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

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 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 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, 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 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, 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.

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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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

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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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.

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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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, 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

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 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. 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. 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

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

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, 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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.

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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

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

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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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

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

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 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 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. 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 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 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

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

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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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,

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. 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 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, 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, 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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,

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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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

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.

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 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 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 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

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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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.