad reason to be there. There's the really

934
00:53:28,840 --> 00:53:31,000
Speaker 1: bad reason, and then there's the also really bad reason,

935
00:53:31,080 --> 00:53:34,279
Speaker 1: but without as much emphasis. You know, some of the

936
00:53:34,360 --> 00:53:36,840
Speaker 1: missionaries start coming award because there's some of the only

937
00:53:36,960 --> 00:53:41,040
Speaker 1: Europeans who are in Central Congo who aren't like Belgian

938
00:53:41,480 --> 00:53:45,200
Speaker 1: corporate people, you know, and some of them start coming

939
00:53:45,200 --> 00:53:46,920
Speaker 1: out and being like, hey, this is there's some like

940
00:53:47,000 --> 00:53:51,319
Speaker 1: not great stuff happening. So so Leopold he says, Oh,

941
00:53:51,360 --> 00:53:54,280
Speaker 1: I've heard about these mutilations. It's horrible. It's a practice

942
00:53:54,360 --> 00:53:57,520
Speaker 1: leftover from their savage tribal ways. Or maybe it was

943
00:53:57,560 --> 00:53:59,840
Speaker 1: brought by the you know, damn Arabs or whatever, and

944
00:53:59,840 --> 00:54:04,400
Speaker 1: it it was not casement and other people had basically

945
00:54:04,440 --> 00:54:06,440
Speaker 1: the records to prove that this is a lie. This

946
00:54:06,520 --> 00:54:11,800
Speaker 1: is this was not a a tribal practice within the area.

947
00:54:12,239 --> 00:54:17,480
Speaker 1: It was absolutely brought by the fucking Belgians. Um So

948
00:54:17,640 --> 00:54:21,319
Speaker 1: Leopold continues to spin his pr and he said he

949
00:54:21,440 --> 00:54:26,239
Speaker 1: lets journalists go. They get carefully guided tours and they're

950
00:54:26,239 --> 00:54:29,200
Speaker 1: all like, everything is fine down here, and it's a

951
00:54:29,239 --> 00:54:31,520
Speaker 1: really good way if you're a journalist, too, like make

952
00:54:31,560 --> 00:54:34,560
Speaker 1: your living is take Leopold's money, because he will pay

953
00:54:34,600 --> 00:54:36,400
Speaker 1: you a bunch, and he will get your stories in

954
00:54:36,400 --> 00:54:39,360
Speaker 1: the New York Times and you will be a famous

955
00:54:39,960 --> 00:54:46,160
Speaker 1: Yeah for repeating his the party line basically, yeah, which

956
00:54:46,360 --> 00:54:48,359
Speaker 1: totally isn't a thing to think about when we think

957
00:54:48,360 --> 00:54:53,400
Speaker 1: about journalism today. Absolutely anyway, that's actually part of the

958
00:54:53,440 --> 00:54:55,160
Speaker 1: reason I carry my heart on my sleeve about my

959
00:54:55,200 --> 00:54:57,320
Speaker 1: biases and stuff so much. Anyone who's listening. Part of

960
00:54:57,320 --> 00:55:00,080
Speaker 1: the reason I do that is so that you can like, no, oh,

961
00:55:00,160 --> 00:55:02,280
Speaker 1: my biases because you might not agree with my biases,

962
00:55:02,520 --> 00:55:04,960
Speaker 1: and that's good, that's fine. Um, I want to be

963
00:55:05,000 --> 00:55:07,400
Speaker 1: honest with you about them, with everyone about them, so

964
00:55:07,440 --> 00:55:10,560
Speaker 1: that people can um kind of have a sense of

965
00:55:10,560 --> 00:55:13,759
Speaker 1: what to filter. You know. Um, I don't know if

966
00:55:13,760 --> 00:55:16,320
Speaker 1: that's the right. And I'm also not really a journalist

967
00:55:16,360 --> 00:55:19,920
Speaker 1: about fucking entertainment podcaster, but I don't know. You've done

968
00:55:19,960 --> 00:55:25,279
Speaker 1: journalism stuff. You're a journalist smartt oh, thanks, Yeah, I

969
00:55:25,640 --> 00:55:30,360
Speaker 1: have in the past, but not in many years. Yeah.

970
00:55:30,719 --> 00:55:35,840
Speaker 1: So in the meantime, in England we get another awesome person,

971
00:55:36,560 --> 00:55:40,880
Speaker 1: a journalist named Edmund Moral Moral Moral. I don't know

972
00:55:41,000 --> 00:55:43,680
Speaker 1: MOREL will be a funnier name for him. It really

973
00:55:43,680 --> 00:55:45,120
Speaker 1: what I was going to say, let's go with that.

974
00:55:45,560 --> 00:55:47,560
Speaker 1: We're going with that. It's m O R E L.

975
00:55:47,680 --> 00:55:51,520
Speaker 1: For anyone who's googling at home. Um, he was raised

976
00:55:51,880 --> 00:55:58,600
Speaker 1: friend of the pod Quaker of the halfway decent white

977
00:55:58,600 --> 00:56:00,920
Speaker 1: people in history or Quakers. Is what I've learned by

978
00:56:00,920 --> 00:56:03,359
Speaker 1: writing this podcast, which is not a bias I came

979
00:56:03,360 --> 00:56:08,000
Speaker 1: into this podcast with. Just to also be clear, it's

980
00:56:08,040 --> 00:56:11,319
Speaker 1: just there everywhere. They They may show up again in

981
00:56:11,360 --> 00:56:18,320
Speaker 1: the second half yeah cool, Yeah, okay, and so um,

982
00:56:18,400 --> 00:56:20,719
Speaker 1: he didn't start out as a journalist. He actually started

983
00:56:20,719 --> 00:56:23,160
Speaker 1: out and actually the same way that Casement did. He

984
00:56:23,200 --> 00:56:27,120
Speaker 1: was a shipping clerk. But he notices he's a shipping clerk,

985
00:56:27,160 --> 00:56:31,040
Speaker 1: and he's like rubber comes out, guns and ammo go in.

986
00:56:31,560 --> 00:56:34,800
Speaker 1: This doesn't seem like a good thing, so he quits

987
00:56:34,840 --> 00:56:38,880
Speaker 1: his job to become a journalist. Uh. Specifically on this topic,

988
00:56:39,680 --> 00:56:42,840
Speaker 1: he right revitalizes a movement started by the late George

989
00:56:42,840 --> 00:56:45,640
Speaker 1: Washington Williams, the movement to Free the Congo, which had

990
00:56:45,760 --> 00:56:49,680
Speaker 1: kind of basically when it was only George Washington Williams

991
00:56:49,680 --> 00:56:53,400
Speaker 1: is word. Leopold's pr campaign was sort of kind of

992
00:56:53,400 --> 00:56:57,279
Speaker 1: effectively quashed the movement. Mm hmm. But so it is

993
00:56:57,280 --> 00:57:00,600
Speaker 1: worth noting that once again like Moral and Casement are

994
00:57:00,640 --> 00:57:03,080
Speaker 1: coming in and revitalizing the movement that was started by

995
00:57:03,080 --> 00:57:06,759
Speaker 1: a black man. And uh, you know, and again this

996
00:57:06,800 --> 00:57:09,400
Speaker 1: is the European movement. The Congolese were also well on

997
00:57:09,440 --> 00:57:11,640
Speaker 1: their way. They're very active in the Free the Congo

998
00:57:11,719 --> 00:57:14,880
Speaker 1: movement as well. And he discovers Moral discovers that the

999
00:57:14,920 --> 00:57:18,200
Speaker 1: money is being embezzled directly by Leopold himself. It's not

1000
00:57:18,280 --> 00:57:21,120
Speaker 1: even like going to the companies, like he like is

1001
00:57:21,160 --> 00:57:23,400
Speaker 1: doing the looking at the money and he's like, wait,

1002
00:57:23,680 --> 00:57:26,680
Speaker 1: two fifths of the money is literally just going directly

1003
00:57:26,800 --> 00:57:30,920
Speaker 1: to Leopold illegally, which is funny because you could do

1004
00:57:30,960 --> 00:57:33,760
Speaker 1: all of this legally, you could be a monster legally.

1005
00:57:33,760 --> 00:57:36,040
Speaker 1: But he has to go that extra little bit. His

1006
00:57:36,120 --> 00:57:39,480
Speaker 1: free state isn't a state, it's a robbery. So Casement

1007
00:57:40,160 --> 00:57:42,840
Speaker 1: he leaves. Um. He goes back to Europe from Africa,

1008
00:57:43,080 --> 00:57:45,080
Speaker 1: and he goes to Brussels to find out more and

1009
00:57:45,160 --> 00:57:48,560
Speaker 1: Leopold invites him to lunch because he wants to keep

1010
00:57:48,560 --> 00:57:52,400
Speaker 1: Belgium in England. Buds um. This is not how Casement dies,

1011
00:57:52,840 --> 00:57:56,680
Speaker 1: because it almost sounds like it would be. Leopold is like, oh,

1012
00:57:56,720 --> 00:57:58,600
Speaker 1: I only care about the well being and good government

1013
00:57:58,640 --> 00:58:00,840
Speaker 1: of the natives, and Casements like, then, why are you

1014
00:58:00,880 --> 00:58:03,560
Speaker 1: forcing everyone to labor? It's like, it's not forced labor,

1015
00:58:03,640 --> 00:58:07,000
Speaker 1: it's just bonus labor in lieu of tax. In Casement's like,

1016
00:58:07,160 --> 00:58:10,320
Speaker 1: why are you cutting off everyone's hands and label it

1017
00:58:10,400 --> 00:58:12,360
Speaker 1: is like there have been some cases of misconduct, which

1018
00:58:12,360 --> 00:58:15,400
Speaker 1: is unfortunate and and this is a okay, the one

1019
00:58:15,480 --> 00:58:19,080
Speaker 1: I'm paraphrasing but the climate in Africa had a deliterious

1020
00:58:19,080 --> 00:58:21,920
Speaker 1: effect on some of the men. Used the word deliterious.

1021
00:58:21,920 --> 00:58:26,640
Speaker 1: He was like that crazy Africa just made everyone crazy.

1022
00:58:27,720 --> 00:58:30,760
Speaker 1: He blamed the climate of Africa for his men cutting around,

1023
00:58:30,800 --> 00:58:34,760
Speaker 1: running around, cutting off everyone's hands, instead of like a colonizing, racist,

1024
00:58:35,280 --> 00:58:38,280
Speaker 1: white supremacist system that is empowering these people to go

1025
00:58:38,320 --> 00:58:44,320
Speaker 1: around doing that. Yeah. Yeah, So Casement is not convinced.

1026
00:58:44,360 --> 00:58:47,040
Speaker 1: You always shocked to now uh And he petitions England

1027
00:58:47,040 --> 00:58:49,320
Speaker 1: to get him up river and Cono to find out. Personally,

1028
00:58:49,760 --> 00:58:52,960
Speaker 1: he knows the place well, he helped build it um

1029
00:58:53,000 --> 00:58:56,120
Speaker 1: and it helps his case that British traders keep getting

1030
00:58:56,120 --> 00:58:59,480
Speaker 1: assassinated and it takes a little while for him to

1031
00:58:59,480 --> 00:59:02,840
Speaker 1: get permiss. In the meantime, the movement in England is

1032
00:59:02,880 --> 00:59:05,800
Speaker 1: heating up. In nineteen o three, Moral writes a book

1033
00:59:05,800 --> 00:59:08,840
Speaker 1: called Affairs of West Africa. Another guy writes a book

1034
00:59:08,880 --> 00:59:13,440
Speaker 1: called Civilization in Congo Land subtitled History of International Wrongdoing

1035
00:59:14,200 --> 00:59:17,120
Speaker 1: just kind of a cool subtitle. Another one is the

1036
00:59:17,200 --> 00:59:20,000
Speaker 1: Curse of Central Africa, with the curse being the Free State.

1037
00:59:21,160 --> 00:59:23,320
Speaker 1: And then in nineteen o two, during all of this,

1038
00:59:23,520 --> 00:59:27,960
Speaker 1: novelist and not Friend of the pot Joseph Conrad publishes

1039
00:59:28,160 --> 00:59:31,600
Speaker 1: Heart of Darkness, which is a thinly veiled critique of Leopold,

1040
00:59:31,640 --> 00:59:34,640
Speaker 1: which I didn't know when I read this book in

1041
00:59:34,720 --> 00:59:38,200
Speaker 1: high school. Conrad and Caseman actually met and we're friends

1042
00:59:38,240 --> 00:59:40,800
Speaker 1: back in the day when Conrad was a riverboat captain

1043
00:59:40,800 --> 00:59:42,800
Speaker 1: in the Congo Um. And I'm really not trying to

1044
00:59:42,840 --> 00:59:44,880
Speaker 1: go to bad for that book, but it's it's worth

1045
00:59:45,440 --> 00:59:48,360
Speaker 1: or Conrad, but he wrote it with that. But we

1046
00:59:48,440 --> 00:59:53,280
Speaker 1: keep talking about these two types of colonial racism, you know, Um,

1047
00:59:53,320 --> 00:59:56,240
Speaker 1: he wrote it with the but don't cut off people's

1048
00:59:56,280 --> 01:00:02,360
Speaker 1: hands version of it, best intentions or whatever. Casement, for

1049
01:00:02,480 --> 01:00:04,720
Speaker 1: his part, he's a public servant and he's not supposed

1050
01:00:04,720 --> 01:00:09,720
Speaker 1: to be working public opinion. But mysteriously an Irish writer

1051
01:00:09,840 --> 01:00:13,360
Speaker 1: starts writing stuff that just sounds exactly like what Casement

1052
01:00:13,400 --> 01:00:16,520
Speaker 1: would write, because Caseman is either feeding him information or

1053
01:00:16,600 --> 01:00:21,520
Speaker 1: just ghost writing for the guy. And and I'm gonna

1054
01:00:21,520 --> 01:00:23,680
Speaker 1: tell you about one European who tried to cut to

1055
01:00:23,720 --> 01:00:27,320
Speaker 1: the chase. One person who tried to solve this problem

1056
01:00:27,320 --> 01:00:32,000
Speaker 1: directly was a guy named Gennaro Robino, who is an

1057
01:00:32,000 --> 01:00:35,400
Speaker 1: Italian guy, and he got hired in London to spy

1058
01:00:35,440 --> 01:00:38,400
Speaker 1: on the anarchists because he was, you know, a poor

1059
01:00:38,400 --> 01:00:40,200
Speaker 1: worker or whatever, and they were like, hey, we'll give

1060
01:00:40,240 --> 01:00:41,960
Speaker 1: you money. Goes spying the anarchists. So he goes in

1061
01:00:42,000 --> 01:00:44,480
Speaker 1: the spies on the anarchists and then becomes an anarchist.

1062
01:00:45,800 --> 01:00:49,360
Speaker 1: The best outcome of spying on anarchists. They're like, oh,

1063
01:00:49,360 --> 01:00:52,840
Speaker 1: there's actually they're making a lot of sense here. Yeah,

1064
01:00:52,880 --> 01:00:55,600
Speaker 1: but it's not a good way to start your career

1065
01:00:55,640 --> 01:00:58,920
Speaker 1: as an anarchist. He gets outed by his fellow anarchists

1066
01:00:58,920 --> 01:01:02,040
Speaker 1: as a police by so he figures, I know how

1067
01:01:02,080 --> 01:01:04,400
Speaker 1: I can show my friends that I mean when I say,

1068
01:01:05,080 --> 01:01:08,280
Speaker 1: I'll go kill King Leopold the Second. And I don't

1069
01:01:08,280 --> 01:01:10,800
Speaker 1: think he really thought it through, Like I think he

1070
01:01:10,880 --> 01:01:13,480
Speaker 1: just bought a revolver and then some postcards with like

1071
01:01:13,560 --> 01:01:15,840
Speaker 1: Leopold and his family's faces on them, so he like

1072
01:01:15,920 --> 01:01:19,840
Speaker 1: had a picture of the person he was trying to shoot. Oh, no,

1073
01:01:20,440 --> 01:01:22,800
Speaker 1: you need to be more organized than that. This is

1074
01:01:22,840 --> 01:01:26,840
Speaker 1: a yes, um. So he goes and he sees the

1075
01:01:26,920 --> 01:01:30,400
Speaker 1: like royal parade of carriages and he shoots it the

1076
01:01:30,440 --> 01:01:32,920
Speaker 1: one that he thinks as Leopold in it. It is

1077
01:01:32,960 --> 01:01:35,200
Speaker 1: not the one with Leopold in it. He kills and

1078
01:01:35,240 --> 01:01:38,320
Speaker 1: injures nobody. He shoots three shots of the Revolver. He

1079
01:01:38,360 --> 01:01:41,200
Speaker 1: spends the rest of his life in prison. He still

1080
01:01:41,240 --> 01:01:43,720
Speaker 1: didn't convince the anarchist he was one of them. Everyone

1081
01:01:43,800 --> 01:01:46,560
Speaker 1: was like, now, this plan was so bad that it

1082
01:01:46,600 --> 01:01:49,120
Speaker 1: was clearly an agent provoctor. It was clearly never designed

1083
01:01:49,160 --> 01:01:53,320
Speaker 1: to kill Leopold. It it was he was an earnest man.

1084
01:01:53,800 --> 01:01:57,200
Speaker 1: Um he died in prison. I wish he had done

1085
01:01:57,200 --> 01:02:01,600
Speaker 1: his homework, is what I would like to say. Yeah,

1086
01:02:01,760 --> 01:02:07,800
Speaker 1: all right. So Casement, basically Britain finally is like, all right,

1087
01:02:08,120 --> 01:02:10,600
Speaker 1: we'll send Casement down there. And so they send to

1088
01:02:10,800 --> 01:02:14,160
Speaker 1: Leopold a letter. They're like, I mean, I don't I

1089
01:02:14,160 --> 01:02:16,160
Speaker 1: can't do a British accent say in my life, sorry

1090
01:02:16,160 --> 01:02:17,920
Speaker 1: to bother you, old chap, but can we pop around

1091
01:02:17,920 --> 01:02:20,880
Speaker 1: your congo for just a spot of investigation, just a

1092
01:02:20,880 --> 01:02:24,960
Speaker 1: formal report. We're sure it'll exonerate you. And Leopold is like, whoops,

1093
01:02:25,000 --> 01:02:27,480
Speaker 1: I'm magically nowhere near where your letter needs to go.

1094
01:02:28,280 --> 01:02:30,280
Speaker 1: H right, So I can't consent because I never got

1095
01:02:30,280 --> 01:02:35,200
Speaker 1: your letter. Um. He just leaves them unread. And English

1096
01:02:35,280 --> 01:02:38,240
Speaker 1: Congress or whatever it's called parliament, they talk it over

1097
01:02:38,320 --> 01:02:41,320
Speaker 1: and they're like, fine, fucket Casement, you can go to

1098
01:02:41,320 --> 01:02:44,919
Speaker 1: the Upper Congo. And in NT. Three he sets out

1099
01:02:45,320 --> 01:02:47,280
Speaker 1: they get a private steamboat to go up the river,

1100
01:02:47,440 --> 01:02:50,080
Speaker 1: so they aren't beholding to the Congo authorities. And that's

1101
01:02:50,080 --> 01:02:53,040
Speaker 1: where we're gonna leave it today. What's he gonna find.

1102
01:02:55,440 --> 01:02:58,080
Speaker 1: That's a real cliffhanger right there. I know I put

1103
01:02:58,080 --> 01:03:01,440
Speaker 1: that purposes a cliffhanger. Yeah, Rhan, Do you have anything

1104
01:03:01,440 --> 01:03:05,000
Speaker 1: you'd like to plug at the end here? I'm sure? Well,

1105
01:03:05,000 --> 01:03:09,760
Speaker 1: we already mentioned the anthology that I edited. Um, it's

1106
01:03:09,760 --> 01:03:14,520
Speaker 1: called Nourishing Resistance. I know that my editors have asked

1107
01:03:14,560 --> 01:03:16,200
Speaker 1: me to ask you to put a link to it

1108
01:03:16,240 --> 01:03:19,160
Speaker 1: in the show notes, so I will do that later. Um.

1109
01:03:19,200 --> 01:03:22,280
Speaker 1: And I also want to plug BCC Tucson, which is

1110
01:03:22,320 --> 01:03:26,120
Speaker 1: where I am recording this. It's a radical community space,

1111
01:03:26,120 --> 01:03:28,120
Speaker 1: social center, whatever you want to call it, that does

1112
01:03:28,240 --> 01:03:30,640
Speaker 1: a lot of really cool things, um here in Tucson.

1113
01:03:30,920 --> 01:03:36,320
Speaker 1: So yea, yeay, Margaret, you you have a book coming

1114
01:03:36,320 --> 01:03:39,200
Speaker 1: out I do. It's called we Won't be Here Tomorrow.

1115
01:03:39,920 --> 01:03:42,400
Speaker 1: I've already made the we'll be here on Wednesday joke. Yeah, okay,

1116
01:03:42,400 --> 01:03:44,720
Speaker 1: I have Okay, it's called we Won't be here Tomorrow

1117
01:03:44,760 --> 01:03:47,600
Speaker 1: and it is available for pre order from a k Press,

1118
01:03:47,680 --> 01:03:49,680
Speaker 1: or if you're listening to this in the future, it's

1119
01:03:49,720 --> 01:03:53,680
Speaker 1: available for regular order. And Sophie, what do you what

1120
01:03:53,720 --> 01:03:56,040
Speaker 1: do you have to plug? I'm not trying to make

1121
01:03:56,080 --> 01:03:57,720
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to make you feel bad. I'm just

1122
01:03:57,800 --> 01:03:59,440
Speaker 1: what do I want to plug today? I like to,

1123
01:03:59,520 --> 01:04:01,320
Speaker 1: I like to. I'd like to pick a show on

1124
01:04:01,360 --> 01:04:04,160
Speaker 1: our network to plug. I feel like I should plug

1125
01:04:04,240 --> 01:04:06,800
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards just because we're talking about King Leopold

1126
01:04:06,840 --> 01:04:09,840
Speaker 1: and Robert did such a good job with Andrew t

1127
01:04:11,080 --> 01:04:13,920
Speaker 1: who guessed on this pod not too long ago, discussing

1128
01:04:14,000 --> 01:04:16,440
Speaker 1: King King Leopold not too long ago. So go check

1129
01:04:16,480 --> 01:04:19,200
Speaker 1: out Behind the Bastards. It is a really good episode.

1130
01:04:19,200 --> 01:04:22,560
Speaker 1: I am plagiarized some parts of my vehicle from it.

1131
01:04:23,480 --> 01:04:31,040
Speaker 1: I love it. We'll be back by Cool People Who

1132
01:04:31,080 --> 01:04:33,600
Speaker 1: Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.

1133
01:04:33,960 --> 01:04:36,760
Speaker 1: For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website

1134
01:04:36,920 --> 01:04:39,440
Speaker 1: cool zone media dot com, or check us out on

1135
01:04:39,480 --> 01:04:42,400
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

1136
01:04:42,440 --> 01:04:43,520
Speaker 1: get your podcasts.