Speaker 1: Alz Media.
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, Robert Evans here. Earlier this week, we had
Speaker 2: a one partner on Dracula. Could have been long enough
Speaker 2: actually for a two part, but I just felt it
Speaker 2: ran better as a one parter. But this is a
Speaker 2: holiday week, the most sacred day on my calendar, Halloween,
Speaker 2: so I'm taking the rest of the week off. So
Speaker 2: we've decided on Thursday, we're giving you a blast from
Speaker 2: the past. We're doing a rewind episode and this is
Speaker 2: our episode on Ediamine from like almost five years ago,
Speaker 2: I think something like that. It's really a fascinating story.
Speaker 2: If you're a newer listener, you might have missed it,
Speaker 2: so check it out. Hello friends, and welcome back to
Speaker 2: Behind the Bastards. I'm Robert Evans, and this is the
Speaker 2: show that tells you everything you don't know about the
Speaker 2: very worst people in all of history. Today. My guest
Speaker 2: who I will be who's coming in cold with this
Speaker 2: tale and who I'll be reading a story to is
Speaker 2: Brody Reid, comedian.
Speaker 3: Hello, Hey, esteemed guest.
Speaker 2: I think steamed guest, Yes, yeah, Esquire. Brodie read Esquire.
Speaker 2: I think means you're the editor for Esquire magazine.
Speaker 3: Right, I'm a lawyer, and I'm also the headed editor
Speaker 3: of Esquire magazine. Those are my credits, yea, and I
Speaker 3: won't change them.
Speaker 2: That's what that means. Now, we're doing a little bit
Speaker 2: different today. Normally we're pretty upfront about who the subject
Speaker 2: of the podcast is, but there's a lot of background
Speaker 2: to get to before we can really properly introduce this guy. Okay,
Speaker 2: So I'm kind of curious as to when you figure
Speaker 2: out who we're talking about, and I also kind of
Speaker 2: want it to be a little bit of a surprise
Speaker 2: for the audience. So okay, if you're good, I'm just
Speaker 2: going to get into it.
Speaker 3: Okay. I mean, I'm kind of like an amateur private investigator,
Speaker 3: so I might get it real off the bat, and
Speaker 3: I want to ruin your flow or anything. But let's
Speaker 3: let's try.
Speaker 2: All right, let's se let's let's see how this goes.
Speaker 3: Time on the clock.
Speaker 2: Maybe this will be you know, my, my, my great disaster, but.
Speaker 3: I think it'll be fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, so today you know, right now twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: Britain is a tiny, adorable nation filled with wizards and
Speaker 2: a conspicuously broad definition of the word pudding. It's easy.
Speaker 3: I'm going to guess Valdemort.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I'm just getting it that it's easy
Speaker 2: for us to forget today considering how docile the British
Speaker 2: people are, that for a while they ruled the entire world.
Speaker 2: The British Empire was the largest empire in human history.
Speaker 2: The Mongol Empire at its height held about twenty four
Speaker 2: million kilometers in area, sixteen percent of the world's population.
Speaker 2: The British Empire was over thirty five million kilometers in
Speaker 2: area and ruled nearly a quarter of the planets.
Speaker 3: Trust me, I did not forget that they colonized everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they I think what's most shocking to me
Speaker 2: when I read about this is that they controlled that
Speaker 2: huge chunk of the planet with probably the smallest army
Speaker 2: than any empire has ever had. You know, the Roman
Speaker 2: Empire at its height was about seven hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: thousand regular soldiers. The British Empire at its you know
Speaker 2: height before the World War started, was about one hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty thousand British soldiers. They never spent more than
Speaker 2: about two and a half percent of their GDP on defense.
Speaker 3: Wow, which is as a regular soldiers were like super
Speaker 3: serum like Captain America soldier.
Speaker 2: So you have predicted a little bit where this is going. Now,
Speaker 2: these soldiers are regular soldiers. They're volunteers, which is different
Speaker 2: from most Most militaries in this period are not volunteer,
Speaker 2: permanent standing military. So the British are a little bit
Speaker 2: different there. But they're just normal, you know, soldiers. They
Speaker 2: have machine guns, which certainly helps with the whole colonizing thing,
Speaker 2: or they have machine guns for a chunk of this.
Speaker 2: But you know, it does beg the question when you've
Speaker 2: only got one hundred and twenty thousand guys and for
Speaker 2: most of the British Empire they don't have machine guns,
Speaker 2: how do you hold a quarter of the planet in
Speaker 2: bondage for two hundred years with the whole army that's
Speaker 2: a little larger than the modern Coast Guard in the
Speaker 2: United States nukes?
Speaker 3: Is that not the correct? No?
Speaker 2: No, no, I mean you get the locals to oppress themselves.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's my second guy. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Michael Codner, who was the head of Military science
Speaker 2: for the Royal United Services Institute, described the British Empire's
Speaker 2: military is essentially quote the Royal Navy and a system
Speaker 2: of indigenous constabularies overseen by a small but professional British army.
Speaker 2: Now I found that quote in the BBC article from
Speaker 2: back in twenty eleven. The article also quoted a military
Speaker 2: historian named doctor Hugh Davies, who noted that all of
Speaker 2: British India was controlled by just thirty thousand British troops
Speaker 2: supervising hundreds of thousands of local Indian soldiers or sepoys.
Speaker 2: He was quoted as saying, the empire had to pay
Speaker 2: for itself, and it had to be profitable, and if
Speaker 2: you put too much into building up the army, the
Speaker 2: empire is no longer a profitable enterprise.
Speaker 3: He sounds like the a rap mogul. Yeah, so that
Speaker 3: sentence sounds and has a build itself.
Speaker 2: In his defense, I don't think he's justifying imperialism. I
Speaker 2: think he's just explained this was the attitude that the
Speaker 2: imperialists had is we can't spend too much money on
Speaker 2: the army. Otherwise. Yeah, everything is for profits exact, And
Speaker 2: British India was conquered in the first place by a
Speaker 2: for profit corporation, the East India Trading Company. The East
Speaker 2: India Company had a private army of over a quarter
Speaker 2: of a million men.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Most of those were indigenous soldiers. So you know, local Indians,
Speaker 2: people from Burma, whatever.
Speaker 3: That's great local jobs.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, yeah, exactly by local, very ethical with our
Speaker 2: modern as a job creator.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the East India companies started taking over India
Speaker 2: in the sixteen hundreds and by eighteen oh three they
Speaker 2: controlled most of what's now India, Pakistan, and Burma. In
Speaker 2: eighteen fourteen, this giant multinational corporation declared war on Nepal,
Speaker 2: which was at that point known as the Kingdom of Gorka.
Speaker 2: They fought for two brutal years before the kingdom seated
Speaker 2: a third of its territory to the company in exchange
Speaker 2: for peace. The British won, but the Gorkas had put
Speaker 2: up a really vicious fight, and the East India Company
Speaker 2: was impressed by their warriors, so they started recruiting these
Speaker 2: men into their army. At first, these Gurkhas were used
Speaker 2: to keep the peace in ever rebellious India, but the
Speaker 2: Gurkhas quickly proved themselves to be very capable warriors. In
Speaker 2: eighteen fifty eight, when the Queen formally took control of
Speaker 2: India away from the company, Gurkhas were integrated into the
Speaker 2: Greater British Army. They served as elite shock troops in
Speaker 2: World War One and two. The British Army today still
Speaker 2: fields battalions of Gurkis recruited basically as mercenaries from Nepal
Speaker 2: and paid far less than their British citizens counterpart.
Speaker 3: This sounds like Game of the rounds. This sounds like
Speaker 3: some unsullied.
Speaker 2: It's a little bit like that.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: The British like the Gurkhas because they were loyal and
Speaker 2: just incredibly deadly. They carry these big knives called kukries
Speaker 2: in there. There's a lot of if you go online,
Speaker 2: you can find threads today where British veterans talk about
Speaker 2: the stories their NCOs told about Gurkhas and like there's
Speaker 2: a common one where you have to tie your shoes
Speaker 2: a certain way, okay, because the Gurkhas cut your foot off. Well. No,
Speaker 2: when they're doing espionage missions in the night, they'll tell
Speaker 2: who they want to kill by feeling their bootlaces. They
Speaker 2: could tell like in World War Two they knew what
Speaker 2: German bootlaces felt like, and so if an Allied soldier
Speaker 2: took boots off of a dead German he might get
Speaker 2: cut by a Girka like that. It's a possibly apocryphal story,
Speaker 2: the variants of it are still told today.
Speaker 3: So they'll kill you if you tie your shoes.
Speaker 2: Wrong, essentially, if you tie your shoes like the enemy.
Speaker 3: Yeah I heard that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the Gurkhas were like super soldiers of the British
Speaker 2: Empire of what you were getting at.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they sound like sword guys to me. Yeah, the
Speaker 3: knives equally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're scary and they weren't the only super soldiers
Speaker 2: in the British Empire. Over their period of time conquering
Speaker 2: huge chunks of the world, the British encountered a number
Speaker 2: of warrior peoples. Some of these peoples, like the Gurkhas,
Speaker 2: had their own well developed warrior culture already when the
Speaker 2: British arrived, and the British just exploited it. But in
Speaker 2: other parts of the world the process occurred less naturally.
Speaker 2: Take the tribes of the West Nile region of Africa.
Speaker 2: Their first contact with more technologically advanced peoples came in
Speaker 2: the early eighteen hundreds, when successive groups of Arab slavers
Speaker 2: started preying on them. Certain tribes who were the best
Speaker 2: fighters were enslaved by these Arab slavers and used as
Speaker 2: soldiers to capture other Africans who were then sent off
Speaker 2: to markets in North Africa and the Middle East.
Speaker 3: Sad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's a bumber. This whole story is going
Speaker 2: to be kind of a bomber. Oh great, when you're
Speaker 2: talking colonialism, it's never not a heartbreak.
Speaker 3: I mean, when aren't you talking colonialism? If we want
Speaker 3: to get real.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, and that's one of the point, Like
Speaker 2: when you start talking about dictators, especially from the seventies, eighties, nineties,
Speaker 2: you can trace nearly all of them back to colonialism.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's more or less this story. So by
Speaker 2: the eighteen seventies, the British had become abolitionists in a
Speaker 2: big way, perhaps because they felt kind of bad about,
Speaker 2: you know, the whole Atlantic slave trade thing, but mostly
Speaker 2: because it was a way to justify conquering colonies in Africa,
Speaker 2: saying we're going to stop the Arab slave traders, but
Speaker 2: we have to conquer this whole chunk of Africa in
Speaker 2: order to stop the slave trade. Right way to do it.
Speaker 3: They're a good guy with the gun mm hmm, with
Speaker 3: a lot with all the with a lot of mascots. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the British took over a huge chunk of North Africa,
Speaker 2: including the Sudan, and with public pressure behind them, they
Speaker 2: sent armies down to stop the slave traders. These armies,
Speaker 2: like all British armies, were made mostly of locals. Many
Speaker 2: of those locals were recently freed slave soldiers that the
Speaker 2: British were happy to induct into their army. So they
Speaker 2: would free these slave soldiers from the Arab slave traders
Speaker 2: and then they would induct them into a colonial military
Speaker 2: and use them to fight slave traders.
Speaker 3: Yeah sounds like college sounds like the job market.
Speaker 2: I thought you were going to compare this like college football,
Speaker 2: but well, yeah, that's too absolutely.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: One such army of former slaves was headed by a
Speaker 2: German doctor and a Muslim convert named Emin Pasha. In
Speaker 2: the eighteen eighties, m and Pasha and his army were
Speaker 2: besieged by an Islamic army during the Modest Insurrection. They
Speaker 2: were eventually freed by a guy named Henry Morton Stanley,
Speaker 2: who regular listeners of the podcast will recognize as the
Speaker 2: guy who mapped the Congo for King Leopold of Belgium.
Speaker 2: Stanley took Pasha with him when he left, and Pasha's
Speaker 2: men stayed behind in the West Nile region on garrison
Speaker 2: duty for a few years until they were picked up
Speaker 2: by agents for the Imperial British East Africa Company. Now
Speaker 2: the company representatives were always alert for new warrior people
Speaker 2: to enlist, and they considered these men to be quote
Speaker 2: the best material for soldiery in Africa. These tribes came
Speaker 2: to be called Nubi or Nubians and became the British
Speaker 2: Empire's shock troopers in Africa. The East Africa Company used
Speaker 2: their Nubians to carve an empire out of the continent
Speaker 2: heart They named their new colony Uganda. As the British
Speaker 2: Empire grew, the Nubians were inducted into their regular British
Speaker 2: army and became the elite fourth Battalion of the King's
Speaker 2: African Rifles. They were Muslims, which differentiated them from most
Speaker 2: of the peoples they were sent to suppress in Central
Speaker 2: and West Africa. The British basically turned the Nubian people
Speaker 2: into a living, breathing factory for the production of the
Speaker 2: deadliest colonial soldiers in Africa and yes being bred for
Speaker 2: war had a negative impact on the Nubians themselves. Here's
Speaker 2: what one former commanding officer of the King's African Rifles
Speaker 2: wrote about them. Quote, the Nubians became the most feared
Speaker 2: and influential ethnic group in Uganda, mercilessly suppressing uprisings and
Speaker 2: tribal sippruts at the behest of their British masters. It
Speaker 2: was the success of these early operations that gave them
Speaker 2: contempt for all pagan and Christian tribes in the country.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy four, a journalist named David martinek of
Speaker 2: this sentiment. Quote. Among their fellow countrymen, they enjoyed an
Speaker 2: unenviable reputation of having one of the world's highest homicide rates.
Speaker 2: The Nubians were renowned for their statistic brutality, lack of
Speaker 2: formal education for poor enemies, and for the refusal to
Speaker 2: integrate even in the urban centers. Martin was in Uganda
Speaker 2: to write about one Nubian in particular, one of the
Speaker 2: deadliest warriors to ever serve in the King's African Rifles,
Speaker 2: a man named Idiot.
Speaker 3: I mean, okay, wow, okay, So that's these guys sound
Speaker 3: like black Republicans. To me, guys are on the wrong team.
Speaker 2: I mean they're like did they ever have a choice,
Speaker 2: Like no, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: You're right.
Speaker 2: If you recruited people as soldiers for one hundred years
Speaker 2: and don't really give them any other options for anything
Speaker 2: to do, it's it's not going to be pretty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hear that. I mean I grew up in
Speaker 3: a bad neighborhood also, but I didn't become a tough warrior.
Speaker 3: I just became a comedian with a smart mouth.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there were a few Nubian comedians and that
Speaker 2: like part of the difficulty here is like all these
Speaker 2: stories about how brutal they are coming from like British
Speaker 2: and American white guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally, they're probably just like pretty cool. They're probably
Speaker 3: just like, I don't know, trying to event whatever a
Speaker 3: sports game that they had. I'm trying to play some
Speaker 3: football and they were like, well, these guys are brutal.
Speaker 3: They're kicking our ass.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean it's like British football, so yeah, for sure,
Speaker 2: can it be?
Speaker 3: I mean I feel like if Colinizers came over to
Speaker 3: Africa and then the Africans just like dunked a basketball,
Speaker 3: they'd be like, whoa, he's brutal power.
Speaker 2: It's a shame of basketball. Get over there first, now
Speaker 2: I know. So Idiomine was born sometime between nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: five and nineteen twenty eight. We don't really know for sure.
Speaker 2: He was probably born in the village of Koboco in
Speaker 2: northwest Uganda. He was for sure a Kakwaw, which were
Speaker 2: one of the Nubian tribes that British considered to be
Speaker 2: a warrior people. Now Iddy's father served with the British Army,
Speaker 2: the King's African Rifles, and was generally out of the picture.
Speaker 2: His mother is usually described as a witch or a
Speaker 2: self proclaimed sorceress. I watched a documentary when I was
Speaker 2: sort of prepping for this thing that was called, I mean,
Speaker 2: The Rise and Fall, and it was it was a
Speaker 2: terrible documentary, one of those like nineties made for TV
Speaker 2: movies where all the acting's bad and it's very sensational,
Speaker 2: super biased, and it leans into the stuff that I
Speaker 2: think what most people have heard about Idiomine, which was
Speaker 2: like witchcraft, cannibalism, that sort of thing, which we'll be
Speaker 2: we'll be talking about a little bit later.
Speaker 3: But is uh, I mean that just sounds like Los
Speaker 3: Angeles culture, witchcraft, astrology, and the veganism not much, not
Speaker 3: so much cannibalism.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, veganisms. Yeah, a better ism than day.
Speaker 2: But we're we're going to get into, uh sort of
Speaker 2: how a lot of these facts are unreliable about Iddie.
Speaker 2: But the way that this terrible documentary summed up Idy's
Speaker 2: childhood I found humorous, which is the child grew up
Speaker 2: by the river learning the ways of manhood and the
Speaker 2: spells of witchcraft, which that sort of sums up I
Speaker 2: think the general common popular perception of who this guy was.
Speaker 2: It sounds like a fished a lot boy. Yeah, there's
Speaker 2: all there's gonna be a lot of dark stories about rivers.
Speaker 2: Whenever you read about.
Speaker 3: The scary Yeah, how did the ocean get to the
Speaker 3: land that way?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one of those Like anytime you read about
Speaker 2: a place with that's like famous for its rivers and
Speaker 2: they have some sort of like horrible butchery happen, there's
Speaker 2: just always tons of stories about kids finding heads in
Speaker 2: the rivers. We were just in the Cambodia when it
Speaker 2: was the same thing.
Speaker 3: Just like I mean, you find all kinds of weird
Speaker 3: stuff in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah tbh. So, yeah, the witchcraft stuffed is almost certainly
Speaker 2: racist bullshit. What witchcraft was and is still common in
Speaker 2: parts of Uganda, I mean, was a practicing Muslim. You
Speaker 2: Gandan Muslims had their own kind of witchcrafty tradition where
Speaker 2: people would use the Koran to foretell the future, and
Speaker 2: he certainly used that, but he wasn't doing like pagan
Speaker 2: blood magic or anything like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all of this sounds like astrology so far.
Speaker 2: What was the sign?
Speaker 3: Doesn't it say?
Speaker 2: Well, it was like in the Islamic version of astrology, Okay,
Speaker 2: but I don't know, probably Aquarius. Yeah, witchcraft was less
Speaker 2: of a factor in his regime than the tradition and
Speaker 2: rituals of his beloved British Army, so Itdy was eventually
Speaker 2: abandoned by his father and by some accounts his mother too.
Speaker 2: It's kind of hard to tell what happened there. He
Speaker 2: got as far as the fourth grade before he dropped
Speaker 2: out of school. When he was at most seventeen, a
Speaker 2: British Colonial Army officer noted his tremendous size and recruited
Speaker 2: him into the King's African Rifles. He started his service
Speaker 2: as a cook's assistant literally peeling potatoes, which is like
Speaker 2: the stereotypical bottom of the wrong Army.
Speaker 3: John. But it seems like if you're big that you
Speaker 3: shouldn't be a rifleman. We're gonna make you target. Go ahead.
Speaker 2: You're a pragmatic man, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, I would only recruit the little guys, the
Speaker 3: most beard army.
Speaker 2: Ever, he didn't stay at the bottom long it. He
Speaker 2: was gigantic. He was like six foot four, well over
Speaker 2: two hundred pounds, and he was in his younger days.
Speaker 2: He gets kind of heavier as an older guy, but
Speaker 2: like you go get picturement and he's young. He is
Speaker 2: solid muscle. He's just a mountain of a man. Yeah,
Speaker 2: me too.
Speaker 3: He's got about three inches and that's about it.
Speaker 2: So he was perfect candidate to become a heavyweight boxer,
Speaker 2: which is exactly what happened. According to Robert Keeley, deputy
Speaker 2: chief of the US Mission in Campaula, quote, his advancements
Speaker 2: came essentially through boxing. He was very tall, with a
Speaker 2: tremendous reach in big hands. He was big and strong
Speaker 2: and tough. In general. You could picture him in any
Speaker 2: culture as a heavyweight champion, and that's what he was.
Speaker 2: The Ugandans are very fine boxers. They still prove it
Speaker 2: to this day in the Olympics. They have a strong
Speaker 2: boxing tradition which the British encouraged. The main avenue for
Speaker 2: advancement in the army was boxing, so Amin eventually became
Speaker 2: the heavyweight champion of the Army and in nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: one to fifty two the heavyweight champion of all Uganda.
Speaker 2: His ability to punch people proved useful in maintaining discipline
Speaker 2: among other soldiers in his unit. Here's another quote from Keighley.
Speaker 2: Idiomin became prominent as the link between the two. The
Speaker 2: officers sitting around sipping their tea or their brandy or
Speaker 2: their port, upon hearing some noises and disruptions outside, would
Speaker 2: call in Sergeant Amine and tell him to take care
Speaker 2: of the problem. I mean, goes out. There are some
Speaker 2: shouts and screams as he knocks him heads together and
Speaker 2: kicks some butt, and then silence. The officers resume their
Speaker 2: sipping and a very appreciate performance. They eventually made him
Speaker 2: the top sergeant. Wow okay, because of course sergeant was
Speaker 2: as high as an actual African could raise in the
Speaker 2: King's African Rifles. We're not allowed to have any Africans
Speaker 2: be officers in any of the British colonial armies the world,
Speaker 2: or I think in India for that matter, which is
Speaker 2: you know, if you're a racist colonial power, you don't
Speaker 2: want anybody in your army. You can't have like you've
Speaker 2: got to recruit soldiers from the locals, but you don't
Speaker 2: want them learning about supply lines and logistics and stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, then they'll know how to you know, overthrow the
Speaker 2: seven guys that you have there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why I haven't been promoted to any officer ranks.
Speaker 2: I mean, how's your boxing?
Speaker 3: I mean very very, very bad. But if we're talking
Speaker 3: about a wee game, then still very bad.
Speaker 2: So we need an army where yet where we as
Speaker 2: the product? I mean with drones nowadays, that's that's the future.
Speaker 2: I feel like that's the future drone box.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hear you.
Speaker 2: So he was the perfect soldier for the British Empire.
Speaker 2: Everyone who served with him in those days was impressed
Speaker 2: both by his toughness and by his almost superhuman strength.
Speaker 2: His commanding officer, Ian Graham, said that his body was
Speaker 2: quote like that of a Grecian sculpture during one terrible march,
Speaker 2: when all of the other men could barely continue. Quote,
Speaker 2: one man was an example and an inspiration to us all.
Speaker 2: As we finally passed the finishing post, Idioman was marching
Speaker 2: beside me at the head of the column, head held
Speaker 2: high and still singing for all he was worth. Across
Speaker 2: one shoulder were two brin guns, And a brin is
Speaker 2: like a machine gun. It's like a twenty two pound
Speaker 2: like machine gun that you put on a tripod on
Speaker 2: the ground. So he with two of those in one
Speaker 2: hand and over the other was a crippled ascari. And
Speaker 2: the askari was a British word for like a local soldier.
Speaker 2: So he had one of his wounded comrades on one
Speaker 2: arm and two machine guns on the other. That's like
Speaker 2: the kind of soldier he made. He was just he
Speaker 2: was like he was a super so man.
Speaker 3: He invented CrossFit. Apparently this guy's some Joe Rogan alpha
Speaker 3: brim kind of guy.
Speaker 2: Now. Ian Graham said that seeing this reminded him of
Speaker 2: a translation of another of a King's African Rifles marching song.
Speaker 2: I'm about to read you the song, which is explained
Speaker 2: sort of how the British viewed men no singing. Oh boy,
Speaker 2: that's I think I can do a good British accent here,
Speaker 2: but I don't know that I can sing again. It
Speaker 2: does pressed, It definitely rhymes, and it's a bit racist.
Speaker 2: Now for this, you know, you need to understand the
Speaker 2: word Sudi is another word for Nubian, like it's like
Speaker 2: a local term for like people who are from his
Speaker 2: group of Ugandans. So here's the British fighting song that
Speaker 2: this guy thought of when he saw idiot mean marching.
Speaker 2: It's the Sudi, my boy, it's the Sudi with his
Speaker 2: grim set, ugly face, but he looks like a man,
Speaker 2: and he fights like a man, for he comes of
Speaker 2: a fighting race. Which that's exactly what these people were
Speaker 2: to the British. Is the whole art. So I assumed
Speaker 2: there was more, But this was the lion that this
Speaker 2: guy recalled, which is like it shows you exactly what
Speaker 2: the British thought of these guys. Is that they are soldiers.
Speaker 2: That's why, and that's what they were bred for and
Speaker 2: encouraged for. And they didn't have to do people of
Speaker 2: like the coquit tribe didn't have to do anything other
Speaker 2: than send their sons to fight for the British army
Speaker 2: and the British would take care of them.
Speaker 3: And did they respond with their own distract or?
Speaker 2: I know how these people press as a distrack at
Speaker 2: that point, that's too bad, Yeah it is, and it
Speaker 2: gets yeah, it gets better. So young a Man was
Speaker 2: sent to war several times on behalf of the British Empire.
Speaker 2: In nineteen forty nine he went to Somalia to suppress
Speaker 2: the shift of rebellion. In nineteen fifty two he sent
Speaker 2: to Kenya to suppress the Mau Mau uprising. We don't
Speaker 2: talk about the Mau Mau uprising a lot these days,
Speaker 2: but it basically started as a bunch of Kenyan rebels
Speaker 2: who were angry because the British were whipping people half
Speaker 2: to death, which that's how British kept discipline and all
Speaker 2: their African colonies. Was just horrific amounts of whipping. So
Speaker 2: these guys rose up and they killed some British people,
Speaker 2: and the British sin an army and brutally suppressed it.
Speaker 2: They put more than one and a half million kenyons
Speaker 2: and concentration camps, they hanged thousands of them. Edie probably
Speaker 2: would have been doing a good amount of the hanging,
Speaker 2: and he also killed a number of warriors and vicious
Speaker 2: battles in places like Kenyoma and Kangheema. So he's been
Speaker 2: raised just as a soldier and now he's been brutalized
Speaker 2: suppressing multiple colonial wars very violently.
Speaker 3: Man, successful black man, and then he just turned around
Speaker 3: and betrays his culture. Classic story.
Speaker 2: I mean, he kind of starts with the betrayal. Right,
Speaker 2: yea many later, Well we'll get to later right now.
Speaker 3: Actually, oh ma'am is more okay, correct, there's a lot.
Speaker 2: So by the late nineteen fifties, Idy had risen as
Speaker 2: high as an African could and the King's African Rifles,
Speaker 2: which is sergeant. The British, yeah, as I said, didn't
Speaker 2: let their locals be officers in their armies. This policy
Speaker 2: came back to bite them in the ass in the
Speaker 2: late fifties because by that point it had become clear
Speaker 2: that colonialism was on its way out. The British were
Speaker 2: preparing to release Uganda as an independent nation. Unfortunately, the
Speaker 2: British hadn't governed any of their colonies as countries. They
Speaker 2: basically just treated them as money making enterprises, corporations. Essentially
Speaker 2: with all the business of state craft kept out of
Speaker 2: the hands of the locals. The British were required by
Speaker 2: international the international community to leave Uganda with an army
Speaker 2: so it could defend itself, but they hadn't trained any
Speaker 2: sort of officer corps into Uganda, which is an important
Speaker 2: thing to have, which is why every military in the
Speaker 2: world has an officer corps. You know, you train people
Speaker 2: to do certain jobs. But the Ugandans just didn't have that,
Speaker 2: and rather than spend more money in time to build
Speaker 2: an officer corps for there soon to be country, the
Speaker 2: British just randomly promoted the sergeants they liked best. One
Speaker 2: of those sergeants was a boxer with a fourth grade
Speaker 2: education named Idi.
Speaker 3: I mean, is it okay? Cool?
Speaker 2: Yeah? He was commissioned in nineteen sixty two, right before
Speaker 2: uganda independence. He found himself in charge of a platoon
Speaker 2: in northwest Kenya, captured a bunch of prisoners and ordered
Speaker 2: them to be executed. The British governor of Uganda, Sir
Speaker 2: Walter Coates, vetoed the possibility of Idy being charged for
Speaker 2: this war crime. Was one of the few African soldiers
Speaker 2: in the entire officers in the entire army and prosecuting
Speaker 2: him right before independence was deemed politically undesirable. No one
Speaker 2: stopped to consider whether or not it might be bad
Speaker 2: for Uganda if one of their high ranking military leaders
Speaker 2: was a war criminal. Okay, So when we get back,
Speaker 2: we're going to get into how Idiomine rose to power
Speaker 2: and to be the president of Uganda and what happened next,
Speaker 2: which it's going to be a dark story, but we
Speaker 2: have we have some ads first off, and before we
Speaker 2: get into some ads, you know, I've been talking a
Speaker 2: lot about the Dorito's people. We're trying to get Doritos
Speaker 2: to sponsor the podcast.
Speaker 3: Oh I hear you. I love that crunchy crown show
Speaker 3: that the Rito's.
Speaker 2: Chip nothing washes the horrible taste of colonialism out of
Speaker 2: your mouth like a cool ranch. I was gonna say
Speaker 2: nacho cheese. But that's what's great about Dorito's is freedom,
Speaker 2: the freedom to cleanse your palate with whatever exciting flavor
Speaker 2: combination you want.
Speaker 3: How are they not as sponsor yet?
Speaker 2: I well, maybe they will be after this video. Let's
Speaker 2: hear from some other sponsors and we're back. Sorry was
Speaker 2: that so? Yeah? I did want to get into before
Speaker 2: we dig into the rest of the story. What you
Speaker 2: recall about idiomin before we get into his career. Not much.
Speaker 3: I have heard the name before. I've heard that he
Speaker 3: was a president of Uganda, who's a bad guy. I
Speaker 3: don't know the details. I mean already, I've learned way
Speaker 3: more than I thought. Yeah, before you know, it was
Speaker 3: even it even became an independent nation. I didn't realize that.
Speaker 3: You know, they killed so many people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it was one of those things I had.
Speaker 2: I had vaguely heard yet he was president of Uganda.
Speaker 2: There were these rumors of witchcraft and cannibalism. I hadn't
Speaker 2: known any of this stuff about sort of how the
Speaker 2: British military worked at the time, and the fact that
Speaker 2: he was basically bred to suppress insurgencies, Like that's what
Speaker 2: the British used his people for, was controlling populations through brutality,
Speaker 2: which I think is an important thing to get into here,
Speaker 2: because otherwise it's just a story of like this dictator.
Speaker 2: But he didn't rise up out of anything. He was
Speaker 2: like and I think he went up the system. He
Speaker 2: paid his dues, and he was also trained, like you're
Speaker 2: going to when we get into the things he did
Speaker 2: in Uganda that were brutal. They're all echoes of things
Speaker 2: he was doing for the British, like they like, it's
Speaker 2: it's not just a story of like some horrible dictator
Speaker 2: rose up and did terrible things. It's the British trained
Speaker 2: this guy to do terrible things on their behalf and
Speaker 2: then abandoned the country of Uganda to him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is basically this guy's completely might meets right
Speaker 3: and yeah, that's dangerous.
Speaker 2: It's really dangerous, and it's dangerous if you don't like.
Speaker 2: People like that exist in every culture. We've got more
Speaker 2: than our fair share of them in the United States.
Speaker 2: We have a we have structures built up to like
Speaker 2: make sure that those people don't wind up in charge
Speaker 2: of the military or whatever. Like, yeah, at least not
Speaker 2: to the extent where it's like, there's a reason we've
Speaker 2: never had the army seize power like it's in our country. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we've definitely.
Speaker 3: Well it's because we give them so much money.
Speaker 2: Okay, so not just cool cool ranch. Fuck, let's get
Speaker 2: back to idiot. I mean all right, but seriously, Derido's
Speaker 2: people send us a drop us on We're at bastards
Speaker 2: pot on Twitter. Yeah, Idiomine has just committed a war
Speaker 2: crime right before you've got an independence, and the British
Speaker 2: governor of Uganda has sort of hushed up the whole
Speaker 2: thing because he's one of the only officers and they
Speaker 2: didn't want to, you know, they just they just didn't
Speaker 2: want any complications. They said it would be politically undesirable
Speaker 2: if this came up right before independence. So idioman now
Speaker 2: in off Serve, rises again rapidly through the ranks. According
Speaker 2: to Robert Keeley, he advanced by eliminating his rivals in
Speaker 2: one fashion or another, either physically or by discrediting them,
Speaker 2: or by scaring them or some way or another. His
Speaker 2: promotions came frequently, so he's good at working the system.
Speaker 2: He understands how the British military works.
Speaker 3: In respect the hustle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if there's one man who knows how to hustle,
Speaker 2: it's Idiomine. Now. On October ninth, nineteen sixty two, Uganda
Speaker 2: gains its independence from Great Britain. You got his first
Speaker 2: prime minister was a guy named Milton Obote, and the
Speaker 2: president was a guy named Edward Mutessa. Mutessa was also
Speaker 2: the king of the Baganda, who were a southern tribe
Speaker 2: in Uganda, he was better known as King Freddie. For
Speaker 2: a little while, Mutessa and a Bote co existed and
Speaker 2: things were all right in Uganda. Milton Obote, like Idiomine,
Speaker 2: came from northern Uganda. He advocated for a great African awakening.
Speaker 2: He was a socialist, although not a very dogmatic one.
Speaker 2: The West generally disliked him. But he was also super corrupt,
Speaker 2: which is going to be a theme in this story.
Speaker 2: So by nineteen sixty four, Idiomine had been named deputy
Speaker 2: army commander under a dude with the really cool name
Speaker 2: Shaban Appelat, which is one of my favorite names that
Speaker 2: I've encountered in this podcast research. He saw action again,
Speaker 2: fighting alongside Katanga rebels who were battling the government of
Speaker 2: zaiir It. He took gold and diamonds from the rebels
Speaker 2: and gave them guns from the Ugandan army in exchange.
Speaker 2: He then sold the loot for cash. A Bote, the President,
Speaker 2: got in on the racket. There was a brief parliamentary inquiry,
Speaker 2: but a Bote had all the other people in this
Speaker 2: scheme arrested and so he and he and Idie were fine. Now,
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty six, a Bote got tired of sharing
Speaker 2: power and suspended the constitution. He sent Colonel Idiamine to
Speaker 2: attack the palace and bring the king back dead or alive.
Speaker 2: The king managed to flee the country, but the coup
Speaker 2: succeeded and a Bote was left as the sole power
Speaker 2: in Uganda. Now this did not make the British happy.
Speaker 2: The Baganda were their favorite tribe in Uganda. Winston Churchill,
Speaker 2: under Secretary of State for the Colonies from nineteen oh
Speaker 2: five to nineteen three eight. Yeah, super good guy. Never
Speaker 2: caused a famine that four and a half million Yeah,
Speaker 2: not even well once. But let he among us who
Speaker 2: has not starved for four and a half millionaire. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we all cause a couple of famines, you know. He
Speaker 2: considered the Baganda to be civilized, which means basically that
Speaker 2: they'd all converted to Christianity easily. Their territory was just
Speaker 2: where the British wound up putting the railroad and their
Speaker 2: administration buildings. So the Begandans were the people the British
Speaker 2: had spent the most time within Uganda. They considered them
Speaker 2: civilized because they acted like British people are the good
Speaker 2: ones yeah, exactly. Now. The Ugandan people, most of whom
Speaker 2: weren't Begondans, supported a Botes kicking down the king. They
Speaker 2: saw him as casting down a British backed monarch. They
Speaker 2: saw this as a true break from the past and
Speaker 2: chance at a new beginning. It was an exciting time,
Speaker 2: but the excitement soon faded in the reality of a
Speaker 2: botes ridiculous corruption. People protested, of course, and by nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty nine the government could only stay in power with
Speaker 2: the military's backing. Edie had been popular with the British
Speaker 2: because he was a great soldier and because he spoke
Speaker 2: English with just the right a accent that made them
Speaker 2: think he was cute and dumb because they were racist
Speaker 2: as fuck. But Idy was not dumb. Well, the government
Speaker 2: had grown more dependent on his military. He started recruiting
Speaker 2: hundreds of his relatives and fellow Nubians into the army
Speaker 2: and putting them in the positions he would want them
Speaker 2: in when it was time to take power. This was
Speaker 2: disrupted in nineteen seventy when an assassin tried to kill
Speaker 2: President a Bote and shot him through the mouth. American
Speaker 2: diplomat Beavou, now recalled the army, went a muck in
Speaker 2: for about twelve hours. It was a pretty horrifying situation.
Speaker 2: Itdy appears to have gotten confused and thought the attempt
Speaker 2: was a coup against both him and a Bote, so
Speaker 2: he ran he quote jumped out the back window of
Speaker 2: his house and his pajamas and disappeared, which really mystified
Speaker 2: us all because they were expecting that this assassination attempt
Speaker 2: was him seizing power, but it was just somebody else.
Speaker 2: So he was mocked for weeks in the wake of
Speaker 2: the attack because he'd ran out in the night in
Speaker 2: his pajamas, and a number of people counted him out
Speaker 2: as a force and new gund in politics at this point.
Speaker 2: But Idy embarked on a redemption tour. Part of that
Speaker 2: was having a bunch of people clandestinely executed in the night.
Speaker 2: Part of it was showing up in public within a
Speaker 2: bunch of his armed friends and just scaring people. Nall
Speaker 2: was there for part of that too. He was out
Speaker 2: at a bar one night and he quote, you know,
Speaker 2: he saw Idio. Quote I walked out of the bar
Speaker 2: and there was a mean, a huge man, an enormous
Speaker 2: fellow with his officers and their weapons sitting in the
Speaker 2: main lounge, sitting at attention, not talking, just looking around.
Speaker 2: I thought, Jesus, what's going to happen. They sat there
Speaker 2: for about half an hour and then Amen said something
Speaker 2: in one of the local languages, and they all got
Speaker 2: up and walked out of there. What it was, I'm
Speaker 2: convinced to this day was a threat on the part
Speaker 2: of a mean about re establishing his position. He knew
Speaker 2: that he was laughed at because he ran away. This
Speaker 2: was his reprisal, his counter threat, and it worked. People
Speaker 2: were scared to death. So they might have been more
Speaker 2: scared by the fact that Idi had had a number
Speaker 2: of people killed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the fact that he just sat there for
Speaker 3: a half hour for his heave. That's crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a little bit like some guy just
Speaker 2: sits in the bar staring at you with like his
Speaker 2: friends and all their guns. You know, that's intimidating. So yeah.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy one, President of BOTE went to Singapore
Speaker 2: for a conference. Before he left, he put out the
Speaker 2: order that idiom In was to be arrested for massive
Speaker 2: corruption and murder, which Idiot was guilty of, but which
Speaker 2: a Bote was guilty of. Two before the warrant could
Speaker 2: be served, Idiomin launched his coup. The killing started right away.
Speaker 2: At least a thousand soldiers from tribes that Idie didn't
Speaker 2: trust were massacred. The river filled with corpses, which is
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: So when you tell the story, like when I hear
Speaker 3: stories like this, I'm like, I don't even know where
Speaker 3: all these people. How many people are are they going
Speaker 3: to kill before they just completely run out of people?
Speaker 3: You know, it's like Jesuise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they really go pretty far. And by the time
Speaker 2: this is all over, Idio will have killed something like
Speaker 2: one in fifty seven of the people in Uganda. And
Speaker 2: he's not the worst of them, which we'll get to
Speaker 2: as well. Oh my god, he's just the one that
Speaker 2: everyone focuses on because there's rumors that he ate people.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: So Nall was the American diplomatic officer in Uganda, so
Speaker 2: he had responsibility for all of the eight hundred Dish
Speaker 2: American citizens and country. He told those people to hold
Speaker 2: fast and chill at home, and that went fine. But
Speaker 2: there was also a tourist group in town who were
Speaker 2: furious that this coup got in the way of their vacation.
Speaker 2: So I want to read this story just because it's
Speaker 2: a levity. It's just America. Help. It's rich Americans acting
Speaker 2: like rich Americans in the middle of a coup that's
Speaker 2: life and death for their people. In Uganda.
Speaker 3: We just wanted to go on a nice vacation on
Speaker 3: some endangered animals.
Speaker 2: I said to them, look, the airport is closed. And
Speaker 2: later the tour leader turned to me and said, well, mister, now,
Speaker 2: these are important people. They haven't got time to wait around.
Speaker 2: They're going to miss their connections in Nairobi. I said,
Speaker 2: you're damn right. They're going to miss their connections in Nairobi,
Speaker 2: and they're going to get hungry, they're going to get tired,
Speaker 2: they're going to get dirty, and they're going to want
Speaker 2: to get their laundry done. And it's not going to
Speaker 2: be done because I don't see any chance of these
Speaker 2: folks leaving for four or five days. And that was
Speaker 2: just the case. They were furious. One guy, the president
Speaker 2: of this big liquor distributing company in Hartford, Connecticut, High
Speaker 2: Blood or Hugh Mind or something. He beat me about
Speaker 2: that on the head and shoulders. He said he had
Speaker 2: to get back to sign a contract. I said, you
Speaker 2: can't do it. There are soldiers at the airport who
Speaker 2: will kill you, which I just love. Like, there's people
Speaker 2: getting murdered in the street and you're like, I've got
Speaker 2: a contract to get back to.
Speaker 3: Yeah. That sounds like every screenplay where a businessman is inconvenience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like that. Yeah, there's a terrorist hijacking the
Speaker 2: airplane and he's like, I'm gonna miss the account.
Speaker 3: I gotta get home for Christmas.
Speaker 2: So okay, that was a nice little interlude. So in
Speaker 2: short order, Idiomine is the new president of Uganda. That's
Speaker 2: a position he would hold for more than eight years.
Speaker 2: The Western powers, mainly the British and the Americans, were
Speaker 2: hopeful at first. They hated a Bote because he was
Speaker 2: a socialist and because he was even more corrupt than
Speaker 2: they were prepared to forgive. Idiomine had a good reputation
Speaker 2: among the British. He trained as a paratrooper in Israel,
Speaker 2: so Israel really liked the guy too. So yeah, at first,
Speaker 2: it seems like this new dictator is going to be
Speaker 2: great for white people. You know Lady Listowell, who was
Speaker 2: a hungary noblewoman and a journalist who became Idio's first biographer,
Speaker 2: I met him around this time, and here's how she
Speaker 2: described meeting him for the first time, to give you
Speaker 2: an idea of like how this guy comes across quote.
Speaker 2: I looked into the smiling face of a tall, muscular
Speaker 2: officer with shrewd eyes who invited me to a cup
Speaker 2: of coffee. He was a hooking figure of a man,
Speaker 2: and I was fascinated by his hands. Beautiful, slim hands
Speaker 2: with long, tapering fingers.
Speaker 3: We got your horny, we gotta.
Speaker 2: I just love. We did a podcast on King Leopold
Speaker 2: of Belgium, the guy who massacred fifteen million people in
Speaker 2: the Congo, and in his biography there was like a
Speaker 2: whole paragraph talking about how beautiful his hands were. So
Speaker 2: I just that's apparently that's now if I can find
Speaker 2: one more that's officially trains beautiful hands. I'm just always
Speaker 2: shocked that apparently some people are really staring at hands
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, and you never hear about like, you know,
Speaker 3: his cuticles weren't not well manicured. Yeah, his piranos were
Speaker 3: a little long.
Speaker 2: It was really yeah, yeah, there were actually reasons that
Speaker 2: a reasonable person and who wasn't you know, purely looking
Speaker 2: at this from like the British point of view, might
Speaker 2: have thought Idiomine had a shot at being a good president.
Speaker 2: For one thing, he was a fun guy. Everybody who
Speaker 2: met him really spoke highly of him, Like everybody, like
Speaker 2: even people who later were like, oh yeah, he definitely
Speaker 2: committed atrocities. He was charming. It was a fun guy
Speaker 2: to be around.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I met him and I was so scared. I
Speaker 3: was like, this guy is gonna kill me. So I
Speaker 3: was like, ha haha, nice guy, great guy.
Speaker 2: He was obsessed with Scotland, which is one of the
Speaker 2: famous things about idioman Yeah. All of the officers in
Speaker 2: the African Rifles. Yeah, and he had he loved people
Speaker 2: playing bagpipes. Time's weird. Yeah, all of the officers in
Speaker 2: the King's African Rifles had been Scottish, and so Edie
Speaker 2: just really loved Scottish culture. He had huge He had
Speaker 2: a whole plane.
Speaker 3: Do you remember seeing him in like clothing and he's
Speaker 3: wearing like plaid and stuff.
Speaker 2: And there's a movie about him that's not super accurate,
Speaker 2: but it's called The Last King of Scotland, right, Yeah, yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 2: And he had a whole plane dedicated to just bringing
Speaker 2: Scottish whiskey into uh Uganda. Like there was like a
Speaker 2: presidential plane. That's just the Whiskey Express, which is a
Speaker 2: cool thing to desert. Yeah no, that's that's that's legitimately fine.
Speaker 3: Here you cool of flying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm fine. No, we have a vodka guy fly
Speaker 2: the Whiskey Express. He's fine until he gets home. Uh
Speaker 2: Idio adopted a number of British military traditions for his
Speaker 2: own military. He sent a musician to Scotland for a
Speaker 2: year to learn the bagpipes. He also established a state
Speaker 2: military jazz band with perhaps the best name of for
Speaker 2: a band I've ever heard, the Revolutionary Suicide Jazz Band,
Speaker 2: also known as the Revolutionary Suicide Mechanized Regiment Band or
Speaker 2: the Suicide Mechanized Jazz Band. And here's there.
Speaker 3: Were they like a punk band.
Speaker 2: No, they were just a jazz band. They should have
Speaker 2: been a punk bandide they were there. This is a
Speaker 2: really great picture. They were the regimental band. They were
Speaker 2: a military band. And the band they were a Unit
Speaker 2: four was one of the elite mechanized regiments in the
Speaker 2: Ugandan army. That was a suicide mechanized regiment. So it
Speaker 2: was like to try to make them sound scary, because
Speaker 2: guys don't care if they die. They're the suicide regiment
Speaker 2: for And this amazing picture, with several others, will be
Speaker 2: up on our website behind the Bastards dot com. You
Speaker 2: owe it to yourself to check it out. Yeah, So
Speaker 2: it also seems I should note that from reports at
Speaker 2: the time, most of the musicians and the Suicide Revolutionary
Speaker 2: Jazz Band were sort of press ganged and forced to
Speaker 2: play Yeah, they don't look exactly happy, they don't look
Speaker 2: jazz wow. So Iddy's reign was brutal by all measures,
Speaker 2: and got increasingly brutal as time went on. There are
Speaker 2: a number of theories as to why Robert Keey thinks
Speaker 2: he was just promoted out of his depth, like Michael Scott.
Speaker 2: Basically he was a fine sergeant, but he never should
Speaker 2: have been an officer, let alone running the nation, which
Speaker 2: is one way or another probably fair Keeley says quote
Speaker 2: he had learned to use his fists and translated that
Speaker 2: into how you hold your position, how you protect yourself.
Speaker 2: He applied all of the brutal boxing lessons he had
Speaker 2: learned against his rivals. Lady Listowel also thought that this
Speaker 2: poor guy had just been forced to jump into a
Speaker 2: position too complex for his mind. Quote. The Kakwa have
Speaker 2: a great respect for personalities, but not for rank or position.
Speaker 2: They never had chiefs or recognized clan leaders. I mean
Speaker 2: was brought up to believe that all Kaqwa tribesmen are equal.
Speaker 2: Some of his recent measures illustrate all too well that
Speaker 2: he had to leap from a peasant background into the
Speaker 2: complicated politics of the modern world without any intermediate feudal preparation.
Speaker 2: I think this attitude that Idy was just a guy
Speaker 2: that who got promoted beyond his talents is inaccurate and
Speaker 2: based pretty heavily in racism. It shifts the brain the
Speaker 2: blame over to Uganda for letting such a man rise
Speaker 2: that high, and I think the real blame lies with
Speaker 2: the British. Again, there's guys like Idio in every country,
Speaker 2: violent authoritarians who seek to impose their will on others.
Speaker 2: Established nations, build antibodies, up checks and balances and legal systems,
Speaker 2: and established bureaucracies to stop men with fourth grade educations
Speaker 2: and histories of head injuries from heading the army.
Speaker 3: Sounds nice, Rabo.
Speaker 2: Now well, clearly ours aren't perfect, so but you know,
Speaker 2: Uganda didn't have any any of that. The British didn't
Speaker 2: put any of that in place before. They just abandoned them.
Speaker 2: M Like. It's one of those things where if you
Speaker 2: look at what was set up when the Uganda was freed,
Speaker 2: I don't see someone like idiot was bound to at
Speaker 2: least try to take control.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounds like they set up the country like
Speaker 3: a reality show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it is almost like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were like, here you guys, go hear some
Speaker 3: sticks survive.
Speaker 2: And they didn't. They didn't consider any of the ways
Speaker 2: it could go badly, and they didn't like they know,
Speaker 2: like the British have never had a military coup and
Speaker 2: they have an officer cadre for a reason. They like
Speaker 2: set like they know how you set up a military
Speaker 2: so it doesn't destroy the country. And they didn't do
Speaker 2: any of that in Uganda because they were lazy and
Speaker 2: they didn't care. So fuck the British.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fucked and Flint, Michigan still doesn't have clean water.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and fuck us too, for sure, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 2: This one is actually this one sort of our bad too,
Speaker 2: because we're we supported the Idiomine regime for a while.
Speaker 2: We being the United States, Fuck us, fuck everybody, Fuck
Speaker 2: everybody except for Uganda. They didn't deserve any except for now.
Speaker 2: Dorito's had nothing to do with this. Okay, that's that's fair.
Speaker 2: And you could argue that Dorito's has stopped similar monsters
Speaker 2: from arising in other countries by filling them with nacho goodness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, stop the monster of hunger.
Speaker 2: As far as we know, Idiomine never got to experience
Speaker 2: extreme nacho flavor, and that might be the secret of
Speaker 2: his madness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the only extremism he should have been into is
Speaker 3: not choke cheesy crunch.
Speaker 2: So yeah. When the British first started the Ugandan Colony,
Speaker 2: they had carried out a policy of bringing in South Asians,
Speaker 2: mostly from India, to Uganda to quote service a buffer
Speaker 2: between Europeans and Africans in the middle rungs of commerce
Speaker 2: and administration. This had started when the British brought thirty
Speaker 2: thousand Indians over to build railways in Uganda. These folks
Speaker 2: had a lot more experience with Western style capitalism than
Speaker 2: the average Ugandan, and as a result, they saw great
Speaker 2: success setting up businesses in the new colony. By the
Speaker 2: early nineteen seventies, Ugandan Asians owned ninety percent of the
Speaker 2: country's businesses and contributed ninety percent of its tax revenue,
Speaker 2: despite making up a small minority of the actual population.
Speaker 2: This had obviously caused a lot of unrest between native
Speaker 2: ethnic Ugandans and the Ugandan Asians. President de Bote had
Speaker 2: pursued a policy called Africanization, which attacked Ugandan Asians with
Speaker 2: laws aimed at reducing their economic dominance it. He expanded
Speaker 2: on that policy and added in a healthy dollop of
Speaker 2: straight up racism. He announced that the government would be
Speaker 2: reviewing the status of Ugandan Asians who'd been given citizenship.
Speaker 2: So basically they were looking at naturalized Ugandan citizens and
Speaker 2: finding excuses to take away their citizenship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what's happening right now.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's exactly what's happening right now to naturalized American citizens,
Speaker 2: which is a.
Speaker 3: Huge bummer, huge bummer.
Speaker 2: Weird how these shitty guys have the same playbook in
Speaker 2: a lot of cases. Yeah, I mean, also canceled all
Speaker 2: in progress citizenship applications from Asians, and then in August
Speaker 2: of nineteen seventy two, he gave all Asians in Uganda
Speaker 2: ninety days to vacate the country. So we're going to
Speaker 2: get into how that policy went and what a clusterfuck
Speaker 2: ensued afterwards, and what happened once the West finally decided
Speaker 2: that Idiomine wasn't their man. But first we've got some
Speaker 2: capitalism to get into. Oh, yay, yay, capitalism, the thing
Speaker 2: that has nothing to do with the tens of millions
Speaker 2: of death to colonialism. Not a thing, not a thing.
Speaker 2: Here's some ads and we're back. So as the story
Speaker 2: has come up here, Idiomine has seized power, He's executed
Speaker 2: a bunch of people, and he has decided to expel
Speaker 2: all of the Asians in Uganda. He's given him ninety
Speaker 2: days to vacate the country. This policy affected eighty five
Speaker 2: thousand people, twenty three thousand of whom are already citizens
Speaker 2: of Uganda. I'm going to play a clip of idiomy
Speaker 2: In talking to the press to hear how he justified
Speaker 2: the policy. And I think what's interesting about this is
Speaker 2: how friendly the foreign press is to him, which sort
Speaker 2: of gives you an idea of how charming this guy
Speaker 2: was in person. So even though he's introduced, he's talking
Speaker 2: about something pretty awful, like people are they?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll play it decision for the economy of Uganda,
Speaker 4: and I must make sure that ever Ugandans get a
Speaker 4: fruit of independent since independent actually Uganda is not yet independent.
Speaker 4: I will say that even when the British handed over
Speaker 4: on the ninth of October nineteen sixty two, the Uganda
Speaker 4: is still not yet independent. Uganda will be independent after
Speaker 4: this my decision. After I want to see that the
Speaker 4: whole Campala street is not full of Indians. It must
Speaker 4: be proper black and the administration in those shops is
Speaker 4: run by the Ugandans.
Speaker 2: Would you like to get all Asians out of really?
Speaker 4: Yes, they must go to their country.
Speaker 2: Even on nationals of Uganda.
Speaker 4: If they want to go, they're they're, they're they're, They're
Speaker 4: welcome to go.
Speaker 2: What's what happened to these people?
Speaker 4: If they don't go, by the time, I think they
Speaker 4: will be sitting like they're sitting on the fire. I
Speaker 4: will tell you this.
Speaker 2: You just wait.
Speaker 4: After three months, what will you do to them? Okay,
Speaker 4: you will see. I think they will not a city
Speaker 4: comfortable here in Uganda. I will tell you this. I
Speaker 4: must actually tell you the truth. Take camp for them.
Speaker 1: If you're not.
Speaker 4: Doing I am not responsible for building them transity camp.
Speaker 4: Have you asked the British to take them away?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 4: It is a British high mission is here. He's a responsibility.
Speaker 4: I have told him. You've said you wanted to teach
Speaker 4: Britain a lesson President, Why is that? And that is
Speaker 4: now listen, I'm teaching the British. I am teaching now
Speaker 4: the listen because I am correcting them from the mystic
Speaker 4: they had admit if they had to think before Elia
Speaker 4: that that as the African here, who can even work
Speaker 4: and building the railway with the instruction given to them
Speaker 4: by the British, this problem will not happen.
Speaker 3: Wow, that was like a Monty Python.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's remarkable that he's like talking about like these
Speaker 2: twenty thousand people, terrible things will happen and they don't leave,
Speaker 2: and then all of these guys laugh like just because
Speaker 2: it's disgusting. It's yeah, and it's so I mean, he
Speaker 2: has a point at the end there when he says
Speaker 2: like it was fucked up to the British to bring
Speaker 2: these people in the build railroads and not just have
Speaker 2: us build railroads because it's our fucking country, which is
Speaker 2: you know, a fair point. But at this point, the
Speaker 2: guys are like third generation Ugandans, Like, it's messed up
Speaker 2: to kick people out of your country and take their businesses.
Speaker 2: It's just weird to me. How friendly the press was
Speaker 2: to him still at this point.
Speaker 3: Well, they were all British guys and they didn't really
Speaker 3: give a FuG about brown people either way. They were
Speaker 3: just there because they had to.
Speaker 2: Being yeah, and they thought he was fun and they liked, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's yeah. So Iddy's main defense of his policy was
Speaker 2: that he was trying to give you guanna back to Ugandans.
Speaker 2: He also said that God had told him in a
Speaker 2: dream that South Asians were to blame for Ugandis economic
Speaker 2: woes and corruption. It's probable that this policy had a
Speaker 2: lot to do with the fact that Great Britain had
Speaker 2: just refused to sell them guns so he could invade Tanzania.
Speaker 2: So he was basically just being like, Okay, Great Britain,
Speaker 2: you have to deal with eighty thousand refugees now because
Speaker 2: you wouldn't give me the weapons I needed to fund
Speaker 2: with my neighbor. Idy was brutal to the Ugandan Asians,
Speaker 2: but he was equally brutal to ethnic Ugandans. His particular
Speaker 2: targets were a Choli and Langhi tribesman. In the first
Speaker 2: few days of his regime, he executed more than a
Speaker 2: thousand members of these tribes in the army. As his
Speaker 2: reign wore on, the purchase spread from the military to
Speaker 2: the general population. Bullets were in short supply in the
Speaker 2: country and desperately needed for all the wars id he
Speaker 2: planned to start, so the murder squads he dispatched had
Speaker 2: to find other ways of doing their work. Their preferred
Speaker 2: tools were sledgehammers, crowbars, and sometimes crocodiles. Oh my god, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, if you have crocodiles, every problem looks like crocodile.
Speaker 3: No one has ever wielded a crocodile. It's been a
Speaker 3: good guy.
Speaker 2: It's never a tool of the good guy. No, what
Speaker 2: about Yeah, So, the most feared government agency, sort of
Speaker 2: the idiomine equivalent of the German SS, was the State
Speaker 2: Research Bureau, which is maybe my favorite name for like
Speaker 2: a secret police organization. Sounds so like seems like the
Speaker 2: guys who should be like, oh, yeah, your soils pH
Speaker 2: is off. But yeah, these are the murder police, as
Speaker 2: opposed to you know, countries where all of the police
Speaker 2: are the murder police anyway. Apollo Lawalco survived one hundred
Speaker 2: ninety six days in the pink stucco building where they
Speaker 2: tortured and executed their captives. He gives us our clearest
Speaker 2: picture of what life was like for people deemed by
Speaker 2: Idioman to be enemies of the state. Quote, when the
Speaker 2: prisoner's name was called out, the guards would go and
Speaker 2: grab him. We were all in handcuffs already. We were
Speaker 2: in handcuffs twenty four hours a day. But they would
Speaker 2: change the position when they called a man, putting them
Speaker 2: on and back, and then they would place a long
Speaker 2: rope with a loop around his neck. Then someone would
Speaker 2: drag him by the rope along the staircase going up
Speaker 2: to the ground floor, and people would beating him on
Speaker 2: all parts of his body. Then his head would be
Speaker 2: beaten in. By the time he reached the top of
Speaker 2: the stairs, he was dead. So Looko claims the guards
Speaker 2: made sure the prisoners saw every execution. That was part
Speaker 2: of the point. He claims that between one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty and two hundred people were executed every night while
Speaker 2: he was there in nineteen seventy seven. Looko believes he
Speaker 2: saw more than fifteen thousand Ugandans clubbed and beaten to
Speaker 2: death over just five months. At least two hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty thousand Ugandans perished during Idiomin's terror. In the real
Speaker 2: number maybe more like half a million. Roughly every fifty
Speaker 2: seven were to die over the next eight years. So
Speaker 2: Idy himself has said to have participated in a number
Speaker 2: of these murders. Luoko claims to remember seeing him beat
Speaker 2: men to death with sledgehammers while wearing a gas mask. Quote,
Speaker 2: I mean was actually participating. He turned to us at
Speaker 2: one point and told us to relax. The state research
Speaker 2: buomen were mostly Nubians like Idy, former super soldiers of
Speaker 2: the British Empire, doing what they'd always done, just for themselves.
Speaker 2: Now and again, this is not savagery that he's executing
Speaker 2: suddenly now that he's in charge. This is exactly what
Speaker 2: he was doing on British orders in Kenya. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go ahead and guess that when he
Speaker 2: was president is not the first time he had people
Speaker 2: killed with sledgehammers.
Speaker 3: Like it never ceases to amaze me, just the capability
Speaker 3: of brutality of some people.
Speaker 2: No, and these all, all these deaths, Like, obviously these
Speaker 2: deaths aren't idiot mean, but they're also on colonialism, which is.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, for sure, I blame everything on colonialism, just
Speaker 3: so restraight.
Speaker 2: And that you can it's totally fair. It's like being
Speaker 2: being a white kid who was educated in the South,
Speaker 2: I did not hear very much about colonialism growing up,
Speaker 2: and so it's once I've started researching a lot of
Speaker 2: these guys in the show and learning about King Leopold
Speaker 2: and the fifteen million who died in the Belgian Congo,
Speaker 2: which is probably the worst single crime of colonialism that
Speaker 2: I've come across. But like it's I think it would
Speaker 2: probably be fair to say that, like if you add
Speaker 2: together the Nazis and the Stalinist and Maoist communists and
Speaker 2: all the people they killed, it doesn't come close to
Speaker 2: the deaths to colonialism. Yeah, absolutely, And you know, in
Speaker 2: a shorter time, you know, the Nazis were great at
Speaker 2: killing people fast, but there's I will never know most
Speaker 2: of what was done on behalf of the British Empire.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, so while most secret police organizations were you know,
Speaker 2: wear leather trench coats and dress in all black and
Speaker 2: like you know, like your cat. You're in central casting.
Speaker 2: You're trying to like cast a secret police a Like
Speaker 2: they're all in black. They look like the Matrix guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, were turtlenecks.
Speaker 2: Not the men of the Research Bureau. They wore wore
Speaker 2: flowered Hawaiian shirts, platform shoes and sunglasses. Oh no, they're
Speaker 2: dressed real cool like me. Oh, I appreciate someone doing
Speaker 2: it different. If you're if you're gonna massacre hundreds of
Speaker 2: thousands of people, at least try a new You know,
Speaker 2: there's no arm bands here, it's it's.
Speaker 3: Yeah style, dressed like parroteads. I guess we're sandals.
Speaker 2: If if Jimmy Buffett carried out a massacre, it would
Speaker 2: look like this.
Speaker 3: Every time you killed somebody, get a lay Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and you know they're all drunk. They've got a
Speaker 2: whiskey plane. Yeah yeah. Uh So. The Research Brio headquarters
Speaker 2: was connected to president a Means Home by an underground tunnel,
Speaker 2: so we could show up and participate in the executions
Speaker 2: when he wanted to. Most of the work was headed
Speaker 2: by a man named Major faruquin Men. He was sort
Speaker 2: of the Laventi Barria type figure, and Barria was the
Speaker 2: head of the KGB for a while under Stalin. So
Speaker 2: he's the kind of guy who could murder his own
Speaker 2: friends after a night of drinking and hanging out with them.
Speaker 2: At one point, he had his wife and three daughters executed.
Speaker 3: Fuck dude, that guy should have waited till a grand
Speaker 3: the photo came out.
Speaker 2: Just didn't get it out of his system.
Speaker 3: I think so.
Speaker 2: He suspected his wife and daughters were helping gun and
Speaker 2: rebels because they were Bagandas, which is like the tribe
Speaker 2: one of the tribes that ID he hated. So yeah,
Speaker 2: It's important to understand that all the oppression apparatus id
Speaker 2: he created was very decentralized, So most of the deaths
Speaker 2: during this period were not idiomins signing someone's death warrant.
Speaker 2: It was as a result of the fact that all
Speaker 2: soldiers and intelligence officers in his country were allowed to
Speaker 2: arrest or kill any person they considered dangerous to peace
Speaker 2: and good order. Man so Idy gave his men a
Speaker 2: legal excuse to pursue their personal grudges and steal from people.
Speaker 3: Wow, abolish ice, you guys just dropping out in there.
Speaker 2: No, And that is the official line of the podcast
Speaker 2: is Abolish Ice.
Speaker 3: Bid ritas a ball of science. I'm drinking all water
Speaker 3: lukewarm until ice is abolished.
Speaker 2: It is funny that, like our Gestapo equivalent is is ice,
Speaker 2: because if.
Speaker 3: They had known fifteen years ago, they probably would have
Speaker 3: named it something cooler.
Speaker 2: Ice is. Yeah, it's not cool. It's not that cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Amen gave his men excuses, yeah, to pursue personal grudges
Speaker 2: and steal from people. One survivor recalled, quote, everything you
Speaker 2: have seen in Wild West movies was everyday life. Here
Speaker 2: someone bumping off the husband and publicly taking the wife,
Speaker 2: or someone bumping you off and openly driving off with
Speaker 2: your car. So I hope we presented kind of a
Speaker 2: picture of how brutal Amin's regime was. Let's dig a
Speaker 2: little deeper into the man himself. You can't understand idiomine
Speaker 2: without understanding that he was great at fucking Who wrote that? Well,
Speaker 2: at least he needed everyone to believe that he was great,
Speaker 2: So one way or the other, it's it's important to
Speaker 2: understand that was a part of his public image. That's
Speaker 2: how he knew his bad ladies, No and and almost
Speaker 2: all like the only person, the only famous person I'm
Speaker 2: convinced who is ever actually good at fucking. I was
Speaker 2: gonna say Marlon Brando, but oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, well Marlon Brando makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, he was method. So he was method anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah so, I mean was it was important to him
Speaker 2: that there be a public image that he was virile
Speaker 2: and good at sex. His former Minister for Health, Henry Kimba,
Speaker 2: said this, besides his five wives. Also, he had five wives.
Speaker 3: That's kind of low honestly for what I thought.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, he's he's he's he's a conservative fellow. Besides
Speaker 2: his five wives, Amine has had countless other women, many
Speaker 2: of whom have borne him children. His sex life is
Speaker 2: truly extraordinary. He regards his sexual energy as a sign
Speaker 2: of his power and authority. He never tries to hide
Speaker 2: his lust, his eyes locked onto any beautiful woman. His
Speaker 2: reputation for sexual performance is so startling that women often
Speaker 2: deliberately make themselves available, and his love affairs have included
Speaker 2: women of all colors in many nations, from schoolgirls to
Speaker 2: mature women, from street girls to university lecturers, which is
Speaker 2: who knows how true that is.
Speaker 3: It sounds like a lot of rape.
Speaker 2: Definitely, definitely a lot, because there's a ton of stories
Speaker 2: of him having husbands executed so he could fuck their way.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, but this is you know, his former
Speaker 2: minister of health giving what is This is what idiot
Speaker 2: men wanted people to hear about him, that he's because
Speaker 2: this was important, of course. Yeah, I'm great at fighting
Speaker 2: and I'm great at fucking.
Speaker 3: Yeah. He sounds like Wilt Chamberlain.
Speaker 2: There's just something about authoritarian assholes and needing people to
Speaker 2: believe they're tough and good at fucking.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. I want everyone to know I am bad
Speaker 3: at sex, which means good sex over there. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think about which of our presidents were
Speaker 2: definitely the bit because I hear JFK was terrible. Really yeah,
Speaker 2: I've heard LBJ said JFK was terrible.
Speaker 3: Well, you can't trust that guy.
Speaker 2: You can't trust that guy.
Speaker 3: He was he was jealous.
Speaker 2: And he called his dick jumbo, which means he did.
Speaker 3: Well, maybe that's true. Then I don't know. Nixon seems
Speaker 3: pretty bad.
Speaker 2: Nixon can't have been good, right, no way, No, I
Speaker 2: feel like Teddy Roosevelt.
Speaker 3: Well he was in a wheelchair. No, it was FDR
Speaker 3: never mind.
Speaker 2: Well he was a big stick guy, right, Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was a big stick guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that guy could fuck.
Speaker 2: That guy could fuck. And I feel like FDR was
Speaker 2: probably pretty good, but like he would have been like
Speaker 2: a hands an oral man. That's my guess for FDR.
Speaker 2: I think he leaves them satisfied. As what I'm saying,
Speaker 2: I don't think I agree. Yeah yeah, so idiot mean
Speaker 2: Again had five wives. His favorite wife was a lady
Speaker 2: named Sarah. He met her when she was eighteen and
Speaker 2: a go go dancer for the Revolutionary Suicide jazz band. Okay,
Speaker 2: story as oldest time Idy fell in love, but tragically,
Speaker 2: Sarah already had a fiance and she was pregnant. So
Speaker 2: when she gave birth on Christmas Day nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 2: oh god it he just told everyone that the kid
Speaker 2: was his and had the birth announced on state television.
Speaker 3: Oh what the fuck.
Speaker 2: Sarah's fiance was not happy with this, but he died
Speaker 2: in a car crash immediately after this, so it worked out.
Speaker 3: No suspicion, no but then at all.
Speaker 2: Nope, just a random car crash the like the day
Speaker 2: that he complains.
Speaker 3: Oh poor guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, I shouldn't laughed there. I may be
Speaker 2: getting a little callous with all these stories.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's hard not to disassociate a little bit.
Speaker 3: I mean, so far in the last hour, I've learned
Speaker 3: of many millions of people died.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's horrific. So Idy, I mean married Sarah
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy five was a small private ceremony, but
Speaker 2: Iddy was concerned that having a small private ceremony might
Speaker 2: be portrayed or might be seen as excluding the people
Speaker 2: of Uganda, so he remarried her in a gigantic televised ceremony. Yes,
Speaker 2: Sir Arafat was his best man. The banquet cost two
Speaker 2: million dollars, the banquet, not the whole wedding, just that,
Speaker 2: which I would kind of want to check out a TOI.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've seen Super sixteen, you know whatever it's called.
Speaker 2: So President Amine cut the rudding wedding cake with a sword.
Speaker 2: Knowing his history, there's no chance he didn't also use
Speaker 2: that sword to stab people.
Speaker 3: Obviously. This sword guy is a sort of guy.
Speaker 2: Fucking sword guy to the problem. That's how you know
Speaker 2: someone's trusted if they're a fucking sword guy. M hmm.
Speaker 2: Machete is a people's weapon.
Speaker 3: While you were learning about colonialism, I was studying a Blockchaine.
Speaker 2: So Idy had five wives and something like forty or
Speaker 2: fifty children. He married his first two wives in the
Speaker 2: same year, nineteen sixty six, when he was twenty eight.
Speaker 2: One of those marriages went all right and produced several children,
Speaker 2: but his second wife Ka divorced. He murdered the best
Speaker 2: man and then murdered k Her arms and legs were
Speaker 2: found in a sack in the trunk of a car.
Speaker 2: So Idy had her body sewn back together and marched
Speaker 2: around in front of his children and other wives, or
Speaker 2: he didn't. So this is again where we get into
Speaker 2: some controversy because his kids are still around and talking
Speaker 2: today and do speeches, and like several of them, they
Speaker 2: don't like necessarily doubt the crimes that were committed in
Speaker 2: their dad's reign. But they are all pretty consistent about
Speaker 2: the fact that no, he was a good dad and
Speaker 2: very normal around us. So it's possible this is a
Speaker 2: this story is a lie, like the Witchcraft stuff. Hard
Speaker 2: to tell because again, his kids even today, are all
Speaker 2: pretty much he was fun, So he might not have
Speaker 2: brought it home. I really don't know. I wasn't there. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 2: it's one of those things. It's impossible to know the truth.
Speaker 2: There's stories that he was brutal to his kids and
Speaker 2: fucking had corpses creating around them, and then his kids
Speaker 2: say stuff like, here's a quote from his son, it
Speaker 2: was fun with my dad. All the time was on
Speaker 2: His daughter Maimuna Amin said, he was such a lovely man,
Speaker 2: so good, so lovely. He never beats any children when
Speaker 2: he's at home. He just wanted us all to be
Speaker 2: on him. He's like a mother, a father, a sister,
Speaker 2: a brother in one. He loved music and he's always
Speaker 2: on his accordion singing.
Speaker 3: Wow, what are revisionist history this jickass?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's also possible that he was a
Speaker 2: brutal monster everywhere outside of the home and was fine
Speaker 2: with his kids.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they just never heard about the other stuff.
Speaker 2: No, they heard about it, but again they know a
Speaker 2: lot of them don't deny the brutality of the regime.
Speaker 2: They're just like at home, he was a normal guy.
Speaker 2: That's fucked which that happens, like, you can find plenty
Speaker 2: of stories about people hanging out with Hitler and being
Speaker 2: like he was super nice and he was like my uncle, and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people always say dictators are charismanic and stuff. I mean,
Speaker 3: even if we I feel this same thing with celebrities,
Speaker 3: I don't really know.
Speaker 2: But yeah, and I can't know what we do know,
Speaker 2: and what we do know for certain is that Idiomine
Speaker 2: played the accordion fucking constantly. He was apparently if you're
Speaker 2: an accordion guy, he was apparently good at playing the accordion.
Speaker 2: And here is here's a picture of him doing the
Speaker 2: weird al thing.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, right, it's weird that dorks are truly
Speaker 3: the worst people in the world because this guy's in
Speaker 3: the swords, accordions, bagpipes.
Speaker 2: This guy has bad taste. Everyone with bad tish needs
Speaker 2: to be called no. And if he had grown up now, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: he would still play the accordion and have a bunch
Speaker 2: of swords, but he would also be able to talk
Speaker 2: to you about anime for sixteen hours. Oh yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: m yeah, I'm sorry anime fans.
Speaker 3: I mean, anime is pretty cool. Yeah, sagoy some of it.
Speaker 2: So the stuff idi Amine is probably most famous for
Speaker 2: is again cannibalism, witchcraft, and his obsession with Scotland, because
Speaker 2: that's like the sensational stuff or you can.
Speaker 3: Do so he's for sure eight people we don't know.
Speaker 2: Okay again, that's one of those Yeah, we're about to
Speaker 2: get into that. So it's an arguably true that he
Speaker 2: loved Scotland. There's a shitload of documented evidence of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Maybe he just was eating some hagas and people
Speaker 3: thought it was like a human intestine.
Speaker 2: Or they just wished it. Yeah exactly, Oh please eat
Speaker 2: some people. Stop with that shit. It is very much
Speaker 2: up for debate as to whether or not he was
Speaker 2: really into black magic and cannibalism. The rumors that he
Speaker 2: was in the magic and eating people started with the Begondans,
Speaker 2: and the Begondans were the people from South Uganda and
Speaker 2: they did not like the people from North Uganda. A
Speaker 2: lot of these rumors originate from one Begondan who served
Speaker 2: in Idioman's cabinet. He wrote in his book, which was
Speaker 2: one of the major sources for the Last King of Scotland,
Speaker 2: quote A means bizarre behavior derives partly from his tribal background.
Speaker 2: Like many other warrior societies, the kakua Amans tribe are
Speaker 2: known to have practiced blood rituals on slain enemies. These
Speaker 2: involve cutting a piece of flesh from the body to
Speaker 2: subdue the dead man's spirit, or tasting the victim's blood
Speaker 2: to render the spirit harmless. Such rituals still exist among
Speaker 2: the Coaqua. If they kill a man, it is their
Speaker 2: practice to insert a knife in the body and touch
Speaker 2: the bloody blade to their lips. I have reason to
Speaker 2: believe that it means practices do not stop at tasting blood.
Speaker 2: On several occasions, he has boasted to me and others
Speaker 2: that he has eaten human flesh. On to say that
Speaker 2: eating human flesh is not uncommon in his home area.
Speaker 2: It's possible that this is true. The British noted that
Speaker 2: the Kaqua engaged in quote sacrifices of humans and animals,
Speaker 2: but it's also worth noting that most of the claims
Speaker 2: about cannibalism came from Iddy's enemies. A major source for
Speaker 2: this podcast was an article from the University of Groningen
Speaker 2: in the Netherlands titled idiamin Icon of Evil. This article
Speaker 2: notes that the witchcraft and cannibalism myths may have started
Speaker 2: as a result of local racism within Uganda, so racism
Speaker 2: from southern Ugandans towards northern Ugandans. Quote the Southern Ugandans
Speaker 2: are particularly contemptuous of the southern Sudanese and Nubies, not
Speaker 2: of other northern tribes as wild and uncivilized. It is
Speaker 2: from them that we have reports of Amen and his
Speaker 2: nubies tasting the blood of their victims and eating their livers,
Speaker 2: and the explanation that such a custom is either a
Speaker 2: nubie or Kakua one.
Speaker 3: So we don't know.
Speaker 2: It's possible he licked blood. It's possible he ate flesh.
Speaker 2: It's also possible that's just racism from people in the South.
Speaker 3: Hey, I mean I would argue, you know, you kill
Speaker 3: thousands of people, that is worse anyway. I mean, like,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't be completely surprised if you know, he got
Speaker 3: into desecrating some bodies at all.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't be beyond the pale to assume. But it's
Speaker 2: also I think this is something that happens in Western
Speaker 2: media a lot with these dictators where if you can
Speaker 2: get like that, there's a bunch of stories about the
Speaker 2: North Korean regime that are bullshit that have no basis
Speaker 2: in reality about like and it's always like the kooky
Speaker 2: ones about like ridiculous claims that Kim's made and like
Speaker 2: the stuff that sounds really funny, like that you can
Speaker 2: laugh at. And some of those are true because like
Speaker 2: any authoritarian regime is going to have some silly stuff
Speaker 2: around it, huh, because it's a silly thing. But a
Speaker 2: lot of it's just lies, and it's the same thing.
Speaker 2: It's lies that make it seem like something other than
Speaker 2: what it is, which is a brutal dictatorship as opposed
Speaker 2: to like, no, it's this crazy cannibal madman who ruled
Speaker 2: the country, and it's like, well, no, there's nothing really crazy.
Speaker 2: He's just a monster like all of the other.
Speaker 3: That's less scary to me than just a person who
Speaker 3: knows exactly what they're doing and does it anyway. That's
Speaker 3: like an oil tycoon or something. And then there was
Speaker 3: a rumor they're like, did you hear that he litters? Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's running the environment.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And that's kind of why I wanted to dig
Speaker 2: into these myths about him a lot, because that's what
Speaker 2: most people know about idiot mean, which I think is
Speaker 2: less I think the fact that the idea that, oh,
Speaker 2: maybe this guy was a cannibal and a dictator is
Speaker 2: less interesting than like, this guy was trained to be
Speaker 2: a brutal dictator in the British army who raised him
Speaker 2: to be a soldier and then abandon him and his
Speaker 2: country to whatever was going to happen next, which I
Speaker 2: think is a more accurate story, But that one isn't
Speaker 2: fun for Americans because it implicates all of Western civilization
Speaker 2: as opposed to some cannibal gotten in charge over there
Speaker 2: in Africa. Anyway, that's my thinking on the man. So
Speaker 2: obviously by this time, and you know, by the middle
Speaker 2: of his reign, kind of the bloom was off the rose.
Speaker 2: The British were no longer fans of idiomin What if
Speaker 2: his atrocities had filtered out to the world. Europe turned
Speaker 2: away and idiot did what he always did when someone
Speaker 2: questioned him. He flipped out and attacked. He declared himself
Speaker 2: conquer of the British Empire. He had T shirts printed
Speaker 2: up with his face on it and Conquer of the
Speaker 2: British Empire printed beneath, which is a pretty pro move.
Speaker 2: He developed a love for having white guys, particularly British guys,
Speaker 2: bow to him. So there's a bunch of pictures like
Speaker 2: this of British businessmen, like I mean wearing oaths to him.
Speaker 3: Now, this is the first cool thing that you showed me.
Speaker 2: Oh, just wait, because it's about to get fucking better.
Speaker 2: Because at one point he made a bunch of British
Speaker 2: businessmen carry him around on a sedan chair while a
Speaker 2: crowd cheered, which is that's a solid move.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do like that.
Speaker 2: It's hard not to support that.
Speaker 3: For sure. He's got a little he's got Okay, someone's
Speaker 3: holding an umbrella for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's the kind of wackiness that we know
Speaker 2: went down. And again he's not all wrong, Like the
Speaker 2: whiskey plane was a solid idea. Yeah. Yeah, So Edie
Speaker 2: desperately wanted to be a major player on the global stage.
Speaker 2: He wasted no opportunity to wade into any global conflict
Speaker 2: that he could. When the Watergate scandal broke, he sent
Speaker 2: a letter to Richard Nixon and gave him advice on
Speaker 2: how to handle Watergate. Nice quote. When the stability of
Speaker 2: a nation is in danger, the only solution is, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: to imprison the leaders of the opposition. Yeah. The longer
Speaker 2: he was in power, the more unhinged and braggy he
Speaker 2: became president, I mean, started to inflate the stories of
Speaker 2: his military service, claiming he'd fought in Burma during World
Speaker 2: War Two. He offered to marry Princess Anne of Great Britain.
Speaker 2: He also offered to become King of Scotland and lead
Speaker 2: the Scots to independence from Britain. Britain for the most part,
Speaker 2: the international response to Eddiemine was laughter. The same kind
Speaker 2: of laugh do you find a day when people talk
Speaker 2: about ridiculous smith Korean propaganda. Alan Coren, a British comedian,
Speaker 2: had a popular column in Punch magazine where he'd write
Speaker 2: out fake Idioman speeches that were very racist. If you've
Speaker 2: got Spotify, you can find the album that was made
Speaker 2: based on these columns with a white guy doing Idie's voice,
Speaker 2: and it is it was. I mean, this was like
Speaker 2: in the mid seventies. Okay, if you look up Idiomin
Speaker 2: on Spotify, you'll find the album and it's like infuriating wow,
Speaker 2: because it's just it's joking about what was in reality
Speaker 2: a horrific, crime filled regime, making fun of the fact
Speaker 2: that Idioman talks funny, which he doesn't even talk that funny.
Speaker 2: He speaks better English than I do, fucking Ugandan. So yeah,
Speaker 2: but this is again that's the international reaction is they're
Speaker 2: laughing at this guy, They're making fun of him. He's like,
Speaker 2: this horror show is playing out in Africa and it's
Speaker 2: being treated as kind of like a freak show to
Speaker 2: the rest of the world. So yeah, the caricature of
Speaker 2: Idioman is based a lot in white European racism, but
Speaker 2: it's also based in some local Ugandan regional racism. So
Speaker 2: they're north. North of Uganda is basically the social equivalent
Speaker 2: of the American South, and the well educated, well to
Speaker 2: do Southern Ugandans considered Idiomin to be like a hillbilly.
Speaker 2: They thought his accent when he spoke in Uganda, they
Speaker 2: thought his accent was painful. So it's basically he was
Speaker 2: like to a lot of people in southern Uganda, he
Speaker 2: was like if we had a president who came from
Speaker 2: the dirty South and talked like he was grew up
Speaker 2: on the box, ye president. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That That
Speaker 2: is the attitude that like the Southerners have towards him.
Speaker 2: In reality, Idioman was a pretty smart guy. He wasn't
Speaker 2: educated obviously, but he was. He had a lot of
Speaker 2: intelligence because you don't carry out a regime like this
Speaker 2: and keep it going for eight years without that. Most
Speaker 2: of his actions were pretty logical. Mass murder is a
Speaker 2: time honored way to stay in power. Exiling the Asians
Speaker 2: tank Uganda's economy, but it provided idiot with a host
Speaker 2: of businesses that he could give away to his porters
Speaker 2: in exchange for their loyalty. And for a while his
Speaker 2: tactics worked pretty well. But he made more mistakes as
Speaker 2: time went on. One of those was alienating Israel. He
Speaker 2: had initially been friendly to the country he'd trained there
Speaker 2: again as a paratrooper, but he wound up switching around
Speaker 2: and backing the Palestinian cause, which is fine, but he
Speaker 2: also descended into horrific anti Semitism. In nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 2: he told the UN Secretary General that Hitler had been
Speaker 2: quote right to burn six million Jews, and he promised
Speaker 2: to build a monument to Hitler in Campala. He was
Speaker 2: eventually convinced to cancel this plan because everyone around him
Speaker 2: was like, that's fucking bad idea idiot mean, but he
Speaker 2: continued pissing off Israel as the years rolled by. On
Speaker 2: June twenty seventh, nineteen seventy six, an Air France flight
Speaker 2: with two hundred and forty eight passengers was hijacked by
Speaker 2: two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Now,
Speaker 2: this was back in the day when terrorist plane hijackers
Speaker 2: didn't kill people as a general rule. They just kind
Speaker 2: of have the plane flow to an airport and hold
Speaker 2: everyone hostage until their comrades were released from prison or
Speaker 2: they got a bunch of money or whatever. This was
Speaker 2: like a common thing. There's a period of time in
Speaker 2: the seventies where every week there'd be a new fucking hijacking.
Speaker 2: So these particular hijackers and this plane, most of the
Speaker 2: passengers or Israeli. So these particular hijackers land first in
Speaker 2: Libya and then at Intebbe Airport in Uganda. President I
Speaker 2: mean welcome them enthusiastically. This proved to be a mistake
Speaker 2: when one week later Israeli commandos raided the airport, liberated
Speaker 2: the captives, and destroyed a sizable chunk of the Ugandan
Speaker 2: air Force while it was sitting on the tarmac. Oh wow, Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a movie called raid On in Tebbi about it.
Speaker 2: It's a very famous like commando raid thing. So it
Speaker 2: he flipped out of this, he'd already switched from ming
Speaker 2: pro is Reel to pro Palestine, of course, but he
Speaker 2: went over the deep end. He had a seventy three
Speaker 2: year old Jewish woman in a yuguand in hospital named
Speaker 2: Dora Block, pretty brutally murdered, and then he went on
Speaker 2: kind of a world insult tour. So this is kind
Speaker 2: of a little bit, and there's growing local resistance to
Speaker 2: him at this point too, so he starts to in
Speaker 2: the late seven hees go off the rails a bit.
Speaker 2: He called the President of Tanzania a coward, an old
Speaker 2: woman in a prostitute. He called the President of Zambia
Speaker 2: an imperialist puppet and boot liquor. He called Henry Kissinger
Speaker 2: a murderer and a spy, which was pretty fair. He
Speaker 2: also said that Queen Elizabeth should send him her twenty
Speaker 2: five year old knickers to celebrate her silver Juwilee. So
Speaker 2: he was like se year old underwear Queen of England. Yeah,
Speaker 2: which is I appreciate a good diss. Yeah, that's a solid.
Speaker 2: He steadily expanded his list of titles over the years.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy seven, he announced that he must now
Speaker 2: be addressed as quote his Excellency Field Marshal Alhaji doctor
Speaker 2: idi Amin Dada, life President of Uganda, Conqueror of the
Speaker 2: British Empire, Distinguished Service Order of the Military Cross, Victoria Cross,
Speaker 2: and Professor of Geography.
Speaker 3: What a good tag at the end, this guy is funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that professor of geography thing is really what sets
Speaker 2: it off. On October thirtieth night, seventy eight, he made
Speaker 2: the biggest mistake of his dictator career. He invaded Tanzania.
Speaker 2: This was over a pretty useless piece of land, like
Speaker 2: there was no good reason to attack the spot that
Speaker 2: he did. Tanzania counterattacked, and since their military was much
Speaker 2: more functional than the Ugandan military, the Ugandans were quickly
Speaker 2: thrown back. Next, Tanzania marched on Uganda. Aided by Begandan
Speaker 2: Ugandan exiles. They moved to unseat idy from power. For
Speaker 2: his part, Idiomine announced that he now loved the Tanzanian
Speaker 2: president and quote would have married him if he had
Speaker 2: been a woman. This didn't work and did not turn
Speaker 2: back the Tanzanian army, so Idiomine had to flee from power,
Speaker 2: first to Libya and then to Saudi Arabia, where he
Speaker 2: spent the rest of his life. In exile. Somehow, not
Speaker 2: being a warlord anymore seemed to calm him down. He
Speaker 2: lived a quiet life, regularly visiting Mecca and living with
Speaker 2: just one wife and several of his children. Oooh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's one of the ones who got away with it.
Speaker 3: Ugh itd.
Speaker 2: He explained in a rare nineteen ninety three interview that quote,
Speaker 2: when I am no longer president, some of them say
Speaker 2: they don't want I accept it. Frankly, I have had
Speaker 2: one wife since and have found also to have one
Speaker 2: wife as better. So Idiomine lapsed into a coma on
Speaker 2: July nineteenth, two thousand and three. He was put on
Speaker 2: life support at a hospital in Jedda. His family had
Speaker 2: begged the New Yugan and government to let him return
Speaker 2: home to die. They were told he'd have to stand
Speaker 2: trial if he returned. So I mean he didn't go back,
Speaker 2: and on August sixteenth, two thousand and three, Idiomine died
Speaker 2: peacefully in a hospital bed in Saudi Arabia. And that's
Speaker 2: unfortunately not the end of the story or ugandas problems. Oh,
Speaker 2: because President of the ghosts ghost do this is going
Speaker 2: to happen. President of Bote returned after idiot was ousted.
Speaker 2: A Bote was not outwardly ridiculous. He didn't make crazy
Speaker 2: claims about the Holocaust or randomly insult foreign leaders. He
Speaker 2: didn't have a wacky title. What he did do was
Speaker 2: vastly expand the purges that Idiomine had begun. While Amine
Speaker 2: had mostly targeted certain tribe members in the military and government,
Speaker 2: a Bote targeted huge chunks of civilians based on their tribe.
Speaker 2: He probably killed more people in his second term than
Speaker 2: died during the entirety of Idea means reign Jesus. A
Speaker 2: Bote was eventually overthrown by a general named Bazzello Olaro Okello,
Speaker 2: who was violently overthrown by Yoweri Musevenni's National Resistance Army
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty six. Mussevenni is still the president of
Speaker 2: Uganda today. He had term limits abolished in two thousand
Speaker 2: and five and removed the presidential aid limit in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: Uganda has to this day never seen a peaceful transition
Speaker 2: of power.
Speaker 3: Wow, so.
Speaker 2: That's the story.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a heartwarming tale.
Speaker 2: It is it is, and it's a tale where like
Speaker 2: I mean, Idiomine is the organ through which all of
Speaker 2: this repression and violence was executed, But the real bastard
Speaker 2: of this is the British Empire, in my opinion at least.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, I mean I'll trace all the blame
Speaker 3: back to white people at any time, for sure. But man,
Speaker 3: I really just can't imagine living in a country or
Speaker 3: so much bloodshed is like happening constantly all the time. Yeah, politically, yeah,
Speaker 3: I would move away so fast.
Speaker 2: Well, and that's it's one of those things that.
Speaker 3: How are you Ghanna?
Speaker 2: But yeah, how are you Ghana? And it's you get
Speaker 2: all these people in Europe and the United States now,
Speaker 2: because most of the people who like flee parts of
Speaker 2: Africa are going to wind ap heading to Europe because
Speaker 2: it's very it's easier to get there than it is
Speaker 2: to get to the US. And you know, get this,
Speaker 2: like what is our We can't take care of all
Speaker 2: these people. It's like, well you could steal their shit
Speaker 2: for two hundred years, like and then leave them without
Speaker 2: because Uganda there at no point in prior history there
Speaker 2: were like kingdoms and states and whatnot all over Africa,
Speaker 2: but there was there never been a Uganda. Like all
Speaker 2: of these groups of people had never been forced together
Speaker 2: before the British did that, and if you're going to
Speaker 2: do that, you shouldn't do that in the first place.
Speaker 2: But if you're going to do that, if you're going
Speaker 2: to force these people into a state, you owe it
Speaker 2: to them to like create a functional state before you leave. Yeah, which, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's fucked up, it's real fucked up. Well, I hope
Speaker 2: you learned something today.
Speaker 3: I did. I somehow left more grim than I came in.
Speaker 2: That's the fun of colonialism.
Speaker 3: But that's okay. I mean, like sometimes you got to
Speaker 3: know the monstrous capabilities of what you know, what we
Speaker 3: can do as human beings to prevent it. Yeah, jeez,
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's hard to take a good lesson out of
Speaker 2: this other than don't be a colonialist and don't take
Speaker 2: a people and train them to be soldiers and nothing
Speaker 2: else for a century.
Speaker 3: Yeah, don't What are some of the things? Don't play bagpipes,
Speaker 3: sim play the accordion?
Speaker 2: Well, that's okay, let's not attack.
Speaker 3: Let's attack.
Speaker 2: The bagpipes aren't the problem here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know what else to learn.
Speaker 2: I'll meet with you about accordions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I haven't watched what's it called Lasking
Speaker 3: of Scotland. Have you watched it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I don't. I didn't enjoy it very much.
Speaker 3: Is it too, Is it sympathetic or no?
Speaker 2: It's it plays into the brutality of it. One thing
Speaker 2: that does a decent job of is showing you how
Speaker 2: he might have charmed people early huh. But I think
Speaker 2: it leans more into the sensational side of.
Speaker 3: Things, which eating people and stuff and it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it doesn't. It doesn't talk at all about
Speaker 2: a means past in a meaningful way. And that's why
Speaker 2: I led this by talking about British military policy in
Speaker 2: their colonies, because I don't think you can understand, I mean,
Speaker 2: without understanding where he and his people came from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that alone is interesting by itself as
Speaker 3: a story, I mean, not a not a fun story, but.
Speaker 2: It's definitely not a fun story. But it's an important one. Uh.
Speaker 2: And I will say, uh, if you are starting a
Speaker 2: punk band in the near future, the Suicide Revolutionary Jazz Band,
Speaker 2: it's a pretty fucking name.
Speaker 3: They honestly sound like a ska band and look like one.
Speaker 2: They do look like a ska band. They're all dressed nice,
Speaker 2: they got their shirts tucked in ah man, I could
Speaker 2: go for some suicide revolutionary ska music.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think the worst part of that story was
Speaker 3: that he died peacefully.
Speaker 2: That is, it's always a bummer when that happens, because,
Speaker 2: like we're I think Kadafi is going to be running
Speaker 2: shortly before this podcast comes out, and that's a story
Speaker 2: where the monster gets like, that's what you want to
Speaker 2: see happen to these guys is they get dragged out
Speaker 2: into the street and murdered by their own people. Yeaeople
Speaker 2: they fucked over.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I can think of a couple of people I'd
Speaker 3: like to see that happen to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, whose names we won't give because there are
Speaker 2: laws against that sort of thing. But yeah, there's it's
Speaker 2: hard not to want certain people dragged out into the
Speaker 2: street and at least, like, you know, maybe not even killed,
Speaker 2: just pete on by dozens of people. Well, I guess
Speaker 2: there's nothing left for us to do but for me
Speaker 2: to ask you to plug. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Cool, you could you know, uh, maybe get some laughs
Speaker 3: from looking at some videos. I don't know how to
Speaker 3: transition this either. I have some videos on my website
Speaker 3: britdiread dot com. You can follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 3: ao bro Bro, where I just usually complain about people
Speaker 3: getting casts in Hollywood and making some jokes and you
Speaker 3: can see me perform with jokes all around La. And
Speaker 3: you know, if you have any more questions, I will
Speaker 3: refer you to this guy because I don't know anything.
Speaker 2: Well, if you like complaining about casting, they did just
Speaker 2: cast a new idiom in movie. Uh did that? Yes,
Speaker 2: Scarlett Johansson's gonna play him. Fuck, you got me? You
Speaker 2: got me? I'm Robert Evans. You can find me on
Speaker 2: Twitter at I write okay, just the two letters there.
Speaker 2: I get a book on Amazon called A Brief History
Speaker 2: of Vice. You can find that on Amazon. You can
Speaker 2: find this podcast at behind the Bastards dot com, where
Speaker 2: we will have pictures of the incredible Suicide Revolutionary Jazz
Speaker 2: Band and some other pictures from Amine's Rain, as well
Speaker 2: as links to all the sources for this podcast. I
Speaker 2: really do recommend reading that University of gron Again article.
Speaker 2: It's a fascinating analysis of why idiots seen sort of
Speaker 2: the way he is today and where he came from.
Speaker 2: So you can also find us on Twitter and Instagram
Speaker 2: social media at Bastards pod, So look us up. Check
Speaker 2: us out. This has been Behind the Bastards for the
Speaker 2: week I've been Robert Evans. Check back in next Tuesday,
Speaker 2: when we will be talking about someone else who is
Speaker 2: also terrible.
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Speaker 1: zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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