Podcast Summary: "This Guy Sucked" – George Pitt-Rivers with Dan Hicks

Podcast: This Guy Sucked
Episode: George Pitt-Rivers with Dan Hicks
Date: October 2, 2025
Host: Dr. Claire Aubin
Guest: Prof. Dan Hicks

Overview

This episode dives into the life and legacy of George Pitt-Rivers, a British aristocrat, eugenicist, and fascist, as well as the broader history and ethics of museums, monuments, and the “inheritance” of colonial violence—especially as it relates to human remains and artifacts. Host Dr. Claire Aubin and guest Prof. Dan Hicks (curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum and author of "Every Monument Will Fall") explore how Pitt-Rivers exemplifies the persistence of colonial mindsets and practices in cultural institutions, the dangers of centering “bad guys,” and the urgent need for transparency and transformation in how we reckon with the past.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Focus on George Pitt-Rivers?

• The episode problematizes the very act of centering notorious figures:
  • Dan Hicks: “Sometimes when you're telling these histories, the challenge is not to center the bad guy, but actually to talk about all those other people who are part of this story who maybe have been unnamed or denamed or dehumanized.” [09:12]
• Host and guest agree: the point isn’t to re-lionize a villain, but to use his story as a lens on institutional violence and inherited legacies.

2. Disciplinary Backgrounds: Contemporary Archaeology & History

• Both Aubin and Hicks begin by defining their work as focused on the “now” and the near past, marked by a commitment to interrogating what endures and is remembered.
• Dan Hicks describes himself as “the world’s first professor of contemporary archaeology,” focusing on how material things help us understand the present. [01:40]
• They discuss four intersecting disciplines: archaeology, anthropology, art, and architecture, and how they've historically been co-opted for imperial or fascist ends. [06:30]

3. The Pitt-Rivers Family Legacy

• Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers (George’s grandfather) was:
  • A pioneering archaeologist, ethnographer, and soldier.
  • Founder of the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford, established with material gained from colonial exploits and wealth traced to Caribbean plantations and the slave trade. [20:05]
• Hicks details how the family's inherited fortune was built on the suffering of enslaved people, and how Augustus built a theory of “cultural supremacy,” which would haunt the disciplines of anthropology and archaeology. [21:57–26:29]
  • Aubin: "Glory...is almost always built out of human suffering." [21:27]

4. George Pitt-Rivers: Life & Infamy

• Born 1890, George (“Joe”) Pitt-Rivers was a British Army officer turned eugenicist, fascist, and funder of far-right movements, including Oswald Mosley’s Nazi-aligned British Union of Fascists. [15:00]
  • Connected to elites: cousin to Winston Churchill, in-laws with British aristocracy, related to the Mitford sisters, Sonja Orwell, and banking families. [34:27–36:19]
  • Notable for anti-union actions in South Africa and fervent support for Nazi Germany (attending Nuremberg rallies, congratulating Hitler, parading in swastika regalia). [37:17–39:00]
  • Wrote anti-Semitic, anti-left tracts promoting notions of "Judeo-Bolshevism" and biological/cultural supremacy.
  • Instrumental in the hardening of anthropological “race science” and eugenicist thinking, especially via self-fashioned fieldwork in Australasia and Oceania.
• Upon release from internment as a Nazi sympathizer after WWII, George returned to Oxford and donated a human skull “chalice” to be used ceremonially at Worcester College—a tradition that lasted until 2015. [17:15]

5. Museums, Human Remains, & Colonial Violence

• Augustus Pitt-Rivers founded not only the Oxford museum but also a second, private museum in Wiltshire. Both amassed looted artifacts, including Benin Bronzes and human remains, including the aforementioned skull-chalice of an enslaved Caribbean woman.
• Hicks’ central argument: what museums inherit is not neutral. The artifacts and even the organizational structures themselves are formed by—often continue to perpetrate—colonial and white supremacist violence.
  • Hicks: "Multiply it now and think about that extreme action [using a human skull as chalice] continued in an Oxford College for 70 years without anyone undoing it. How many other actions are there that we inherit from colonialism via fascism into the present that just carry on without anyone really daring to challenge them?" [47:58]
• The continued legality and prevalence of human remains in private and public collections:
  • "It's entirely legal still today for somebody to buy a human skull or an object like that at Sotheby's." [47:58]
  • Raises questions about institutional transparency, ethics, and the dehumanization still present in museums globally. [51:23]

6. Memory, Monuments, and What Falls (or Doesn’t)

• Hicks’ book, "Every Monument Will Fall," argues that the reckoning with colonial monuments, names, and collections is intergenerational and ongoing, but not radical erasure—it is about exercising the democratic right to reshape memory.
  • The need to “not confuse the image of the man with the man” (in debates over memorials, statues, and the right to forget/remember). [30:20]
• The “culture war” over history isn’t new; it’s a long-standing tactic that weaponizes memory, mixing up memory and history, objects and people. [55:36]
• The removal or re-contextualization of statues (e.g., Edward Colston in Bristol, Cecil Rhodes) is both symbolic and practical, showing that “fallism” movements eventually succeed through collective, ongoing efforts. [60:05]

7. Present-Day Connections and Calls to Action

• Aubin and Hicks encourage listeners to question what is being memorialized and to demand transparency from local museums about human remains and collection practices. [69:53]
• The ongoing legacy of eugenics, white supremacy, and colonial science isn’t just history—it is continually renewed unless challenged.
  • Hicks: “There's nothing more patriotic, I mean, not nationalistic, than returning an object from a museum, than saying we can change our memory culture, than, you know, saying that we can update our academic discipline so they're relevant for the world in which we live.” [67:36]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Centering the Marginalized:
  • “It's always a choice when you invoke someone's name.” (Dan Hicks, 07:39)
• On Legacies Built on Suffering:
  • “The cost of all of these things, of someone becoming very wealthy ... is human suffering.” (Claire Aubin, 21:27)
• On the Power of Memory and Monuments:
  • “This is the point in history where there is an active … what does the monument do? … It makes you confuse the image of the man with the man.” (Dan Hicks, 30:20)
• On Museum Collections and Human Remains:
  • “How many other actions are there that we inherit from colonialism via fascism into the present that just carry on without anyone really daring to challenge them?” (Dan Hicks, 47:58)
• On Culture Wars and History:
  • “You can't make any change in the museum. You can't return an object, but you can't even rewrite a label. … To change your memory, you're canceling history. That makes no sense at all.” (Dan Hicks, 55:36)
• On Democratic Rights and Memory:
  • “We should have a democratic right to shaping our memory culture, not this weird example of extreme involuntary memory where we have the memories of a whole bunch of, like, 1890s Victorians forced upon us.” (Dan Hicks, 60:05)
• On Active Engagement:
  • “Go ask your local museum what human remains they have and what their policies are regarding them. It's important that they also ... be encouraging this transparency in the spaces around you...” (Claire Aubin, 69:53)

Key Segment Timestamps

• Introductions & Disciplinary Conversation – 00:00–07:23
• The Ethics of Naming and Centering – 07:34–11:43
• Discussion of Book Influences and Memory – 12:23–14:39
• Who Was George Pitt-Rivers? – 15:00–18:05
• The Pitt-Rivers Family & Colonial Wealth – 20:05–26:29
• Race, Eugenics, and Cultural Supremacy – 26:29–39:00
• Museums, Human Remains & the Skull Chalice – 39:34–51:23
• Sanitization of Violence and Institutional Response – 52:12–59:02
• Culture Wars, Memory, and Monumentalism Today – 59:02–63:45
• Hope for Change & Calls to Action – 63:45–69:53
• Closing Thoughts: Decentering the Villain – 69:53–70:44

Final Thoughts

Through the case study of George Pitt-Rivers, Aubin and Hicks deliver a nuanced, unsparing look at how violence, racism, and white supremacy are embedded in not just the “bad guys” of history, but the very structures and collections of our institutions. The episode advocates for pushing beyond demonization to ask: Who is memorialized? Who is erased? And what do we demand of the institutions around us?

Takeaway:
Listeners are urged to be proactive—ask questions of museums, advocate for transparency, and recognize that questioning and reshaping memory culture is not only necessary, but overdue.

Further Resources:

• Prof. Dan Hicks: Bluesky: @profdanhix | Instagram: @profdanhicks | danhicks.uk
• "Every Monument Will Fall" (book & audiobook)

Podcast produced by Multitude.
Support and episode archive: patreon.com/thisguysucked