Speaker 1: Hello everybody. I am Robert Evans, and this is Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards to show where we tell you everything you
Speaker 1: don't know about the very worst people in all of history.
Speaker 1: Today with me is my former boss at Cracked and
Speaker 1: current boss at Stuff Media, Jack O'Brien at me, Jack O'Brien,
Speaker 1: and today Jack Attack. We are talking about the children
Speaker 1: of dictators, which I know you you just had another kid,
Speaker 1: did um, and you're you're kind of like the podcast
Speaker 1: equivalent of a dictator. Yeah, so there might be some
Speaker 1: tips here. I didn't realize that's how we were coming
Speaker 1: at this, But okay, I feel like you can empathize
Speaker 1: with the fathers the father figures. Well, at least you
Speaker 1: can give me some you know, I'm not. I don't
Speaker 1: have kids, so I may not know if something is
Speaker 1: actually a good parenting tactic. Well, my children are two
Speaker 1: and two weeks old, so I have yet to be
Speaker 1: able to funk them up totally given one of them
Speaker 1: control of either a soccer team or a military unit.
Speaker 1: Not yet. Okay, Okay, third birthday gonna be a lot
Speaker 1: of that in this podcast. All right, I've spent most
Speaker 1: of the last week reading about the various children of Dictators.
Speaker 1: There's a number of sources for this podcast, which I'll
Speaker 1: go through as we read them, but I do want
Speaker 1: to upfront plug a book called Children of Monsters by j. Nordlinger. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's a great book. I'll be referencing it regularly here.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of players in this podcast, so
Speaker 1: I kind of figured my best bet would be to
Speaker 1: start with the dictator who I think was probably the
Speaker 1: best parent out of all of them, Fidel Castro. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying Fidel was a good parent. He was
Speaker 1: terrible by every normal measure of being a dad, but
Speaker 1: none of his kids grew up to be mass raping,
Speaker 1: mass torturing monsters, and that counts as a win on
Speaker 1: this list. So Castro's oldest son was Fidelito. Uh. Castro
Speaker 1: divorced Fidelito's mom, Murda early and philed to Mexico to
Speaker 1: wage his revolution from Afar. Fidelito's mom's family was well
Speaker 1: connected in Cuban politics, so obviously Castro hated them, and
Speaker 1: he hated that his kid lived with them because they were,
Speaker 1: you know, bougie as. When Fidelito was six, Castro asked
Speaker 1: nicely if he could have his kid for a two
Speaker 1: week visit. Murder said yes and sent him over, and
Speaker 1: Castro kidnapped him. But not only did he kidnap him,
Speaker 1: he didn't even kidnap him to raise him himself. He
Speaker 1: kidnapped him and put him with a foster family that
Speaker 1: he thought would do a better job than the kids.
Speaker 1: Actual mom is dictatorship, like you should be over here.
Speaker 1: These are better parents for you than your mom and
Speaker 1: certainly better than me. Um. So Murder had to get
Speaker 1: the Mexican government to help her re kidnap her son
Speaker 1: three months later. But in nineteen fifty nine, when Fidelito
Speaker 1: was nine, Castro took power. His mother sent him over
Speaker 1: from New York to visit his dad again because she
Speaker 1: thought he should know his dad, even though he had
Speaker 1: already kidnapped him once, which is maybe a questionable call
Speaker 1: from a mom, but I mean, so far, this is
Speaker 1: exactly the story of my two year old so kep coming.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Fidelito went over to Cuba to see his dad,
Speaker 1: who was, you know, the new dictator of Cuba. They
Speaker 1: post together on top of tanks and basically Castro treated
Speaker 1: him as a prop um. Fun dictator stuff, yeah, fun
Speaker 1: dictator stuff, and a few months after those tank photos
Speaker 1: were taken, there was a horrible car accident Fidelito got
Speaker 1: into um he was badly injured. He went into surgery
Speaker 1: to have his spleen removed on the same night Fidel
Speaker 1: Castro was set to address a bunch of reporters on TV.
Speaker 1: The Children of Monsters book quotes a biography of Castro
Speaker 1: called Guerilla Prints, which is both a solid name for
Speaker 1: a rap album, uh, and which I'll also quote because
Speaker 1: you know it's great. So this is the night Castro
Speaker 1: was talking to a bunch of press people while his
Speaker 1: son is getting surgery, and he's at least set all
Speaker 1: this up. So all these journalists are talking to him,
Speaker 1: but instead of asking him normal questions, they're all asking
Speaker 1: him like, why aren't you leaving to go see your son?
Speaker 1: Why aren't you leaving to go see your son? And uh.
Speaker 1: Finally one of them says, Commandante Castro, who is it
Speaker 1: who rules in Cuba? And Castro shouts back the people,
Speaker 1: And then the journalist says, well, then the people want
Speaker 1: you to go see your son. And so at this
Speaker 1: Castro turns around and drives off to see his kid. So,
Speaker 1: like his son gets in an accident and he's like,
Speaker 1: how can I spend this for good? Um So, Fittalito
Speaker 1: became a celebrity in Cuba, and he seems to have
Speaker 1: hated it. Castro eventually pulled him out of the line
Speaker 1: lime light and sent him to study nuclear physics in
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union like you do. Um. He became the
Speaker 1: head of Cuba's Atomic Energy Commission in eight Uh. He
Speaker 1: was not good at the job he was. He round
Speaker 1: up getting removed from the position twelve years later in
Speaker 1: ninety two. We don't know why exactly, but it probably
Speaker 1: had something to do with the joint Cuban Russian nuclear reactor. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a great article about this reactor on Gizmodo. On
Speaker 1: the title of the article kind of tells you the
Speaker 1: story the abandoned communist reactor that would have killed us all.
Speaker 1: Um So, this reactor that Castro's son was presiding over. Uh.
Speaker 1: They basically found that upon its operation, it would have
Speaker 1: been at least fifteen times likelier than the US plant
Speaker 1: to have had a catastrophic meltdown. Based on the weather patterns,
Speaker 1: they knew it would only take twenty four hours for
Speaker 1: radioactive materials to reach Florida, if it did melt down,
Speaker 1: and since Cuba is not very big, Fidalito's plan was
Speaker 1: to dump all of their nuclear waste into the ocean. Um.
Speaker 1: So he was. He was not a great atomic energy commissioner. Um.
Speaker 1: His dad fired him. Uh, he was sent to the
Speaker 1: Cuban Academy of Sciences. And that's not really much else
Speaker 1: to say about Fidalito. He's kind of boring, which is
Speaker 1: basically the best case scenario for a kid on this list, Fidel.
Speaker 1: We don't know how many kids Fidel had. We aren't
Speaker 1: even sure if he was married for most of his
Speaker 1: time in power or how many wives he had, but
Speaker 1: we do know that he had another boy, Antonio, who
Speaker 1: became an orthopedic surgeon. An Tonio worked as a physician
Speaker 1: to the Cuban basketball team and seems to be better
Speaker 1: at his job than his older brother. Wasn't building nuclear
Speaker 1: power plants. I'm bringing him up because in two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: something hilarious happened to him. Uh. Louis Dominiquez, pro democracy activist,
Speaker 1: baseball fan, and Cuban American, pretended to be a twenty
Speaker 1: seven year old Colombian sports journalist named Claudia to seduce Antonio.
Speaker 1: So the Internet is not allowed in Cuba, but if
Speaker 1: you're a Castro family member, you get a smartphone, you
Speaker 1: get internet access, you get all of that stuff you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to, but you know they have it anyway.
Speaker 1: So Luis pretends to be this woman Claudia and strikes
Speaker 1: up a romantic relationship with Castro's son via text messages
Speaker 1: and Google Chat and like he's cat Fish, Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: he Catfish's Castro son um and fishing the king fish,
Speaker 1: the big fish. There's messages like guess where I am
Speaker 1: and I will make love to you without stopping his
Speaker 1: one message Antonio sent this fake woman while he was
Speaker 1: on a diplomatic visit to Russia. I mean that's just
Speaker 1: kind of basic love making, is that you don't stop
Speaker 1: in the middle of you, and I won't just randomly stuff.
Speaker 1: I have a desire to kiss you. I want to
Speaker 1: kiss you, love you, and make love to you. So
Speaker 1: that's sweet. Um. But Louis was also able to get
Speaker 1: Antonio to share his phone number, his address, and Havana
Speaker 1: and reveal that he had no bodyguards and give him
Speaker 1: updates on secret trips he was taking to other countries
Speaker 1: in Central and South America. That's sort of thing that
Speaker 1: a secret admirer would ask you. Yeah, exactly. And my
Speaker 1: favorite thing about this is that, like, by doing this,
Speaker 1: Louise is not just throwing shade on the on Fidel Castro. Um,
Speaker 1: but he's also like kind of sticking it to the
Speaker 1: c I A who spent like trying to kill Castro
Speaker 1: like five times, always trying to figure out stuff and couldn't.
Speaker 1: And then this guy, I'll just pretend to be a girl,
Speaker 1: pretend I want to fund his son. Turns out that
Speaker 1: was the key all along. Um So that's a fun story.
Speaker 1: Um So, Yeah, Antonio is clearly kind of dumb, but
Speaker 1: he's he doesn't seem to be a bad person. Um So, again,
Speaker 1: Castro's kids atty much the best case scenario here. The
Speaker 1: worst case scenario for that, we're gonna have to roll
Speaker 1: over to our old buddy, Saddam Hussein. Of all the
Speaker 1: dictator fathers I've read about, I'm pretty sure he was
Speaker 1: the worst. Um Ude. Hussein was born in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: four and Kusay in nineteen sixty six. Uh, Kusay, not
Speaker 1: a whole lot to say about. I mean, he wasn't
Speaker 1: a great guy, but it's Day. Who who's the real
Speaker 1: kingship of Garbage Mountain? Um so Uda was originally meant
Speaker 1: to be the heir to Saddam's power. Uh. He was tall,
Speaker 1: handsome and athletic. But he was also so crazy that
Speaker 1: Saddam couldn't stand him and eventually disinherited him. So in
Speaker 1: the nineties, u Day was made the head of the
Speaker 1: national soccer team football team, whatever term you want to use,
Speaker 1: the head of the team. Yeah. Yeah, he was like
Speaker 1: the head coach. That's like a dictator kid. Trope will
Speaker 1: run into a couple of other kids who like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you get to run the soccer team because your dad's
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that's awesome the boss. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: as coach of this team, he was known to show
Speaker 1: up at halftime and promised to cut off players legs
Speaker 1: and feed them to hungry dogs if they didn't improve. Um,
Speaker 1: which is that's good motivation? Yeah, yeah, it's a solid strategy. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote here from a wonderful Guardian article titled
Speaker 1: day Career of Rape, Torture and Murder. Uh. Quote. As
Speaker 1: football oversealer, Seer, Uday kept a private torture scorecard with
Speaker 1: written instructions on how many times each player should be
Speaker 1: beaten on the soles of his feet after a particularly
Speaker 1: poor showing. Well, you gotta stay organized. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the that's the first thing. I can't forget any any
Speaker 1: beating worthy mistakes. No, no, that's like the first. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure what Joe Namath said that he was always
Speaker 1: hitting people in the foot. Yeah. Um so, in addition
Speaker 1: to being probably not a very good coach, Day was
Speaker 1: famous for raping basically anyone and everyone who caught his eye.
Speaker 1: There were some occasions where he'd show up at weddings
Speaker 1: and just take the bride. Yeah, that would happen, like
Speaker 1: is a lot of those stories. So he's he's garbage.
Speaker 1: He became obsessed with torture. It said that he had
Speaker 1: a private torture chamber on the Tigris. I found a
Speaker 1: quote during my research from a friend of the Hussain
Speaker 1: family who said the day Day discovered the Internet was
Speaker 1: a black day for Iraqis which, yeah, what did he
Speaker 1: do with the Internet. Well, he found out about things
Speaker 1: like Iron Maidens, not the band, the sarcophagus filled with spikes. Um,
Speaker 1: we found one of those in one of his palaces.
Speaker 1: The Americans did when when Iraq was you know, conquered
Speaker 1: or whatever. Uh, And when they found it, it was
Speaker 1: dull like like it wasn't he didn't just buy it
Speaker 1: to put it in the corner because he was like,
Speaker 1: I mean I think it started sharp. Yeah, you gotta
Speaker 1: you gotta keep that thing sharp, man. I think he
Speaker 1: was doing a lot of maiden ing with the iron maiden,
Speaker 1: although maybe more painful if it's not sharp. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean I assumed Huda knew what he was doing when
Speaker 1: it came to using an iron maiden on people. He
Speaker 1: was probably the world's leading expert on that actually, So
Speaker 1: you know, I've only used one like once or twice.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't. Yeah. Um. There is one mark in Uday's favor,
Speaker 1: which is that he was the leader of the Saddam Fedain,
Speaker 1: which was a violent paramilitary force dedicated to his dad. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the mark in his favor is that he equipped
Speaker 1: his private army with Darth Vader helmets. Yes, I've got
Speaker 1: a picture of them, and that's that's cool. That's that's
Speaker 1: that's pretty fly. Now did he know they were Darth
Speaker 1: Vader helmets? Yeah? Oh yeah, yeah, no, he he knew
Speaker 1: what he was doing. It was a conscious decision to
Speaker 1: echo Darth Vader and the helmets of his private army,
Speaker 1: which is, if you're gonna have a private army, not
Speaker 1: a bad call. So he was just like, I'm a
Speaker 1: bad guy, like from age one, was just like I'm
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be evil. He didn't have acid. He's yeah, no,
Speaker 1: he's not like one of those awful people who tries
Speaker 1: to pretend to be good. He's like fully committed. You know,
Speaker 1: it would be cool an army of Darth Vaders if
Speaker 1: they were mine. Um. So Saddam does not seem to
Speaker 1: have reigned in his oldest son for decades or disciplined
Speaker 1: him much at all, But over time Uday's behavior grew
Speaker 1: too abhorrant for even histories. Worst dad to let that
Speaker 1: horse run? You know. Well, uh so Ude was a drunk,
Speaker 1: had a little bit of a drinking problem. In a
Speaker 1: nine eight, he got drunk at a party and bludgeoned
Speaker 1: his father's bodyguard to death in front of a bunch
Speaker 1: of random partiers, which is kind of a party foul.
Speaker 1: That's where I personally, Yeah, beating your dad's bodyguard to death,
Speaker 1: that's an important line. Yeah, Um, this was not unheard
Speaker 1: of behavior, for he was famous for getting ship faced
Speaker 1: and doing things like firing his machine gun above the
Speaker 1: heads of musicians and dancers at parties. Sometimes he did
Speaker 1: not shoot above their heads. Um. He would just get
Speaker 1: drunk and shoot people at parties. That was his thing.
Speaker 1: He was like Joe Peshy's character and Good Fellas if
Speaker 1: he was never kidding every single time time. He was
Speaker 1: just going to murder them. Yeah, yeah, he's he's There's
Speaker 1: no kidding with Ude Hussein, um said sense of humor
Speaker 1: notoriously bad sense of well And all of this came
Speaker 1: to a head during a drunken brawl with his uncle
Speaker 1: What bon see what bon? And the why? Which? Who
Speaker 1: was a? Saddam's brother in law got into an argument
Speaker 1: over quote, the most sought after prostitute at a party. Uh.
Speaker 1: They went to Ude to ask him to basically King
Speaker 1: Solomon the whole matter and like determine who gets the prostitute. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was not a good idea. Ude had shown up
Speaker 1: at the party after three am, drunk as fun with
Speaker 1: a crazy pump action rifle that looked like it came
Speaker 1: from the movie Rambo. Is the only description I've I've
Speaker 1: I can't. I have no idea what kind of gun
Speaker 1: it was. Uh, it sounds ridiculous, So he was he
Speaker 1: was already hammered, probably blacked out, and when they asked
Speaker 1: him this, for some reason, he became convinced that what
Speaker 1: Bond had been making fun of his speech impediment. So
Speaker 1: Ude just starts shooting. Uh. He fires randomly into the crowd,
Speaker 1: first killing three people and wounding god knows how many.
Speaker 1: Then he turned the gun on his uncle and shot
Speaker 1: him in both legs, and then also accidentally gunned down
Speaker 1: six female dancers. So like nine people have died total
Speaker 1: in this ramsay, and Saddam's brother has had his kneecaps
Speaker 1: blown off. So this piste off Saddam Hussein Uh, and
Speaker 1: he decided he was actually going to discipline his son.
Speaker 1: So the story, yeah, so it's a real hardass. You know,
Speaker 1: you gotta draw the line somewhere. So the story of
Speaker 1: how I'm quoting from Will Barton Wharper's The Prisoner in
Speaker 1: his Palace quote. As punishment, he torched U Day's prize
Speaker 1: collection of rolls, Royce's, Bentley's, BMW's, Porsches and Ferraris, which
Speaker 1: had been stored under guard in a garage and the
Speaker 1: Republican Palace. Laughing wildly, the former dictator recalled how he
Speaker 1: gleefully watched the inferno, smoking one of his famous coheba's
Speaker 1: as the flames engulfed his son's treasured possessions. Saddam's almost
Speaker 1: manacle laughter was contagious. Rogerson, who's the guy, the American
Speaker 1: he's telling this story too, was unable to resist joining in,
Speaker 1: succumbing to belly laughs of his own. The mental image
Speaker 1: of the Dictator dousing hundreds of his sons luxury cars
Speaker 1: with gasoline and setting them ablaze reminded him of a
Speaker 1: Jerry Springer episode on steroids. Oh so, just everybody in
Speaker 1: this story, including the guy he's telling the story too,
Speaker 1: is just fucking crazy, just completely out of their mind.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's pretty funny. You murder nine people at
Speaker 1: a party, I'm gonna light a hundred cars on fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that'll show him. And Woday was on the straight and
Speaker 1: narrow from that point forward right the end. No, he
Speaker 1: he actually got shot in an assassination attempt and paralyzed
Speaker 1: from like the waist down. So he did calm down
Speaker 1: after that, But I don't think it was because of
Speaker 1: the cars. So uh. One of the weird things here
Speaker 1: is that like, well Soddam doesn't seem to have done
Speaker 1: much at all to his son's one way or the other. Uh,
Speaker 1: he was actually kind of a sweet dad to his daughter's,
Speaker 1: especially his eldest daughter, Rock had Uh. She told a
Speaker 1: story to an interviewer who at like saw this cheap
Speaker 1: piece of jewelry on her when she was like an
Speaker 1: egg island. Jordan was like, that doesn't look like the
Speaker 1: kind of thing you'd have, and she told him a
Speaker 1: sweet story about when you know, before Saddan was dictator,
Speaker 1: they've been walking in a market and she'd fallen down
Speaker 1: and scraped her knee and broken down into power crazed general. Like,
Speaker 1: well he was power vice president, scrappy young power crazed
Speaker 1: vice president. Yeah, yeah exactly. So he like he bought
Speaker 1: her some fancy like costume jewelry when she scraped her knee,
Speaker 1: and she kept it her whole life. So Tom was
Speaker 1: like a sweet And this is like another dictator trope
Speaker 1: is their sons always are often turned out to be
Speaker 1: like mass raping murderers and their daughters are like he
Speaker 1: was a sweet dad. He bought me jewelry. This is
Speaker 1: why it's so good that our main enemy in North
Speaker 1: Korea has just a line of succession with just nothing
Speaker 1: but dictators and sons of dictators all the way down. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and most of them seem to be cut from
Speaker 1: the old day cloth. Yeah. Um. So again that's a trend.
Speaker 1: Dictator is being really close to their first daughter, and
Speaker 1: that kind of brings us to Stalin because Stalin adored
Speaker 1: his young daughter's feed Lana. Uh. And we're going to
Speaker 1: get into Joseph Stalin as a doting father after this break,
Speaker 1: But first we're going to break for something Stalin would
Speaker 1: have hated, ads capitalism, songs of of products. By not
Speaker 1: skipping these ads, you're fighting Stalin in a sense. Yes, Uh,
Speaker 1: stick it to Stalin be a good American and several
Speaker 1: of the dictators on this list by listening to these ads.
Speaker 1: And we're back. Uh. Last we talked about Fidel Castro
Speaker 1: and Saddam Hussein and their parenting tactics, and right now
Speaker 1: we are talking about fed Lana Stalin, the daughter to
Speaker 1: Joseph Stalin. She was born in after Stalin was already
Speaker 1: in power, and he was kind of a doting father
Speaker 1: at first, Uh, Lana thinks it's because he reminded her
Speaker 1: of his mother. There um set Lana's mother and Ndesda
Speaker 1: was a committed Bolshevik. She was not big on child rearing.
Speaker 1: She never hugged her daughter, she never said a kind
Speaker 1: word to her daughter, and she constantly gave Stalin ship
Speaker 1: for coddling their daughter. So in this relationship, Stalin was
Speaker 1: the cool parent, which the laid back He's the chill
Speaker 1: dad right, um wow, Stalin's wife did not funk around her. No,
Speaker 1: she did not. Uh yeah, she wound up killing herself
Speaker 1: because she wasn't angry at how he wasn't Communist enough
Speaker 1: for her. Basically real it seems like why we don't
Speaker 1: even I mean, we're not gonna tell you when argument ladies.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so Stalin and his daughter had a cute
Speaker 1: little relationship. He would have her issue orders to him
Speaker 1: in writing and then he would respond I obey. He
Speaker 1: would sign notes as like the poor peasant Joseph Stalin
Speaker 1: the secretary to you know my daughter. Um so that
Speaker 1: was cute, adorable. Yeah, they had a cute little thing
Speaker 1: it And last you know, Stalin was always busy and
Speaker 1: a lot of what he was busy doing was disappearing people.
Speaker 1: So regularly her classmates would just not show up at
Speaker 1: school because their parents had been exiled or executed, and
Speaker 1: he had her classmates killed for like not being nice
Speaker 1: to his daughter. I suspect some of that might have
Speaker 1: happened to Um. There's just a lot of her schoolmates
Speaker 1: weren't there one day, and that kept on happening. From
Speaker 1: time to time. Other classmates would give her notes to
Speaker 1: pass on to her father, begging him to free their parents. UM.
Speaker 1: Stalin hated this and told his daughter to not act
Speaker 1: as a post office box. So that's a fun thing
Speaker 1: to put on your daughter's shoulder. Um. Her relatives started
Speaker 1: to disappear to after Stalin's wife committed suicide. Stalin got
Speaker 1: rid of basically the mom's whole side of the family,
Speaker 1: so all of fet Laana's aunts and uncles. Uh. She
Speaker 1: didn't understand why this was happening and thought that it
Speaker 1: was just like a terrible mistake until she went to
Speaker 1: Stalin about it and he said, no, they knew too much.
Speaker 1: They babbled, and it played into the hands of our enemy.
Speaker 1: He knows how to talk to his daughter. He's a
Speaker 1: good father. He's a good dad. He's a good dad.
Speaker 1: That's how you explained disappearing. Yeah, someone's relatives. Um so.
Speaker 1: In three, at the height of World War two, set
Speaker 1: Lana fell in love with a young boy named Kapler.
Speaker 1: They had a brief romance and then Stalin found out
Speaker 1: He became convinced Kapler was a British spy. He also
Speaker 1: wasn't wild about the fact that Kapler was Jewish. Uh.
Speaker 1: Spet Laana said, you know, but I love him Dad.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from spet Lana's autobiography here, love, screamed
Speaker 1: my father with a hatred of the very word I
Speaker 1: can scarcely convey. And for the first time in his life,
Speaker 1: he slapped me across the face twice. Take a look
Speaker 1: at yourself. Who'd want you? You fool? He's got women
Speaker 1: all around him. So that's what that Stalin he there's
Speaker 1: an immediate drop off if she gets to be a
Speaker 1: teenager and how sweet Stolid is. Yeah, and just the
Speaker 1: second she shows any interest in another man, Yeah, that's she.
Speaker 1: So she's also a first daughter. Yeah, yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: just interesting. We were just talking on the other podcast
Speaker 1: that I host, The Daily Zieist, Today about our president
Speaker 1: and his strange relationship to his first daughter, Ivanka, just
Speaker 1: how it doesn't seem like totally normal, like they seem
Speaker 1: to have a very special bond. But yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: he has sort of the same sort of relationship to
Speaker 1: his daughter Stylin does that, um like Scarface has to
Speaker 1: his sister. It's like, yeah, man, he's really protective of her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sweet up until another human being enters the picture,
Speaker 1: and then it's like, oh no, this is bad. That's
Speaker 1: interesting that dictators can like not because they they're clearly
Speaker 1: their love for their daughter is just a function of
Speaker 1: their narcissism, right, Yeah, but it's weird that it doesn't
Speaker 1: translate to their sons, probably because they see their sons
Speaker 1: as just like a diminished, shittier version of them. Yeah
Speaker 1: it's me, but you know, you never had to struggle.
Speaker 1: You didn't grow up robbing banks for a living, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: whereas his daughter is just this, you know, perfect little
Speaker 1: thing that loved him and then she becomes a person
Speaker 1: and he's very angry about Yeah. So you know, Stalin
Speaker 1: dies spoiler alert, uh and after his deaths ft Lana
Speaker 1: flees the Soviet Union. She becomes an American citizen in
Speaker 1: sixty seven, but then comes back to the U. S
Speaker 1: s r. In eighty four. But then she goes back
Speaker 1: to the US and then France and then finally England
Speaker 1: in NU just on her my dad was Stalin tour Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she wrote two very popular books and one of them
Speaker 1: was a best seller, um and they were apparently good books,
Speaker 1: like well reviewed, so you you might call her the
Speaker 1: best case scenario for like the kid of a monster.
Speaker 1: From her perspective, Yeah, she wound up being a relatively
Speaker 1: successful person and you know, spoke out against her dad
Speaker 1: the rest of her life. Like whatever happened to the
Speaker 1: guy Kaplar that she fell in love with? He went
Speaker 1: off to a gulag? Oh got it? Got yep yep,
Speaker 1: like specifically as ordered by Stalin or just because he
Speaker 1: was one of millions and millions of people who got
Speaker 1: swept up. I mean, he was one of millions and
Speaker 1: millions of people who got swept up. But Stalin, you know, like,
Speaker 1: I don't think it was unrelated to the fact that
Speaker 1: he was making eyes at Stalin's daughter and gulags were
Speaker 1: nice places, right, yeah, pretty chill. Let's not examine that
Speaker 1: any further, they seem nice because it's a nice name.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a good soup. Yeah yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I love the gulag It's eggplant, right yeah yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: My favorite fact about gulags is the Russian word for Russia.
Speaker 1: Russian still has a word for this. It's called it
Speaker 1: basically means man cow, and it's a word that was
Speaker 1: created in the Gulags for when you fatten somebody up
Speaker 1: who you're in the gulags with in order to uh
Speaker 1: and then you plan an escape with them so that
Speaker 1: you can eat them as you're crossing the tundra. That's yeah,
Speaker 1: Russian hats has a single word for that. Is that
Speaker 1: why you would cater all those fat about it? Okay? Um,
Speaker 1: all right, back to uh Castro's oh yeah so um.
Speaker 1: This kind of this kind of brings to mind Castro's
Speaker 1: daughter Elena, who had a very similar story to fet Laana. Um. So,
Speaker 1: she never really lived with her dad. Her mom was
Speaker 1: kind of one of Castro's side flings, but she grew
Speaker 1: up knowing knowing she was Castro's daughter. Everyone else knew
Speaker 1: she was Castro's daughter, and likes fet Lana, people would
Speaker 1: beg her to have her dad free their families from
Speaker 1: you know, horrible you know, slave camps and stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: Castro wasn't as much of a dick about it as Stalin.
Speaker 1: I don't think he did anything when she asked him,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't, like makes it kind of hard to
Speaker 1: be like, guys, I'm not just defined by my father
Speaker 1: when they're like, but he's killing my family, my father, right. Um.
Speaker 1: So they didn't have a super close relationship, but Fidel
Speaker 1: did show up at her first wedding and as he left,
Speaker 1: he told her don't let me know when you get
Speaker 1: your divorce, and her response was, don't worry. I don't
Speaker 1: have your phone number. Um likes fet Lana. She fled
Speaker 1: her home country. She wound up in the United States.
Speaker 1: She wrote a book about her shitty dad, and she
Speaker 1: started a radio show in Miami called Simply Elena where
Speaker 1: she would talk about Castro every day. Not Castro was
Speaker 1: my dad, it was just simply Elena. Now I think
Speaker 1: Castro was my dad was similar to her books title.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, yeah, So that's that's interesting. You've got
Speaker 1: like two older daughters of of dictators who followed basically
Speaker 1: the same path um rejecting their father, who clearly was
Speaker 1: into them for a weird reason. They're still hope for
Speaker 1: you Avanca. Yeah, you can write it, but you could
Speaker 1: have a simply Avanca. You could just interesting. I'm really
Speaker 1: interested to see, like what as everybody who was associated
Speaker 1: with Well, well we don't need to talk about politics.
Speaker 1: Let's keep going with these crazy motherfucker's. Yeah, let's talk
Speaker 1: about Stalin's sons. Um. So, first props to stop. Uh.
Speaker 1: He spoiled his kids a lot less than most dictators.
Speaker 1: This is particularly true of his son's Vassili and Yakov. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: Stalin seems to have been kind of a true believer
Speaker 1: in some ways. Uh to the stuff he was, he was,
Speaker 1: he was, you know, thrown out there. Uh. He didn't
Speaker 1: want his kids to get special treatment just because their
Speaker 1: dad was Stalin. Um. When Vasili was seventeen, he joined
Speaker 1: a flight school. His grades were terrible. Um, his dad's
Speaker 1: employees helped him get into the school. Uh, without you know,
Speaker 1: Stalin's knowledge, because they thought it might curry favor. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They were probably disappeared for that because Stalin did not
Speaker 1: like that. He described his son as spoiled an average
Speaker 1: when you're helping somebody get into flight school and they're
Speaker 1: not good enough to get into flight school. Are you
Speaker 1: really doing them a favor or are you just sending
Speaker 1: them off to a fiery death? Yeah? Um, or maybe
Speaker 1: other people. So vasili Uh tried to use his famous
Speaker 1: name to get privileges at flight school. Stalin found out
Speaker 1: and ordered that his kid not get any special treatment. Um.
Speaker 1: I think he still did get some special treatment, but
Speaker 1: I think Stalin was pissed about it. Vassili was a
Speaker 1: rampage and drunk In spite of that, he did manage
Speaker 1: to graduate flight school. He had a habit of drunkenly
Speaker 1: commandeering planes and then flying them while continuing to drink.
Speaker 1: You would expect that story to end worse than it did,
Speaker 1: but apparently he never like accidentally nine eleven anything. And
Speaker 1: I like that nine eleven's past tenses nine to eleven
Speaker 1: first of all, but also, yeah, so he was like
Speaker 1: Denza Washington's character in flight. I need a couple of
Speaker 1: pops to like get him in the World's Greatest Pilot
Speaker 1: and then he's like flying planes upside down? Is he
Speaker 1: a commercial pilot or what? Military? Military? So he is
Speaker 1: the commander. He is a colonel in charge of an
Speaker 1: Air Force regiment during World War Two for a little while.
Speaker 1: Stalin actually fired him very quickly and said this, Colonel
Speaker 1: Stalin is being removed from his post as regimental commander
Speaker 1: for drunkenness and debauchery and because he is ruining and
Speaker 1: perverting the regiment. So so, I mean when he's drunkenly
Speaker 1: commandeering these plane means that's only a thing that is
Speaker 1: possible if you're a Stalin's kid, because everyone else they
Speaker 1: just fucking shoot you between the eyes. Yeah, Stalin did
Speaker 1: predict his kids from being shot in the eyes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if there's one thing you could say about that guy, Yes,
Speaker 1: millions of flaves lost. But actually Vassilly got to drunkenly
Speaker 1: commandeer that plan. I should say he stopped two thirds
Speaker 1: of his kids from being shot in. So Vassili lived
Speaker 1: to the ripled age of forty one when he died
Speaker 1: of rampant alcoholism. He lasted longer than his brother Yakov um.
Speaker 1: As far as I can tell, Yakov was actually pretty
Speaker 1: solid dude. I haven't read about any specific crimes he committed.
Speaker 1: He did try to kill himself after a failed romance.
Speaker 1: When he failed, Stalin's only comment was he can't even
Speaker 1: shoot straight? Is the name Yakov in Russian spelled jack Off?
Speaker 1: I mean I wrote it as white like it's written
Speaker 1: in cyrillic. Well, it's neither because you can you spell
Speaker 1: it either way because they use different letters. Proceed. Yeah, um.
Speaker 1: Yakov wound up on the Eastern Front during the Nazi invasion.
Speaker 1: He was captured by the Nazis. They offered to ransom
Speaker 1: him back to Stalin in exchange for the captured German
Speaker 1: field Marshal Paulis, but Stalin said it's not worth it
Speaker 1: to trade a general for a lieutenant h. Stalin also
Speaker 1: had Yakov's family locked up after he was captured because
Speaker 1: he issued a decrease saying that the families of captured
Speaker 1: soldiers had to be punished. Uh, and he did not
Speaker 1: exempt his son's own family from that. So his son's
Speaker 1: own family was imprisoned. But that's like his wife or
Speaker 1: like something, just his wife and kids some side piece. No,
Speaker 1: it's his wife. I think he's got a wife and kids.
Speaker 1: So Yakov's family was also his family. Yeah, yeah, Saddam
Speaker 1: Saddam's grandkids and daughter in law he throws in prison
Speaker 1: because their dad gets captured by the Nazis. Okay, yakoffs Yeah,
Speaker 1: wife and kids. Yeah. And Yakov gets killed at the
Speaker 1: Saxon Housen concentration camp when he refuses an order from
Speaker 1: a guard to go, you know, do something. He just
Speaker 1: like wasn't only to take it anymore. The fact that
Speaker 1: he died this way is actually the only thing he
Speaker 1: ever did that Stalin approved of. Uh. So that's Stalin
Speaker 1: the dad in a nutshell? Um? So was he shot
Speaker 1: by a German officer? He's shot by a German while
Speaker 1: an s S guard. Basically, the guys like it's time
Speaker 1: to go inside, and Yakov's like, no funk and I'm
Speaker 1: just ready to die. When to keep playing? Yeah and yeah.
Speaker 1: So that's how you get Stalin's approval. Um, if you
Speaker 1: were his son, get shot by a Nazi. Way to
Speaker 1: go yet? Yeah, And I feel like now is the
Speaker 1: right time to move on to another communist dictator, Nikolai Cichesco.
Speaker 1: He was the dictator of Romania from nineteen sixty five
Speaker 1: to nineteen eighty nine. As an authoritarian ruler, he ordered
Speaker 1: troops to fire and protesters, operated a vast and repressive
Speaker 1: secret police, and generally ran his country into the ground.
Speaker 1: He's the whole standard bingo for a European dictator sixties seventies, eighties. Uh,
Speaker 1: and he's kind of middle of the pack as far
Speaker 1: as dictator dad's go. So his wife was named Alina
Speaker 1: and they had two sons and one daughter. His first son, Valentine,
Speaker 1: was initially meant to be the air Apparent, but Valentine
Speaker 1: didn't want to follow in his dad's footsteps. He declined
Speaker 1: the privilege of being the air and instead became a
Speaker 1: nuclear physicist, which he still does today. Such a disappointment.
Speaker 1: So yeah, what a bummer kid, just becomes a nuclear physicist,
Speaker 1: not a power hungry dictator. Um. Valentine only abused his
Speaker 1: position a little bit. He acquired a giant art collection,
Speaker 1: and he had a side job helping to run the
Speaker 1: nation's best soccer team. Um, but he was apparently pretty nice.
Speaker 1: Nobody had any complaints with him on the soccer team. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, the silly Stalin also had a soccer team
Speaker 1: or or a hockey team or whatever. Um. All these
Speaker 1: dictator kids get a sports team if they want him. Apparently,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of fun because it's what our richest
Speaker 1: people do. Right the second they become billionaires. They buy
Speaker 1: a sports teams. Yeah, Zoya che Skoo was the middle daughter.
Speaker 1: Apparently Nikolai and Elina did something right because she also
Speaker 1: got a PhD. Hers was in mathematics. Yeah this check
Speaker 1: out the big brand on the chichev schoose. Well, this
Speaker 1: is actually a problem because nick Kali's wife, Elena, the
Speaker 1: dictator ASTs you could say, was kind of a giant
Speaker 1: piece of ship too. And her hobby was pretending to
Speaker 1: be a chemist. Uh. She loved to get honors from
Speaker 1: foreign universities for her pioneering work in chemistry. She had
Speaker 1: done no work in chemistry, but that was just a thing.
Speaker 1: It got her off to pretend she was a chemist,
Speaker 1: and she hated that her daughter was an actual scientist
Speaker 1: with actual accomplishing. So when her daughter gets a PhD
Speaker 1: in mathematics, Elena kicks Zoya out of the presidential palace
Speaker 1: and makes her live in an apartment. Um. As revenge,
Speaker 1: Zoya starts a new mathematics department at the institute she
Speaker 1: worked at and winds up in charge of it. She
Speaker 1: also starts smoking because her mom hates cigarettes. Um So
Speaker 1: this is like like a mix of normal teenage rebellion
Speaker 1: and the kind of thing you can only do it
Speaker 1: as a dictator's kid, like I'm gonna smoke cigarettes and
Speaker 1: start a new mathematics institute. Yeah, very smart, dictator's kid. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's brilliant. She starts drinking heavily and having lots of
Speaker 1: sex with random people, like you do. A didn't care
Speaker 1: about the sex so much, but she did order the
Speaker 1: secret police to watch her daughter and report on the
Speaker 1: boys she dated, which I assumed did not always end
Speaker 1: well for the boys. Zoya became a bit of a dissident.
Speaker 1: She made some friends with normal Romanians who were suffering
Speaker 1: under her parents rule, and so she stopped using her
Speaker 1: family name and spoke out about terrible living conditions. But
Speaker 1: that really seems to have been more of a way
Speaker 1: to get back at her mom than out of a
Speaker 1: real commitment to justice. When her parents were forced from power,
Speaker 1: Elena was arrested to The troops that searched her house
Speaker 1: found it filled with jewels and art and cash. As
Speaker 1: they took her away, she asked the police if they
Speaker 1: had any room in the truck for her poodles, since
Speaker 1: many Romanians were starving at this point. This did not
Speaker 1: play well, um, but you know, Zoia and Valentine were
Speaker 1: both functional people who like, got legitimate jobs and you know,
Speaker 1: high level degrees their success stories. The same cannot be
Speaker 1: said of Nikolai and Elina's youngest child, Nikko. Uh, since
Speaker 1: Valentine had chosen the life of the mind and Nicko
Speaker 1: was seen as the Czechski's best bet for establishing a
Speaker 1: communist dynasty. I'm gonna quote Odren of Monsters again here.
Speaker 1: From his mid teens, Nikku was an out of control
Speaker 1: drunk and a rapist. He raped it will, and his
Speaker 1: will was ferocious and unopposable. He had complete license. He
Speaker 1: was the kind who could run red lights and kill
Speaker 1: people in the process with total impunity. So that's yeah.
Speaker 1: When the United Nations named International Youth here, Nikko was
Speaker 1: picked to be the spokesperson of that whole thing. The
Speaker 1: United Nations picked him. Yeah, he's the spokesperson of the
Speaker 1: International Youth. Yeah yeah, I mean, you got a metal
Speaker 1: what's more youthful than running red lights and indiscriminate rape.
Speaker 1: He's a fun guy. Um. You know, back in Romania
Speaker 1: now with a metal nik who drank, raped and regularly
Speaker 1: got in a car accidents. His best friend was Ude Hussein.
Speaker 1: The pair would regularly meet up in Monica, said like,
Speaker 1: weird sound in their name, and yeah, they just seemed
Speaker 1: like a perfect match. I bet they had fun in Monico.
Speaker 1: In Switzerland, it seemed like it seemed like a good
Speaker 1: crew to party with. Yeah, you must be weird to
Speaker 1: get drunk with. Day when he can't machine gun people,
Speaker 1: just I wonder, Yeah, what does he do then? Yeah,
Speaker 1: just like goes around and pushes people under traffic or something,
Speaker 1: shows people off of balconies. Um. At one point, Nikko
Speaker 1: got married. His mom had to force this on him
Speaker 1: because you know, he was happier raping people indiscriminately. But
Speaker 1: at his mom's urging, he eventually married a girl named Pollyanna.
Speaker 1: After the wedding, he told her, now, go live with
Speaker 1: my mother. She should fuck you because she chose you.
Speaker 1: So that's some solid that was actually in my wedding
Speaker 1: valves as well. That's a beautiful, beautiful sentiment. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: couple divorced not long after that. Yeah, it's a heartbreak
Speaker 1: whenever that happens. So during the revolution that kicked their
Speaker 1: parents out of power, Nikko ordered troops to massacre civilians.
Speaker 1: In one Transylvanian town. His brother and sister didn't do
Speaker 1: much at all. They received eight months sentences. Nikko was
Speaker 1: given twenty years in prison. He was released after only
Speaker 1: three because his heavy drinking had killed his liver. He
Speaker 1: died at age forty five, which means he lived, you know,
Speaker 1: a good four years longer than Vassili Stalin. Um. I
Speaker 1: could probably fill two or three full podcasts with anecdotes
Speaker 1: of other dictator kids. I assume we'll all follow up
Speaker 1: at some point. You know, there's there's the story of
Speaker 1: Kadafi's son Matassen, who hired Beyonce and Usher to play
Speaker 1: at private parties. He would throw and spent two million
Speaker 1: dollars a month of the government's money on his own.
Speaker 1: It's fun, but us also sounds like some sort of
Speaker 1: over the counter cough medicine. Yeah. Um, we're gonna actually
Speaker 1: move on to another dictator's kid in a little bit,
Speaker 1: Nikolai Lukashenko, the small child with a Golden gun. But
Speaker 1: first we've got some advertisements to come back to. Which
Speaker 1: advertisements that would really piss off Nikolai Chichesko because he was,
Speaker 1: you know, Communist. So let's keep angering these dead dictators Hey,
Speaker 1: we are back, and I'm going to talk about Benito Mussolini, Uh,
Speaker 1: the lean man, and he he actually seems to have
Speaker 1: been a decent parent, and that his kids all grew
Speaker 1: up idolizing him even after his death. But he was
Speaker 1: a shitty parent, and that his kids all became horrible
Speaker 1: fascists and his family are still fascists today. Um. He
Speaker 1: sent his son, Vittorio to Hollywood in nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: and Vittorio formed a company with how Roach, creator of
Speaker 1: the Little Rascals. Uh. Their collaboration was short lived, adorable.
Speaker 1: You can find a video online of Mussolini's son meeting
Speaker 1: all of the Little Rascals for Yeah, he does he
Speaker 1: have like a stiff sort of fascist demeanor about you
Speaker 1: know what. I think he would have been any of them. No,
Speaker 1: but he would have been a great member of the cast.
Speaker 1: He's got um, he's got Rascal's charisma. Uh. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: I really I don't see why they didn't bring him
Speaker 1: back for the reboot in the nineties of the Little Rascals.
Speaker 1: That would have been what that was missing. But yeah,
Speaker 1: if you want to look that up online, you can
Speaker 1: see Mussolini's son and the Little rascals being adorable together. Um.
Speaker 1: Mussolini's daughter Edda loved Hitler in the Nazis. In nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three, she joined Hitler and Gebels and Gebbels family
Speaker 1: at Lake Vance, which is where the Holocaust was planned. Uh.
Speaker 1: Not during that meeting, but in that same location a
Speaker 1: couple of years later, Uh planned the Holocaustter Holocaust jokes
Speaker 1: aren't that funny, but the idea of Hitler planning it
Speaker 1: with a ten year old is really weird. I think
Speaker 1: she was late teens like point. Yeah. You know. She
Speaker 1: called Hitler her uncle though, and was quote always struck
Speaker 1: by his extraordinary kindness and affection towards me as well
Speaker 1: as his patients. Unky Hitler, Unky Hitler. Um. Yeah. In
Speaker 1: nineteen forty, she said she was ashamed and disgusted that
Speaker 1: Italy hadn't yet entered World War Two on the side
Speaker 1: of the Nazis. Uh. She said that she didn't force
Speaker 1: her dad into World War Two, but she also said, quote,
Speaker 1: given my germaniphile sympathies, I was, without being aware of it,
Speaker 1: the link between the fewer and my father. I found
Speaker 1: it normal that two dictators should be all and this
Speaker 1: is all the more so since as soon as he
Speaker 1: took power in nineteen thirty three, I had begun to
Speaker 1: consider Hitler a veritable hero in the thirties. I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to get a sense of when when Mussolini and
Speaker 1: Hitler were like first on the scene, is there a
Speaker 1: modern day corollary for like how the world viewed them.
Speaker 1: Would Putin be like the closest thing we have, or
Speaker 1: putin Putin might be the closest thing we have Towards
Speaker 1: how Mussolini was viewed at the time, A lot of
Speaker 1: people thought he was a monster, but he was very popular.
Speaker 1: Like one of the things that's hard when you're thinking
Speaker 1: about the thirties is that fascism was a legitimate political
Speaker 1: ideology at that point. People thought yeah, people thought like,
Speaker 1: oh no, this might be a reasonable way to run
Speaker 1: a country. So Mussolini was like he was the senior
Speaker 1: partner between him and Hitler for a while, Like in
Speaker 1: the thirties, he was like the big man, and Hitler
Speaker 1: was trying to impress him. And obviously Mussolini went to
Speaker 1: ship and this whole country went to ship. Um Hitler thrived. No,
Speaker 1: as far as I know now, I haven't read past
Speaker 1: thirty six. But I think it pretty good that guy's
Speaker 1: got something on the ball. I feel like we got
Speaker 1: a lot now. Probably shouldn't make those jokes about Hitler,
Speaker 1: but um, yeah. Edda had a husband named Siana who
Speaker 1: wound up turning against Mussolini and being part of a
Speaker 1: plot to sort of overthrow him and pull Italy out
Speaker 1: of the war. Uh. Mussolini had him executed. He was
Speaker 1: forced to sit in a chair with other co conspirators,
Speaker 1: tied to the chair and then shot in the head. Uh.
Speaker 1: His Mussolini's grandchild, Fabreezio Ciano, wrote a book in the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties titled When Grandpa had Dad's shot. Wow. Um,
Speaker 1: it's taking all I have to not say any of
Speaker 1: these names and like a like insulting Just there we go.
Speaker 1: Go you feel better, get a little bit of that
Speaker 1: pressure out. Yeah. Um. Mussolini's family is still very active
Speaker 1: in the Italian far right, which you'd think after their
Speaker 1: dad and his mistress being like murdered in public and
Speaker 1: the country getting bombed, like it would have been like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe that was a mistake. But his granddaughter, Alessandra is
Speaker 1: a member of the Italian Senate since I think two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven uh and also a member of the European Parliament.
Speaker 1: In two thousands six, when Libya asked for reparations for
Speaker 1: Italy's colonization and brutal war against it, Alessandra said, quote,
Speaker 1: if it hadn't been for my grandfather, they would still
Speaker 1: be writing camels and wearing turbans on their heads. They
Speaker 1: should be paying us compensation. So being complete ship does
Speaker 1: not always skip a generation. Uh. The Mussolini family just
Speaker 1: kind of seems to be garbage. Um. Or maybe it
Speaker 1: did skip a generation and he had that generation shot
Speaker 1: in the head. This is the shitty generation again. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so maybe the next generation will shoot the prior generation.
Speaker 1: I mean, the jury is pretty much in on fascism,
Speaker 1: isn't it. You would think so, but then everything that's
Speaker 1: happened in the last two years. Yeah yeah. Um. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about Cadafi. Momar freaking daffy. So you're a quman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a human. I'm a human. Uh um. He has
Speaker 1: a weird record as a parent. Um. Like most dictators,
Speaker 1: he gave one of his sons a sport team. Sadi
Speaker 1: Kadafi was the head of Libya's national football federation, but
Speaker 1: he was also the captain of his home team and
Speaker 1: the national team, so he played too, and he was
Speaker 1: not good, but he benefited and his team benefited from
Speaker 1: the fact that referees weren't allowed to rule against him um.
Speaker 1: And also broadcasters weren't allowed to mention the names of
Speaker 1: any other players in games he played in. UM, so
Speaker 1: they would call out Saudi by name, but the other
Speaker 1: players they just go ahead. They just give jersey numbers
Speaker 1: for the other players. So if you were playing in
Speaker 1: a game and he was anywhere on the field, no
Speaker 1: one else's name could be mentioned, so they'd be like,
Speaker 1: and the guy who saw it, he passed two, three passes,
Speaker 1: ago passes too, they call their numbers out. Okay, everyone
Speaker 1: but him on the field was just a number. Um. Yeah, Jesus.
Speaker 1: He did not have a lot of a sense of
Speaker 1: humor about his playing. There was a game in Tripoli
Speaker 1: where Tripoli was playing against their rivals been god z
Speaker 1: Uh and the Benghazi team dressed a donkey up in
Speaker 1: Saudi's jersey. Uh Saudi, I mean you want to guess
Speaker 1: how cool His reaction was, Uh, pretty chill. He had
Speaker 1: the Benghazi stadium demolished and banned their team from playing.
Speaker 1: That's that's a lot. Yeah, he was kind of a dick. Um.
Speaker 1: Kitafi's son Mutassam was allowed to hire famous international pop
Speaker 1: stars for his parties. Uh. He hired Beyonce and Usher
Speaker 1: and Mariah Carey, all of whom were apparently fine with
Speaker 1: taking a dictator's money to play at his birthday parties.
Speaker 1: Wait when did the because for some reason, my brand
Speaker 1: was still in black and white from the Muthalini stories.
Speaker 1: When did he have that uh stadium demolished? Was that
Speaker 1: modern days? I think that was in the early two
Speaker 1: thousand Jesus. Yeah, I'm not on that, um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it was pretty recent, like it wasn't back in black
Speaker 1: and white days for sure. Um. Yeah, Mutassam, you know,
Speaker 1: had Beyonce play for him and stuff. He once counted
Speaker 1: that his lifestyle costs the Libyan government two million a
Speaker 1: month just for him counted that. Yeah. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: something he admitted freely to a friend. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: can imagine how expensive the whole family was. Um. Mutasam
Speaker 1: attempted a coup probably once in the nineteen nineties. We
Speaker 1: don't know for sure, but he tried to overthrow his dad.
Speaker 1: We think his dad exiled him for a little while
Speaker 1: and then welcomed him back as the National Security Advisory.
Speaker 1: Uh so little, Yeah, you gotta, you gotta forgive your kids,
Speaker 1: gotta let them get that stuff out of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that military overthrowing exactly. Your kids are gonna
Speaker 1: they're gonna crash a car or something. You know, they're
Speaker 1: gonna gonna smoke a little weed. You can't be too
Speaker 1: hard on him, you know, you kick him out to
Speaker 1: Europe for a while, and then you make them your
Speaker 1: national security advisor. Now, I see they'll never get there
Speaker 1: because I already know my kids are plotting my overthrow,
Speaker 1: and I just have it in the back of my mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's smart. You gotta, you gotta. It's like that
Speaker 1: old parenting saying. You always you know, for every kid,
Speaker 1: you need a as in secret police. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Most of our conversations begin with you think you're stronger
Speaker 1: than me. Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's good, that's setting
Speaker 1: yourself up for success. Uh. Kadafi's son Hannibal, was a
Speaker 1: sailor and so wound up in control of Libya's hornible. Well,
Speaker 1: Hannibal is a big name in that part of the world.
Speaker 1: You know, he's still a hero, fucking baller, bad guy name.
Speaker 1: Anytime your name is Hannibal, that's frightening. Um. One of
Speaker 1: the things that's a general rule with dictator kids is
Speaker 1: that if you have like an interest like sailing, you'll
Speaker 1: wind up in charge of that for the whole country.
Speaker 1: So he was like, oh, you like being on ships, Well,
Speaker 1: you're in charge of all the ports in our port nation.
Speaker 1: You own the ocean. Yeah. Uh. The upside of it
Speaker 1: is Hannibal was well educated and took his education seriously.
Speaker 1: At one point, he was tutored by a European professor
Speaker 1: from Copenhagen. The book Children of Dictators quotes writer John
Speaker 1: byrne Is saying he was this tutor who visited and
Speaker 1: was met by Chaufford cars, put up in a five
Speaker 1: star hotel, and someone for private sessions to Hannibal's home,
Speaker 1: where gazelles and antelopes strolled around a garden. Um. Pretty
Speaker 1: sweet gig. If you're a tutor, I can see, Like,
Speaker 1: I think that's more forgivable than like Beyonce because she
Speaker 1: doesn't need the money. But a college professor, you can't
Speaker 1: take what you can get. Yeah, I guess like, be
Speaker 1: creative with who you make rich. Yeah. Yeah, at least, yeah,
Speaker 1: college professor. I feel better about than Beyonce getting more
Speaker 1: money to play for a dictator. We're just one of
Speaker 1: the other Destiny's child Yeah, yeah, that would have been creative. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We We've got a whole podcast on Children of Destiny
Speaker 1: coming after this one, Destiny's Children. I'm sorry, I feel stupid. Uh.
Speaker 1: Hannibal regularly found himself in conflict with the police. Not
Speaker 1: Libyan police obviously, because they would never get him in
Speaker 1: trouble or anything, but with European police. Uh. In two
Speaker 1: thousand one, he assaulted officers at the Hilton in Rome
Speaker 1: at three am. I'm gonna quote from Children of Dictators here,
Speaker 1: uh quote. The officers had been guarding Hannibal's own room.
Speaker 1: He struck them with bottles and emptied a fire extinguisher
Speaker 1: on them for good measure. He then pleaded diplomatic community,
Speaker 1: as he would habitually do. In two thousand four, Hannibal
Speaker 1: French police on a high speed chase through the center
Speaker 1: of Paris. He was drunk in his black Porsche, doing
Speaker 1: ninety miles an hour down the Chansa Lise. He ran
Speaker 1: red lights at one point he went the wrong way.
Speaker 1: When the police finally stopped him, six of his bodyguards
Speaker 1: arrived in other cars and attacked the police and attacked
Speaker 1: them like physically. Yes, um so this is like that, uh,
Speaker 1: that affluenza case, but just on a global scale. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's affluenza when you actually are immune to prosecution because
Speaker 1: you have diplomatic credentials, so you really can just plea
Speaker 1: diplomatic community. They're like guilty. Yeah, well, diplomatic community and
Speaker 1: diplomatic community. We control one of the biggest ports in
Speaker 1: the world, so what are you gonna do? Like you you,
Speaker 1: you know, our trade is a not insignificant part of
Speaker 1: your g d P. It's amazing that nobody just kills
Speaker 1: one of these guys just like it's just like, well,
Speaker 1: come on, you guys aren't gonna care, right, I mean
Speaker 1: some of them did get killed, Yeah, but just Matasson
Speaker 1: wound up getting killed right with alongside his dad. Yeah
Speaker 1: yeah yeah yeah. Um so Hannibal, you know, was a
Speaker 1: nightmare person. He beat his wife and his servants, but
Speaker 1: also his wife poured boiling water on her servants. So
Speaker 1: nobody's the good. Nobody's good in this story. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: the servants are okay, Yeah, the servants are probably decent
Speaker 1: people who are just trying not to get boiled. After
Speaker 1: Kadafi was deposed, information came out that Hannibal had ordered
Speaker 1: the building of a private cruise liner called the Phoenicia.
Speaker 1: It would have been big enough for thirty passengers. Hannibal
Speaker 1: had specified that he wanted it to include a one
Speaker 1: ton shark tank that could hold to san tiger sharks,
Speaker 1: two white sharks, and two black tip tip reef sharks.
Speaker 1: White sharks are great white sharks, just white, just white,
Speaker 1: just white, just white at the great ones. He wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna he wasn't gonna splurge the company's country's money. Right,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't want to go crazy. Um. Kadafi
Speaker 1: did have one good kid. His name was Saif al Islam,
Speaker 1: which literally means sort of Islam. Uh. Scife refused to
Speaker 1: post in government and would regularly give interviews to the
Speaker 1: national press where he was critical of the Libyan government
Speaker 1: and his father Uh. He like was kind of very
Speaker 1: popular in the world media because he was calling out
Speaker 1: the Libyan regime. He would call for democratic elections, but
Speaker 1: when the civil war happened, he returned home to fight
Speaker 1: on behalf of his father, uh real godfather to situations, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess father one. Yeah, got father one. Like he
Speaker 1: was a good enough guy that he recognized it was
Speaker 1: fucked up and he was willing to call it out.
Speaker 1: But like when the chips were down, he defended his
Speaker 1: monster dad um And in fact he was like the
Speaker 1: last Kadafi's standing in Libya, as as children of dictators
Speaker 1: puts it after everyone else was you know, murdered or
Speaker 1: had fled the country to avoid getting murdered in the
Speaker 1: street publicly, and he was leftover. Did he ever get murdered?
Speaker 1: As far as I think he's still alive, I think
Speaker 1: he might be in custody right now. Two days after
Speaker 1: his dad was killed, he said that he was willing
Speaker 1: to fight at the end, But I think he's in
Speaker 1: custody right now. It's it makes you wonder, knowing what
Speaker 1: we know about all these other children of dictators, it
Speaker 1: makes you wonder if this guy was the best human
Speaker 1: like ever because he managed to just be an all
Speaker 1: right person. Yeah, it's rare, right, Like you've got some
Speaker 1: of the castros who were not terrible people, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. As far as we know, but like Castrew
Speaker 1: didn't give them, I don't know he know he gave
Speaker 1: them Like it's it's feel like he was kind of
Speaker 1: absentee or like a disinterested dad maybe like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's they were just fucked up by or like
Speaker 1: poorly parented into not being terrible. I guess. Yeah. Like
Speaker 1: the best thing you can hope for is an of
Speaker 1: neglect and also that your dad doesn't give you too
Speaker 1: much responsibility. Um. And if that happens, then you won't
Speaker 1: like wind up in the worst case scenario, you could
Speaker 1: wind up in um. Yeah. Yeah, uh no. He was
Speaker 1: Scipe was captured trying to flee Libya. He was in
Speaker 1: jail for five or six years. He was released in
Speaker 1: June of two thousands, seventeen uh and a militia that
Speaker 1: had arrested him chose not to transfer him to the
Speaker 1: International Criminal Court. And it looks like he's going to Yeah,
Speaker 1: he says he's running for president. The u N backed
Speaker 1: Libyan government says he says he's going to. But the
Speaker 1: u N backed government in Libya right now says that's
Speaker 1: not going to happen. The i c C has a
Speaker 1: warrant out for his arrest Uh. So, I guess we'll
Speaker 1: see what happens if he needs somebody to run his campaign.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we just gave them the strategy.
Speaker 1: Just be like, did you see how shitty might have
Speaker 1: siblings were like, come on, I feel like Bannon can
Speaker 1: make it. I mean that makes you wonder though, if
Speaker 1: like the whole speaking out against his father thing was
Speaker 1: all it was an act from the beginning, Like it
Speaker 1: was like, I mean, he is the great like the
Speaker 1: long con. Yeah, what do they call like the ship
Speaker 1: the second Coming of Satan? Is that data Satan to
Speaker 1: electric Stan to electric blugalooya? Uh fuck? I forgot Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like a great deceiver or whatever. I feel
Speaker 1: like that's what's happening here. She's just like, if I
Speaker 1: make myself seem like a good guy to the international press,
Speaker 1: then they won't have a big issue when I wind
Speaker 1: up taking over from my dad. And his dad was like, well,
Speaker 1: he's the only kid I have who's not a complete
Speaker 1: funk up, so he'll definitely take over. And it's fine
Speaker 1: that he's gonna critique me a little bit antichrist. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So I'm about to talk about my boy Nikolai Lukashenko. So, uh,
Speaker 1: Nikolai is the son of al Xander Lukashenko, who is
Speaker 1: known as the last dictator in Europe. He's the president
Speaker 1: of Belarus. I should probably add that people called him
Speaker 1: the last dictator in Europe before Putin was as clearly
Speaker 1: a dictator as right now. Um. But yeah, we'll stray
Speaker 1: away from politics here, coming back, baby, yeah. So um.
Speaker 1: Nikolai Lukashenko started being groomed to rule Belarus when he
Speaker 1: was six years old, which is I guess the age
Speaker 1: when you start that training. I assumed some of this
Speaker 1: involved a thorough education and military training and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the time his dad just seems
Speaker 1: to use him as a prop to embarrass world leaders.
Speaker 1: By the age of seven, he'd posed Nikolai with the
Speaker 1: Pope Hugo Chavez and the President of Russia. Uh Dmitri Medvedev.
Speaker 1: The President of Russia gave him an actual golden handgun. Uh.
Speaker 1: He apparently still wears it because when he met Chavez
Speaker 1: again in two thousand twelve, he reached his hands up
Speaker 1: to high five him, and his suit coat slid back
Speaker 1: to reveal a giant, stupid golden handgun. And I gotta
Speaker 1: drop you some pictures here. So these are all going
Speaker 1: to be up on the website, all the pictures behind
Speaker 1: the bat Stards dot Com. Here's Nikolai Lukashenko receiving his
Speaker 1: giant golden handgun and there it is in his little suit,
Speaker 1: just always clearly packing heat. He's still a child, He's
Speaker 1: he's thirteen now, wow, and he still has a golden
Speaker 1: handgun that he carries everywhere. There's the picture of him
Speaker 1: with chops and this is a working handgun. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a functional gold plated handgun. Jesus Chris. He's like, my man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what else do you give a kid? What do you
Speaker 1: give the kid who has everything? A golden gun? I
Speaker 1: like that he's slapping Hugo chavas a five instead of
Speaker 1: like shaking his hand or cowering in fear. Oh he's
Speaker 1: a hip you know, dictator in training. Uh, and apparently
Speaker 1: gets to carry a gun everywhere, which golden gun. I mean,
Speaker 1: what twelve year old wouldn't do that if they had
Speaker 1: the chance. Nothing says mad with power like golden handguns. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He's draw fring pretty hard in all those pictures. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't find a whole lot about Nikola's personality because
Speaker 1: you know, Belarus is a pretty closed country. Um, but
Speaker 1: I'm sure he's gonna turn out just great. Uh. He's
Speaker 1: been chosen to represent Belarus at the United Nations General Assembly.
Speaker 1: He's taking pictures of the Obama's and basically every other
Speaker 1: world leader who winds up near him. As of right now,
Speaker 1: he's aged thirteen. Uh, and yeah, we don't know much
Speaker 1: about him, but I'm optimistic that he will not be
Speaker 1: a drunken mass rapist. Yeah, so am I. If I've
Speaker 1: learned anything today, it's that I want that guy to
Speaker 1: marry my daughter if I if I ever have one. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: he seems like he's going to be well balanced. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he seems like that seems like that's gonna go. So
Speaker 1: what why does his dad bring him everywhere? Because he
Speaker 1: thinks it's like funny to make heads of state pose
Speaker 1: with him, or it's it's kind of impossible to tell
Speaker 1: if it feels like some of it's that because Belarus
Speaker 1: has been condemned by a bunch of different countries, including US,
Speaker 1: through you know, nightmarish human rights violations jailing political opponents,
Speaker 1: So I think it kind of tickles him to make
Speaker 1: someone like Barack Obama pose with him and his little
Speaker 1: kid who's the dictator in waiting. But I think some
Speaker 1: of its training, like he wants to establish like a
Speaker 1: Kim style dynasty uh in Belarus, and so he's sort
Speaker 1: of positioning his kid. And so there's there's like two
Speaker 1: messages and making a six year old year heir apparent.
Speaker 1: One of them is, you know, obviously getting people ready
Speaker 1: for this guy to be in charge, but the other
Speaker 1: is like, well, he's six, so I'm going to be
Speaker 1: around for a long time, Like you're not going to
Speaker 1: be free of Alexander Lucaschanko anytime soon. And my kids
Speaker 1: packing a golden gun if anybody has a problem with um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I wanna end this podcast by talking about
Speaker 1: Hitler's son. UM. Now, I didn't know Hitler had a son.
Speaker 1: He almost certainly did not. But there is one man
Speaker 1: who spent most of his life believing he was Hitler's son,
Speaker 1: even though he never met the man. So his story
Speaker 1: is worth telling. Uh. This guy, Jean Mary Laurey, was
Speaker 1: born right at the end of World War One. He
Speaker 1: grew up without a dad, just knowing that his father
Speaker 1: was a random German soldier because the Germans had occupied
Speaker 1: his village for most of you know that war. He
Speaker 1: lived a pretty normal life. During World War Two, he
Speaker 1: fought against the Nazis is a member of the French Resistance. UM.
Speaker 1: But then in nineteen fifty, when his mom was on
Speaker 1: her deathbed, she told him that when she was sixteen,
Speaker 1: she'd had an affair with Hitler. Jean Marie had been conceived.
Speaker 1: During a quote Tipsy Night with the Future Fear in
Speaker 1: June of nineteen seventeen. UM. This is a quote from
Speaker 1: Jean Murray quoting his mother saying, I was cutting hay
Speaker 1: with the other women when we saw a German soldier
Speaker 1: on the other side of the street. He had a
Speaker 1: sketch pad and seemed to be drawing checks out so far.
Speaker 1: All the women found this soldier interesting and wanted to
Speaker 1: know what he was drawing. They picked me to try
Speaker 1: to approach him. They wound up starting a relationship and
Speaker 1: Jean Maurie was born the next year. UM. It's cutting
Speaker 1: head euphemism for something, or they were just legitimately cutting
Speaker 1: they was I mean this is some like peasant ship,
Speaker 1: the adorably peasant Yeah, yeah, so yeah. According to Jean
Speaker 1: Maurie's mom. Uh, she and hit Or would often go
Speaker 1: on walks while she was pregnant. The walks usually ended badly. Quote.
Speaker 1: In fact, your father, inspired by nature, launched into speeches
Speaker 1: which I did not really understand. He did not speak French,
Speaker 1: but ranted in German, talking to an imaginary audience. So
Speaker 1: it sounds like Hitler. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like
Speaker 1: the one thing you would know about Hitler if you so,
Speaker 1: when was this? This was during World War two, during
Speaker 1: World War One? During World War World? World War one
Speaker 1: is when this kid's conceived, because he fights the Nazis
Speaker 1: as a young man. Um, because he's just like a
Speaker 1: French kid. Um, So most reputable historians say Philip probably
Speaker 1: wasn't Hitler's kid. A blood test didn't rule it out, though,
Speaker 1: because they have the same blood group. UM, and his
Speaker 1: mom had a Hitler painting, and there's another painting of
Speaker 1: Hitler's that looks like it's a painting of her Hitler
Speaker 1: and original Hitler. Maybe there's Yeah, it's not impossible. So
Speaker 1: did we have this guy's bloodline? Snuff doubt or where
Speaker 1: what we do? What's going on? We're getting to that um,
Speaker 1: so you know Jean Marie grew up believing he was Hitler,
Speaker 1: or you know, from the age thirty believed he was
Speaker 1: Hitler's kid. And he claimed that at first he was
Speaker 1: horribly depressed and he would just work all day, every
Speaker 1: day in order to not be overwhelmed with sadness. Uh.
Speaker 1: He says for twenty years he couldn't even go to
Speaker 1: the movies because any time spent not productively, it would
Speaker 1: just like grip him and and and consume him. Ah.
Speaker 1: He didn't tell anyone for almost thirty years until in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine he walked into a lawyer's office and said, quote,
Speaker 1: I am the son of Hitler. Tell me what I
Speaker 1: should do? Which great day to be that lawyer? Why
Speaker 1: did he think that was a legal matter? Well, he
Speaker 1: never makes much of a point of it in the
Speaker 1: interviews of him I read, but there's always talk about like,
Speaker 1: well he might be entitled to the royalties from mine
Speaker 1: camp um. He did wind up writing a book about
Speaker 1: his experience as maybe Hitler's kid. Uh. And as the
Speaker 1: years went on and the scientific battle to prove his
Speaker 1: claims was waged, John Murie sort of leaned into being Hitler.
Speaker 1: He changed his look to match the fewer and he
Speaker 1: definitely looks Hitler. E h. I mean, all you need
Speaker 1: is a mustache. So this is him posing next to
Speaker 1: a picture of hit he keeps in his house. That
Speaker 1: will do it. He's got the stash and that's all
Speaker 1: you need. Yeah. He he grew the mustache and he
Speaker 1: kept Hitler pictures around on his walls so that when
Speaker 1: journalists came over they could catch a picture of him
Speaker 1: looking just like Hitler. And he does also important that
Speaker 1: you not be smiling in your picture. No, you can't
Speaker 1: look like Hitler while smiling. No, you don't see a
Speaker 1: lot of smiling Hitler pictures. Yeah, um so uh yeah.
Speaker 1: He seems to have gone from ashamed and horrified of
Speaker 1: his lineage to weirdly proud very Here's a quote from him,
Speaker 1: Hitler is my family. It's not my fault that I
Speaker 1: ended up as his grandson, or that all those things
Speaker 1: happened during the war, those things I think being Holocaust.
Speaker 1: What he did has all those things, all those things,
Speaker 1: all that stuff, all those that that whatnot. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: he did has nothing to do with me, which you know,
Speaker 1: that's fair. He will always be family for me. That's weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think evil passes on. Of course, qualities from
Speaker 1: your parents pass on to you, but you build your
Speaker 1: own life and you make it what it is. Up
Speaker 1: until the end of his days, Jean Murray Lay continued
Speaker 1: to insist that he was proud of being Hitler's son.
Speaker 1: So that's weird. He is wearing a smart little sweater
Speaker 1: tie number. Yeah, he kind of gives you an idea
Speaker 1: of what Hitler retired might have. Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: Uh So, this is not the end of the story
Speaker 1: because Jean Marie had a son, Philippe, who worked as
Speaker 1: a plumber for the French Air Force. That's apparently a
Speaker 1: job the air Force would have wanted it, just just
Speaker 1: like Hitler would have loved. Please, I want you to
Speaker 1: deal with French soldier shit. Uh So. In recent years,
Speaker 1: Philippe has opened up about his belief that he is
Speaker 1: the grandson of Adolf Hitler. From him, we get quotes
Speaker 1: such as, my father said Hitler was a good lover
Speaker 1: and was gentle to my grandmother, But apparently he was
Speaker 1: a jealous person and did not like other men giving
Speaker 1: her the eye. As far as I know, he never
Speaker 1: had any sexual perversions. I don't want to make him
Speaker 1: out to be more of a monster than he is,
Speaker 1: which is weird of all of the things, rather than
Speaker 1: just being like, yeah, I think I'm Hitler's grandson, but
Speaker 1: doesn't mean I'm a bad guy. You're like, I think
Speaker 1: I'm Hitler's grandson, and my grandpa was good at sex.
Speaker 1: What a strange Yeah, so weird to die on. It's
Speaker 1: not like Hitler is known for not being good at
Speaker 1: sex or being good at sex, like either way, it's
Speaker 1: a very strange. I hear he was a gentle lover.
Speaker 1: All right, see you guys later. That's a weird thing
Speaker 1: you just drop on a journalist. My favorite thing about
Speaker 1: this story is the way Genre apparently informed his kids,
Speaker 1: including Philippe, that they might be Hitler kin. So one
Speaker 1: evening they're all seated around the dining room table when
Speaker 1: quote suddenly, my father said, kids, I've got something to
Speaker 1: tell you. Your grandfather is Adolf Hitler. Wow. Really built
Speaker 1: up to that. He had a lifetime to write that speech,
Speaker 1: and it was just like, oh Hitler, I almost forgot, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Hitler's your granddad. Yeah. Philip also expressed a weird sort
Speaker 1: of pride in his possible ancestry and he too, keeps
Speaker 1: pictures of Hitler on his wall, seemingly so photographers can
Speaker 1: take photographs that show off the clear resemblance. It's the
Speaker 1: same picture his dad took me. Yeah, I mean his
Speaker 1: mustache is a little less Hitler. His mustache is just
Speaker 1: a mustache. Um. He does have two framed photographs on
Speaker 1: his wall, both of Hitler. One of them is a
Speaker 1: drawing um. But this is very strange, like they they
Speaker 1: look like, you know, they are in frames where you
Speaker 1: would have family pictures. Yeah. Yeah, just Hitler right on
Speaker 1: his back wall, and like like his dad seems to
Speaker 1: be making some effort to look Hitler. E Yeah, and
Speaker 1: with that casual, laid back Hitler vibe he has is
Speaker 1: like one hand on his wrist, like just kind of
Speaker 1: doing a hey, just chilling at Hitler the Third's dining room. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see the resemblance. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: not impossible that they're actually Hitler's kids. It's just weirder
Speaker 1: to me the impact that just thinking you've got this
Speaker 1: guy as your relative has on you. Yeah. It's also
Speaker 1: interesting to me that like so many of those other kids,
Speaker 1: the ones who weren't garbage like as soon as they
Speaker 1: were old enough to realize what their dad was doing,
Speaker 1: like fled the country. But these guys, once they think like, oh,
Speaker 1: my dead granddad might have been Hitler, they just go
Speaker 1: whole hog into looking like hi and like, hey, Hitler
Speaker 1: wasn't that bad. He was a good lover. Yeah, say
Speaker 1: what you will about all that stuff that happened during
Speaker 1: the war. Hitler could fuck and he was my grandpa
Speaker 1: the end. I think that's the name of his book,
Speaker 1: Hitler could fuck my grandpa. Man. But what a romantic
Speaker 1: that Hitler was. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, I've learned a
Speaker 1: lot about what to do as a parent from these stories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: any lessons you want to take back home with you,
Speaker 1: just uh yeah, burn their belongings. Well, laughing maniacally is
Speaker 1: kind of one of the first things that puts them
Speaker 1: in their place. Really, uh kind of found his place
Speaker 1: after that. It sounds like, um, Jesus man, what a nightmare. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh boy, that's a fun tale. Yeah yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: I still feel like having gone over all of this,
Speaker 1: Like my initial conclusion was right that that Fidel was
Speaker 1: probably the least garbage of all these parents, but they
Speaker 1: were all pretty pretty terrible, right, Yeah, Like not a
Speaker 1: lot of good cases here. Yeah, so yeah, um being
Speaker 1: a strong leader. That maybe that's a lesson for all
Speaker 1: of us parents to learn, Like, uh, the tendencies that
Speaker 1: lead to dictatorship don't lead to good parenting. Yeah, Authoritarianism
Speaker 1: isn't a good thing to to bring out and apparently not. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: although you know, maybe the Obama kids will wind up,
Speaker 1: you know, carrying out a brutal uh purge campaign against
Speaker 1: the Trump family and and murder their political enemy. So
Speaker 1: we're not going to talk about whether how we would
Speaker 1: feel about that. But yeah, I bet the Obama girls,
Speaker 1: are you gonna end up just fine? Yeah? I suspect
Speaker 1: they'll wind up better than we already know the Trump
Speaker 1: kids have held out. I'm really curious about Baron. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Baron could be very interesting Ivanka. I mean, come on,
Speaker 1: she's she's an all star, She's a star. You guys,
Speaker 1: how long do you think it isn't before Putin gives
Speaker 1: Baron a golden gun? It's coming man, all right? Uh, well, Jack,
Speaker 1: you've got anything to plug? I hear you have a
Speaker 1: podcast these days? I do have a podcast these days.
Speaker 1: Almost definitely on the day you're listening to this, unless
Speaker 1: this weekend. We just released an episode. It's called The
Speaker 1: Daily Zeitgeist. We talk about whatever is happening right now
Speaker 1: on a daily basis. I hosted with my co host
Speaker 1: Miles Gray, and we have a third comedian on end.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of fun. You can find it wherever.
Speaker 1: Fine podcasts are given away for free. And you should
Speaker 1: try and get Hitler's grandson to come on. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: would that would actually be awesome. Yeah, I'm sure you
Speaker 1: have a fun pronunciation of the word zeitgeist. Um. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: And you can follow me at Jack Underscore O'Brien on Twitter. Well,
Speaker 1: this has been Behind the Bastards and I am and
Speaker 1: have been Robert Evans. Uh if we haven't in this
Speaker 1: episode gotten to a dictator that you particularly wanted to
Speaker 1: hear about in their parenting strategies, Uh, that's okay. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of dictators who had kids. Uh they were
Speaker 1: all terrible. We didn't even get into Papa Dock and
Speaker 1: baby doc. H. So this is going to be a
Speaker 1: reoccurring feature throughout the podcast, will be checking back in
Speaker 1: with other dictator parents and their kids talking about how
Speaker 1: that's going. And you know, uh so, so if you've
Speaker 1: got a dictator parent you want to hear about, maybe
Speaker 1: drop us an email uh and we'll what is there
Speaker 1: an email? Oh so, if you've got uh so, if
Speaker 1: you've got a dictator kid or a dictator parent, you
Speaker 1: want to hear about, maybe you tweeted at us, and
Speaker 1: we'll make sure that one gets into the next episode
Speaker 1: we do on this topic. Until then, you can find
Speaker 1: us on Twitter and Instagram and social media at at
Speaker 1: Bastards pod. You can find us on the internet dot
Speaker 1: com at behind the Bastards dot com, and you can
Speaker 1: find us next Tuesday with another episode of Behind the Bastards.
Speaker 1: Until then, I'm Robert Evans.