Speaker 1: H Hello, my friends, Hi guys, everybody ready for the show.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, this is behind the Bastards and you
Speaker 1: might know me as the executive producer Anderson's mom or
Speaker 1: that who's that really annoying voice laughing obnoxiously in the background.
Speaker 1: Oh thanks, guys. Well, first to the stage, let's welcome
Speaker 1: Reverend Dr Billionaire Wayne David h and live in person
Speaker 1: and not trapped in an iPad, my favorite bastard, Reverend
Speaker 1: doctor Robert Evans. So I let it go to my
Speaker 1: head a little bit, Jesus, do you like me to
Speaker 1: hold You got so much going on and plan for
Speaker 1: after coming in with the cape, just for coming in
Speaker 1: with you. Just you look like one of those people
Speaker 1: that like you're going to battle, but then you get
Speaker 1: the battle and you're wearing things and battles just through.
Speaker 1: How are you doing to that, Billy man, I'm fucking good.
Speaker 1: I wanted to thank you, Billy for this, the wonderful
Speaker 1: gift of this machete. I got a new one. Billy
Speaker 1: just gave it some And you know, I'm I'm a
Speaker 1: little bit of a connoisseur. And what I love about
Speaker 1: this machete is that in order to draw it. You
Speaker 1: have to bring it day juriously close to your throat,
Speaker 1: and that's the real mark of a quality weapon, Like
Speaker 1: look at that. You do that drunk, you could really
Speaker 1: damage yourself. That's probably why they had it for sale
Speaker 1: on Craigslist. About that, the guy walked out of an alley,
Speaker 1: handed me that through my car, just handed it to
Speaker 1: my car, and I gave him twenty five. This is
Speaker 1: like a real story, you guys, we're laughing. It's not
Speaker 1: a bit. No. That's when you see a machete for
Speaker 1: sale on Craigslist, you're like, I'm gonna go try to
Speaker 1: buy this. You know, you know one thing immediately, and
Speaker 1: it's the person you're buying that machete from did not
Speaker 1: themselves come by it least no, God, that is a
Speaker 1: stolen machete, but it was in a package. That's He
Speaker 1: walked off before I could ask him any follow up questions,
Speaker 1: where I was like, how many do you have? It's
Speaker 1: a fascinating for me to get to the head of
Speaker 1: somebody that goes to an ARII and of all of
Speaker 1: the different high dollar items you could steal from an
Speaker 1: r I picks like the worst price price to size ratio,
Speaker 1: but I think that's just opportunity presented itself. And now
Speaker 1: you have fourteen machetes that happened to me, but all
Speaker 1: they did start a podcast, So Billy, you don't know
Speaker 1: the subject today that we're going with. That's good, that's good.
Speaker 1: I have a question i'd like to to ask you
Speaker 1: before I kind of lead into things, um, and I
Speaker 1: hope it's okay to ask this in front of an
Speaker 1: intimate group of our friends. Have you ever killed a
Speaker 1: man on purpose? No? No, I have not, but you've
Speaker 1: you've thought about it? Like we all like like that's
Speaker 1: the thing, right, Yeah, I'm not fuck off with that question.
Speaker 1: That is you can't answer that and we're recording this.
Speaker 1: I think it was like witness with all their names,
Speaker 1: have you ever thought about kill in someone? If we're
Speaker 1: honest with ourselves, if we're if we're really if we're
Speaker 1: really being truthful tonight, I think most most men, particularly
Speaker 1: you know, you're in the line at the bank and
Speaker 1: you're like, would have ninja came out? Right? You're at
Speaker 1: the McDonald's and you just like if something happened, if
Speaker 1: the ship went down, Like could I could I be
Speaker 1: a badass? And like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, never, like,
Speaker 1: if they weren't on this planet, this would help me out.
Speaker 1: Never never think that way. You said McDonald's. I thought
Speaker 1: you were going Trump there because how much you love
Speaker 1: him some McDonald's, but he ain't step McDonald's. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: I think it's a pretty normal thing to like wonder
Speaker 1: how you would react if, like a situation required you
Speaker 1: to be a giant badass. Um. But that fantasy isn't
Speaker 1: enough for everybody. Some people need to really commit to
Speaker 1: the fantasy that, despite all evidence to the contrary, they're
Speaker 1: huge badasses. And over the last twenty years or so,
Speaker 1: there's a whole industry that's grown up of tactical gear
Speaker 1: and tactical content and tactical magazine. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we like there's a bit of that. And I mean
Speaker 1: I walked on the stage. Yeah it's fine, um, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go yeah, I don't dive. So we're all
Speaker 1: familiar with kind of where the story has ended up
Speaker 1: in and today we're going to talk about the birth
Speaker 1: of this industry as embodied by a single periodical soldier
Speaker 1: of fortunes. Yeah, yes, man, I was so hoping you're
Speaker 1: gonna say that. Yeah, you might want to hold onto
Speaker 1: that I know I don't mean good. I think is
Speaker 1: to entertaining as fuck, entertaining as fun. I think Reddit
Speaker 1: is a magazine. You might be surprised by how many
Speaker 1: people this magazine got killed, because it is a lot
Speaker 1: even better. So our story starts with a single man,
Speaker 1: Robert Brown. He was born on November two, nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 1: in Monroe, Michigan, and I've been able to find vanishingly
Speaker 1: little about his early life, and everything you just said
Speaker 1: is boring his head. But he entered college in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty and at the time there was a draft on
Speaker 1: and Brown saw some sort of military service as inevitable.
Speaker 1: He decided he'd rather be a fighter pilot than anything else,
Speaker 1: and he joined the Air Force r OTC to make
Speaker 1: that happen. So far, it all scans um. He wound
Speaker 1: up not being doing well in college and was forced
Speaker 1: to transfer in nineteen fifty three to another university because,
Speaker 1: in his words, the dean and I agreed it was
Speaker 1: best I leave Michigan State. I've been on some of
Speaker 1: those discussions. So, due to a mix of his new
Speaker 1: colleges policies and his bad eyesight, Brown gradually accepted that
Speaker 1: his career as a that a career as a fighter
Speaker 1: pilot was not in the cards, and instead he joined
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps Reserve. But then, uh, a military recruiter
Speaker 1: he calls a snake oil salesman convinced him to join
Speaker 1: the Army instead, saying that he would become a special
Speaker 1: agent in the counter Intelligence Corps. You got what you deserve? Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: so this was obviously a bald faced lie, as our
Speaker 1: most things that military recruiters tell young men. Uh, but
Speaker 1: fantasizing of platinum blondes and Catillac convertibles. Brown agreed and
Speaker 1: he signed on the dotted line. Yeah he did he
Speaker 1: ever watch like even the movies don't make it look great. No, No,
Speaker 1: he really thought that he was going to join the
Speaker 1: Army and become James Bond. But he was young and dumb.
Speaker 1: He gets smarter, so he enters the Army on October
Speaker 1: and he loves it. He's particularly taken with arms training
Speaker 1: and getting to shoot guns a lot, and the whole
Speaker 1: experience of basic training convinces him that the draft is
Speaker 1: an awesome idea and should never have been discontinued. He's
Speaker 1: he's very, very prone to brainwashing. It was very clear,
Speaker 1: Like by the end of basic training, he's like, this
Speaker 1: is the best. Everyone should have to do this, like
Speaker 1: even the even the drill sergeant, like, we gotta watch him.
Speaker 1: We did too good. So once he graduates training, he
Speaker 1: has informed that this job as special agent uh is
Speaker 1: not going to work out because it doesn't exist. Who
Speaker 1: told you it was? Oh, I know who told you
Speaker 1: that he's funny. Instead, he's told that his job is
Speaker 1: actually going to be clerk analyst, which is essentially secretarial work.
Speaker 1: So it's yeah, it's lateral, not a change in money.
Speaker 1: So Robert was profoundly bad at this job and he
Speaker 1: failed the training course for it four times. You're really
Speaker 1: terrible at hitting at that desk. Yeah, keep stand up,
Speaker 1: And he just failed down. So he uh. He's admitted
Speaker 1: since that he uh found the idea of doing secretarial
Speaker 1: work hateful, and this is what convinced him to drop
Speaker 1: out of that career track and go to officer candidate
Speaker 1: school as a way to escape the tedium of office work.
Speaker 1: He graduates, I just want to tell people what to do.
Speaker 1: I can't handle this desk. I think I should be
Speaker 1: in charge of a lot of people's lives instead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So he graduates, and he would later brag of two accomplishments.
Speaker 1: At Officer Candidate School number one, he received more demerits
Speaker 1: than any other member of his class. At number two,
Speaker 1: he was the best shot with a heavy machine gun.
Speaker 1: I was the angriest and the best at machine guns.
Speaker 1: And that checks out. You can be a dick when
Speaker 1: you're good at the machine gun. Really, all that matters
Speaker 1: is good at machine guns. It's wild that we haven't
Speaker 1: had a presidential candidate run on that platform. We got
Speaker 1: some months. Yeah, that's how Bloomberg could have come in.
Speaker 1: And he's still so. Brown's dreams of daring do in
Speaker 1: the army were initially cut short by his father's untimely
Speaker 1: deaf death. He opted for a state side job in Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: working what he calls a cushy desk job. He left
Speaker 1: active service in nineteen fifty seven and spent the next
Speaker 1: few years in the Army reserves, mostly participating in marksmanship competitions.
Speaker 1: He managed to say some to say some of his
Speaker 1: desire for action whene Fidel Castro launched his rebellion against
Speaker 1: the dictatorial rule of Fugencio Batista. So this happens right
Speaker 1: as he gets out of the army and for a
Speaker 1: few months Brown improbably became a pro cast stro activist,
Speaker 1: even purchasing and hiding at a legal machine gun with
Speaker 1: the goal of running weapons to Cuban rebels in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: From Wisconsin, you know, the classic Wisconsin to Cuba flight path.
Speaker 1: Everybody French connection. They call Wisconsin Big Cuba. So eventually
Speaker 1: he tricked his college's student newspaper into issuing him press credentials,
Speaker 1: and he spent a brief period of time and Havana,
Speaker 1: but failed to see any action. He was repeatedly invited
Speaker 1: by contexts he'd met in Havana to participate as a
Speaker 1: war correspondent a number of revolutions throughout South America, but
Speaker 1: never quite managed to make it work out, mostly because
Speaker 1: he was afraid he'd get killed. Man, now he really
Speaker 1: gets in the way of the secret agent work. It does.
Speaker 1: That would that would be a bummer if you had
Speaker 1: to like go alone into a situation. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: do this. I keep missing matings. It's a lot of anxiety.
Speaker 1: So he manages to get hired by the AP to
Speaker 1: interview a refugee Spanish general promising to overthrow Francisco Franco,
Speaker 1: Spain's dictator. What do you mean? He may like, I
Speaker 1: mean some there's some places like there's just refugee General's
Speaker 1: left and right. Man, you just gotta He sounds like mean,
Speaker 1: he's just stumbling into all this stuff that is kind
Speaker 1: of his life. He's like I was in Westconsin and
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm gonna go Cuba for a minute,
Speaker 1: and people are like, okay, Robert. So he writes an
Speaker 1: article based on his his conversation with this general and
Speaker 1: it did well, and Brown struck up a friendly acquaintance
Speaker 1: ship with the general who had helped to train Castro's guerrillas.
Speaker 1: So this guy gives Brown a copy of a book
Speaker 1: called A hundred Fifty Questions for a Guerrilla and it's
Speaker 1: the militant kind, not the Yeah, it's a manual for
Speaker 1: like so funny. I just picked up Males book on
Speaker 1: guerrilla warfare, and the first thing I thought was like,
Speaker 1: woll I was reading. I was like, so he talked,
Speaker 1: guerrilla is to fun This is the dumbest joker. But
Speaker 1: it made me laugh for a good fifteen minutes. And
Speaker 1: I haven't been able to start that book because there's
Speaker 1: time I do right. Uh. So it's a manual for
Speaker 1: like how to wage an insurgent war? Right? Um. So
Speaker 1: he gets a copy of this book from this general
Speaker 1: and he instantly sees dollar signs, and he opens a
Speaker 1: publishing company to translate the book into English and sell
Speaker 1: it in the United States. So that's his his first business.
Speaker 1: That's where the most guerillas are. Ye. So Robert worked
Speaker 1: as a reporter for a little while, writing articles for
Speaker 1: Guns Magazine and similar publications. But as the Vietnam War
Speaker 1: kicked off for the US in the nineteen sixties, are
Speaker 1: simpler then what you gonna make a magazine? What's about goods?
Speaker 1: I got a dirty one is called jugs? They really
Speaker 1: should emerged. I feel like the gas station. So the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War kicks off and Robert Brown finds himself drawn
Speaker 1: back to his dream of experience in combat. He rejoined
Speaker 1: active duty and became a Green Beret, serving from nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight to nineteen sixty nine. It was easier. They're
Speaker 1: just saying stuff. It's like a weird mad lib of
Speaker 1: like this dude's life because he was like, he's bad
Speaker 1: at desk work, couldn't be a fire pilot. Then he's like,
Speaker 1: then he west went to Wisconsin, got really good at
Speaker 1: desk work. And then he's like, funk this, I'm going
Speaker 1: to Cuba and doing some weird lights spying. That's our
Speaker 1: show again. With all of these guys, it's an ability
Speaker 1: to pivot that makes them great. It's impressive, and he's
Speaker 1: a pivot. So he pivots all the way to Vietnam
Speaker 1: and gets horribly wounded at nineteen sixty nine in a
Speaker 1: mortar attack. He pivot. So he was pretty good at
Speaker 1: a soldier up until getting wounded. Um, but he would
Speaker 1: and it would eventually retire from the service as a
Speaker 1: lieutenant colonel. But sadly for him at least, the Vietnam
Speaker 1: War did not end well for the United States. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry if that's a spoiler to anybody. Um. He returned
Speaker 1: home to a nation that widely considered the war he'd
Speaker 1: nearly died in to have been a colossal waste of money.
Speaker 1: Many protesters called soldiers like him baby killers, and Brown
Speaker 1: quickly recognized that he was part of a new generation
Speaker 1: of retired warrior who felt increasingly isolated from mainstream American society.
Speaker 1: See World War two had been this like widely celebrated
Speaker 1: collective endeavor, but Korea and Vietnam weren't, and that left
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of veterans feeling like their service was
Speaker 1: neither appreciated nor understood, and a big chunk of those
Speaker 1: men in including Robert Brown, still found themselves drawn to
Speaker 1: stories of combat and daring do. In nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: the same year that Vietnam War ended, Robert Brown found
Speaker 1: himself traveling around Africa and basically living as a war tourist,
Speaker 1: visiting combat zones just to hang out somewhere exciting. You
Speaker 1: never done that, Billy, I never thought that that's the thing. Like, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go watch a little bit war for a while.
Speaker 1: Have I Have I ever told you about Iraqi? Margharita's
Speaker 1: by the way, Look I get it, Like I used
Speaker 1: to not understand like people watching the Civil War like
Speaker 1: from a field, but now like I understand, like some
Speaker 1: people just like to fight. So you just go like, hey,
Speaker 1: we'll watch him do it. But the way he's doing
Speaker 1: is not no cool. So while he's touring around and
Speaker 1: just hanging out in war zones, Robert Brown befriends some
Speaker 1: mercenaries on their way to Oman to put down an
Speaker 1: insurrection for the Sultan. Spirit Air spirit Air. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: meeting these guys gives Robert Brown the idea to write
Speaker 1: the Oman Ministry of Defense inquiring about taking the job himself.
Speaker 1: And they send him a contract, just like a blank
Speaker 1: contract to be a mercenary for the government of Oman.
Speaker 1: And well, no, he he recognizes immediately anyone who's just
Speaker 1: gonna send me become a mercenary letter site unseen in
Speaker 1: the mail, probably don't want to fight for that army.
Speaker 1: Not a great idea, but he has a smarter idea
Speaker 1: for what to do with it, So go on. He
Speaker 1: takes out ads in a series of gun magazines reading
Speaker 1: want to be a mercenary in the Middle East, Send
Speaker 1: five dollars. All y'all think this through. This was not
Speaker 1: Internet where you're like click, that's hilarious. That was This
Speaker 1: is gonna take some time. This is some errands involved.
Speaker 1: It's like four to six weeks to get the letter there. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you gotta wait for the money to come back.
Speaker 1: He's all this through. He's a smart man, So when
Speaker 1: people would send him five dollars, he would just xerox
Speaker 1: the contract he'd received and mail it to them. Brown
Speaker 1: later recalled, I'm not mad at him at all. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is kind of brilliant. Yeah. I don't get to
Speaker 1: where he's a bastard yet. So Brown later recalled, I
Speaker 1: got scores of replies. Newsweek spotted this and did an
Speaker 1: article on my ad, and it went through the roof.
Speaker 1: I was getting replies from people in Bangladesh, Greece. I
Speaker 1: was in the army in Turkey for five years. I
Speaker 1: want to be a mercenary. I realized I was onto something.
Speaker 1: You are. Yeah, it's not a good thing. You're out too. No,
Speaker 1: and it's unlikely that any of Brown's clients wound up
Speaker 1: actually fighting froman One assumes most men who volunteered to
Speaker 1: join a war effort based on an ad in a
Speaker 1: magazine are not particularly enticing specimens of soldiery um. But
Speaker 1: the financial the financial success of the endeavor convinces Brown
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of money to be made and
Speaker 1: playing to the dream in every man's heart, that he might,
Speaker 1: and the right circumstances, be a fucking badass. So this
Speaker 1: is the thing, he realizes, and so Robert Brown uses
Speaker 1: the ten thousand dollars he made scamming gun nuts to
Speaker 1: fund the creation of a new magazine, Soldier of Fortune.
Speaker 1: That was the appropriate That was the right amount of
Speaker 1: applause for that. Yeah, he's like one gun fell out,
Speaker 1: just fell apart, So Brown stated, go with this magazine
Speaker 1: was to rehabilitate the image of the warrior in American society.
Speaker 1: I like him a lot. Yeah, And Soldier Fortune magazine
Speaker 1: probably would have just been a blip on the radar
Speaker 1: if it weren't for a real stroke of marketing genius
Speaker 1: by Robert Brown. Rather than portraying or angling it as
Speaker 1: a magazine for military veterans, of which there are only
Speaker 1: a few, and even a smaller number who glorify what
Speaker 1: actually happens. In more, he fashioned Soldier of Fortune as
Speaker 1: the journal of professional adventurers, a magazine for mercenaries and
Speaker 1: people who think would be cool to be a mercenary?
Speaker 1: Do you like hiking? And pretended so well, they won't
Speaker 1: let you get boys life anymore. So Uh then, as now,
Speaker 1: there were at most a couple of thousand English speaking
Speaker 1: works in the world who were actually mercenaries. But Brown's
Speaker 1: real target was not hard bitten mercenaries. It was aging
Speaker 1: baby boomers who thought they probably could have been hard
Speaker 1: bitten mercenaries if they hadn't gotten that girl pregnant back
Speaker 1: in sixty two. All that mud, it would stoker, I'd
Speaker 1: have been Vietnam towards some ligaments doing fucking. Here's how
Speaker 1: Mike Royko of the Chicago Tribune described the magazine in nine.
Speaker 1: It's directed to professional mercenaries, men who will fight for
Speaker 1: pay in those who want to hire them. But since
Speaker 1: mercenaries represent only a tiny portion of the reading population,
Speaker 1: the magazine tries to broaden its appeal to include those
Speaker 1: who might be called war fans and the weapon their
Speaker 1: work through a magazine. Yeah. So. The first ever issue
Speaker 1: of Soldier of Fortune features a glossy color picture of
Speaker 1: a soldier with a rifle behind a barbed wire fence
Speaker 1: with a red sun setting in the background. The whole
Speaker 1: image was cast in a green tent. Is it being
Speaker 1: viewed through night vision goggles? Articles included You're gonna like this,
Speaker 1: billy underwater knife fighting techniques, lunge, lunge again, free and
Speaker 1: it it tells you kind of where I am on
Speaker 1: this spectrum that I get understanding, Like, yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to know what it's like to fight with a knife
Speaker 1: in the water, but I recognize that having techniques applied
Speaker 1: to it as ridiculous, right, like, do it better? So
Speaker 1: in addition to urban knife fighting techniques or underwater knife
Speaker 1: fighting technique, sorry, urban street Survival part one. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: guess we all assume how racist that article was, right, like,
Speaker 1: I don't need to like. Yeah, and then an article
Speaker 1: titled American mercenaries in Africa. Now that last article, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna guess the person who said, huh knows where we're
Speaker 1: going with us. I don't like it. It was a
Speaker 1: feature about the conflict in Rhodesia. Yeah, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: a lot about Rhodesia right now. I was having what
Speaker 1: do you know about Rhodesia? I don't know much, and
Speaker 1: judging by their reaction, I wish I could leave. I
Speaker 1: was like, this is a fun one. Nothing bad has happened.
Speaker 1: It can't all be underwater knife it can't all be
Speaker 1: underwater knife fighting. But you really can only do that once.
Speaker 1: It's a general rule. So Rhodesia was a white supremacist
Speaker 1: state in modern days Zimbabwe that broke away from the
Speaker 1: British Empire in nineteen sixty five over the issue of
Speaker 1: whether or not black people should be able to vote.
Speaker 1: The three percent of the nation that was white did
Speaker 1: not think they should be. Okay, from a logic standpoint,
Speaker 1: if you want power, I can see where they're like,
Speaker 1: we've been so shitty to you guys for so long. Shit,
Speaker 1: what if you all can't vote? Nope? Fuck, I feel
Speaker 1: like three per cents enough for us to keep a
Speaker 1: lid on this thing, this wanting to vote thing. So
Speaker 1: just jesus, I'm gonna read a quote to you, Billy
Speaker 1: from Soldier of Fortune magazine describing the Rhodesian conflict, and
Speaker 1: they have a different take on it than I do.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty five, Therhodesian government got together with the
Speaker 1: British government to try to sort out a way to
Speaker 1: end the war that was smoldering and about to explode.
Speaker 1: Ian Smith was the governor of Rhodesia and leader of
Speaker 1: the Rhodesia Front. The insurgents were on the move. The
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five talks accomplished nothing with the Brits wanted
Speaker 1: was for the Blacks to get the vote. One man,
Speaker 1: one vote. Of course, that would mean the Blacks would
Speaker 1: get into power, So the white Rhodesian's unilaterally implemented the
Speaker 1: Universal Declaration of Independence in nineteen sixty five. So that's
Speaker 1: our soldier of Fortune magazine, the country they wanted to
Speaker 1: You can't have your country, so you're not read history.
Speaker 1: So a lot of Rhodesia's black residents decide that we
Speaker 1: should probably overthrow the government, which is a reasonable conclusion
Speaker 1: to reach given the circumstances. Um, yeah, I bet they
Speaker 1: all came together at once. I mean, like, hey, the
Speaker 1: British Empire is all on the reasonable side of things.
Speaker 1: I think these guys might be really bad. Yeah. Before
Speaker 1: Oh so, having lived under an oppressive capitalist system their
Speaker 1: whole lives, most of these rebels decided communism sounded pretty good. Uh.
Speaker 1: The U. S s R. In China wound up backing
Speaker 1: separate guerrilla armies, and the two fought each other sometimes,
Speaker 1: but they put enough pressure on the embattled white minority
Speaker 1: that things began to get very dire for the Rhodesian government.
Speaker 1: This racist nation's problems were compounded by the fact that
Speaker 1: virtually the whole world, except for South Africa, slammed Rhodesia
Speaker 1: with sanctions as life in this time, why not South Africa?
Speaker 1: You know, Billy, I've never heard anyone theorize on that.
Speaker 1: Look it up later. Yeah. As life in the tiny,
Speaker 1: landlocked country grew more difficult for a large grew more difficult,
Speaker 1: a large chunk of the white population fled the country,
Speaker 1: mostly for South Africa. Stuck, you guys, I know a place.
Speaker 1: Studying there is going to be interesting. Stuck between a
Speaker 1: rock and a hard place. The Rhodesian government decided to
Speaker 1: turn their national struggle and struggle into a cost celeb
Speaker 1: for the racist right wing worldwide. Of course, they didn't
Speaker 1: frame it as a racist crusade to stop black self determination. Instead,
Speaker 1: they build it as a fight against the encroachment of communism.
Speaker 1: Prime Minister Ian Smith called his nation the ultimate bastion
Speaker 1: against communism in the on the African continent, and this
Speaker 1: worked pretty well. Mainstream American Republicans can tended to embrace
Speaker 1: the idea. William F. Buckley. William F. Buckley found it,
Speaker 1: organized the Friends of Rhodesian Independence campaign. He just forgot
Speaker 1: his mask. This camp pain work to spread propaganda to
Speaker 1: Americans about what a cool place Rhodesia was, but no
Speaker 1: single public William historically, motherfuckers, what's your legacy? I'm a motherfucker,
Speaker 1: and I made a lot of money being a motherfucker,
Speaker 1: but I don't spend it like you think I would. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: Rhodesia had a lot of support in the worldwide right wing,
Speaker 1: but no single publication did as much to popular popularize
Speaker 1: the Rhodesian cause as Soldier of Fortune magazine. Starting in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, they ran a series of lurid articles
Speaker 1: about the American volunteers already fighting in Rhodesia. Interviews with
Speaker 1: these men focused on the failures of the US to
Speaker 1: stop Communism from getting a foothold in Africa, which was
Speaker 1: heightened after congressional democrats stopped the CIA from aiding fascists
Speaker 1: and Angola against the socialist regime. One mercenary in that
Speaker 1: first Soldier of Fortune issue complained, the West isn't doing
Speaker 1: its job. The US especially isn't doing its duty. If
Speaker 1: they're too scared to fight the communists, than people like
Speaker 1: me have to act independently. I consider it my duty
Speaker 1: to fight in Rhodesia. After Vietnam and and Goala, we
Speaker 1: can't afford to lose any more countries. I ain't allowed
Speaker 1: to kill in America. Let me go over endition killing.
Speaker 1: So while Soldier of Fortune was smart enough to not
Speaker 1: throw out any racial slurs, the racism in its Rhodesian
Speaker 1: coverage was pretty obvious. At one point, a mercenary was
Speaker 1: quoted as saying, what we have here is an ideal
Speaker 1: core of white people who are able to raise the
Speaker 1: standard of living among the Africans without US conditions will
Speaker 1: decline rapidly. But you guys, he didn't say slurs. He
Speaker 1: didn't say slurs, didn't say slurs. I bet he has
Speaker 1: strong opinions about the fact that that's free speech, and
Speaker 1: he should be able to. But let me communicate my idea.
Speaker 1: After Vietnam, the US had probably the highest population of
Speaker 1: unemployed combat veterans in the world. A few of these
Speaker 1: men joined the Rhodesian fighting effort and rose to high
Speaker 1: levels and its military establishment, but most volunteers were far
Speaker 1: from hardened operators. Instead, there were folks who had missed
Speaker 1: out on their chance to fight in Vietnam but wanted
Speaker 1: desperately to experience combat. Oh wish we had videos. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys to do right, Yes, it's like a truth.
Speaker 1: So for these men, Soldier of Fortune published a series
Speaker 1: of articles written by major Nick Lamprett, the chief recruiting
Speaker 1: officer for the Rhodesian Army. He provided step by step
Speaker 1: advice for how they could apply to join and be
Speaker 1: flown out to the country to be inducted into the
Speaker 1: army as conscripts. Lamp Preck promised that the work would
Speaker 1: be difficult but rewarding. Sometimes there's a delay when I
Speaker 1: have to switch pieces of paper that normally gets edited
Speaker 1: out by Daniels, So let's give a shout out to him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, and by Chris, who's not here tonight. But
Speaker 1: it's also great. Yeah, let's give it up for Chris too.
Speaker 1: So Chris, Okay, this is Nick Lamprect. Rhodesia has many
Speaker 1: things to offer, good Rhodesian beer, friendly, populous and what
Speaker 1: I wanted to stop, motherfucker goddamnit, and what I would
Speaker 1: describe as a free and easy, unhurry ways of life,
Speaker 1: of wide open spaces. And they're filled with some of
Speaker 1: those friendly locals with sniper rifles shooting at us for
Speaker 1: unexplicable reasons. They hate these cans, Yeah, they hate these
Speaker 1: cans of good Rhodesian beer. For years, Soldier of Fortune,
Speaker 1: rand glossy recruiting articles with full page spreads featuring the
Speaker 1: elite Rhodesian Light Infantry and sell US scouts locked in
Speaker 1: glorious combat. Some four hundred men were eventually induced to
Speaker 1: join the fight by soldier of Fortune magazine, and as
Speaker 1: you might expect, they were not very good at it.
Speaker 1: Most Rhodesian it's hot. Yeah. Most Rhodesian volunteers were people
Speaker 1: whose lives in the US were going badly enough that
Speaker 1: they opted to join the army based on whatever I'm doing.
Speaker 1: Feels worse than joining the army based on a magazine ad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been there. Yeah, I've been what's in the back
Speaker 1: of magazine the guys that were that's a glossy magazine
Speaker 1: ad and it said beer, we're not great fighters. No, no,
Speaker 1: not not ideal soldiers. No so uh. In nine, one
Speaker 1: reporter noted the majority found the routine too leugh to,
Speaker 1: too rough to last more than a few months. The
Speaker 1: desertion rate among American citizens who have joined the Rhodesian
Speaker 1: Army over the past two years has estimated to run
Speaker 1: about a Yeah, that's pretty great, but I don't want
Speaker 1: to meet this. No, no, no, they like this is
Speaker 1: there's some legitimately scary guys among yeah, and of course
Speaker 1: a good number of the American volunteers did not survive
Speaker 1: their time in Rhodesia. John allan Coe, Yeah, that's fine.
Speaker 1: To clap a lot of claps for dead Rhodesians. That's
Speaker 1: what I like to hear. No, Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: John allan Coe, a medic from Cleveland, Ohio, joint based
Speaker 1: on a Soldier of Fortune article and died in combat
Speaker 1: almost as soon as he arrived in the country. Soldier
Speaker 1: Dangerous Overthing. Soldier of Fortune published a hagiographic article quoting
Speaker 1: him as saying this. Since coming to Rhodesia, I've often
Speaker 1: heard people remark that it's inevitable for the country and
Speaker 1: all of Southern Africa to follow the winds of change
Speaker 1: and go the same way as other former allan ease
Speaker 1: to the north. This is rubbish and only indicates a
Speaker 1: lack of fighting spirit, guts and the will to rule
Speaker 1: a civilization built by better men. Would that last part
Speaker 1: meaning he was being vague? I don't know that. They
Speaker 1: couldn't ask him a follow up question because, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: because a better man got him. Better man got him so.
Speaker 1: Soldier of Fortune articles on Rhodesia regular rarely made blatant lies.
Speaker 1: It was a lot easier to just ignore facts that
Speaker 1: didn't reinforce their narrative. And one piece they noted, it's
Speaker 1: a lot easier. It makes everything easier. The young rivaled
Speaker 1: Sella Scouts, the covert elite special force regiment of a
Speaker 1: thousand that consisted of black and white, with a majority
Speaker 1: of blacks, were credited with gathering spot on intelligence for
Speaker 1: the regular army. And it is true that the Rhodesian
Speaker 1: armed forces were mostly black, but Soldier of Fortune neglected
Speaker 1: to mention that on the white men were allowed to
Speaker 1: be officers. Yeah, like nobo, are y'all shocked about this
Speaker 1: is consistent by ignoring the uncomfortable reality of Rhodesia. Soldier
Speaker 1: of Fortune succeeded in painting a picture of a gallant
Speaker 1: lost cause fight. And it's not wildly different from this.
Speaker 1: The from the lost Cause narrative of the Confederacy. Actual
Speaker 1: articles from real journalists who visited Rhodesia, like this nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine Washington Post article made the reality clear. Quote.
Speaker 1: The first impressions are of the rural South I knew
Speaker 1: as a boy in the nineteen thirties, Black maids and
Speaker 1: houseboys earning twenty to sixty dollars a month, fetching boo,
Speaker 1: saying master and boss. Black labors working for twelve to
Speaker 1: twenty dollars a month plus rations, cluster and grass grasshots
Speaker 1: on the white farmer's land, like the Mississippi sharecroppers of
Speaker 1: the remembered past past. They are like children. A housewife says,
Speaker 1: you have to do everything for them. You have to
Speaker 1: stand over them to get anything done. It's more trouble
Speaker 1: than it's worth sometimes, but they are very happy people.
Speaker 1: It's not like South Africa. A young woman asks if
Speaker 1: we have a dishwash, a clothes washer, and a dryer.
Speaker 1: She laughs, you know what we call them here, and
Speaker 1: then she says what is essentially the N word, thank
Speaker 1: you for coming to the comedy show. The only part
Speaker 1: of history that's like this. Yeah, No, everything else is
Speaker 1: actually pretty great. Yeah. The Rhodesian Bush War ended in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, when rebel succeeded in blowing up the
Speaker 1: nation's entire strategic fuel reserve. Probably shouldn't have kept it
Speaker 1: all in the one place. Not a great call, especially
Speaker 1: on beer. Not Yeah. A final toll more than eleven
Speaker 1: hundred Rhodesian soldiers died, along with roughly ten thousand rebels
Speaker 1: and more than twenty thousand civilians. It is unlikely that
Speaker 1: the few hundred mercenary Soldier of Fortune induced to join
Speaker 1: had a measurable impact on the confliction, but they did
Speaker 1: an awful lot to influence how Rhodes has gone on
Speaker 1: to be remembered by racists around the world. Remember that
Speaker 1: Soldier of Fortune article I quoted from earlier that aked
Speaker 1: about how weird it was that the Blacks wanted to
Speaker 1: vote unfortunately. Now, when would you guess that article was written, Billy?
Speaker 1: Probably like the seventies, right, probably, No, it was two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve. You guys, I've been following the news. Yeah, somebody,
Speaker 1: I'll need to go home and google the news. You're
Speaker 1: gonna be like, what we should do, something we should
Speaker 1: we need to do? Maybe find us a strategic well
Speaker 1: written No, I'm not gonna probably shouldn't make statements like
Speaker 1: that here. Yeah, so I should note before we get
Speaker 1: onto the more fun wacky stuff that three years after
Speaker 1: that article was published, in two thousand and fifteen, Dylan
Speaker 1: Ruth walked into a black church in Charleston and shot
Speaker 1: nine people to death. His ated goal was to provoke
Speaker 1: a race war, and he left behind a manifesto titled
Speaker 1: The Last Rhodesian. Yep, cool, Yep, there's a whole road
Speaker 1: easier chunk at YouTube two. You do not want to
Speaker 1: read the comments? No, No, you don't. So did you?
Speaker 1: Did you read the comment? Yeah? It's not good? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I figured you did. Yeah, so um. Most of Soldier
Speaker 1: of Fortune's argument in favor of the Rhodesian government came
Speaker 1: from the fact that the government it replaced was ruled
Speaker 1: by Robert Mugabe, hitler loving monster who killed a lot
Speaker 1: of people. Mugabe was absolutely terrible, and there's no arguing
Speaker 1: with that. But the argument Robert Brown would make that
Speaker 1: the Rhodesian government was the only thing that held Zimbabwe
Speaker 1: back from tyranny was nonsense because the reality is that
Speaker 1: Mugabi didn't take control of the guerrilla forces fighting Rhodesian's
Speaker 1: government until the previous commander was assassinated by Rhodesian forces
Speaker 1: in the late seventies. Mugabi rose to power because there
Speaker 1: was a civil war and he was good at fighting it.
Speaker 1: Rides had transitioned into a democracy in nineteen six five,
Speaker 1: Mugabi wouldn't have come to Power War s o f
Speaker 1: S articles also ignored the brutal realities of the Rhodesian regime,
Speaker 1: which jailed peaceful black political leaders and moss and employed
Speaker 1: a torture technique on them known as skull bashing, which
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't be referred to as a technique. It's not
Speaker 1: a technique if it's just in the name. It's just
Speaker 1: what you're doing to them. That's not a technique that
Speaker 1: that's not that you need to learn. That's just human instinct.
Speaker 1: While the Rhodesian Bush War was a disaster for humanity,
Speaker 1: it was a great time for Robert Brown and the
Speaker 1: writers of Soldier of Fortune magazine. They got to take
Speaker 1: all sorts of little trips to the country and bring
Speaker 1: in guns and take part in gunfights because like they
Speaker 1: were helping bring in soldiers, so it's like, sure, you
Speaker 1: can go, you can go shoot at strangers in the
Speaker 1: middle of the savannah with us, like absolutely, So it
Speaker 1: was like a really fun time for them, and it
Speaker 1: was a perfect situation for Brown. He got to play
Speaker 1: soldier whenever he wanted and then head home when things
Speaker 1: got really scary and you didn't have to hang around
Speaker 1: for strategic oil reserves blowing up in the light. It's
Speaker 1: like a rich guy hunter. Yeah, yeah, that's what it is.
Speaker 1: It's like those dudes that go up and like my
Speaker 1: friend does it in Alaska. He tracks bears and they
Speaker 1: get the thing and then he's like, literally just do
Speaker 1: everything and they come over and they pull the trigger.
Speaker 1: It's like it's good for conservation. He like explained it
Speaker 1: to me. He's like, but funk does motherfucker's forever also,
Speaker 1: And I was like, I was like, I'm so conflicted.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to tell you. He's scary hunt bears,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's like it's like volunteerism,
Speaker 1: but with war. Yeah, yeah, it's yeah, So that that's
Speaker 1: what the Soldier of Fortune writers get up to. Well,
Speaker 1: this is all going on, and the whole performance did
Speaker 1: great things for Soldier of Fortune subscription numbers. By the
Speaker 1: end of the war, more than a hundred thousand people
Speaker 1: were signed up for the magazine. So it turns out
Speaker 1: this is a good business. Hyeah, don't worry. Nothing like
Speaker 1: this ever happened again. Repeatedly fixed it. Yeah, we learned
Speaker 1: our lessons. A brief FBI investigation into whether or not
Speaker 1: the magazine was breaking the law by soliciting mercenaries. Also,
Speaker 1: how drum up interest in Soldier of Fortune? Okay, that
Speaker 1: is a good question I've been had in the back.
Speaker 1: I was like, Yo, can you do that? Yes, you can.
Speaker 1: And here's why. See, the men who joined the Rhodesian
Speaker 1: military were conscripted, so they became regular soldiers, so they
Speaker 1: weren't mercenaries. So it wasn't illegal to induce people to
Speaker 1: do this. That makes sense, right, everybody's on board. I
Speaker 1: love a loophole, you know what I mean? No, I go,
Speaker 1: I'm not a mercenary by loophole. Yeah. And so, as
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies rolled to an end, Robert Brown continued
Speaker 1: to send his writers off to little wars around the world.
Speaker 1: He focused primarily on struggles between communist and anti communist forces,
Speaker 1: like the fighting in Angola. Brown was canny enough not
Speaker 1: to solicit mercenaries directly this time, but he did allow
Speaker 1: his readers to place classified ads in the magazines with
Speaker 1: no restrictions whatsoever. Those are good. Yeah, you guys ever
Speaker 1: been on the internet, That's what that is. One of
Speaker 1: these ads caught the eye of a con artist or
Speaker 1: the fact that soldier forts had this classified section caught
Speaker 1: the eye of a con artist named David Buffkin, a
Speaker 1: former I know, right, like what's in a name? You know?
Speaker 1: David Buffkin as a man who's started Soldier of Fortune.
Speaker 1: I got a idea well prior to finding that he
Speaker 1: was a crop duster um, and he decided that crop
Speaker 1: dusting had gotten old and he would rather be a
Speaker 1: mercenary recruiter. So he started putting up ads in local
Speaker 1: newspapers and Soldier of Fortune magazine, trying to raise a
Speaker 1: hundred mercenaries to fight against the communists in Angola. To
Speaker 1: make his case seem more legit, he lied and claimed
Speaker 1: that he'd been given an eighty thousand dollar contract by
Speaker 1: the CIA for this. Yeah let checks out, yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: So a few dozen would be warriors reached out to Buffkin, but,
Speaker 1: as one actual mercenary later recalled, Buffkin obviously had no
Speaker 1: funds available. He operated out of motels, He had no office.
Speaker 1: Potential recruits had to pay their own travel expenses. It
Speaker 1: was definitely a shoester operation. Now, if I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: fight for your country, you gotta pay for me to
Speaker 1: fly out there. That's how he said. Motels, Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna give you a lot of exposure, though it's gonna
Speaker 1: really help your career. So a few very dumb men
Speaker 1: did agree to join. Former CIA officer George Bacon read
Speaker 1: this ad on Soldier of Fortune magazine, enjoyed the war effort,
Speaker 1: which the CIA does a lot of shady ship. But
Speaker 1: let's not pretend they're smarter than they are. Okay, see
Speaker 1: that's someone they got. He programmed and it's not right.
Speaker 1: And then he thought he was done, and he's like, no,
Speaker 1: I read the thing. It still happened. I'm in the
Speaker 1: sag and right, oh we baking up. Yeah, we did
Speaker 1: some damage to Bacon. He might have been one of
Speaker 1: the ones they gave too much acid to. Uh So,
Speaker 1: like many Rhodesian volunteers, Bacon was basically immediately since he
Speaker 1: and his fellow antique communist fighters were vastly outnumbered by
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers. I think there was
Speaker 1: like a last second thing where he was like, this
Speaker 1: is the yeah, you know what, this doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: the c I oh no, it's up dead. I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, the Bay of Pigs wasn't that long ago,
Speaker 1: So this kind of does feel like the c Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: written all over yea, who's yeah, there's thirty of us
Speaker 1: in a lot of Cuban Army guys. Yeah, this kind
Speaker 1: of feels like the CIA. I'm dead. Daniel Gearhardt, a
Speaker 1: thirty four year old Vietnam veteran and financial distress, also replied.
Speaker 1: His wife told him this was a terrible idea, but
Speaker 1: Buffkin managed to convince him, and soon he found himself
Speaker 1: over and come to He was capt it instantly, without
Speaker 1: ever getting into common. His wife and family begged President
Speaker 1: gerald Ford to do something. But if you know one
Speaker 1: thing about gerald Ford, no, no, no, not unless you're
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon. So the government of Angolas they made that dirty.
Speaker 1: That's a weird reaction. So the government of Angola sentenced
Speaker 1: him to death and executed him with a handful of
Speaker 1: other mercenaries in nineteen seventy six. He and George we're
Speaker 1: not the first soldier of Fortune readers to die as
Speaker 1: a result of the magazine's classic classified ads section, and
Speaker 1: they would not be the last. We have a legacy
Speaker 1: to ophold here now. Billy I found a copy of
Speaker 1: the magazine from the Year of Our Lord nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: and I'd like to read you a handful of the
Speaker 1: different ads in it. Are you you want to? Yeah?
Speaker 1: This is this is don't worry no more depressing racism,
Speaker 1: some depressing murder, and some depressing racism, but entertaining murder.
Speaker 1: Probably at the entertaining murder for something. I noticed that
Speaker 1: and then like somebody else does, and you guys like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a bit of a whip lash episode. We're all
Speaker 1: over the place tonight. So add number one male years old,
Speaker 1: five ft nine pounds, desire security position any location, excellent
Speaker 1: marksman and speaks fair German. I'm anti social and prefer
Speaker 1: working alone. That's like the Vegas like, just let me
Speaker 1: kiel a German. Du you need a German kield, I'll
Speaker 1: do it. I'm quiet. Oh we speak? Ohh I was?
Speaker 1: I read something else and speaks German and likes to shoot.
Speaker 1: But and anti social. Oh there's a lot of bad
Speaker 1: people in this magazine. Yeah. The next ads shrying to
Speaker 1: help you. I get it. That's bad. It took me
Speaker 1: a minute and I'm glad it did. So. The next
Speaker 1: ad x C I A attach a seeks area in
Speaker 1: us to it actually does, but like like proud boy
Speaker 1: kind of racist, so it seeks area in US to
Speaker 1: fulfill purpose of pro Western ideals and their success. Tradecrafts
Speaker 1: many cut out, sanitization, sanctification, playback, disinformation, bag jobs, false
Speaker 1: flag legends, peeps and sounds, sneak ease, and sisters available.
Speaker 1: I don't know what sisters means in this context. I
Speaker 1: bet he'd use the same thing on his dating profile up.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, thirty years later and this is just an
Speaker 1: okay Cupid Yeah, Snakey's Oh this ad billy former agent
Speaker 1: in place, qualified in counter ops, SERAI brief Debrief, War
Speaker 1: Planning interrogator to to three and three oh eight arms dead,
Speaker 1: serious inquiries only contact micro Data Systems of Huntington's Beach, California.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. I don't worry bullshit the next ad. I'll
Speaker 1: live an orange Gammy's Madman's Book of Formulas, how to
Speaker 1: make step by step goodies like knockout drops, explosives, silencer's poisons,
Speaker 1: letter bomb, and many others you need to know to
Speaker 1: make a letter bomb. Knockout drops. I bet they're good.
Speaker 1: I bet they work. I bet that's where Cosby got his.
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. It was probably a real doctor. You
Speaker 1: guys goome off and the last little lad we're gonna
Speaker 1: read Billy wanted Patriots, especially veterans who see the coming
Speaker 1: national crises and desire to be prepared right to for
Speaker 1: free information to Christian Patriots Defense League. Yeah yeah, we've
Speaker 1: moved on to Christian mingles. What you're saying, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: farmers only I do whenever I see Farmers Only, I
Speaker 1: can't imagine someone saying the name of that service without
Speaker 1: holding a gun. Yeah, no, no, I think the people
Speaker 1: that came up, but that we're like, yeah, now, the
Speaker 1: slogan for Soldier of Fortune magazine, displayed displayed in vibrant
Speaker 1: color on a poster in their Boulder, Colorado office, was
Speaker 1: killing is our business, and business is good. Actually, our
Speaker 1: business is a magazine and we most get just you know,
Speaker 1: we do a lot of ink writing. They're all fat.
Speaker 1: And I have to say, though, like the fact that
Speaker 1: their business is killing and it's good was not as
Speaker 1: untrue as you'd think, because throughout the early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: Soldier of Fortune did a brisk business and selling ads
Speaker 1: to contract killers. Yeah yeah, yeah, it's wild because like
Speaker 1: they kind of invented the dark web before the dark
Speaker 1: but while all of them, the hitman on the dark
Speaker 1: web are just FBI agents. Like this, this actually happened,
Speaker 1: like real people did murders through these. Yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote now from a media I'll be getting people in
Speaker 1: trouble here. I'm gonna quote now from a media matters
Speaker 1: right up one of them. Knoxville, Tennessee one of them,
Speaker 1: and Knoxville, Tennessee. Nightclub operator and former prison guard named
Speaker 1: Richard Michael Savage said that he received thirty to forty
Speaker 1: calls a week after he placed this ad in the
Speaker 1: June issue of the magazine Gun for Higher. Thirty seven
Speaker 1: year old professional mercenary desires jobs Vietnam veteran, discreet and
Speaker 1: very private bodyguard, courier, and other special skills all jobs considered.
Speaker 1: Which is a nice way of saying, I'll kill people.
Speaker 1: I'll kill him. Yeah, I'm from Tennessee. I'll kill somebody.
Speaker 1: That was one of the ads. I'm from Tennessee. Some
Speaker 1: people don't understand, like the volunteers, they think that's our nickname. No,
Speaker 1: that's because whenever there was a kid like war or anything,
Speaker 1: every Tennessee and his wit it's okay to go kill people.
Speaker 1: There I'll be there. I don't give a ship. Which
Speaker 1: side is just something I'm good at. And the Tennessee
Speaker 1: Mercenaries doesn't have the ring to it, the volume, because
Speaker 1: you gotta sail that ship. You know, we're learning, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. So uh. One of the people
Speaker 1: who called Richard Savage wanted to recruit a small army
Speaker 1: to rate a gold mine in Alaska. He's go to
Speaker 1: a bar in Alaska. It's it's really it is not
Speaker 1: hard to find army man looking for work there. Who's
Speaker 1: got a gun? Oh? You brought him? Follow me, That's it.
Speaker 1: I'll be there in May. Another caller pitched him on
Speaker 1: a plot to steal an army payroll in South America,
Speaker 1: and based on its interview with a friend of Chard
Speaker 1: Savage who was in contact with him during this whole period,
Speaker 1: People magazine reported this in quote. Yet another wanted to
Speaker 1: rate Nicaragua and promised to supply guns, camouflage, clothing, rubber boats,
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars for each mercenary when the raid was completed.
Speaker 1: Savage was enthusiastic about every hair braids. It's a good deal.
Speaker 1: I do it. Yeah, sure, why not? You don't have
Speaker 1: to complete the mission, no, you get the money gets.
Speaker 1: Savage was enthusiastic about every hairbrain scheme he heard, but
Speaker 1: ultimately was persuaded to concentrate on murder. So if the
Speaker 1: caller sounded discreet, Savage would ask for a round trip
Speaker 1: for a round trip airline ticket and a thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: the two would meet face to face, then feel each
Speaker 1: other out until each was certain of the other's credentials.
Speaker 1: It's a good business to being getting paid thousand dollars
Speaker 1: just to talk about killing a guy that's not against
Speaker 1: the law. Probably anyway, I got a new business idea, Billy.
Speaker 1: I think d C is the place for that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in a way, Robert, Yeah, sorry, I just gave that
Speaker 1: out a little early there. So, um, I know, I know,
Speaker 1: I'm fucking hacking a fraud. So Savage took on a
Speaker 1: job to kill Richard Brown, an Atlanta man he and
Speaker 1: to triggerman also recruited through soldier of Fortune magazine, ambushed
Speaker 1: Brown and his teenage son with AMAC eleven. They killed
Speaker 1: Brown and wounded his boy. Four months after this, Savage
Speaker 1: was hired to kill Anita Spearman of Palm Beach, Florida.
Speaker 1: He subcontracted the head out he had. Another Soldier of
Speaker 1: Fortune reader. Yeah, listen, I got a lot going on.
Speaker 1: A guy named and at Fast in my work for me.
Speaker 1: So Savage and the guy that he subcontracted were paid
Speaker 1: twenty dollars for the hit by Spearman's husband, himself a
Speaker 1: big fan of Soldier of Fortune magazine. Another hit man
Speaker 1: I'm a huge fan of Would you murderous? I've always
Speaker 1: wanted to do this. Sorry, I'm a little starstruck. Gets
Speaker 1: here's the money. Horror she dried here? Should not bring
Speaker 1: her in? I don't know. Another hitman was Texas trucker
Speaker 1: John Hearno. He ran an ad in four issues of
Speaker 1: the magazine looking for high risk assignments USKR overs u
Speaker 1: S or overseas. So many people called hern that he
Speaker 1: had to hire an answering service to handle all the demand.
Speaker 1: He estimated that of his callers wanted him to commit
Speaker 1: some sort of crime, ranging from bombings to jail breakings.
Speaker 1: Too simple. Assault. He received, he says, three to five
Speaker 1: contract murder offers every single day, which says a lot
Speaker 1: about the readers of Soldier Fortune magazine. Finally, Yeah, in
Speaker 1: February five, Herne took on the job of murdering Sandra Black.
Speaker 1: Her husband paid him ten thousand dollars to shoot his
Speaker 1: wife the first one. If you're getting that many, you know,
Speaker 1: that's a very good question. I would love to asked
Speaker 1: him that. Same with the other dude, you're getting like,
Speaker 1: I'm like, he was, like, listen, they were all great offers,
Speaker 1: but I got in this today murder. Um. You know, Billy,
Speaker 1: A big part of success when you do what you
Speaker 1: want for a living is figuring out how to say no.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a struggle, it is, so Richard said,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, um. So Hearne was eventually caught and tried um,
Speaker 1: and he has insisted that he never would have gotten
Speaker 1: start as a hitman if started as a hitman, if
Speaker 1: it weren't for Soldier of Fortune Magazine. What a sentence.
Speaker 1: Richard Savage was also caught by the law. He too,
Speaker 1: squealed on Soldier of Fortune magazine, and suddenly a deluge
Speaker 1: of news coverage hit the magazine. Robert Brown denied any
Speaker 1: responsibility for the deaths. He ordered his executive editor to
Speaker 1: make this statement, We're as cupable as any newspaper which
Speaker 1: accepts an ad from a used car salesman, and doesn't
Speaker 1: go out to check the condition of the brakes. Same thing,
Speaker 1: tied Jesus, It's amazing. You think they had a meeting
Speaker 1: like we'ing go with this one. Yeah. Oh, they must
Speaker 1: have workshop the ship out of that. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: go to use karthin. I'm glad we all got guns. Still.
Speaker 1: Brown was wise enough to stop running ads for murderers
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty six. If he felt any guilt over
Speaker 1: all the deaths, he did not show it, writing in
Speaker 1: a nineteen eighty six editorial, for the last decade, I
Speaker 1: have hunted terrorists with the Rhodesian African rifles and fired
Speaker 1: up a Russian fort in Afghanistan with the Mujahideen. Between firefights,
Speaker 1: takeovers and insurgencies, I managed to put out a magazine
Speaker 1: Kick him in the balls. Yeah. He also managed to
Speaker 1: get sued by Richard Brown's sons for his role in
Speaker 1: their father's murder. They were awarded four point three million
Speaker 1: dollars in civil judgments judgments, which was upheld by the U. S.
Speaker 1: Court of Appeals in nineteen two. The New York Times
Speaker 1: wrote this about the case. The Eleventh Circuit Panel said, however,
Speaker 1: that while the advertisement in the Texas case was facially
Speaker 1: innocuous and ambiguous in its message. Mr Savages advertisement clearly
Speaker 1: conveyed that he was ready, willing and able to use
Speaker 1: his gun to commit crimes. Yeah, I got that. I
Speaker 1: got a couple other people got that too, Billy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not good at codes either. Brown wound up settling
Speaker 1: with the bron family for two dred thousand dollars. When
Speaker 1: he was interviewed about this later in two thousand sixteen,
Speaker 1: he said this, they really tried the magazine, not the cases.
Speaker 1: Two guys meet through the magazine, They have a friendly
Speaker 1: relationship for six months, they don't talk about anything illegal,
Speaker 1: but then six months later they agree to commit this
Speaker 1: horrendous crime. I'm a dick. Well, if they meet up
Speaker 1: in a bar six months later they say, let's rob
Speaker 1: a bank, should the bartender be held liable? It was
Speaker 1: total crap. Well, like the bar was like a bartend,
Speaker 1: like a bar for people that rob banks. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: it was the bartender, probould be like the police would
Speaker 1: be like yo, I feel like the booze was just
Speaker 1: a you got me. Yeah, if instead of checking I
Speaker 1: d S, the bar required you to plan to murder
Speaker 1: someone's wife, in order to enter like then we then
Speaker 1: the comparison would be valid. I will say that and
Speaker 1: that's an Applebach just that is an apple BEEAs and
Speaker 1: some waffle houses not a good one. So from that
Speaker 1: point on, the Soldier of Fortune classified ad section turned
Speaker 1: to slightly more licit fair. They sold Mail Order Brides
Speaker 1: Bounty Hunter treating all of a sudden, I got real serious,
Speaker 1: you guys, that's how you treated that one. They sold
Speaker 1: Male Order Bride's Bounty Hunter training manuals, Secrets of the
Speaker 1: Ninja Lessons, old Nazi equipment, functional machine. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: I think you know what it means. It means as
Speaker 1: well as silencers and sniper rifles, they send you a potato.
Speaker 1: Soldier of Fortune also did a brisk business and selling
Speaker 1: the kind of T shirts that are all too common
Speaker 1: in randomly generated Facebook counts today. I do not want
Speaker 1: to know what the shirts with slogans like no happiness
Speaker 1: is a confirmed kill. There are a few social programs
Speaker 1: that cannot be solved by the proper application of high explosives,
Speaker 1: and the ever popular kill them all and let God
Speaker 1: sort them, saying yes, we have Robert Brown to thank
Speaker 1: for launching the bafflingly violent t shirt industry, which, by
Speaker 1: my rough count, provides roughly six of Facebook's operating revenue today.
Speaker 1: So so belly. Soldier of Fortune also contributed to the
Speaker 1: birth of the needlessly aggressive sticker industry, selling door stickers
Speaker 1: labor is their life after death. Trespass here and find
Speaker 1: out and never mind the dog, be aware of owner,
Speaker 1: and of course bumper stickers. Like the only way they'll
Speaker 1: get my gun is to pry it from my cold
Speaker 1: dead hands, and the irony of that one. So Robert
Speaker 1: Robert Milch wrote Red Dawn classic movie. There's very famous
Speaker 1: scene in the beginning when the Soviets are invading were like,
Speaker 1: you see a guy with a they get my gun
Speaker 1: when they pried for my cold dead hands, lying dead
Speaker 1: behind his truck with at five. Robert Milch was the
Speaker 1: subject of like a tin page spread like article in
Speaker 1: Soldier of Fortune magazine. It's just fun, it's just a
Speaker 1: good time. It's good time. Boulder is a nice place.
Speaker 1: It is a nice place. He went for college and
Speaker 1: likes it. He went to college and behold, I went
Speaker 1: to the University of Colorado. How do you go there?
Speaker 1: And then like I'm gonna be a professional well different age, okay,
Speaker 1: because I don't know if you've been in the Boulder lightly,
Speaker 1: but no one has murdered anything there, and like even soap,
Speaker 1: they don't. It's just where if you rich kids go
Speaker 1: that can't get into Ivy League schools. So in addition
Speaker 1: to all this, Soldier of Fortune continue to play host
Speaker 1: to a series of classic articles for the modern man,
Speaker 1: who's pretty sure he would have been Conan the Barbarian
Speaker 1: if a few cards had landed differently, and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: time cards to a lot of cards actually, And I
Speaker 1: think the single best example of this magazine's content is
Speaker 1: this classic article that I'm so excited to read you
Speaker 1: Billy Wayne Davis. Wow, that's not a good sign. Secrets
Speaker 1: of Modern battle Acts Fighting by Jeff Cooper. This ain't
Speaker 1: everyday knowledge, and this ain't old school ship modern secret
Speaker 1: modern battle axe fighting trying to hit him in the neck.
Speaker 1: A lot of people don't know that some important ship
Speaker 1: here week do their hands. The article opens with Jeff
Speaker 1: announcing that, for reasons that are never made clear, he
Speaker 1: has won an award that also happens to be a
Speaker 1: hand forged Norse battle axe, being the kind of man
Speaker 1: who writes for Soldier of Fortune magazine, Jeff Cooper decided
Speaker 1: he desperately needed to know how to kill people with
Speaker 1: this axe. Unfortunately, the only manuals he could find on
Speaker 1: axe fighting were archaic and not very detailed. So he
Speaker 1: had a friend. Decided to spend the afternoon inventing am saying,
Speaker 1: I had to drink made first. So he had a
Speaker 1: friend and spent an afternoon inventing a modern science of
Speaker 1: battle axe fighting by afternoon. Yeah, now that's kung fu
Speaker 1: was written in an afternoon, A long afternoon, Yes, they
Speaker 1: let it was in like August. Yeah, so they did
Speaker 1: this by jabbing vaguely at hay bales in an empty field. Now, Billy,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna need you to take a look at a
Speaker 1: pat I've studied how to do this. I want you
Speaker 1: to look at the picture, and I want you to
Speaker 1: notice that while he is jabbing this hay bale violently
Speaker 1: with an axe, he's wearing a gun on his hip.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna pass this around. It is this is
Speaker 1: He looks like you think you would, yeah, like you
Speaker 1: can't see his eyes, but they're beaty, you know, they're bady.
Speaker 1: I gotta finish to pass this around because you really
Speaker 1: need to see Jeff Cooper doing the pike thrust, the
Speaker 1: straight right, the full overhead, and of course port guard
Speaker 1: for he got again. Yeah, I think he might have
Speaker 1: a cigarette in his mouth on the last of these two.
Speaker 1: He didn't even know he lit it. That's how. That's
Speaker 1: how people smoke, how to get I don't even know.
Speaker 1: So the business of writing articles like this was rather safe,
Speaker 1: but Robert Brown was not satisfied with safe. He still
Speaker 1: found himself desperately addicted to war tourism, and the primary
Speaker 1: purpose of Soldier of Fortune magazine was to enable his habit.
Speaker 1: Throughout the mid nineteen eighties, Brown and his magazine got
Speaker 1: increasingly involved in the El Salvadoran Civil War. He visited
Speaker 1: for the first time in nineteen three and spent several
Speaker 1: happy days fighting alongside a cadre of mercenaries and paramilitary
Speaker 1: fighters backing Roberto de Abison. Dobyson was, in the words
Speaker 1: of the U. S. Ambassador to El Salvador, a pathological
Speaker 1: killer who bragged about the need to exterminate two of
Speaker 1: the three hundred thousand people in his country. This is
Speaker 1: the guy Robert Brown's like, I don't want to be
Speaker 1: angry with you. I'm gonna I'm gonna pass these battle
Speaker 1: axe photos around because I have a moral obligation to
Speaker 1: show them to you. Yeah, you guys need to see him.
Speaker 1: He looks like he looks like, he looks like he's
Speaker 1: gonna like if he was around today, he'd have a
Speaker 1: red hat on in those pas. No very specific brand.
Speaker 1: Oh what happened with the light, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: just these people are important, looking very nice. I was
Speaker 1: hoping it was shining on Katie Stole and Cody Johnston.
Speaker 1: It was just like a red that's like old school Vegas.
Speaker 1: We're like, hey, Dean Martin's in the Dean Martin is
Speaker 1: in the audience. But turn a lout off. So Dabis
Speaker 1: and Round ran death squads which massacred women, children, and
Speaker 1: a huge number of priests, and Robert Brown was only
Speaker 1: too happy to help with that. He claimed to have
Speaker 1: sent more than a hundred mercenaries into Al Salvador. He
Speaker 1: also claimed that Henne came back a lot, didn't um.
Speaker 1: He also claimed that his readers had donated more than
Speaker 1: four million dollars in supplies to fight the Contra rebels
Speaker 1: in Nicaragua. When he was criticized over the fact that
Speaker 1: his magazine was actively enabling death squads and multiple nations.
Speaker 1: Robert Brown wrote this, we are not content to just
Speaker 1: tell the story to the best of our ability. We
Speaker 1: also help equip, aid and train the world's anti communist
Speaker 1: freedom fighters. We make no apologies about this or for
Speaker 1: our virulent, anti tyrant, anti communist editorial stance. Now, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: not only did I report what happens, I shoot people
Speaker 1: from a safe distance, from a very safe distance, and
Speaker 1: then I leave. Now tragedy, tragically, billy, And this is
Speaker 1: really gonna buy me out. Robert Brown's second plan trip
Speaker 1: to go fighting El Salvador, was canceled. I know, I
Speaker 1: know it's a bummer, right, but we all you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes you get sick and you can't make that trip. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: as in Brown's case, one of your own mercenary shoots
Speaker 1: you in the leg and it took a long time.
Speaker 1: Well that's you want. You're gonna do some other stuff
Speaker 1: after you do that. Well, here's how the Chicago Tribune
Speaker 1: described what happened. Because this is you're gonna enjoy this.
Speaker 1: Colonel Brown and his kitchen table buddies. We're talking about
Speaker 1: a flight to El Salvador that Brown was to make
Speaker 1: the next day. Brown, who was a captain in Vietnam,
Speaker 1: claims to be helping to train the Salvadoran army on
Speaker 1: an unofficial basis. He says he's making them tougher and
Speaker 1: more disciplined. As the evening war on official basis, I
Speaker 1: like that, Like, I'm just gonna war these people up
Speaker 1: a little bit, Just an ad hoc thing, don't you
Speaker 1: mind me? Unofficially teach. As the evening wore on towards midnight,
Speaker 1: one of Brown's buddies, who writes for Soldier of Fortune,
Speaker 1: took out an automatic pistol he was carrying and showed
Speaker 1: it to Brown. Brown's buddy talked about his pistols, heft,
Speaker 1: the trigger action, and the other qualities that please gun lovers.
Speaker 1: He pulled the trigger. Being a gun expert, he knew
Speaker 1: it was empty. When Brown's buddy, a gun expert, pulled
Speaker 1: the trigger, there was a loud explosion. He scared. He
Speaker 1: scared me. He stood there for a moment with his
Speaker 1: mouth wide open. Then he looked at his hand and
Speaker 1: saw a hole. He had shot a hole through his hand.
Speaker 1: Brown looked down at his leg, his leg hurt. He
Speaker 1: saw blood running out of his calf. The bullet, after
Speaker 1: blowing a hole in his buddy's hand, had blown a
Speaker 1: hole in Brown's leg. The hole the owner of the
Speaker 1: gun was right, It did pack a wallop. I tell you,
Speaker 1: I tell everyone, Yeah, I didn't look like a strong gun.
Speaker 1: Brown looked down looking at it slowed down through his hand.
Speaker 1: That could have hurt you. I would have done some
Speaker 1: real dawn could up. Brown looked down at his bleeding leg.
Speaker 1: Then he looked at his buddy and said, you stupid
Speaker 1: son of a bit. You shot me, and now I
Speaker 1: can't go to El Salvador. That's a good story. That's
Speaker 1: a feel good moment right there. We're all nine years old.
Speaker 1: That's where we'd never get past. That's our media, just like, hey,
Speaker 1: now I can't go to the water park. When I
Speaker 1: think about situations that scare me as like a journalist
Speaker 1: embedded with a group of people, one of them is
Speaker 1: being there for that and having to like not laugh,
Speaker 1: like because you really can't in that situation because one
Speaker 1: bullets already gone off. They're not against using another. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can correct who tells this story to this? A
Speaker 1: different version of this gets out As the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: wore on and the Cold War neared its end, so
Speaker 1: too did the business of soliciting mercenary fighters to crush
Speaker 1: so to crush socialist movements. Being a far right crypto fascist,
Speaker 1: Robert Brown trans transitioned seamlessly from demonizing left wing movements
Speaker 1: around the world and towards attacking the US government. As
Speaker 1: the Cold War ended, Soldier of Fortune became one of
Speaker 1: the prime sources fueling the American American Militia movement. In
Speaker 1: April nineteen, it did a cover story on the Michigan Militia,
Speaker 1: the largest such patriot group in the country. That same month,
Speaker 1: Soldier of Fortune subscriber and former Michigan Militia member Tim
Speaker 1: McVeigh set off a truck bomb outside them Are Building
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma City, killing a hundred sixty people and injuring
Speaker 1: seven hundred. When McVeigh was caught and his car was searched,
Speaker 1: the police found a photocopy of an underground right wing
Speaker 1: zene called The Resistor Sixty Minutes. Correspondent Steve Croft described
Speaker 1: it as a political warfare journal, describing the U s
Speaker 1: Government as a deadly enemy that needed to be crushed
Speaker 1: with lethal course, it's publisher, Stephen Barry, was a former
Speaker 1: Special Forces man who went on to work for the
Speaker 1: National Alliance, at the time the largest neo Nazi group
Speaker 1: in the United States. Now, the FBI obviously wanted to
Speaker 1: track down how this copy of the Resistor had wound
Speaker 1: up in mcveigh's hands, and by reading the fact signature
Speaker 1: of the paper, they were able to trace it back
Speaker 1: to Soldier of Fortunes offices, because it turns out Robert
Speaker 1: Brown had sent out nine hundred free copies of this
Speaker 1: zine the Soldier of Fortune subscribers as part of a
Speaker 1: promotional offer. Yes, this is a good deal. It is
Speaker 1: a two for one. You know he's gonna spend the money. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the Bureau wanted to know if Steven Barry Nazi head
Speaker 1: any ties to Robert Brown, so they leaked him false
Speaker 1: intel and watched as Sure enough that false intel appeared
Speaker 1: in Soldier of Fortune magazine. No way, So Brown found
Speaker 1: himself regularly under investigation and sued, but he always managed
Speaker 1: to stay in business and just shy of getting convicted
Speaker 1: of any felonies I had committing any felonies, But he
Speaker 1: absolutely committed some felonies allegedly after the Oklahoma City bombing,
Speaker 1: the Patriot movement got too toxic for Soldier of Fortune
Speaker 1: to cover. But once the nineties ended, Soldier of Fortune
Speaker 1: was able to pivot yet again by focusing on the
Speaker 1: dangers of immigrants and Muslim extremists. In two thousand three,
Speaker 1: Soldier of Fortune published a two part article on a
Speaker 1: group called Ranch Rescue a Border, a border vigilante group
Speaker 1: that later pistol whipped and set Rottweiler's on immigrants in
Speaker 1: Arizona and Texas. In October of two thousand nine, Soldier
Speaker 1: of Fortune to the feature on Sheriff Joe R. Pio
Speaker 1: of Maricopa County. Yeah, you guys, a funny cartoon writing
Speaker 1: his tough stand on a legal immigration is what he's
Speaker 1: getting beat up for by liberals promoting a legal immigration.
Speaker 1: Respect you know other people. They neglected to mention that
Speaker 1: dozens of prisoners had died in our piles jails at
Speaker 1: that point, often by being illegally risk reigned and boiled
Speaker 1: to get death in a hundred and forty five degrees
Speaker 1: cells under our pile. The Marico County Sheriff's office paid
Speaker 1: out more than a hundred and forty million dollars in
Speaker 1: wrongful death suits. We don't talk about it. We don't
Speaker 1: like to talk about that. Shockingly, Robert Brown was not
Speaker 1: an instant fan of the candidacy of Donald J. Trump.
Speaker 1: When interviewed about it in two thousand sixteen, he expressed
Speaker 1: his belief that the man was a buffoon and would
Speaker 1: hand the election to Hillary Clinton, meaning Robert Brown was
Speaker 1: too optimistic. Um, he has kept his men. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: really is. It's amazing. He's kept his mouth mostly quiet
Speaker 1: about Trump since then, involving himself primarily and internal n
Speaker 1: r A politics. He was once the organization's vice chairman.
Speaker 1: No way soldier of fortune. No longer publishes a physical magazine.
Speaker 1: Brown had to lay off almost all of his staff
Speaker 1: and go digital a few years back. The periodical is
Speaker 1: still online and still just as racist as ever, although
Speaker 1: it's increasing irrelevance has made it less dangerous. In late
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, the online edition of the magazine republished
Speaker 1: that two thousand twelve article about Rhodsha. Whatever you can
Speaker 1: say about Robert Brown, he's not a quitter, although he
Speaker 1: really should be. Is he still is he alive? Oh? Man,
Speaker 1: that's frustrating. In it. It's just one of those things
Speaker 1: you're like, I wonder what he's doing it now. It's
Speaker 1: not good. It's good. He's he's too old and sick
Speaker 1: to do as much of the bad stuff. He said
Speaker 1: like a year or two ago that he thinks he's
Speaker 1: got one more good war in him. So that's the
Speaker 1: right reaction when anyone says ship like that, Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got one good war left. Things like that. Now, everybody,
Speaker 1: I know this has been an emotionally taxing episode. I
Speaker 1: know this isn't a ootionally taxing year. And on top
Speaker 1: of all of them have to not read Chldren of
Speaker 1: Fortune anymore. And that's hard. I know. That's really a
Speaker 1: bummer to everybody. People weren't prepared for that. Walking in turning,
Speaker 1: you're killing people T shirts. It's a bummer. It's a bummer. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: we have brought, courtesy of Sophie, a truly unreasonable number
Speaker 1: of bagels, and I want to pass those out to
Speaker 1: people in the crowds. And then you're gonna take turns
Speaker 1: tossing them at Usine We'll we'll, we'll knock him out
Speaker 1: of the air. And the water boy is not gonna
Speaker 1: be excited about it, and there's already some in the
Speaker 1: crowd already. Okay, good looking at you, Daniel, Jamie Katie
Speaker 1: could if if we hit your bagel, then you're protected.
Speaker 1: If we don't, I'm sorry. It's not a perfect science.
Speaker 1: This wouldn't be a legitimate medical practice if we claimed
Speaker 1: it was perfect. I got, hey, this all you also
Speaker 1: have to do diet and exercise with this, stay off planes,
Speaker 1: all that stuff. I have to put it back around
Speaker 1: my neck to draw it again because it doesn't feel
Speaker 1: right unless it's day. It looks good, all right, Now
Speaker 1: what a weird This is the weirdest ship so now okay,
Speaker 1: wrong where he looks like he defends MacArthur Park every night. Now, Billy,
Speaker 1: I want to ask you to remember all of the
Speaker 1: safety precautions we talked about before. That you want to
Speaker 1: hold the machete real loose and just as hard as
Speaker 1: you can with a loose grip, just right at the crowd,
Speaker 1: right critical Senator Buck from Colorado taught me safety. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, I don't want to chainey the mic stand
Speaker 1: by the way, I could use your help with making
Speaker 1: cheney a verb for that specific reason, So I don't
Speaker 1: think Cheney gives them fun. No, h these are just
Speaker 1: c d s. We're not going to destroy these. Um
Speaker 1: funk we can These are just you guys can have these.
Speaker 1: These are my first CD. I bought a bunch of them.
Speaker 1: In the theme it's a CD, you guys, don't cheers,
Speaker 1: just a heavy fucking flyer. I'm giving you all right,
Speaker 1: all right, Billy, it's time. Okay, it's time. So are
Speaker 1: you ready, Reverend doctor, I'm yeah, all right, start throwing
Speaker 1: Holy Ship. They're just coming at us. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know what a terrible idea. It's. It's well because
Speaker 1: it just comes out of the darkness as you can't
Speaker 1: see him deep enough, then they just show up. It's
Speaker 1: like an old video game. We're not great at this,
Speaker 1: it's not don't cheer, okay, yeah, I talk all right,
Speaker 1: you do it with a machette. So if I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna toss it out and everything, Oh shit, Oh god,
Speaker 1: don't she swum that right at the crowd, you guys?
Speaker 1: Oh holy ship? There are so many bagels on this.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to explain this to me now.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if I really want to
Speaker 1: watch the first minutes of that, I'm sandwiched. He's just
Speaker 1: walking around like at a medium pace. Why are all
Speaker 1: these bagels here? I mean, I'm a bagel man, right, motherfuck?
Speaker 1: I think you didn't need that bagel money. One thing
Speaker 1: we've learned, Oh there is still all billy billy we
Speaker 1: gotta do. We gotta do the throwing and the whole
Speaker 1: thing between it, because that's make it explode. Yeah. Here,
Speaker 1: just passed that around. This is a new machette. I'm
Speaker 1: not as used to hitting. Baby, grab as many. They're free.
Speaker 1: You can take ten. I don't give a ship. It's heavy,
Speaker 1: so you can't have that bag. I don't give a
Speaker 1: fun There we go. Ready, I'm gonna doing it vertical
Speaker 1: for horizon, horizontal, so aggressive. Here, throw it high. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna chop it down there we'll go, oh so high,
Speaker 1: so high. This is not you just can't just sit
Speaker 1: that down. Wasn't it handy weapon? Oh oh no, stop
Speaker 1: stop hitting it toward the crowd. If you don't throw
Speaker 1: things at the crowd, then they don't know. Can you tell?
Speaker 1: I have a ten year old and everything I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is I don't want to go to the emergency,
Speaker 1: all right, you can do it. One more guys getting
Speaker 1: sucked up. All right, all right, we have to stop
Speaker 1: doing this because this is a actually a very big
Speaker 1: problem now, so we have to we have to clean everything.
Speaker 1: But I want you all to take with you the
Speaker 1: knowledge that, through the good graces of Machettison, you are
Speaker 1: all now protected and that's legally by all right, everybody,
Speaker 1: Thank you, guys coming