Behind the Bastards - CZM Rewind: Part One: King Leopold II: The First Modern Bastard

Episode Date: November 21, 2023

Original Air Date: June 12th, 2018 Have you ever heard of King Leopold II? In Episode 7, Robert is joined by Andrew Ti (Yo, Is This Racist?) and they discuss the King of Belgium, who was the first world leader to be crappy in the true modern sense of the word. His life’s work was the blueprint for being the kind of terrible that we recognize in modern leaders like Dick Cheney or Vladimir Putin. He pioneered screwing over tens of millions of people for petty personal gainSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Coolza Media. Hey, everyone. Robert Evans here. And, you know, it's another holiday week. This is not a holiday I tend to celebrate, but it is a holiday that our company gives us off. And I like my team not having to work. It's also good to not have to work. And when we drop episodes on weeks like this, it means we basically have to double up during the week before or the week after,

which causes a lot of stress that isn't necessary when you're trying to have everyone be able to relax. So this week we are doing another rewind our infamous and beloved episodes on King Leopold II of Belgium. So tuck in and enjoy yourselves and enjoy a real terrible story of a real terrible piece of shit. I hope you all have a good week,

regardless of what you do during it. Hello friends and welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in history. On this show we cover monsters like Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Eric Prince, Will Wheaton and today's topic, King Leopold. But before we get to King Leopold, I'd like to introduce my guest for the week Andrew T. Host of Yo is this racist and general man about town. Hello Andrew. What's up? Well today we're talking about a little Belgian dude named Leopold. You've heard of King Leopold

Belgium? Uh, not particularly. King Leopold the second, if that makes sense. Yeah, I feel like the closest I'm gonna come is I feel like at some point I got a box of fancy chocolates that might have had a a leopold maybe not the badly a pulled I assume a good leopold This is not a good leopold. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So I'm probably not this particular Yeah, yeah Leopold II was King of Belgium once upon a time and he was in my opinion the first world leader to be truly shitty in the modern sense of the word Oh snap like like like the kind of shitty that like Putin and Trump right right right so not right We're discounting our gangus cons and on yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah cuz gangus con like did what he did But he didn't have like a bunch of newspapers that he used to justify. He was just like, I'm gonna conquer some shit.

Right, right, right. This is the transition from barbarian bastards into media bastards. Exactly. And I think Leopold of Belgium is really where it happens in a modern, like obviously other people had toyed with aspects of this. He really nailed it.

So King Leopold, the second's dad, was obviously King Leopold the first. And he was the first king of Belgium. Is that obvious? Is it always like one, Pigex II? Or is it like, oh, your grandfather was Leopold I'm Gerald of Belgium, but you're gonna be Leopold II. I think that's more how it happens most of the time.

Not this time. Not this time. This time Leopold II was like, this went so well. Yeah. We're gonna have it the right. Not this time. This time, Leopold I was like, this went so well. Yeah. We're gonna have at the second. Keep it going. Yeah.

So Leopold I was like, again, the very first king of Belgium at all, because Belgium had just been made a thing in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. So during the whole fighting between Napoleon and everyone else in Europe, Belgium was generally the battleground where like everyone would sort of duke it out between the Germans and the French and the French and everybody else. Yeah, Waterloo is in Belgium. Oh. So after Napoleon's butt gets kicked, the European powers who win are like, okay, we can't have France and Germany fighting over Belgium forever.

We're going to make it its own thing. It's a new thing. Oh. Yeah. And since it was going to be a new country, obviously, it needed a king. Yeah. So they, Leopold the first got the job because he was a German prince who didn't Yeah, and since it was going to be a new country obviously it needed a king. Yeah So they the Leopold the first got the job because he was a German prince who didn't have a kingdom of his own Oh, okay. Yeah, it was just like split off right this is like we're gonna give Meghan Markle whales or what or don't part of whales Yeah, part of whales. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's that exactly that sort of thing

They actually tried him out to be king of Greece first, but he didn't like, didn't fit for whatever, yeah. What? That's an option. We're gonna find you with something, buddy. Don't worry, Leopold. Oh my God. We're gonna put you in a kingdom. It's just, Greece isn't the right one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course, you try to start a kingdom. Everyone has a kingdom to start. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's an existence. Yeah, Greece was his unsold pilot. Oh, wow. Yeah. And he was, by all accounts, a's an intense. Yeah, Greece was his unsold pilot. Oh, wow. Yeah.

And he was, by all accounts, a pretty good king of Belgium, if you're into that sort of thing. Yeah. Waffles. Waffles and chocolate. Chocolate. Mm-hmm. Getting invaded by the Germans.

Oh, beer, I guess. They like to beer, yeah, get the beer. Great beer. Get jammed by the Germans. Great beer, great at getting jammed by the Germans. Yeah. That's Belgium and a nutshell. Yep. But yeah, he was a good king while he was king midway through his reign in 1848. There was like this big year of revolutions all across Europe and all these European countries had their monarchs over thrown except for Belgium.

So he was very hot spring. We call that. Yes. The white man's spring. I don't know. That's the last 300 years. Yeah, that's true. What a time. What a time for the whites. Give it up for the whites. Yeah.

So Leopold the first solid king. I've got two main sources for today's podcast, which I should note now. The first is a biography called Leopold the second king of Belgium. It's a pro monarchist book that was written in 1910. Great. The article is critical about Leopold sometimes, but he thinks he was like a great king. Anything's kings are a good idea. So it's an interesting book because it gives you an idea of how Leopold himself would sort of present himself and defend himself, but you know what the propaganda at the time was.

And also, right, just critical enough to be legitimate. Well, no. No. It's totally, I guess for the time it wasn't bad. Oh, I mean, it's like it. You put it in just the faintest of criticism to give the rest of it more, you know, yeah. Oh, this is a real investigation. Yeah, it's like the monarch's equivalent of one of those like celebrity biographies. Yeah, yeah, softball.

A softball or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. This is a Geraldo interview of books. Exactly. Exactly. And then the other book is a book called King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Haaschild which takes the stance that Leopold was one of history's great monsters. Anyway, so these are, these are most of what I come from as sort of the contrasting views that these two books present. You read two books for a podcast? Out of your mind. Come on, Doc.

There's a lot to dig into here. Oh wow. And there's not a lot. You're making me feel real bad. I'm usually good for half a Wikipedia article. Holy shit. Well, this is at least the equivalent of like four Wikipedia articles.

That's a lot. Geez, go ahead. All right, so Leopold, the second's mom, Luis, was almost a love match as the term the book uses for his dad, the king. And it says this because the king was already in love with her before they got married. She's a teenager. So that makes it a love match. That's so nice.

He liked her when she was 14. Yeah. So it's love. Yeah. The 1800s were all of a time she had the right land I assume Yeah, she had some nice land. I'm related to the right enemies. She was with I think from the oily-owned family So she was like she had some solid-ass royal pedigree all of them You know you get some German from King Leopold the first you get a little bit of French from his wife and then their baby is sort of a mix, so maybe Germany and France won't fight over Belgium. Oh wow, what a brave.

Yeah, didn't wear it. So Leopold II was born Leopold, Louis Philippe, Mary Victor, and he was his parent second child. His older brother died 11 months before he was born. So if you think about that timeline a lot, it's not very fun because Leopold's older brother is born. Yeah. He dies 11 months later.

Yeah. They pop out another son. Yeah. Immediately. Immediately. Not a lot of morning time. Nah. Or maybe they just kind of, you know, fuck the pain away.

But yeah. Yeah. That's probably what happens. That's the what happens. That's the optimistic look. All right, so at age five, Liam holds father declared him Duke of Brabant, which is how he was addressed right up until his coronation.

He said five, age five. Yeah, age five. Yeah, you're old enough to be a Duke at age five. And he looks like he looks like he should be ruling people in this picture. What a pretty little Duke. We'll have the pictures up on our website. He has no chin and a kind of a lopsided face,

but maybe that's just the painting. Looks a little bit like a ghost, like a human ghost. It looks like the painting of a ghost that you find in the basement of an old house. And then like there's a rush of wind and the camera falls over and like your friend gets mulled by the spirit. And that's, this guy's selfie essentially. of wind and the camera falls over and like your friend gets mulled by the spirit.

And that's this guy's selfie essentially. Yeah, that's this guy's like this is the image we want to put out into the world. Yeah, this was like hanging in palaces. Yeah, tight. So he looks like a creeper from Dale and spooky boy. But he's still a baby. So the biography notes that Leopold and his siblings were brought up and quote the simplest manner and taught to behave as if they were normal citizens rather than royalty.

That sounds great until you get to the next part. Quote, the king further expressed the wish to develop in the children the sentiment of duty and not to allow them to have an opinion of their own with regard to their duties and their studies. Basically, the king was trying to crush the individuality of his kids so that they would just fit the role of king. That's kind of good actually. Is it?

What else are you going to do? Because I got to do this dumb job. Well, I mean, you could try to make them be healthy, fully formed people. Yeah, but why? Then they got to be king. Yeah. Well, that's fair. I mean, you were taking Leopold the first side.

Yeah, well, he's the good one again. I'm probably in his chocolate. No, but right, isn't that the, he's just as trapped as everyone else, you know? Yes. So if he's gotta do this thing, you might as well make it so he can do this thing. Okay, so you're expressing some motivation maybe to

Why you would do this? Why you would do what he winds up doing. I mean. And you don't even know what he winds up doing. What does he do? Yeah, what did I just defend? We are very- Let me just say right now, whatever he does, I stand behind it.

Well, he kills about 10 to 15 million people. Yeah, that's fine. Okay, well, what's that? So when Leopold is 15, his mom dies of some illness or another. It's one of those things where the writers at the time aren't specific. They're just like, she took ill and was sick for, and then she dies.

Like, yeah, yeah. It's probably diphtheria or some weird named the flu disease. Yeah. If it was a flu, it'd be a big deal, I guess. I mean, it probably is a flu, like that killed everybody back then. Yeah.

Yeah, and King Leopold's ghost, Adam Hoshal describes Leopold's childhood as being kind of stark and cold. Quote, if Leopold wanted to see his father, he had to apply for an audience when the father had something to tell the son he communicated it through one of his secretaries. I mean, look, this is not just 18th century arrested development.

Yeah, I don't know who's. Yeah, that's kind of what's going on. Like he definitely has a buster-bluth vibe to him. Yeah. That's again, especially once you see this fucking painting. You'll get it, audience. The biography that was written at the time says that it is worthy of note that the late king never had any comrades or playmates. His childhood was passed among his teachers and tutors and the disciplinary and father made even more the relationship

with his brother and sister a very formal one frank childish gayity and brotherly expansion and confidence were banished the princess thoughts thus became concentrated upon himself and his natural activity and vitality his exuberant strength were expended on work and study tight yeah about it no friends does nothing but work. Yeah Who needs a break? He has a Duke. Yeah, I mean he's already achieved a lot. I mean he has kind of a boss baby Yeah, just throwing that out there So he he grows up he serves in the Belgian military He apparently does okay by his early 20s

Leopold becomes an influential figure in Belgian politics. You know, he's the crown prince, everyone who's gonna win a big game. influential. Yeah. And he kind of looks a little like Adam Driver. Yeah, he looks here, he looks like an anime Adam Driver. Yeah, yeah, that's who you would cast as an anime Adam driver. Yeah, yeah, yeah, in the movie.

So like many rich young people, he traveled far and wide in his early 20s. He went all throughout the Middle East, North Africa, parts of Asia. But he was not traveling for his enjoyment. It was basically traveling, the biography says, as like a commercial employee. So he was essentially looking for financial opportunities for Belgium. Because this is the period when all of Europe is colonizing the entire world. Yeah. Belgium doesn't have a colony.

Yeah. So he's traveling all around the Middle East in Asia, basically being like, what can we take? Yeah, who's, yeah, who's the link can we take? Yeah, yeah, what can we get? Does this hop ahead with the Congo? Oh, yes. Oh, nice. Yeah, that's where we're headed.

Tired, okay. How do I know that tiny bit of history? It's one of those things that drops in every now and then you'll hear like, oh yeah, the Belgium's did something bad in the Congo, but you don't ever get a whole story. I don't know any details. In fact, I probably know more plot points from Michael Criton's the Congo than the, uh, then reality is the Congo. Yes. I mean, there's unconfirmed reports that he, he tried to find the law city of Zinj but no great movie is that what they were doing there yeah they're trying to find diamonds that a monkey there's a monkey city

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's more what I remember solid to be honest really solid yeah yeah there's a laser there is a laser there's definitely a laser in that movie. Oh man, what a weird, it's a ride. Michael Craig and we're still watching as bullshit. I can't believe Westworld. Oh my god, sorry. Okay. So, Prince Leopold, one of his favorite books as he's a young man studying, trying to find a new colony for Belgium is a book about the Dutch East Indies called the Java How to

Manage a Colony. To height. Yeah. Why would you... Oh my God. I mean, I guess that's why you have to tell people your favorite book is. But... Yeah, that's...

Well, no. I mean, because so the book is all about how the Dutch colonized the island of Java and how they got a shitload of coffee and sugar and like dyes and tobacco and it made... basically made so much money that they were able to buy a bunch of railroads and canals back in Holland. The book is all about that. Outland's how they were able to monetize Java so well. It talks about how the king basically brought in a bunch of private companies and became

a major shareholder in those companies. It was the company's job to farm the land and to produce the resources and then export them to Belgium. So the king didn't have to send Dutch government workers over and do anything. The king just said, I own Java, corporations come in,

give me a stake in your profits and do whatever you want. I think it's just cool to have political leaders also own corporations that has never been a problem and never will be a problem No, it seems to always work out great. It seems to work out great 100% of the time The book also did note that the Dutch prophets and Java would have been impossible without a huge amount of force labor And young princely a poll to greed with this and said that force labor was quote the only way to civilize and uplift these indolent and corrupt peoples of the far east. Yeah, yeah.

He ain't wrong. No. What else you got? I thought you said this guy was bad. Alright, so late in his duked him, you know, a few years before he becomes king, Leopold gets up in front of Belgium's Senate and he urges them to take up foreign colonies. So they got a king and a senate? Yeah, yeah. as I work.

So basically the king of Belgium is kind of a ceremony you'll figure. He's got more power than like the queen in England has today. But it's heading towards. But it's heading towards that. There's no formal power, lots of soft power. Lots of soft power and a little bit of formal power. But you can't do things as the king like just make colonies.

Right. You can't do things as the king like send the army places. Yeah, yeah. And so Leopold's dad seems to be okay with that. But Leopold the second is growing up chopping at the bent to do shit. And it doesn't want to become a monarch who just waves at the crowd.

Why? Yeah, why not? So he gets up in front of the Senate and he says, quote, I am profoundly convinced of our vast resources, and I passionately wish that my beautiful country would show the necessary pluck to derive all the benefit which, in my opinion, it can derive. I think that the moment for our expansion abroad has arrived. We must not lose time. Otherwise, the best positions in markets, which are becoming more rare every day, will be occupied by nations

more innerprising than ourselves. And when he talks about positions in markets, which are becoming more rare every day, will be occupied by nations more inner-pricing than ourselves. And when he talks about positions in markets, he's talking about whole countries and stuff. I mean, millions of people. It's more chilling in the original. Flemish. Yeah, Flemish.

Yes, yeah, nailed it. Although he probably would have been speaking just French for this. Fla-foo. Yeah. All right, so what do I say, Flamish? Well, you can say Flamish. You can say,

I'm Walloon if you want. I'm getting, what is that? That's the other group of people. There's this thing. Belgium is made up of Flamish people and Walloons. Yeah, the Wallunatics, of course, banded on their face, we got it. That's a rough name to grow into the world stage

taking on. Ah, well, you know, you got to get enough rifles, get enough cutlasses. Everything starts to make sense. I don't feel like it does. I feel like Germany was so fierce in part because German is like, that's like an emotion name. Like the Germans are coming. Imagine if the name got switched and the Belgians were called the Germans and like the Nazis had tried to invade and everyone was like Oh, the Walloons are invading. Yeah, that's not gonna go. Yeah, yeah Well listen, let's boot up a Risk game. Yeah, we'll figure it out

All right So yeah, Leopold the first Leopold the second's dad died in of 1865, the same year the American Civil War ended. Leopold is now the king and 30 years old. This appears to be the point when he decided to grow a gigantic mountain manbeard, tight, which he would maintain for the rest of his days. He needed it. Yeah, well, there's a lot of pictures of Leopold

with a beard. We'll post them on the site. Some of them look uncomfortably like me. Some of them are clear missteps in the beard growing process. Where he's got like gigantic mutton chops and it's, he looks like a fucking hair octopus. Style of the time. Yeah.

He went through some rough patches in his, you know, Sartorial history for sure. That's pretty, that's, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're looking at, yeah, that's a rough picture. Dumb chop. Yeah. And it's almost, he's almost yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's a rough picture. Demch hot. Yeah, and it's almost, he's almost wearing bell bottoms in that picture.

Hey, it's the 60s. Well, it is the 1860s. Boom. Boom. All right. So yeah, Leopold the King of Belgium, he's super frustrated because the King doesn't have that much in the way of power. Leopold takes to sort of mocking the restrained role

that he has in Belgian politics. There's a story of this guy who came to visit him. He's like, the king's got to visit with his donors and benefactors and whatnot. This guy complains about the poor state of the roads around his property. And Leopold interrupts him and says, I have no authority to change the roads.

You ought to address yourself to the press, especially to the small papers. I mean, this impality in the government will do anything they ask. So he was like making a point of being frustrated that like I can't do anything. So I'm just gonna like take it to the press. The King's not allowed to do anything.

He sort of set to work, making himself into kind of an image for the Belgian people. He was the aristocratic equivalent of an alpha male. He spent a lot of time doing science work and supporting the arts and sciences. 19th century sciences, just like beakers of lead and shit like that. He's pouring colored water into beakers. He's got goggles on, you know how this all goes. Yeah, there's a quote from his biography that says,

he used to sleep in a camp bed, so like a military cot, and had a general horror of everything that could innovate or render him a feminine. So he's kind of like a, he's a proud boy. He's a proud boy, yeah, that's what they call people who aren't racist. Soy boys, is that right? Yeah, because eating soy feminizes you.

Again, yeah, that's what the, the, the, the, the, the all right thing. Yeah. Um, hey, while at least we know that they have a, a nice historical antecedent. Leopold would have been all about that stuff. Yeah, yeah. So he's, he's grown a giant weird beard.

He's sleeping in a palace in a military car. Yeah. He's scared of girls. Uh, he hates spending money. Uh, his biography, quote, his pocket hanker chiff was only renewed on Sunday mornings when going to mass. And on no account would he take another in the interval. If his valedges changed his towels more than once a week, they were sure to receive a good scolding from his majesty. What? So he's like a gross

miser. Yeah. Don't clean those towels. Oh, which one of those wasn't one of the alt-right guys living in their mom's basement I think most of them are well definitely a one-reach be yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah ruches fee the the pick-up artist guy that was found living in his mom's basement that's what this guy was lia pulled was missing yeah yeah I guess the beer the beard experiment well clearly on that factor. His mom died young, so he became a king. Yeah.

Yeah, instead, that's called peacocking, everyone. I interact with him in the kingdom. I think he came to me. Yeah, I'm being a king. I mean, having a castle is pretty solid peacocking. That's true. Yeah, undeniable. Yeah.

Leopold, the second II was noted in his biography as the first king to treat his kingship as a corporate endeavor. His primary concern was making money, not for Belgium, but for himself. Yeah. It's all about the bottom line. Yeah. So there's, like when you talk about dictators

and warlords and terrorists, there's like a tendency to call them psychopaths and sociopaths. Yeah. Sociopaths. Yeah. Sociopath is like an actual medical diagnosis and I don't think guys like Hitler or Stalin really fit it

because they all had histories of like warm family life and like people who cared about them and people that they like sacrificed for at times. Leopold might have been a straight up like Dexter Leopold. Cause he's more clever in monster. Yeah, cause that's what they say, right? Is like so many CEOs and Fortune 500, whatever the fuck.

They're overrepresented in corporate leadership. Yeah, psychopathic traits. Yeah, even his positive biography says that while he was charming, he was quote, devoid of enthusiasm himself and was quite incapable of arousing any and others. So he just can't actually touch people. It's heartening.

Yeah. If you can't motivate people. So yeah, we're going to get more into the soullessly uphold the second, his scheme to find a colony and the colony that he eventually found. But first we've got some ads. Of course, we all realize it's a pro corporate podcast. So let's keep it real. Here's some buying advice. of hand, buried under an avalanche of customer emails, texts, and social media messages, keep

your edge with Thrive Small Business Software and never miss a message again. Thrive offers one solution to communicate, market, and run your business. But simply, small businesses run better on Thrive. Get Command Center for free today at Thrive.ca. That's THR-Y-V-DOT-CA. Terms and conditions apply. Free plans have limited functionality. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is the greatest murder mystery in American history. That's Rob Breiner, Rob called me, so would Ed O'Brien and asked me what I knew about this crime. I know 60 years later, new leads are still emerging. To me, an award-winning journalist, that's the

making of an incredible story, and on this podcast, you're going to hear it told by one of America's greatest storytellers. Well, last, who had the motive to assassinate a sitting president? My dad, the father of JFK, screwed us at the Bay of Pigs, and then he screwed us after the Cuban Missile Crisis. We'll reveal why Lee Harvey Oswald isn't who they said he was. I was under the impression that Lee was being trained for a specific operation, then we'll pull the curtain back on the cover-up.

The American people need to know the truth. Listen to Who Killed JFK on the IHeartRadio app, Apple app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your wealth. Don't miss this epic event starting Thursday, November 16th at 7pm Eastern at State Farm Park in I Heartland on Roblox, available all week and long. Be sure to check out State Farm's new Temple of Sound Maze Mini-Game. Visit iHeartRadio.com slash iHeartland to start playing today. And we're back. We're back. We're talking about King Leopold who is searching for a little colony somewhere in the world to fill that hole in his heart. The doose, of course. Yeah, Leopold, the doose, Leopold, two electric boogaloo whenever you want to call him. We were just talking about what a soulless sociopathic creepy is. Allegedly. Yeah, allegedly. Well, here's another quote. Again,

this is from like a positive pro-Leopold that you probably paid for he disliked music hunting tobacco and at no taste for physical exercises except walking although a frequent visitor at austin which is like one of his palaces he never learned to swim he was seen yawning and a gala performance of fast so he doesn't like plays he doesn't like art he that he hates music like that's a thing any book you read about him anyone who knew him he hated music like plays, he doesn't like art, he hates music. Like that's a thing, any book you read about him, anyone who knew him, he hated music. Like, not like he hated popular music, music itself was offensive to him.

So, that's fascinating. Well, that's cutting into the American psycho narrative. Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, he's a weird guy. He's very vain. But his main vanity was quite odd. He thought he had the most beautiful hands and all of Europe type.

He's biography. What? His biography notes. Another of Leopold's hobbies was his dislike for gloves. And although he often wore uniform, he has never reported to have put on gloves. It may have been a hatred of restraint, but more probably it was a partenable vanity on the part of the late king, for he possessed

the shapely and beautiful hand of the Orleone family. That rules so hard. Here's the only picture I could find that shows his good ass hand. No, no, he's holding the gloves in his hand, so his hand is naked. That's even stronger actually. Like reminding people you could be wearing gloves. I'm the master of the, yeah. And his, I mean, in fairness to him, his hands are beautiful in this picture. Of course.

I mean, they're just, just look at the bone definition. Yeah. They are shapely. They're good-ass hands. Yeah, they're good-ass hands. Oh, man. So that means that he made some painter do multiple drafts on those hands.

That's like, this is like a, wait, rest of the development, where the guy has a fake hand. Oh, it's always sunny, always sunny, where the guy has a fake hand. Yeah, the lawyer and always sunny, always has fake hands. Oh, yeah.

Then there's some things to be said about our president in hands. Yeah. It's weird, it's weird that you would even, like I never think about my hands. Yeah. Like how they look, like when I'm thinking about someone taking a picture of me, like 0% of the time, I'm like, oh my god, my hands do they look shapely.

Do you know what's crazy? Is I had to send a picture of a piece of equipment for this job I'm on to a technical person. And I just took a picture of my phone and sent it to them. And I realized as I was sending the email, I was like, my hands look fucked up in this. I'm having a real low hand self esteem day. Oh, I think you have the shapely hands

of the Orlean family. No, you're being really nice right now, but it's actually a little hilarious that the one day, possibly in my life that I've noticed my hands. You're just like, these are horrible. I was like, what the fuck is up with my hands? Only these were feet.

Yeah. I've been an arm model before. My friend was doing some, not like, you know, elbows down. I was doing some stock photography. I was like, I want to take pictures of your arms and it was like, you're wiling out. So, you know what, I'm good, I'm good risk to elbow. Risk to elbow, I got forearm, my forearms, I'm about it. Well, Leopold was a hand man.

Yeah. So we've got this frustrated greedy, gorgeous handed king on the throne of Belgium. He keeps trying to get his countryman to jump on board to having a colony trained, but the people of Belgium express zero interest in this. Oh, okay, Wait, why? What do you mean?

Yeah. Alright, because obviously all European colonialism is pretty much the root of almost everything that's wrong in the world right now. But, I don't understand why they, I mean they certainly didn't, I'm gonna guess not want to do it for the reasons why I don't think they should have done it. I think the Belgians, for one thing, so the Belgians of this era, anyone who's like a mature adult, lived through what was at that point, the equivalent of World War II, the Napoleonic War II.

There's like, we just don't want any trouble. Like, you just want to stay in Belgium and eat chocolate and drink beer. We don't really want to go to Africa or Asia and like- Can I say the first of- Die. Not the first. Can I say, first of- Die. Not the first. Can I say continue an incredibly list-long list of ignorant ass shit

I'm about to say. You do you. Is Belgium landlocked? No. No, no, no, no. It has an ant-worked. Ant-worked. That's right.

Okay. A number of more times here. Yeah, yeah. Okay. It's a wee little country. You can drive across it in a couple hours. Yeah. Okay. I was just like, okay, nevermind.

Yeah, I was just like, it's funny to imagine a landlock country, owning stuff, but of course they can, who gives a ship, but they're not landlocked, so fuck me. Yeah, no, they're not. They didn't have a colony at this point, and they seem to have zero interest in having one. That's amazing.

Now, at the same time, from 1874 to 1877, when Leopold's like a decade or so into his Kinghood, there's this explorer named Henry Morton Stanley. And yeah, from 1747, he completes a 7,000 mile expedition across Central Africa. Much of his travel centered upon the still undiscovered by white people, Congo. No one had mapped the extent of the Congo River. We didn't know where it originated from at this point. So in this time in European history,

different explorers mapping Africa are kind of like the Marvel movie franchise of the day. Like each of these guys is world famous and like newspapers breathlessly cover every expedition and every finish and expedition. They write a book and millions of people buy it. So this is like- Automatically profitable.

Exactly. This is like the this is like, exactly. This is like the thing people care about at this point in time. It's like, what these explorers are doing all in Africa and all over the world. Like that just means if I were alive then and a white person to big F's. I would be like struggling to get on one of the good expeditions. Yeah, you really, you really like fingers crossed it's not one of the ones where people eat

each other. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, which statistically a lot of them are. Yeah. So Stanley maps like a huge chunk of the Congo more than anyone had ever done before and it's like big news. He gets back to Europe from Africa and he goes on tour. He's doing like speaking engagements. He's a big celebrity.

I feel like there's a lot of like skulls and calipers in a talk like this Yeah, and probably Buckets of racism. Yeah, like totally unexamined racism. I look. Yeah, if you don't look it's not there. Yeah, well, that's the racist motto So he's he's touring around and King Leopold winds up meeting with him Stanley had been bullish on the idea that the Congo would be a great place for a colony. And he wanted the British to set up a colony there. The OGs. You want to go to the best colonizing studio first.

Yeah, exactly. That's like the paramount good, probably not. I don't know anything about the civil war. The brotherly ol' living. The Disney. Disney. That's the Disney. Yeah, Britain's the Disney of colonizing. Yeah.

And instead he goes to, I don't know, who's making DC's garbage movies? Warner Brothers. Warner Brothers. Yeah. Okay, so Leopold's Warner Brothers. No, they're not even in it. Well, Leopold is like, this has gotten very confusing. Leopold is like a Snapchat-making stuff.

Like technically they got the, or YouTube. Like it's a YouTube show. Yeah, you know what? They got the money. Let's actually call it. They have no history for it, but who knows? I feel like we actually hit upon the right thing to compare him to, which is Amazon.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Stanley tries to sell his Congo idea to Disney, just slash Britain, and it fails. And King Leopold aka Amazon's like, well, we might be interested in this plan. Yeah, we'll fund this. Why don't you give me your elevator pitch, calling me in the Congo, huh?

I like it, I like this idea. Yeah, so Leopold contracts Stanley to work for him, and he sends him back to Africa with a new mission. So Leopold's master plan here, I'm gonna peel back for a minute and then we're gonna zoom into the different pieces because it's a complicated-ass plan. His master plan is to create the Congo-free state,

which is this supposedly independent African nation that just happened to also be ruled by King Leopold the second. So he went about doing this in a few ways. In 1876, he hosted the Brussels Geographic Conference, where he invited a bunch of European experts to form the so-called International African Association, which of course had no Africans as members.

The association was a supposedly philanthropic organization. I'm going to read you a selection from Leopold's speech at the conference where he sort of lays out what he wants to do. The subject that calls us together today is one that demands a first place in the attention of friends of humanity to open up to civilization, the only part of our globe where she has not yet penetrated, to pierce the darkness that envelops entire populations is, I may venture to say, a crusade worthy of this century of progress, and I am glad to observe how very favorable public feeling is to its accomplishment, the current is with us.

So he gets this association together and he says, this is an international group, and we're trying to civilize and improve lives of people who are there. I didn't realize that back then, the rhetoric was already like the kind of like, oh, this is to help them double speak. I actually just assumed they were like,

you don't wanna take this shit from black people. No, they are, and these guys, the people that he invites to the geographic conference informs the International African Association with. These guys are a lot of people who legitimately wanna make things better for Africans, who aren't even thinking about making it. Yeah, yeah, these are the well-'t even thinking about making. Yeah, yeah.

These are the well-meaning liberal white people. Yeah, exactly. And like missionaries who are like, well-meaning liberal white people because there's an Arab slave trade in Africa. Like, traders moving through the Congo and the abolition movement is very big at this point in time. And so these people are being like, we've got to stop the slave trade in Africa. So the upholds, like, we can do that. And there's a bunch of people who are like, we've got to stop the slave trade in Africa. So the upholds, we can do that. And there's a bunch of people who are like,

we've got to Christianize the Africans. And the upholds, we can do that. And so that's what he's claiming this association. Okay, so this is right. This is definitely like colonialism 2.0 or 3.0. He steps ahead of everyone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's not even framing this as colonialism.

He's framing this as a charitable endeavor to create real life. Exactly, yeah, yeah. So he suggests that Belgium would be a great place for this new international body to meet because it's a neutral country and it's centrally located in Europe. And then he suggests that he might be a good person to run the association just for its first year. God, I'll get yourself. You know, you gotta be confident. Just for its first year. Uh, and he shares the mall that he's doing this from the goodness of his heart. for his first year. And he assures them all that he's doing this from the goodness of his heart. He says, Belgium is small, she is happy and satisfied with her lot. I have no other ambition than to serve her well. And it was true that Belgians were pretty happy with their lot. But Leopold

did have some ambitions. So he gets elected head of the International African Association the first year. And then he gets elected the head of it the second year too even though that was supposed to be illegal back to back and then the association kind of stops existing and the uphold replaces it with the committee for studies of the upper Congo and then he replaces that with the International Association for the Congo on paper these are all different international philanthropic groups their names were deliberately forgettable and similar so the public would assume they were all the same thing. In King Leopold's Ghost, Adam Hoshild writes

that Leopold directly told his aides, quote, "'Care must be taken not to let it be obvious that the association of the Congo and the African association are two different things. The public doesn't grasp that." So in reality, all of these philanthropic groups are shadow fronts for Leopold's plan to conquer the Congo. So they're all charity organizations that he gets international aid money getting sent into and he's able to pour Belgian government funds into as well as

indonations. Just like Hillary Clinton. Exactly like Hillary Clinton. Yes. You've watched the documentary Clinton cash by Denise DeSosa. Yes. The thing that's amazing about this is it's so complicated a plan that doesn't feel like, I'm a super smart person, of course. I'm not finding a place where you could improvise your way into this.

You just gotta wait, because we're not even halfway through the plan. Like, he is a legitimate, like, okay, so the villain that Marvel keeps trying to write and like failing to write in my opinion, where it's like the Loki character, where there, he's got all these plans within plans, and he's a step ahead.

Leopold actually was that guy to the whole world. But in sort of the same villainous way, you're like, this isn't sane. There's so many things that could go wrong in this. So he's now created three different philanthropic associations. Just because the backers will start realizing that the associations fake and they'll pull their money, but he'll keep the organizational I have

or he'll roll its assets into a new organization. And nobody who got caught, who realized that this was some weird show company wants to admit that they got caught. So they just don't say anything. And the public just hears like, oh, it's the new thing is out. The International African Association. It's that group of people trying to make life better in Africa.

Right, right, right. So he, all these groups are basically funneling money into the work of Henry Morton Stanley, that explorer who Leopold sent back to Africa. So Leopold sent him back in 1879, and his job was to start building, using the association money, a series of stations along the Congo River to act as like waypoints for steamboat traffic. He also met with hundreds of local chiefs all throughout the Congo, all the different people who had chunks of land throughout the Congo, the different villages and chiefs, hundreds

and hundreds of them. He meets with these guys and he gets them to sign treaties giving up their rights to the land. Here's a quote from Hostiles book. The very word treaty is a euphemism, from many chiefs had no idea what they were signing, if you had ever seen the written word before and they were being asked to mark their existed documents in a foreign language and in legalese. These guys weren't ignorant of the concept of diplomacy. They knew it would emit to write treaties of friendship with neighboring tribes or villages. They understood the idea of a non-aggression pact, and that's what they thought these were.

The reality was somewhat different. Quote, in return for one piece of cloth per month to each of the undersigned chiefs, besides present of cloth and hand, they promised to freely of their own accord for themselves and their heirs and successors forever, give up to set association, the sovereignty and all sovereign and governing rights to all their territories. So, basically, he gives them cloth. They think that they're getting some sick ass clothes, just for like, a aggression path with the white people. This is a thing, here's's our everyone gets a jersey.

You give us shirts. We promise we won't shoot you. We don't want to shoot you anyway. That sounds great. In reality, these are all statements saying that they give up other rights to the International African Association. And the association will have the right to collect taxes on the people who gave up their rights to their land.

And those taxes, because there's no currency in most of the Congo, those taxes can be paid in labor. So Leopold gets hundreds of cheaps, you're up Stanley to sign these agreements. Yeah. Jesus. So Europe thinks Stan Lee's over there doing valuable philanthropic work

fighting with the slave traders and trying to open the Congo up to free trade. That's what it buzz word everyone with the slave traders and trying to open the Congo up to free trade. That's what it buzzword everyone's using. It's like we're going to open the Congo up to free trade and it'll benefit the Africans, it'll benefit Europe, everyone will benefit if there's free trade in the Congo. Meanwhile what he's actually doing is getting pieces of paper that give Lee a polled the rights to the Congo. It makes me look like all these chiefs have come together and said we want this guy to be our king and we want to be a country.

So I feel like I should break for just a second and talk a little bit more about Henry Morton Stanley, who's the guy who's actually doing all this legwork. He was one of the greatest explorers in history and he was also a human garbage fight. Yeah, sort of a Darth Vader. Definitely a Darth Vader. Yeah. He was terrified by the thought of being touched by a woman, just like Darth Vader. He once cut off his own dog's tail, cooked it and fed it to the dog for no real reason.

And he basically, when I say he was an explorer, he shot his way through Africa. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's a quote from a description of one of Stanley's expeditions in King Zleopold's Ghost. To those unfortunate enough to live in its path, the expedition felt like an invading army for it, sometimes held women in children hostage into a local sheep-supplied food. So yeah, he's shooting his way through these tribes, taking their food, taking their shit, burning down villages if there's any resistance. One of his men described just hunting people,

like the predator, like laying and waiting and just shooting random strangers. Yeah. Like less ethical than the predator, who should point out has a certain code. Yeah, yeah. Way less ethical than the predator. So these guys are predatorying their way through through Africa. But they're not particularly worse than any other explorer of the time I would. He's one of the worst. Okay. They vary. So Henry Morn Stanley, you know, the doctor Livingston, I presume, he's that guy. Yeah. Yeah. And Dr. Livingston was apparently a pretty nice guy. He was also an explorer and actually would like get to know people and like and locate himself in a local culture. So some of these guys are legitimately just in it for

the sake of exploration and their scientists and their good to the people they encounter. And some of them, like, Stanley just want to make a shitload of money. And their creepy file videos can Stanley is one of the kills thousands of people while he's exploring. Got it, got it. I just want to, I guess when I met not as a mitigating thing of like everyone was doing it, but like a if not the only standard practice, it was not what you're describing is not not. He's he's definitely common practice on a lot of these guys, but it's not nearly the only one. Yeah, but he's one of the worst. Yeah, for sure. Okay. Um, so yeah, uh, while Stanley's expedition is going on, Leopold also hires

a bunch of other expeditions to explore their parts of Africa. These were deliberately showy expeditions meant to distract public attention. One of them involved a team of four Indian elephants being sent to Africa to see if they could breed with African elephants. All of the elephants died horribly, but the news covered the story the whole time. So nobody's reading about what Stanley's doing, because they think it's a boring, philanthrop philanthropical mission and there's this crazy story about elephants. Let's read about that. That's so fucking dark. Holy shit. So he's clearly understands the media well enough that he's not just thinking about how to accomplish his plan

but how to distract public attention while he does it. When Morton Stan Lee gets back from his expedition, he writes a book. It's an instant bestseller. King Leopold edits it himself. That's one of the things he'd insisted on is that Stanley could write a book about this. But King Leopold would get to edit it. And most of what he did was correct the times when Stanley mixed up the different associations and committees that he was supposedly working for.

Because nobody could keep it straight, but Leopold. That's such an attention to detail. That's unbelievable. Like I said, he's the first modern, truly modern bastard. Yeah. So, this book is sort of framed as like Henry Morton Stanley's helping the Congo free state be born and helping these Africans like take their stab at nationhood and joining the international community and whatnot. So that's how all this is being played on the outside world.

The reality in the Congo is very different. And what happens next is not what anyone but Leopold had expected. Right, we're gonna get into that in a minute. But right now, Andrew, do you have too much money? Oh, hell yeah. Well, one of the great things to do with too much money is spend it on products.

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Europe with a bunch of showy expeditions. It's just like it used to be just like cannons and soldiers and swords I guess. And now it's PR and fake treaties and stuff. Yeah. Wow. It's really modern in a lot of ways. Yeah. So Leopold has this new best-selling book that's talking about the great stuff he's trying to do in the Congo. That gets the public jazz, and he's able to sort of further push the legitimacy of his project by giving the US President, Chester A. Arthur, to recognize the Congo free state. Leopold had charmed the former US minister to Belgium, a guy who called himself General Sanford, even though he wasn't actually a general.

But he was a rich guy who had a lot of money and like an orange plantation. And because he was a rich guy, he was able to get the president's ear. General Sanford appealed to President Arthur's dislike of Arabs. Because again, there were all these Arab slave traders. Yeah, so just. Yeah, nothing's changed. Yeah, okay, nothing's new. Yeah, so Chester A. Arthur was, uh, he also pointed out that the Congo had been discovered by an American, because Henry Mornin Stanley called himself an American. He wasn't. He was actually British,

but he lied his whole life and said he was American. Right. Everyone lies about everything in the 1800s. Yeah, internet, because there's no, yeah, there's nothing to, like you run into a thousand kernels when you're reading anything in this period and none of them are kernels. Sure, none of them were ever in the military. Great, great, great. Like, I'm gonna be a kernel now. This fried chicken kernels is fine. And in this case, in general. Anyway, Chester E Arthur was like, sounds great.

Congo Free Straight sounds like a great idea. You're gonna fight some Arabs. That's part. Hooray. So he included this next bit in his State of the Union speech, recognizing the Congo Free State. Quote from Chester A. Arthur. The rich and populous valley of the Congo

spelled with a K in this is being opened by a society called the International African Association, of which the King of the Belgians is the president. Large tracks of territory have been seated to the association by native chiefs. Roads have been opened, steamboats have been placed on the river, and the nuclei of states established, under one flag which offers freedom to commerce and prohibits the slave trade. Oh my god. So that's how Chester A. Arthur pictures it. So he got paid placement for his propaganda in the state of the union.

Yeah, in the state of the union. Yeah, in the state of the union. So far, the people of Belgium and the other European states are fooled pretty well. But France and some other folks in the British government whatnot are starting to catch on to Leopold's plan and realize that he's making a power grab. This helped to spark a general, what's known as the scramble for Africa.

Where all of these European powers are like, oh my god, we're running out of Africa to take over. So they start shooting out expeditions to claim the last pieces of the continent before it fills up. This all culminates in the Berlin conference of 1884 to 85. And a bunch of stuff is decided there.

But Leopold's main goal is to get recognition for what he starts calling the Congo Free State. He's basically like, I've got all these treaties. Like he gets up in front of Europe and he's like, I got all these treaties. Look, the starts calling the Congo free state. He's basically like, I've got all these treaties, like he gets up in front of Europe and he's like, I got all these treaties, look, the people of the Congo want to be their own state, they want me to be their king, they've given this state their rights to their land.

And if you all back me and establishing the state, it'll be a free trade zone. So everyone will be able to trade freely and buy and sell freely in there. It'll make a bunch of money for everybody. So that's Leopold's pitch. Oh, man. And Europe buys it.

In 1885, the Congo Free State is established. Leopold had to go in front of Belgium's Senate to ask if he could be two kings at once. He promised that the Congo would be its own independent nation and that it would pay its own way in the world. He told Belgium he thought it was his duty to quote, help the nations of second rank become useful members of the great family of nations.

Then he asked for money, a little loan to help the fledgling new nation. And he asked his fellow Belgians to volunteer to help in this bold project. Quote, more than any other, a manufacturing and commercial people like ourselves ought to strive to obtain a market for all its workers,

for thinkers, capitalists, and workmen. So the Congo Free State is on paper, a country with Leopold II as its absolute ruler. So he's gone from the King of Belgium, but he doesn't really have any power to the absolute ruler. Yeah, of a country like 20s times the size of Belgium. Jesus Christ. So the Congo Free State is, to all intents and purposes of state.

It has its own army, the force public, which is made up of African soldiers led by Belgian officers. It's illegal for black men to be officers in the army of the Congo. Yeah. That sounds about right. That sounds about right. So oh man. Leopold has acquired himself an African empire.

Unfortunately, he didn't want an empire. He had no desire to actually rule in other countries. He just wanted money. He just wanted money. So, the Congo Free State is entirely a money making scheme and it's all based around rubber. So the late 1800s is when rubber really started to take off. That's like in the mid 1800s or so is when they figure out how to vulcanize rubber, which is what

makes it like nice and shiny and stable and it doesn't smell weird and fall apart. It's so the Macintosh coat becomes popular around this time. People like in Europe are just like covered head to toe and rubber. Like it's it. It's like the fashion of the time. Like people are just flipping out over rubber. Uh-huh. A bunch of- A bunch of fetishes are born. A tons of fetishes are born.

Exactly. Yup. Hot air balloons rely on it. It's like this one, it's a wonder material. It's like the first time people, they don't have to use glass for everything. Yeah. So everyone's in love with rubber, but there's only two ways to make rubber at that time. Vines and trees. Now rubber vines grew wild all around the Congo.

Wait, so the two ways are vines and trees. There's rubber vines and there's rubber vines. Got it. Yeah, I thought it was going to be vegetation and chemistry. No, they haven't, they didn't, they do, now we can make rubber vines, but they hadn't figured that to it. So actually harvesting all of the rubber from vines, like the ones who grew in the Congo, required thousands and thousands of people climbing trees in the jungle.

There's the risk of snake bite and monster attacks, and it's just a nightmare. Harvesting. Yeah. At large scale in the Congo. Harvesting rubber from trees on the other hand is really easy. And some enterprising people had already started planting groves of rubber trees in South America

But those trees took about 20 years or so to really get going so Leopold standing here in charge of the Congo Knows that he has about 20 years to be the world's leading producer of rubber the Congo free state wasn't Basically just a giant rubber factory that was his whole vision for this land filled with millions of people. This is like the actual story of Willie Wonka. He's the real Willie Wonka, exactly. Jesus Christ. So now remember when I said that Leopold had the right to collect taxes in the form of labor?

Well, he used these taxes to make Congolese people go harvest rubber for him. In theory, I think he was allowed to only demand like 40 hours a month from them or something, but what happened is that he would have his soldiers go from village to village and take hostages. These hostages would be put in concentration camps where they'd be starved and beaten until the village met its rubber quota. So, if you didn't get all the rubber that you were supposed to get soon enough, your family would just starve to death.

Yeah. Leopold's government did have a problem because obviously it needs soldiers to enforce these nightmarish rules, but white people die like crazy in the Congo. Like a more than a third of the Belgians who went there died there. And since again, it's illegal for Africans

to be officers in the force public. There would wind up being like four or five Belgian guys commanding hundreds and hundreds of African soldiers. So that's like obviously you're cheating these guys terribly, you're making the massacre their own people, and there's five of you for every 500 of them. That's like a recipe for a revolution. Or it would be if the soldiers had free access to bullets.

One of the ways the Belgians controlled their army was by heavily restricting when anybody would get bullets and by policing their ammo so they couldn't hide any way. So each soldier would only be issued a certain amount of ammo when they'd go out to get rubber. And if they fired any rounds, they had to account for them. The general policy in the Congo became that if you fired around, you had to provide a right hand from a corpse for every round that you shot This was meant to stop people from stockpiling am I and it was meant to stop them from like hunting for animals? Yeah, when they should have been you know shooting people

What this actually meant yeah exactly so but that creates a market for right hands exactly So, but that creates a market for right hands. Exactly. So, what could possibly go wrong? Yeah, for one thing, these soldiers aren't fed enough, so they're starving and they start hunting and then once they've fired a couple of rounds to hunt an animal, they need to pick up, okay, well, we fired three rounds, getting that, that whatever it is, now we need three hands. So we need to go into a village, we need to take some people's hands.

And in addition to that, like it becomes common if a village refuses to provide rubber, like people like, we're not take some people's hands. And in addition to that, it becomes common if a village refuses to provide rubber like people like we're not going to work to you, we're not going to give up our relatives as hostages, the force of leak would just burn down the whole village. Sometimes they just kill everybody in the entire village. And this is happening on basically an industrial scale. In 1903, a single rubber collecting post was sent more than 40,000 replacement rounds of ammunition. Every round that they're being sent, they've got a hand. Yeah. Yeah. So like the military units in the force public, even would have a keeper of the

hands whose job was to smoke all of the severed hands so that they'd preserve so that you could go back to the authorities. That's your evidence. We need 20,000 more bullets. Here's 20,000 human hands. Jesus Christ. Yeah, so in 1885, when this whole operation is just getting off the ground, King Leopold is named in British court as a client of what the British called a disorderly house. Can you guess what a disorderly house was?

Uh, probably not enough. It's a hoddish bit. Is a way to go for it, yeah, I know. No, it's a hoddish bit. Is it what it'll go for it? Yeah, I know. No, it's a brothel. Oh, yeah. So, so while this is all starting off, can you pull this thing into a whorehouse in England?

I thought you, oh, just orderly house meant like his dukedum didn't have like X or Y like paperwork filed. No, no, no, while he's freshly the king of the Belgian Congo, he's named in British court as a client of a whorehouse. And they say that he had been paying 800 pounds a month for a steady supply of young women, some of whom were 10 to 15 years old. That's what Leopold's doing

in between administering the Congo. Yeah. And while he's doing that, his men in the Congo are building a system of roads, railways, posts, and steamboats that are meant to allow the rubber making operation to prosper. Leopold doesn't want to pay for all this himself, so he claimed the infrastructure is necessary so that the free states army can fight those dastardly Arab slavers. So we got the US to pay for it?

Or just generally. He got everyone else to pay for it. So he got in Europe on board with us by saying that Congo was going to be a free trade zone. But then he's like, we need to build all this infrastructure in order to fight the slavers. So we're gonna have to collect import taxes now. So he's just, like, the one that you can trust Leopoldo do is he will fuck over every single person.

Yeah. So now even these countries who had gotten on board because they thought this was a free trade zone, they're getting screwed. Yeah. And of course the millions of people whose hands he's having severed, you know, screwed. I guess the key is just never stop lying. Yeah. I think that's the thing. Whenever you read about any of these guys, that is the most important thing. Yeah. It's never, ever stop lying. If you're going to be a monster, you have to lie consistently for decades about everything. All right, yeah, I'm in.

It works. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm in. Oh, yeah. Well, you'll be a great king of the Congo. Ha, ha, ha. So, Tileopold's credit, his men did fight Arab slave traders, but most of the fighting was done by conscripted African soldiers who were themselves, basically slaves.

Yeah. Yeah. King Leopold personally endorsed a system where white agents of the free state got a bonus if they were able to find more recruits for the force public. Many agents wound up buying them in from various chiefs and effect doing the same thing as the Arab Slavers they bragged about fighting. State agents also got bonuses for, quote, reducing recruiting expenses. So if they outright enslaved people

rather than paid them to join, they got more money in their pocket. As many as three quarters of all volunteers for the force public died before they could receive training, most of those volunteers were teenagers. Right. Yeah. So they're just volunteers, quote unquote.

That's fucking incredible. So it was like, we have our indentured servant army is going to fight your slave arm. So basically the Congo at this point is groups of white guys with soldiers going into the jungle to collect a bunch of other soldiers. And they'll put them in chains and like, march them through the jungle and most of them will die and then they'll train those guys up to fight. And they'll take those guys into the jungle to tell people, to collect rubber from people and to kill everyone who doesn't provide enough rubber.

And to kill a lot of the people who do provide enough rubber just because these kids are like starving to death and they have to shoot an animal. Or maybe there's rebels and they get into a firefight, but they don't have to kill anyone. And then you gotta take hands from these. So it just keeps spiraling out of control and becoming like even more of a nightmare to everybody but Leopold. Because again, he's sitting back in Belgium this time.

Since Leopold was the absolute monarch, he got to rule by royal decree. His first decree was that all quote, vacant land was now property of the state. He didn't explain what vacant meant because obviously farmers don't live on every inch of their farm land. So basically most of the land in the Congo was now just his. He leased this land to a series of private corporations and this gets to the real brilliance of his scheme because Leopold didn't have to dirty his hands actually running in the

of the rubber harvesting. He was able to privateize it. Yeah. Other people paid for the right to mine rubber and cut off hands and do all the actual work, and Leopold owned the rights to a huge chunk of their profits. So basically, these companies would come in and give him an owning stake in the operation. Yeah. They would license the scheme of insolving people cutting off their hands, etc. Yeah. Right. Adam Hoshchild and King Leopold's ghost compares the Congo Free State to a venture capital firm. Right. Quote, he had essentially found a way to attract other people's

capital to his investment schemes while he retained half the proceeds. In the end, what with various taxes and fees, the companies paid the state, it came to more than half. Jesus. So in the 1890s, the Congo Free State really starts putting out rubber. And suddenly King Leopold is one of the richest guys in the 1890s the Congo Freestyle 8 really starts putting out rubber and suddenly King Leopold

is one of the richest guys in the world. He starts buying gigantic monuments and palaces and shit for Belgium. Big showy projects, some of which are still there. It's to make people like him, it's to keep him popular at home. He's succeeding beyond his wildest dreams in the business side of things, but his personal life is just kind of one series of train wrecks after the other. Oh, so that's sad. Yeah, his son had died in 1864, which led to an understandable This personal life is just kind of one series of train wrecks after the other. His son had died in 1864, which led to an understandable strangement between Leopold and his wife. It took eight years before they could stand to be around each other and try again. This passage from Leopold's biography tells you a lot about the relationships between

the sexes and the 1860s. Quote, Leopold II was anxious to have a male heir, and in 1872 Queen Marie Henriette consented to resume conjugal life with her royal spouse, from whom she had separated sometime before. She sacrificed herself, as one may say, for her country. A child was born unto them, but alas, it was a daughter and not a son which was given unto them. So that's messed up for a lot of reasons.

Jesus. One of which is just that even in the pro-Leo-Pold biography, it just admits that having sex with Leopold is a sacrifice. I actually, I'm surprised that the amount of agency she has, like she, you know, ends the queen. Facing pressure, but was a force that guillotine point or whatever to.

She kind of was. I guess that's true. I guess that's between the lines of course. Yeah, it's Jesus. I mean, she probably has more agency than the average, but at the same time in a way she has less because it's less important for a commoner to have a song. Yeah, yeah. Because like the king, that's like the whole dynasty thing. So you might say she has even less. We probably should say that. Yeah, we probably would be responsible for the record. Yeah.

So yeah, Leopold did not take having a daughter very well. This quote is from King Leopold's Ghost. When the last daughter, Clementine was born, according to his sister, Luis, the king was furious and then's forth refused to have anything to do with his admirable wife. From the beginning, she wrote, quote, the king paid very little

attention to me or my sisters. So he doesn't pay attention to his daughters. And he mostly seems to care when one of them like fucks with his garden. Here's a recollection from Louise. Large juicy peaches grew on the walls of the gardens and the king was very proud of them. I had a passion for peaches, and one day I dared eat one which was hidden away among the leaves. And that year peaches were plentiful But the following day the king discovered the theft what a dramatic moment at once suspected I confessed my crime and was promptly punished I did not realize that the king counted his peaches So while Leopold is running a nightmare hand harvesting rubber

Making a scheme in the Congo He's got enough time to make sure that his daughter doesn't steal a peach from his guy. That's so fun. Because it's like, at least Ivanka Trump has the decency to pretend that she loved her time with her dad even though, like, and all those, like, stories she tells it's sad and weird too. But it's like, at least she's like,

I love him, he's my dad, you know, and I believe in Alicia. He couldn't even get his daughters to be like, I love him. Well, there's gonna be more about his daughters coming in. Right. He is not a great dad. Yeah.

If you can't tell that already. There's in fact no evidence that Leopold cared about any of his children as anything more than vehicles for his legacy. Even that faunting 1910 biography can't make it seem like Leopold had a single fuck for his family. As King Leopold had a single fuck for his family uh... as king leopold i'm gonna be honest that's so far the most relatable that's not like it is family that's good i love you

family as king leopold grew older and richer he also became a full on hypokondriac he took to wearing a waterproof bag around his gigantic beard whenever he went outside in the rain or when he swam. He required his palace tablecloths to be boiled every day to kill any germs, which is at least a character evolution from not letting them wash his sheets. Yeah.

It's an napkin. Yeah. Good for him. So he's changing. He's got his own little heroes journey. Yeah, yeah. We all get there. Hypochadria.

This wound up being another really, really long one. There was just so much research. So, um, this is going to be a two-parter podcast, and the second part is going to drop on Thursday. Uh, so we'll be getting into the rest of Leopold story and the tremendously dark story of the Congo. So, so stick around, check back out on Thursday. It's going to be great. In the meantime, you can check out Andrew T's podcast, Yoast's Racist. You can also check out every other episode of Behind the Bastards. You can find us on Twitter at BastardsPod and Instagram as well. You can find us on the internet at BehindTheVastards.com and you can find me on Twitter at I Write Okay.

So Andrew and I will be back on Thursday with more Leopold so check us out then. Behind the bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, CoolzoneMedia.com or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is the greatest murder mystery in American history. That's Rob Breiner, Rob called me, so would Ed O'Brien and asked me what I knew about this crime. Well, ask who had the motive to assassinate a sitting president, then we'll pull the curtain

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