Part Two: General Butt-Naked and the Liberian Civil War

Robert is joined again by Shereen Lani Younes to continue to discuss the Liberian Civil War.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and for the last two years,
Behind the Bastards listeners have funded the Portland Diaper Bank,
which provides diapers for low income families. Uh. Last year
y'all raised more than twenty one dollars, which was able
to purchase one point one million diapers for children and
families in need in one um. And this year we're

(00:24):
trying to get two dollars raised for the Portland Diaper Bank,
which is going to allow us to help even more kids.
So UM, if you want to help, you can go
to bTB fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank at go fund me.
Just type and go fund me b TB Fundraiser for
PDX Diaper Bank. Again, that's go fund Me bTB Fundraiser

(00:44):
for PDX Diaper Bank, or find the link in the
show notes. Thank you all, Ah, Behind the Bastards. That's
how I would say this show's name if we were
dry time radio DJs. This life of podcasting with me

(01:07):
get up at five am every morning and talk to
people on their well it's uh horn dog in the
apple here with you do do our morning buts days
travel thing. Here's a part sound that could be a Shearine,
that could be how we live our lives. Anything for you,

(01:28):
Robert Kings, We'll both get greatly addicted to cocaine, I mean,
Sharine problematically addicted to cocaine. And then I'll o d
and have to go to the hospital, and then I'll
become a born again Christian and I'll start another radio
show but it's super racist and right wing, and then
I'll become a congressman and then the vice president of

(01:49):
the United States. That's the logical timeline and route any
white man. So I'm gonna that's like like the shirt
I wear every day. I'm gonna just pensive. But everybody,
we all love we all of our former vice president
Michael Pitts. Yeah, bless God, bless well pin that I mean, yeah,

(02:13):
we're just talking about how God isn't really come on,
that's an obvious Joe. We we we we we we.
We were just talking about how Charles Taylor has invaded
Liberia or is like carrying out a liberation freedom civil
war yeada, YadA yda. Anyway, he's got his troops, they're
taking more and more of the country. Um, and there's
other warlords and there's other people like fighting against the government.

(02:34):
Like it's not all Charles Taylor, but his forces are
like gradually advancing on the Capitol. And as they advance
on the Capitol in April of nineteen ninety, one of
the places I was born in April nineteen ninety And
when you're a little baby, so recent and well, baby Sharie,
Charles Taylor's liberation forces reaching the outskirts of the Firestone

(02:58):
rubber plane invasion. Now the guy in charge of it,
this dude in Sminger, who's again like the ex pat
the white dude who's like running this plantation. Um, he
sends out a message to all of the Liberian like
the indigenous workers who live on the plantation, and he's like,
don't worry, be calm, there's nothing to fear. He says repeatedly, like, UM,

(03:20):
I'm not, you know, worried about what's going to happen. Um.
The rebels, you know, aren't gonna funk with you. Like
everything's fine, keep right on working. Um. Now you want
to guess if he's saying the same thing to the
ex pats, the white workers who live there with their families.
I don't like where this is going, he sends them

(03:41):
a confidential letter saying, due to the current unstable political
situation in Liberia, we believe it is prudent to plan
for the worst case scenario. He tells them to pack
emergency supplies to fill up their cars to meet its
secret rally points in case of an evacuation uh and
he states the information contained in this memo, even the
very existence of this memo, should not be discussed with
persons covered by it. Um. He also sends home the

(04:02):
wives and children of all the ex pats who worked there.
So here's the cool thing. They're fine because again, Charles
Taylor also not a stupid person. I don't want to
He's inventive converse. He did after inventing converse, he invades Liberia,
and he's like, I'm not going to murder a bunch
of like white people working at the Firestone. That's not
good for me. Like that's gonna piss off all of

(04:24):
these governments that I don't particularly want angry at me
right now. Yeah, because that's like that's the kind of
thing that's gonna get dough a bunch of weapons from
the whoever, right, Like, you don't want to murder? So
he has I don't think you ever had any intention
of harming the ex pats working there, just because it
wouldn't have been a smart thing to do. But this
has become an ethnic war at this point. Right, Doe

(04:44):
is massacring the members of ethnic groups that are opposed
to him. Uh, Taylor is massacring Krown and members of
like other allied like ethnic groups that are allied with
Dough in his regime. Right, So when Charles Taylor's forces
reach the Firestone plantation, they start picking out all of
the people who are members of these groups that are
their enemies and massacring them. Quote from Republica. The first

(05:06):
person the rebels killed after crossing the river, according to
several witnesses, was a mentally handicapped man. He was gunned
down in the street. Next, the rebels began hunting down
people who belonged to tribes closely associated with the ruling regime.
Kevin Estel, a British expatriate who was Firestones agricultural operations manager,
recalled seeing piles of dead bodies of Liberians lying outside
the Harbell supermarket. He was told the rebels had executed

(05:29):
the men in public because they were from a rival tribe.
They had been stitched riddled with bullets from May case
forty seven, straight up and down their bodies. He said.
They were left in the street, their bodies swelling in
the sun. So that's good for Firestone, Like, hey, you
guys are fine, don't worry about it. White people get
the fun out exactly. Pretty messed up, pretty pretty bad stuff. God,

(05:51):
white people, Well, I would say, so, I would say,
none of that's good behavior. I would say both abandoning
your workers, not telling them they're in danger, only protecting
the white people. Firestone, Why why don't you know this?
I think there are things we do should to Firestone
property that would be good. But boycotting, I don't know

(06:12):
if that's the most effective thing that could. I mean,
I I I've gone there a bunch of times. I
don't needn't know this blunt diamond history, you know what
I mean? Make a molotov out of a Chuck Taylor
converse and tucking through the window of a Firestone tire store.
So yeah, when Charles Taylor invaded Laboria, his problem. His

(06:32):
plan probably was not to spark the building of a
series of child militias filled with drug adult and heavily
armed kids. But it kind of happens as the invasion proceeds.
Right once his forces are in country, they're engaging with
those forces, he's running up into shortages of manpower. The
decision to arm kids just becomes militarily pragmatic. So at

(06:55):
this point Dough has spent like that half decade he's
been in power, sending his military two different provinces and
killing all of the men he can find, raping most
of the women, and then often killing them to write UM.
And as a result, there's a shipload of angry, starving
orphans in Liberia, you know whose parents got murdered by
the regime. Now, if you're Charles Taylor, you're always short

(07:18):
of dudes to hand guns. Um, what's a great source
of manpower? But a bunch of like twelve year old
kids who were piste off because their families died. Um.
If anything, they're like, they're potentially more loyal because you're
the loyal because the purpose starving and they need an
authority figure. Charles Taylor provides both. So he gives these

(07:42):
kids guns and he gives them cocaine, UM and other drugs.
But cocaine is the big one. Because man let me
tell you, I mean, this is just something I've learned
a lot. If you want to get a child to
fight for you, you've got to give him a lot
of cocaine. That's the best way to get kids to
fight with you or for you, um whatever, both. Really, so,
these kids have been exposed to the culture of human
sacrifice and corpse desecration engaged in by the most prominent

(08:05):
and powerful adults in their world. Again, these kids grow
up seeing all of both, kind of the president's signpost
aspects of this, and then after the Civil War they
see all of these warlords doing this ship. I mean,
they're beyond traumatized. Can only there, It's not it's more
than traumatized. Certain aspects of this has become normalized. This

(08:26):
is what you do in the war. This is what
you do to exert power right and to take power
for yourself, to protect yourself. These are practices you engage in.
So as Taylor's men take more and more of the country,
journalists start to see roadblocks manned by small boys units
um draping their command posts with the bones and guts
of slaughtered enemies and civilians for like ritual purposes to

(08:48):
protect themselves. Um. Dough responds in the predictable way by
handing guns out to Krawn kids and kids of any
other allied ethnic groups in Monrovia and sending them out
in ad hoc death squads and platoons to attack Taylor's soldiers,
who by late nineteen laying siege to the capital UH.
These children that Dough arms in the city become known

(09:10):
as the nineteen nineties Soldiers. At one point, they attack
a Lutheran church that's filled with members of rival ethnic
groups UH, and using axes and machetes, they murder more
than six hundred refugees from these kind of ethnic groups
that they're seen as being opposed to the president. Um
like like kids just massacring six hundred people with axes
like and again these are like some of them are

(09:30):
like ten little kids. Often. Um. So, Taylor has a
lot of initial international support for obvious reasons, but it
becomes quickly obvious that he is just as vicious as Dough. Right,
there is not a real moral difference between these two dudes. Um. Yeah,

(09:50):
Liberian expact pet positions like Ellen Surleif, who had supported
Taylor initially, quickly dropped him, and she'll get like attacked
later on because she helps fund him early the economists.
Yeah yeah, but also like you know, he didn't start
off doing some of the ship he would later do. Um.
I don't know, I'm not going to weigh in on
that too much, but uh so, the good Dough Jackson

(10:12):
Doe tries to join up with Charles Taylor's forces at
one point, and Taylor like uses him a little bit
as like a billboard, like look at us, you know,
we're legitimate. This guy really won the election. He's on
our side. But then a couple of weeks later, Jackson
Doe disappears and nobody knows what happens to him, probably
because Taylor's like, well, I don't actually I'm going to
be the president. So this guy here, yeah, you're you're

(10:32):
not really needed, You're not really useful here. So as
all this killing continues um, the world just kind of
watches on in shock. Taylor's forces gradually boxed Dough into
pretty much just controlling the capital Um, and his overthrow
was only halted by the arrival of an international military
mission made up by soldiers from West African states. Although

(10:54):
Nigeria is basically a d percent of the effort, and
it's more or less Nigeria intervening in order to try
and have things work out in a way that's best
for Nigeria. Right, That's often what you'll hear people claim,
at least so because like Dough connected to the US
and Nigeria also wants some Yeah, there's a number of reasons.
I'm not gonna like, I'm not gonna attempt to lay

(11:15):
into like, but yeah, this is supposed the International Mission
is primarily Nigeria, and it's primarily Nigerian forces. So they
set up shop in the capital to like monitor things
and try to negotiate a peace between Taylor's forces and
the rebel Taylor Taylor's forces and does or the different
rebel groups dominated by Taylor and Dough um. But this

(11:37):
isn't really doesn't go anywhere because none of the belligerents
are really willing to discuss any kind of peace as
long as Dough remains in the country and Do is
not willing to leave, and so the situation is stymied
once again until on September nine, n President Dough gets
in his motor cade to visit the International Military Missions
headquarters and through a comedic series of errors. He winds

(11:58):
up captured by troops from the a f L, which
is the party that Charles Taylor is a member of. Now,
the a f L splits into at one point, and
Taylor is in charge of a bunch of the troops,
and then another guy named Prince Johnson, who is a warlord,
is like in control. He's like also a major warlord
in this period, right, So these guys are in the
party that Taylor's affiliated with, but they're under the command

(12:19):
of this other warlord, Prince Johnson. And I'm gonna quote
from the Liberian Civil Wars. The events that followed were
captured on film by a Palestinian journalist representing a Middle
Eastern news agency, the result of which was a snuff
film that later found its way into circulation all across
West Africa. The sequence opens with Prince Johnson seated at
a desk, a can of Budweiser beer in his hand
and a string of hand grenades slung around his neck.

(12:42):
Opposite him, seated on the floor and dressed only in underwear,
with his arms and legs tightly bound. With Samuel Doe.
A rambling interrogation followed, interspersed with him singing in prayer
as Prince Johnson and an audience of his men grew
steadily more inebriated. Doe could be heard pleading for his
arms to be loosened and appealing for brotherhood, while jeers
in general conversation punctuate the background scenes. Then, at a

(13:02):
certain point, Johnson thumped the desk and ordered Doe's ear
to be cut off. Dough was held down by several
men as one man armed with a knife cut off
his ears as he wailed and thrashed on the floor,
And so it continued. The torture went on between bouts
of muddled interrogation and snippets of discussion of Doe's potential
to escape despite his condition thanks to his juju power. Death,
no doubt, came slowly, and it is generally accepted that

(13:24):
he died in the early hours of September ten. So
pretty nasty. Also pretty similar to how the last guy
goes out to how Dough kills the last press point.
That's a very good throwback, Yes, Laberia. At this point,
when you've had two presidents get tortured and executed by
the guy who takes over after them, that's not a
good precedent, right, I thought a good track record. I

(13:46):
would say, like, look, the US has had some a
complicated history with democracy. I don't want to get up
on our high horse, but I think it's fair to
say that's not an ideal transition of power. You know,
that's not the best way that can go. Yeah. Yeah,
just recently remembered how you opened up this entire story

(14:07):
about someone named button naked, and I'm so curious how
we're to general butt nakeds coming baby, Okay, I would love. Yeah,
that's not as fun a figure as you're thinking right now. Well,
I know, you know, because I told you he's not.
I know he's not as fun as he sounds. Okay, fine, fine,
So you might think this would have been the end

(14:29):
of things, hopefully, but obviously the violence just continues. Taylor's
victory against Dough sets off a six year period of
kind of free for all civil warfare. Now Taylor is
in charge in the capital for much of this, but
the capital city and a lot of the country gets
split up by this patchwork of different militia units. They're
all allied to different strong men, all of them call

(14:52):
themselves generals. Some of them are in charge of armies
that have thousands of guys. Some of them is just
like a couple of dozen dudes, right, they all call
themselves generals. Most of these guys are pretty young, you're talking,
we're talking in like their twenties. Um. Basically none have
formal military experience. Some of them had been in the
librarian military. A lot of them are just like fucking
dudes who joined militias during the early stage of the

(15:14):
civil war and wind up you know, in charge of units.
Um at this point, are you are you? I know,
no one has all the answers. But like it's is
Taylor like revered or like, oh, this person's fear because
the violence never ends, Like nobody likes Dough But like
Taylor's not bringing peace to Liberia. He is definitely very

(15:39):
popular members of ethnic groups that had been purged by Dough, right, Um,
but that does not obviously the country kind of falls
apart into this massive civil war afterwards, so he's not
like widely seen as legitimate you know, um, and of
all these different warlords and generals and whatnot. Basically, since
they don't have much in the way of military experience,

(16:01):
their understanding of war and how to prosecute. It comes
from American action movies. Um, it's a mix of like,
it's a mix of American action movies. The own like
the trauma they remember from being like twelve and seeing
the early days of the war, right uh, and then
myths they kind of remember from childhood about like different
Indigenous practices, and as an adult they adopt noms to

(16:23):
gear for themselves that are a dizzying mix of awesome
and nonsense. Famous rebel leaders included General Chuck Norris, General
one Ft Devil, General Mosquito, General Mosquito Spray, and of
course the guy we're going to spend most of this
episode discussing General butt naked. So that's where that of course,
it's a child fucking Yeah, they're fucking like kids may

(16:46):
there like I mean like twenty or something, but like
they were kids when the fighting started. In many cases,
I think it's you would most likely get stunted at
that age, you know what I mean. There's only so
much yeah, and developing you do when you're so your
traumatie so young, and so I don't know, Yeah, this
is by the time Taylor's in power. This is a

(17:06):
civil war that's being fought by kids who probably don't
have a ton of memories from before ship started to
go really get really violent through things. Yeah, so, General
butt Naked's real name was Joshua Milton blacky Uh. He
was born on September nineteen seventy one as a member
of the Sarpo tribe. One source I found, the credibly

(17:29):
named mysterious universe dot Org give this gives this description
of his upbringing. And obviously I'm going to explain why
this is largely bullshit, but I want to read this
because it gives you an idea of how kind of
like popularly and more in like less credible, but like
main not mainstream, but like one of the ways, like
the way in which people talk about this guy's background

(17:51):
most commonly, even though it's not accurate. Quote. As he
grew he was just another boy, like so many in
the world. Somewhat rebellious, yes, but there was no clue
as to the darkness and atrocities that ahead on his
path to the future. His childhood would diverge from the
norm when, at the tender age of eleven, he was
made a tribal priest after an initiation ceremony in the forest.
Lay would claim during his initiation ritual, he had a
strange and terrifying vision in which he says the devil

(18:13):
came to him and proclaimed him to be a great
warrior who could gain vast supernatural power if only he
were to practice cannibalism and perform human sacrifices, and his
life would change dramatically after this. Now these are lies. Uh.
Joshua Milton Lay General Butt Naked is a huge liar.
The mysterious universe thing is based heavily on a book

(18:33):
that he wrote after he became a born again Christian.
His book titled The Redemption of an African war Lord
is a pretty standard redemption narrative. You see a lot
of evangelical I used to be a Satanic priest, sacrifice
in babies and then a huge thing and like especially
during like this actually this exact period, the Satanic panic

(18:55):
is hitting in the United States, and you're getting a
lot of these like people being like, oh, I was
a devil wor shipper and then I found Jesus Christ.
Blaye's narrative is like the same thing. One of the
differences though, that he absolutely murders a little kid. He
kills a shipload of people and does a bunch of
like anyway, so what you're saying is he runs this website. No, no,

(19:17):
this is kind of based on Yeah. So Blahie claims
to have engaged from an early age in elaborate nightmare
acts of child sacrifice to gain powers, like even as
a little kid. He says he's doing this as the
priest um and true, like, well no, because he's not
a child priest um but committing but like he's doing

(19:38):
up things as an adult. He is claiming that at
age eleven, he becomes a priest and learns human visits
by the devil and starts sacrificing people. That's pretty certainly
not true. There's basically one good article about this guy
that I found. It's called The Greater the Center. It's
in the New Yorker. It's written by Damon tabor Um

(19:59):
and a lot of report orders who aren't Tabor kind
of taken in and charmed by blah He He's a
very charming guy. Tabor talked to his family though, and
among other things, he pretty easily punctures the myth that
Blahi was some sort of child murder priest. Quote Harrison
shine Challer, another of Blahi's half brothers told me that
he had been unaware of Blahi's life as a priest.

(20:19):
As far as Chader knew, Blai was merely a rebellious youth.
Their mother would give him money to buy food for
the family, and he would disappear into the streets of
Monrovia for weeks at a time. He left school after
the third grade and later sold kool aid and chicken
soup at a local market wearing a purple necktie, purple shirt,
purple trousers, and purple shoes so people would recognize him.
He then moved on to drug trafficking and robbery. Sometimes.

(20:40):
Chader said he and Blaihie worked together. A Nigerian soldier
once asked Blahi to help him gain spiritual powers. Blai
prescribed a witchcraft treatment, an enema, and while the soldier
was indisposed, Chader stole his money. So this I think
is a more credible version of his back story. He
is a con man, he knows how do He's always

(21:01):
thinking about an angle. He wants to make money, um
and I think he will get into this more later,
but I think he adopts this very American Christian but
although not just because Liberian Christianity has a lot in
common with like the Revival bat like all, you see
a lot of the same things over there, these Revival meetings,
speaking and tongues, they have as much acclaim to it
as Americans do. Obviously, um because again there started out

(21:23):
as a colony. But that's what he's doing. When you
hear about these crazy stories of like him sacrificing babies
from magical powers, that's what he's doing. He is also
as a warlord, as we're gonna get to, he commits
a lot of crimes against humanity. Do not get me wrong.
This is a very complicated story for that reason. So again,

(21:45):
in order to puncture his claims about his early life,
um Tabor also goes on to note that while witchcraft
and human sacrifice are a part of some indigenous beliefs
in West Africa, nothing like the sort of child priesthood
that Blahie describes, where he's like to be the tribe
priest at eleven and has to carry it sacrifice, nothing
like like. Anthropologists have found no evidence of anything like

(22:06):
that existing in indigenous societies and like communities in Liberia.
Quote David Brown, a social anthropologist who has worked in
Liberia since the nineteen seventies, said that he had never
heard of a secret society that matches Blahi's description. I
spoke with many other experts who agreed. One called Blahi's
story ludicrous. And again, part of what he's playing on
here is the fact that white people are willing to

(22:28):
believe any kind of ship. Can you tell about this stuff?
You say, like, that's why it's so many people bought
into it. It was like, oh my god, that's what
these cultures are crazy and it's savage. Of course that
would happen. And you know what else, White people are
always willing to believe in, Sharon. Yeah, capitalism and the
products and services that support this podcast all backed heavily

(22:50):
by white people. Oh god, So that was I mean,
that was too real. I mean I did not enjoy
that at all at all times. Sometimes things happen and
they can't be stopped. We're back from ADS, so we're

(23:10):
talking about Milton Blah He So Blaghi now claims that
when Sergeant Doe took control, and this is again I'm
gonna be talking a lot about things he claims about
his back story. I will tell you when it's true.
I think it's true. Okay, right. So one of the
things Blah claims is that when Sergeant Doe took control
of the country right back in the eighties, he was
Doe's official spiritual advisor. That's already sounds like absolutely there's

(23:35):
no evidence of this. A lot of casual write ups
of of of General Butt Naked will say it will
either just say that he was or that he sometimes
they'll say he claims. I don't think they have put
enough emphasis on the fact that, like, there's no fucking
evidence of this. Um. One source claims he did black
magic to help doughe win election or re election, which

(23:56):
is not true. Dough did not win re election. He
burned people's ballots and men of genocides. UM. I don't
know he was. He does get affiliated with Dough at
some point. It's not impossible they did some sort of
like together. But the idea that like he was his
spiritual I just have not seen hard evidence of it. Um.
But to give you an idea of more of the

(24:16):
lurid claims made about Blahi during the Dough period of
time in Liberia, I'm gonna quote again from Mysterious Universe
dot org you can tell that's a credible site. Yeah,
he would get involved. Is a high priest of a
secret cult that practiced black magic. Human sacrificed and worshiped
a god called nyanbe Awe, who he believed was actually
the Devil. During this time, he claims he regularly talked

(24:39):
to the Devil, as well as displayed many supernatural powers
such as invisibility, flight, and immunity to bullets, and he
was already accustomed to the sight of blood due to
the monthly sacrifices he helped carry out. But it would
not be until Civil War came to Liberia that he
would truly carve out his legacy as a ruthless, frightening
force to be reckoned with and truly earned his moniker
the most evil man in the world. He just made

(24:59):
himself to like a superhero villains. Yeah, he kind of does. Yeah,
that's absurd, and he has a really bad dude, don't
get me wrong, But like we'll we'll continue. So when
it comes to the question of what did this guy
actually do right, what is his real background, things are
a lot murkier. Many sources will say that he will
kind of just because he calls himself a general. Will

(25:21):
assume he was a major military leader. He was certainly
well known. Um he was infamous within the city of Monrovia,
which is where he was active right and where a
lot of the fighting is occurring. A lot of people
were knew him in Monrovia. But basically all good documented
evidence of him as the warlord General butt Naked is
pretty much just nineteen right now. He's fighting. He's involved

(25:44):
in different militias to some extent prior to that, but
really his his career is butt Naked is like one
year now, that's when something like that. Yeah, Now, based
on what his brother said, we can assume he probably
spends the early year like while Doe is in power,
he's probably mostly like smuggling drugs, doing some mid levels
scams and crimes. He's he's not Krown, but he's like

(26:06):
an ethnicity that is kind of allied with Doze, with
the Krown, with like Dose people. So he does when
when the civil war starts, he joins a militia that's
allied with Doze political party and he fights on that
side of the conflict of Taylor. So he's on the
losing side of the initial stage of the Civil War
right uh. And when Doe gets killed, Blighi joins a

(26:27):
militia called the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy,
which is made up of former soldiers in Doe's army
and other kron Um. Charles Taylor is the big enemy
that Blaggie and all of his fellows were fighting, and
by the mid nineteen nineties, Taylor had turned the process
of making child soldiers into something of a science. Taylor's
Small Boys units numbered thousands of kids and were made

(26:49):
up mostly of orphans who swore allegiance to Popeye as
they called him, like Papaye, like Papa Uh, and he
would have to prove and he would have some prove
their loyalty by killing their parents. Because they were so
loyal and impressionable and drugged up, they made excellent shock troops.
From a write up in pro Publica, he presented himself
as a Baptist who neither smoke nor drank. A mesmeric speaker,

(27:11):
he would appear before adoring crowds dressed in fine white linen,
spouting promises of democracy jobs in better days. At other
times he wore camouflage and carrying an AK forty seven.
He would talk to the radio to announce the impending
capture of a nearby town than magically do it. For
many in Liberia, the spirit world remains close at hand.
In such a place, Taylor became something more than a man, mystical, powerful, otherworldly.

(27:33):
So this is the guy that blah he is is
fighting against. Right, So he starts in the mid nineteen nineties,
it's probably I don't think I'm not gonna say he
was only butt naked for a year. But like he
starts to like go from just being a guy involved
in the Civil War to a militia leader in kind
of the mid nineties, when he starts recruiting children himself. Um,

(27:54):
mostly kids who are like nine to ten, some who
are like older in their teens, but like a lot
of the kids, he's recruiting our little kids, um. And
he has them fight naked, and he fights naked, um blah.
He claimed that this was because being naked made his
magical powers more effective. He could go invisible and he
could avoid bullets more easily. And one thing people will

(28:14):
point out is that like he legitimately was fighting in
a bunch of battles naked. There's video of him naked
with guns and like fighting killing people with machetes and stuff,
and he doesn't get shot like he is. It's one
of those things. Um, you can see how a mystique
builds around this guy because yeah, he and his kids
are fighting nude, but also like they're winning a lot
of the time, you know, and these like these are

(28:35):
like street fights with guts very low, like not we're
not talking like tanks and ship fighting each other. Helps
his narrative being like he doesn't need well they don't have.
We'll talk about that in a bit. So he and
a soldiers will fight nude. They're also he's mashing cocaine
up into the foods of these kids in his unit
to like make them fight better. I really feel for

(28:56):
all these children that work. It's horrible. Yeah. Um, and
the massacre the ship out of anyone they see as
an enemy right up from ABC notes blah. He had
a reputation for being more brutal than other military leaders.
Everyone knows his nom de gear General butt Naked. He
was a cannibal who prefers to who preferred to sacrifice
babies because he believed their death promised the greatest amount

(29:18):
of protection. He went into battle naked, wearing only sneakers
and carrying a machette because he believed it made him
invulnerable and he was in fact never hit by a bullet.
His soldiers would make bets on with her, a pregnant
woman was carrying a boy or girl, then they would
slit open her belly to see who was right. And
you know, these are things Blai claims a lot of.
It's certainly true. He has soldiers who kill a shitload

(29:39):
of women and children. Also that slitting up in the
belie a pregnant Roman. You hear that a lot, as
like claims of war crimes and stories, and often like
I don't know the degree to which they did it.
It is something he claims a lot of things. He claims.
There lies that said. They do stuff that's on that level,
that's documented, that's on that level of horrible. So it's
not out of the question either. Um, we have footage

(30:00):
and photos of him naked and wielding rifles and machetes.
Foreign journalists reported on what he did. He's he was
really doing some of this stuff. Numerous Liberian civilians since
the war have talked to breast To, have talked to
press about how he do stuff like shoot off their
legs with his handgun or machete their husband to death,
kill their brothers and sisters by hacking them to pieces. Um. So,

(30:22):
like again, this is very much like a lot of
those traditional evangelical Christian narratives where they will like luridly
claimed to have been doing horrible satanic ship. But like,
also he did a bunch of that, like we do know,
like he's not making all of this up. A lot
of it's documented. It's just that there's a lot of
like lurid occult stuff that isn't so much document that

(30:44):
is more questionable. Anyway, years later, while he was testifying
at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which we'll talk about
more later, he claims that how he talked about how
he would um he called it planting violence in his
child soldiers, how he would radicalize them to fight for him. Um.
And the way he would do this is he would
show them American action movies like Rambo and Ship and

(31:06):
a lot of these movies different Hollywood movies. Right, You'll
see the same actors in multiple movies, right, and you'll
die in one movie and then that act will be
back as a character another movie, right, So he would
show them multiple movies where like kind of the same
actors are playing extras, are bad guys and get killed
and then they're back alive in another movie. And he
would explain to these kids that, like, real war works

(31:26):
the same way. So if you kill people, they're going
to come back somewhere else. What he called tells them
war is just an act. You're just playing a role
like these like Rambo, you know, So it's not real,
so we can do whatever, you know. Um. He also
testifies that when he shot and wounded enemies, he'd have
his child soldiers cut them to pieces in order to
desensitize them. Then they would eat and share the heart.

(31:48):
So that's not great for a better idea of the
kind of war crimes this guy and his boys got
up to. I'm going to quote again from that ABC article,
and this is based on interviews with a young woman
who Black he met with after the war to apologize
for murdering her family. Part of why I'm reading this
is like, we can we know this is a true
Like again, a lot of claims he's making aren't true.
His victim is alive, like we can talk to her

(32:09):
That's why I'm reading this because this is one that
we know is one of the things. So are you
saying like he apologized when he was like doing his
Christian ship. We're getting to that. I want to give
you an idea of one of the verified war crimes
we know that he was doing. A group from the
Kron tribe was searching for enemies within the country, which
in a civil war consists of member of another tribe.
Her older brother, Daniel, was hiding a nanny from the

(32:31):
Geo tribe who had been working for the family for years.
It'll be okay, the mother said. Faith heard the screams
outside the huts as the men approached. Suddenly she saw
a naked man with only a machete in his hand.
Why is the man naked, she wondered. Then she saw
the other men, about twenty five of them as she
estimates today, carrying guns. They had heard there was a
Geo woman in the village. Daniel stood in front of

(32:52):
the nanny to protect her. She is a human being
like you and me, he said to Blaghi Blagh. He
responded with an order. One of the boys stepped forward
and shopped off her brother's foot. Then he hacked off
his lower leg, followed by his thigh in his hip,
methodically working his way up to up the body. Eventually,
her brother fell silent. Blai told everyone to lie on
the ground. His men raped her mother and her sisters

(33:13):
and then killed them. Gway says, they didn't rape her,
but they did. They didn't rape me, but they did
things to me I don't want to talk about. They
left me with a blinish that I will always have.
At some point, Bla, you said that things were moving
too slowly and that there were other military operations to
attend to. That was when he began to participate. So again,
to be clear, we're talking about he makes a lot

(33:33):
of claims I don't think happened. This guy is doing
some like nightmarish crimes against humanity, um, real bad stuff.
So yeah, so, oh my god, it's I don't know.
The things that humans are capable of truly are just

(33:54):
mind melting. And the thing is you you could say
that if one person capable of that, than we all are,
right if it's like, if that's what what I just
m hmm. We're not all capable of physically participating in
mass murder and rape, but we're all the people of
we're all for one thing. We're all capable of supporting
the people who do that, which is really one of

(34:16):
the stories that's most important from the Holocaust exactly. No,
I mean a lot of sorry, no, no, no, I'm
just baffled by I mean, I I know humans have
done horrible things since the dawn of humans, but it's
it's still so unsettling to me to really wrap the
head around what that means we are. It's one of

(34:36):
those things. You One of the worst crimes in the
Holocaust was the Bobby r massacre. I think like thirty
thousand Jewish people are shot to death in a single
day by by a German forces UM. A horrific, horrific act,
probably the biggest mass shooting um of of people in history. UM.
In the same war, the United States Air Force incinerates

(34:58):
between like eight and a and fifty people in a
single night in Tokyo, knowingly killing civilian, knowing that that's
most of who will die as civilians, that we're going
to burn them to death by the tens of thousands, UM.
Which of those is a worse war crime. Well, people
have strong opinions on that, but at the end of
the day, both of them are the targeted killing of civilians. UM.

(35:20):
For different purposes, one could argue, but both are military
forces using military grade weaponry to massacre civilians by the
tens of thousands. UM. It's a thing that every side
in a sufficiently large war, every side finds a reason
to justify and and so I think, as lurid as
the crimes of these Liberian warlords are, you get so

(35:41):
many breathless descriptions of guys like butt naked, murdering little
kids and raping women, all these horrible things that happened
that are worth documenting and worth discussing, but they often
get talked like they are somehow separate from the kinds
of war crimes that we endorse. And I don't think
they are. I think the the targeting and killing and

(36:02):
torturing and raping of civilians UM is bad, whether it's
being done using missiles or being done by a man
with a rifle going face to face. I don't I
don't think that the separation, or that we we trade
one kind of massacre for another makes a tremendous mortal
difference to me. When you're still killing civilians now, I

(36:23):
agree with that. That's a good reminder. Yeah. Sometimes I
get like one of the arguments is that we usually
when we kill civilians it's an accident. Like that guy
you have family of tin in Afghanistan, right, he wanted
to rape and murder these people. We didn't want to
kill that family. We just fucked up. And it's like, Okay,
I don't know how you want to apportion out the

(36:44):
morality of that, you know, totally. I just think that's
we'rekill ignorance and just like, what's just it's just, uh,
if you still believe some of that bullshit and after
all this technology and all these things you can make,
and it's we can sit at home and like debate
which those is more or less a moral act. I
don't know that it matters to the people getting blown

(37:05):
up exactly, you know, um, but whatever. Like I just
state this because it frustrates me when like the fighting
in Liberia and the brutality of it is seen as
something exceptional rather than this is what happens when there
are civil wars. That's very true, and maybe it's more
digestible when things are just large numbers versus like this

(37:27):
happened to this person and you can visualize it in
your head, right, or it's like a like a village
of people. It doesn't really. It's when I when I
read a story like that of him killing this family
and repeatedly raping the women and having his soldiers do it,
that is horrific and uh, deeply painful to hear in
a way that if I say, a US air strike

(37:49):
killed a family of eleven exactly doesn't sound Now if
I were to describe to you what shrapnel does to
the bodies of little children, perhaps you would have that
reaction to the email about what that bombing did to
the bodies of these people. Yeah, exactly. But it's just
like sometimes, especially now, we just hear all these like

(38:09):
eighteen casualties and Palestine or whatever, and it's like we're desensitized,
does that mean? And we get these stories because there
they seem foreign and terrifying, like they're doing magic and
they're these drug adult warlords doing these horrible things. And
that's again this he is committing unfathomably brutal crimes in
the on the same level of her horribleness as any

(38:33):
like Nazi Einsets groupa member carried out any of these
guys slaughtering their way through Russia. Like, I don't mean
to mitigate what he's doing at all. I just hate
that it is often portrayed as somehow separate from the
history of Western warfare. We hear you, and I think
it's it's I don't. I didn't see it as you
mitigating anything. I think it's just a good reminder to

(38:53):
just if you think this is bad, realize that it's suggested.
But if this is also not unique. So lay would
later claim that his general butt naked, he used human
sacrifice and cannibalism to gain magic powers. Quote every town
I entered, they would give me the chance to do
my human sacrifices, which included innocent children. He elaborated. Anytime

(39:15):
we captured a town I had to make a human sacrifice,
they bring me a living child that I slaughter and
take the heart out to eat it. I'm perfectly winn
to believe this happened. Sometimes in this worth noting. I've
read a lot of accounts that journalists have had Because
he's now that he's for like apologized, he goes around
and talks to his victims to try to get like,
we'll get into that more later. Um, all of their

(39:37):
stories are horrible. They're like the one I read earlier.
I have not run into any of them talking about like, yeah,
we had to he sacrificed an infant in my village
or something like that. That's all from him as opposed
to the things that like his victim so I I
don't know how true it is. It was a thing
he did sometimes, but he's exaggerating how often it happened,

(39:57):
like very unclear. It's just weird to me that, Like,
I can come up with a lot of stories of
fund up ship we knew this guy did, and none
of them are like that kind of stuff. But whatever. Um,
he did definitely kill a lot of civilians. He was
definitely into like magic kind of stuff, which is not
a lot of Liberian warlords are doing different kind of
witch doctor kind of stuff. It's usually framed right. Um.

(40:18):
In the years since Blah, he has attempted to make
amends with his victims. Uh, and overwhelmingly I think most
of them are men and boys, although a lot of
them are especially a lot of the people he does
violence to that's not murder our women. Um. There are
two ways you can look at his lurid claims of
committing wartime atrocities. Either he did everything he said and

(40:39):
literally believed he was engaging in witchcraft and gaining powers,
or he was making a very rational decision based on
elements of the local culture and battlefield efficacy. For one thing,
people in this culture, because of what everyone else has
been doing, our prime to take seriously some of these
signifiers of being involved in witchcraft, being a witch doctor
and whatnot, so they make people take you more seriously. Um. Also,

(41:04):
if other people who are seen as powerful are doing
sacrifices and engaging in cannibalism, than engaging in that too
makes you like he's fighting Charles Taylor, and there's forces
are doing stuff like this, and this makes this allows
him to like like you have to build yourself up
into it, like in a mythic sense, something as formidable
as what you're fighting, right, you're not getting shot by bullets. Yeah,

(41:27):
it's just like it's also it's worth noting in a
in fighting like what's happening in Liberia, fighting naked does
not expose you to much more danger than fighting with
clothing on. This is not a war. This is before
people outside of like very advanced militaries have ready access
to quality body armor, right, it just does not exist

(41:48):
for most people in this fighting and a T shirt
offers no more protection from a bullet than than being naked.
And in fact, one thing like this is from there
were there have been forces who fought naked earlier in history.
And one of the things that was noted is like, well,
when they would get stabbed or shop, they were less
likely to die because they're not having like a filthy,
matted fur or something pushed into an open wound which infections.

(42:12):
And this is also there's not a lot of great
access to medical care. So it's not it sounds wacky
and crazy, it's not as irrational a decision as it
may see. And also seeing a naked dude charging, he
was terrified as he gains a reputation from being not
being able to be killed, that benefit that makes people

(42:33):
less likely to fight him. People will tell stories that
like whole towns would flee when you hear General butt
naked is coming because he's a fucking dangerous, crazy person.
You want to get the funk out of there, right,
And that's a benefit for him. Like so again, as
as wild as all this sounds there are very rational
reasons for everything he's doing in addition to whatever he
does happen to believe. Um. Yeah, And so again that's

(42:57):
just important to note that, like all of the stuff
that is most lurid about, this makes a kind of
sense as a cold blooded military calculation. Um yeah, it's
a force multiplier, right. Um, it's like drifting. It's like
a different form of like just like how just conning
people in a much more intense violent way. What I think,

(43:18):
what I want to point out is again you get
a lot of ableism this with people who describe behavior
like what he's doing, like taking cocaine and fighting naked,
as insane and like this is extremely sane. He is
very much acting within the strictures of the society that
has devolved in Liberia over wartime, and his actions are
perfectly rational within the context that he lives. Um. And

(43:42):
part of the evidence for that is he survives the war.
So um. And I tend to think he is a
pretty calculating guy. Um. You know, I mean, unfortunately, he's
not stupid. It sounds like you know, yeah, no, you
have to Yeah, he's he's he I think he was
pretty pragmatic dude. So Blah. He now claims that his

(44:04):
career as General butt Naked ended after a battle on
April sixth, or in some versions, right before a battle
to take a bridge in in like April of nineteen
and he has this vision. And I'm gonna quote from
a write up in The New Yorker. I met Jesus
there for the first time, he said. In his memoir Blah,
he describes killing a child near the bridge, this bridge,
by opening the little girl's belt back and plucking out

(44:24):
her heart. Her blood was still in his hands, he
told me when he heard a voice. When I looked back,
I saw a man standing there. He was so bright,
brighter than the sun. The voice told him repent and live,
or refuse and die. I wanted to continue fighting, but
my mind never left this person, how bright he was
and how passionate his words, Blah, he continued. He soon
quit fighting, leaving his child soldiers defend for themselves, and

(44:46):
he began sleeping in a pew in a nearby church.
The pastor there gathered his congregation and they asked God
to strip Blahi of his demonic powers. The next day, Blah,
he went to see his commanding officer handed over his
weapons and amulets and said, my new commander is Jesus Christ. Okay,
I what is that? Ben okay? As a grifter, as
a con man. What was the reason he decided? We

(45:10):
are getting to that? So it is worth noting for
context that this year nine six, the year he claims
he converted and left war behind, is also the year
there's a ceasefire in live here. Okay, that's a good
thing to note. Everyone is fucking exhausted at this point.
For like sixteen years basically they've been either at war,
they've just been this dictator has been purging people who's

(45:30):
been coups. It's been like it's been like fifteen plus
years of just like constant traumatizing bullshit. Everyone's exhausted, um,
and they agree like, okay, let's have a fucking election
and we'll see if that works any better than what
we've been doing. UM. So Charles Taylor is like in
charge in Monrovia at this point, and he decides to
run for president. Um. And since violence has gotten kind

(45:52):
of out of favor, he declares that he's been born
again as a Christian, so he is not is not
like his rival does, his rival does gets like starts
signaling some of this witchcraft ship and like using child
soldiers blah ye does it? Charles Taylor becomes born again
blah right, Like that's an element here. Um. Now, there
is widespread skepticism about Charles Taylor's claims that he's born again, um,

(46:16):
and it's generally seen as a ploy to make himself
more palatable. The next year, he runs for presidents under
the incredible slogan he killed my ma, he killed my paw,
I'll vote for him. That was not where I thought
that was going. Right, that's pretty quite quite a presidential
actually at least rhyme or something interest. The New Yorker explains,

(46:39):
quote the phrase was darkly ironic. Taylor was claiming to
be the only leader powerful enough to prevent another war,
so like that's his That's what he's saying, is like, yeah, man,
I killed your fucking family. But now I've got what
it the the amount the might that it will take
to keep Liberia peaceful. So vote for me, like no
one else is going to to to to defeat me,

(46:59):
like the yeah, yeah yeah, And he wins the election.
You can either say this is because of his brilliant
strategy or because it's not not a great election. Um,
Taylor wins or wins, you know, however you want to
see it. Uh. And he immediately sets to persecuting his rivals,
including Blackie the former general. Butt Naked flees to Ghana,

(47:20):
where he lives in a refugee camp, and he claims
he learns to read and studies the Bible during this time,
and he also says this is when he starts spending
time face to face with people who had been as victims,
who are like, what then are you doing here? You're
the reason that we had to leave, you know. Um.
So he spends like a decade kind of hiding. Uh.
In nineteen nine, the civil war starts up again. Right

(47:42):
they have like three years, asked Durry, where there's this election?
And Taylor wins and then another rebel invades the same
way Taylor had, from like a bordering country and try
right exactly mean like right, you know this is none
of this should be surprising. By two thousand and three,
at least a order of a million people have been
killed in the two Liberian civil wars. And this has

(48:04):
now been going like the civil wars have been going
on for fourteen years, right, and then you had Doze
reigned before that, which was pretty nasty. People just have
nothing left in them. Um. But the war has, like
I say, regular people, the warlords and the their fucking
child armies. All they do is keep escalating. Um. And
as kind of the Year begins, Taylor is fighting for

(48:26):
his life in the city against a siege from an
opposing rebel party, just like Dough had been doing against him. Right,
it's like the third time this ship has happened. So
it is at this point that the women of Liberias
start to get seriously politically organized. Women bore the brunt
of the violence in both civil wars, and there had
been attempts to organize non violent protest campaigns earlier in

(48:48):
the First Civil War. I think one of the issues
is that Muslim and Christian women have trouble like organizing
together for a variety of reasons. Um. And I'm gonna
tell you this story, which is pretty fucking cool. But
you know what else is pretty cool. Let's see what
is it this time? Well, it's not Mono. That was less.
It's not Mono is pretty cool. It's all the cool

(49:10):
kids are getting it because out in my high school.
If you didn't get it, that means you weren't kissing anybody.
I know you're not. You're not you're not getting any
action if you're not catching mono because I didn't actually
not clear. Yeah, yeah, neither did I I don't think
it makes sense anyway, Wamp wamp, go ahead. I have

(49:30):
faith and everyone here's ability to catch mono. We're back. Ah,
So it is, you know, bad stuff. This has mostly
been bad stuff, but now we're going to talk about
some cool ship. M because all of the women in
Liberia start to organize a protest campaign women women. Let's

(49:55):
bring women into the story. Final so too, they've been involved,
just mostly getting murder. Now they are going to I mean,
it's been horrible and that's part of why this is
able to happen. Um, and this is one of the
coolest stories I've ever heard. So to explain what happened next,
I'm going to quote from an article in the Journal
of International Women's Studies by Maxwell A. J J A

(50:17):
d g A d j E. I. So there you go,
engulfed in a cycle of violence and with no hope
for a better future. A group of Liberian women under
the leadership of Lema Bowie, came together to form the
Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace w l m
a P to demand an immediate into the conflict. Initially, Gabowie,
a Christian social worker with the Lutheran Church, had intended

(50:39):
the organization to include include a small group of Christian
women who would meet regularly to pray for peace. However,
when words spread about their meetings through the community, one
Muslim policewoman, a Satu Bah Kenneth, became highly impressed with
the women's vision and volunteered to mobilize Muslim women to
join the movement. Following initial concerns that having Muslims in
their ranks would dilute their faith, the Christian women ultimately

(51:01):
resolved that because bullets don't pick and shoes between Christian
and Muslim women, it would be in their interests to
work together for peace. More importantly, having a united front
of Christian and Muslim women would send a clear message
to the people of Liberia that neither the government forces
predominantly Christian nor l u r D forces predominantly Muslim,
We're fighting for their religious interests. While addressing w l

(51:24):
m a P for the first time. Gabawie declared that
in the past we were silent, but after being killed, raped, dehumanized,
and infected with diseases, war has taught us that the
future lies in saying no to violence and yes to peace.
For the thousands of women gathered, this impassioned speech by Gabawie,
more than any ethnic or religious affinities, represented the level
of frustration with the conflict and the extent to which

(51:45):
they were willing to commit to bring peace to their country.
So Gabawie and her fellow organizers start holding rallies at mosques,
markets and churches. They'll do three rallies a week, one
of a mosque, one of a market, wanted a church.
These are all like so that they're reaching every one right.
These are the three places everyone's going to go to
at least one of these three places. Um and they

(52:05):
start reaching out to other women and gradually expanding the
reach of their organization and demanding peace. Once they've built
themselves up into a sizeable organization and they'd had time
to discuss a more detailed plan of action, they issued
a statement condemning all sides in the Civil War for
their abuses of women and children, basically saying none of
you were legitimate because all of you were just massacring people,
which is not an inaccurate way to analyze the life

(52:28):
period Civil War next quote. In defiance of President Taylor's
ban on public marches, w l m a P staged
its first mass protest at Monrovious Fish Market, a location
that would make the President see them on his daily
commute to the office. While using radio and printed flyers
to just to spread word about the protest, Cavalli and
her team encouraged women to show up for the protests
in white clothing, without any jewelry or makeup for them.

(52:50):
This would send a signal about their serious commitment to peace,
an unrelenting desire to remain independent of either side of
the conflict. Heating to their calls on the radio over
women from different social backgrounds, clad in white T shirts
showed up daily for the sit in protests, which took
place over the next several weeks. In each of the gatherings,
the women would sit, dance, and sing for peace while
displaying placards and banners with messages such as the women

(53:14):
of Liberia want peace now, we are tired, we want
peace no more. War, et cetera. For a while, Taylor
was able to ignore the women, but their crowds kept
growing larger and larger. He was eventually forced to take
their petition and promise his willingness to quit hold ceasefire
talks with the rebels. They didn't consider this the end, though,
and brainstormed other tactics to apply pressure. Eventually, they decided

(53:38):
to go on a sex strike and this is a
quote again from the same document, to purnt their husbands
from forcibly having sex with them. They set up safe
spaces where they could stay and sleep together. After some
initial setbacks, the strategies seemed to be effective, as many
men began to pray with their wives and demand an
into the conflict. More importantly, the sex strike gave the
campaign extremely valuable media attention outside of Liberia. Following the

(54:01):
successes with the sex strike and President Taylor's meeting, the
women turned their attention to the rebels, demanding that they
too agree to attend the peace talks. Upon hearing that
the war lords were meeting at a hotel in a
neighboring country, Sierra Leone, a delegation of the women traveled
to the country on their arrival, the delegation was able
to arrange a private meeting with the war lords and
get them to commit to attending peace talks. So men

(54:22):
of our geniuses. That was pretty It's a pretty good story. Um,
you know it's not there's other stuff going on, other
factors working for peace obviously, like talk about the ceasefires
and stuff have been going on for what it is
not just this that leads to an end. But this
plays a significant role in the end of the Second
Liberian Civil War, um, which is pretty cool. Yeah, I think,

(54:47):
uh yeah, I mean not that we did more evidence
of this, but women smarter than men, you know what
I mean. So let's just this is definitely definitely a
story where the women are the ones who are much
smarter and also very much like have you so Liza
Strata is this old Greek play about the Peloponnesian War
with the plot of like this is the plot of it,

(55:08):
Like the women in Athens decided to go on like
a sex strike to force an into the war. Yeah,
I mean, like, if you think about it, if nothing
else is working, you use what is weaponized to you,
like for your benefit, you know what I mean, or
like for you take advantage of people see you as
and it's important to note like they have to there's
a lot that they have to do in order to

(55:29):
make this work, including setting up safe spaces where they
cannot get like that. That the document that I cited there, Um,
you should is really worth reading because there's a lot
more that go. Like, there's a ton of organizations. This
is a very involved process. Um, I'm giving you like
really broad strokes here. Uh So Taylor is eventually forced
to resign and go into exile. International peacekeeping troops into

(55:51):
the country, the rebels lay down some of their arms,
and broadly speaking, things get a lot better. There were
elections and more elections, and these all of aally culminate
in the election of Ellen Johnson Surleif, who becomes Liberia's
first female president. So this is all great, uh In
things in Liberia get much better because of this. But
peace is only achieved because there's with There have to

(56:13):
be a lot of ugly compromises, right, So when the
war ends, one side isn't crushed. Everyone's got people under arms.
The country is filled with tens of thousands of men
and boys who have done the things we just talked about.
Why are you doing who have raped women in mass
and like gunned down babies and all this kind of ship.
These guys are like still around. But also, what are

(56:36):
you gonna do about it? If you start going after
every individual who committed a war crime in the militia,
how does that not cause another civil war? Because they're
gonna pick up guns again, and also their families are
gonna be pissed. The ethnic group is gonna be like, well,
they did what they did because that was done to
us and they were defending us, and like it's it's
a really messy problem. We have achieved peace. What do

(56:57):
we do to what extent can we hunish the people
who did bad things during the war? How like? How
so this is not they don't have a simple answer
to this. But they decided to hold a truth and
Reconciliation commission um, And the purpose of this is to
investigate the worst offenders and basically go through this list
of people they know had done fucked up ship, talk

(57:18):
to as many of them as they can, investigate it,
and then decide, broadly speaking, do we pardon them or
do we prosecute them? You know? Um? And this is
where General butt Naked comes back into the historic record.
So he's been he's been hiding for like a decade,
you know, hanging around. Uh when he hears about this. Uh,

(57:38):
he shows up on day one of the hearings and
becomes the first warlord to testify. He admits, Yeah, he shows,
he enters that he's not even in the country. He
comes back to testify. He is the first, I think
like the only person to admit to war crimes on
this level. Um. He admits in front of this to
recruiting child soldiers, to raping women, to murdering civilians, to

(58:01):
sacrificing babies, to everything we've talked about. He admits his
personal death toll at twenty people. Now that's not possible.
He he isn't He is effectively leading a platoon. There's
like thirty forty kids that he's commanding at any given time,
maybe a company at the most. There's just no way
he killed a tenth of the people who died in
the Liberian Civil War. Um. Yeah, but this guy exagger right, right,

(58:24):
he's a fan. And also there's a a Vice documentary
about him, which we'll talk about in a bit. There's
problematic aspects of that. Um. But some of the Liberians
who were interviewed in that suggests that, well, he's not
literally saying me and my forces killed, but we were
the side we were working on in the period where
I was one of the leaders of that side killed,
which is broadly plausible, right, And you know, so that's

(58:46):
a thing you'll hear. Um. The Commission did not really
question him on anything. They seem to kind of be
in awe of him and the fact that he's coming
and admitting and he's saying, like, I feel terrible, you
know it is it's the smart move. If he did
something stupid and you immediately admit to it, there's something
almost endearing about it, you know what I mean. It's just, Yeah,

(59:06):
that's why I always when I finished drunk driving my
Forerunner through a trailer park and shooting an A K
forty seven out the window, I always with a note
that says, real sorry, And that's why everybody loves me.
And I'm just say it. If y'all cheat on your partners,
instead of getting caught, if you admit to it, less
likely they're gonna hate you, you know what I mean?
Stuff like that, not the A K whatever, the ship

(59:26):
that you just said, but also none of this works
on cops, so don't try it. Um So the Commission
does not really question him on any of this stuff.
One member tells him he has good leadership qualities. They
seem to just be blown away that this guy is
like coming to them and just saying what people broadly
know is true. Next from the New Yorker quote, Blast
testimony was front page News and Liberia. Strangers hugged him

(59:49):
on the streets of Monrovia and journalists came from all
over the world to interview him. The Daily Mail run
a profile under the headline face to Face with General
Butt Naked, the most Evil man in the World. Vice
feature Blaggie in a lurid travel documentary called The Vice
Guide to Liberia, which has been viewed more than ten
million times on YouTube. The pastor of an evangelical church
in the East Village saw the video and later became

(01:00:12):
one of Blaghie's benefactors. Blaghie has written five books. A
memoire told titled The Redemption of an African Warlord and
was published in two thousand and thirteen by a small
Christian press. In the foreword, Jans wrote, not since the
conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus.
Have I ever heard a conversation a conversion story more
radically compelling? So I'm trying to look him up because

(01:00:33):
I need to know. Again, we talked about this before,
I'm sure on an episode have been on. But like,
if you're he said he was charming, But if you're
good looking ish, even above average, you can get away
with more ships. I want to know what he looks like.
I mean, he's not he's he's like a big dude,
he's pretty like muscular. He's not really b l h
y e y I. He's not really my I'm kind

(01:00:56):
of more into like anyway whatever. But you said he
was charismatic, so it's probably he's very charismatic. There's the
reason he's I'm I'm sure some and he when he's younger,
I'm sure he's also considered more handsome. Okay, sorry, but
I think he's just he's a really good talker. You know.
That's kind of more than the deal. Um, I guess
more and more than attraction, that's what or attractiveness, that's

(01:01:17):
what probably gets you more cons it's the talking. Yeah,
so blah. Used detractors will argue that he pretty much
just partied his fame as the repentant warlord into a
new career charismatic and wealth spoken. He's been and again
he's in this like this Vice documentary early on, and
it gets him a benefactor. Somebody starts giving him money

(01:01:38):
to do things to like try and make things right. Um.
And he like, right after he gets kind of famous
for going to this thing, he establishes a home for
former child soldiers, like a rehab home to help them. Um.
It definitely exists or it has it points. There's a
Vice documentary from two thousand eleven called the I think

(01:01:58):
it's called The Redemption of General Butt Naked Um, and
it films him and his soldiers and like or these
kitchen former child soldiers and they're all saying, like, oh,
he saved my life. I would have died with I
was living on the street. He's you know, he's he's
he did bad things, but like you know, he's he's
are are basically our father. Now he's like he's saving us. Um.
But interestingly, that documentary is filming him while he gets

(01:02:22):
a death threat and he flees the country for Ghana.
Um and his soldiers all wind up back on the
street and are like, what the funk he abandoned us
while he lives in a hotel. So that that there's
there's criticisms of Vices coverage of him, which spans a
couple of pieces, but they do get that piece of
his his life. I mean, it benefited him more than anything.
Like imagine this, you're in hiding and you you he

(01:02:47):
thinks of a way that not only can he get
out of hiding, but he can be fucking he can
benefit off of it and make money, you know what
I mean? Like he did the perfect con. He's smart.
So by the time that New Yorker article comes out,
he's back to running a halfway house. He comes back
to Monrovia, he starts another halfway house. He's running one
again for these child soldiers in Monrovia, and this seems

(01:03:07):
to be thanks. He gets the funding to do this
from a white American lady named Brenda Webber who saw
the redemption of General butt Naked one of the Vice
documentaries and contacted him on Facebook. How modern everything is
all the time when you're talking Facebook. So she sees
this guy and she is taken by him, and she
wants to help, and she does this like I think

(01:03:30):
a lot of white ladies do where they decide like
and white dudes. Uh, just white people thing where they decide,
I want to help Africa. Yeah, and this guy seems legit.
Let me just give him a bunch of money to
do a thing. So yeah, they do this. They set
up a halfway house, um, using this lady's money. And
in the New Yorker interview, this woman she's getting grifted

(01:03:53):
and conduct of our life savings. I also don't care
too much, uh, she says during the interview quote I
could just tell he was genuine. I knew he wasn't
the same person, that he was a totally different man.
And then she would go on to say ship like this,
you should see them when someone cares, especially a white
woman from America, and makes them feel like they are
worth something for the first time in years. This is

(01:04:14):
what she's saying about, like the child soldiers that she's
helping to fund, like like, wow, when a white woman
likes them, they feel great. Like I don't care that
this lady is getting grifted. Yeah, I know me either.
But also it's a whole like psychological study about how
serial killers or whatever even if they're in jail like
women are. There's a there's it's certainly a thing that

(01:04:37):
had a number of serial killers have had like women
fall in love with them. I wonder what that's about.
That's a bigger topic than we can get in. Um.
So yeah, so she's she's at this point when New
Yorker writes about them, she is sending eight hundred dollars
a month. Half of it goes to him directly for
him to live on, and again to a white lady

(01:04:58):
living in like, you know, ning a pharmacy. Well, I mean,
he's just he's living off four dollars a month. Doesn't
sound like a lot, but that's ten times the local wage.
So that's pretty good money for him. Um. The other
half is supposed to go to run this home for
child soldiers. Um. But we'll talk about that in a second.
It's also worth noting she's spending more than eight hundred
bucks a month by the time the New Yorker gets

(01:05:20):
to her. She says that in the first year, she
ran through their entire family savings account of dollars, and
she's taken out like a fifty thou dollar credit line
in order to continue funding it, and she's she's definitely
the same kind of like really frustrating evangelical prosperity gospel
ship that like, well exactly, she tells the New Yorker,

(01:05:42):
I know everything is going to be fine. You can't
give and give like that and not get something in return.
And she's like, hasn't told her husband she's spending all
the money on this, and like, but like she believes,
you know, you give money for God, and God will
make you make it right. He'll get your money back,
you know. Yeah. And I think that New Yorker article
makes it really clear the Vice the Redemption of General

(01:06:03):
Butt Naked Vice documentary, I actually think and this is
like not the first thing they do about him. I
don't think it's yeah, but it is it. I came
away being like, well, this dude's fucking con man. I
guess you can kind of make either conclusion from it.
It's kind of murky. I mean, if you are easily
or like if you have a predisposition to maybe believe
religious stories about redemption, or like someone that claims he

(01:06:27):
found God, like maybe that's something different, you know what
I mean. I don't know. Yeah. Uh, Now, the New
Yorker article, though I want to read another quote from
it that kind of further makes that case. At one point,
another resident of the house pulled me aside and told
me that Blaghi was misappropriating the program's money for his
own benefit. The administration is run by his entire family,
and no one really questions it. Sometimes, the young man added.

(01:06:49):
The residence of the house went without breakfast, or their
meals consisted of playing rice with salt and pepper. When
Western reporters arrived, Blagyi and his staff say, okay, stand
in front of this camera and tell the man. We
are josh Joshua blah ye beneficiaries. But what have I benefited?
When one of the residents texted Weber to report that
they weren't being fed breakfast, she started sending an additional

(01:07:10):
three dollars a month. Blah. He hadn't told her about
the problem, she believed, out of concern for her finances.
I wholeheartedly trust Joshua, she went on. If he ever
makes a mistake, it's not willfully. Now that con has
been successful in a lot of foreign journalists. Uh. The
lynchpin of his entire act, though, the meat thing that
he makes sure to do whenever he's interviewed is find

(01:07:31):
one of the people he victimized and asked them to
forgive him on camera. Now, there are some of these
people who he's like helped in one where he's given
him money and he has like good relations with them, um,
but it is really ugly and a lot of them haven't,
and he'll like harass them on camera to demand, like
he'll say stuff like you have to forgive me, and
I want to play a clip from one of these

(01:07:51):
moments he's this is a woman he murdered her brother
in front of her. UM. So it's like, does he
think they're less likely to say I mean, yeah, it's
probably what he's thinking. Just watch it and watch it
and watch her face like I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I
beg you forgive me. Don't you bank yourself better out

(01:08:20):
of madness, but please, I will be able to play
the better for you. I mean, I'm not being able
to do everything that you're better can do, but I
will stand there whenever you need it betterly, council, whenever
you need a better protection. Trying to quote on me,
I beg you please. So the whole time this has happened,

(01:08:42):
because if you just hear what he's saying, it may
sound okay. She is turning away and trying to get
away from him, and he is repeatedly standing in front
of her and stopping her from leaving while he says
all this, and there are people in the background like
naughty along saying so it's not letting her go when
she wants to leave. There's no part of her that
wants anything what he's saying. Like, there's a moment that

(01:09:03):
like where her eyes just like are so dead and
the staring off. He's like, I can be your brother.
She's like, I'm out of here. She's also cornered with
a camera in her face to the camera in her face. Yeah,
it's it's pretty gross. So yeah, that's the episode. There's
more to say about the Liberian Civil War. Charles Taylor

(01:09:24):
just got sentenced to prison. By the way, He's one
of the people who does not get like they reckon
the truth and reconciliation thing, recommends prosecution. Um. He goes
to the uh the International Criminal Court uh, and he's yeah,
he does a whole he does a whole thing, and
he gets sentenced to like fifty years in prison. Um,

(01:09:47):
so that's good, I guess. I mean whatever, Yeah, I mean,
it's like, fuck him, he shouldn't be allowed to just
it's good. It's good when war criminals get punished for
being war criminals. I feel mixed about Blackey, where he's
not doing nothing, and there's definitely people who, at least

(01:10:07):
on camera, will say that like he's helped them, he's
helped them after the war and stuff. But he's also
like he goes to all these revival meetings, he's like
raising money and it's questionable where's it goes. And it's like,
I don't know, I don't know what you do. I'm
not going to tell the Liberians when we or the
other this is how you should handle the aftermath of
your civil war. But like this, this guy is a

(01:10:28):
pretty familiar kind of grifter. Yeah, no, I agree. I
usually these grifters somehow are able to live a long
life just continuing some type of grift. And like, look
at him now, he's like he's only fifty. He has
you know what I mean, It's I don't know, it's
he's doing great. He's being great all things considered. He

(01:10:48):
fucking he won. Yeah, you know who else wins Sharine
who everyone who listens to your plugs? That's correct, Robert, Wow,
thank you so much. You can follow me if you
want on the internet. Twitter is Shiro Hero six six
six and Instagram is just Shiro Hero. I have some

(01:11:09):
poetry books out that you can buy if you want,
and a podcast as well. Uh, ethnically ambiguous and that's about.
That's that's enough for today. Yeah, all right, motherfucker's that's
the episode, So get out of here. Thanks for having met.

(01:11:34):
I do think but we bonded on this episode. Do
you feel it we had like that discussion about whatever
the funk that was? Yeah, that was like that was
a conversation that we just happened to record, you know
what I mean? That was that was you wanna you
want to smoke weed and listen to King Crimson? Helly? Alright, okay,
but Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

(01:12:00):
More from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone
media dot com, or check us out on the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.