The British Super-Soldier Who Killed A Nation

Esquire Magazine. Those are my credits and I won't change them. That's what that means. Uh. Now, we're doing a little bit different today. Normally we're pretty upfront about who the subject of the podcast is, but there's a lot of background to get to before we can really properly introduce this guy. So I'm kind of curious as to when you figure out who we're talking about. And I also kind of wanted to be a little bit of a surprise for the audience. So if you're good, I'm just

going to get into it. Okay. I mean I'm kind of like an amateur private investigator, so I might get it real off the bat and I want to ruin your flow or anything. But um, let's let's try. All right, let's let's let's see how this goes. I'm on o'clock. Maybe this will be you know, my, my, my, great disaster, but I think it'll be fun. Yeah, alright, So today, you know, right now two eighteen, Britain is a tiny, adorable nation filled with wizards and a conspicuously broad definition

of the word pudding. It's easy, I'm going to guess Baltimore. No, no, no, I'm just I'm just getting it that. It's easy for us to forget today considering how docile the British people are that for a while they ruled the entire world. The British Empire was the largest empire in human history. The Mongol Empire, at that's height, held about twenty four million kilometers in area, six percent of the world's population. The British Empire was over thirty five million kilometers in

area and ruled nearly a quarter of the planets. Trust me, I did not forget that they polonize everything. Yeah, yeah, um, and they I think what's most shocking to me when I read about this is that they controlled that huge chunk of the planet with probably the smallest army than any empire has ever had. You know, the Roman Empire

at height was about seven hundred and fifty thousand regular soldiers. Um. The British Empire at its height before the World War started was about a hundred and twenty thousand British soldiers. They never spent more than about two and a half percent of their GDP on defense, which is a regular soldiers were like super serium, like Captain America. So you have predicted a little bit where this is going. Now.

These soldiers are regular soldiers. They're volunteers, which is different from most Most militaries in this period are not volunteer, permanent standing military. So the British are a little bit different there. But they're just normal, you know soldiers. They have machine guns, which certainly helps with the whole colonizing thing. Um or they have machine guns for a chunk of this,

but um, you know, it does beg the question. We've only got a hundred and twenty thousand guys and from most of the British Empire they don't have machine guns. How do you hold a quarter of the planet in bondage for two hundred years. But the whole army that's a little larger than the modern Coast Guard in the United States nukes? Is that the correct? No? No, I mean you you get the locals to oppress themselves. Yeah, yeah, so.

Michael Codner, who was the head of Military Science for the Royal United Services Institute, described the British Empire's military is essentially quote the Royal Navy and a system of indigenous constabularies overseen by a small but professional British Army. Now. I found that quote in a BBC article from back

in two thousand and eleven. The article also quoted a military historian named Dr Hugh Davies who noted that all of British in Bia was controlled by just thirty thousand British troops supervising hundreds of thousands of local Indian soldiers or set boys. He was quoted as saying, the empire had to pay for itself, and it had to be profitable, and if you put too much into building up the army,

the empire is no longer a profitable enterprise. He sounds like the rap mogul, so that sentence sounds in his defense, I don't think he's justifying imperial realism. I think he's just explained this was the attitude that the imperialists had is we can't spend too much money on the army, otherwise everything is for profit. Um. And British India was conquered in the first place by a for profit corporation,

the East India Trading Company. The East India Company had a private army of over a quarter of a million men. Most of those were indigenous soldiers. So you know, local Indians, people from Burma, whatever, local job. Yeah, no, yeah, exactly by local very very ethical with our modern yeah. Um. So the East India Company started taking over India in the sixteen hundreds, and by eighteen o three they controlled

most of what's now India, Pakistan and Burma. In eighteen fourteen, this giant multinational corporation declared war on Nepal, which was at that point known as the Kingdom of Gorka. They fought for two brutal years before the kingdom seated a third of its territory to the company in exchange for peace. The British one, but the Gorkas had put up a really vicious fight in the East India Company was impressed by their warriors, so they started recruiting these men into

their army. At first, these Gurkhas were used to keep the peace and ever rebellious India, but the gurk Has quickly proved themselves to be very capable warriors. In eighteen fifty eight, when the Queen formally took control of India away from the Company, Gurkas were integrated into the Greater British Army. They served as elite shock troops in World War One and two. The British Army today still fields battalions of Gurkhas recruited basically as mercenaries from Nepal and

paid far less than their British citizen counterparts. Sound that sounds like some unsolid It's a little bit like that. Now the British like the Gurkhas because they were loyal and just incredibly deadly. They carry these big knives called kukries in there. There's a lot of if you go online, you can find threads today where British veterans talk about the stories their n c o S told about Gurkhas and like there's a common one where you have to tie your shoes a certain way because the Gurkhas cut

your foot off, well, know that. They when they're doing espionage missions in the night, they'll tell who they want to kill by feeling their bootlaces. They could tell like in World War Two, they knew what German bootlaces felt like, and so if an Allied soldier took boots off of a dead German, he might get cut by a Gurkha like this. It's a possibly apocryphal story, but variants of it are still told today. So they'll kill you if you tied your shoes wrong, essentially, if you tied your

shoes like the enemy. Yeah I heard that. Yeah, So the Gurkhas were like super soldiers of the British Empire what you were getting in Yeah, they sound like sword guys to me. Yeah, yeah, they're they're they're scary um. And they weren't the only super soldiers in the British Empire. Um. Over their period of time conquering huge chunks of the world,

the British encountered a number of warrior people's. Some of these people's, like the Gurkhas, had their own well developed warrior culture already when the British arrived, and the British just exploited it. But in other parts of the world the process occurred less naturally. Take the tribes of the West Nile region of Africa. Their first contact with more technologically advanced people's came in the early eighteen hundreds when

successive groups of Arab slavers started praying on them. Certain tribes who were the best fighters were enslaved by these Arab slavers and used the soldiers to capture other Africans who were then sent off to markets in North Africa in the Middle East. Yeah. Yeah, it's a bomber. This whole story is going to be a kind of a bomber. Oh great, Yeah, when you're talking colonialism, it's it's never not a heartbreak. I mean, when aren't you talking colonialism?

If we if people want to get real, well, I mean, and that's that's one of the points. Like when you start talking about dictators, especially from the seventies, eighties, nineties, you can trace nearly all of them back to colonialism. Yeah for sure. Yeah, that's that's that's more or less

this story. Um So, by the eighteen seventies, the British had become abolitionists in a big way, perhaps because they felt kind of bad about, you know, the whole Atlantic slave trade thing, but mostly because it was a way to justify conquering colonies in Africa, saying, we're going to stop the Arab slave traders, but we have to conquer this whole chunk of Africa in order to stop the

slave trade. Right way to do it. They're a good guy with a gun with a lot with all the yeah, um so, the British took over a huge chunk of North Africa, including the Sudan, and with public pressure behind them, they sent armies down to stop the slave traders. These armies, like all British armies, were made mostly of locals. Many of those locals were recently freed slave soldiers that the

British were happy to induct into their army. So they would free these slave soldiers from the Arab slave traders, and then they would induct them into a colonial military and use them to fight slave traders. Sounds like college, sounds like the job market. I thought you were going to compare this slight college football, but I was, well, yeah's absolutely um so. One such army of former slaves was headed by a German doctor and a Muslim convert

named Emin Pasha. In the eighteen eighties, Immin Pasha and his army were besieged by an Islamic army during the Modest Insurrection. They were eventually freed by a guy named Henry Morton Stanley, who regular listeners of the podcast will recognize as the guy who mapped the Congo for King

Leopold of Belgium. Stanley took Pasha with him when he left, and Pasha's men stayed behind in the West Nile region garrison duty for a few years until they were picked up by agents for the Imperial British East Africa Company. Now the company representatives were always alert for new warrior people to enlist, and they considered these men to be quote the best material for soldiery in Africa. These tribes came to be called Nubi or Nubians and became the

British empires shock troopers in Africa. The East Africa Company used their Nubians to carve an empire out of the continent's heart. They named their new colony Uganda. As the British Empire grew, the Nubians were inducted into the regular British army and became the elite fourth Battalion of the King's African Rifles. They were Muslims, which differentiated them from most of the peoples they were sent to suppress in

Central and West Africa. The British basically turned the Nubian people into a living, breathing factory for the production of the deadliest colonial soldiers in Africa, and yes, being bred for war had a negative impact on the Nubians themselves. Here's what one former commanding officer of the King's African

Rifles wrote about them. Quote, the Nubians became the most feared and influential ethnic group, and you Ganda mercilessly suppressing uprisings and tribal supproots at the behest of their British masters. It was the success of these early operations that gave them contempt for all pagan and Christian tribes in the country. In nineteen seventy four, a journalist named David Martin echo

the sentiment quote. Among their fellow countrymen, they enjoyed an unenviable reputation of having one of the world's highest homicide rates. The Dubians were renowned for their statistic brutality, lack of formal education, for poisoning enemies and for the refusal to integrate even in the urban centers. Martin was in Uganda to write about one Nubian in particular, one of the deadliest warriors to ever serve in the King's African Rifles, a man named Idy. I mean, okay, wow, okay, so

that's this guy. Sounds like Black Republicans to me are on the wrong team. I mean they're like, did they ever have a choice? Like, yeah, exactly, you're right, highlights. If you recruited people as soldiers for a hundred years and don't really give them any other options for anything to do, it's it's it's not going to be pretty. Yeah, I hear that. I mean I grew up in a bad neighborhood also, but I didn't become a tough warrior.

I just became a comedian with a smart mouth. I'm sure there were a few Nubian comedians and that like part of the difficulty here is like all these stories about how brutal they are coming from like British and American white guys. Yeah, totally, they're probably just like pretty cool. They're probably just like I don't know, trying to invent whatever sports game that they had trying to play some football and they were like, well, these guys are brutal,

they're kicking our ass. Well, I mean it's like British football, So yeah, for sure, can it be? I mean, I feel like if colonizers came over to Africa and then the Africans just like dunk to basketball, they'll be like, wow, these brutal power. It's a shame of basketballers over there. Um. So Idi Amine was born sometimes between n we don't really know for sure. Um he was probably born in the village of Cococa in northwest Uganda. He was for sure a Kakwa, which were one of the Nubian tribes

that British considered to be a warrior people. Now. Eddie's father served with the British Army and the King's African Rifles and was generally out of the picture. His mother is usually described as a witch or a self proclaimed sorceress. Um. I watched the documentary when I was sort of prepping for this thing that was called, i mean, The Rise and Fall, and it was it was a terrible documentary.

It's one of those like nineties made for TV movies where all the actings bad and it's very sensational, super biased, and it leans into this stuff that I think most people have heard about idi amine, which was like witchcraft, cannibalism, that sort of thing, which will be we'll be talking about a little bit later. But is uh, I mean that just sounds like Los Angeles culture, witchcraft, astrology, and the veganism not much, not so much cannibalism. Yeah, yeah, yeah, veganisms. Yeah,

a better ism than CA's. But we're we're going to get into, uh sort of how a lot of these facts are unreliable about Ittie. But the way that this terrible documentary summed up Ittie's childhood I found humorous, which is the child grew up by the river learning the ways of manhood and the spells of witchcraft, which that sort of sums up I think the general common popular perception of who this guy was. It sounds like a fished a lot boy. Yeah, And there's always there's gonna

be a lot of dark stories about rivers. Whenever you read about the scary Yeah, how did the ocean get to the land that way? Yeah, it's one of those like anytime you read about a place with that's like famous for its rivers, and they have some sort of like horrible butchery happened. There's just always tons of stories about kids finding heads in the rivers. We were just in the Cambodia when it was the same thing, just like,

I mean, you find all kinds of weird stuff in there. Yeah, so yeah, the witchcraft stuffed is almost certainly racist bullshit. What witchcraft wasn't is still common in parts of Uganda. I mean, was it practicing Muslim? You on? And Muslims had their own kind of witchcrafty tradition where people would use the Koran to foretell the future, and he certainly used that, but he wasn't doing like pagan blood magic or anything like that. Yeah, all of this sounds like

astrology so far. What was the sign doesn't say? Well, it was like the Islamic version of astrology, but I don't know, probably queries yea um Witchcraft was less of a factor in his regime than the traditions and rituals of his beloved British army. Um so it he was eventually abandoned by his father and by some accounts his mother too. It's kind of hard to tell what happened there. He got as far as the fourth grade before he

dropped out of school. When he was at most seventeen, a British colonial army officer noted his tremendous size and recruited him into the King's African Rifles. He started his service as a cook's assistant, literally peeling potatoes, which is like the stereotypical bottom of the wrong army job. But he seems like if you're big, that you shouldn't be a rifleman. We're gonna make you target. You're a pragmat man. Yeah, I mean, I would only recruit the little guys, the

most weird army ever. Um, he didn't stay at the bottom long it. He was gigantic. He was like six ft four, well over two hundred pounds, and he was in his younger days. He gets kind of heavier as an older guy, but like you could get picture him and he's young, he is solid muscle, like he is just a mountain of a man. Yeah, me too. He's got about three inches and that's about it. So he was a perfect candidate to become a heavyweight boxer, which

is exactly what happened. According to Robert Keeley, Deputy chief of the US Mission in Kempoala quote. His advancements came essentially through boxing. He was very tall, with a tremendous reach in big hands. He was big and strong and tough. In general. You could picture him in any culture as a heavyweight champion, and that's what he was. The Ugandans are very fine boxers. They still prove it to this day in the Olympics. They have a strong boxing tradition

which the British encouraged. The main avenue for advancement in the army was boxing. Um So I mean eventually became the heavyweight champion of the Army and in nineteen one to fifty two the heavyweight champion of all Uganda. His ability to punch people proved useful in maintaining discipline among other soldiers in his unit. Here's another quote from Keiley. Uh Idi Amine became prominent as the link between the two.

The officers sitting around sipping their tea or their brandy or their port, upon hearing some noises and disruptions outside, would call in Sergeant Amine and tell him to take care of the problem. I Mean goes out. There are some shouts and screams as he knocks him heads together and kick some butt and then silence. The officers resumed

their sipping in a very appreciative of performance. They eventually made him the top sergeant o um, because of course sergeant was as high as an actual African could raise in the King's African Rifles. And we're not allowed to have any Africans be officers in any of the British colonial armies out of the world, or I think in India for that matter, which is, you know, if you're a racist colonial power, you don't want anybody in your army.

You can't have like you've got to recruit soldiers from the locals, but you don't want them learning about supply lines and logistics and stuff. Yeah good, Yeah, then they'll know how to, you know, overthrow the seven guys that you have there. Yeah, that's why I'm I haven't been promoted to any officer ranks. I mean, how's your boxing? I mean very very, very bad. But if we're talking about a wee game, then still very bad. So we need an army where yeah, where we as the product

I mean with drones nowadays, that's that's the future. I feel like that's the future. I hear you. Um. So he was the perfect soldier for the British Empire. Everyone who served with him in those days was impressed both

by his toughness and by his almost superhuman strength. His commanding officer, Ian Graham, said that his body was quote like that of a Grecian sculpture during one terrible march, when all of the other men could barely continue quote, one man was an example and an inspiration to us all. As we finally passed the finishing post, Idioman was marching beside me at the head of the column, head held high and still singing for all he was worth. Across one shoulder were two in guns, and a brin is

a like a machine gun. It's like a twenty two pound like machine gun that you you know, put on a tripod on the ground. So two of those in one hand and over the other was a crippled a scari, And the ascari was a British word for like a local soldier. So he had one of his wounded comrades on one arm and two machine guns on the other. That's like the kind of soldier he made. He was just he was. He was like he was. He was a super soldier. Man He invented CrossFit, apparently some Joe

Rogan alpha brain kind of guy. Now. Ian Graham said that seeing this reminded him of a translation of another of a King's African Rifles marching song that I'm about to read you the song, which is explained sort of how the British viewed men sing Oh boy, that's I think I can do a good British accent here, but I don't know that I can sing it rhyme. It does.

It definitely rhymes, and it's a bit racist. Now for this, you know, you need to understand the word suity is another word for Nubian, like it's like a local term for like people who are from his group of of Uganda's. So here's the British fighting song that this guy thought of when he saw Idio I mean marching. It's the Suiti, My boy, it's the Suiti with his grim set, ugly face. But he looks like a man and he fights like a man, for he comes of a fighting race, which

that's exactly what these people were to the British. I assume there was more, but this was the lion that this guy recalled, which is like, it shows you exactly what the British thought of these guys is that they are soldiers. That's why, and that's what they were bred for and encouraged for. And they didn't have to do People of like the Coquit tribe, didn't have to do anything other than send their sons to fight for the British army and the British would take care of them.

And then they respond with their own distract or. Um, this is a distract at that point, bad, Yeah it is, and it gets yeah, it gets better. Um. So young Aman was sent to war several times on behalf of the British Empire. In he went to Malia to suppress the Shift of Rebellion. In nine fifty two he went

sent to Kenya to suppress the Mau Mau uprising. We don't talk about the Mau Mau uprising a lot these days, but it basically started as a bunch of Kenyan rebels who were angry, angry because the British were whipping people half to death, which is that's how British kept discipline and all their African colonies was just horrific amounts of whipping. Um. So these guys rose up and they killed some British people in the British sent an army and brutally suppressed it.

They put more than one and a half million Kenyans in concentration camps. They hanged thousands of them. Eat probably would have been doing a good amount of the hanging um. And he also killed the number of warriors in vicious battles in places like Kenyoma and Kenema. So he's been raised just as a soldier and now he's been brutalized suppressing multiple colonial wars very violently. Man, successful black man. And then he just turned around betrays culture. Classic story.

I mean, he kind of starts with the betrayal, right and later well we'll get too later right now. Actually, oh man, there's more. There's a lot. So by the late nineteen fifties, Iddy had risen as high as an African could in the King's African Rifles, which is sergeant. The British, yeah, as I said, didn't let their locals be officers in their armies. Uh. This policy came back to bite them in the ass in the late fifties because by that point it had become clear that colonialism

was on its way out. The British were preparing to release Uganda as an independent nation. Unfortunately, the British hadn't governed any of their colonies as countries. They basically just treated them as money making enterprises corporations, essentially, with all the business of statecraft kept out of the hands of

the locals. The British were required by international you know, the international community, to leave Uganda with an army so it could defend itself, but they hadn't trained any sort of officer corps into Uganda, um, which is an important thing to have, which is why every military in the world has an officer corps. You know, you train people

to do certain jobs. But the Ugandans just didn't have that, and rather than spend more money in time to build an officer corps for their soon to be country, the British just randomly promoted the sergeants they liked best. One of those sergeants was a boxer with a fourth grade education named Idie I mean yeah. He was commissioned in nineteen sixty two, right before uganda independence. He found himself in charge of a platoon in northwest Kenya, captured a

bunch of prisoners and ordered them to be executed. The British governor of Uganda. Sir Walter Coates vetoed the possibility of Ittie being charged for this war crime. I mean, was one of the few African soldiers in the entire officers in the entire army, and prosecuting him right before independence was named politically undesirable. No one stopped to consider whether or not it might be bad for Uganda if

one of their high ranking military leaders was a war criminal. Okay, So when we get back, we're going to get into how Idi Amine rose to power and to be the president of Uganda and what happened next, which it's going to be a dark story, but we we have we have some ads first off, and before we get into some ads. Uh, you know, I've been talking a lot about the Rito's people. We're trying to get der Ritos to sponsor the pot oh I hear you. I love

that crunchy crunch that the Rito's chip. Nothing washes the horrible taste of colonialism out of your mouth like a cool ranch. I was gonna say nacho cheese. But that's what's great about der Rito's is freedom. That the freedom to cleanse your palette with whatever exciting flavor combination you want. How are they not a sponsor yet? I will maybe they will be after this video. Let's hear from some

other sponsors and we're back. Sorry. So, um yeah, I did want to get into before we dig into the rest of the story, what you recall about Idiomine before we get into his career. Not much. I have heard the name before. I've heard there was a president. If you're going to who's a bad guy. I don't know the details. I mean already I've learned way more than I thought. Uh yeah, before you know, it was even it even became an independent nation. I didn't realize that.

You know, they killed so many people. Yeah, well, it was one of those things I hadn't I had vaguely heard yet. As president of Uganda, there were these rumors of witchcraft and cannibalism. Um. I hadn't known any of this stuff about sort of how the British military worked at the time, and the fact that he was basically bred to suppress insurgencies, like that's what the British used

his people for, was controlling populations through brutality. Um, which I think is an important thing to get into here because otherwise it's just a story of like this dictator, but he didn't rise up out of anything. He was like and I think he went up to the system.

He paid his dues, and he was also trained, like you're going to where when we get into the things he did in Uganda that were brutal, they're all echoes of things he was doing for the British, like they it's it's not just a story of like some horrible dictator rose up and did terrible things. It's the British trained this guy to do terrible things on their behalf and then abandoned the country if you gone to him. Yeah, this is basically this guy is completely might meets right

and um, yeah, that's dangerous. It's really dangerous, and it's dangerous if you don't. Like. People like that exist in every culture. We've got more than our fair share of them in the United States. We have a we have structures built up to like make sure that those people don't wind up in charge of the military or whatever. Like, yeah, at least not to the extent where it's like there's a reason we've never had the army sees power like it's it's in our country. Yeah, we've definitely, well, it's

it's because we give them so much money. Um. Okay, so not just cool cool ranch, let's get back to Idio. I mean, um, but seriously, Dorito's people send us a drop, us a home. We're at Bastard's pot on Twitter. Yeah, Idi Amine has just committed a war crime right before you got an independence, and the British governor of Uganda has sort of hushed up the whole thing because he's one of the only officers and they didn't want to, you know, they just they just didn't want any complications.

They said it would be politically undesirable if this came up right before independence. So uh, Idi Amine, now an officer, rises again rapidly through the ranks. According to Robert Keeley, he advanced by eliminating his rivals in one fashion or another, either physically or by discrediting them, or by scaring them or somewhere or another. His promotions came frequently, so he's good at working the system. Um, he understands how the British military works. And yeah, and if there's one man

who knows how to hustle, it's Idi Amine. Now. On October nine, ninety two, Uganda gains its independence from Great Britain. Uh, you got His first prime minister was a guy named Milton Aboute, and the president was a guy named Edward Mutessa. Mutessa was also the king of the Wanda, who were a southern tribe in Uganda. He was better known as King Freddie. Uh. For a little while, Mutessa and a Bote co existed and things were all right in Uganda. Um.

Milton Aboute, like idi Amine, came from northern Uganda. He advocated for a great African awakening. He was a socialist, although not a very dogmatic one. The West generally disliked him. Um. But he was also super corrupt, which is going to be a theme in this story. So by nineteen sixty four, idi Amine had been named deputy army commander under a dude with the really cool name shaban ap a Lot, which is one of my favorite names that I've encountered

in this podcast research. Um. He saw action again, fighting alongside Katanga rebels who were battling the government of Zi year It. He took gold and diamonds from the rebels and gave them guns from the Uganda Army in exchange. He then sold the lute for cash. A Botte, the president got it on the racket. There was a brief parliamentary inquiry, but Abote had all the other people in the scheme arrested and so he and he and Ittie

were fine. Um. Now, nineteen sixty six, a Bote got tired of sharing power and susp end at the constitution. He sent Colonel Idi Amine to attack the palace and bring the king back dead or alive. The king managed to flee the country, but the coup succeeded in a vote was left as the sole power in Uganda. Now, this did not make the British happy. Um. The Baganda where their favorite tribe in Uganda. Winston Churchill, under Secretary of State for the Colonies from nineteen o five to

nineteen Yeah, super good guy. Never caused a famine half million people. Yeah, not not even well once. But led he among us who was not starved, we all cause a couple of famines, you know. Uh. He considered the Baganda to be civilized, um, which means basically that they'd all converted to Christianity easily. Their territory was just where the British wound up putting the railroad and their administration buildings. So the begun is where the people. The British had

spent the most time within Uganda. They considered them civilized because they acted like British people are the good Yeah, exactly. Um. Now, the Ugandan people, most of whom weren't begun and supported aboutees kicking down the king Um. They saw him as casting down a British backed monarch. They saw this as a true break from the past and chance at a new beginning. It was an exciting time, but the excitement soon faded in the reality of about his ridiculous corruption.

People protested, of course, in by nineteen sixty nine, the government could only stay in power with the military's backing. Uh Edi had been popular with the British because he was a great soldier and because he spoke English with just the right accent that made them think he was cute and dumb because they were racist as fuck. But

Iddy was not dumb. While the government had grown more dependent on his military, he started recruiting hundreds of his relatives and fellow Nubians into the army and putting them in the positions he would want them in when it was time to take power. UM. This was disrupted in nineteen seventy when an assassin tried to kill President Aboute and shot him through the mouth. American diplomat Bovu now recalled the army went a muck and for about twelve hours.

It was a pretty horrifying situation. It appears to have gotten confused and thought the attempt was a coup against both him and a Bote, so he ran uh he quote jumped out the back window of his house and his pajamas and disappeared, which really mystified us all because they were expecting that this assassination attempt was him seizing power,

but it was just somebody else. So he was mocked for weeks in the wake of the attack because he ran out in the night in his pajamas, and a number of people counted him out as a force in Ugandan politics at this point. But Idio embarked on a redemption tour. Part of that was having a bunch of people clandestinely executed in the night. Part of it was showing up in public with a bunch of his armed friends and just scaring people. Uh. No, All was there

for part of that too. He was at at a bar one night and he quote you know, he saw he saw it quote I walked out of the bar and there was a mean, a huge man, an enormous fellow, with his officers and their weapons, sitting in the main lounge, sitting at attention, not talking, just looking around. I thought, Jesus, what's going to happen. They sat there for about half an hour, and then Aman said something in one of the local languages, and they all got up and walked

out of there. What it was, I'm convinced to this day, was a threat on part on the part of a mean about re establishing his position. He knew that he was laughed at because he ran away. This was his reprisal, his counter threat, and it worked. People were scared to death. So they might have been more scared by the fact that Diddie had had a number of people killed. Yeah,

and the fact that he just sat there for half hour. Yeah, it was a little bit like some guy just sits in the bar staring at you with like his friends and all their guns. You know, that's intimidating. So yeah. And Ieen seventy one, president of BOTE, went to Singapore for a conference. Before he left, he put out the order that Idioman was to be arrested for massive corruption and murder, which Iddie was guilty of, but which Abote was guilty of too. Before the warrant could be served,

idi Amine launched launched his coup. The killing started right away. At least a thousand soldiers from tribes that it he didn't trust were massacred. The river filled with corpses um, which is you know, when you tell the story, like when I hear stories like this, I'm like, I don't even know where all these people. How many people are are they going to kill before they just completely run out of people? You know, It's like, yeah, they really

go pretty far. And by the time this is all over it, he will have killed at there's something like one in fifty seven of the people in Uganda. Um and he's not the worst of them, which we'll get to as well. Oh my god, he's just the one that everyone focuses on because there's rumors that he ate people. Um Sonal was the American diplomatic officer in Uganda, so he had responsibility for all of the eight hundred Dish

American citizens in country. Uh. He told those people to hold fast and chill at home, and that went fine, but there was also a tourist group in town who were furious that this coup got in the way of their vacation. So I want to read this story just because it's a little levity. It's just American. It's rich Americans acting like rich Americans in the middle of a coup. That's life and death for the people in Uganda. We just wanted to go on a nice vacation on some

endangered animals. I said to them, look, the airport is closed. And later the tour leader turned to me and said, well, Mr, now, these are important people. They haven't got time to wait around. They're going to miss their connections in Nairobi. I said, you're damn right. They're going to miss their nections in Nairobi, and they're going to get hungry, they're going to get tired, they're going to get dirty, and they're going to want

to get their laundry done. And it's not going to be done because I don't see any chance of these folks leaving for four or five days. And that was just the case. They were furious. One guy, the president of this big liquor distributing company in Hartford, Connecticut, High Blood or Hue Mind or something. He beat me about that on the head and shoulders. He said he had to get back to sign a contract. I said, you can't do it. There are soldiers at the airport who

will kill you. Um, which I just love. Like, there's people getting murdered in the street and you're like, I've got a contract to get back to. Yeah. That sounds like every screenplay or a businessman is inconvenience. Yeah, it's like that. Yeah, there's a terrorist hijacking the airplane and he's like, I'm gonna miss the account. I gotta get home for Christmas. Um So, Okay, that was a nice little interlude. So in short order, idi Amine is the

new president of Uganda. That's a position he would hold for more than eight years. The West Stern powers, mainly the British and the Americans, were hopeful. At first. They hated a Botte because he was a socialist and because he was even more corrupt than they were prepared to forgive. Idiomine had a good reputation among the British. He trained as a paratrooper in Israel, so Israel really liked the guy too. Um So, yeah, at first, it seems like

this new dictator is going to be great for white people. Um. You know, Lady Listowell, who was a Hungarian noblewoman and a journalist who became Adie's first biographer, met him around this time. And here's how she described meeting him for the first time, to give you an idea of like how this guy comes across quote. I looked into the smiling face of a tall, muscular officer with shrewd eyes who invited me to a cup of coffee. He was a hoaking figure of a man, and I was fascinated

by his hands. Beautiful, slim hands with long, tapering fingers. We gotta your horny gotta, I just love. We did a podcast on King Leopold of Belgium, the guy who massacred fifteen million people in the Congo, and in his biography there's like a whole paragraph talking about how beautiful his hands work. So I just that's apparently that's now. If I can find one more that's officially hands were beautiful hands. I'm just always shocked that apparently some people

are really staring at hands a lot. Yeah, I know, and you never hear about like, you know, his cuticles weren't not well manicured, his figures were a little long. It was really Yeah. Yeah, there were actually reasons that a reasonable person who wasn't you know, purely looking at this from like the British point of view, might have thought Idiom and had a shot at being a good president. Uh.

For one thing, he was a fun guy. Everybody who met him really spoke highly of him, Like everybody, like even people who later were like, oh yeah, he definitely committed atrocities. He was charming. It was a fun guy to be around. Yeah. I met him and I was so scared. I was like, this guy is going to kill me. And so I was like, nice guy, great guy. Um. He was obsessed with Scotland, which is one of the

famous things about Idiom. Yeah, all of the officers and um yeah, and he had he loved people playing bagpipe weird. All of the officers in the King's African Rifles have been Scottish and so Dye just really loved Scottish culture. He had huge He had a whole plane. Do you remember seeing him in like clothing and he's wearing like plaid and stuff. And there's a movie about him that's

not super accurate. It's called The Last King of Scotland. Yeah, yeah. Um. And he had a whole plane dedicated just bringing Scottish whiskey into uh Uganda, Like there was like a presidential plane. That's it's just the Whiskey Express, which is a cool thing to differ. Yeah no, that's that's that's legitimately fine. Um yeah no, we have a vodka guy, fly the Whiskey Express. He's fine until he gets home. Uh Idy adopted a number of British military traditions for his own military.

He sent a musician to Scotland for year to learn the bagpipes. He also established a state military jazz band with perhaps the best name of for a band I've ever heard, the Revolutionary Suicide Jazz Band, also known as the Revolutionary Suicide Mechanized Regiment Band or the Suicide Mechanized Jazz Band. And here's there a punk band. No, they were just a jazz band. They should have been a punk band. Suicide they were. This is a really great picture.

They were the regimental band. They were a military band, and the band they were a unit for was one of the elite mechanized regiments in the Ugandan Army that was a suicide mechanized regiment. So it was like to try to make them sound scary. These guys don't care if they die. They're a suicide regiment for sure. Uh. And this amazing picture, with several others will be up on our website behind the Bastards dot Com. You owe

it to yourself to check it out. Um. Yeah, So it also seems I should know that from from reports at the time, most of the musicians in the Suicide Revolutionary Jazz Band were sort of press ganged and forced to play. Um. They don't look exactly happy, but they don't look jazz wow. Um. Sotty's rain was brutal by all measures, uh, and got increasingly brutal ass time went on. There are a number of theories as to why Robert Keeley thinks he was just promoted out of his depth.

Like Michael Scott. Basically was a fine sergeant, but he never should have been an officer, let alone running the nation, which is one way or another probably fair. Keely says quote he had learned to use his fists and translated that into how you hold your position, how you protect yourself. He applied all of the brutal boxing lessons he had learned against his rivals. Uh. Lady Listowell also thought that this poor guy had just been forced to jump into

a position too complex for his mind. Quote the Kakua have a great respect for personalities, but not for rank or position. They never had chiefs or recognized clan leaders. I mean was brought up to believe that all Cowqua tribesmen are equal. Some of his recent measures illustrate all too well that he had to leap from a peasant background into the complicated politics of the modern world without

any intermediate feudal preparation. I think this attitude that Eddy was just a guy that who got promoted to be on his talents is inaccurate and based pretty heavily in racism. It shifts the brain the blame over to Uganda for letting such a man rise that high, and I think the real blame lies with the British. Again, there's guys like Idy in every country. Violent authoritarians who seek to

impose their will on others. Established nation's build antibodies, up checks and balances and legal systems, and established bureaucracies to stop men with fourth grade educations and histories of head injuries from heading the army. Well that sounds nice right about now. Well, clearly ours aren't perfect. Um so, but you know Uganda didn't have any any of that. The British didn't put any of that in place before. They

just abandoned them. Um. I Like it's one of those things where if you look at what was set up when the Uganda was freed, I don't see someone like idy was bound to at least try to take control. Yeah, it sounds like they set up the country like a reality show. Yeah, yeah, it is almost like that. Yeah, they were like here, you guys, go here, some sticks survive and they didn't. They didn't consider any of the

ways it could go badly. Um and they didn't like they know, like the British have never had a military coup and they have an officer cadre for a reason. They like set like they know how you set up a military so it doesn't destroy the country. And they didn't do any of that in Uganda because they were lazy and they didn't care. Uh So, fun the fun

the British and Flint Michigan still doesn't have clean water. Yeah, fun us too, for sure, for sure, for sure this one is actually this one's sort of are bad too, because we're we we we supported the Idiomine regime for a while, we being the United States, fuck everybody, funck everybody except for Uganda. They didn't deserve for Dorrito's. Now, Derrito's had nothing to do with this good That's that's fair.

And and you could argue that Derritos has stopped similar monsters from arising in other countries by filling them with nachio goodness. Yeah, that's right, you stop the monster of hunger. As far as we know, Idiomane never got to experience extreme nacho flavor, and that might be the secret of his madness. The only extremism he should have been into

is na jesu. So yeah. When the British first started the Ugandan colony, they had carried out a policy of ringing in South Asians, mostly from India, to Uganda to quote service a buffer between Europeans and Africans in the middle runs of commerce and administration. This had started when the British brought thirty Indians over to build railways in Uganda.

Uh these folks had a lot more experience with Western style capitalism in the average Ugandan and as a result, they saw great success setting up businesses in the new colony. By the early nineteen seventies, Ugandan Asians owned nine of the country's businesses and contributed of its tax revenue, despite making up a small minority of the actual population. UH. This has obviously caused a lot of unrest between native

ethnic Ugandans and the Ugandan Asians. President de Boute had pursued a policy called Corchanization, which attacked Ugandan Asians with laws aimed at reducing their economic dominance it. He expanded on that policy and added in a healthy dollop of straight up raisism. He announced that the government would be reviewing the status of Ugandan Asians who'd been given citizenship. So basically they're looking at naturalized Yuganan citizens and finding

excuses to take away their citizenship. Yeah, that's what's happening right now. Yes, it's exactly what's happening right now to naturalized American citizens. UM, which is uh, huge bummer, huge bumber weird. How these shitty guys have the same playbook in a lot of cases. UM. I mean also canceled all in progress citizenship applications from Asians UH. And then in August of nineteen seventy two, who gave all Asians

in Uganda ninety days to vacate the country. So we're gonna get into how that policy went and what a cluster fuck ensued afterwards, and what happened once the West finally decided that Idi Amine wasn't their man. But first we've got some some capitalism to get into. Yeah, capitalism, the thing that has nothing to do with the tens of millions of death STI colonialism not a thing. Not a thing. Here's some ants and we're back. So as the story has has come up here, Idioman has seized power.

He's executed a bunch of people, and he has decided to expel all of the Asians in Uganda. He's given him ninety days to vacate the country. This policy affected eighty five thousand people, twenty three thousand of whom were already citizens of Uganda. I'm gonna play a clip of Idi Amine talking to the press to hear how he justified the policy. And I think what's interesting about this is how friendly the foreign press is to him, which sort of gives you an idea of how charming this

guy was in person. So even though he's introduced, he's talking about something pretty awful, like people are they just yeah, I'll play decision for the economy of Uganda, and I'm he makes you that every Ugandans get a fruit of independent since independent actually Uganda is not yet independent. I will say that even when the British handed over on the ninth of October nineteen sixty two, the Uganda still not yet independent. Uganda will be independent after this my decision.

After I want to see that the whole Kampala street is not full of Indians. It must be proper black under administration in those shops is run by the Ugandans. Would you like to get all actions out of Really? Yes, they must go to their country, even nationals of Uganda. If they want to go there, they're they're they're They're welcome to go. Also happened to these people If they don't go over the time, I think they will be sitting like they're sitting on the fire. I will tell

you this. You just wait. After three months, okay, you will see. I think they will not city comfortable here in Uganda. I will tell you this. I must actually tell you the truth to take for them. If they're not doing I am not responsible for building them plans to camp. Have you asked the British to take the way. Yes, it is a British High commission is here his responsibility. I have told him. You've said you wanted to teach Britain a lesson? President, why is that? And that is

now a lesson I'm teaching the British. I am teaching now the lesson because I am correcting them from the mistake they had made. If they had to think before earlier that that as the African here who can even work, and the building the railway with the instruction given to them by the British, this problem will not happen. Well, I was like a MOUNTI python. Yeah, it's remarkable that he's like talking about like people, terrible things will happen

in that they don't leave. And then all of these guys laugh like just because it's it's yeah, and it's so. I mean, he has a point at the end there when he says like it was fucked up the British to bring these people into build railroads and not just have us build railroads because it's our fucking country, which is you know, a fair point. But at this point these guys are like third generation Uganda's like it's messed up to kick people out of your country and take

their businesses. It's just weird to me. How friendly the press was to him still at this point, Well, they were all British guys and they didn't really give a funk about brown people either way. They were just there because they had to be yeah, and they thought he was. He was fun and they liked yeah, it's yeah, so Itdi's main defense of his policy was that he was

trying to give you guna back to Ugandans. He also said that God had told him in a dream that South Asians were to blame for Uganda's economic woes and corruption. It's probably that this policy had a lot to do with the fact that Great Britain had just refused to sell him guns so he could invade hands and Ea. So he was basically just being like, Okay, Great Britain, you have to deal with eighty thousand refugees now because you wouldn't give me the weapons I needed to fund

with my neighbor. Itty was brutal to the Ugandan Asians, but he was equally brutal to ethnic Ugandans. His particular targets were a Cholly and Langi tribesman. In the first few days of his regime, he executed more than a thousand members of these tribes in the army as his rain war on the purchase spread from the military to the general population. Bullets were in short supply in the country and desperately needed for all the wars Itty planned to start, so the murder squads he dispatched had to

find other ways of doing their work. Their preferred tools were sledgehammers, crowbars, and sometimes crocodiles. Yeah yeah, I mean, if you have crocodiles, every problem looks like crocodiles. No one he's ever wielded a crocodile has been a good guy. It's never a tool of the good guy. What about Yeah? Uh So, the most feared government agency, sort of the Idioman equivalent of the German SS, was the State Research Bureau, which is maybe my favorite name for like a secret

police organization. Just sounds so like it seems like the guys who should be like, oh yeah, your soils pH is off. But these are the murder police, as opposed to you know, countries where all of the police and the murder police. Um. Anyway, Apollo Lo Walco survived a hundred ninety six days in the pink stucco building where they tortured and executed their captives. He gives us our clearest picture of what life was like for people deemed

by Idioman to be enemies of the state. Quote, when the prisoner's name was called out, the guards would go and grab him. We were all in handcuffs already. We were in handcuffs twenty four hours a day. But they would change the position when they called a man, putting them on in back, and then they would place a long rope with a loop around his neck. Then someone would drag him by the rope along the staircase going up to the ground floor, and people would be beating

him on all parts of his body. Then his head would be beaten in. By the time he reached the top of the stairs, he was dead. So Looco claims the guards made sure the prisoners saw every execution. That was part of the point. He claims that between a hundred and fifty and two hundred people were executed every

night while he was there in nineteen seventy seven. Looco believes he saw more than fifteen thousand Ugandans clubbed and beaten to death over just five months, at least two hundred fifty thousand Ugandans perished during an idiot means terror. In the real number maybe more like half a million, roughly one in every fifty seven where to die over the next eight years. So Itty himself is said to

have participated in a number of these murders. Looco claims to remember seeing him beat men to death with sledgehammers while wearing a gas mask. Quote, I mean was actually participating. He turned to us at one point and told us to relax. The state research bowmen were mostly Nubians, like Itti, former super soldiers of the British Empire, doing what they'd always done, just for themselves now. Um, and again, this is not savagery that he's executing suddenly now that he's

in charge. This is exactly what he was doing on British orders in Kenya. You know, I'm gonna go ahead and get us that when he was president. Is not the first time he had people killed with sledgehammers, like it's it never sees this to amaze me, Just the

capability of brutality of some people. Know, and these all all these deaths, like obviously these deaths are an idioman, but they're also on colonialism, which is well, yeah, for sure, I blame everything on colonialism, just so straight and that

you can it's totally fair. Um, it's like being being a white kid who was educated in the South, I did not hear very much about colonialism growing up, and so it's once I've started researching a lot of these guys in the show and learning about King Leopold in the fifteen million who died in the Belgian Congo, which is probably the worst single crime of colonialism that I've

come across. But like it's I think it would probably be fair to say that, like if you add together the Nazis and the Stalinist and Maoist communists and all the people they killed, it doesn't come close to the deaths to colonialism absolutely, and you know, in a shorter time, you know, the Nazis were great at killing people fast, but there's I will never know most of what was

done in behalf of the British Empire. Yeah. Anyway, so all most secret police organizations wore you know, wear leather trench coats and dressing all black, like you know, like a c your cat. You're in central casting, you're trying to like cast its secret police. Like they're all in black. They look like the Matrix guys. Yeah, they were in turtlenecks, not the men of the Research Bureau. They wore wore flowered Hawaiian shirts, platform shoes, and sunglasses. Oh no, they're

dressed real cool like me. Oh I, I appreciate someone doing it different. If you're if you're gonna massacre hundreds of thousands of people, at least trying new. You know, there's no arm bands here, it's it's yeah, dresses, we're sandals. If m if Jimmy Bufett carried out a massacre, it would look like this, yeah every time. Y Yeah, well you know they're all drunk. They've got a whiskey plane.

Yeah yeah. Uh So. The Research Brea headquarters was connected to president a Means Home by an underground tunnel, so we could show up and participate in the executions when he wanted to. Most of the work was headed by a man named Major Farouquin Minawa. He was sort of the Lavernty Barrier type figure, and Barrier was the head of the KGB for a while under Stalin. Uh So, he's the kind of guy who could murder his own friends after a night of drinking and hanging out with him.

At one point he had his wife and three daughters executed. That guy should have waited till a grand theF Ato came out, just to get it out of his system. I think so. Um he suspected his wife and daughters were helping guns and rebels because they were Baganda Baganda's which is like the tribe, one of the tribes that he hated. Um. So yeah, It's important to understand that all the oppression apparatus ITDDI created was very decentralized, so most of the deaths during this period were not idio

means signing someone's death warrant. It was as a result of the fact that all soldiers and intelligence officers in his country were allowed to arrest or kill any person they considered dangerous to peace and good order. So Iddie gave his men a legal excuse to pursue their personal grudges and steal from people. Polished. You guys just dropping out in their no and that is the official line

of the podcast is abolish ice, bider ritos. I'm drinking all water lukewarm until ice is a bolish It is funny that like our Gestapo equivalent is ice, because if they had known fifteen years ago, they probably would have named it something cooler. Ice is. Yeah, it's not that cool. Yeah, I mean gave his men excuses yet to pursue personal grudges and steal from people. One survivor recalled, quote, everything you have seen in Wild West movies was everyday life.

Here someone bumping off the husband and publicly taking the wife, or someone bumping you off and openly driving off with your car. So I hope we presented kind of a picture of how brutal a means regime was. Let's dig a little deeper into the man himself. You can't understand Idioman without understanding that he was great at fucking great that well, at least he needed everyone to believe that he was great at fun So one way or the other, it's important understand that that was a part of his

public image that was bad. Ladies now and and almost all like the only person, the only famous person I'm convinced who was ever actually good at fucking I was gonna say Marlon Brandon, but oh yeah, yeah, well Marlon Brandon makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was method so he was method Um anyway, Yeah, so uh, I mean was it was important to him that there'd be a public image that he was virile and good at sex. His former Minister for Health, Henry Kimba, said this besides

his five wives. Also, he had five wives, honestly for what I thought. Yeah, No, he's he's he's he's a conservative fellow. Besides his five wives, I mean, has had countless other women, many of whom have borne him children. His sex life is truly extraordinary. He regards his sexual energy as a sign of his power and authority. He never tries to hide his lust. His eyes lock onto

any beautiful woman. His reputation for sexual performance is so startling that women often deliberately make themselves available, and his love affairs have included women of all colors in many nations, from schoolgirls to mature women, from street girls to university lecturers. Which is who knows how true that is? It sounds like a lot of it. Definitely, definitely a lot, because there's a ton of stories from having husbands executed so

we could suck their wife. Um, but this is you know, his former minister of health giving what is this is what Idioman wanted people to hear about him that he's because this was important, of course. Yeah, I'm great at fighting and I'm great at fucking. Yeah, he sounds like World Chamberlain. There's just something about authoritarian assholes and needing people to believe they're tough and good at fucking. I want everyone to know I am bad at sex, which

means very ladies, good sex over there. Yeah, I'm trying to think about which of our presidents were definitely the bit because I hear JFK was terrible. Really, yeah, I've heard. I've heard lb J said JFK was terrible. Well, you can't trust that guy. You can't trust that guy was jealous and he called his dick jumbo, which means he did well, maybe that's true. Then I don't know. Nixon seems pretty bad. Nixon can't have been good, right, No, Um,

I feel like Teddy Roosevelt. Well he was in a wheelchair. That was FDR. Never mind, Well he was a big stick guy, right, it was a big stick guy. Yeah, that guy can suck. That guy could fun. And I feel like FDR was probably pretty good, but like he would have been like a hands and oral man. That's my guest for FDR. I think he leaves them satisfied. As what I'm saying, I don't think. Yeah yeah, um so idi Amin again had five wives. His favorite wife

was a lady named Sarah. He met her when she was eighteen and a go go dancer for the Revolutionary Suicide jazz band Um stories. All this time Eddie fell in love, but tragically, Sarah already had a fiance and she was pregnant, so when she gave birth on Christmas Day nineteen seventy four, it he just told everyone the kid was his and had the birth announced on state television. Sarah's fiance was not happy with this, but he died in our car crash immediately after this, so it worked out.

No suspicion but then at all Nope, just a random car crash, the like the day that he complains, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I shouldn't laugh there. I may be getting a little callous of all these stories. I mean it's hard not to disassociate a little bit. I mean, so far in the last hour, I've learned of many millions of people. Yeah,

it's it's it's horrific. Um so Idy I mean married Sarah Knight was a small private ceremony, but Idy was concerned that having a small private ceremony might be portrayed or might be seen as excluding the people of Uganda, so he remarried her in a gigantic televised ceremony. Yes or Era Fat was his best man. The banquet cost two million dollars, the banquet, not the whole wedding, just that which I would kind of want to check out it.

I mean, I've seen Super sixteen, you know whatever it's called. So President, I mean cut the red and wedding cake with a sword. Knowing his history, there's no chance he didn't also use that sword to stab people. Obviously, sword guys sort of the problem. That's how you know someone's trusted if they're a fucking sword guy. Machine eddie is a people's weapon. While you were learning about colonialism, I was studying a block change. Uh. So Idy had five

wives and something like forty or fifty children. Uh. He married his first two wives in the same year, nineteen sixty six, when he was twenty eight. One of those marriages went all right and produced several children, but his second wife, Kay, divorced him, and he murdered the best man and then murdered Kay. Her arms and legs were found in a sack in the trunk of a car, so Idi had her body sewn back together and marched around in front of his children and other wives, or

he didn't. So this is again where we get into some controversy. Because his kids are still around and talking today and do speeches and like several of them have have they don't necessarily doubt the crimes that were committed in their dad's reign, but they are all pretty consistent about the fact that no, he was a good dad and very normal around us. So it's possible this is

this story is a lie, like the witchcraft stuff. Hard to tell because again, his kids even today, are all pretty much he was He was fun um, so he might not have brought it home. I really don't know. I wasn't there. Yeah, okay, there's it's It's one of those things. It's impossible to know the truth their stories that he was brutal to his kids and fucking had corpses training around them, and then his kids say stuff like here's a quote from his son, it was fun

with my dad all the time. It was fun. His daughter, my muna Amin said he was such a lovely man, so good, so lovely. He never beats any children when he's at home. He just wanted us all to be on him. He's like a mother, a father, a sister, a brother in one. He loved music and he's always on his accordion singing. Wow, what a revisionist history. Yeah, I mean, it's also possible that he was a brutal monster everywhere outside of the home and was fine with

his kids. Yeah, and they just never heard about They heard about it, but again they don't. A lot of them don't deny that brutality of the regime. They're just like at home, he was a normal guy, which that happens. Like. You can find plenty of stories about people hanging out with Hitler and being like he was super nice and he was like my uncle. And yeah, people always say dictators are charismatic and stuff. I mean, even if we feel the same thing with celebrities. I don't really know,

but yeah, I I and I can't know. What we do know, and what we do know for certain is that Idi Amine played the accordion fucking constantly. He was apparently if you're an accordion guy, he was apparently good at playing the accordion and here's here's a picture of him doing the weird ol thing o. God right, it's weird that dorks are truly the worst people in the world because that guy's in the swords, accordions, bagpipes. This guy has a bad taste. Everyone with bad tish needs

to be called. And if he had grown up now, like, yeah, he would still play the accordion and have a bunch of swords, but he would also be able to talk to you about anime for sixteen hours. Oh yeah, absolutely, Yeah, I'm sorry anime fans, I mean, enemy is pretty cool, yeah, some of it. So the stuff Idie I mean is probably most famous for is again cannibalism, witchcraft in his obsession with Scotland, because that's like the sensational stuff for sure.

People we don't know again, that's one of those Yeah, we're about to get into that. Um. So it's an arguably true that he loved Scotland. There's a shipload of documented evidence of that. And maybe he just was eating some haggas and or they just wished it was exactly oh please eat some people stuff with that ship. It is very much up for debate as to whether or

not he was really into black magic and cannibalism. The rumors that he was in the magic and eating people started with the Begundans Uh and the Begundans where the people from South Uganda and they did not like the people from North Uganda Um. A lot of these rumors originate from one begund And who served in Idia Means cabinet. He wrote in his book, which was one of the major sources for the last King of Scotland, quote a

means bizarre behavior derives partly from his tribal background. Like many other warrior societies, the Kakwa Means tribe are known to have practiced blood rituals on slain enemies. These involved cutting a piece of flesh from the body to subdue the dead man's spirit, or tasting the victim's blood to render the spirit harmless. Such rituals still exist among the Kakwa. If they kill a man, it is their practice to insert a knife in the body and touch the bloody

blade to their lips. I have reason to believe that it means practices do not stop at tasting blood. On several occasions, he has boasted to me and others that he has eaten human flesh. He went on to say that eating human flesh is not uncommon in his home area. It's possible that this is true. The British noted that the Kaqwa engaged in quote sacrifices of humans and animals, but it's also worth noting that most of the claims

about cannibalism came from Idye's enemies. A major source for this podcast was an article from the University of Graneingen in the Netherlands titled idi Amine Icon of Evil. This article notes that the witchcraft and cannibalism myths may have started as a result of local racism within Uganda, so racism from southern Ugandans towards no Northern Ugandans quote. The southern Ugandans are particularly contemptuous of the Southern Sudanese and Newbies,

not of other northern tribes as wild and uncivilized. It is from them that we have reports, if I mean and his Newbies tasting the blood of their victims and eating their livers. And the explanation that's such a custom is either a nubie or coqua one, So we don't know. It's possible he licked blood it's possible he ate flesh. It's also possible that's just racism from people in the sun would argue, you know, you kill thousands of people,

that is worse anyway. I mean, like, I'm wouldn't be completely surprised if you know, he got into desecrating some bodies at all, It wouldn't be beyond the pale to assume.

But it's also I think this is something that happens in Western media a lot with these dictators where if you can get like that, there's a bunch of stories about the North Korean regime that are are bullshit that that have no basis in reality about like and it's always like the cookie ones about like ridiculous claims the Kim's made, and like the stuff that that sounds really funny,

like that you can laugh at. And some of those are true because like any authoritarian regime is going to have some silly stuff around it because it's a silly thing, um. But a lot of it's just lies, and it's the same thing. It's lies that make it seem like something other than what it is, which is a brutal dictatorship as opposed to like, no, it's this crazy cannibal man man who ruled the country. And it's like, well, no,

there's nothing really crazy. He's just a monster like all of the other That's less scary to me than just a person who knows exactly what they're doing and does it anyway. That's like if an oil tycoon or something. And then there was a rumor though, like did you hear that he litters? Yeah, he's running the environment. Yeah.

And I that's kind of why I wanted to dig into these myths about him a lot, because that's what most people know about Idio mean, which I think is less I think the fact that the idea that, oh, maybe this guy was a cannibal and a dictator is less interesting than like, this guy was trained to be a brutal dictator in the British Army who raised him to be a soldier and then abandoned him and his country to whatever was going to happen next, which I

think is a more accurate story. Um. And but that one isn't fun for Americans because it implicates all of Western civilization as opposed to some cannibal gotten in charge over there in Africa. Um. Anyway, that's that's you know, my thinking on the matter. Um, so obviously by this time, uh and you know, by the middle of his reign, kind of the bloom was off the rose. The British were no longer fans of idi Amin word if his

atrocities had filtered out to the world. Europe turned away, and idi did what he always did when someone questioned him. He flipped out and attacked. He declared himself conquer of the British Empire. He had T shirts printed up with his face on it and Conquer of the British Empire printed beneath, which is a pretty pretty pro move. He developed a love for having white guys, particularly British guys, bow to him. So there's a bunch of picture is

like this of British businessmen like I'm wearing oaths to him. Now, this is the first thing that oh, just away because it's about to get fucking better. Because at one point he made a bunch of British businessmen carry him around on a sedan chair while a crowd cheered, which is that's a solid move. Yeah, I do like that. Sorry not to support that. He's got a little he's got Okay, someone's holding an umbrella for him. Yeah, and that's the

kind of wackiness that we know went down. And again he's not all wrong, like the whiskey plane was a solid idea. Yeah yeah, um. So Eddie desperately wanted to be a major player on the global stage. He wasted no opportunity to wade into any global conflict that he could. When the Watergate scandal broke, he sent a letter to Richard Nixon and gave him advice on how to handle Watergate.

Nice quote. When the stability of a nation is in danger, the only solution is, unfortunately, to imprison the leaders of the opposition. Yea. The longer he was in power, the more unhinged in braggy he became president. I mean, started to inflate the stories of his military service, claiming he'd fought in Burma during World War Two. He offered to

marry Princess Anne of Great Britain. He also offered to become King of Scotland and lead the Scots to independence from Britainin Britain, for the most part, the international response to Idi Amine was laughter, the same kind of laughter you find today when people talk about ridiculous with Korean propaganda. Alan coren A British comedian had a popular column in Punch magazine where he'd write out fake idi Amine speeches

that were very racist. If you've got Spotify, you can find the album that was made based on these columns with a white guy doing IDE's voice. It is it was. I mean, this was like in the mid seventies. Um if you look up Idiomine on Spotify, you'll find the album and it's like infuriating because it's just it's joking about what was in reality a horrific, crime filled regime, making fun of the fact that Idioman talks funny, which he doesn't even talk that funny. He speaks better English

than I do fucking Uganda. Um so uh yeah. But this is again that's the international reaction is they're laughing at this guy, They're making fun of him. He's like, this horror show is playing out in Africa and it's being treated as kind of like a freak show to the rest of the world. Um so yeah. The caricature of idi Amine Um is based a lot in white European racism, but it's also based in some local Ugandan

regional racism. So they're north North of Uganda is basically the social equivalent of the American South and the well educated, well to do Southern Uganda's considered idi Amine to be like a hillbilly. They thought his accent when he spoke in Yugan and they thought his accent was painful. Um. So it's basically he was like to a lot of people in Southern Uganda. He was like if we had a president who came from the dirty South and talked like he was grew up on the body. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

That That is the attitude that like the Southerners have towards him. Um. In reality, Idioman was a pretty smart guy. He wasn't educated obviously, but he was. He had a lot of intelligence, because you don't carry out a regime like this and keep it going for eight years without that. Most of his actions were pretty logical. Uh. Mass murder is a time honored way to stay in power. Exiling the Asians tank Ugana's economy, but it provided itdie with a host of businesses that he could give away to

his supporters in exchange for their loyalty. And for a while his tactics worked pretty well, but he made more mistakes as time went on. One of those was alienating Israel. He had initially been friendly to the country, he'd trained there again as a paratrooper, but he wound up switching around and backing the Palestinian cause, which is fine, but

he also descended into horrific anti Semitism. In nineteen seventy two, the he told the UN Secretary General that Hitler had been quote right to burn six million Jews, and he promised to build a monument to Hitler in kampala Uh. He was eventually convinced to cancel this plan because everyone around him was like, that's bad idea, idio mean, but he continued pissing off Israel as the years rolled by.

On June nine, six and Air France flight with two forty eight passengers was hijacked by two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Now this was back in the day when terrorist plane hijackers didn't kill people as a general rule. They just kind of have the plane flown to an airport and hold everyone hostage until their comrades were released from prison or they got a bunch of money or whatever. This was like a common thing. There's a period of time in the seventies

where every week there'd be a new fucking hijacking. Um So, these particular hijackers and this plane most of the passengers there is Rali. So these particular hijackers land first in Libya and then at Entebbi Airport in Uganda. President I mean welcomed them enthusiastically. This proved to be a mistake when one week later Israeli commandos raided the airport, liberated the captives, and destroyed a sizeable chunk of the Ugandan air force while it was sitting on the tarmac. Yeah,

there's a movie called Raid on Entebbi about it. It's a very famous like commando raid thing. Um So, Itty flipped out of this. He'd already switched from ing pro is Real to pro Palestine, of course, but he went over the deep end. He had a seventy three year old Jewish woman and a you gun in hospital named Dora block Uh, pretty brutally murdered, and then he went on kind of a world insult tour. Um So, this is kind of a little bit and and there's growing

local resistance to him at this point too. So he's he starts to in the late seventies go off the rails a bit. Uh. He called the President of Tanzania a coward, an old woman in a prostitute. He called the President of Zambia an imperialist puppet and boot liquor. He called Henry Kissinger a murderer and a spy, which was pretty fair. Uh. He also said that Queen Elizabeth should send him her twenty five year old knickers to celebrate her silver jubilee. So he was like the semi

year old underwear Queen of England, which is I appreciate this. Yeah, that's that's solid. Uh. He steadily expanded his list of titles over the years. In nineteen seventy seven, he announced that he must now be addressed as quote his excellent see Field Marshal Al Haji Dr Idi Amine data life, President of Uganda, Conqueror of the British Empire, Distinguished Service Order of the Military Cross, Victoria Cross, and Professor of Geography. What a good tag at the end. This guy is funny. Yeah.

That professor of geography thing is really what sets it off. UM. On October thirty made the biggest mistake of his dictator career. He invaded Tanzania. Um. This was over a pretty useless piece of land like there was no good reason to attack the spot that he did. Tanzania counterattacked, and since their military was much more functional than the Ugandan military, the Ugandans were quickly thrown back. Next, Tanzania marched on Uganda. Aided by the Gandan Ugandan exiles, they moved to unseat

Ittie from power. For his part, Idi Amine announced that he now loved the Tanzanian president and quote would have married him if he had been a woman. This didn't work and did not turn back the Tanzanian army, so Idi Amine had to flee from power, first to Libya and then to Saudi Arabia, where he spent the rest of his life in exile. Uh somehow, not being a warlord anymore seemed to calm him down. He lived a quiet life, regularly visiting Mecca and living with just one

wife and several of his children. Yeah. Yeah, he's one of the ones who got away with it. Um Idi explained in a rare nineteen interview that quote, when I am no longer president, some of them say they don't want me. I accept it. Frankly. I have had one wife since and have found also to have one life is better. So idi Amine lapsed into a coma on July nineteenth, two thousand three. He was put on life

support at a hospital in Jetta. His family had begged the new ugun And government to let him return home to die. They were told he'd have to stand trial if he returned, So I mean he didn't go back, and in August sixteen, two thousand and three, Idi Amine died peacefully in a hospital bed in Saudi Arabia. And that's unfortunately not the end of the story or Uganda's problems, because President of the Ghosts is going to happen um. President of Bote returned after Iddie was ousted. Aboute was

not outwardly ridiculous. He didn't make crazy claims about the Holocaust or randomly insult foreign leaders. He didn't have a wacky title. What he did do was vastly expand the purges that Idi Amine had begun. While Amine had mostly targeted certain tribe members in the military and government, a Bote targeted huge chunks of civilians based on their tribe. He probably killed more people in his second term than

died during the entirety of Idi Amine's reign. Jesus A. Bote was eventually overthrown by a general named Bazello olauo Okello, who was violently overthrown by Yoweri Musaveni's Natural National Resistance Army in nineteen six. Musaveni is still the president of Uganda today. He had term limits abolished in two thousand five and removed the presidential aid limit in two thousand seventeen. Uganda has to this day never seen a peaceful transition

of power. Wow. So that's the story. That's a heartwarming time. It is it is uh And it's a tale where like I mean, Idiomine is the the organ through which all of this repression and violence was executed. But the real bastard of this is the British Empire in my opinion at least, Yeah, for sure. I mean, I mean I'll trace all the blame back to white people at any time, for sure. But man, I really just can't imagine living in a country or so much bloodshed is

like happening constantly all the time. Politically, Um, yeah, I would move away so fast. Well, And that's it's one of those things that how are you gonna? But yeah, how are you gonna? And it's you get all these people in Europe and the United States now because most of the people who like flee parts of Africa are going to wade heading to Europe because it's very it's easier to get there than it is to get to

the US. And you know, get this, like what is our We can't take all care of all these people. It's like, well, you could steal the ship for two hundred years, like and then leave them without because Uganda there at no point in prior history they were like kingdoms and states and whatnot all over Africa, but there was there never been a Uganda, Like all of these groups of people had never been forced together before the British did that. And if you're going to do you

shouldn't do that in the first place. But if you're going to do that, if you're going to force these people into a state, you owe it to them to like create a functional state before you leave. Which, yeah, it's up, it's real fucked up. Well, I hope you learned something today. I did somehow left more grim than than it came in. Um that's the fun of colonialism. But that's okay. I mean, like sometimes you got to know the monstrous capabilities of um what you know what

we can do as human beings to prevent it. Yeah, Um, jeez, I don't know. Yeah, it's hard to take a good lesson out of this, other than don't be a colonialist and don't take a people and train them to be soldiers and nothing else for a century. Yeah, don't. Um, what are some other things? Don't play bagpipes and play the accordions? Well that's okay, let's not attempt the swords. Let's attack the bagpipes aren't the problem here. Yeah, I don't know what else to learn. I mean with you

about accordions? Yeah, I mean I haven't watched Um, what's it called Last King of Scotland? Have you watched? Yeah, it's I don't. I didn't enjoy it very much. Is it too? Is it sympathetic or no? It's it plays into the brutality of one thing that does a decent job of this, showing you how he might have charmed people earlier. But I think it leans more into the sensational side of things, which eating people and stuff and it Yeah, and it does, isn't. It doesn't talk at

all about a means past in a meaningful way. And that's why I lead this by talking about British military policy and their colonies, because I don't think you can understand, I mean, without understanding where he and his people came from. Yeah, I mean that alone is interesting by itself. Is a story, I mean, not a not a fun story, but it's

definitely not a fun story, but it's an important one. Uh. And I will say, if you are starting a punk band in the near future, the Suicide Revolutionary Jazz band, it's pretty fucking they honestly sound like a scar bandy and look like one. They do look like a scar band. They're all dressed nice, they got their shirts tucked in. Ah man, I could go for some suicide revolutionary SCA music. Yeah. Um. I think the worst part of that story was that

he died peacefully. That is, it's always a bummer when that happens, because like we're I think a daffi is going to be running shortly before this podcast comes out, and that's a story where the monster gets Like, that's what you want to see happen to these guys as they get dragged out into the street and murdered by their own people. They sucked over. Yeah, I can think of a couple of people would like to see that happened to Yeah, yeah, whose names we won't give because

there are laws against that sort of thing. But there's it's hard not to want certain people dragged out into the street and at least like, you know, maybe not even killed, just pete on by dozens of people. Well, I guess there's nothing left for us to do but for me to ask you to cool. You could uh, you know, uh, maybe get some laughs from looking at some videos. I don't know how to transition this either

that hasn't videos on my website Bertti Rida com. You can follow me on Twitter at ao bro bro um, where I just usually complain about um. People can cat us in Hollywood and making some jokes and you can see me performs with jokes all around l A and um. You know, if you have any more questions, I will refer you to this guy because I don't know anything. You know, if you like complaining about casting, they did just cast a new Idioman movie. Uh yes, Scarlett Johansson's

gonna play him. You got me, you got me? Um. I'm Robert Evans. You can find me on Twitter at I write okay, just the two letters there, I get a book on Amazon called A Brief History of Vice. You can find that on Amazon. You can find this podcast at behind the Bastards dot com, where we will have pictures of the incredible Suicide Revolutionary Jazz Band and some other pictures from A Means Rain, as well as links to all the sources for this podcast. I really

do recommend reading that University of Gronigan article. It's a fascinating analysis of why Idi has seen sort of the way he is today and where he came from. Um so uh. You can also find us on Twitter and Instagram social media at Bastards pods, so so look us up, check us out. This has been behind the Bastards for the week I've been Robert Evans. Check back in next Tuesday, when we will be talking about someone else who is also terrible. H