WEBVTT - Part Two: King Leopold II: The First Modern Bastard 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:04.240 Hello friends, I'm Robert Evans, and this is Behind the Bastards, 0:00:04.280 --> 0:00:05.920 the show where we tell you everything you don't know 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:08.360 about the very worst people in history. And this is 0:00:08.440 --> 0:00:11.320 part two of our episode on Leopold, the second King 0:00:11.360 --> 0:00:14.480 of Belgium. In part one we sort of went over 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:17.880 how Leopold conned his way into becoming king of the Congo, 0:00:18.640 --> 0:00:21.480 how he tricked the locals into signing over their rights 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:24.800 to their land, and how he conscripted thousands of them 0:00:24.840 --> 0:00:28.080 into a slave army. Uh So, now we're going to 0:00:28.120 --> 0:00:31.400 get back into all that and the rest of the terrible, 0:00:31.480 --> 0:00:34.479 terrible story of the Belgian Congo. So the first five 0:00:34.560 --> 0:00:36.760 or so years of the Congo project or great for Leopold. 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:38.800 He's in total control, richer than God, and most of 0:00:38.800 --> 0:00:41.760 Europe still believes he's improving a lot of the Congolese people. 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:45.000 But in around eighteen ninety, a black journalist named Colonel 0:00:45.120 --> 0:00:48.680 and he's not really a colonel, George Washington Williams saw 0:00:48.720 --> 0:00:51.160 the actual Congo. So he didn't like take the tour 0:00:51.280 --> 0:00:53.360 where you get led through the nice parts of the 0:00:53.400 --> 0:00:55.560 Congo like he He went on foot and he got 0:00:55.600 --> 0:00:58.880 in there and he saw the fucking nightmare that Leopold 0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:01.520 had built. And he wrote an article called an open 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:04.480 Letter to King Leopold uh and it was the first 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:09.000 expos of Leopold's blood soak rubber regime. UM William's document 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:11.319 is remarkable because he's basically the only person up to 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:14.000 that point who actually sat down with African people and 0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:16.399 asked them what was going on in the Congo. He 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:18.800 retraced a lot of Stanley's right along the Congo and 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:20.440 actually talked to some of the people who had signed 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:23.039 treaties giving their land to Leopold. He learned that a 0:01:23.080 --> 0:01:25.400 great number of chiefs had been tricked into signing things 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:28.039 with magic tricks. Um. One of the tricks was that, 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:31.160 like Stanley, had bought a bunch of electric batteries in London, 0:01:31.560 --> 0:01:34.680 and when quote when attached to the arm under the coat, 0:01:34.760 --> 0:01:37.240 communicated with a band of ribbon which passed over the 0:01:37.280 --> 0:01:39.680 palm of the white brother's hand, And when he gave 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:42.240 the black brother a cordial grasp of the hand, the 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:44.840 black brother was greatly surprised to find his white brother 0:01:44.959 --> 0:01:47.680 was so strong that he nearly knocked him off his feet. 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:50.760 When the native inquired about the disparity of strength between 0:01:50.800 --> 0:01:52.480 himself and his white brother. He was told that the 0:01:52.480 --> 0:01:54.680 white man could pull up trees and performing the most 0:01:54.680 --> 0:01:57.840 prodigious feats of strength. So he did a hand buzzer. 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:00.440 He did a hand buzzer and these like if you 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:02.880 don't know what electricity is. Yeah, he's just some sort 0:02:02.920 --> 0:02:09.000 of superman. Let's sign the peace treaty. Yeah yeah, holy ship. Yeah. 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:11.520 Another trick was to use a magnifying glass to light 0:02:11.520 --> 0:02:15.680 a cigar and then claim that white people had sun powers. Um, 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:17.680 and he'll burn up your villain, basically like I have 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:21.040 power over the sun and I'll plage on fire. Yeah 0:02:20.200 --> 0:02:26.440 ye god, what a bluff. Yeah yeah yeah. So um 0:02:26.480 --> 0:02:29.640 Williams writes this open letter. Um. He frames it as 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:32.840 like presuming Leopold doesn't know how terrible things are. He 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:34.760 writes about the taking of hands and like all of 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:37.160 the death and the people who are being like starved 0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:39.880 to death as porters, carrying this sort of like modest 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:42.200 proposal style like of course, you know, but it's an 0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:45.120 indictment or think there's a little bit of a satirical 0:02:45.200 --> 0:02:49.640 bit um And yeah, so Williams publishes this that, but 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:52.800 unfortunately he dies not long after writing the letter, and 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:55.239 Leopold's able to clamp down on any kind of outrage 0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:58.239 after for a little while. But seven or eight years later, 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:01.359 another guy who's an amateur journalist named Morrell stumbles upon 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:04.040 the conspiracy. So he was working as a mid level 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:06.320 employee for a shipping line that had the contract to 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:08.880 handle all shipping into the Congo Free State, and so 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:11.399 every so often Morrell would get sent over to Belgium 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:13.280 and he would report on what's going into and out 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:15.720 of the port of Antwerp. And so he realizes that 0:03:15.760 --> 0:03:18.160 the only thing coming out of the Congo into Europe 0:03:18.240 --> 0:03:22.240 is rubber, just shiploads of rubber, impossible quantities of it, 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:25.080 larger quantities than have been reported in fact. And the 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:27.280 only thing that's going being sent out to the Congo 0:03:27.560 --> 0:03:31.080 rather than trade are just guns and money, and a 0:03:31.080 --> 0:03:33.200 lot more guns than you'd need for any kind of 0:03:33.200 --> 0:03:40.640 philanthropic enterprise. Um Man, Yeah, so exactly, exactly. So he starts, 0:03:40.640 --> 0:03:42.080 he never actually goes to the Congo, but he just 0:03:42.120 --> 0:03:44.560 starts digging, and he starts talking to other people who 0:03:44.560 --> 0:03:48.320 have worked there, and basically, um he starts a newspaper 0:03:48.520 --> 0:03:52.120 that is focused entirely on exposing King Leopold's crimes to 0:03:52.160 --> 0:03:55.200 the world and starts publishing it all throughout Europe. Um. 0:03:55.240 --> 0:03:57.720 He's active all over the world and basically becomes like 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:00.360 the Congo equivalent of Wiki leaks. So all the guys 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:03.200 who had worked in Leopold's Congo and felt bad kind 0:04:03.280 --> 0:04:04.800 to him and be like, I saw this, this is 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:07.920 what happened. Here's some documents I managed to smug. Well, 0:04:07.960 --> 0:04:10.920 it's also like you're like, yeah, this is what wikilliks 0:04:10.920 --> 0:04:13.640 was supposed to be, Like, this is what it could be. 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:17.760 And this is also why people like that have legitimacy, 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:21.680 because and why conspiracies have legitimacy because guess what there 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:27.480 have been Yeah, big complex conspiracy gigantic conspiracies. So Morrel 0:04:27.720 --> 0:04:31.040 starts this newspaper and he winds up creating was probably 0:04:31.080 --> 0:04:34.760 the first modern human rights organization, the Congo Reform Association, 0:04:34.880 --> 0:04:39.360 which is dedicated to stopping this fi nightmare in the Congo. UM. 0:04:39.560 --> 0:04:43.800 King Leopold responded by inventing the first modern international pr campaign. 0:04:44.080 --> 0:04:46.159 He bought a shipload of journalists of his own, and 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:48.159 he had them all right puff pieces about how great 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:51.000 the Congo actually was. He would pay for journalists to 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:53.720 go on lavish, carefully controlled trips through the Congo. He'd 0:04:53.720 --> 0:04:56.080 give them exclusive interviews when they got back, and he'd 0:04:56.160 --> 0:04:58.160 use his network of agents to help them place their 0:04:58.240 --> 0:05:01.120 articles in newspapers. He got journalists in the New York 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:04.240 Times to write quotes like I have witnessed more atrocities 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:06.520 in London streets than I have ever seen in the Congo. 0:05:07.240 --> 0:05:09.440 He would pay for journalists to give public speeches, and 0:05:09.480 --> 0:05:13.800 he would lobby politicians. Leopold's regime was heavily criticized for 0:05:13.839 --> 0:05:16.279 its widespread use of something called the jacote, which is 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:19.279 a hippo hyde whip which was used to punish laborers. 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:21.960 Prisoners were often lashed to death by it, and it's 0:05:22.000 --> 0:05:24.880 possible that like literally several million people were killed with 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:28.440 his whip. Um So Leopold starts catching flak for this, 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:31.159 and he decides to distract attention from his whipping millions 0:05:31.160 --> 0:05:33.520 of people to death by sending journalists to British colonies 0:05:33.560 --> 0:05:37.279 and having them write lurished expose of abuses in British colonies. 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:40.080 So his pet reporters would write stories about like how 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:42.680 the British were using whips on prisoners in South Africa 0:05:42.960 --> 0:05:45.760 or something terrible they've done to people in India. And 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:50.160 then exactly what about Hillary style? That's exactly it. Like 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:53.120 I said, he invented the modern art of being shitty, 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:56.479 like he's he's doing what about is um on a 0:05:56.600 --> 0:05:59.200 massive scale? Did he did he have like an anti 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:02.640 sdent for like the media, like playing the media or 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:04.800 did he just make all of I think he invented 0:06:04.880 --> 0:06:09.279 this playbook because other people had. Obviously, every the media's 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:11.799 existed for a while. Other people have used the media 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:14.839 one degree or another. But he is the first person 0:06:14.880 --> 0:06:17.080 that I've ever run across who's using it in the 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:20.120 same way politicians use it today, in the same way 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:22.200 world leaders use it today, Like this is a very 0:06:22.279 --> 0:06:26.080 modern pr campaign. Um he buys he uses his Congo 0:06:26.120 --> 0:06:28.600 earnings to buy the editors of a bunch of newspapers, 0:06:28.600 --> 0:06:32.240 including the London Times. So he's spending like thousands of 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:36.040 dollars on just owning editors. UM, so that number one, 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:38.320 they'll kill stories that are negative to with the Congo 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:41.080 free state, and so that he can place his positive 0:06:41.080 --> 0:06:44.240 stories once he gets like positive journalists to go, you know, 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:45.960 have a tour of the Congo and then come and 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:48.839 write about it. Um. And this is all basically a 0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:51.800 delaying action. Leopold knows eventually the truth is going to 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:54.320 get out, but he's playing for time. He's got twenty 0:06:54.400 --> 0:06:56.960 years before rubber stops being his problem. He doesn't need 0:06:57.000 --> 0:06:58.599 to do this forever. He just needs to do it 0:06:58.600 --> 0:07:00.520 for a little while. He just wants to as much 0:07:00.520 --> 0:07:03.120 money as he can out of the situation. Um. And 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:06.040 eventually the sheer weight of facts did change public opinion 0:07:06.080 --> 0:07:09.160 against him, but it took like twenty years. At one point, 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:11.560 Leopold has said to have seen a cartoon of himself 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:13.960 in a German newspaper. UM. And in the cartoon, he's 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:16.960 cutting the hands off of Africans and he reportedly laughed 0:07:16.960 --> 0:07:19.520 at that and said, cut off hands. That's idiotic. I'd 0:07:19.560 --> 0:07:21.720 cut off all the rest of them, but not the hands. 0:07:21.760 --> 0:07:25.080 That's the thing I need in the congo. So he's 0:07:25.080 --> 0:07:30.760 a real piece of work. Um. Now in Leopold had 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:34.080 started dating a sixteen year old prostitute named Caroline um. 0:07:34.240 --> 0:07:35.960 This is when the congo is at the height of 0:07:36.000 --> 0:07:38.640 its rubber production. UM. So he'd been hooked up to 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:41.280 her via a pimp named Duro, who was a former 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:44.480 officer in the French army. We know now that Caroline's 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:47.400 whole relationship with Leopold was likely a con game, an 0:07:47.400 --> 0:07:51.960 incredibly successful scheme to snatch his inheritance. But at the time, Uh, 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:55.320 King Leopold, blood drenched, absolute ruler of the Congo, was 0:07:55.360 --> 0:07:58.800 smitten with this teenage prostitute. Adam hoss Child writes that 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:01.720 quote to the extent that someone like Leopold was capable 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:04.280 of love, this teenage prostitute proved to be the love 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:08.160 of his life. Um so he's really got it for 0:08:08.200 --> 0:08:12.160 this girl hard. He names her the barrenness of Vaughan. Uh. 0:08:12.200 --> 0:08:16.160 And the unseemliness of their relationship isn't really acknowledged in 0:08:16.160 --> 0:08:18.800 the nineteen ten biography. It just calls her one of 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:21.720 the king's quote favorites. Uh, and it dances around the 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:24.720 fact that they got together while the Queen was still alive. Um. 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:27.000 In general, it refers to the King's constant parade of 0:08:27.040 --> 0:08:32.120 mistresses as distractions. Um so yeah. Caroline went on to 0:08:32.160 --> 0:08:34.040 write a bit about their life together, and she gives 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:37.480 this additional insight into the kind of man Leopold was. Quote. 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:40.200 Every evening a steam launch took the King to appear 0:08:40.280 --> 0:08:43.840 leading to my villa through a subterranean passage. Speaking about this, 0:08:43.960 --> 0:08:46.599 I can't help remarking on the extraordinary taste of the 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:49.840 king for everything which had a secret and mysterious character. 0:08:50.160 --> 0:08:52.280 Anyone who could sell him any house, so long as 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:54.280 it was built on the side of an abandoned quarry, 0:08:54.400 --> 0:08:58.200 or if it had a secret staircase. So basically, he's 0:08:58.240 --> 0:09:01.640 gone from being too cheap to like rinse his like 0:09:01.679 --> 0:09:04.480 a handkerchief. He's like a cartoon villain. Yeah, to like 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:07.400 a cartoon villed with like layers built into mountain sides 0:09:07.440 --> 0:09:12.560 and hidden boat like grottos and stuff. Yeah. But Caroline 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:15.400 seems to have his number. Um. So she's both got 0:09:15.480 --> 0:09:17.760 him on madly in love with her. But she also 0:09:17.880 --> 0:09:21.760 like she takes advantage of his hypochondriasm or whatever you 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:23.880 call that, Like whenever she wanted him to leave her alone, 0:09:23.920 --> 0:09:26.360 she'd pretend to have a cough and then he'd hide 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:29.280 for days, um because he was scared of So she's 0:09:29.400 --> 0:09:34.280 she's my favorite person in this story. She's lockdown. Um. 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:37.720 So the king is sort of the nineteen hundreds come around, 0:09:37.800 --> 0:09:41.559 is in his late sixties, um, and he takes to 0:09:41.679 --> 0:09:46.240 visiting his teenage mistress in a large tricycle. Um, because again, yeah, 0:09:46.480 --> 0:09:52.280 he's getting more and more Yeah for the genocidal murderer. 0:09:52.360 --> 0:09:55.160 Yeah righting a big tricycle to hang out with his 0:09:55.200 --> 0:09:59.720 teenage girlfriend. Um, just as bad everyone who every white 0:09:59.720 --> 0:10:02.480 guy riding a tricycle with the big old mustache, you 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:05.959 are all as bad as king. Yeah. So he's writing 0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:08.640 a big tricycle. He drinks nothing but hot water. Uh. 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:10.959 And he starts referring to himself in the third person 0:10:11.000 --> 0:10:16.040 at this point in time. Um, so yeah, he's a weirdo. Um, 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:18.640 he's not entirely past his old ways at this point. 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:21.040 There's like a story of the time his mistress bought 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:24.040 a new hat for him, um, and gives it to him, 0:10:24.080 --> 0:10:26.720 and he like flies into a rage. Uh. And he 0:10:26.760 --> 0:10:29.440 only calms down when she explains him that she got 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:31.080 it for a bargain and it was like a deal 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:32.680 that she bought it a quarter of its value. So 0:10:32.760 --> 0:10:35.560 like he's still he's just he's just a weirdo. He's 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:39.920 a weird guy. He's like a weird old rich letcher 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:44.120 who's just knows what's going on in the congo but 0:10:44.200 --> 0:10:47.400 doesn't like I mean Look, here's the other part. The 0:10:47.440 --> 0:10:49.679 other way to look at that, I suppose is maybe 0:10:49.679 --> 0:10:52.240 not in such a direct degree, but as Americans, we 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:54.640 all have similar types of blood on our hands that 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:57.440 we are electing to not think about. Yeah, but we're 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:01.280 not we're not driving it in the same way. But 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:04.280 we absolutely like we all have these phones that we 0:11:04.320 --> 0:11:06.760 know are made by people who hate the work that 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:09.600 they're doing. And they're like including minerals that are mined 0:11:09.679 --> 0:11:12.800 from like conflict written nations and often use slave labor 0:11:12.800 --> 0:11:14.360 in one. And we know that, like the fabric in 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:16.640 our clothes is often their slave labor. At some point 0:11:16.640 --> 0:11:21.079 in the production line. Leopold knows that because he's signing 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:23.839 the orders and saying cut off more hands, cut off 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:27.040 more hands, and he's just it's just amazing to me 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:29.400 that he's able to do that all day every day 0:11:29.720 --> 0:11:33.200 and then write a tricycle to his teenage girlfriend's house. Um, 0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:37.800 but that's it's amazing what you're saying. But to me, 0:11:37.880 --> 0:11:40.440 I'm like, it's a little bit just degrees. I mean, look, 0:11:40.440 --> 0:11:44.080 we're all able to it is degrees. We're all able 0:11:44.080 --> 0:11:49.920 to compartmentalize the misery that's necessary for our comfort. Um, 0:11:50.040 --> 0:11:54.520 but this guy, this guy. Uh. One of the things 0:11:54.600 --> 0:11:57.160 that was interesting to me reading that pro Leopold biography 0:11:57.240 --> 0:12:00.880 is that, well, it does talk about nineteen ten, the 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:04.920 air after he died spoiler. Um. So this biography of him, 0:12:04.960 --> 0:12:07.600 it's very positive. It talks about how there's atrocities, but 0:12:07.640 --> 0:12:09.400 it always kind of doesn't talk about the detail. It 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:13.040 just said he definitely committed atrocities. But look at this 0:12:13.480 --> 0:12:18.079 or look at how, look at how and everyone did 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:21.600 is like everyone did, and we'll get to that in 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:24.520 a little. Um. What is interesting to me is that 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:29.000 this biography does condemn his mistress for capitalizing on the congo. 0:12:29.960 --> 0:12:32.400 It notes that she was called the Queen of the 0:12:32.480 --> 0:12:35.720 Congo by the people of Belgium for she was to 0:12:35.760 --> 0:12:38.680 benefit largely by the atrocities committed in the Free State. 0:12:38.760 --> 0:12:41.920 We're sweating and bleeding natives labored so as to accumulate 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:44.520 millions for the royal favorite. So like he again, he 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:48.520 doesn't really attack Leopold ever, like he's like, yeah, he 0:12:48.600 --> 0:12:51.480 did some bad stuff, But this biographer goes off on 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:54.760 her mistress for like taking money from him. That's that's 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:57.520 blood money, which it is blood money, but like she's 0:12:57.640 --> 0:13:04.400 the least objectionable person situation. Um so, yeah, yeah, she 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:07.559 has a little Melannia asked, I suppose she is, and 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:10.240 she maybe knew more what she was getting into at 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:14.120 the top. Yeah, she probably knew less about them because, 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:16.920 like I doubt, just a rich guy. Yeah, she just 0:13:16.960 --> 0:13:18.599 wanted to marry a rich guy, Like I doubt. He 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:20.560 doesn't seem like the kind of guy who have talked 0:13:20.559 --> 0:13:24.280 to his mistress about the hands or that they were 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:27.360 murdering people with. And it's at the time especially quite 0:13:27.440 --> 0:13:30.480 easy to ignore you forget about. You don't share a 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:32.600 lot of that stuff with you, Yeah, especially not your 0:13:32.640 --> 0:13:36.360 teenage child bride. And as a teenage child bride to 0:13:36.520 --> 0:13:38.800 just feel like, I don't read those books. Yeah, I 0:13:38.840 --> 0:13:41.760 don't read that article. Yeah yeah. Um So. In the 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:44.200 early nineteen hundreds, more and more stories of abuse in 0:13:44.240 --> 0:13:46.760 the Congo hit the world press. People actually started to 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:49.080 take notice and care. They read about things like an 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:52.319 entire towns worth of boys being giving fifty lashes each, 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:55.160 which is a fatal sentence for laughing in the presence 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:57.840 of a white man. Uh. In nineteen o four, one 0:13:57.880 --> 0:13:59.640 of the rubber companies in the Congo put one of 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:01.560 its own men on trial, mostly to show that they 0:14:01.559 --> 0:14:04.080 were trying to do something about all of the horrible crimes. 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:07.280 The guy Charles Couldron was accused of murdering at least 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:09.640 a hundred and twenty two Africans. The case wound up 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:11.800 revealing a bunch of fun up details about like how 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:14.120 all the hostage taking and the hand taking and stuff 0:14:14.160 --> 0:14:17.680 actually worked. Um. But Caldrone was released due to quote 0:14:17.679 --> 0:14:21.160 extenuating circumstances. The court said that he'd had to contend 0:14:21.200 --> 0:14:24.800 with quote great difficulties under which could Drone found himself 0:14:24.840 --> 0:14:27.960 accomplishing his mission in the midst of a population absolutely 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:30.680 resistant to any idea of work, and which respects no 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:32.960 other law than force, and knows no other means of 0:14:32.960 --> 0:14:39.080 persuasion than terror. Um. So yeah, they were asking for 0:14:39.120 --> 0:14:42.600 it defense. They were asking for it works it that 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:45.280 also still works today kind it does, but it was 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:47.720 it was stopping. This is at the point where it 0:14:47.720 --> 0:14:50.640 was working less and less in the congo um and 0:14:50.680 --> 0:14:53.120 in the early nineteen hundreds, Leopold starts dealing with more 0:14:53.120 --> 0:14:56.800 and more resistance to his ideas um, both in the 0:14:56.880 --> 0:14:59.440 congo end at home. So this is also kind of 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:01.480 the point of where socialism is starting to rise, and 0:15:01.560 --> 0:15:05.000 socialists obviously are a big fans of kings. Um. Leopold 0:15:05.000 --> 0:15:07.960 declared himself a mortal enemy of socialism. He fought against 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:10.680 the universal right to vote for all Belgians. Still in 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:14.000 the playbook, both of those things. In nine two, the 0:15:14.000 --> 0:15:16.760 Belgian Labor Party called a general strike and Leopold called 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:19.000 for it to be brutally stopped. The strikers were fired 0:15:19.080 --> 0:15:21.760 upon by city guards and eight people were killed. The 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:25.040 massacre was a calculated message to the socialists, don't funk 0:15:25.040 --> 0:15:27.320 with the money trained. Leopold was willing to kill a 0:15:27.320 --> 0:15:28.800 hell of a lot more than eight people to keep 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:31.800 the money coming. In has Child's book relates one six 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:34.520 week campaign in the Congo that killed quote over nine 0:15:34.560 --> 0:15:37.200 hundred natives, men, women, and children in order to add 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:39.840 twenty tons of rubber a month to one region's productivity. 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:41.720 They gives you an idea of the kind of calculus 0:15:41.720 --> 0:15:45.200 he's making. Yeah, Yeah, that's how I mean. Right, it's 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:48.080 just lives for rubber. Yeah, it's just lives for rubber 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:51.000 has a commodity price. Yeah. Um. I have to point 0:15:51.000 --> 0:15:53.720 out that none of the revelations brutality did much to 0:15:53.760 --> 0:15:56.400 hurt Leopold's popularity at home in Belgium. He was growing 0:15:56.640 --> 0:15:58.800 less popular and even hated in a lot of Europe. 0:15:59.120 --> 0:16:01.880 But even today are Belgian museums that proudly talk about 0:16:01.920 --> 0:16:04.720 his anti slavery campaigns that ignore the whole genocide thing. 0:16:05.560 --> 0:16:08.440 The crimes against humanity didn't hurt Leopold's legacy. The only 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:11.240 thing Belgium couldn't forgive him for was being a shitty 0:16:11.320 --> 0:16:14.840 dad and having a mistress. In nineteen o four, Leopold's 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:17.480 daughter Stephanie sued her father, the king, for keeping her 0:16:17.560 --> 0:16:20.680 chunk of her mother's inheritance. Leopold fought in court for 0:16:20.720 --> 0:16:23.320 the right to deny his children their inheritance, and in 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:26.240 fact denied them any wealth or property even after his death. 0:16:26.760 --> 0:16:30.080 Around this time, a Belgian cabinet minister noted that quote, 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:32.960 the king has but two dreams, to die a billionaire 0:16:33.040 --> 0:16:38.200 and to disinherit his daughters. I mean, what father doesn't 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:41.080 want that? A lot of ways kind of cool, A 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:45.160 lot always kind of cool. Uh So in nineteen o six, 0:16:45.280 --> 0:16:48.880 King Leopold finally marries the Baroness. They have two sons. 0:16:49.280 --> 0:16:51.840 His second son was born with a malformed arm, that 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:55.040 just sort of ended in a stump with no hand. Obviously, 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:57.400 some people suggested this might be a judgment from God 0:16:57.440 --> 0:16:59.840 for all the millions of hands that Leopold ordered severed, 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:02.200 which is almost more fucked up if you think about 0:17:02.200 --> 0:17:05.760 the morality behind, Like this guy cut off millions of 0:17:05.760 --> 0:17:09.399 people's hands, let's funk off his innocent baby's hand. Yeah, 0:17:09.480 --> 0:17:13.080 that's not how you do that, if you got first 0:17:13.080 --> 0:17:17.919 of all, that is definitely how God do that. God 0:17:18.320 --> 0:17:21.560 is punchy on the messages. Yeah, God, God ain't great 0:17:21.600 --> 0:17:25.880 with making sure these people get their just desserts. Yeah, yeah, 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:28.680 because right, because it's so funny. It's like all these 0:17:28.840 --> 0:17:30.919 like just so kind of stories where God is just 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:34.879 a little like tricky metaphor man, like, Oh, you didn't 0:17:34.880 --> 0:17:37.480 expect this, didn't You didn't think God would do that? 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:43.720 Just God, get it right, man? Yeah, Hey, speaking of hands, 0:17:43.960 --> 0:17:48.280 why don't you use both of them to order the 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:51.439 products that we are about to advertise. Here they go 0:17:57.440 --> 0:18:01.439 and we're back. So the general and seemliness of the 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:04.200 king's young bride and the disinheritance of his daughters meant 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:06.800 the public sort of deserted Leopold. Once the Human rights 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:10.080 campaign against his atrocities really took off. In nineteen o eight, 0:18:10.119 --> 0:18:12.760 King Leopold was forced to bequeath his control of the 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:15.720 Congo to the Belgian government. In exchange, they paid for 0:18:15.760 --> 0:18:18.280 the colonies hundred and ten million francs worth of debt, 0:18:18.520 --> 0:18:20.639 most of which had been accrued because Leopold used the 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:23.000 Free State as a bank to buy gifts for his mistresses. 0:18:24.280 --> 0:18:26.680 Before he hands over control of the colony, he'd ruled 0:18:26.720 --> 0:18:29.000 with an iron fist for more than twenty years. Leopold 0:18:29.080 --> 0:18:32.080 has all of the Congo state records burned. I will 0:18:32.119 --> 0:18:34.320 give them my Congo, he said. But they have no 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:38.560 right to know what I did there. Oh what fun 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:43.159 such a piece of ship. So the thing that I 0:18:43.280 --> 0:18:45.880 say all the time or think about, it's like, yes, 0:18:45.960 --> 0:18:50.200 of course there have been massive conspiracies in history, and 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:55.719 I'm sure today, but like oftentimes, like there isn't like 0:18:55.760 --> 0:18:58.560 the basic human competency to pull off some of the 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:02.080 more far fetched, you know, like a pizza gate style thing. 0:19:02.119 --> 0:19:04.320 You're like, how could everyone cover this up? And then 0:19:04.480 --> 0:19:08.480 it's like just hearing a story of nineteenth century to 0:19:08.640 --> 0:19:13.600 twentieth century like attention to detail. Because he's a genius 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:16.919 like he really is like a genius in the sense 0:19:17.080 --> 0:19:20.640 that like if you saw a character execute a plan 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:23.360 like this in a movie, it would be like, that's 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:25.560 a little far fext that he get away with it, 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:29.440 But he did, and he's he is an evil genius. Yeah, 0:19:29.880 --> 0:19:32.160 And I guess you know what, and it's I guess 0:19:32.160 --> 0:19:34.080 it was from a time when little people were less 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:36.320 empowered to speak up, yes, because that's the real thing. 0:19:36.359 --> 0:19:38.199 It's like it would be hard to pull off a 0:19:38.200 --> 0:19:43.320 pizza Gate because it's not like the top conspirators would 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:45.359 go to jail, but it's like there's gonna be a 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:48.000 janitor who's like, what the fund is this? What is 0:19:48.040 --> 0:19:51.439 going on? Kids in this basement? Yeah, and that's like 0:19:51.600 --> 0:19:55.399 less likely to happen. That was more controllable back in 0:19:55.440 --> 0:19:58.240 the day, clearly. Yeah. And and even when that it 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:01.840 started coming out, Um, there's a lot less of a 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:04.640 media landscape. You only get the news from your newspapers. 0:20:04.920 --> 0:20:07.879 You read every newspaper. Most people don't read much of 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:11.280 one newspaper. So if you're a guy like Leopold, you've 0:20:11.320 --> 0:20:15.040 got the money to make the press do what you want. 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:18.280 And if I if I understand my history correctly, which 0:20:18.280 --> 0:20:20.840 I probably don't. That was a time when the public 0:20:20.960 --> 0:20:24.240 had more of an expectation that media was biased. It 0:20:24.320 --> 0:20:26.600 was just the right. Well, yeah, this is like a 0:20:26.640 --> 0:20:29.320 lot of this is right around the time when America 0:20:29.400 --> 0:20:32.680 gets involved in a war with Spain. That's essentially pushed 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:36.400 by two different newspaper magnets wanting to sell more papers. 0:20:36.400 --> 0:20:38.400 So like, yeah, the press, he doesn't have a great 0:20:38.440 --> 0:20:41.280