Part Four: Prince Mohammed Bin Salman: The Tyrant of Saudi Arabia

Summary

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Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Prince Mohammed Bin Salman: The Tyrant of Saudi Arabia

Host: Brett (with guest Dave Bell) | Release Date: January 29, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode continues the deep dive into the rise, methods, and atrocities of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). Brett and Dave discuss MBS’s brutal consolidation of power, social “reforms” paired with ruthless repression, the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen, the crackdown on dissidents—including the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi—and the fantasy of utopian megaprojects like NEOM. The conversation sheds light on how MBS simultaneously projects himself as a reformer while ruling via fear, economic leverage, and violence.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The MBS Paradox: Energetic Reformer or Ruthless Tyrant?

• [05:43] Brett: MBS stands out in Saudi royalty for having energy, drive, and a lack of complacency.

  “Perhaps the key defining characteristic of Mohammed bin Salman that most explains his success within the closed world of the Saudi royal family is simply the fact that he's got energy and he wants to do things. I cannot overemphasize how lazy most of these guys are.”

• MBS is compared to a “nepo baby” who’s not afraid to get his hands dirty to achieve power.

2. Confronting the Religious Police: Real Reforms with Cynical Motives

• [06:59–14:00]
  • MBS strikes against the mutawa (religious police—or “fun police”) who had previously been untouchable, ending their power to harass and detain citizens.
  • The crackdown is popular, especially with Saudi youth frustrated by decades of oppression, but also serves as a method to centralize control.
  • Notable Quote [13:56], MBS (reported speech):

    “I am young. I don't want 70% of the Saudi population to waste their lives trying to get rid of this. We want to do it now.”

  • Brett frames it as a “broken clock situation”—MBS is a tyrant, but even he gets some things right.

3. Yemen: Catastrophe by Deliberate Policy

• [15:36–18:21]
  • Saudi intervention in Yemen (led by MBS) is described as a humanitarian disaster and possibly genocide.
  • Saudi government uses starvation as a weapon:
    • [16:13] Quote from Saudi diplomat (reported by Martha Mundi):

      “Once we control them, we will feed them.”

    • UN and independent groups confirm deliberate targeting of food supplies and civilian infrastructure.
  • [69:02–69:40]: Yemen war statistics:
    • 12,000+ civilians killed directly, mass starvation, cholera.
    • Over 233,000 civilian deaths.

4. Economic Crisis: The Illusion of Reform

• [18:21–24:17]
  • Oil price collapse; massive budget shortfall.
  • MBS tries austerity—cuts government salaries and subsidies drastically, triggering public outrage and eventually a “takesies backsies” reversal.
  • Memorable Analogy [23:24]:

    “If we were on a lifeboat...I'm gonna shoot you because I want all the food...then you realize there's no bullets: ‘Sorry, nevermind.’”

5. Family Purge and Game-of-Thrones Tactics

• [28:31–33:24]
  • MBS ousts rival Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef (“MBN”) via a palace coup: summons, isolation from guards and medication, pressured resignation.
  • Turki Al Alshik, the prince’s “hatchet man,” later runs the General Entertainment Authority and high-profile events like the Riyadh Comedy Festival.
    • [29:47]: “He’s not only in charge of entertainment...he’s been Salman’s hatchet man...He has a whole prison named after him.”
  • Comedians like Dave Chappelle and Louis CK perform at these festivals, raising questions about artists working for repressive regimes.

6. Corruption Crackdown or Power Play? Ritz Carlton Arrests

• [45:12–48:12]
  • MBS detains hundreds of royals/tycoons in the Riyadh Ritz Carlton, demanding they sign over assets in return for release—using torture, psychological abuse.
  • [48:04] Notable quote (NBC report):

    “This was a shakedown operation and a power consolidation operation... The Ritz detentions were designed to remind people going forward that their wealth and their well being would depend on the Crown Prince and not on anything else...”

7. NEOM: The 'Davos of the Desert' and Utopian Delusions

• [34:16–44:01]
  • MBS unveils NEOM—an insane $500 billion city as a giant wall, filled with robots and business-designed laws.
  • Brett & Dave lampoon the project as “dystopian cyberpunk,” likening it to failed libertarian city/big tech fantasies and Disney’s original Epcot dream before he bailed and built a theme park instead.
  • [36:20] Actual promo video described: “For too long, humanity has existed within dysfunctional and polluted cities... The Line will be home to 9 million residents...”
  • Reality: Costs spiraling, fundamentals unaddressed; project seen as doomed.

8. Jam-Packed Repression: Dissidents, Activists, and the Khashoggi Murder

• [54:03–67:53]
  • MBS continues to arrest anyone who challenges him, including progressives and those advocating for reforms he’ll later claim as his own achievements.
    • Salman Al Awda: Cleric evolving from fundamentalist to reformer, imprisoned, held solitary since 2017.
    • Women’s Rights: Dozens of activists jailed and tortured for advocating women’s right to drive—right as MBS basks in international praise for ending the driving ban.
    • Lujain al-Hathloul waterboarded, tortured; interrogators threaten sexual violence.
  • [56:00–56:21]
    • Jamal Khashoggi, influential journalist, originally backs MBS reforms until turning critical, flees Saudi for safety but is assassinated in Istanbul by a Saudi death squad.
    • Saudi agents trained in the U.S.—ties to private security contractors.
    • [67:42] Brett:

      “You don't bring a coroner along if you think you're gonna get this guy out of the building alive.”

9. Hypocrisy, U.S. Support, and the Limits of Reform

• [67:55–69:48]
  • Even in the face of Khashoggi’s murder, U.S. administrations debate whether to blame MBS, with Trump siding with the prince over his own CIA.
  • Brett and Dave highlight the global hypocrisy of media and business figures cozying up to MBS for money, ignoring atrocities.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Brett [07:59]:

  “These are the literal fun police. Right. And the men in his father's generation and MBN's generation would not fuck with these guys.”

• Dave Bell [14:14]

  “It's a broken clock situation.”

• Saudi official (read by Brett) [16:13]:

  “Once we control them, we will feed them.”

• Brett [13:56] (on MBS’s youth-driven reforms):

  “I don't want 70% of the Saudi population to waste their lives trying to get rid of this. We want to do it now.”

• Brett [27:34] (on “Free Ecstasy Town”):

  “My first move, I'm changing the country's name...from Saudi Arabia to Free Ecstasy Town...someone will provide the ecstasy. That’s not my job.”

• Dave Bell [37:01] (after NEOM promo):

  “So I love that they're like, too long have cities not been wall-based...not been big walls.”

• Brett [61:52]

  “He would do the minimum necessary, but he would also brutally punish anyone who made the mistake of embracing change before he did.”

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Major Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | |:--------------|:------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 05:43 | Brett on what sets MBS apart in the royal family | | 06:59 | MBS moves against the religious police, popular among youth | | 14:14 | Recognition of MBS’s reforms as a ‘broken clock’ moment | | 15:36 | Yemen war: blockade, starvation policy, deliberate bombing of farms | | 18:21–24:17 | Austerity: universal income cuts, public outrage, and political reversal | | 28:31 | MBS’s coup against Mohammed bin Nayef; palace intrigue | | 29:47 | Turki Al Alshik’s dual role: torturer and “entertainment czar” | | 34:16-44:01 | NEOM and the folly of Saudi megaprojects | | 45:12-48:12 | The great Saudi “anti-corruption” shakedown at the Ritz Carlton | | 54:03–67:53 | Repression and murder of dissidents, Khashoggi assassination, imported mercenary training | | 61:52 | On MBS’s performative minimalism and vengeful crackdown on genuine reformers | | 67:55–69:48 | U.S. complicity, international hypocrisy, Yemen death toll |

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Tone & Style

• Brett and Dave keep their signature irreverent, darkly comedic style, layering heavy history and atrocity with moments of absurdist humor and pop culture asides (“Free Ecstasy Town”, cats as cops, Star Trek fantasy sequences).
• While the laughter often serves as catharsis, the episode never loses sight of MBS’s brutality, the suffering of Saudi and Yemeni people, and the hypocrisy that enables it.
• Frequent sidebar jokes about American parallels, “libertarian boat cities”, and dystopian branding highlight both the universality and peculiarity of modern tyranny.

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Conclusion

The episode ends underscoring the hollowness and violence beneath MBS’s carefully crafted image as a ‘reformer’: the brutal crushing of dissent, performative progressivism, and an economy built on oil and shakedowns, not innovation. Brett and Dave close with an exhausted refusal to buy into the NEOM/Wall City hype, and a final plug for Dave’s own podcasts, all wrapped in their “broken world, gallows humor” signature.

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For Listeners New to the Series

This episode is essential listening for understanding the real mechanics of authoritarian consolidation and the finely tuned PR machine that allows powerful states (and their business partners) to whitewash atrocity in real time. Brett and Dave deliver both the big picture and the unsettling details in equal measure.

Transcript

[Podcast Announcer]

Call Zone Media.

[Brett]

And we're back. Welcome back to the behind the Bastards Mohammed bin Salman episodes extravaganza.

[Dave Bell]

Woo.

[Brett]

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how to introduce these episodes in an exciting way anymore. We're talking about bad people, the worst. And one of them is the current Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. When we left off last episode, he had started what was becoming a genocide in Yemen. He had partied with Pitbull and he was orchestrating the downfall of his relative, Mohammed bin Nayef, who was the crown prince before him. How we doing, Dave? David Bell, our guest.

[Dave Bell]

I'm doing well. I'm doing very well.

[Brett]

Is doing Bell or.

[Dave Bell]

I didn't have a new dream in between these episodes that I could tell you about.

[Brett]

That's probably.

[Dave Bell]

So it's just the same dream from before.

[Brett]

Yeah. That same upsetting dream. Sure.

[Dave Bell]

Yeah. It was a nice shower.

[Brett]

It's upsetting dream to me a little bit.

[Dave Bell]

It wasn't sexual.

[Brett]

That's good. The more you say it wasn't sexual, the more I believe it wasn't sexual. That's how telling someone something isn't sexual works.

[Dave Bell]

It was weird because, like, I don't dream about you often.

[Brett]

Thank you.

[Dave Bell]

I wasn't thinking about the fact that we were recording today and so I'm like, that's interesting. That's interesting that you made a cameo.

[Brett]

See, now I am hurt. Why don't you dream about me often, Dave? Am I not worth talking about?

[Dave Bell]

Here's what I'll start doing.

[Brett]

Thank you.

[Dave Bell]

When I go to bed, I'll look at a photo of you every night.

[Brett]

All right. That's good.

[Dave Bell]

Nothing weird about that.

[Brett]

Yeah. Thank you, Dave. I will continue to have one dream about you per week where we captain the USS Enterprise together. Oh, yeah? Yeah.

[Dave Bell]

We would do terrible things.

[Brett]

We would. We would. That is not going to end well for anyone on board the ship.

[Dave Bell]

We would keep my go to. Every time I be hit with like a moral dilemma or like a problem, I just go, beam them into space. Promise.

[Brett]

Moving on. Get those assholes into space right now.

[Dave Bell]

Yeah. Into space. Here we go. Just a trail of bodies.

[Brett]

The Enterprise, that's the ship that keeps beaming people into space.

[Dave Bell]

Yeah. One move.

[Brett]

I just watched the new Starfleet Academy, the first two episodes and it is missing that wherever these. There's all these bad guys. There's the guy from sideways on your should just be a space. Get his ass. Beam him into space.

[Dave Bell]

Him into space.

[Brett]

Yeah.

[Dave Bell]

So easy.

[Brett]

On God.

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[Brett]

You know who else was in the classic movie Sideways, Dave?

[Dave Bell]

Who?

[Brett]

Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

[Dave Bell]

Uh huh. That checks out.

[Brett]

Yeah, he was the. He was one of the two male leads in Sideways pretty much. Basically. Close enough, sure. So perhaps the key defining characteristic of Mohammed bin Salman that most explains his success within the closed world of the Saudi royal family is simply the fact that he's got energy and he wants to do things. I cannot overemphasize how lazy most of these guys are.

[Dave Bell]

I mean, that's America too, at this point where it's like, well, are they 80? No. Okay, that's great.

[Brett]

It's like, again, if you go into like, nepotism with like, the sons and daughters of like, Hollywood royalty, where when you get that one guy who's like, he's got the famous name and he's like, no, no, no, like, I will cover my body in shit and roll around. Does the role want me to be covered in shit and squirming around like a grub? I'll do it. I don't give. I have no ego about this. I don't give a fuck. And it's like, well, yeah, you're gonna have a career, Nicholas.

[Dave Bell]

Kanye, that was my Lily Rose Depp watching Nosferatu. And I was like, oh, you're willing to like, oh, you'll do weird shit.

[Brett]

You don't give a fuck? Yeah.

[Dave Bell]

All right, okay, we can work with that.

[Brett]

Yeah, yeah, you get to be a star. Mohammed bin Salman is like the Lily Rose Depp of the Saudi royal family. You know, a lot of people, a lot of people have been saying that.

[Dave Bell]

Yeah.

[Brett]

So in 2016, he continues both the war in Yemen and his conflict with Mohammed bin Nayef. And he launches a new war against one of the most powerful blocs in the kingdom of the religious police. Now, the mutawa, or haya, as they are also called, had been seen as almost untouchable by his predecessors. Right, These are the police of vice and virtue. These are the guys who are going around making sure you're not disobeying, like, the religious law. Right, Fun police. Yeah, these are the literal fun police. Right. And the men in his father's generation and MBN's generation would not fuck with these guys. Right? Like, they were scared of them. They really wanted them in their corner. But by 2016, things had started to change. More than 65% of Saudis were under 30. And the young men of this generation had grown up with access to the Internet and social media. They and their peers shared their frustration with the abuses of the religious police. Right. That were talking to each other about how annoying these fuckers were. Right?

[Dave Bell]

Right. They're on the Internet, they're like, hey, everybody else is having fun.

[Brett]

Yeah.

[Dave Bell]

Like we are talking about fun police.

[Brett]

Yeah. In the man who Would Be King, Karen House describes the fun police's mo. For decades, thousands of these men, often self appointed members of the Committee to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice, had roamed Saudi streets carrying a long stick, forcing women to cover their heads, herding Saudis into the mosque at prayer time, ensuring all shops and stores locked their door for half an hour at prayer time. And that western influence, like Barbie dolls or Pokemon cards didn't pollute Saudi youth in the waning year. Yeah, they're going after Pokemon cards.

[Dave Bell]

Listen, if you're, I know it's not the same thing, but if you, if you start a cult, right, one of the key things you gotta do to maintain that cult is make sure people are having fun. Right.

[Brett]

There gotta be something, right?

[Dave Bell]

Yeah, you just can't. Like, if you're like no Pokemon cards, it's like this is not going to last.

[Brett]

If you're saying no Pokemon cards but you can all wife swap, then you might be able to keep a cult going. But if you're saying no swipe wipe swapping and no Pokemon cards, what's gonna keep people there? Yeah, right.

[Dave Bell]

You're out of business very fast.

[Brett]

You're out of business. You gotta at least get them on drugs or something, you know?

[Dave Bell]

Yeah, let them have the goddamn Pokemon cards.

[Brett]

To continue from that quote. In the waning years of the late King Abdullah's rule, the Hiya had gotten completely out of control. Hearing music inside one family's car, the religious police chased the car until it rolled off an overpass, killing the driver and injuring his wife and two young children. A few months later, two young Saudis died when Haya members suspecting alcohol chased the young men's car, bumping it at high, causing the car to roll off a bridge. The religious police fled the scene. Still, six members of the Haya were later acquitted off all charges. Saudis tweeted their anger on social media. The Haya are bloodthirsty. Halal tweeted. Aher wrote. The Haya situation is similar to many governmental entities In Saudi, they all need restructuring and fixing. So these guys are just a menace, right? Where it's like they might be drunk. Ram them off the road, you know, like, they're. They're cops. All cops are kind of more alike than different, right? It's. It's a happy family situation, if you're okay.

[Dave Bell]

When I was a dishwasher, food stopped becoming food. It was just this thing, right? Where you're just like, I'm just doing this thing. When you're a cop of any kind, people stop becoming people, right? Just what happens. Which is why, I don't know, people should only be cops for, like, a few weeks at a time, and then we swap it out.

[Brett]

If you're gonna have cops, it should be a job where everyone is a cop for a little while. And because, you know, what doesn't get enforced then is bullshit rules, right? If everyone has to take and be like, wait, I gotta. I gotta enforce marijuana laws, no, I'm not doing that. Not doing that. Yeah, Yeah, I. Anything is better than having it just be like, a job that a group of people hold and to protect their power, need to, like, prot. Right. To continue doing it with even greater bloodthirstiness. And anything is better, let's think, is better.

[Dave Bell]

Just make cats cops. Cats just replace all cops with cats.

[Brett]

Especially every cat has a drone with a gun on it. So when the cat needs to shoot somebody, the drone just starts firing. Like, whenever the cat gets angry, it just starts blasting whenever the cat gets on.

[Podcast Announcer]

This sounds like a bad play.

[Brett]

Get down, get down. The cat's angry. Someone took away its food bowl.

[Podcast Announcer]

I mean, you're not wrong, but it's.

[Brett]

Still better than what we have, right? If protesters right now were. Instead of trying to fight squadrons of, like, armored police with tanks and machine guns, there were just a bunch of cats with robots firing blindly into the air because they hadn't been let out in long enough. At least it's an easier problem to solve.

[Dave Bell]

Mr. President, how did they get in here? How did they overthrow the government? Well, sir, they had raw salmon on them. Unfortunately, there was everything we could do. Yeah, there's nothing.

[Brett]

So MBS's first move in his war against the religious police was to ban them from stopping or detaining Saudi citizens in public. Great. First start, right? The thing that you were doing that was getting a lot of people killed, you just can't do anymore. You're not allowed to just fuck with people in the world. His predecessors had tried to curb the influence of religious hardliners but failed, most famously blocking for six years an attempt by King Abdullah to make it legal for women to work in lingerie stores selling underwear to other women. And like, the religious, the hardliner clerics would be like, no, women can't work. But then the problem is like, okay, so are men supposed to sell lingerie? So we have.

[Dave Bell]

We have lingerie better, but women can't work in the. Like, yeah, you know, the lingerie industry was like, guys, please, come on, you.

[Brett]

Gotta give us something.

[Dave Bell]

Killing us.

[Brett]

Like, what are we got? We just want to sell you people underwear. What is wrong here? Yeah. Where King Abdullah had been too frightened to confront the Mutawa directly, Muhammad bin Salman simply ignored their protestations and used his father's absolute power to crush any opposition. The public was wildly supportive of his actions, and conservatives found themselves alone. Perhaps MBS's single most important quality was his ability to understand how the youth of Saudi Arabia felt. It wasn't just the morality police. Regular citizens knew it was impossible to get anything done through the government without bribery. The poor majority of the country were forced to watch while a handful of princes siphoned away the oil money that was supposed to be funding social programs and infrastructure. Right. Like, people are pissed about this. And so MBS has a lot of support as he sets about dismantling his enemies, the forces he saw as holding Saudi Arabia and his own ambition back. He later said this of his decision to crack down on the religious police. I am young. I don't want 70% of the Saudi population to waste their lives trying to get rid of this. We want to do it now. Right? And this is. We're going from like the genocide and the orchestrating internal fights with his family where he's the bad guy to like, no, he's in the right side of this thing. These guys suck.

[Dave Bell]

It's a broken clock situation.

[Brett]

Yeah. The only thing that will get rid of them is a strong. He's effectively the king. Not literally, but is a strong regent who's being. Fuck it. That's not how we do things anymore.

[Dave Bell]

Right.

[Brett]

I'm in charge, Right? Like, nothing else was going to fix the situation because of how Saudi Arabia works. Right. I'm not saying every country is this way. We don't need a king to deal with the cops in our country. We could just stop having them be immune to everything, but whatever, by the end of this. Yeah.

[Dave Bell]

It's like when Trump gets something, right? It's like you don't have to hand it to him. You don't.

[Brett]

Yeah, it's like, yeah, he is right. Those, those little Japanese trucks are pretty sweet. We should be able to buy those here. Yeah, we don't need just F350s. We could use some little Ks or whatever they're called. Or the Korean, I forget which. Those little bitty trucks. We should. We need little bitty trucks here. He's right about that.

[Dave Bell]

Yeah, we need little bitty trucks.

[Brett]

Yeah. It's every. Anytime it's something truck related, he's got like a 50% chance of being right. Because he seems to just be a guy who, period, periodically sees trucks and goes, ooh, those are cool.

[Dave Bell]

Yeah, the guy seems to know trucks. Yeah, I would trust him.

[Brett]

I don't think he knows, he just likes them.

[Dave Bell]

If he was like secretary of Trucks, I'd be fine with that.

[Brett]

Yeah, it's like that video where he's inside that big dump truck or whatever pretending to drive around and I'm like, no, that looked pretty fun. I'd be making the little faces too. Like, who wouldn't do that?

[Dave Bell]

Most human moment for him.

[Brett]

Yeah. By the end of two. No.

[Dave Bell]

Just getting rid of the fun police. Anybody could have done it, but anybody.

[Brett]

Everyone should have before him. It's shocking that, but like, he's the guy who does it. Right. By the end of 2017, he had developed a somewhat earned reputation as a reformer. But he was also the architect of what the international community was openly calling a humanitarian catastrophe and potentially an act of genocide. A 2021 report by Watana for Human Rights, an independent Yemeni human rights organization, concluded that By November of 200415 the kingdom was aware of a food insecurity crisis in the regions they were striking. Over the next two years, MBS's Saudi led coalition increasingly and purposefully used hunger as a weapon to try and force Houthi surrender. Martha Mundi, an expert on Yemen, quotes a senior Saudi diplomat who described the coalition strategy. This way, once we control them, we will feed them. Huh? Huh? Is that the plan? Huh?

[Dave Bell]

Yeah.

[Brett]

Okay.

[Dave Bell]

I think that's a good plan.

[Brett]

You know you're the bad guys, right?

[Dave Bell]

Yeah.

[Brett]

Like, first off, that's bad guy talk. Yes.

[Dave Bell]

That supervillain. Yes.

[Brett]

I want to continue by quoting from a 2025 article in the Journal for Genocide Research, Unnoticing Yemen. A UN panel of experts similarly determined in a report published in January 2018 that the Saudi blockade is essentially using the threat of starvation as a bargaining tool and an instrument of war. The Yemen Data Project, a major source of information about Yemen, has documented the persistence of the Tendency of the Saudi coalition to target civilian places and infrastructure. Almost a third of all coalition airstrikes throughout the war have been aimed at such targets, especially at farms. Right, so they are. Food is a weapon, you know, that's. That's a lot of people. Not in a fun way. Not in a fun way. Not in a fun way. Not like in a food fight way. Yes, Dave.

[Dave Bell]

Yeah.

[Brett]

Despite each new atrocity, there appeared to be no end in sight. King Salman had taken power and brought his son with him. But they'd inherited an utter mess of an economy. Oil revenue accounted for 80% of the federal budget, but global oil prices had collapsed, leading to a 50% decline in revenue. One of King Salman's first moves was to bring in the kingdom's foreign currency reserves. With $100 billion budget deficit and the war in Yemen alone costing half a billion dollars a month, the World bank estimated Saudi Arabia could only afford to go on for four years before running out of money. There was no way to begin tackling the problem without cutting benefits to Saudi citizens. Much of this in the form of benefits to government employees. These cuts slash the average Saudi man's income by around 50%. That's how to the bone. Because these people, all their jobs are fake, and all their jobs are like, oh, you know how to use a typewriter? There's an extra 20% to your salary. Right. That's the stuff he's getting ready.

[Dave Bell]

We talked about that, where it's like, sorry, guys, nothing you do matters. So you're kind of, you know.

[Brett]

And the country's falling apart now because of the war the prince launched.

[Dave Bell]

Yeah, we want to do this war, so we're going to pay you less to do nothing. No one's a hero in this.

[Brett]

I guess no one's a hero.

[Dave Bell]

Also. I would be pissed. I'm like, listen, you promised me money to do nothing for a very long time.

[Brett]

Yeah, you promised me money for nothing. And the chicks for free, man. I don't have either.

[Dave Bell]

Exactly. Yeah, maybe I'm spoiled, but I don't want less money. So you can go do a war.

[Brett]

Yeah, and the chicks still aren't free, you know?

[Dave Bell]

No, no, no.

[Brett]

We're not even allowed to play guitar. Well, actually, now we are. We are allowed to play the guitar. Now. That's something. It's something. Right? In the man who Would Be King, Karen House writes. Despite warnings from some of his ministers that economic growth would grind to a halt, MBS proceeded to add insult to injury. The Saudi civil service minister took to television to Accuse government employees of working only an hour a day. These cuts were paired with slashes to subsidize water, power and gasoline. Fuel prices rose by 50%, bringing gas up to a horrifying 96 cents per gallon. One Saudi economist described the situation thusly. We had Christmas every day, and Grinch has stolen it again.

[Dave Bell]

No one's a hero.

[Brett]

No one's a hero.

[Dave Bell]

It's like, shit, man.

[Brett]

Like, should you have had Christmas every day? Is that a good way to run a country?

[Dave Bell]

So I'm all for living in a utopian society where it's Christmas every day.

[Brett]

But not when it's being paid for by oil money.

[Dave Bell]

That's what I'm saying.

[Brett]

And it's only Christmas for a tiny chunk of the population. Yeah.

[Dave Bell]

Where it's just this group at the cost of everybody else. That's not good. But I understand that it's. It's that sort of thing where everybody thinks they're the underdog of their own life. It doesn't matter how rich you are. You want more and you feel like you're not getting enough. So it's like these people clearly were living in their little utopia, and then they're like, sorry, life has to get slightly realer for you.

[Brett]

Yeah.

[Dave Bell]

And they're like, this is bullshit.

[Brett]

Bullshit. You want me to do stuff? Yeah.

[Dave Bell]

No.

[Brett]

So government spending was a huge problem, as was the fact that basically no citizens were working. But just annihilating everyone's income turned out to have negative impacts. By the start of 2017, economic growth was at 0.4%, a state of affairs most economists would describe as fucked up. Social media boiled with resentment. A protest movement began to bubble up. And on April 22nd of 2017, King Salman was forced to issue a royal decree declaring takesies backsies on all cuts and allowances, benefits and bonuses. The civil services minister was fired for insulting Saudi workers. And again, he's right. These guys are at most, in a lot of cases, doing an hour a day of work.

[Dave Bell]

You know, it's interesting because it's. There's certain things in this that I admire, and then certain things where I'm like, again, like, okay, like, I would love to not work much, get paid, but I also, like, it's definitely a sign that things are going bad. I do wish more governments issued takesies backsies.

[Brett]

Like I said, policy.

[Dave Bell]

Yeah, yeah, we're allowed to go, hey, everybody. Oops.

[Brett]

You know what? Department of Homeland Security was a mistake taking away the tsa. Just get on planes now. We'll figure it out, you know, it works like the 90s again. Just run right up to the plane, you know?

[Dave Bell]

Right.

[Brett]

But.

[Dave Bell]

But because that's not normalized, them doing that in this case is like, oh, you really fucked up, huh?

[Brett]

Yeah, no, you made a mistake. You realized that you were about to be overthrown.

[Dave Bell]

Yeah.

[Brett]

MBS was not fired after this fuck up. But his popularity and reputation took a major hit. Perhaps one reason why it was so hard for Saudi citizens to accept any cuts to their benefits was that they'd seen the Al Saud family's personal finances balloon during the same period. And they have a point where it's like, yeah, you guys aren't really working, a lot of you, or you're doing barely a job compared to what you're getting paid for. But the Al Saud family is worth an insane amount of money, and they do nothing at all. Right. Even as the government revenues have collapsed, they continue to be the family net worth. As the state's finances are in freefall, the Saud family net worth is $1.4 trillion. So I get why these people are like, we gotta make cuts. Are you fucking kidding me?

[Dave Bell]

Yeah. The story of everything, right? Where it's like the rich people like, sorry, you're gonna have to tighten the belt.

[Brett]

Yeah.

[Dave Bell]

I mean, I need, I need my super yacht. Sorry.

[Brett]

Look, man, if I don't, like, I can only eat one piece of steak per cow and we've got to burn the rest of the cow. And I'm simply not going to ride on the same private jet twice.

[Dave Bell]

Yeah. I'm not going to cow.

[Brett]

Yeah, absolutely. Now I will say $1.4 trillion is the net worth of the family that is spread. There's 10, like more than 10,000 descendants. Now it's not evenly split up. Right?

[Dave Bell]

Right.

[Brett]

But it is split up between them, you know, so it's not quite as insane, but it's still a lot, you know, so things.

[Dave Bell]

Things are tense, right?

[Brett]

It's like, things are tense by mid-2017. Yeah, yeah.

[Dave Bell]

Because they basically, it's like, I don't know, it feels like the same vibes of if we were on a lifeboat. And I was like, sorry, I'm gonna shoot you because I want all the food. Also, I don't like you. And then you realize there's no bullets. And you're like, sorry, nevermind.

[Brett]

You know what? That was just a test. Just a test? Yeah. Just testing, you guys. See if you were ready to share with me in running this boat.

[Dave Bell]

They're not wrong, but it sounds like he along with being like we're cutting your money, but also by being like, and you deserve to have your money cut. Like it's. Yeah, like you're not doing anything. So.

[Brett]

That's right. That's right. You're not doing anything. But you know who is doing something.

[Dave Bell]

Nope, sorry, I don't know.

[Brett]

Sponsors of this podcast, they're doing hard work. You know, they're earning their pay. If you let them run Saudi Arabia, they'll. They'll do it. You know, they'll run it Saudi Arabia.

[Dave Bell]

They'll definitely do it.

[Brett]

Yeah.

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[Brett]

And we're back.

[Dave Bell]

I'd run it too, by the way.

[Brett]

Food Times. You'd run it too? Yeah. I bet you could run it too. Maybe a. Dave? Yeah. What's your first move?

[Dave Bell]

I don't know if I can do it. I'm just saying I will do it. If someone was like, do you want to do this? I'd do it for at least a week. And then you'd never hear from me again. I would be dead.

[Brett]

It's.

[Dave Bell]

You know. But I'll do it.

[Brett]

My first move, I'm changing the country's name.

[Dave Bell]

To what?

[Brett]

From Saudi Arabia to Free Ecstasy Town, you know, and we just let the tourist dollars flood in. We let those Germans and Spaniards come on over, you know, someone will provide the ecstasy. That's not my job. They're in Free Ecstasy Town right now. Zero downsides.

[Dave Bell]

That's so smart. What if. Okay, hold on. What if, like, I named my apartment that, like, and put it on, like, got it on, like, Google Maps, as, like, Free Ecstasy Town? Because you're right. Is that if you do that and then people show up, eventually there will be free ecstasy. Exactly. It's a problem. That's.

[Brett]

I'm gonna come back in, like, two weeks and start the episode. So our friend David Bell's been raided by the de. He flew too close to the sun.

[Dave Bell]

That's just so smart. I don't know that's such a smart idea.

[Brett]

I think it'll work. I think it'll work. Anyway. Ads.

[Dave Bell]

And we already did ads.

[Brett]

Oh, we did. Are we back from ads?

[Podcast Announcer]

We were back.

[Brett]

I thought, what's wrong with me? What's wrong with me?

[Dave Bell]

Too much ecstasy.

[Brett]

By mid-2017, the king's son was in a very mixed position politically. He'd earned accolades as a reformer for his hobbling of the religious police and his seeming support for some social liberalization. But he was also the author of an unpopular austerity policy. The king and his son faced increasing resistance, both from the populace and within their own family. MBN, who'd made no secret of his critiques of MBS's policies, was an obvious rallying point for resistance. And so, on June 21, 2017, Mohammed bin Salman acted to take him down. Karen House writes, that fateful evening of June 21, 2017, Embian was called to a palace in Mecca. Once there, his guards were forbidden to accompany him inside, all phones were surrendered to palace guards. Embian was taken to a room where Turki Al Ashik, a contemporary and friend of MBS and now minister of the General Entertainment Authority, and others began bullying him to resign. Denied contact with his men and the painkillers to which he was said to be addicted, he finally succumbed early the next morning after Prince Khalid al Faisal, the governor of Mecca, urged him to obey the king. Huh. So that's how he gets rid of his cousin. Yeah.

[Dave Bell]

Wow.

[Brett]

Wait.

[Dave Bell]

Sheesh. That's. It was abrupt.

[Brett]

Yeah. Yeah, it was. It was super abrupt. Yeah. And by the way, that fella, Turki Al A sheikh, who is handling, like, the torturing of Mohammed bin Nayef, like, cutting him off from his guards and his painkillers and, like, forcing him to resign. The guy who handles all that, do you know what? He got more famous. He's become famous for doing more recently.

[Dave Bell]

Oh, no.

[Brett]

Maybe a hint. He's the minister of the General Entertainment Authority.

[Dave Bell]

What did he do?

[Brett]

He's the guy who ran the Riyadh Comedy Festival that all our favorite comedians.

[Podcast Announcer]

Oh, my God.

[Brett]

Yeah, baby. Yeah.

[Dave Bell]

Yeah.

[Brett]

He's. He's not only in charge of entertainment within the kingdom, he's been Solomon's hatchet man. Yes. Yeah. He has a whole prison named after him. Yes. The guy who paid Dave Chappelle $6 million.

[Dave Bell]

I mean, not surprised, I guess. I don't know. Nah. Did. Who else was. It was Louis CK at that.

[Brett]

Yeah, I think he was. Yeah. Pretty sure he was. Yeah.

[Dave Bell]

It's. It's the Simpsons moment with the burlesque house, and Barney comes out and they're like, oh, Barney. It's that. Where like, Louis CK at there. I'm like, yeah, yeah. No one was shocked, I guess.

[Brett]

Yeah.

[Podcast Announcer]

It's. What.

[Brett]

I don't feel any worse about Louis CK or about Dave Chappelle than I did previously. I both Feel about like. Yeah, yeah. I bet they. If you told me some comedians took millions of dollars from the Saudi royal family, those would have been my two first guesses.

[Dave Bell]

Right.

[Brett]

Not shocked.

[Dave Bell]

I wouldn't be surprised by a lot of comedians, frankly, because.

[Brett]

No, you're.

[Dave Bell]

You're a comedian. I don't know. It's the same with Pitbull at that thing where I'm just like, I don't like it, but I'm. I guess I'm not surprised by it.

[Brett]

I'm a little surprised by the. Well, because I think most people, if you say, like, you want to make $6 million for a day's work, you have to make peace with working for a really bad man. But all you have to do is something otherwise innocuous. Most people will do it, which isn't good. It's just $6 million. But if you have a lot of 6 millions of dollars.

[Dave Bell]

That's what I was about to say.

[Brett]

That's where it's like, what, like you're not starving? You don't have to pay for your mom's dialysis? Dave.

[Dave Bell]

And that's. If most people was like, I did it, I wouldn't be like, I'm disappointed in you. I'd say it's like, yeah, I mean.

[Brett]

You still had student loans. I don't know. I get it.

[Dave Bell]

Yeah. Can I have some? I guess.

[Brett]

Yeah.

[Dave Bell]

But, yeah, when it's an already rich person, it's just like.

[Brett]

Like, people didn't need that.

[Dave Bell]

Yeah, but that's rich people. I don't know.

[Brett]

That's rich people. That's how you get that rich. So to the international public, it seemed as if the heir apparent and most powerful man in the Saudi security state had completely collapsed overnight as a center of power. Now, as we've covered, Mohammed bin Nayef's position had been degrading for years. Right. He was not totally well. He did not have a grip on things. And MBS had been slowly cutting him off from his sources of power for several years at this point. So this is the result of a fairly long family conflict. For Most of the 21st century, Saudi Arabia had been ruled not just by the king, but by the Black Prince and another senior prince, a guy named Sultan who headed the defense ministry before MBS. All three of these men died between 2012 and 2016. So now, just like two years into King Salman's being the king, right, in 2017, he and his father have neutered the clerics and the religious police. They've eliminated Crown Prince Nayef and the other crown princes who might have acted as barriers to their total power were gone. They are the ones running everything. There are no other major power centers. They've done this in about two years. Right. So this is a very successful consolidation of power.

[Dave Bell]

Yeah, that's some Game of Thrones shit. Like that's.

[Brett]

Yeah, it really is, yeah. Now all they had to do was discipline a squabbling cadre of lesser princes and officials, some of whom had supported rival princes and others of whom may have eventually represented a threat themselves. More to the point, they were all corrupt. And King and Prince Salman both knew their continued support would hinge on being seen as fighting corruption. In the fall of 2017, Mohammed bin Salman spoke before a major investment conference in Riyadh that had earned a reputation for being the Davos of the Desert. In a bid to attract foreign investment into the kingdom, he deliberately played down the country's connection to Wahhabism and announced that By June of 2018, Saudi Arabia would finally allow women to drive. Hey, what a reformer. Huge move. What a feminist icon. Mohammed bin Salman.

[Dave Bell]

It really is like if you have a society where like, I don't know, people are running around stabbing other people randomly all the time as policy.

[Brett]

Like, like the United Kingdom. Sure. Yeah.

[Dave Bell]

Like a leader shows up and they're like number one, stabbing. Yeah, we would. It didn't. It wouldn't matter how like not progressive they were. We'd be like, good for them. I like them. I'm gonna vote for them. Like, it's just. Yeah. Really low bar is my point.

[Brett]

Extremely low bar. The. The bar is in the fucking below the toilet. It has been flushed into the sewer. Right, yeah. So this is also not quite the promise that it seems now he avoids bringing up. And nobody present feels pressed to ask about the Saudi women's rights activists who are already imprisoned for campaigning for the right to drive on stage at the Davos. Like, there's already women in. Nobody's like, what about them? Are they getting out? And MBS doesn't say shit about that. The next thing he brings up on stage at the Davos of the Desert event is an exciting history making new project. Neom or neom. A city built as a one titanic wall stretching from the Red Sea to the mountains. I heard of this wall sized skyscraper covered in solar panels. The inside is a whole climate controlled city, people. It's going to be like the perfect living place for human beings. And our colleague, Wall Town. Right?

[Dave Bell]

Yeah.

[Brett]

Per the book MBS quote, businessmen would write the laws and entice the world's top minds to innovate on Saudi soil. Planning for a post carbon future and taking advantage of the Saudi sun. The city would be powered by solar energies and staffed by so many robots that they might outnumber the human inhabitants. Neom Mohammed bin Salman said would cost $500 billion and be a place for dreamers. It was not an economic development project, but a civilizational leap for humanity. At that point, the lights dimmed and a video like this one played. And Sophie's gonna, gonna display that for you now, Dave.

[Dave Bell]

Ah, sweet.

[Ad Voice 1]

For too long, humanity has existed within dysfunctional and polluted cities that ignore nature. Now a revolution in civilization is taking place. Imagine a traditional city and consolidating its footprint, designing to protect and enhance nature. The line will be home to 9 million residents and will be built with a footprint of just 34 square kilometers. And we are designing it to provide a healthier, more sustainable quality of life. The line's communities are organized in three dimensions.

[Dave Bell]

Man. So I love that. They're like, too long have cities not been wall based, not been big walls.

[Brett]

Also, cities don't live in harmony with nature. Unlike a giant line, right? Unlike a huge silver wall that cuts off birds from their migratory patterns.

[Dave Bell]

Oh yeah, birds are gonna be smacking into that thing. It's so tough because like when, when, when I first heard of Wall City, right, I'm like, that's cool in cyberpunk. And like that's fun. Then watching that ad where they take a city and cram it, I was like, oh, right, that's dystopian. That's, that's, that's Blade Runner, right?

[Brett]

And it's, there's some like, bits of wisdom in that. Like denser urban developments are a lot easier on the environment than sprawling ones. Sure, there's probably a future. One of the suggested futures of how we would build cities is that they are. Which doesn't mean of low quality, but like that there that you have, like, there's a lot more space for nature. No one is suggesting a giant wall hundreds of feet high and dozens of miles long. Like, that's an insane thing to build.

[Dave Bell]

It's neat because it's like what Blade Runner would have lived in. This is the thing, this is the issue I have with everything from the goddamn cybertruck to this, which is that I love this. I'm not embarrassed to say this. I love the look at the cybertruck. I love that bullshit futurist aesthetic. I know it looks like shit objectively, but all These dildos, it's the same problem, which is like, they're like, I want to make a world like Star Trek. And I think, oh, okay. So number one, we get rid of money. And they're like, no robots.

[Brett]

And it's like just a lot of robots.

[Dave Bell]

Yeah, we.

[Brett]

Just a lot of robots and tall.

[Dave Bell]

Right. They want to make it look like Star Trek. They don't want to actually make it Star Trek where it's actually like, oh, we, we. We eliminate, like money and we. We pour a bunch of efforts into medicine and lifting up the lower classes. No, none of that. We just want fucking cool, smooth things. And like, I get it. So do I.

[Brett]

But.

[Dave Bell]

But I'd rather have the other stuff first.

[Brett]

Yeah, wouldn't we all?

[Dave Bell]

Yeah. Wall City. I'm like, I guess. I mean, I. There's too many of us. We should stay out of nature's way. But yeah, it's who's doing it. And again, it's clearly that. They're just like. They started with like, clearly someone who's like, wall City. That's cool, right?

[Brett]

And then that's a great idea.

[Dave Bell]

And they went from there.

[Brett]

We may do a dedicated episode about this later because we didn't have time in this, but this is impossible. The project is already run into terminal issues like it is. Cost overflows are massive. The kingdom's financial situation today is still not good because again, every effort to transition off of being entirely reliant on oil money has failed. And they never really got over a lot of these central issues that were massive problems for the country when MBS took power. Like, they've been patching over them, but there's still problems. And the goal was to get a bunch of foreign investment to make this thing possible. Again. They were looking at $500 billion and it's likely it'll cost way more than that if they were to actually finish this thing. They've dug a bunch of holes, they've started construction. It's never going to get built. It's impossible.

[Dave Bell]

They're starting with the. The conclusion and not getting there. It's again, like the cyber truck, I think looks cool, but it's clear that he started with the look and then the insides are shit and don't make any sense. So it's like you're not starting with that fundamental idea of like, how do people live? How should we. How should we build a city more efficiently? It started with what if Wall.

[Brett]

Make that we're going to build the city of the future where like a modern Society, you know, built by businessmen. All of the world's innovators will want to live here. It's like, but like, alcohol still illegal and women. Right. Can't, like, don't have shit together first.

[Podcast Announcer]

This is like a very non Original idea. Man's like, what if I start a city? What if I make my own town? Like that. That's a very common thing, I fear. And if you meet that guy, go, please leave me alone. And then tase them.

[Dave Bell]

It's a. It's a teenager's dream where it's like, I. You draw a character where you're like. And he has a cool sword and he's got, like, cool armor. And then you think of, like, what's his personality? Like, you're. You're going backwards, right? Where you're like. And it's that. Where they're just like, cool wall city. But our actual. What they said, designed by businessmen. The laws.

[Podcast Announcer]

Imagine meeting that guy at a bar. Yeah.

[Brett]

Designed by businessmen. Yes.

[Podcast Announcer]

Just imagine meeting that guy, not knowing anything about him. And the guy comes up to you and is like, yeah, I'm gonna build this city. The line, it's just like one really big wall, right? You'd be like, please get away from me. You're terrifying.

[Dave Bell]

I'd be like, are you Peter Thiel? Are you Peter Thiel right now?

[Brett]

No.

[Podcast Announcer]

It's like, classic libertarian shit.

[Dave Bell]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Brett]

It is such a libertarian boat city.

[Podcast Announcer]

Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dave Bell]

Again, I'm not.

[Podcast Announcer]

Which again, could be cool if it was not just like, every single time. It's like, the worst people in the.

[Brett]

World are like, no, I would live on a boat if it was like a pirate radio kind of situation, because that movie. But I'm simply not gonna live on a boat with a bunch of bitcoin guys.

[Dave Bell]

I'd rather like. That's the thing is, like, okay, if we can't get the good futuristic stuff, I still would be. It would be cool if my house looked neat, you know, like, if I had some cyberpunk brutalist house. Like, that's something at least. But the best version of this has ever been Walt Disney designing Epcot, being like, I'm gonna make a future city. And then it got too hard, and he's like, you know what? I'm gonna make a theme park.

[Brett]

Yeah.

[Dave Bell]

Goals, you know? He was like, okay, I'm not the guy to make a future city. The experimental prototype city of tomorrow.

[Brett]

Turns out that sucks ass.

[Dave Bell]

Yeah, I'll just put some fucking rides in there.

[Podcast Announcer]

He's like, not tomorrow, but Tomorrowland.

[Dave Bell]

Yeah. Like, good on him.

[Brett]

As we've Famous good guy, Walt Disney.

[Dave Bell]

Famous good guy.

[Brett]

The real hero of these episod.

[Dave Bell]

It's a nice reminder that these rich dildos have been trying to make cities.

[Brett]

For a while because they all want to prove they can do it better. They all want to prove they know what's wrong with society, but what none of them understand and so why this is impossible is that it's hard to make a good city or a good country because people are messy and don't get along. And if your whole thing is, I don't understand people or like to listen to them, you're going to fail. It's that.

[Dave Bell]

And it's also like, Disney famously was also like, you know what I hate zoning laws. These rich people, they also just don't like following the rules of law. So they're like, oh, what if I made a city? And then it's, everybody will love my cool city. And then everybody has to do what I say.

[Brett]

Yeah. And then you forget to have any measures to prevent the outbreak of cholera. And so everybody dies of cholera.

[Dave Bell]

It's why every libertarian city. I feel like every pitch falls apart when you go, okay, and what do you think the age of consent will be there?

[Brett]

Yeah.

[Dave Bell]

Like, because it's always a dark answer. And you're like, see, that's why I.

[Brett]

See the age of consent. Like, who's gonna be in charge of the poop? What's gonna happen with the poop? You know, where's the poop going? Right.

[Dave Bell]

Where's the poop going?

[Brett]

Yeah. If you're ever hanging out in, like, an alternate living situation or where someone's trying to, like, build their own community, and the first thing they show you or close to the first thing isn't. And here's our toilet solution. Those people are going to fail, Right?

[Dave Bell]

Yeah. Unless it's all around Poop City.

[Brett]

Unless it's poop city.

[Dave Bell]

My idea of our city, it's all poop oriented.

[Brett]

There you go, Dave.

[Dave Bell]

Yep. You take showers with your buddies. Okay.

[Brett]

Sorry. Wow. Sorry. Thanks, Dave. So two weeks after going on this slightly fevered Steve Jobs style rant about how the future was a big line city in a country where most people didn't think TV should be legal, Mohammed bin Salman, well, well, powerful people didn't think TV should be legal, Mohammed bin Salman launched his final gambit towards consolidating absolute power. He'd spent the days since the big Davos in the Desert event sending his Secret police out to arrest and transport hundreds of the most powerful people in the kingdom to one location. And this included multiple members of the royal family, as well as billionaire financiers who had helped to build the nation's economy. These men were taken to the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh, one of the finest hotels in the world. It was locked down for normal business. Its staff was replaced by security officers and secret policemen. Guests were made to surrender their cell phones and devices. They were separated from their guards and sometimes vast fortunes. One of these men was Prince Al Walid Bin Talal. He was the most famous businessman in the kingdom. A billionaire, great grandson of King Abdulaziz. Prince Al Walid was as protected a nobleman as you could imagine. He was called by the royal court one morning and ordered to visit the king. Another billionaire, Waleed Al Ibrahim, had found himself in the same situation a day before. So these are guys who should not have been vulnerable to something like this, right? But the reality is, and King Salman knows this, these guys are not as rich in reality as they seem to be on paper. Because for decades they'd relied on the Saudi state purse and public funds to prop up their bad investments and smooth over any mistakes they made. And all of the richest people in Saudi Arabia were doing this. This is part of why the economy was in the shitter, is these gu start making bad bets and they're using the kingdom as a checkbook to cover their asses. So this mass detainment that King Salman orchestrates of all these guys sends a message, none of you are untouchable anymore. And I want to quote from a summary of what happened by an NBC. From an NBC report by Dan Deluce, Ken Delaney and Robert Windrom. The involuntary guests were told they had to sign away large chunks of their assets to be released. The detention involved both psychological abuse and in some cases, torture. Current and former U.S. officials say the move, described by Saudi authorities as a crackdown on rampant corruption, allowed the Crown Prince to tighten his grip and sent a shockwave through the kingdom's elites. This was a shakedown operation and a power consolidation operation, said one former senior US Official who was in office at the time. The Ritz detentions were designed to remind people going forward that their wealth and their well being would depend on the Crown Prince and not on anything else, which is why it was so upsetting for many in the royal family, said the former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

[Dave Bell]

What was that a quote from?

[Brett]

This is from an NBC report.

[Dave Bell]

I just love involuntary Guest. Perfect journalist.

[Brett]

Speak volumes. Yeah, yeah. Voluntary guest of the Ritz Carlton. Yes. May have been tortured. Involuntary guest. You just call them prisoners at this point. But this is what brings us to Mohammed bin Salman's most notorious crime, although certainly not his worst. The brutal murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Now, Jamal, if you. If you haven't heard much about this guy, he came from almost as rarefied a social circle as Mohammed bin Salman himself. His grandfather, a doctor, had treated MBS's grandfather, the king. He was a close relative to billionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, who was involved in like 80% of the shady deals that took place in the 1990s. Jamal got involved in the Muslim Brotherhood while in college and he worked as a journalist for an English language paper out of Jeddah. Once he graduated, he winds up on the ground floor of reporting on the Mujahideen's resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Khashoggi arguably crossed the line from reporter to participant during at least one part of the conflict. He became a well known figure within the world of Islamic militancy and secured an invitation to talk with another influential Saudi militant, Osama bin Laden. Right, so this is a journalist who's reporting on this, you know, jihad against the Soviets. He at least at one point crosses from being a journalist to being a combatant. And as a result, he has a lot of clout with these other militants, and so he gets to hang out with bin Laden. Now, ultimately, Khashoggi winds up disillusioned by the failure of the revolution in Afghanistan. He had been a guy who had hoped we'll create something better than what had existed before if we can kick the Soviets out and instead we get the Taliban. And Khashoggi's not delusional. He can see the Taliban is bad. And so he comes home being like, well, that didn't fucking work right. Shit, what do I do with my life now?

[Dave Bell]

It's tough. It's tough when your buddies become the Taliban.

[Brett]

Yeah, it's tough when your buddies become the Taliban. Nobody wants that to happen to their buddies. Dave. No, I'm happy that you've continued writing for the Internet as opposed to becoming the Taliban. Ban. Right.

[Dave Bell]

No, I had that crossroads, but, yeah.

[Brett]

It would have been logistically confusing too. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. So when he returns home to Saudi Arabia, he's arguably the most influential journalist in the Kingdom. He's one of them. And he's developed close working relationships with several highly placed members of the royal family. And he spends the next couple of decades as both an influential critic and pillar of the power system. So he is integrated tightly within kind of the upper strata of Saudi Arabia. He's very well regarded. He's also someone who can periodically critique what decisions that are being made by the powerful in Saudi Arabia. And he sees himself as like a mouthpiece for the poor in Saudi Arabia, for the working class. As a result of that, he can occasionally speak some truth to power, right? Or speak truth to the rest of the world about what's going on in Saudi Arabia. That's at least how you'll see this guy written about speaking of people who speak truth to power. These ads will speak truth to the greatest power in the world. Your Wallet Wow.

[Dave Bell]

Not my wallet.

[Brett]

Not.

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[Brett]

And we're back. So Jamal Khashoggi, after a period of time as one of the more influential journalists in Saudi Arabia, is going to do kind of the most dangerous thing you can do in the kingdom, which is express support for reforms that everyone knows are necessary but that the crown prince and king haven't embraced yet. Right? He's going to be ahead of the curve on some important things, and that's going to make him a lot of enemies, ben Hubbard writes. He was appointed editor of Al Watan newspaper and used it to push for women's rights while criticizing the role of the religious establishment. He didn't last long. After Al Qaeda bombings killed 25 people in Riyadh in 2003, Khashoggi penned an editorial attacking not only the terrorists but the clerics who gave them power. Jamal wound up driven to the United States, where he would live at time through the coming years whenever things got too hot for him. Back in the kingdom, he was predictably a big supporter of the Arab Spring, which further caused consternation among the powerful during the rise of isis. Khashoggi compared the terrorist movement's ideology to the kingdom's own Wahhabist beliefs. He initially supported Salman as king and was bullish on the reforms that he and MBS introduced against the religious police and endemic corruption. So when MBS first comes to power, Khashoggi is a big backer because he sees this guy as kind of the answer to his prayers, someone who will stick up to the worst and most like conservative elements in our society. Right? This guy might be a sign of hope. Khashoggi acted for a while as a dogged defender of the new king. To international critics, he was important enough to be included in a public meeting between Mohammed bin Salman and a group of clerics and intellectuals in 2016. Ben Hubbard reports that MbS talked to the crowd about his plans for economic and political reform. Khashoggi asked him, why don't you talk about any of this in public? If you're in favor of all these reforms, why won't you tell people about them? Why are we having this meeting in private? And MBS says, in short, you can just write about what I've said here, put it in the newspaper, tell everybody what I'm saying. Right. I'm giving you permission to make this public. Right.

[Dave Bell]

Okay.

[Brett]

So Jamal is like, all right, I fucking will. And he takes this as an invitation to report openly on the prince's crusade to modernize the kingdom. This would prove to be something of a mistake, man.

[Dave Bell]

Because it's like, yeah, go write it. I'd be like, do you really want that?

[Brett]

Never trust the prince when he's like, oh, I want a journalist to hold my feet to the fire. Are you kidding me? Accountability. That's what kings love, man.

[Dave Bell]

I mean, I'm not blaming him. Like, it's just like. I. It's just like. You can see it all unfolding here.

[Brett]

Yeah. Because I would see where the same thing.

[Dave Bell]

I'd go, like, oh, okay.

[Brett]

Yeah, okay, I guess.

[Dave Bell]

Yeah.

[Brett]

In the fall of 2017, having silenced his most powerful detractors, MBS security forces launched a crackdown on their little enemies. 80 dissidents were arrested. Most were clerics who were either too conservative or too progressive. The rest were political reformers and, as Ben Hubbard writes, individuals who had annoyed MBS and his aides in some way or another. One was an economist who had questioned the wisdom of privatizing Aramco. Another was a poet who had called on journalists to avoid harsh language and to dispute dispute with Qatar. So these are just guys getting arrested for bugging, you know, Turkey or. Or Mohammed bin Salman, you know? Yeah, this is just for any reason.

[Dave Bell]

I'm gonna do my petty tour here, my asshole tour.

[Brett]

I've gotten rid of the big enemies. One prominent detainee was a cleric named Salman Al Awda. In his younger days, he'd been an extreme fundamentalist, and he'd spent time in prison for demeaning the royal family, arguing against their right to rule. In more recent years, he'd become almost a progressive, hosting popular shows on YouTube and television and building a massive younger following on social media with generally positive, upbeat videos about Islam and modern life. What really got him in trouble was his growing embrace of constitutional monarchy. Al Awda framed this as an attempt to help the Kingdom and House of Saud avoid an Arab Spring of their own. He gently suggested that the government might try to listen to its people a little more, rather than governing by the whims of Mohammed bin Salman and his ailing father. He was arrested and has been held in solitary confinement From September of 2017 up to the present day. His brother complained about the arrest on Twitter and has also been detained. If his case ever comes to trial, he could get the death penalty, although given the fact that his health is deteriorated behind bars, that may not be. He could be dead now. I don't think we know. Wow, there's a lot of guys like that. The whole Ritz Carlton affair was carried on in a very hush hush manner by the Kingdom security forces. They obviously wanted everyone to know the broad strokes of what had gone down and there were specific names they wanted publicized. But the government never released a comprehensive list of names and only accused them vaguely of intelligence activities for the benefit of foreign parties and engaging in espionage while having contact with external entities. Their Muslim Brotherhood was named as a specific example. Long term consequences ranged from prison terms to home detention. Some people were let go entirely with the equivalent of a warning. Nearly all spent days or weeks detained at the Ritz without any charge or clear idea of what crimes there were experiments expected to answer to. Some were certainly executed, although it's impossible for us to make any clear estimates about how many people suffered want punishments.

[Dave Bell]

The crime was bugging him. It was bugging him.

[Brett]

The crime was bugging him. Bugging him? Yeah, bugging him or other people like you. Yes, the two great crimes. On June 24, 2018, Saudi Arabia officially lifted its ban on women driving. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, fresh off being released from the Ritz, praised the move on social media and went on a public drive with his daughter and granddaughter. He tweeted, there is no doubt that the thoughts of my brother, Mohammed bin Salman led to this great result. Women have now taken off, gotten their freedom. That's all they needed was to drive. But that May, mere weeks earlier, MBS's police had carried out a massive crackdown on women's rights activists. Ten women and seven men at least were arrested over their work campaigning to end the driving ban that Muhammad himself, bin Salman himself had ordered in day. From an article in the Guardian, Amnesty said that according to three testimonies it obtained. Some of the activists were repeatedly given electric shocks and flogged, leaving some unable to walk or stand properly. In one instance, an activist was hung from the ceiling. Another testimony said one of the detained women was subjected to sexual harassment by interrogators wearing face masks. Jesus. So these are. This is like weeks before he ends the ban. And their crime is not that they want the band in. The crime is that they're advocating. They're saying that the country's doing something wrong, that a law needs to change because it's wrong. And that's criticism. We can't have that. No, sir.

[Dave Bell]

It's just that it's that fucking. That vibe, right? The like hashtag girlboss vibe, where it's like on top of just some of the. The worst things ever, where it's just short circuits your brain where they're like patting themselves on the back at the same time they're doing this.

[Brett]

Yeah, it's just setting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You hate to see it. A Saudi female race car driver. And again, there's this. There's weeks long PR push. In the wake of this, a Saudi female race car driver is given her license in a grand ceremony in Riyadh and allowed to take a celebratory lap through the capital. Weeks before she would help to open the French Grand Prix, journalists were warned that she would not make any comment about women's rights. This eloquently showcased Ben Salman's attitude towards social progress. He would do the minimum necessary, but he would also brutally punish anyone who made the mistake of embracing change before he did. And he expect to be right.

[Dave Bell]

It's just, I'm gonna give you what I give you, and you better not ask for more.

[Brett]

And you better not have asked for what I'm giving you previously, because he.

[Podcast Announcer]

Wants people to like him. He wants to be worshiped.

[Brett]

Yeah, you're gonna praise me. Every step of the way you're gonna be thanking me for what I've given you.

[Dave Bell]

I mean, we had a discuss. You know, when we legalized weed, it became this thing of like, maybe we should let the people in jail for that. Yeah, like it's. It's similar, but except if you say that, you'll be executed, right?

[Brett]

Yeah. Yeah. You shouldn't say that. So. Yeah. Luane Al Hath Lul had gained notoriety in 2014 when she was arrested for trying to drive her car from the UAE into Saudi Arabia. She was released after more than 70 days in prison. The month after Salman was made king. This was initially seen as a reason for optimism towards the new king and his son. Al Hathlul had continued to speak out against the kingdom's laws and participated in a major foreign documentary that criticized Saudi Arabia's human rights record. She'd been living overseas with her husband when she returned home in 2017 and was arrested as part of MBS's wider crackdown on disaster. She was released and expanded the scope of her activism, pushing against the kingdom's guardianship laws, which made women basically legal minors in perpetuity. She was invited to speak at the un, where she directly called Kingdom representatives out for denying the existence of guardianship laws. This was the straw that broke the camel's back. A month after this, she was kidnapped from her home in Abu Dhabi and flown to Saudi Arabia. She was released after a month, but forbidden from leaving the country. Then, just before the driving ban was repealed, she was swept up in a mass arrest with other prominent women's rights activists. And this is like part of this, this big sweep that I had talked about just a second ago, right? Punishments for these activists and their supporters ran the gamut from jail time to travel bans to torture. The kingdom's captive news media embarked on a campaign of slandering the reputations of those incarcerated. And some prisoners, including Al Hathloul, were tortured by officers of the Rapid Intervention Group Group. This was a recently assembled team of black ops guys overseen by a guy named Saud Al Qahtani and operated as the personal enforcers of Muhammad Bin Salman. Anyone who annoyed him was fair game for kidnapping, torture and murder. The women were kept in tiny rooms with covered windows. They were taken to be interrogated and tortured frequently by men who mostly wanted to humiliate them. They were sexually harassed a lot. They were shocked with, like, cattle prods. They were just beaten the old fashioned way. El Hath Lul was waterboarded on several occasions. Al Qahtani oversaw her torture directly. Sometimes he would threaten to rape her repeatedly and throw her body in the sewer. This is the kind of stuff that they're doing. And they're doing this during Ramadan. He and his men are torturing her throughout the night and they force her to eat after the sun comes up when she's not supposed to be eating. So, yeah, this is pretty gross stuff, right?

[Dave Bell]

I don't know, Robert. Cause Dave Chappelle said it's easier to talk in Saudi Arabia.

[Brett]

It's easier to talk in Saudi Arabia.

[Dave Bell]

Unless you're a woman who wants to try because of wokeness here they don't have wokeness. Jesus fucking Christ. That is horrific.

[Brett]

Yeah. It would be. Operatives of the same Rapid Intervention group that Mohammed bin Salman called upon to murder now dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He had written critically of the prince's Ritz Carlton kidnapping spree the previous year and about the ongoing detention of women's driving advocates. What he didn't know was that mere months before MBS started his campaign to destroy dissent, he sent agents of his Rapid Intervention Group, mostly military veterans, to the US so they could train with a private security firm. The tier one group, per the New York Times, the mercenary firm, quote, is owned by the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. The company says the training, including safe marksmanship, encountering an attack, was defensive in nature and designed to better protect Saudi leaders. One person familiar with the training said it also included work in surveillance. Yes, sir.

[Dave Bell]

The good man.

[Brett]

And it's Cerberus Capital Management have a private army that they're using Mohammed bin Salman's goon squad.

[Dave Bell]

Rich people for the longest time. It's the weirdest thing that. How.

[Brett]

How.

[Dave Bell]

They're just like Palantir. Like they're just. You know what? We're not going to even murder co. Yeah. We're just. Let's call it like it is. It's like the only honesty they have. It's so weird.

[Brett]

Yeah, yeah. My new capital management firm, I Just Shot a Baby Incorporated. Yeah, yeah. Named after the time I shot a baby.

[Dave Bell]

Holy shit.

[Brett]

It's great stuff. So Khashoggi himself had fled Saudi Arabia in June of 2017, having seen the writing on the wall of the Ritz. He had escalated his criticisms of the regime and NBS in particular, and had launched a series of projects with the aim of collecting and amplifying foreign dissent against the government. Because he was too clever to fly back into the country, Saudi operatives had to nab him overseas in order to stop his inconvenient criticism. Saud Al Qahtani, MBS's trigger man, is known to have organized the effort to take out Khashoggi. They finally caught him in Turkey. A 15 member intervention group team fell upon the journalist as he visited the Saudi consulate in Istanbul seeking papers to make his marriage to his fiance official. While she waited outside, the tame attacked him. The kingdom would later claim their job was just to take him back to Saudi Arabia. But he resisted and so was injected with a large dose of something that killed him. His body was then dismembered. Mbs, the government insisted, had no Knowledge of any of this. Subsequent investigations and reporting have revealed that one member of the negotiation team was a coroner explicitly hired to dismember Mr. Khashoggi's corpse after he was killed. Which would suggest they never wanted to take him alive. Right. You don't bring a coroner along if you think you're gonna get this guy out of the building alive.

[Dave Bell]

Who among us was like, we just wanna. We just wanna talk to him. Oh, damn it. We dismembered him.

[Brett]

Yeah. Ah, fuck. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

[Dave Bell]

Good God.

[Brett]

So we don't know exactly what went down in the room, but we have a pretty good idea. And all of the evidence shows Mr. Khashoggi was assassinated, dismembered and disposed of by a team that had been sent to Turkey to do just that. All credible experts believe Mohammed bin Salman gave the orders. And that's kind of where we leave things off. There's more to say. I mean, there's a lot more to get into the Trump years and stuff, but. But these are the broad strokes of how he came to be where he is. Right. Our current president has even broken with the conclusions of his own CIA to insist that MBS is probably innocent. And I don't know, do we trust the CIA or do we trust Donald Trump here?

[Dave Bell]

Yeah, no, it's just a real, like, you've identified a bastard, but it really resonates of like the other. All the people who fucking are doing business with this guy and being like, oh, it's great. There's. It's like, oh, fuck all those people.

[Brett]

Yep, yep, yep. Because, you know, the tempo of operations in Yemen with Saudi Arabia is a lot lower than it was. But the damage from the peak of operations was catastrophic. Per an article in genocide watch, in 2021, Saudi strikes have directly killed over 12,000 civilians. Only half of hospitals continue to operate. Saudi naval blockades have cut off food and supplies. Thousands of children have died of starvation. A cholera epidemic afflicted 800 civilians and killed thousands. 80% of the population depends on humanitarian relief. The Ameni Archive and Oxfam report that the Saudi led coalition has systematically destroyed 130 bridges essential for delivery of humanitarian aid. Houthis have also prevented food aid from reaching populations in areas they control. At least 233,000 civilians have died in Yemen civil war. Right. So cool.

[Podcast Announcer]

Horrific.

[Dave Bell]

Not. Not good person. I will not be subscribing to the Wall City. Yeah, sorry.

[Brett]

No, no. And I won't listen to his podcast when it comes out.

[Dave Bell]

Yeah, I was surprised because you talk about all these people who are just getting paid a lot of money and sitting around. I was like, surely a lot of podcasts. Yeah, a lot of terrible podcasts.

[Brett]

Call it the Soundcast. You know, you got a name right there.

[Dave Bell]

Ban. You did it.

[Brett]

Well, Dave. Gotta plug anything.

[Dave Bell]

I don't know. Okay. Oh, gamefully unemployed. That's the podcast network I co run with Tom Ryman. And we talk about movies and TV and you know, stuff like that. The X Files. I am the head writer of some more news which is a, you know, it's like a new show on the YouTube. And that's it for now, maybe more in the future. Someday I will be able to say other things. That's it.

[Brett]

Excellent.

[Podcast Announcer]

Very cool.

[Brett]

Well, everybody say other things with us and to yourself and go away. The episode's done. Bye.

[Dave Bell]

Get out of here. Here.

[Podcast Announcer]

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Full video episodes of behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips in our older episode catalog, continue, Continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com BehindTheBastards we love about 40% of you, statistically speaking.

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[Brett]

Lenovo.

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[Dave Bell]

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