Part One: Ancient Genocide and the War on Carthage

So UM, if you want to help, you can go to bTB fundraiser for pd X 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 for PDX Diaper Bank, or find the link in the show notes. Thank you all. Let's go. Let's start the podcast, So get off, let's move it. Robert, Sophie, Robert Sophie, Robert Sophie, evens Toma Robert. This is Behind the Bastards. It's a podcast. Hello Joe, I'm glad to

be on the podcast. This is the podcast of Behind the Bastards where we talk about bad people, and today we're talking about the worst people broadly speaking, in the world in history, which are collectively all of the people who have participated in are directly enabled genocide. Um yea more to the point, Joe, we're talking. There was an episode of our sister podcast it could happen here. Maybe cousin podcast is more accurate. Um, maybe behind the Bastards

is like the uncle. I don't know, I don't depending on what state you're from, that's all of those things. Behind the Bastards is the uncle by marriage could happen here. Yeah, that sounds right anyway. I made a comment about the fact that because we were talking about anarchism and stuff and and what kind of things the state makes possible in what kind of things are just human nature? And I made a comment that like, genocide is not something

you need a state or like a nation for. It's just like a thing that people have always done, and that basically, as long as we have evidence of people organizing in any capacity, we have evidence of genocide. And um some folks got upset about that. There were some people who really questioned that, and because I had not actually provided any kind of evidence, it's understandable that people will be like, because it is. It is difficult, I think if you haven't thought about this, to imagine like

prehistoric human beings engaging in organized genocide. Um, but they totally did. Yeah, I think it's something that I mean, of course, having an organized state certainly will make that easier. It does help. Yes, I think it's something we're like. I'm a I'm a grad student in holocaust and genocide studies, um, and I I think it's something that people can get

lodged in their head. Is when they see or hear the were genocide, they immediately think of like death camps and things like that, which of course wouldn't happen without

a state structure, right, I mean you would imagine. So I think it might be best, honestly, like, given the fact that we are recording this the week of the Valdi shootings, it might be best to think about this the way it's reasonable to think about mass killings where um, there whether or not guns are available, there will absolutely be mass killings and a wide variety of societies. And the evidence for this is that many societies where guns

are not available have mass killings. The easy availability of guns does mean those killings you're number one, more frequent. Number two tend to kill more people. Um, not always, but generally speaking. And it's the same thing with like genocide. Genocide prior to the state existed, but you can get a lot nastier with it when you have the apparatus of a centralized state. Of course. It's it's like, um,

why World War One was so horrific. Um, you know, we we revolutionize the mechanisms of mass murder to to this human meat. It's it's not like the wars that happened before then. We're not as horrific in their day. We just we just continued to surpass our previous human records with their own violence. Yeah. Anyway, we're doing Genocide Week this week. Joe Joe Casabian, co host of The

Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. Um, and you are also uh, like uh an academic on an academic capacity specialized in genocide. Like you've got a grad degree and ship, unlike me who just reads books about UM. So you have a degree of like formal knowledge here. Uh that is is beyond certainly like what I have in this area, which I think I hope will be hopeful because we'll be getting into this kind of meandered a bit in episode one.

We will primarily be talking about kind of the prehistoric roots of genocide and then sort of the first what what what what? At least one scholar will argues like the first documented genocide UM in in history. And after that we're going to be talking more about what makes people cape of committing genocide, like what's actually going on

that that pushes people to it? Because um, some of this is just based on my continual frustration of the description of like, you know, the perpetrators of the Holocaust is like being brainwashed or taken over by a mania. That's generally not what happens. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. Yeah, yeah, oh, I love that argument. It's it's it's one of my favorites. We we will be chatting about that in part too, But right now, I want to talk about probably the earliest evidence that exists

in history of an act of genocide UM. It was discovered on the banks of Kenya's Lake Turkana in two thousand twelve. It is a mass grave, one which dates back roughly ten thousand years to about eight thousand BC. It is filled with women, children, and men, both young and old. Some of them had school shattered by blunt weapons. Others had been repeatedly pierced by some form of projectile. One woman was a pregnant woman who appeared to have

her hands bound and have been beaten before her execution. Um. It looks very much like mass graves you would find from basically every act of genocide ever committed sense right, including people with their hands bound who were executed. UM, particularly like women and children who were executed with their

hands bound. Uh. Marta Mirazon Lar of the University of Cambridge notes that the injuries discovered quote shocked for their mercilessness, but that quote what we see at the prehistoric side of Nataruk is no different from the fight's wars and

conquests that shaped so much of our history. And again, what's interesting to me kind of in the context of where this line of thoughts started for for us and the comments I added another podcast, is that this is this occurs pre the development of anything we would recognize

as a state really anywhere in the world. This is like eight thousand eight BC is roughly when this is thought to have when the killings that these graves were resulted or resulted from we're thought to have occurred depending on you know, there's some wiggle room as to win the first state arose, right, none of these like thea exact but broadly speaking somewhere around in Mesopotamia in Egypt, like in that kind of ballpark is when we get our first like city and you know how much you

how much you kind of draw line to the first city and like whether you con consider that like a proper state is also a little bit because none of this, like they didn't just pick a day to be like, well now we have states, now human beings existing states, right, people started like living. You know, this all occurred kind

of gradually. Um, So precision isn't possible. But these were definitely whatever happened in that mass graven lake Turkana was not organized by anything we would recognize as like a mass political entity that calls itself a nation, right like that that was not a factor in this. Um. People

weren't doing that yet. Um. The people's of that part of Kenya and roughly eight thousand BC were hunter gatherers, or to be more specific, they were actually fisher foragers, not really like hunting in a big deal, because again there's it was a wet area at this point. It's very dry today, but it was there were a lot of like lakes and rivers that no longer exist in

the area UM Today. The individuals who lived there and who were found in that mass grave are known as the natar Uk people UM, and they're believed to have roamed and made connections as far afield as the Nile Valley and the Maghreb Uh. It's worth noting that in the period they were killed, the Sahara was green. It was not yet a desert. For an example, like how fucking old this is? Like you could you could grow

things in the Sahara UM. So yeah. Um. This also probably made travel simpler, which is why folks who were far away could make it to natar Uck Um. Now, we don't know who committed the massacre of these people, but as this right up from the Smithsonian magazine makes clear, it was done with great intention. The remains were submerged in a lagoon after they were killed, which helped preserve them and may suggest that the people who killed them wanted to hide what they had done. Um. You know,

maybe there was some ritual thing there. We don't really know, um, but it don't looked like other graves that had been found in the area at the time. Hide from who, yeah exactly quote uh, it's not clear that anyone was spared at the not A Rock massacre. Of the twenty seven individuals found, eight were male and eight female, with five adults of unknown gender. The site also contained the partial remains of six children. Twelve of the skeletons were

in a relatively complete state. Ten of those showed very clear evidence that they had met a violent end. Um. In the paper, the researchers described quote extreme blunt force, trauma to crania and cheekbones, broken hands, knees and ribs, arrow allegiance to the neck, and stone projectile tips lodged in the skull and thorax of two men. Four of them, including a late term pregnant women, appear to have had

their hands bound. Um. It's noted by the archaeologists that the killers carried weapons that would not have been used for hunting and fishing, so that this was These were not people like using kind of the tools that they used for other stuff for violence. These were people who

brought special things meant to kill human beings UM. Mirazon Lar notes that there were a number of like close proximity weapons like knives UM, and that this is kind of a hallmark of intergroup conflict, as was the brutality of the killings right um like it suggests a degree of like uh ferocity UM. The use of these weapons, Laar notes also suggests premeditation and planning. She goes on to suggest that given the resources employed, the people of

Natarup were likely massacred for their own resources. Right. This was not like a simple thing for people in this period to get together the kind of equipment they used for this. UM, Yeah, I was gonna I was gonna say that tracks. Um. What's unique is even in situations where and we'll we'll talk about this more. I'm sure when we get the perpetrators and there and their motivations is um, even mass atrocity crimes or mass murders UM are are done. Is normally like women and children are taken,

especially during this time period for very obvious reasons. I won't go into UM. And the men are killed because with the men is the identity of of of the area. But the reason why you're killing them is to take their ship. Yes, so that all that all makes perfect

sense to me in my very very broken mind. Yeah. Yeah, but but it does, like I think the thing that's like this is not this does not look purely like you have two groups who have like a like a conflict over over something like this is there's a lot of evidence of that kind of violence, and it does not look quite like this. Like there's a reason why

this is noted as different. Again, the killing of like women and and and children, pregnant people, the fact that like they were kids, like people were bound and executed, that all looks um again, just like it's it's more complete than the kind of violence that is, I guess you'd say, more normal around people in between people in this period. Even if you measure that against you know, the definitions would come however, many thousands of years later.

That that hits it to a t. Yeah, yeah, And that that's the point that like Mirizon Lar makes is that um, her exact quote is this shows that two of the conditions associated with warfare among settled societies, control of territory and resources, were probably the same for hunter gathers, and that we have underestimated their role in prehistory. Again, just the idea that like genocide uh goes back quite

a bit. And that also, I mean one of the things that it is worth noting too, because when we think about genocide in a modern context, it's always nearly always framed as motivated by racism um. And it's like, obviously racism has played a significant role in many genocides, um, but just as as significant a role as pure venal greed, which we'll be talking about more in Part two. But like people want ship and that's a big part of why they do a genocide, and it's that goes back

further than states UM. Obviously. I think one of the things that's I kind of thought about reading about this case is the mass graves recently uncovered parts of Ukraine, like Buka, and the fact that the killing of civilians who's hands were bound like that was one of the things that I thought of those pictures I saw of like corpses on the road with their hands bound, and then ten thousand years ago you have dead people with their hands bound in a mass grave outside of lake

in Kenya. UM. These archaeologists saying it was probably because they wanted resources, and the Russian soldiers in buccus stealing every luxury item that that isn't nailed down, you know, like this is uh what people do. Yeah, specifically it's what I mean, especially in Kenya, it's extra state forces or I guess paramilitary forces, tribal military forces. Yeah, I mean it's still happening. And with the Boko Haramas, I think it's yeah, yeah, yeah, um, yeah, people are pretty consistent.

You gotta give us that, um, unfortunately painfully depressingly consistent. Yeah. Yeah. And obviously I think there's some people who might have some objections here. Um, because nobody doubts that ancient folks murdered each other in war. Um, that's pretty pretty widely accepted. But we consider genocide to be kind of going beyond that. You know, every king or warlord who like killed a shipload of people isn't necessarily considered like a committer of genocide.

I think there's even a lot of debate about like whether or not you would consider like Genghis Khan like is a lot like it's the sacking of a city for the purposes he did the same as like the extermination of a of a race, and that's a that's a debatable point. So I think if we're gonna have a productive point productive talk about like genocide in an ancient context, we're gonna need to leap forward a bit

to something that you, uh, spoilered a little bit. Spoiler is the wrong term for this, um, the definition of genocide. Spoiler alerts spoiler exactly. Yeah, that's yeah, that's He's the He's the single man with whom that word has its

like linguistic origins. Um Limpcoln was a Holocaust survivor Um and he was an extremely delicated, dead cated, an intelligent man, and his crusade too to start what became like not just the concept of genocide as like a legal term, but the the Genocide Convention actually started way before the Holocaust got going in nineteen thirty three, which is like

the year the Nazis took power. So Lincoln, like I was aware of what was coming, you know, like he was, I mean he he had actually started his research about two decades before then. He was in law school, I believe the same in Poland, Um, when the the trial of Sagamantelerian was going on in Berlin. Yeah, to Leirian being the Turkish or no the Tolerian being the Armenian who assassinated one of the Turkish officials who was responsible

for organizing the Armenian genocide. Yeah, he shot Talat Pasha and broad daylight in Berlin, UM with the sole purpose of going on trial admitting that he killed him and using it as a pulpit to talk about the genocide, which he successfully did day with Yeah, he's a cool dude. Yeah he rocks. Yeah. UM and Lemkin was watching this on well, reading it unfolding the newspaper, and he asked one of his professors, like, how a state could get away with doing this? Um? And why isn't more Turkish

authorities on trial because none of them would ever stand trial. Uh. And his and his professor effectively believe in the in the sovereign idea that a sovereign could do with its people as they pleased and it wasn't any other states to tell them what to do. Um. And he immediately believed, I believe this is a nineteen something like that. He's like,

that doesn't seem right to me. So by the time the Holocaust started and his family died in the Holocaust, UM, he had studied the Armenian genocide, the genocide of the natives in North America. Uh and uh He's like, this is you know, history doesn't repeat itself, but often fucking rhymes, and it's it's it's probably worth noting here too. We're

we're getting a field from the ancient days. But in the same way that like limp Can started thinking about what a genocide was and started like, you know, attempting to get other people to talk about this as it like, as a crime and to kind of change attitudes about

like that. Um, he was motivated and inspired by the same things that in a very different way, we're motivating and inspirational to Hitler, because Hitler also studied the genocide of the Native Americans and was like, oh, this seems cool, Um, this seems like a good way to get a bunch of land. And also Hitler was directly inspired by the genocide of the Armenians. I think his exact quote was like people were asking him like this is and this

is I think from his table talk. But he was being asked by one of his officials like are we not going to get in trouble for this? And he was like, well, shit, who remembers the Armenians. Yeah, and and not to mention they're only um, I mean during World War One, the German Empire had in the Ottoman Empire. Yes, ironically, one of them is the the main prime very resource for pictures about the Armenian genocide because he took pictures

of it and smuggled them out. Yeah. And and then the German Empire committed genocide and Namibia a couple of years before that. Yeah yeah, yeah, Which we'll we'll talk about all of this in more detail at some point, but let's talk about the definition of genocide because people don't you know, Limpcoln's foresight is not widely appreciated, and it is not until nineteen forty four, um that it starts to like the kind of the stuff he's talking about,

starts to gain more ground. And that's also the year that he proposes the term genocide to describe the destruction of a nation or ethnic group. Um. And this is one of those Greek Latin hodgepodge is that I think frustrates some linguistic nerds. Here he basically took the Greek word genos for race or tribe, and he merged it with Latin's side which obviously means killing. I think everyone

knows that bit of latin. Um. So because of his tireless work, on December eleventh, ninety six, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution declaring genocide is the denial of the right of existence of entire human groups. Many instances of such crimes have occurred when racial, religious, political, or other groups have been destroyed entirely or in part. Um. Now that the definition of genocide that's kind of given

there in that and this is the resolution is immediately challenged. UM. A number of nations, including the USSR, disliked the inclusion of political groups as victims of genocide for reasons that should be obvious, right, And that wording not that the USSR is the only state that killed a bunch of

political groups. But yeah, the wording is was eventually dropped. Um. The argument was that the terms etymology excluded those groups because I mean and and that's not in a I think it's wrong, but that's not inaccurate, right, Like the word genocide does imply racial or national groups. UM. So it's not hard to see why, like a number of states were concerned about this. For example, was the killing

of the Russian nobility a genocide. And this is an area in which like, well, yeah, I think it actually would be wrong to say that, like killing the royal family of Russia was a genocide. That seems weird to me. Um, But but like the killing is the killing of like the Ukrainian you know, starvation genocide, which was justified as the killing of like rich peasants. Is that a genocide? Sure, that's absolutely a genocide, and ironically, according to Raphael Imkin,

it sure is. Yes, yes, um, so yeah, I mean it's obviously, like I think we can all agree how exactly to separate other mass killings from genocide is important because not all mass killings are the same, and we shouldn't call all of them genocides. But also I think it's also worth saying that like, yeah, political groups being massacred can absolutely be a genocide. And I mean that wasn't even the only thing that got stripped out of there.

They also got rid of like then, umh Lemkin wrote about the concept of genocidal settler colonialism and genocidal slavery, yes, as well as assimilation as being a form of cultural genocide. Um. You know, like famously in North America, there was the saying kill the Indians saved child, which we all rightfully accept now as genocide. But yeah, well and then let Limpkin had that on there and again the US, the UK and the USSR. I was like, we'll pump the

brakes somebow. None of all of the states that were responsible for like winning World War two also had vested interests in certain things not being called genocide because spoilers, they had all done genocides. As someone who holds a lot of stock in big genocide, I have a problem with Stephanie. Yeah ah man though it is a good time to be invested in genocide. Wow, doing better than Tesla. To be fair, I have a feeling that the white

South Africa also holds stuck in the yea. UM. So when it comes to how we're going to define genocide for this UM, at least my proposition show UM. I want to go to scholar Irvan Staub And now Staub is another Holocaust survivor UM and his he wrote a really good book called UM The Origins of Evil UM, which goes over kind of what inspired perpetrators in a

number of genocides. His book, in addition to talking about like Rwanda and Cambodia, and obviously the Holocaust includes the massacre of thousands, potentially tens of thousands of leftists in Argentina.

Um in his study of Genocide and group violence. I like his book, and for our purposes, i'd like to suggest, using his definition, quote, genocide means an attempt to us exterminate a racial, ethnic, religious, cultural, or political group, either directly through murder or indirectly by creating conditions that lead to the group's destruction. Yeah. That that that that is very very close. Um it's like a simplified version of

Lempkin's original. Yes, yes, and that's what that Staub says, like starts with Limpkin and says like, I think that what he was saying initially is is exactly right, and that's how we should be talking about this. Um So, Yeah, I think that's that's kind of where we're gonna go here or what that that that's what when we talk about genocide in this episode, that's more or less what

we mean. Um So. I think obviously there's a strong case to be made for the Lake Turconom mass grave as evidence of genocide based on this, even though we clearly don't know the entire story there, um, but the presence of pregnant women, the elderly, young kids um all differentiates it from the kind of simple human on human

violence that has occurred since forever. Um. We don't know exactly what happened, but we know that one armed group and and archaeologists think it was the people who carried out the genocide were from a distance away, right, Um, Like that they had traveled to get there, wanted to wipe out a different group of people, and that's that's

a genocide. Um. Yeah, that shows pretty clear intense, like not taking the children or the women, which is very common during crimes like this, pretty shows pretty specific intense that these people would not can to you. Yes, uh. And there are other cases of probable ancient genocide. Obviously, all of them do lack the kind of context that we need for it to be like as kind of satisfying narratively, because there's just ship you don't know when

you're talking about stuff from this far back. Um. One of the most uh, probably well known at least among archaeologists, involves the Yamnia people who occupied the Eurasian step north of the Black Sea between two and three thousand BC. Uh. There were certainly states that existed in the world in this period, but there were not in that area, right, Like, there's no this is like kind of around like Ukraine, Poland that area, there's not in three thousand BC. There's

not a Ukraine or a Poland. Right, there's not political entities in any way we would recognize UM in this area. Uh. So the Yamnia were an ethnic group who colonized large swats of Europe and stages over a period of centuries. UM. It's actually maybe even more accurate to kind of look at them as like a collection of ethnic groups. They were a culture, right. Um. This is all kind of confusing when we talk about what we'll get into like

what archaeologists mean when they talk about like cultures here. Um. But as the Omnia flowed through the continent, a number of things changed dramatically and those parts of Europe. UM. So we can we can see evidence of like these people coming into the area, and we see very suddenly that existing burial practices in the area change. A warrior class appears, and like evidence of them in burials appears

when they had not existed before UM. And we find more evidence of large numbers of people dying violent deaths. Christian Christiansen from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, UH tells New Scientists quote, I've become concreasingly convinced that there must have been a kind of genocide. Now again, there's not like cities or states or empires in Europe, and in this part of Europe, in this period, there's not written history, So we're talking about like archaeologists tend to talk about

this in terms of like broad clashes between cultures. And one of the things we see in this period around It's BC is the violent replacement of what are called the globular Amphora culture, which is again a group of ethnic groups and people living in this region who are defined by the way in which they make pottery, by the corded wear culture, which is another type of pottery and is associated with another like Again, because this is so far ago, we don't have a lot of other content.

Must we must return to a pottery based culture. We must become pottery based again. It would be funny to think about like people six thousand years writing about like the ziplock culture versus the UH the pyrex with a little plastic thing on top culture. What culture is this? Oh? You see he was in high school pottery class and he made a very bad attempt to make a bong. That was me. That was my culture. The water pipe culture versus the drilling a hole in an apple and

putting in some tinfoil culture. This is the make a small dent in the top of a popkin cult, puncture in it. Oh. You know who else has culture? Joe? Oh no, Uh, probably nobody. That's coming next the products and services and support this podcast, Joe. They all come from the by things. Sophie's not looking happy with me here. I mean, it's just not your best work. Yeah, that never is. You know who didn't Actually I was gonna say, you know who didn't benefit from a genocide? But you don't.

We really, we really don't. Both Taser and the Washington State Highway Patrol have attempted to run ads on our network. Fant What were they supposed to do? Uh? Don't you want to, Fanta, Joe? I do. Here's some ads. Ah, we're back, and we're talking about how Europeans are a decadent and depraved people. Um, mainly because of beat sugar, serious sugar. The sugar based sweeteners. Yeah, absolutely not use

corn syrup. Come on like a civilized people, and it needs to be so thick that it just stands on its own. If you cut the can away from the lakes, why are we even flavoring ship? Just give kids entire cans of pure corn syrup. Let him suck it out and then smoke out of the cans. Actually, this is why my life act is I I pull up to the ethanol pumps. That's the that's just corn sugar for cars. I do think it straight from the tap. Baby do it all? Why Why isn't everything corn yet? That's my question.

A lot of things are corn, but why isn't everything? Um? These are We are the corn culture. That is what archaeologists will be calling us. This whole society rapidly degenerated and turned into a corn cut, turned to do a cord cup. Um. So yeah, we're talking about b c E. The violent replacement of the globular Amphora culture with the corded war culture, and the Omnia are kind of associated

with the cord war culture. This is all complicated archaeology here, but I'm gonna I'm gonna quote from a write up in the Journal of anthropology and this is a specifically an article that's like looking at a mass grave from this period where one culture is being replaced by another. We sequence the genomes of fifteen skeletons from a five thousand year old mass grave in Poland associated with the globular Amphora culture. All individuals had been brutally killed by

blows to the head, but buried with great care. Genome white analyzes demonstrate that this was a large extended family and that the people who buried them knew them well. Mothers are buried with their children and siblings next to each other. From a population genetic viewpoint, the individuals are clearly distinct from neighboring corded war groups because of their

lack of step related ancestry. Although the reason for the massacre is unknown, it is possible that it was connected to the expansion of courted where groups which may have resulted in violent conflict and the fact that they're loved ones got to them kind of suggests this was part of a series of like raids and clashes that were

meant to wipe them out. That like this community was you know, attacked, killed found by their relatives as part of like an ongoing struggle that eventually led to the replacement of one group with another, you know, which is

pretty genocide. Yeah, I mean, I think um. Scott Strauss wrote in his book Prevention on Genocide UM Prevention of Genocide, which you can actually download for free at the U S. Holocustomeral Museum website dope, but he said one of the major genocile risk factors is a history of conflict within groups. So uh yeah, that that tracks, especially if you're existing all on like a step, fighting over the same resources offential, and you're like, this would be a lot easier if

those people simply didn't exist. Boy, I have to say, Joe that I do. I do. I'm happy that a book with the title and uh thesis, how to Prevent Genocide is available for free and not pay Walt, Yeah, probably shouldn't pay all that, huh. I think. I think something has to be said for academics that realized that, like, nobody's gonna pay for our ship and if my and if my field of study is how to prevent genocide,

perhaps this this work should be widely available. Um. So further research by two separate teams, writing in Nature magazine in two thousand and fifteen, UH came to a came to similar conclusions that an influx of herders from the steps of what are now Russia and Ukraine replaced a huge amount of the gene pool in central and western Europe and around three thousand BC, really more like hundred But you know, um, this coincided with the disappearance of

Neolithic pottery and burial styles, as well as other cultural artifacts that had been seen earlier. I'm winning out those last couple of things, the change in burials and the change in artifacts, because again that's evidence of a genocide. This culture is being wiped out. Um. Now. Part of why this has been controversial with scholars is that the theories proposed now by Christiansen and others based on this research are similar to some of the ideas of a

guy named Gustaf Cosina. UH. Cosina was an early twentieth century archaeologist in Germany whose ideas were integral to the formation of Nazi race science. UM. Now, obviously the Naya are not Arians. They again would probably look more like Slavs um, which the Nazis did not think. We're a master race slip. But the Nazis bestowed like honorary arian status on so many random groups of people, from Palestinians to Armenians. Yes, I mean to to Tibet where they

like where a lot of Nazi race science started. Was them like hanging out in these monasteries in Tibet and being like these must be the ancient arians. Um, there's a lot of just like us. Yeah, there's a lot of Again, Nazis not great scientists, except with rockets. You gotta give them, you gotta give them the rockets. I'm I'm starting to think, and Robert quickly if I'm wrong, the guys who believed in eugenics. Eugenics might not be the smartest people on Earth. No, No, they weren't good

at a lot of things. Um. But yeah, So this is part of why, like it's been uh difficult to to to kind of push this along. But it does seem like there's a significant amount of scholarship that like, again there's and this is not we're focusing on Europe in all of this so far, just because I mean, we started with Africa, but like that's where the majority of the scholarship has happened. One has to assume all throughout Asia all throughout the Middle East, Southeast Asia, other

parts of Africa, Latin America. You know, there's genocides all over all throughout history in every part of the world. It's like a thing that people do. We're just kind

of talking about what we've got some documentation of. Like obviously there were genocides in Mesoamerica long before um, you know, uh, the fourteen hundreds, and there were genocides and the Middle East from the day that there were cities, um, like and yeah, it's just there's there's a positive positivist uh train of thoughts in the field that says that, like within genocide prevention that believes that, um, genocide is like one of the natural states of man and uh, you

know in modern day you can work to prevent that, yes, hypothetically, seeing how we seem to be very exceedingly bad at doing that. Yeah, we're not good at preventing it. Um. Yeah, it's probably worth acknowledging that, Like you are trying to prevent something that we've been doing for forever, which is always hard to do. It's like, yeah, preventing people from fighting, you know, like we we were pretty good at Yeah.

And there's also of this, UM, this idea that it's like okay, well, how can you prove that you prevented one? Like how can you prove prove something that didn't happen? Like okay, well, what about these things would you rather be wrong about? I mean, it's it is. It is the same we talked about, like how to prevent mass

shootings um. And there's a bunch of different things on the table when it comes to like what kind of like social programs and like interventions can like stop kids who might be on the path to being willing to

do something like that. One of the problems is that, well, if you successfully like intervene and a kid doesn't decide they want to do something like that, you never know, right, like like you don't get the data that like, oh the fact that like this teacher you know, sat down and talked with this kid stopped them from doing this this fucked up thing, or stop them from going down a path where they get on four Chan and get radicalized to do this, or like we just don't get that,

which makes it harder to like develop good programs to stop stuff like that. UM. That's one that's one thing we need to steal from cops. And that's like because I used to be a medic, so it was one of those I worked the firefighters all the time, and it's one of those things that like whenever there's not a lot of fires, um, like, well we can cut the budget from the fire department whenever they don't need

that money. But but like whenever you know, crime goes down, it's never like, well, clearly we actually don't need that many cops or cops at all. It's well, we need to keep funding the cops because crime is down. Yeah, but the answers always give those guys more money, just like the answers to uh war in genocide or always give the military's more money. Right. Yeah, It's like maybe I don't know, there's a there's a middle ground in

there somewhere we could try something a little different. Um yeah, I don't know. So at any rate, I think this establishes that, like genocide, canon has existed outside the structure of state violence. UM. Now, in Part two, we're going to talk about some of the things that, presumably since time and memorial, have made individual humans capable of taking

part in genocide. Um. But for now, I want to move out of prehistory into just kind of early history and talk about what some historians will suggest was the first modern genocide UM, the elimination of Carthage in one BC by the Roman Republic UM. And when I this is not obviously the first genocide by one state against you know, people of another state, UM, but it is very modern in part because Rome was a republic, and so an awful lot of what goes on in the

genocide of Carthage sounds very familiar. UM. And the fact that I've picked this is influenced by the work of Australian born historian Ben Kiernan, who's currently director of Genocide Studies program at Yale UH. He got his start in genocide when he visited Cambodia before the coming of the camer Rouge UH, and then afterwards he traveled around the country, he learned the camer language, he carried out extensive research and interviewed a whole bunch of people about like what

had happened um. Ben posits that the first recorded incitement to genocide were the words of Roman politician Marcus Porteus Cato, who, for the last four years of his life, ended every single public speech with the words Delinda est Carthago or Carthage must be destroyed. Um. Now to explain like what happened here, we're going to have to go back into classic history a little bit, which I know is both you use in my jam. Um. Yeah, I love this

ship not genocide, but you know Roman history. I was I was gonna say, uh, it isn't It is an amazing field to work. And when you can say, yeah, he got his start in genocide, and I'm like, I know what, I know what, Robert, Yeah, Yeah, we're talking about Cato baby, and Kato is so because he's such a modern right wing ship head politician, like he's every like so much of what he does is like, well, that could be a fucking dude today. Um. Because Rome is in a lot of ways a very modern political

entity in this period, like republican Rome. There's a lot of things that sound very familiar because it turns like whenever people develop a republic h that's based primarily around resource extraction, certain things are super similar. Sometimes history is a big dumb loop. Yeah. So, Carthage was a port city on the African coast of the Mediterranean Sea, near where the modern city of Tunis is today. Um, the fact that like Carthage is in Africa and Rome is

Rome makes them sound very distant. They are four hundred miles away. That is the difference between San Francisco and Los Angeles. And if you've seen how people from San Francisco talk about l A, you'll understand how genocidal desire could erupt between the two cities. But yeah, these are not like far but like obviously it's further back then, but like you could fly from from one city to the other in about like an hour like today. Even

back then they could float. It's not that far. Back then, they could float their shitty glued together across the net at one another. It's not it's not hard to get to even then, which is why the war happens right. Um. So while Rome was from the beginning a land military power expanded through force, Carthage Carthage was first a mercantile power with trade routes. Again, they're in northern Africa, they're trading with people in modern day Britain. Um. Like their

their trade routes almost extended like Scotland. And of course they're like as far down in Africa as gabon Um now in my very right wing history classes in Texas, I tended to learn what was more or less the propaganda line about these wars, which is that the Carthaginians are these brutal child sacrificing Eastern devils and the war between them in Rome is like what, this is the first war between the West and the East, and it's what makes the birth of the democratic West possible, Like

this is the start of all of our wonderful traditions. They had to like beat these barbarians, which is that hurts my brain? Nonsense um that that is I actually started uh community college when I was in Texas because I was in the army, and that tracks my experience in Texas history. That is its horseshit um. Obviously, Carthage is a massive, like imperial aristocratic power that does all sorts of fucked up ship, including like human sacrifice and stuff.

Um Roman this period has stopped doing human sacrifice as a religious thing. But they also are a gigantic slave power that brutally oppressives and like enslaves entire racial groups of people during conflicts. Like neither of them is better than the others. There's not a good guy here, like they're just both and it's like it's also I'm like, I think pointless to call one the bad guy. They're just two early states fighting a war over resources, right Like,

that's what's happened. There's no point in drawing a moral line between. All of their wars are over like proxy city states. And that's exactly what we're about to talk. This isn't about democrat, this is not this is not

not in any way. Um, Carthage was the great naval power of the region, like they kind of own the Mediterranean in this period, while Rome in Rome always is an infantry power, right like, that's the core of Roman like military power is like heavy infantry um in this period and basically up until like the fall of the Empire,

that's the thing that their best at. Whenever Rome has anything good that's not heavy infantry, it's because they like higher auxiliaries from another culture, like all of their good cavalry, all of their good archers they're good at. They're also really good at artillery, although that's kind of less of a factor in this period, but they get very very good at artillery to um. But yeah, so Carthage has the boats, Rome has the dudes who hit people with swords, right,

that's their strengths. Broadly speaking, the two states actually got along pretty well for a while. Carthage had some wars with Greeks, which Rome was fine with because Rome was bathering battling Italians. Again, Rome is not Italy at this point, right, most of Rome's wars are with Italians. They call them Galls, but they're like dudes from northern Italy, right, they're my ancestors, Transalpine gall. You know, it becomes a big issue. Like at one point Caesar allows them into Senate and the

Romans are like these barbarians. There's Italian this is something that hasn't changed. Again, there's nothing that Romans hate more than Italians, and there's nothing more than Romans. So um, yeah, the the Carthage Rome get along for a while where they're they're doing all these other wars. But then some ship goes down in Sicily. Now, if you're not a geographyzer, Sicily is the American football that's being kicked by Italy, right, if you think about think about that. So at the time,

Sicily is primarily a Carthaginian province. It's not right there to think it's not like Sicily is like part of Carthage in the way that we would consider like Oklahoma part of the United States, but they have like the

influence there um. But both powers get kind of drawn into a conflict because one city in in Sicily, Syracuse, goes to war with another city in Sicily, messina Um, and like Syracuse sins soldiers to attack messina Um, Carthage back Syracuse, Rome backs messina and they get drawn into a war that starts as like this kind of like proxy fight. It's more complicated than that, but you really don't need to know the details unless you want to

go read about the Punic wars. So Rome puts together a big fleet to go fight the Carthaginians and they just get mass instantly massacred. One of the things that's fun about Rome is that this is along this is like a proud part of their military tradition. A war starts, they build this massive military thing, it gets wiped out to the man and then they're like, all right, I guess we'll do it again, and we don't care about

our lives and like. But that is why Rome becomes the big world power in this region, is because they're the best at like having an entire armies wiped out, to the man and going like, all right, back to the drawing board, let's do another one, you know, And that's what they do. It takes them like twenty years to rebuild their fleet, but they eventually grind down the Carthaginian navy and they win the war, and they win

sicily Um, which Sicilians have rude ever since. So this leads to the Second Punic War, and a key moment in the Second Punic War, the one everyone knows about is you've got this Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca who crossed is the Alps with some elephants and a bunch of dudes, and he attacks Italy. Uh, he threatens Rome for a while.

It's a pretty impressive campaign. It includes the Massacre. So there's this battle called canny Um can I you know, nobody whatever, how are you want to say it, where there's this Roman army that outnumbers the Carthaginians two to one, but Hannibal does what's called a double envelopment and completely surrounds them and like wipes them out in one of it's still probably the most famous defeat in military history

up until World War Two. Like you can find all generals on every side of that war talking about trying to pull off a cane I. Um yeah, Like I think someone did the math, and it's a historian. Historian I'm not a huge fan of, but they said that the massacre at can I was it was like six Romans died every hour until from sunrise the sunset. It is a calculable percentage of the entire population of Rome that dies in this battle, like a meaningful percentage. Um.

It's like it goes really badly. And again, the strength of him is that they keep like this happens to them a bunch in Roman history, and they're like, all right, we got more guys. Um. So Rome eventually grinds Carthage down. Hannibal's armies are beaten because they get pulled back to Africa because the dude named Scipio Africanus invades and there's this whole battle called zama Uh. It's it's it's it's

neat history if you want to read into it. So by the end of the war, Rome has lost like a lot of a generation of young men and they're pretty pissed at the Carthaginians. This is not wildly dissimilar from how a lot of folks in Europe felt at the end of World War One. Right, we lost like a huge chunk of a generation fighting you guys. We don't just want like to shake hands and and in

this thing, you know, like fuck you. That's the attitude. Um. So, a surrender is negotiated, and under the terms of the surrender, Carthage loses all of its territory outside of North Africa, they have to give up their fleet, and they have to pay a large war debt to Rome. Um. And so you know, this is again you could like kind of look at this as there's shades of Versailles in this um And from this point on Carthage is realistically no kind of military threat to Row, right, Like that

is not happening after this point. Um. Now, up through this period in the fighting between them, these are the first and second punic wars is what they're called, right. The first one is the fighting of our sicily. The second one is hannibal. Up through this point, there's not a good guy or a bad guy in this story. You know, that's two assholes beating each other up over

her treasure. It's what happens after this point that's fascinating, because while Rome is very much an aristocratic state and calling it a democracy or even a republic, it is a republic, but like people tend to exaggerate what that means when they talk about it. Um. It is one of the first nations on Earth with proper politicians in the modern sense of the word, guys who you could like pull on the TV and see dudes doing some

of the same ship today. Right. That is one of the things that's really interesting about studying Rome in this period. And this brings us to Marcus Porcius Cato, better known as Kato the Elder and Kato the Wise. He was a famous conservative politician who railed against Greek culture for its decadent influence on Romans. He was kind of like Victor Davis Hansen, who's a modern right wing historian. If you smushed him up with like some Dan Crenshaw and like a dash of Ted Cruz, oh my god, you're

just vultron together the worst guy, and he is. He is the worst guy. He sucks so bad. Um. He was legitimately a soldier and a pretty competent one. He fought in the Second Punic War. He commanded troops, and he spent the years after the Second Punic War. So I just mentioned. The guy who wins the Second Punic War from Rome is a dude named Scipio Africanus, who's generally seen as one of like the best generals in military history because Hannibal pretty good at war um, and

Scipio beats him in a in a fair fight. Uh. Cato spends the like years after the war hounding Scipio into the grave and basically like repeatedly encouraged like accusing him of corruption uh and like profligacy and like wasting resources. Um. And he writes histories of the Punic Wars and deletes not only Scipio's name but every other person involved named Skipio,

which is like a common first name. It's like if you it's like if you're writing a World War two history and you hated Pattents, so you cut out all the George is I need to be clear here, I actually support that that that fuck George's right, right, and fuck Patten. But yes, Cato sucks, But you do have to admire this sheerless level. It's very petty he's an incredibly petty dude. Um So, he's a he's the pettiest

man alive. And in one b C he gets elected Console, which is like pretty much the top of the Roman structure. You have sensors to every now and again when they do this census, but like consoles basically like as as as it's it's like the prime if there were multiple prime ministers and they got to command armies. That's kind of what a console is. Right there there's two of them, yes, yes,

and they're both political and military leaders. Again, it's the top of the Roman political structures called the curses on our um um and it's like it'says, it's like the time. If you're in politics, your goal is to get to be console one day. Right, that's like as as good as it gets. Um So, while he's consul in one five, he takes command of Roman legions in Spain because Spain rebels Spain rebels a lot. It's called Iberia. At this point.

There's actually not any kind of Spanish identity at this moment, right because Iberia is huge and people who are in like the deserts of Zaragoza have no particular identity with the people who are like on the north coast of Spain or whatever, right like, they don't even they don't know what the fuss going on with those motherfucker's um. But Spain is rebelling at this point, and he takes over the military um and he, you know, he does a number of things that we would call war crimes today.

I don't know if you'd call them. They're not really out of step with military tactics in the day, but they're pretty brutal. Um. I'm gonna quote from Ben Kiernan here. He was a courageous and effective general, noted for his cruelty towards his defeated enemies. Livy sympathize. Kato had more difficulties subduing the enemy because he had, as it were, to reclaim them like slaves who had asserted their freedom.

Kato commanded his officers in Spain to force this nation to accept again the yoke which it has cast off. In one battle, Livy estimate sites an estimate of forty enemy killed. When seven towns rebelled, Kato marched his army against them and brought them under control without any fighting worth recording. But after they again revolted. He ensured that the conquered were not granted the same pardon as before.

They were all sold by public auction. Now again, under like the definitions we've cited of genocide, you could you could make a case that he's doing some genocides here. Yeah, I mean, especially um, if we're going off modern definitions, like we're the the i c C or i C j uh identifies rightfully identifies Sabernitza as an active genocide

unto itself. So like there can be micro cosms of genocidal acts, so this would absolutely count as one, yes, for sure, especially the you know, killing for two thousand people may not be a genocide depending on the situation in which you do it. For example, Hannibal killed a similar number of Romans and that was not really a genocide.

I think it was. It was a lot of Roman um, but enslaving an entire region of people and marching because you're taking them away from where they live too, you're marching them out like that is an act even if you're not killing them, it's an act of genocide. You're

destroying the culture, right um. In the same way that like what American slave owners would do to to Africans who were brought into the like that was an act of genocide, even though they were not trying to murder those people because they were a resource, right, it's still genocidal. You strength them of their culture, it's not you're not gonna allowed to propagate anyway, just like you know, slave owners force yeah, slaves to take white names, adopt Christianity. Yeah,

And this is this is one of those. Because there's areas in which Roman slavery is very similar to because there's chattel slavery is a huge part of Roman slavery, and that's very similar to ship you see in the America. And there's areas where it's different. For example, an awful lot of Greeks sold themselves into slavery because it was a pretty good deal. If you were like selling yourself to a rich family to like teach their kids and

stuff like, that's a great gig, you know. Um, it's Roman slavery is very complicated in a way that like slavery in the America's is not. But this chunk of Roman slavery is very similar, especially because some Roman slaves could attain their freedom while others certainly could yeah, I mean if you're one of the things that's interesting if you're talking about like urban Roman slaves, how slaves, right, they usually if they lived, you know, in the Middle Ages,

so would get their freedom. And a lot of the wealthiest people in the city of Rome were either former slaves or descendants of slaves. Because for those people, it was like it was like a paid internship. You would be a slave for like ten, fifteen, twenty years, you would get money when you were freed, and the person who had owned you would have to pay you money the rest of their life. Now you would have to support them in a number of ways politically and stuff.

There was this client system that was built up, but it allowed a lot of people who started successful mercantile businesses were able to do so because they got their training while they were a slave, and then they got funding from their former owner to start a business. And as a freed slave, you can't hold political office, but you can vote and your kids can hold hold full

political office. Right, So a lot of the wealthiest, most powerful families in Rome do have like a slave that was like their granddad or something like that, because it is it's not like racial slavery, right, the Romans think about it in those terms anyway, just it's it's a very interesting thing anthropologically, and if they grabbed a slave and whatever, you know, you happen to be educated, you would probably like half of the like I'm not exactly

sure the numbers, but a large amount of early civil Roman society was slaves. Yeah, it's a huge the accountants, bureaucrats, whatever. And this is occurring at the same time as like when someone like Cato En slaves tens of thousands of people in a in a in an uprising or something. Those folks are like being right to minds or or fields where they're worked to death, right like, which is very familiar to some of like some of the worst

slavery that's ever anyway, And Roman is interesting. And even in the best case scenario here, let's say you know, ten thousand, and that's a very high number of these people are educated, their literate, you know, their aristocrats and

whatever town they came from. At best, if they don't get you know, put into the minds to die, which is legitimately when the worst slavery gigs you could get in rome Um because it's like where they would send rejected gladiators and ships to the minds too, But you would go into Roman society and have to adopt Roman culture, Roman customs, Roman language, all of these things in order to continue to survive. So that's still a genocide. Yeah, it's a Roman history, real neat um. You know what

else is neat Oh? No, services that port this podcast, who also have enslaved a couple of towns in Iberia after crushing a brutal uprising. You know what products and services might not send you to the minds, Oh, for sure will. They'll put you right in those minds. Look, you don't get the kind of quality smoked salmon that puts out and they're smoked salmon breakfast platter without a lot of people dying to mine lithium. They're going to mail you a pre prepared box with a tiny pick

X in it. That's how you get involved with you mind it, we ship it program. Anyway, here's atsuh, we're back. So obviously Kato what what the kind of stuff Kato was doing in Iberia? You can find a number of cases of that stuff like that happening in this period by Romans and by other generals. It is worth, noting that his peers, who are also Roman military commanders, are like, this guy is pretty cruel to his defeated enemies, you know.

And again, Rome is the country that when they had a slave uprising, crucified the entire slave army of thousands and lined their corpses up for miles along the via Appia, right, And they're those guys are being like, Wow, this dude's mean. Guys. I'm I'm starting to think Kato's gone too far. I say, as I hammer and another nail into the slaves hand, that guy's a dick anyway. So um, as a politician, Kato engaged in acts of conservative sophistry that are again

very familiar even today. Um, he got hard as fuck, and I mean that in the dick sens, thinking about farmers, who he considered to be the backbone of society. And he also, yeah, he fucking loves farmers. And he hated the merchants and the business class and educated Greek teachers, who he said, we're ruining Rome the same ship. You gotta get out critical Greek theory on the class. Critical

Greek theory is ruining our children. According to the historian Polybius, quote Kato once declared in a public speech that anybody could see the republic was going downhill when a pretty boy could cost more than a plot of land and jars of fish more than plowman. Again, Roman political history a lot of fun to read about. Have you seen the prices of these boys? I would like to get into the upper middle class for Greek boy. So Kato made a huge point of the values of quote, the

life of simplicity and self discipline. He did this while owning several massive plant plantations or lata fundi, which he worked with huge teams of slate. When he talked about being a farmer, because he wrote a book about farming, his farms were like they were like the plantations of the US South during slavery. There were these massive enterprises worked by thou sense of slaves, like that's the lad

of farming for Cato. The lat of funda were so prevalent they collapsed the Roman economy because regular Roman dudes didn't have jobs, and that's why the dolls started. It's part, it's a big part of why, and it takes a while, which is evidence of some of the things the Romans were doing that we're smart but like, it's a big part of why the Roman Empire eventually collapses because Rome's strength is like the yaleman farmer class that Jefferson got

all horny about. It's small farmers, right, who would breed kids who were like used to roughing it, and then those kids would join the Roman military and that's what expanded the Roman Empire. And over time all of those farms were taken over by rich senators who wanted hobby farms worked by slaves, which made it difficult for them to recruit soldiers, which led to about it. It's a long process, the collapse of the Roman empires, and that simple.

But it's it's even funnier because you, as you talked about, one of their strengths is being able to throw waves of idiot Roman kids at swords until you finally got tired and went home. Um. Back then you had to be a landowning male to join the military. So before the Marian reforms, Yes, so these tens of thousands of landowners died and then assholes like Cato's arms of yeah,

we're like, well this fill it with slaves. Um. Yeah, it was noted of Kato that he preferred he quote preferred to buy those prisoners of war who were young and still susceptible, like puppies. Yeah. Despite his public rants against merchants, he also made most of his money, according to Plutarch as quote the most disruptible branch of money lending a ka. He ran a payday loan company. This guy sucks so bad because his name on a stadium.

Oh oh god. Yeah. And also Kato would have like a billion dollars in crypto, like he would have been all in on n f T s. Don't don't you dare tell me Kato wouldn't own a board ape that he would get stolen from him when he clicked a fishing ink. Now, he would just get really mad that people are buying n f T s of Greek Boy, Yeah, what happened to that made us great? He's just he's just doing a return to mommy, ye resert to monkey. So Kato goes through decades of public life. He writes

a bunch of books. We still have his book on farming. He writes one on soldiering that we don't have. He lays down a lot of pithy quotes for douchebags to put on their Facebook profiles generations later quotes like quote stick to the point, the words will follow, which is very bit like he he invented Ben Shapiro. Let's just say it, like, what does that even mean? It means like you kind of find the argument by the endpoint of the argument, right like that that's a fucking Michael

Scott quote. It is a Michael Scott quote. But it's also like you can see, it's like Ted Cruz being like, we just need one door in the school. So you know, like your point is, I don't want anything to fundamentally change about like guns, because it's the central issue that you can't go against as a conservative. So instead one door, right, Like, it's stick to the stick to the point, and you'll

figure out the words along the way. Coming out boldly, yeah, bravely a favorite door control so many, like many of the conservative demagogues who would come after him, he was a massive misogynist, and this is he's a misogynist. During the Roman republic Um now, Kato spoke out against the repeal of a law from the Second Punic War which denied women the right to quote possess more than half an ounce of gold or where party colored clothing or

right in a horse drawn vehicle in a city or town. Um. Now, this was this law. I'm not entirely certain why they passed this law during the war, but it's like they passed this law as like part of a you know, a the war effort, and it was very unpopular for it was very unpopular for obvious reasons and the injustice

of this law. Roman women because again is a republic, they don't have the right to vote, but there are they do understand the idea of like protesting right, like that does exist in Rome, the idea that you would get people together. Now, generally Roman protests are armed mobs that murder people. But who's who's to say if that's it's not always bad, right? A lot of the times

the armed mobs are in the right. Um, Roman women to protest this law organize one of maybe the first women's rights campaign in democratic history to get it repealed. Uh Livy writes that quote women came in from the towns and rural centers and beset all the streets of

the city and all the approaches to the forum. Um. This horrified Cato, and he found himself asking, quote, are you in the habit of running out into the streets, blocking the roads, addressing other women's husbands, or are you more alluring in the street than in the home, more attractive to other women's husband women's husbands, and even at home, it would not become you to be concerned about the question of what laws should be passed or repealed in

this place. So again to tell you about how modern a right wing politician this guy is. He's yelling at them for blocking the streets. Kato has like an every dust Yes. Yeah, he he awoke one night in fucking one nine two b c with like the vision of the black rifle coffee logo in his head. It does his business model of fraud. He knew the name of Kyle Rittenhouse thousands of years before the boy was born, having visions of nine line clothing and apparel. Uh, he

would have done amazing on Facebook. Um. He and Steve Bannon would have gone fishing together. He was just so ready for our world. He absolutely would have been on that boat they got raised by the Yeah, he would have. He would have been part of the week, and he would have been one of the guys who got pardoned. Right like so, Kato screeched to his fellow legislators that gatherings of women were quote the greatest danger a democracy

could face. Quote Our liberty overthrown in the home by female and discipline is now being crushed and trodden underfoot here too in the Forum. It is because we have not kept them under control individually that we are now terrorized by them collectively. But we, Heaven preserve us, are now allowing them to even take part in politics, and actually to appear in the Forum and be present at our meetings and assemblies. What are they longing for? In

complete liberty or rather complete license. The very moment they begin to be your equals, they will be your superiors. I mean, I like that you started halfway through you switched to your Ben Shapiro voice. I can't not, I can't not. There's a certain level of ship head that you just have to go into Shapira again. Like that could be a fucking bright Bart column, right, Like that could be on Return of Kings. You know, it's amazing,

it's incredible. So going his own way, going its own way, Ben Kieranan goes, I'm imagining Kato giving this speech, and for the Davids are he never felt like a glass of fucking like yeah yeah wine with just enough letting it to take the edge off. Fucking hell um. Ben Kiernan goes on to write quote for Kato. Much of this seemed a matter of social control occluding according to Plutarch, since he believed that among slaves sex was the greatest

cause of delinquency. He made it a rule that his male slaves could, for a set fee, have intercourse with his female slaves, but no one of them was allowed to consort with another woman. After Kato's wife died, a prostitute Quote would come to see him without anyone's knowing of it. In public life, he was more severe. In Spain. One of his officers hung himself when Kato discovered he had bought three captive boys. Kato sold the boys and

returned the price to the treasury. He once banished from the Senate a man who had kissed his own wife in broad daylight and in sight of his daughter. Kato joked publicly that he had never embraced his wife except after a loud thunder clap. So just a normal dude, How are you just a real normal ass guy? Like this is? This is the origin this is the fucking origin story of fucking through a hole in his shue, likes the sheet on top of his wife, who's like, okay, honey,

here I come. And again, Kato is not normal for Rome in the period. He's not abnormal. They're certainly like dudes who line up behind him in his power block. But like most a lot of Roman society is like the fuck dude, especially nobility up. All they do was weird sex thing men women each other. It doesn't matter. Like man, this guy's a fucking prude. He sucks and rounding out his patron saint of right wing politicians Bingo card.

Kato also attacked gay people and one eight six b C Roman magistrates began to execute an alleged bokic cult. Boxus is like the god of wine and other cool stuff. Uh Now, this cult had formerly been an all female cult, which had overtime become an all gay men cult. Basically like a place for them to go cruising. It is pretty rad um, but like Kato helps to like lead this charge against them, and a bunch of guys get convicted of quote foul sexual acts along with some women um,

which again makes it seem even rather um. Cato enthusiastically denounces the cult and he helped in order to like because of how much he hates the fact that, like there's this fairly popular cult that basically is like a place for for for gay people to go cruise. Kato builds support for an invasion of Dalmatia. Um, and he justifies it by saying, quote, because they do not want the men of Italy to become womenish enough through too

lengthy a spell of feast. He's like, this is evidence that our guys are getting too girly, so we have to evade this random country. This is Cato falling for like the Russian army recruitment commercial that everybody loved like a year ago. Yeah yeah, yeah, the VDV thing or oh no though the other one yeah yeah yeah yeah, it's it's it's it's pretty funny. Um anyway. So and then near the end of his life this has all been color on Cato. In one BC, Spain rises in

rebellion again. This is like forty years after he's crushed rebellion in Spain, right, so forty years it's about enough time for you to like replace all the people who he killed. Um. So this rebellion really doesn't have a lot to do with Carthage, which again has no navy

and not much of a military at this point. But the invasion is or the uprising is followed by uprisings in Macedonia and in Achaia, and a wiser man might have concluded that people were mad about like Roman taxes, all of the murdering and enslaving they were doing in these areas. Kato was not that dude. Um In one fifty two b C. He takes part in a senatorial mission to Carthage. Now the city has lost its empire, but it's still it's a really good location. They're still

able to like trade. They can't have a militarized navy, but they got like boats bringing places stuff all over the place. And the fact that they're no longer paying for the massive military that they've had as an empire means that they're like, they're doing really well. Like the economy is thriving. Right, it turns out that we can

reinvest the work. Yes, this is actually going well, Kato writes in his Horror In a Horror that quote Carthridge was quote burgeoning with an abundance of young men brimming with copious wealth, teeming with weapons. Um Man, he really seems a zero and constantly in young men. He's really got a thing with the young men. Now filled with a mix of jealousy and paranoia, he returns home and

he takes to the Senate. Ben Karenan writes on his return, while he was rearranging the folds in his toga in the Senate, Cato by design let fall some Libyan figs. And then after everyone had expressed admiration for their size and beauty, he said that the land produced them was

but three days sail from Rome. So again this is funny, but it's like it's figs. But also this is not that different from being like, I don't you remember guys earlier in the odds, like when China had their big Olympics thing, or just like looking at like look at all the stuff they're making in China, like they're they're they're like, we we have to we can't compete with them.

They they're eating us alive and manufacturing, Like think about like the fucking um one of those Michael Crichton books written in between Reagan and Clinton, where he's like terrified of Japan, like that whole fear of Japan in the eighties, where it's like, look at all these computers they can build. A speaking of Japan, that's like, quite literally the one are the excuses they use to manufacture war in China. It is like, look at all the land they have

that we know this is bullshit. It's it's this, except for in this case it's figs. But yeah, um, and as Kiernan writes, it's all a lie quote. His figs could not have come from Carthage more than a six sta voyage in summer. His audience of senatorial gentleman farmers probably knew they came from Kato's own estate near Rome. Some may even have read his advice on how to plant African figs in Italy. Carthaginian product had barely penetrated the Italian market. So Kato brings his own figs and

it's like, look at how big these Carthaginian figs are. Crisis. Yeah again, he would have done very well with Twitter. So Kato spent the last five years of his life haranguing his fellow senators to destroy Carthage, and gradually they get on board with the idea. While the plan is always couched in terms of Roman self defense. The arguments are all economic, and the primary reason to support the war was to give the nation an easy foe to rally against in a time when which there's all these

costly and difficult constant uprisings. On the year Kato died one nine, Rome's console Sinsurnas demanded Carthage hand over her weapons and give Rome hostages. They do this, so the Romans next demand that the Carthage uproot itself and moved twelve miles inland so that they can burn the old city to the ground. The Carthaginians are like, no, we're not gonna do that. Roman like, all right, we have to give him the demand. They can't possibly. Yeah, this

is why they're the whole city. They're trying to come up with the demand that will force Carthage to fight them, and eventually they have to be all right, you gotta move your city twelve miles. Well, no, that sounds really dumb. Yeah,

So Carthage fights for three years against Romes. Might they finally succumb in one six b C and Roman legions march street to street, house to house, killing systematically depending on who you go to The city is likely to have held between a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand people when Roman soldiers enter it. I'm gonna quote from

a rite up in World History dot org here. Even at this lower end, the slaughter in the city was, however, substantial and probably unprecedented in the European world up to that time. The survivors, possibly numbering anywhere for the thirty thousand to fifty thousand people, were sold as slaves on direct orders from Rome. The city was subsequently set allite and after ten days of burning, demolished stone by stone.

Polybius in his histories uh noted that the destruction of the Carthaginians was immediate and total, so much that there were no Carthaginians left to even express their remorse. The killing of all the inhabitants of the city state whose inhabitants had refused to surrender was quite frequent in the ancient world, so labor labeling this particular innocent incident a

genocide needs careful examination. A key element in this case, and one which would be in line with Limpkin's notion of genocide, was Rome's apparent intention to destroy carthage It's people and culture. No matter what this underlying aim could be seen in Romes increasingly impossible to satisfy demands placed on Carthage before the outbreak of war, when Carthage could no longer realistically satisfy the demands, this gave the Romans

a legitimate excuse for their actions. And yeah, I'm comfortable calling it a genocide. Yeah, yeah. I think one of the problems is, and I think we've already talked about this, is this hasn'tancy to use the term genocide. Is one, obviously heavily politicized when we talk about modern day events, but two, when it comes to events that have happened thousands of years ago. Everybody has this idea that genocide

is a modern thing within the eight eighteen hundreds. Yeah it's nah, it's And I don't understand that the hesitancy anymore, Like I I don't understand the political politicization of it either, but like, at least that you understand why, like, well, we can't call this a genocide because you know, we'll get fucking sanctioned by Russia or China, the United States.

But like, is fucking Italy gonna sanction nobody? Nobody if you tell like Romans like this, they'll be like, yeah, I guess, like I don't think anyone gives a ship anymore, Like we should be able to do this. Um, And the ones who do care are probably like, deeply deep probably really it's probably like Mussolini's granddaughter. I'm sure she's not and she is legitimately a political figure in the country. So yeah, I'm sure there are some people who would be pissed, But I don't know. I know some I

know some Italians. I think mostly it's like it's like talking to I don't know, if you were like go to somebody in Kenya and be like, hey, you know, somebody did a genocide here ten thousand years ago, I think most people would be like, okay, yeah, that's probably I would caution some people, I'm not doing that. And in certain countries with that the genocidit card in the last hundred and eight years or so, that's when it gets real political. Ten thousand years back, not much as

although you know we could we could talk. Um, you do literally live in Armenia. Um. All right, well, Joe, this is going to be the end of part one. When it comes back to Part two, We're gonna have a super fun discussion about what makes human beings capable of engaging in mass killing. It sounds like will last I can't wait. I thought you'd never asked. It does occasionally involve blasts. Um, Joey, that was that was uncomfortable.

Um you got you got any pluggable puck. I host the podcast The Lines Led by Donkeys podcasts, not the British political one. Um, and we talk about genocide unfortunately quite often. For instance, we've done seven hours on the Cambodian genocide and we also talked about military history and stuff like that. Yeah. Um, so check out Lions led by donkeys. Check out donkeys, just find one. They're good. They're good, good animals, the good animals. Yeah, they do

good stuff, useful, hardy, um, good eating. Oh man, donkey put that on some like rye bread, a little bit of catch up. Yeah yeah, absolutely. Anyway, this has been behind the Bastards, the podcast funded by the donkey made industry, which is having a tough years, always having a tough year. Difficult to get people on board with donkeys. I can't believe Big Donkey got their hooks into I heart media.

I always knew this day would Yeah, yeah, where where we're we're primarily opposing the EMU Farmers of America UM who disastrous path that Australia has already followed? What what was making an Australia joke, So we have to oppose big EMU. It's just proxy war, don't you know them is already defeated Australia. They're just trying to bring them here and they're just trying to bring them to the United States. All their boomerangs were useless. All right. That's

the show. Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For 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.