WEBVTT - Part One: The Dumbest Coup In World History 0:00:02.120 --> 0:00:07.120 Shit, damn it. Nope, bad Um. That's the introduction for 0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:10.639 the podcast though, because we're recording. Welcome to Behind the Bastards, 0:00:10.880 --> 0:00:14.600 the podcast that is not introduced very well, but often 0:00:14.680 --> 0:00:19.599 include stories of terrible people. Uh today, my guest to 0:00:19.680 --> 0:00:23.000 help me kind of rewright the ship. After that terrible 0:00:23.040 --> 0:00:28.479 introduction is the inimitable Bridget Todd Bridget Hello, Hello, I'm 0:00:28.520 --> 0:00:30.520 so happy to be here, and even though we're not 0:00:31.040 --> 0:00:33.159 physically in the same place, I am happy to be 0:00:33.240 --> 0:00:37.320 here doing this socially distant podcast to you. We are 0:00:37.440 --> 0:00:40.880 very socially distant because you and I are almost as 0:00:40.960 --> 0:00:43.440 distant as we could possibly be while still being on 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:47.479 the same continent. So that's very very responsible. Yeah, it's 0:00:47.520 --> 0:00:49.880 you're You're on one side, I'm on the other. I'm 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:53.640 in d c Um. We're all wearing our masks and 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:58.000 freaking the funk out. You know, here are the nation's capital. Yeah, 0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:01.440 here in where I am. Uh, no one is wearing 0:01:01.440 --> 0:01:04.600 a mask and we all live in the woods. Um, 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:09.040 but we are both coastal elites, so that's fun. Um. 0:01:09.319 --> 0:01:13.680 De Bridget, you are you are? You are a veteran podcaster. 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:16.840 You were on my podcast early on in behind the 0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:20.640 Bastard's run. When we went to uh protest Nazis at 0:01:20.640 --> 0:01:22.760 the second Unite the Right rally in d C. That 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:25.280 was fun. It was so fun. It was that was 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:28.240 my first time I protested a lot of things in 0:01:28.240 --> 0:01:32.360 my life. That was my first time specifically protesting Nazis. Um, 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:34.560 it was a good time. It was it was it 0:01:34.640 --> 0:01:37.360 was a little like um, it was a little it 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:39.200 was a new experience, I'll put it that way. Yeah, 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:42.800 it was a good thing to have done. And speaking 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:46.840 of good things to have done, Um, you know what's 0:01:46.880 --> 0:01:49.800 not a good thing to do? What's that attempt to 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:53.960 overthrow the government of a sovereign nation for your own profit. 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:57.840 That's a good thing to do. Know, that was such 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:00.480 a good intro. I'm so proud, Thank you, thank cut. Yeah, 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:03.080 that's what we're talking about today. We're talking specifically about 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:06.640 we're talking about cups because coups are in the news. Um, 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:09.959 I'm proud of that one too. Uh. You remember when 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:13.240 I'm those guys tried to invade Venezuela and it didn't 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:14.959 work out and one of them wound up lying in 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:20.440 his own pa. Well, when that happened, I started getting 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:22.519 a whole bunch of people hit me up on Twitter 0:02:22.600 --> 0:02:24.960 being like, you should do an episode about this, and 0:02:25.000 --> 0:02:27.680 we will someday. But there's just there's there's so many 0:02:27.680 --> 0:02:30.360 more dumb details that haven't come out yet. I'm certain 0:02:30.760 --> 0:02:32.960 that it would be silly to cover it right now. 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:35.320 But also some folks reached out and said, like, you 0:02:35.320 --> 0:02:39.080 should cover something called the Wonga Coup, which was a 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:42.640 coup in two thousand four in Equatorial Guinea that's generally 0:02:42.720 --> 0:02:45.320 seen as one of the worst coup attempts at of 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:49.200 all time. So that's kind of what we're talking about today. 0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:51.480 But I fell down a rabbit hole researching it, and 0:02:51.520 --> 0:02:54.600 so mostly we're going to talk about like the whole 0:02:54.720 --> 0:02:57.600 weird and dumb history of white people trying to overthrow 0:02:57.639 --> 0:03:01.760 governments in Africa, um and usually being doing a really 0:03:01.840 --> 0:03:04.760 bad job of it. So that's today. Yeah, that ship 0:03:04.880 --> 0:03:07.799 never goes well, right, like it's it's always it always 0:03:07.840 --> 0:03:11.120 turns out badly. Yeah, yeah, and it's awesome because like 0:03:11.720 --> 0:03:14.280 it doesn't matter if the leader they're trying to overthrow 0:03:14.400 --> 0:03:18.040 is legitimately shitty or not. They always make the situation worse. 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:20.480 And and given how bad some of the dictators are. 0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:23.280 It's kind of incredible that they managed to like, like, 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:25.880 you've got a guy who like takes hands from people, 0:03:26.400 --> 0:03:30.040 um for fun, and then like they make it worse somehow. 0:03:30.120 --> 0:03:33.520 It's incredible. So that's today's podcast topic. Are you ready? 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:35.680 Are you ready to dive into this bridget I'm ready. 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:40.600 I'm locked and loaded. I'm stressed in let's do this, alright, alright, alright, alright, 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:43.880 So I want to start by going back in time 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:47.120 to what I think is the piece of fiction that 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:50.080 is kind of the seed for this desire in the 0:03:50.080 --> 0:03:53.600 heads of some white dudes to carry out coups in Africa, 0:03:53.640 --> 0:03:56.640 because there's a single fictional book that really started this 0:03:56.720 --> 0:04:00.960 ball rolling, and it's a book called King's Solemn Minds. 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:05.160 Have you ever heard of King Solomon's Minds? Oh my gosh, 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:07.040 So this is um I read my dad read this 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:08.720 to me when I was a kid. Uh, And it's 0:04:08.760 --> 0:04:11.480 like it was one of the big influences behind Indiana Jones, 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:13.520 which should give you an idea of kind of like 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:16.800 some of the themes that we can expect from King 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:20.200 Solomon's Minds. And it was it was written by a 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:23.680 fellow named h Writer Haggard and h writer Haggard is 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:28.279 like the colonial fiction writer of the eighteen hundreds in 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:32.080 early nineteen hundreds, UM and King Solomon's Minds is considered 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:35.240 to be like the quintessential classic of British colonialist leadership. 0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:38.039 It's the first novel to star big game hunter and 0:04:38.080 --> 0:04:40.960 explorer Alan Quartermain, who was like kind of like the 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:45.880 James Bond of the of the of of colonialism um. 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:49.000 And in fact, in the movie League of Extraordinary Gentleman 0:04:49.040 --> 0:04:53.000 he was played by Sean Connery, So that's interesting. Oh yeah, 0:04:53.520 --> 0:04:55.359 now I know, I know it. Yeah, he's like the 0:04:55.680 --> 0:04:57.800 and if you've never even read one of these books, 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:00.839 you've been influenced by this guy because he's Alan Quartermain 0:05:00.960 --> 0:05:03.880 is like the arc type of like the British big 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:07.719 game hunting like Safari dude, and like, yeah, like the 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:10.839 guy in um fucking Jumanji, like the White Guy Hunter 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:13.320 is based off of old Quartermain. Like that's just how 0:05:13.320 --> 0:05:15.800 they always do it. It's a very influential character and 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:19.839 in King Solomon's Minds is generally regarded as the first 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:22.840 example of a book in the Lost World genre of fiction. 0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:25.320 So you know those those kinds of books and movies 0:05:25.400 --> 0:05:27.760 where like a bunch of explorers or scientists find a 0:05:27.760 --> 0:05:30.680 loster forgotten city in some desolate chunk of the world. Yeah, 0:05:30.720 --> 0:05:33.520 I'm pretty familiar with that genre. Yeah, H Writer Haggard 0:05:33.560 --> 0:05:36.440 invented it. King Solomon's Minds is like the first example 0:05:36.480 --> 0:05:39.400 of that kind of book. I feel like, I feel 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:41.760 like I can picture what this guy looks like, Like 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:45.119 I'm picturing a safari hat, like maybe some like loose 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:48.520 khaki pants of some kind. Yeah, very specific kind of 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:51.479 facial hair. Yes, you you know you know everything about 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:57.760 H Writer Haggard in his life now, Um. I mean 0:05:57.920 --> 0:05:59.360 you kind of get it by the name. Like if 0:05:59.360 --> 0:06:02.800 someone tells you there's a famous author named H Writer Haggard, 0:06:03.360 --> 0:06:05.520 you could probably guess, Oh, he wrote books about how 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:13.400 colonialism is awesome, didn't he? Yeah? Um. So, the basic 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:15.960 gist of the story is that a group of explorers, 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:17.800 led by my own quartermain go on the search for 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:20.320 a lost europe and who went missing looking for the 0:06:20.360 --> 0:06:24.039 fabled King Solomon's minds, and that's the big Biblical King Solomon. 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:27.800 There's this rumor that he had these famous diamond minds YadA, YadA, YadA. 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:30.960 Uh So they go off looking for these this white 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:33.320 guy and these minds, and they wind up finding a 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:38.279 lost African civilization that possesses tremendous wealth. The movie Congo, 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:40.440 based off the Michael Crichton book of the same name, 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:43.719 is the modern adaptation of this story. So yeah, and 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:47.599 interestingly enough, for as racist as this book is, it's 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:51.719 not as racist as you might assume. Um it. Actually 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:56.120 it actually opens with the main character, Alan Quartermain going 0:06:56.160 --> 0:06:58.240 on an angry and angry rant about how the in 0:06:58.320 --> 0:07:00.920 word is never okay to use um and it's it's 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:04.320 always So that's good, right, Like that's a step that's 0:07:04.320 --> 0:07:08.159 pretty progressive, I guess what you mean. Yeah. Yeah, And 0:07:08.160 --> 0:07:12.760 there's even an interracial relationship in it, although the black 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:17.000 woman dating the white guy dies. Um, but like eight 0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:20.320 that's about as good as your credit kids from a 0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:24.280 white guy book. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't be expecting 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:27.400 that from the eighteen hundreds, like a little interracial pairing. 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:33.040 Of course she has to die in the end, of course. Yeah, 0:07:33.200 --> 0:07:35.960 um yeah. And h writer Haggard did repeatedly point out 0:07:35.960 --> 0:07:38.960 through his characters that a lot of European colonialist officers 0:07:38.960 --> 0:07:42.000 were horrible people. Alan Cortermain regularly notes that a lot 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:44.360 of black africancy meats are more worthy of the word 0:07:44.400 --> 0:07:48.400 gentleman than British officials, so it's it's not the kind 0:07:48.440 --> 0:07:51.880 of racist you'd expect, but it's also simultaneously still one 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:54.400 of the most racist books ever written for a very 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:58.000 specific reason. Um see. The climax of the book comes 0:07:58.000 --> 0:08:01.360 when the explorers managed to finally okay the lost kingdom 0:08:01.440 --> 0:08:05.200 of Kuwana Land, which is a surprisingly well organized and 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:07.760 advanced society that's completely cut off from the rest of 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:10.040 the world by tall mountains in a wide desert. The 0:08:10.120 --> 0:08:13.080 kingdom is ruled by a cruel king, Twala, who maintains 0:08:13.120 --> 0:08:16.600 power by dint of horrific violence. The white explorers are 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:18.840 able to get special treatment by convincing the natives that 0:08:18.840 --> 0:08:21.960 they're white men from the stars, basically magical gods, but 0:08:22.000 --> 0:08:24.400 they're horrified by the brutality of the king and his 0:08:24.520 --> 0:08:28.920 evil advisor, Gagool, who regularly burns innocent people as witches 0:08:28.960 --> 0:08:35.360 and traders. Um, yeah, I know, a yeah. So it 0:08:35.440 --> 0:08:39.040 becomes gradually clear that the current king earned his position 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:41.840 by murdering his brother, the old King, and forcing his 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:44.640 brother's wife an infant son, out into the desert to die. 0:08:44.679 --> 0:08:46.600 So there's a lot of the Lion King in this 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:50.200 story too, Like it was clearly inspired by King Solomon's 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:52.640 minds in a lot of ways. And anyway, it turns 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:55.479 out that one of the porters that the white expedition 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:58.480 team brought along, um, this guy named Umbopa is the 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:01.800 royal child who got ex sild you know, decades earlier, 0:09:02.040 --> 0:09:04.040 and he was noted throughout the book is being better 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:06.800 looking and more well spoken than the other Africans who 0:09:06.880 --> 0:09:10.000 like we're working for the expedition. So the white people 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:12.480 decided to overthrow the king of Kuwana Land and put 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:15.160 their friend Umboba on the front on the throne instead, 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:17.200 And after a vicious battle that kills a lot of 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:20.320 black people but no white people, they succeeded instituting regime 0:09:20.400 --> 0:09:22.560 change in Kuwana Land and they get to go home 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:25.320 with pockets full of diamonds. So that's like the that's 0:09:25.360 --> 0:09:28.480 the story of Like you can you can draw a 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:31.200 straight line from King Solomon's mind to the thinking that 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:34.000 led us to war in Iraq if you really like 0:09:34.200 --> 0:09:38.120 it's not hard, yeah, just killing off black and brown 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:41.120 people and like like coming back with your pockets full 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:44.959 of diamonds. Yeah, that that fantasy and you make everything 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:47.360 better by putting your one black friend in charge and 0:09:47.400 --> 0:09:53.160 like yeah, that's the whole like that's the story. Um. 0:09:53.280 --> 0:09:56.720 So I also have to say it really is very 0:09:56.880 --> 0:09:59.839 Lion King, this idea that you know, this guy was 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:03.680 more handsome and like somehow better and then like he comes, 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:06.319 he goes away, comes back like I want to be 0:10:06.400 --> 0:10:09.240 watched The Lion King. Now, yeah, there's some there's some 0:10:09.280 --> 0:10:11.320 of this in The Lion King for sure. Obviously it 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:13.920 has a lot of influences, but there's there's there's pieces 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:18.280 of h writer Haggard in that script. So um yeah, 0:10:18.440 --> 0:10:20.240 this book was a huge success, was like one of 0:10:20.240 --> 0:10:24.760 the biggest books of the nineteenth century period. Um And 0:10:24.800 --> 0:10:27.040 like I said, it inspired the whole Lost World genre. 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:31.839 It inspired probably tens of thousands of particularly white British kids, 0:10:31.880 --> 0:10:34.040 but a lot of Americans too, to go to Africa 0:10:34.160 --> 0:10:39.280 and like overthrow fucking countries. Um And while he did, 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:43.200 like absolutely this book inspired real world coups, it was 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:45.840 also inspired by stuff that had happened earlier in the 0:10:45.920 --> 0:10:50.640 history of like African colonialism. Um. Cecil Rhodes is mercenary 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:53.440 army with the British South Africa Company had conquered Zimbobwi 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:56.240 and Zambia. The British East Africa Company, under the command 0:10:56.240 --> 0:10:59.120 of Mercenary Frederick Lugard, had conquered large chunks of East 0:10:59.120 --> 0:11:01.640 and West Africa uh and in all these places, local 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:05.160 leaders were selected to rule based on their amended amenability 0:11:05.200 --> 0:11:08.280 to the desires of white Europeans, and for decades the 0:11:08.320 --> 0:11:11.040 whole story was repeated all over the continent. So H 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:14.439 writer Haggard didn't come up with this idea obviously, but 0:11:14.559 --> 0:11:19.839 he created like this very classical and and and attractive 0:11:19.920 --> 0:11:25.160 fictional justification for it that helped, um helped solidify it 0:11:25.200 --> 0:11:28.240 in the heads of of white colonialists. Is like the 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:32.520 way things ought to go. Um. So yeah, that's that's 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:37.280 that's cool. It's not cool, but it happened. It's not cool, 0:11:37.440 --> 0:11:40.360 it's funny. I really feel like in addition to the 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:44.320 way that we understand, you know, um kind of American 0:11:44.360 --> 0:11:46.720 exceptionalism and the idea of like going to another country 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:49.000 or another continent and like and like we're going to 0:11:49.120 --> 0:11:51.560 quote save them and then get rich in the process, 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:55.680 I feel like I see that vibe reverberated in so 0:11:55.720 --> 0:11:58.439 many different ways, Like even the idea of like how 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:01.720 white people have this idea that they're going to go 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:03.880 to Africa and save the babies, and they post a 0:12:03.920 --> 0:12:07.080 picture of them like helping in Africa Instagram. Like the 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:11.120 entire kind of gross vibe. I feel like it's sort 0:12:11.120 --> 0:12:14.840 of established as a blueprint in this work. Yeah, it 0:12:14.960 --> 0:12:18.280 really is. And it's like right down to the fact 0:12:18.320 --> 0:12:21.320 that this would actually be I think a less unsettling 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:24.760 novel King Solomon's Minds if h writer Haggard had been 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:29.000 super hatefully racist. Um, but he's like you see part 0:12:29.040 --> 0:12:31.160 of like a lot of the horror that comes from 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:34.320 like attempts even as particularly in the modern day, like 0:12:34.320 --> 0:12:36.360 when we we talked about that lady, that white girl 0:12:36.360 --> 0:12:41.240 in Africa who like ran that baby killing clinic. Um, yeah, 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:47.640 fucking wild, yeah wild. And it's um, it's always it's 0:12:47.640 --> 0:12:50.680 always sketchier and often more dangerous when the person doing 0:12:50.720 --> 0:12:54.840 this stuff is like super woke about it, right, And 0:12:54.880 --> 0:12:57.200 that's kind of what's so scary about King Solomon's Minds 0:12:57.280 --> 0:12:59.280 is that it's this white guy being like, oh, these 0:12:59.320 --> 0:13:02.240 white dudes in Africa are doing horrible things. I know, 0:13:02.440 --> 0:13:07.360 the right thing. White dudes in Africa should be doing, Like, Yeah, 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:09.400 I think you totally hit on something that it's sort 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:14.000 of like scary. If someone is evil and racist, I 0:13:14.520 --> 0:13:17.280 get it, I understand it. I know where they're coming from. Cool. 0:13:17.600 --> 0:13:21.040 If they have a mentality that they are righteous or 0:13:21.040 --> 0:13:23.560 that they're like the fact that this person probably thought 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:26.560 he was like doing something good like that is so 0:13:26.640 --> 0:13:28.920 much scarier. And I feel like has such a more 0:13:29.200 --> 0:13:34.000 a bigger capacity for evil when you think that you're righteous. Yep. 0:13:34.080 --> 0:13:38.080 And and the person we will eventually get to who 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:41.679 carries out this possibly the worst planned coup in all 0:13:41.720 --> 0:13:45.640 of history, is like the Patriot, well the archetype, at 0:13:45.679 --> 0:13:49.280 least of of that kind of person. So uh. As 0:13:49.320 --> 0:13:51.319 the eighteen hundreds turned into the nineteen hundreds in the 0:13:51.360 --> 0:13:54.120 world wars came and went, Europeans in particular and white 0:13:54.120 --> 0:13:57.880 folks in general gradually started to accept that, on balance, 0:13:57.960 --> 0:14:02.120 colonialism had at least been a problem amatic idea uh Europe. 0:14:02.240 --> 0:14:05.400 Europe gradually began to release their active or their captive 0:14:05.400 --> 0:14:08.719 African colonies from their chains, and since there was no 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:12.120 profit in doing this, colonies were generally let go in 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:15.480 the laziest way possible, slap dash elections were held, and 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:17.600 as a general rule, men were left in charge who 0:14:17.600 --> 0:14:20.040 colonialists thought would be trusted to rule in a manner 0:14:20.080 --> 0:14:24.120 beneficial to European economic interests. One example of this would 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:27.840 be former British military sergeant Idi Amine, who we we 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:30.840 did an episode about, you know you, just like we 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:34.160 gotta leave this country. It's there's no money in like 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:38.880 actually setting up a functional government before we go. So like, uh, 0:14:39.000 --> 0:14:41.480 this guy is good at beating people up and likes us. 0:14:41.560 --> 0:14:46.680 Let's put him in charge. Nothing will go wrong. Yeah. 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:50.160 So obviously, sometimes these newly freed local people's made decisions 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:53.120 that white folks thought were dangerous. Since the militaries of 0:14:53.120 --> 0:14:55.240 states like Great Britain and Belgium could no longer be 0:14:55.320 --> 0:14:59.520 used to enforce order directly, they often turned to mercenaries 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:03.000 to do so. These modern datacendants of Alan Quartermain and 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:06.560 his companions regularly used their superior military training and access 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:10.560 to firepower to carry out their own coups. Mad Mike 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:14.320 core is probably the patron saint of this kind of guy. 0:15:14.720 --> 0:15:17.640 He was originally a British soldier born in Calcutta and 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:19.880 raised on a steady diet of novels by h writer 0:15:19.960 --> 0:15:23.040 Haggard and his fellow adventure writers. Mad Mike joined the 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:25.680 British Army, but by the nineteen sixties the Empire was 0:15:25.720 --> 0:15:28.080 in steep decline and the colonies he'd been raised to 0:15:28.120 --> 0:15:32.400 help control we're flying free. So Mad Mike became a mercenary. 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:35.360 In nineteen sixty one, he he traveled to the Congo 0:15:35.440 --> 0:15:38.720 to fight Moishi Shamba, who wanted to create a breakaway 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:42.600 nation by leading the Congo's wealthiest territory and secession. Now 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:45.480 this was all, in reality a plot by rich Belgian 0:15:45.480 --> 0:15:48.320 business owners in the CIA to ensure that black Africans 0:15:48.320 --> 0:15:50.800 didn't have the opportunity to control a huge chunk of 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:53.800 their continents wealth. Like this breakaway chunk of the Congo 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:57.000 was more friendly to Belgian economic interests, and the Congo 0:15:57.040 --> 0:15:59.560 at that point was controlled by the socialist leader who 0:15:59.560 --> 0:16:02.720 they later assassinated. We did an episode on that, Patrice 0:16:02.800 --> 0:16:07.000 lamumba Um. But yeah, so the whole attempt failed. The 0:16:07.000 --> 0:16:09.800 secession attempt failed, and two of Mike's men were allegedly 0:16:09.880 --> 0:16:12.880 cannibalized in the attempt, But he didn't lose the bug 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:16.440 for trying to like lead coups in African nations. A 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:19.160 couple of years later, Shambay was elected Prime Minister of 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:21.960 the Congo under shady read. The CIA put him in 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:26.360 power circumstances and Shambay angled himself as an anti communist fighter, 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:29.680 but he was really just a tyrant, unhappy Congolese people 0:16:29.720 --> 0:16:32.160 revolted against Shamba, backed by the U. S. S R. 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:35.960 And the Cuban government. Se Guevara got involved, and obviously 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:38.800 these guys weren't super great either. So basically you just 0:16:38.880 --> 0:16:40.560 had kind of and this is like the story of 0:16:40.600 --> 0:16:43.120 Africa in a lot of the Cold War, you have 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:47.400 like Soviet imperialists on one side being like, we'll give 0:16:47.440 --> 0:16:49.280 you guns if you do the thing we like, and 0:16:49.320 --> 0:16:52.120 you have capitalist imperialists on the other side going like, 0:16:52.440 --> 0:16:54.040 we'll give you guns if you do the thing that 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:57.479 we like. And Mad Mike Core and his fellow mercenaries 0:16:57.520 --> 0:16:59.360 made a lot of money by just kind of standing 0:16:59.360 --> 0:17:01.280 in the middle and shooting at whoever had the most 0:17:01.360 --> 0:17:06.240 cash or shooting for whoever had the most cash. Um 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:09.480 For years, the Congo Wars provided white combat veterans with 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:12.160 steady employment. Mad Mike was a World War Two veteran. 0:17:12.160 --> 0:17:14.000 A lot of these guys were World War two veterans, 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:16.840 and like they were just guys who, like after the 0:17:16.880 --> 0:17:20.720 war ended, they couldn't do anything else but kill people. 0:17:20.720 --> 0:17:22.960 And a number of them were actually Nazi military veterans. 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:24.919 That was even in like the French Foreign Legion had 0:17:24.960 --> 0:17:27.280 a lot of Nazi military veterans because they were like, 0:17:27.480 --> 0:17:29.520 all I know how to do is kill people. And 0:17:29.640 --> 0:17:31.640 the French Foreign Legions like, will you help us kill 0:17:31.640 --> 0:17:34.480 people who aren't white in Africa? And they were like absolutely, 0:17:35.520 --> 0:17:39.800 as long as I'm killing so uh now, Mad Mike. 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:42.440 Uh again, it's probably the most famous of these guys, 0:17:42.480 --> 0:17:45.240 and he he among other things, he was renowned for 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:49.400 telling black mercenaries who attempted to join his mercenary army 0:17:49.440 --> 0:17:52.240 that he only hired white women or white men. Uh. 0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:55.840 He earned a colorful reputation for, among other things, shooting 0:17:55.880 --> 0:17:58.000 the toes off of a fellow mercenary who had raped 0:17:58.040 --> 0:18:01.679 a woman in the field. Um And as a general rule, uh, 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:08.040 Mad Mike soldiers were kind of rough customers. You might say, yeah, yeah, 0:18:08.160 --> 0:18:11.960 I would say they sound like rock customers. Yeah yeah, 0:18:12.000 --> 0:18:15.159 shoot shot the toes off a man, I mean, you know. 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:18.000 So as the fighting in the Congo War on Mad 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:20.720 Mike wound up on the side of Mobotu sesse Ciccu, 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:25.440 the Congo's longest lived dictator. Uh Moboto also patterned himself 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:27.520 as an anti communist fighter, which was enough to earn 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:30.320 the allegiance of the CIA and of Mad Mike. In 0:18:30.400 --> 0:18:33.560 order to help Mobot stay in power and fight against rebels, 0:18:33.560 --> 0:18:36.800 he put together a commando army of Irish mercenaries, the 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:40.719 Wild Geese. Here's how the Washington Post recalled their service 0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:43.720 in the obituary they wrote for Mad Mike earlier this year. 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:49.560 This guy fucking had the longest life. Like, sorry, and 0:18:50.000 --> 0:18:52.240 I went a million years. I never would have thought 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:55.560 that you were going to say he died earlier this year. Yeah, 0:18:55.560 --> 0:19:02.240 he was a hundred years old. Like, get incredible, um quote, 0:19:02.880 --> 0:19:04.960 I believe we have a great mission here, he told 0:19:04.960 --> 0:19:07.359 a fellow mercenary. According to a history of the Simba 0:19:07.440 --> 0:19:11.440 Rebellion by John Hopkins, professor Piero guil Jas, the Africans 0:19:11.440 --> 0:19:13.119 have gotten used to the idea that they can do 0:19:13.160 --> 0:19:15.400 whatever they like to us Whites, that they can trample 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:18.119 on us and spit on us. So that's that's the 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:21.680 kind of fella Mike is dubbed the White Giants. Mr 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:25.160 Horrors men spelled swept through the country, mowing down untrained 0:19:25.160 --> 0:19:28.560 and outnumbered Seemba forces who believed that witchcraft made them impervious. 0:19:28.600 --> 0:19:31.120 Two bullets in total. The mercenary unit was paid about 0:19:31.160 --> 0:19:34.119 three thousand dollars a month by US authorities, according to 0:19:34.160 --> 0:19:36.320 a Post report, and backed by what The New York 0:19:36.359 --> 0:19:39.800 Times described as an instant air force created by the 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:43.080 c i A. So can way back up to the 0:19:43.160 --> 0:19:48.040 White Giants just for like one second that needed. It's 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:50.639 it's actually the reason why they were called giants is 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:53.000 actually pretty sad. It's because they all grew up in 0:19:53.119 --> 0:19:56.159 wealthier western countries and had access to a lot of 0:19:56.200 --> 0:19:58.320 protein and milk and stuff like that when they were 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:01.200 growing up, and folks in the cong go Uh tended 0:20:01.240 --> 0:20:03.760 to be malnourished, in large part due to the fact 0:20:03.760 --> 0:20:06.840 that the Belgian colonialists who had owned them had starved 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:10.879 the entirety of Central Africa for decades prior to this point, 0:20:11.280 --> 0:20:14.080 and so people in the Congo tended to be smaller, 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:18.240 and white mercenaries tended to be very large. Well that's up, Jesus. Yeah, 0:20:18.280 --> 0:20:22.719 it's not great. It's not great. The world. Yeah, so 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:25.440 the white giants or the wild geese, whatever you wanna 0:20:25.480 --> 0:20:28.879 call them, killed a shitload of people. Mike himself bragged 0:20:28.920 --> 0:20:32.879 to journalists, quote, killing communist is like killing vermin. Killing 0:20:32.920 --> 0:20:35.920 African nationalists is as if one is killing an animal. 0:20:36.160 --> 0:20:38.439 My men and I have killed between five thousand and 0:20:38.480 --> 0:20:40.880 ten thousand Congo rebels in the twenty months that I've 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:43.239 spent in the Congo. But that's not enough. There are 0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:45.720 twenty million Congolees, you know, and I assumed that about 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:47.600 half of them at one point or another were rebels 0:20:47.600 --> 0:20:50.040 whilst I was down there. This is interesting to me 0:20:50.080 --> 0:20:52.520 for a couple of reasons. One of them is that, uh, 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:55.840 the generation prior to Mike, King Leopold of Belgium had 0:20:55.920 --> 0:20:58.679 killed fully half of the population of the Congo. And 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:01.000 here you have another white guy generation later being like, 0:21:01.040 --> 0:21:04.639 if we just got rid of another half, yeah, pretty 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:09.520 bad people, pretty bad. And Matt Mike is perfectly embodies 0:21:09.560 --> 0:21:11.120 the fact that a lot of the men who were 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:14.439 responsible for fighting the Nazis would have been perfectly happy 0:21:14.440 --> 0:21:17.240 with Nazism if Hitler had just picked slightly different white 0:21:17.240 --> 0:21:20.920 people to fight. Oh yeah, I have to It's funny 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:22.199 that you say this, I feel like I have to 0:21:22.240 --> 0:21:25.159 like tell, like admit something. When I was young, I 0:21:25.200 --> 0:21:27.480 thought that there was just like white people. I had 0:21:27.520 --> 0:21:31.400 no idea that there was like in like these white 0:21:31.440 --> 0:21:33.040 people don't like that white people. I thought it was 0:21:33.080 --> 0:21:35.639 just white people. And when we found that out, it 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:39.040 was like a big sort of galaxy brained thing for me. 0:21:39.080 --> 0:21:42.000