Speaker 1: Hello friends, I'm Robert Evans, and this is Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 1: the show where we tell you everything you don't know
Speaker 1: about the very worst people in history. And this is
Speaker 1: part two of our episode on Leopold, the second King
Speaker 1: of Belgium. In part one we sort of went over
Speaker 1: how Leopold conned his way into becoming king of the Congo,
Speaker 1: how he tricked the locals into signing over their rights
Speaker 1: to their land, and how he conscripted thousands of them
Speaker 1: into a slave army. Uh So, now we're going to
Speaker 1: get back into all that and the rest of the terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible story of the Belgian Congo. So the first five
Speaker 1: or so years of the Congo project or great for Leopold.
Speaker 1: He's in total control, richer than God, and most of
Speaker 1: Europe still believes he's improving a lot of the Congolese people.
Speaker 1: But in around eighteen ninety, a black journalist named Colonel
Speaker 1: and he's not really a colonel, George Washington Williams saw
Speaker 1: the actual Congo. So he didn't like take the tour
Speaker 1: where you get led through the nice parts of the
Speaker 1: Congo like he He went on foot and he got
Speaker 1: in there and he saw the fucking nightmare that Leopold
Speaker 1: had built. And he wrote an article called an open
Speaker 1: Letter to King Leopold uh and it was the first
Speaker 1: expos of Leopold's blood soak rubber regime. UM William's document
Speaker 1: is remarkable because he's basically the only person up to
Speaker 1: that point who actually sat down with African people and
Speaker 1: asked them what was going on in the Congo. He
Speaker 1: retraced a lot of Stanley's right along the Congo and
Speaker 1: actually talked to some of the people who had signed
Speaker 1: treaties giving their land to Leopold. He learned that a
Speaker 1: great number of chiefs had been tricked into signing things
Speaker 1: with magic tricks. Um. One of the tricks was that,
Speaker 1: like Stanley, had bought a bunch of electric batteries in London,
Speaker 1: and when quote when attached to the arm under the coat,
Speaker 1: communicated with a band of ribbon which passed over the
Speaker 1: palm of the white brother's hand, And when he gave
Speaker 1: the black brother a cordial grasp of the hand, the
Speaker 1: black brother was greatly surprised to find his white brother
Speaker 1: was so strong that he nearly knocked him off his feet.
Speaker 1: When the native inquired about the disparity of strength between
Speaker 1: himself and his white brother. He was told that the
Speaker 1: white man could pull up trees and performing the most
Speaker 1: prodigious feats of strength. So he did a hand buzzer.
Speaker 1: He did a hand buzzer and these like if you
Speaker 1: don't know what electricity is. Yeah, he's just some sort
Speaker 1: of superman. Let's sign the peace treaty. Yeah yeah, holy ship. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another trick was to use a magnifying glass to light
Speaker 1: a cigar and then claim that white people had sun powers. Um,
Speaker 1: and he'll burn up your villain, basically like I have
Speaker 1: power over the sun and I'll plage on fire. Yeah
Speaker 1: ye god, what a bluff. Yeah yeah yeah. So um
Speaker 1: Williams writes this open letter. Um. He frames it as
Speaker 1: like presuming Leopold doesn't know how terrible things are. He
Speaker 1: writes about the taking of hands and like all of
Speaker 1: the death and the people who are being like starved
Speaker 1: to death as porters, carrying this sort of like modest
Speaker 1: proposal style like of course, you know, but it's an
Speaker 1: indictment or think there's a little bit of a satirical
Speaker 1: bit um And yeah, so Williams publishes this that, but
Speaker 1: unfortunately he dies not long after writing the letter, and
Speaker 1: Leopold's able to clamp down on any kind of outrage
Speaker 1: after for a little while. But seven or eight years later,
Speaker 1: another guy who's an amateur journalist named Morrell stumbles upon
Speaker 1: the conspiracy. So he was working as a mid level
Speaker 1: employee for a shipping line that had the contract to
Speaker 1: handle all shipping into the Congo Free State, and so
Speaker 1: every so often Morrell would get sent over to Belgium
Speaker 1: and he would report on what's going into and out
Speaker 1: of the port of Antwerp. And so he realizes that
Speaker 1: the only thing coming out of the Congo into Europe
Speaker 1: is rubber, just shiploads of rubber, impossible quantities of it,
Speaker 1: larger quantities than have been reported in fact. And the
Speaker 1: only thing that's going being sent out to the Congo
Speaker 1: rather than trade are just guns and money, and a
Speaker 1: lot more guns than you'd need for any kind of
Speaker 1: philanthropic enterprise. Um Man, Yeah, so exactly, exactly. So he starts,
Speaker 1: he never actually goes to the Congo, but he just
Speaker 1: starts digging, and he starts talking to other people who
Speaker 1: have worked there, and basically, um he starts a newspaper
Speaker 1: that is focused entirely on exposing King Leopold's crimes to
Speaker 1: the world and starts publishing it all throughout Europe. Um.
Speaker 1: He's active all over the world and basically becomes like
Speaker 1: the Congo equivalent of Wiki leaks. So all the guys
Speaker 1: who had worked in Leopold's Congo and felt bad kind
Speaker 1: to him and be like, I saw this, this is
Speaker 1: what happened. Here's some documents I managed to smug. Well,
Speaker 1: it's also like you're like, yeah, this is what wikilliks
Speaker 1: was supposed to be, Like, this is what it could be.
Speaker 1: And this is also why people like that have legitimacy,
Speaker 1: because and why conspiracies have legitimacy because guess what there
Speaker 1: have been Yeah, big complex conspiracy gigantic conspiracies. So Morrel
Speaker 1: starts this newspaper and he winds up creating was probably
Speaker 1: the first modern human rights organization, the Congo Reform Association,
Speaker 1: which is dedicated to stopping this fi nightmare in the Congo. UM.
Speaker 1: King Leopold responded by inventing the first modern international pr campaign.
Speaker 1: He bought a shipload of journalists of his own, and
Speaker 1: he had them all right puff pieces about how great
Speaker 1: the Congo actually was. He would pay for journalists to
Speaker 1: go on lavish, carefully controlled trips through the Congo. He'd
Speaker 1: give them exclusive interviews when they got back, and he'd
Speaker 1: use his network of agents to help them place their
Speaker 1: articles in newspapers. He got journalists in the New York
Speaker 1: Times to write quotes like I have witnessed more atrocities
Speaker 1: in London streets than I have ever seen in the Congo.
Speaker 1: He would pay for journalists to give public speeches, and
Speaker 1: he would lobby politicians. Leopold's regime was heavily criticized for
Speaker 1: its widespread use of something called the jacote, which is
Speaker 1: a hippo hyde whip which was used to punish laborers.
Speaker 1: Prisoners were often lashed to death by it, and it's
Speaker 1: possible that like literally several million people were killed with
Speaker 1: his whip. Um So Leopold starts catching flak for this,
Speaker 1: and he decides to distract attention from his whipping millions
Speaker 1: of people to death by sending journalists to British colonies
Speaker 1: and having them write lurished expose of abuses in British colonies.
Speaker 1: So his pet reporters would write stories about like how
Speaker 1: the British were using whips on prisoners in South Africa
Speaker 1: or something terrible they've done to people in India. And
Speaker 1: then exactly what about Hillary style? That's exactly it. Like
Speaker 1: I said, he invented the modern art of being shitty,
Speaker 1: like he's he's doing what about is um on a
Speaker 1: massive scale? Did he did he have like an anti
Speaker 1: sdent for like the media, like playing the media or
Speaker 1: did he just make all of I think he invented
Speaker 1: this playbook because other people had. Obviously, every the media's
Speaker 1: existed for a while. Other people have used the media
Speaker 1: one degree or another. But he is the first person
Speaker 1: that I've ever run across who's using it in the
Speaker 1: same way politicians use it today, in the same way
Speaker 1: world leaders use it today, Like this is a very
Speaker 1: modern pr campaign. Um he buys he uses his Congo
Speaker 1: earnings to buy the editors of a bunch of newspapers,
Speaker 1: including the London Times. So he's spending like thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars on just owning editors. UM, so that number one,
Speaker 1: they'll kill stories that are negative to with the Congo
Speaker 1: free state, and so that he can place his positive
Speaker 1: stories once he gets like positive journalists to go, you know,
Speaker 1: have a tour of the Congo and then come and
Speaker 1: write about it. Um. And this is all basically a
Speaker 1: delaying action. Leopold knows eventually the truth is going to
Speaker 1: get out, but he's playing for time. He's got twenty
Speaker 1: years before rubber stops being his problem. He doesn't need
Speaker 1: to do this forever. He just needs to do it
Speaker 1: for a little while. He just wants to as much
Speaker 1: money as he can out of the situation. Um. And
Speaker 1: eventually the sheer weight of facts did change public opinion
Speaker 1: against him, but it took like twenty years. At one point,
Speaker 1: Leopold has said to have seen a cartoon of himself
Speaker 1: in a German newspaper. UM. And in the cartoon, he's
Speaker 1: cutting the hands off of Africans and he reportedly laughed
Speaker 1: at that and said, cut off hands. That's idiotic. I'd
Speaker 1: cut off all the rest of them, but not the hands.
Speaker 1: That's the thing I need in the congo. So he's
Speaker 1: a real piece of work. Um. Now in Leopold had
Speaker 1: started dating a sixteen year old prostitute named Caroline um.
Speaker 1: This is when the congo is at the height of
Speaker 1: its rubber production. UM. So he'd been hooked up to
Speaker 1: her via a pimp named Duro, who was a former
Speaker 1: officer in the French army. We know now that Caroline's
Speaker 1: whole relationship with Leopold was likely a con game, an
Speaker 1: incredibly successful scheme to snatch his inheritance. But at the time, Uh,
Speaker 1: King Leopold, blood drenched, absolute ruler of the Congo, was
Speaker 1: smitten with this teenage prostitute. Adam hoss Child writes that
Speaker 1: quote to the extent that someone like Leopold was capable
Speaker 1: of love, this teenage prostitute proved to be the love
Speaker 1: of his life. Um so he's really got it for
Speaker 1: this girl hard. He names her the barrenness of Vaughan. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the unseemliness of their relationship isn't really acknowledged in
Speaker 1: the nineteen ten biography. It just calls her one of
Speaker 1: the king's quote favorites. Uh, and it dances around the
Speaker 1: fact that they got together while the Queen was still alive. Um.
Speaker 1: In general, it refers to the King's constant parade of
Speaker 1: mistresses as distractions. Um so yeah. Caroline went on to
Speaker 1: write a bit about their life together, and she gives
Speaker 1: this additional insight into the kind of man Leopold was. Quote.
Speaker 1: Every evening a steam launch took the King to appear
Speaker 1: leading to my villa through a subterranean passage. Speaking about this,
Speaker 1: I can't help remarking on the extraordinary taste of the
Speaker 1: king for everything which had a secret and mysterious character.
Speaker 1: Anyone who could sell him any house, so long as
Speaker 1: it was built on the side of an abandoned quarry,
Speaker 1: or if it had a secret staircase. So basically, he's
Speaker 1: gone from being too cheap to like rinse his like
Speaker 1: a handkerchief. He's like a cartoon villain. Yeah, to like
Speaker 1: a cartoon villed with like layers built into mountain sides
Speaker 1: and hidden boat like grottos and stuff. Yeah. But Caroline
Speaker 1: seems to have his number. Um. So she's both got
Speaker 1: him on madly in love with her. But she also
Speaker 1: like she takes advantage of his hypochondriasm or whatever you
Speaker 1: call that, Like whenever she wanted him to leave her alone,
Speaker 1: she'd pretend to have a cough and then he'd hide
Speaker 1: for days, um because he was scared of So she's
Speaker 1: she's my favorite person in this story. She's lockdown. Um.
Speaker 1: So the king is sort of the nineteen hundreds come around,
Speaker 1: is in his late sixties, um, and he takes to
Speaker 1: visiting his teenage mistress in a large tricycle. Um, because again, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's getting more and more Yeah for the genocidal murderer.
Speaker 1: Yeah righting a big tricycle to hang out with his
Speaker 1: teenage girlfriend. Um, just as bad everyone who every white
Speaker 1: guy riding a tricycle with the big old mustache, you
Speaker 1: are all as bad as king. Yeah. So he's writing
Speaker 1: a big tricycle. He drinks nothing but hot water. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he starts referring to himself in the third person
Speaker 1: at this point in time. Um, so yeah, he's a weirdo. Um,
Speaker 1: he's not entirely past his old ways at this point.
Speaker 1: There's like a story of the time his mistress bought
Speaker 1: a new hat for him, um, and gives it to him,
Speaker 1: and he like flies into a rage. Uh. And he
Speaker 1: only calms down when she explains him that she got
Speaker 1: it for a bargain and it was like a deal
Speaker 1: that she bought it a quarter of its value. So
Speaker 1: like he's still he's just he's just a weirdo. He's
Speaker 1: a weird guy. He's like a weird old rich letcher
Speaker 1: who's just knows what's going on in the congo but
Speaker 1: doesn't like I mean Look, here's the other part. The
Speaker 1: other way to look at that, I suppose is maybe
Speaker 1: not in such a direct degree, but as Americans, we
Speaker 1: all have similar types of blood on our hands that
Speaker 1: we are electing to not think about. Yeah, but we're
Speaker 1: not we're not driving it in the same way. But
Speaker 1: we absolutely like we all have these phones that we
Speaker 1: know are made by people who hate the work that
Speaker 1: they're doing. And they're like including minerals that are mined
Speaker 1: from like conflict written nations and often use slave labor
Speaker 1: in one. And we know that, like the fabric in
Speaker 1: our clothes is often their slave labor. At some point
Speaker 1: in the production line. Leopold knows that because he's signing
Speaker 1: the orders and saying cut off more hands, cut off
Speaker 1: more hands, and he's just it's just amazing to me
Speaker 1: that he's able to do that all day every day
Speaker 1: and then write a tricycle to his teenage girlfriend's house. Um,
Speaker 1: but that's it's amazing what you're saying. But to me,
Speaker 1: I'm like, it's a little bit just degrees. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: we're all able to it is degrees. We're all able
Speaker 1: to compartmentalize the misery that's necessary for our comfort. Um,
Speaker 1: but this guy, this guy. Uh. One of the things
Speaker 1: that was interesting to me reading that pro Leopold biography
Speaker 1: is that, well, it does talk about nineteen ten, the
Speaker 1: air after he died spoiler. Um. So this biography of him,
Speaker 1: it's very positive. It talks about how there's atrocities, but
Speaker 1: it always kind of doesn't talk about the detail. It
Speaker 1: just said he definitely committed atrocities. But look at this
Speaker 1: or look at how, look at how and everyone did
Speaker 1: is like everyone did, and we'll get to that in
Speaker 1: a little. Um. What is interesting to me is that
Speaker 1: this biography does condemn his mistress for capitalizing on the congo.
Speaker 1: It notes that she was called the Queen of the
Speaker 1: Congo by the people of Belgium for she was to
Speaker 1: benefit largely by the atrocities committed in the Free State.
Speaker 1: We're sweating and bleeding natives labored so as to accumulate
Speaker 1: millions for the royal favorite. So like he again, he
Speaker 1: doesn't really attack Leopold ever, like he's like, yeah, he
Speaker 1: did some bad stuff, But this biographer goes off on
Speaker 1: her mistress for like taking money from him. That's that's
Speaker 1: blood money, which it is blood money, but like she's
Speaker 1: the least objectionable person situation. Um so, yeah, yeah, she
Speaker 1: has a little Melannia asked, I suppose she is, and
Speaker 1: she maybe knew more what she was getting into at
Speaker 1: the top. Yeah, she probably knew less about them because,
Speaker 1: like I doubt, just a rich guy. Yeah, she just
Speaker 1: wanted to marry a rich guy, Like I doubt. He
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like the kind of guy who have talked
Speaker 1: to his mistress about the hands or that they were
Speaker 1: murdering people with. And it's at the time especially quite
Speaker 1: easy to ignore you forget about. You don't share a
Speaker 1: lot of that stuff with you, Yeah, especially not your
Speaker 1: teenage child bride. And as a teenage child bride to
Speaker 1: just feel like, I don't read those books. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't read that article. Yeah yeah. Um So. In the
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds, more and more stories of abuse in
Speaker 1: the Congo hit the world press. People actually started to
Speaker 1: take notice and care. They read about things like an
Speaker 1: entire towns worth of boys being giving fifty lashes each,
Speaker 1: which is a fatal sentence for laughing in the presence
Speaker 1: of a white man. Uh. In nineteen o four, one
Speaker 1: of the rubber companies in the Congo put one of
Speaker 1: its own men on trial, mostly to show that they
Speaker 1: were trying to do something about all of the horrible crimes.
Speaker 1: The guy Charles Couldron was accused of murdering at least
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty two Africans. The case wound up
Speaker 1: revealing a bunch of fun up details about like how
Speaker 1: all the hostage taking and the hand taking and stuff
Speaker 1: actually worked. Um. But Caldrone was released due to quote
Speaker 1: extenuating circumstances. The court said that he'd had to contend
Speaker 1: with quote great difficulties under which could Drone found himself
Speaker 1: accomplishing his mission in the midst of a population absolutely
Speaker 1: resistant to any idea of work, and which respects no
Speaker 1: other law than force, and knows no other means of
Speaker 1: persuasion than terror. Um. So yeah, they were asking for
Speaker 1: it defense. They were asking for it works it that
Speaker 1: also still works today kind it does, but it was
Speaker 1: it was stopping. This is at the point where it
Speaker 1: was working less and less in the congo um and
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds, Leopold starts dealing with more
Speaker 1: and more resistance to his ideas um, both in the
Speaker 1: congo end at home. So this is also kind of
Speaker 1: the point of where socialism is starting to rise, and
Speaker 1: socialists obviously are a big fans of kings. Um. Leopold
Speaker 1: declared himself a mortal enemy of socialism. He fought against
Speaker 1: the universal right to vote for all Belgians. Still in
Speaker 1: the playbook, both of those things. In nine two, the
Speaker 1: Belgian Labor Party called a general strike and Leopold called
Speaker 1: for it to be brutally stopped. The strikers were fired
Speaker 1: upon by city guards and eight people were killed. The
Speaker 1: massacre was a calculated message to the socialists, don't funk
Speaker 1: with the money trained. Leopold was willing to kill a
Speaker 1: hell of a lot more than eight people to keep
Speaker 1: the money coming. In has Child's book relates one six
Speaker 1: week campaign in the Congo that killed quote over nine
Speaker 1: hundred natives, men, women, and children in order to add
Speaker 1: twenty tons of rubber a month to one region's productivity.
Speaker 1: They gives you an idea of the kind of calculus
Speaker 1: he's making. Yeah, Yeah, that's how I mean. Right, it's
Speaker 1: just lives for rubber. Yeah, it's just lives for rubber
Speaker 1: has a commodity price. Yeah. Um. I have to point
Speaker 1: out that none of the revelations brutality did much to
Speaker 1: hurt Leopold's popularity at home in Belgium. He was growing
Speaker 1: less popular and even hated in a lot of Europe.
Speaker 1: But even today are Belgian museums that proudly talk about
Speaker 1: his anti slavery campaigns that ignore the whole genocide thing.
Speaker 1: The crimes against humanity didn't hurt Leopold's legacy. The only
Speaker 1: thing Belgium couldn't forgive him for was being a shitty
Speaker 1: dad and having a mistress. In nineteen o four, Leopold's
Speaker 1: daughter Stephanie sued her father, the king, for keeping her
Speaker 1: chunk of her mother's inheritance. Leopold fought in court for
Speaker 1: the right to deny his children their inheritance, and in
Speaker 1: fact denied them any wealth or property even after his death.
Speaker 1: Around this time, a Belgian cabinet minister noted that quote,
Speaker 1: the king has but two dreams, to die a billionaire
Speaker 1: and to disinherit his daughters. I mean, what father doesn't
Speaker 1: want that? A lot of ways kind of cool, A
Speaker 1: lot always kind of cool. Uh So in nineteen o six,
Speaker 1: King Leopold finally marries the Baroness. They have two sons.
Speaker 1: His second son was born with a malformed arm, that
Speaker 1: just sort of ended in a stump with no hand. Obviously,
Speaker 1: some people suggested this might be a judgment from God
Speaker 1: for all the millions of hands that Leopold ordered severed,
Speaker 1: which is almost more fucked up if you think about
Speaker 1: the morality behind, Like this guy cut off millions of
Speaker 1: people's hands, let's funk off his innocent baby's hand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not how you do that, if you got first
Speaker 1: of all, that is definitely how God do that. God
Speaker 1: is punchy on the messages. Yeah, God, God ain't great
Speaker 1: with making sure these people get their just desserts. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because right, because it's so funny. It's like all these
Speaker 1: like just so kind of stories where God is just
Speaker 1: a little like tricky metaphor man, like, Oh, you didn't
Speaker 1: expect this, didn't You didn't think God would do that?
Speaker 1: Just God, get it right, man? Yeah, Hey, speaking of hands,
Speaker 1: why don't you use both of them to order the
Speaker 1: products that we are about to advertise. Here they go
Speaker 1: and we're back. So the general and seemliness of the
Speaker 1: king's young bride and the disinheritance of his daughters meant
Speaker 1: the public sort of deserted Leopold. Once the Human rights
Speaker 1: campaign against his atrocities really took off. In nineteen o eight,
Speaker 1: King Leopold was forced to bequeath his control of the
Speaker 1: Congo to the Belgian government. In exchange, they paid for
Speaker 1: the colonies hundred and ten million francs worth of debt,
Speaker 1: most of which had been accrued because Leopold used the
Speaker 1: Free State as a bank to buy gifts for his mistresses.
Speaker 1: Before he hands over control of the colony, he'd ruled
Speaker 1: with an iron fist for more than twenty years. Leopold
Speaker 1: has all of the Congo state records burned. I will
Speaker 1: give them my Congo, he said. But they have no
Speaker 1: right to know what I did there. Oh what fun
Speaker 1: such a piece of ship. So the thing that I
Speaker 1: say all the time or think about, it's like, yes,
Speaker 1: of course there have been massive conspiracies in history, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure today, but like oftentimes, like there isn't like
Speaker 1: the basic human competency to pull off some of the
Speaker 1: more far fetched, you know, like a pizza gate style thing.
Speaker 1: You're like, how could everyone cover this up? And then
Speaker 1: it's like just hearing a story of nineteenth century to
Speaker 1: twentieth century like attention to detail. Because he's a genius
Speaker 1: like he really is like a genius in the sense
Speaker 1: that like if you saw a character execute a plan
Speaker 1: like this in a movie, it would be like, that's
Speaker 1: a little far fext that he get away with it,
Speaker 1: But he did, and he's he is an evil genius. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I guess you know what, and it's I guess
Speaker 1: it was from a time when little people were less
Speaker 1: empowered to speak up, yes, because that's the real thing.
Speaker 1: It's like it would be hard to pull off a
Speaker 1: pizza Gate because it's not like the top conspirators would
Speaker 1: go to jail, but it's like there's gonna be a
Speaker 1: janitor who's like, what the fund is this? What is
Speaker 1: going on? Kids in this basement? Yeah, and that's like
Speaker 1: less likely to happen. That was more controllable back in
Speaker 1: the day, clearly. Yeah. And and even when that it
Speaker 1: started coming out, Um, there's a lot less of a
Speaker 1: media landscape. You only get the news from your newspapers.
Speaker 1: You read every newspaper. Most people don't read much of
Speaker 1: one newspaper. So if you're a guy like Leopold, you've
Speaker 1: got the money to make the press do what you want.
Speaker 1: And if I if I understand my history correctly, which
Speaker 1: I probably don't. That was a time when the public
Speaker 1: had more of an expectation that media was biased. It
Speaker 1: was just the right. Well, yeah, this is like a
Speaker 1: lot of this is right around the time when America
Speaker 1: gets involved in a war with Spain. That's essentially pushed
Speaker 1: by two different newspaper magnets wanting to sell more papers.
Speaker 1: So like, yeah, the press, he doesn't have a great
Speaker 1: reputation now, yeah, but even it still didn't have a
Speaker 1: great reputation then. Um, so yeah, it's like a perfect storm,
Speaker 1: but it also is it was a legitimately brilliant scheme,
Speaker 1: and he did his best to cover his tracks. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he died in December of nineteen nine at the
Speaker 1: age of eighty four. Uh super rich. Uh did you
Speaker 1: make that billion? Well we'll get to that in a minute. Um.
Speaker 1: The biography published the next year said that quote, were
Speaker 1: it not for his private life, his domestic affairs, and
Speaker 1: his avarice, he would have retained his popularity to the
Speaker 1: very last. Belgium as a nation, with the exception of
Speaker 1: the socialists, would have forgiven him the Congo atrocities. Indeed,
Speaker 1: she has forgiven him, for after all, she is destined
Speaker 1: to benefit by them, and she will not grudge her
Speaker 1: king the Royal commission he pocketed on the enterprise. And
Speaker 1: this is where again I want to point out that
Speaker 1: in some total there's no percent agreed upon death toll
Speaker 1: for Leopold's regime in the Congo, but the likely numbers
Speaker 1: are between ten and thirteen million, possibly as high as
Speaker 1: fifteen million people um. And the Congo was definitely the
Speaker 1: bloodiest of any of the colonists in Africa by a
Speaker 1: substantial margin. But they all killed a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them killed a lot of people
Speaker 1: making rubber. And one of the things that was found
Speaker 1: out after Leopold's death is that in the bloody French
Speaker 1: and German colonies that were producing rubber, Leopold owned a
Speaker 1: majority of several of the large rubber making corporations and
Speaker 1: those colonies too, so he was also the first like
Speaker 1: pan multinational. Right, the corporations can be the conduits for
Speaker 1: the scumbags, because the corporations are the scumbags, of course.
Speaker 1: But Jesus Christ, yeah, so he's he's he's a real monster.
Speaker 1: The late king achieved his ambition of disinheriting his daughters.
Speaker 1: He left them only fifteen million francs, the exact amount
Speaker 1: he'd inherited from his father. His entire fortune went to
Speaker 1: Baroness Devon, the prostitute courts On that he fell in
Speaker 1: love with and married. After his death, she immediately married drou,
Speaker 1: her pimp, and spent the rest of her life living
Speaker 1: lavishly off the gold made by the blood of Congolese labor.
Speaker 1: Which she doesn't come out as good as I don't know.
Speaker 1: I kind of like that his inheritance got stolen by
Speaker 1: a scheming prostitute and her pimp friend. Yeah, that's better
Speaker 1: than I can us. If she had murdered him, that
Speaker 1: would have if she'd strangled him with his own beard
Speaker 1: job al Yeah, or poison him. Maybe she did poison him.
Speaker 1: Maybe she had poisoned him. I can't hope, so I
Speaker 1: certainly don't know. Um oh what a grim mass tail. Fuck. Yeah.
Speaker 1: His biography, the nineteen ten biography, summed up Leopold's life
Speaker 1: this way Leopold the second New Belgium, New Europe and
Speaker 1: new humanity. And like a strong man, he had a
Speaker 1: deep contempt for everything and everybody. He loved his country
Speaker 1: and his own interests for all. Love is after all selfish.
Speaker 1: It's the Victorian Age is a bleak gas period. There's
Speaker 1: also you know, speaking of although it's not exactly the
Speaker 1: same players, but it's the same types of institutions every
Speaker 1: one of y'all who whenever this comes out, you'll have
Speaker 1: just enjoyed the royal wedding. Yeah, that ship has built
Speaker 1: off the back of ship, like exactly like this, well,
Speaker 1: less artful than this a lot not even good was
Speaker 1: because this is if you can like the it's it's
Speaker 1: up there with the Holocaust in terms of like the
Speaker 1: greatest crimes in human history. But as a scheme, his
Speaker 1: planned is it's like almost artwork. It's like watching The
Speaker 1: Joker and The Good Christinal and Batman. Yeah, but also
Speaker 1: that one too, where you're like it has similar moments
Speaker 1: of like I feel like some of these lives are
Speaker 1: just to do the lie. Yeah, it's not even about
Speaker 1: achieving the aid need to do this yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like the funk you do that
Speaker 1: for well, it's crazy and so one of the more
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many fund up things about this.
Speaker 1: I really recommend reading King Leopold's Ghost by Adam host Child.
Speaker 1: It's a great book. And it really delves into the
Speaker 1: human misery caused by this regime. But you know, you're
Speaker 1: you're talking ten to fifteen million people killed, millions more
Speaker 1: left without hands, left maimed, starved, like whose villages were
Speaker 1: destroyed the go Today, it's still probably the least stable
Speaker 1: state in Africa, or at least one of them, because
Speaker 1: all social order was destroyed. He swats the party like that.
Speaker 1: It continues to this day. Leopold's profits, Yeah, roughly a
Speaker 1: billion dollars in modern currency. That's bonkers, that's I feel like,
Speaker 1: that's fucking nothing for what he did in terms of right.
Speaker 1: Not a billion dollars in nineteen o nine money. Billion
Speaker 1: dollars in today's money is what he got for killing
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen million people and destroying Central Africa. That's Jesus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's not even extracting enough wealth, like you could do
Speaker 1: that just by closing up bookshops. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: a lot of that is because he had to spend
Speaker 1: so much money on an army, on policing the state
Speaker 1: of fighting, because there were a bunch of rebellions, people
Speaker 1: who thought back. He had to he had to suppress
Speaker 1: those rebellions, and he had to pay all these journalists
Speaker 1: and like, yeah, there you go, fucking capitalists, and he's
Speaker 1: like and profitable to be the worst person. Although I
Speaker 1: guess that was the second lesson that everyone turned is like, oh,
Speaker 1: the real prophets in pr and making people think they
Speaker 1: want to do this now. I want to ask you
Speaker 1: a question that occurred to me when I finished researching this,
Speaker 1: and I wonder about this, like is Leopold a worse
Speaker 1: person than Hitler? Because I can't not think about that
Speaker 1: line in The Big Lebowski where what's his name Walter's like,
Speaker 1: say what you will about national socialism. At least it's
Speaker 1: an ethos. Hitler committed crimes on a on a similar,
Speaker 1: if not much greater scale if you include all of
Speaker 1: the war dead, but he had like an ideology behind it,
Speaker 1: as opposed to Leopold, who this was never anything but money.
Speaker 1: There was no hatred, there was no goal, there was
Speaker 1: no view of the world. It was purely if I
Speaker 1: can make money, and killing these people is the fastest
Speaker 1: way to get it. I don't care what happens to
Speaker 1: them because I want money. And it was also like separate.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, I guess it's just different things. They
Speaker 1: are very different things. Although, like when you look at
Speaker 1: the Holocaust, and this is something that's often glossed over
Speaker 1: when people talk about the Holocaust is how much of
Speaker 1: it was a money making endeavor from the German state
Speaker 1: because they were literally mining people to death in terms
Speaker 1: of like taking their hair, taking the gold fillings out
Speaker 1: of them, taking their businesses beforehand, and taking their property.
Speaker 1: So I mean you have with most of like and
Speaker 1: with really with every great genocide, because like if you
Speaker 1: look at the Rwandan genocide, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: financial motivation. There are people wanting each other's farms and one, yeah,
Speaker 1: I I have to imagine like those are the things
Speaker 1: that allow I mean, like all look but like all
Speaker 1: conflict to It's like like especially anything sectarian or religious,
Speaker 1: like the Crusades. You know, you can make an economic
Speaker 1: case for the Crusades or or or colonialism or at large,
Speaker 1: like all that is sort of possible. I think the
Speaker 1: thing with Leopold's evil is as as we've discussed already.
Speaker 1: It's like, though not in the same degree, anyone listening
Speaker 1: to this on a podcast thing and on exactly is
Speaker 1: complicit in something along Leopold's vector whereas it's fewer of
Speaker 1: us listening to this podcast are complicit in some type
Speaker 1: of thing that Hitler has involved in. So I think
Speaker 1: it behooves us to say Hitler is more evil because
Speaker 1: we don't want to be part you know. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: banality that I mean, look, not banality, but the you know,
Speaker 1: the it's in the direction of banality. I think you're
Speaker 1: onto something that's great there. And I think that's why
Speaker 1: the idea of the banality of evil is so important
Speaker 1: is because Hitler is it's so easy to see the
Speaker 1: evil and Hitler because he was he was showy with
Speaker 1: like he's the most showy villain in all of history.
Speaker 1: Leopold was a weird old man who had a stupid
Speaker 1: beard and sat in his office and never shot anybody
Speaker 1: in RhoD of tricycle to his mistress and was just
Speaker 1: this weird old dude who was happy to orchestrate one
Speaker 1: of like the great crimes in human history just for
Speaker 1: some cash in his pocket. And that's scarier. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you can imagine that he doesn't come up with the
Speaker 1: hands for bullets scheme. No, he's just doesn't need to.
Speaker 1: We can't let them have bullets. We have to make
Speaker 1: sure that, like we're accounting for all the bullets, that
Speaker 1: they're not saving them up for a rebellion. What can
Speaker 1: we do, Oh, well, we just make sure they prove
Speaker 1: to us they're using the bullets for good reason when
Speaker 1: they fire them. How about we have them bringing a hand. Great,
Speaker 1: and that's probably the end of the cons and then
Speaker 1: the first person people lose hands, like, then a crime
Speaker 1: on an unspeakable scale happens. And he's just like sitting
Speaker 1: at home being like, boy, I wonder why productions down
Speaker 1: this week. But he can also be like, I'm not
Speaker 1: the one that came up with the hands thing. It's
Speaker 1: a shame. He can even be like all the hand
Speaker 1: things are real shame. Yeah, that's a real shame. One
Speaker 1: of my new guys, you know these you know the walloons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you put them in charge of something and they mess
Speaker 1: it up. I hate that we have to do this,
Speaker 1: but of course we do need that rubber. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's the thing that you know. And look, that's a
Speaker 1: version of every one of us calls ourselves every fucking day. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that's why I think most people would say Hitler
Speaker 1: is a worse, more evil person because we don't want
Speaker 1: to be complicit in our own evil. Hey, everybody, this
Speaker 1: is Robert Evans from the future. I realized that this
Speaker 1: podcast was a teeny bit incomplete. There was some more
Speaker 1: information I want to give out, so I gained access
Speaker 1: to a time machine and went back in time to
Speaker 1: to record it. It was either fixed the podcast or
Speaker 1: stop nine eleven. Hopefully I made the right decision. But UM,
Speaker 1: I wanted to say a little bit more about the Chakote,
Speaker 1: which we we talked about a little bit in this podcast.
Speaker 1: That's the hippo hyde whip that was the primary disciplinary
Speaker 1: tool in the Congo Free State. UM. The book King
Speaker 1: Leopold's Ghost makes a big deal out of the Chakote,
Speaker 1: and it's probably true that the Belgians under Leopold whipped
Speaker 1: more people to death than any other regime in history. UM.
Speaker 1: But that book also points out that whipping people to
Speaker 1: death or nearly to death was basically the bedrock that
Speaker 1: colonialism was founded upon. UM. It relates the story of
Speaker 1: a guy named Roger Casement. We didn't get to talk
Speaker 1: to you in this podcast, but he's a very interesting dude.
Speaker 1: He's one of the men who investigated atrocities in the Congo.
Speaker 1: He also wound up investigating a lot of atrocities in
Speaker 1: the Amazon at a place called Puta Mayo, where the
Speaker 1: Peruvian Amazon Rubber Company had been caught basically enslaving and
Speaker 1: murdering people to produce even more rubber. UM. And this
Speaker 1: was for I think the British. It was mostly a
Speaker 1: British owned company, although it was like a corporation with
Speaker 1: a lot of different sort of stockholders behind it. UM
Speaker 1: and the Peruvian Amazon Rubber Company dealt out punishments with
Speaker 1: a whip of their own that was actually a two
Speaker 1: peer hide whip UM, but it was similar to the
Speaker 1: jacote and its effect. Roughly thirty thousand indigenous people in
Speaker 1: the Amazon died mining rubber for that company. UM whips.
Speaker 1: It turns out we're basically the glue that made colonialism
Speaker 1: UM possible. I found one book on slavery in the
Speaker 1: British West Indies published in eighteen twenty four, that admits
Speaker 1: that whips were quote the main spring of the agricultural
Speaker 1: system in that region of the Empire. Whips were also
Speaker 1: critical to the French colonies as far back as the
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds, when a visitor to the French Antilles noticed
Speaker 1: that the use of whips was quote always excessive and barbarous,
Speaker 1: with the potential of maiming the victim by assaulting his
Speaker 1: private parts or even killing him, if not instantly, as
Speaker 1: has already been the case, in due course, as is
Speaker 1: often the case. So whipping and slavery go hand in hand. Obviously.
Speaker 1: I don't think most people are surprised by that, but
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people would be surprised to
Speaker 1: know that Europeans didn't stop whipping subject people once slavery
Speaker 1: was over. The Congo and the Amazon are proof of that, um,
Speaker 1: but the atomic bomb is actually even more proof. After
Speaker 1: Leopold died, the Belgians continued to control the Congo region,
Speaker 1: and they moved on from rubber farming to mining. In
Speaker 1: the first six months of nineteen twenty, a single gold
Speaker 1: mine is recorded as issuing over twenty six thousand lashes
Speaker 1: to his workers, more than eight lashes for every single
Speaker 1: African quote employed there. I say, you know, employed in
Speaker 1: quotation marks. Because the Belgians kept right on using forced labor,
Speaker 1: as did the British and Kenya up and into the
Speaker 1: modern era. By World War Two, Belgium required a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty days per year of labor for each adult
Speaker 1: male inhabitant of the Congo reach. And it turns out
Speaker 1: that of the uranium mind to make the bombs dropped
Speaker 1: on Hiroshima and Nagasaki came from Congolese minds that used
Speaker 1: forced labor, which means we can thank the Jacote for
Speaker 1: the first atom bombs. The British are also famous for
Speaker 1: flogging their colonial subjects well into the middle of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. By the nineteen twenties, Kenya was the colony
Speaker 1: where the British used the most corporal punishment, or as
Speaker 1: they called it, rough justice UH. Flogging was seen to
Speaker 1: be necessary in order to deal with the quote raw
Speaker 1: native Africans, who were perhaps so raw because the British
Speaker 1: regularly whipped them bloody uh. There were attempts in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties to alter British penal laws in the colony
Speaker 1: to be less brutal, but they didn't exactly stop the
Speaker 1: problem of white colonists treating black natives like shit. Brutality
Speaker 1: and the Kenyan colony eventually led to the Mau Mau Uprising,
Speaker 1: which started in nineteen fifty two when a bunch of rebels,
Speaker 1: calling themselves the Mau Mau killed thirty two white people.
Speaker 1: This made England go batch it crazy. Uh. The English
Speaker 1: forces rounded up a hundred and fifty thousand Kenyans and
Speaker 1: through them into concentration camps, where they were starved and
Speaker 1: beaten regularly. One survivor recalled, we were forced to do
Speaker 1: work carrying bricks to build a school. We were beating
Speaker 1: if we moved too slowly. It was very hard work.
Speaker 1: They would just flog everyone. At times, four or five
Speaker 1: guards with whips would come into the cell. So at
Speaker 1: least twelve thousand people were killed during the Mamou uprising,
Speaker 1: although it's hard to say how many of them died
Speaker 1: from being whipped. The brutalizing effect of whipping people certainly
Speaker 1: had an impact on the British men who did it.
Speaker 1: A Kenyan judge who investigated whipping, torture and murder at
Speaker 1: one British interrogation center compared it to a Nazi labor
Speaker 1: camp and said, quote from the brutalizing of flogging, it
Speaker 1: is only a step to taking a life without qualm.
Speaker 1: So uh, I just thought this is a good information
Speaker 1: to know. People talk about colonialism a lot and it
Speaker 1: gets you know, a lot of well deserved harsh criticism
Speaker 1: these days. But I think that the people who rightly
Speaker 1: view it as a as a horrible historical crime also
Speaker 1: tend to kind of push it further back in history
Speaker 1: and sort of assume that most of the worst stuff
Speaker 1: was done and you know, the seventeen and eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: The reality is that colonialism was still exporting wealth from
Speaker 1: African nations, you know, into Europe well into the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: and that the European nations were using brutal and in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways medieval justice measures in order to
Speaker 1: keep the colonies compliant. So, uh, there's your happy little
Speaker 1: reminder that not only was colonialism and nightmare, but it
Speaker 1: is a nightmare that happened recently enough that a lot
Speaker 1: of people are still alive to remember it today. Uh
Speaker 1: So just keep that in mind, I guess. And now
Speaker 1: I'm going to use my magical time powers to go
Speaker 1: back to you know, when Andrew and I were sitting
Speaker 1: in the room. Yeah, and we don't wanna We also
Speaker 1: don't want to acknowledge like when you go to Belgium,
Speaker 1: which I love Belgium, on there a couple of times
Speaker 1: beautiful country, best beer I've ever had in the world,
Speaker 1: gorgeous giant buildings, many in like the cities and stuff
Speaker 1: like ain't really old, beautiful museums and stuff, many of
Speaker 1: which are built on congo money um, and so you
Speaker 1: don't and in like we're shooting on Belgium here, but
Speaker 1: that's like all of Europe you go to, you go
Speaker 1: to uh, American South and they're American North. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: that's everything was built on the backs of that ship.
Speaker 1: So and you know there's there were good people at
Speaker 1: all times being like that sucks, this is really messed up.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but that's the same every you pick up
Speaker 1: an iPhone, you're like, it sucks that someone had a
Speaker 1: south from that. I do need it though, well, and
Speaker 1: there are and this is again the thing that Leopold's
Speaker 1: Ghost is a good job of going into. There are
Speaker 1: the heroes in this story. There's the guy like Colonel Washington,
Speaker 1: who I was there and right, there's guys like Morrell
Speaker 1: who are who like who don't even see it firsthand,
Speaker 1: but put it together like this can't stand. I have
Speaker 1: to do something and I hope that like like that's
Speaker 1: the we got to focus on Leopold in this both
Speaker 1: because his story is the blueprint of every terrible person
Speaker 1: who came after him. He really is the first modern
Speaker 1: monster world like head of State, the first one to
Speaker 1: use pr in a really modern way. But it's important.
Speaker 1: It's just as important to think about the guys like Morrell,
Speaker 1: who are probably more relevant to our own lives because
Speaker 1: they pointed like, well, you can do something. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you don't have to just say this it's a shame,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly, and it might take fifteen years, but you can. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: these guys will still win to some extent, but you
Speaker 1: can know where the margins by which they win you
Speaker 1: can put into their profits. Well, right, it's a it's
Speaker 1: just a battle. All you can do is make it
Speaker 1: less profitable. The Capitalist Revolution. That is our podcast for
Speaker 1: the week. Uh, Andrew, you want to plug your plugables?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well just just please listen to you know,
Speaker 1: is this racist? Uh? I used to think it was
Speaker 1: the most depressing podcast on the internet, but not anymore.
Speaker 1: And I'm Robert Evans. You can find me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at at I right, okay, you can find this podcast
Speaker 1: on the internet at Behind the Bastards dot com. You
Speaker 1: can find us on social media at at Bastard's Pod.
Speaker 1: I've got a book you can find on Amazon, Brief
Speaker 1: History of Vice. Um, so yeah, check my stuff out,
Speaker 1: check us out. We will be back every single Tuesday
Speaker 1: from now until the heat death of the Universe with
Speaker 1: a new Bastard. So check that us next. Yes, I
Speaker 1: can't wait. Yep. Okay, m h m