Part Four: How Lawrence of Arabia Invented Modern War
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November 21, 2024
TLDR: Robert discusses T.E. Lawrence's life, focusing on the malevolent aspect of his actions, particularly a severe war crime.
In the fourth episode of the podcast series discussing T.E. Lawrence's life, titled Part Four: How Lawrence of Arabia Invented Modern War, key themes of war crimes, moral dilemmas, and the complexities of Lawrence's legacy are explored. Host Robert takes listeners through the latter chapters of Lawrence's life, examining not only his military practices but also his controversial support for the Balfour Declaration and Zionism, which are critical topics in the ongoing discourse about Middle Eastern politics today.
Lawrence's Military Actions
Brutality of War
The discussion opens with a stark portrayal of Lawrence's violent actions during the Arab Revolt:
- Lawrence commanded forces that exhibited increasing brutality, ordering soldiers not to take prisoners, leading to widespread executions of the wounded and surrendering Turks.
- Historical accounts, such as those by Scott Anderson, present Lawrence as a commander whose judgment deteriorated under pressure and trauma.
Key Incidents:
- Lawrence’s own involvement in battle escalated as he took part in massacres, highlighting the moral degradation war can impose on individuals.
- The conflict in Dara, where Lawrence ordered his men to kill Turkish prisoners and civilians, stands out as a major war crime and a point of contention regarding his character.
The Complicated Legacy of T.E. Lawrence
Support for the Balfour Declaration
The podcast delves into Lawrence's shifting stance towards Zionism:
- Initially ambivalent about the Balfour Declaration, he ultimately saw Zionists as potential allies in advocating for Arab independence post-war.
- This alignment with Zionism is particularly scrutinized in light of current events in Gaza, prompting reflections on the implications of his support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Critical Perspectives
Experts in the episode express differing views on Lawrence's impact:
- Some historians emphasize his role as a betrayer of Arab interests, noting that his actions led to disillusionment among those he purported to help.
- Others argue that he genuinely sought Arab independence, but his methods and eventual compromises under British imperial interests undermine his noble intentions.
Quotes from the Podcast:
- "Lawrence ordered no quarter be given and we turned our Hotchkiss machine gun on the prisoners..."
- "He was shattered, he was very depressed, seeing all of his hopes go down in flames."
Psychological Toll of War
The podcast also reflects on the psychological impact of warfare on Lawrence:
- Lawrence's mental state deteriorated significantly after his traumatic experiences.
- Engulfed by guilt and perhaps PTSD, he struggled with the consequences of his actions and the realization that his efforts might have been in vain.
Historical Re-evaluation
Modern Scholar Perspectives
The conversation touches on the re-evaluation of Lawrence's actions by contemporary scholars:
- Works by historians reflect a more nuanced understanding of Lawrence's motivations and the socio-political contexts in which he operated.
- Lawrence's writing, including his memoirs, complicates the narrative of a straightforward imperialist, depicting his struggle with personal morality amid the chaos of war.
Conclusion
The episode closes with reflections on the complexity of Lawrence's legacy, suggesting that:
- Lawrence embodies the moral contradictions of war, demonstrating how the desire to do good can lead to horrific outcomes.
- His actions prompt reminders of the political complexities involved in foreign interventions, raising the question of whether outsiders can effectively influence local conflicts without negative repercussions.
Final Thoughts:
- Listeners are left to ponder the enigmatic figure of Lawrence of Arabia, whose life story raises essential questions about heroism, complicity, and the devastating consequences of war, both historical and present.
This summary captures the multifaceted discussions surrounding T.E. Lawrence, maintaining relevance to current geopolitical issues while exploring the broader implications of his life and actions.
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Cool, so media. What's murdering 75 men in hand-to-hand combat? My Margaret, have you killed 75 men in hand-to-hand combat? I have been told to not comment on this until I'm more certain about a few steps. I was fucking following you into war so fast. I'd be like, yes. Yes, boss. Where are we going?
To me, grab my axe. Let's go. That's going to be conditional for me on what kinds of men you count when you're killing, right? You know, like outta didn't count Turks. You know, do you count Turks with you? Kill them in hand to hand combat? These are the questions that I need to know. Yeah. The chuds are the ones that are not certain count. You don't count. No, no chuds. Yeah. Yeah. I refer to my truck as a national. Yeah. And people think I refer to it as a truck truck because it looks like a truck, a chudwood drive, but actually it's just very good at.
Anyway, I would have been a truck guy. I think we can all agree on that. Yes.
I know, it's tragic. He was born for the highlucks. Oh, my God. Can you imagine how much Lawrence would have loved the highlucks? I got my own. This guy who was like trying to tell me about why it's worth it to import a highlucks. Absolutely. You don't have to convince me, brother.
The cost of importing the high, he went over all of the prices of all of the importing the Hilux and I was like, there's no longer seems worth it. I thought the point of it was that it was cheaper than the other Toyota trucks. Yeah.
The point of it is that it's a Hilux, you know? That's just got some flair, you can't replace. It has high classiness, it's in the name. Yeah, I do feel some, I can understand Lawrence better now that I've gone into battle in the back of a Hilux in the fucking Arab world. Driven across Syria, yeah. In an up armored Hilux, yeah. That is a good life experience to have for really getting T.E. Lawrence.
Yeah, it would have been a lot of fun, probably, if we got in the blow up a bridge or two, but that wouldn't have been helpful in the situation we were in. No, just a strategic scientific. And I have no idea how to really do that. I would just blow up the bridge. Yeah. Yeah. Now, when we discuss T.E. Lawrence, particularly when we try to answer the question, was he a bastard, you know, sitting at our computers in the fall of 2020? Have we been forgetting to do cold opens? Haven't we, Sophie?
We just do them and then Daniel cuts them in later. Daniel cuts them in later. Well, he's a hero and I don't know. I don't know. I don't. Just Dan. Sorry. I just sit. It's fine. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder what's the main. Daniel counts. Yeah. It depends. I still don't know. I don't know what kind of men Daniel counts when he when he when he's killing men. So she doesn't count men. It's pretty impressive. Wow. Wow. Only only the women you kill. Okay. Yeah. That's good to know. I would never kill women.
Yeah, that's what Sophie just never kills anyone by Sophie's standards. Yeah. Woke Swashbuckler who only counts the in-b's he kills. Men and women don't count to me. Just the they-thems.
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Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So when we discuss T.E. Lawrence while sitting in our computers in the fall of 2024, one thing probably stands. What?
That wasn't even a joke. I know, but so funny. One thing stands above every other matter, which is his support for the Balfour Declaration, particularly his support, because that was not made. He did not help make that, but he is a supporter of Zionism in this particularly post-war period.
When all of these European powers give their official support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, Lawrence is not initially on that side, but he's going to wind up on that side. Given what's going on in Gaza right now, it's probably impossible to avoid having this dominate your thoughts on the man's legacy, and that's not entirely wrong.
We are going to talk about his role here because it's significant. But it's important to note that at the time, his feelings on Zionism are not what any of his critics, including in the Arab world, saw as the most problematic thing about the man. If you were a Westerner or a Turk, the top argument in your Lawrence's evil ledger probably would have been the war crimes. And so we're going to talk about those first.
The gist of this story is that after Lawrence escaped the Turks, the forces under his command exhibited increasingly brutal behavior on the battlefield. He started ordering his soldiers not to take prisoners, which is against the law. And in several cases began executing wounded men himself as they lay bleeding on the battlefield. He would just walk around battlefields afterwards, shooting guys in the head, doing decross, doing de-gross. Yeah. Okay.
which is, you know, bad. You're not supposed to do that. I mean, arguably in a lot of these cases that may have been the kindest thing to do, but it's not legal to do that. Yeah. So he's cooing some de Graz. He's killing people. Scott Anderson writing for Smithsonian Magazine describes how his judgment seems to have degraded as well. And the general way this often gets credited to like the fact that he has just been gang raped, right? That like this kind of his mind breaks after that.
Quote, he attacked a Turkish troop train, despite being so short of weapons that some of his men could only throw rocks at the enemy. If this was rooted in the trauma at Darah, it seems he was at least as much driven by the desperate belief that if the Arabs could reach Damascus first, then the lies and guilty secrets he had harbored since coming to Arabia might somehow be set right.
So that's kind of the debate here is like, is he traumatized because he's just been raped? And as a result, he's making all of these very rash moves. He's becoming increasingly brutal in battle. Is it more that he's desperate to try and he's traumatized because he knows that he's kind of betraying his friends and he's trying to make things right by getting them to Damascus before the war ends, you know, in order to kind of cut off Sykes Pico at the knees, right?
I think that's a strong argument to me because he wants to be a moral man and he knows he's not. So if he can find a loophole to loophole himself into morality by killing everyone. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's the only thing he can do. There's also this argument that Lawrence describes himself as a virgin and he is someone who his friends insist he has no discernible sexual leanings.
and maybe there's this, the fact that it's forced upon him, like he has an extra strong reaction to it. We just will never know, you know, the actual answers to this. He did go to, he did, he went to less rapey schools than a lot of other British boys of his, of his era. Like I think that is kind of built into a lot of that school system though. Yeah. But we don't, I have no evidence as to whether or not anything like that happened to Lawrence. He certainly doesn't write about it.
Yeah. So even if you hold to the argument that Lawrence lied about the rape and maybe he would have lied about that in order to explain why he was like obsessively trying to get the herbs to Damascus because that was kind of some like light treason against his own side.
Whatever's going on here, it makes total sense that his mental state would be degraded by this point. He has spent more than half of his time in Arabia, deathly ill, sick with plague and heat stroke and catastrophic dehydration. He's experienced harrowing combat at close quarters. He has blown his camel's brains out and been flung into the hot desert sands during a battle. So yeah, I mean, just not weird that he's kind of losing it at this point.
And as Anderson notes, he's also weighed down with guilt over the fact that all these guys are fighting and dying with him may be for nothing because his government might betray them. This all culminates in late September in an attack on a town called Dara where Lawrence had been if he was raped. This is where that happened, right?
So this is part of a general offensive that he is carrying out with Allenby that's meant to coordinate with an attack by Allenby on Palestine in the north, right? Lawrence and his Bedouin allies are supposed to cut off the Turkish avenues of retreat by taking the railroad junction at de Ra. So one of the arguments here is that this is where he claims to have been tortured. So maybe what he's about to do is him taking vengeance for that attack. And I'm going to quote from Anderson again.
After coming upon the village of Tophas, where the fleeing Turks had massacred many residents, Lawrence ordered his men to give no quarter. Throughout that day, the rebels picked apart a retreating column of 4,000, slaughtering all they found. But as Lawrence doubled back that afternoon, he discovered one unit had missed the command and taken 250 Turks and Germans captive. We turned our Hotchkiss machine gun on the prisoners, he noted in his battlefield report, and made an end of them.
Lawrence was even more explicit about his actions that day in seven pillars. In a madness born of the horror of Tophis, we killed and killed, even blowing in the heads of the fallen and of the animals, as though their death and running blood could slake our agony.
Whoops. Yeah. He's going full like corn berserker here. You know, he's just massacring people. And it's, you know, the people he's massacring had also just massacred a bunch of civilians. It's a very ugly war. Like war cry, plenty of war crimes to go around here, right? But this, this slaughter of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of prisoners and wounded men would have been a massive war crime in any theater of world war. That's enough to put them in.
Like, yeah, he belongs in behind the bastards now. Yeah, that's that's an international criminal court crime. Right. Yeah. Now, again, many of the bastards you had on have killed like three people. Right. Right. You know, that said, do I kind of sympathize with him still? Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Like this is just
No, I don't know. I just don't know how likely it is that most commanders in a similar situation having gone through what he's gone through would have been much better, right? Especially since this is not entirely Lawrence by his own admission is partaking in the bloodshed. But a lot of this is just that his own troops are so angry at all of these war crimes that took it including on some of their families, right? And they're just
bent for slaughter now, right? Like everyone has just lost their minds. The war has gotten that ugly. Um, so anyway, you know, you can, you can parse that out morally. However you want to, you can judge him. However you want to sitting at your computer. Uh, we all do to some extent. Um, but yeah, from here, from de Ra Lawrence himself moved directly to Damascus, right? Like he and his forces, uh, rush there and they,
They beat the Turks out of Damascus and they beat European forces to the city. Now, I have a question. Yeah. How did he get out of conscription rape jail? He kind of escapes. Okay. I mean, they're not, they're not great at doing guardings. They don't know that he's Lawrence of Arabia, right? Okay. He just sort of bounces, you know, after a while.
Cool. So this was an explicit and a direct attempt to destroy Sykes-Picot. As soon as the city was in their hands, Lawrence helped organize a provisional Arab government headed by Faisal, right? Now, again, the Arabs of Syria don't really want Faisal in charge of them. They certainly don't want his dad in charge, but they have their own leaders, and they see they don't really like guys from Mecca.
They write about these Arabs in Syria who are pissed about this, some of whom are making overtures to the Ottomans because of how unhappy they are about Faisal. They kind of see Faisal in his dad, this whole family of guys, the Sharif of Mecca.
the way like rural Americans talk about like people from like San Francisco or, you know, DC, you know, they have the kind of like Richmond, north of Richmond talk about them of like these fucking city assholes from Mecca coming into Syria and telling us how to live our goddamn lives. I don't like that any better than the Turks, you know?
And there's actually, there's this kind of Zionism is going to play a weird role in this here because it becomes kind of crucial to this conflict in between these different factions on the Arab revolt, right? So within a few days of the Arabs taking Damascus, General Allenby arrives. And he's like, provisional government, my ass, the French are in charge here now. And Lawrence, like, there's really nothing he can do, right? Allenby is his superior officer. The British are there with like,
you know, a significant amount of assets. And this is, you know, kind of shatters him, right? Like he is so distraught over the fact that all of their work, you know, even though they took the city, it's just been handed over to French control. He's sort of struck by this, that he begs to be relieved of command by Allen Lee, Allen B. He leaves for London, hell bent on using his celebrity to win Western support for an independent Arab nation after this.
Now, as a note, Lawrence was definitely a very famous over in Europe by this point. An American journalist based in Palestine, Lowell Thomas, had like spotted his story and been like, well, this is one of the most interesting things happening in the war. It's much more interesting than just like recording slaughter at the various trench fronts. I'm going to follow this guy around. I'm going to take some video and photographs and whatnot. And he puts together like a lecture show, basically like a slideshow with
a lecture attached to it that runs in movie theaters. It's like a matinee hit in England. It's a huge blockbuster at the time. Like prior to the 1960 Lawrence of Arabia, this is kind of like the first movie version of Lawrence and it's portrayed as journalism, but you know, Lowell is a
He's like a tabloid guy, right? Like he is exaggerating. He's kind of outright lying about stuff. There's some evidence that Lawrence is deeply, deeply unhappy as a result of like the kind of attention that Lowell draws on him and how much he makes Lawrence the center of the story. But he's also able to use this fame.
in order to secure meetings with politicians to try and talk up Faisal side of things, right, during these negotiations over what's going to happen to Ottoman territories in the wake of Ottoman collapse. So he's such a vocal part of this, and such like so vocally against Sykes Picco, that he starts to be seen as a threat from within the military and within the government of the British Empire.
A lot of them see him as a fame hound because like this is happening while his movie is a big deal They see him as like he's just some like up Junior officer who's gotten way too big for his britches and he's trying to ruin this good thing We've got with France this horrible war is finally done and we're finally going to get fucking some money some place we can plunder right to help make up for all of the money we spent on this stupid war we got our country into right and This guy's going to fuck it all up right?
Now, the Balfour Declaration had been leaked out to the public right around the same time Sykes Pico had been made public, so right at the end of 1917. And summoned the British administration during these negotiations in late 1918-1919.
saw the Balfour Declaration, which has a complicated reaction, especially over in the Arab world, saw it as potentially good news for their support of the Hussein's. Because, again, Faisal and his dad are wildly unpopular in Syria, right? They're seen as these assholes from Mecca trying to lord over a place they don't belong. And Lawrence's boss in the intelligence service, one of the masterminds behind the whole Arab revolt was a brigadier general named Gilbert Clayton.
And Gilbert saw the Balfour Declaration as problematic. He's going to be the guy who writes most accurately about why this is a bad idea. But he also is like, this could help us with Faisal, right? And he writes, up to date, the Syrian Arab has shown the utmost distaste for any idea of a government in which mechan-patriarchism has in the influence, hence a lack of real sympathy with the Sharif.
fear of the Jew may cause a raproach moth. If we make it clear that we're going to give the Jews a homeland, the Arabs may get so angry that they line up behind our guy, who they're not really happy about right now, but maybe their racism against Jewish people will convince them, which obviously that's an incredibly racist move from
from Clayton, right? We'll just use anti-Semitism to solve our imperial problems and get our puppet in charge. It's pretty classic. It's pretty classic, right? Yeah. Now Sykes himself tried to convince Clayton that the declaration was a positive for Arab independence, which Clayton for all of the racism you see in his writing really does care about Arab independence. He is one of these guys like Lawrence, who is like, we made promises to these people and we should keep them.
Clayton, more than Lawrence, recognizes because Lawrence kind of gets behind the idea of Zionism eventually. Clayton is always like, this is a bad idea and we shouldn't have done it. But he does get into that. He comes to that conclusion also through a very racist way by saying that Arabs would be dismayed by knowledge that the Jews, quote, whose superior intelligence and commercial abilities are feared would take over in Palestine.
In a different letter to Gertrude Bell, the Arab Bureau's Baghdad correspondent. Clayton wrote this,
and no amount of specious oratory will humbug them in a matter which affects him so vitally. Experience such as I have gained in this war and tells me to deprecate strongly and cautious declarations and visionary agreements. We are like men walking through an unknown country in a fog, and it behooves to feel our way and take care with each step we take.
And he is not wrong. We shouldn't be doing this in part because obviously this is going to lead to Arabs being displaced from their homes in Palestine. Arabs recognize this, their right to recognize this. And even by sticking our hands into this mess, we are men walking through an unknown country in a fog. We don't know what we're doing, so we shouldn't be doing it.
Yeah. That's what the British Empire should have been doing instead of being an empire. Again, everyone here is racist, but some of the racists are correct about what's going to happen.
Bell, who also deserves much more coverage than giving her Gertrude Bell, was a fascinating character. This woman who had just traveled alone throughout this huge stretch of the Middle East become a legitimate expert on the area, a really interesting person, someone who knew Lawrence, too, kind of in his early travels, replied that she also hated, quote, Mr. Balfour's Zionist pronouncement.
But Lawrence, whose instincts for this region and its people were generally much better than this, got caught up in the Zionist cause. And he did so in an interesting way as part of his backing of the Arab cause, right? So during Lawrence's struggle against Sykes-Picot in London after the war, he came to see European Zionists as potential allies in the fight for Arab independence.
He met with Heim Weizmann, head of the English Zionist Federation, who was willing to back Lawrence's fight for an Arab state so long as Lawrence supported the establishment of a Jewish state. Lawrence, by one account, convinced Faisal by another. Faisal is kind of the one who's saying, hey, Lawrence, I want you to make overtures to this guy. But either way, Lawrence and Faisal get on board with Weizmann and the Zionists.
And they make an agreement, they actually sign an agreement, right? Which if the Zionist support a Faisal-led Arab state based in Syria, Faisal will support European Jews immigrating to Palestine. Now Faisal does not explicitly embrace a Jewish state, but that was understood to be the result of this.
The treaty between the two of them reads, mindful, and this is just fascinating reading, just in light of where we are today, mindful of the racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish people, and realizing that the surest means of working out the consummation of their national aspirations,
is through the closest possible collaboration in the development of the Arab state and Palestine. It continues that the Arab state and Palestine should, in all their relations, be controlled by the most cordial goodwill, a commission would be established to lay out boundaries of the Arab state and Palestine, right? And there's a lot there about like, obviously, no one will be displaced by this. Right. It's presenting a two-state solution for Palestine.
Not entirely, right? There's an Arab state and then there's Palestine. Palestine is also understood to be an encouraging Jewish immigration and seen as a Jewish state. Now, it's not clear. Does that mean Arabs and Palestinians like Arabs and like European Jews who immigrate and like, you know,
like the people like and who live there at now, are will they be kind of equal partners in a state? That's kind of how I read it is the idea, but it's not a state solution. They are always referring to Palestine, right? Like they don't call it Israel, but yeah, to the one state solution to like one secular, you can be Jewish or
Yeah, that is the closest thing. The arrangement that they are talking to, when I say that he supported Zionism, the actual text of the kind of thing he was trying to set up is very different than what exists today. I'm going to quote again from that agreement.
All necessary measures shall be taken to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale, and as quickly as possible to settle Jewish immigrants upon the land through closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil. In taking such measures, the Arab peasant and tenant farmers shall be protected in their rights and shall be assisted in forwarding their economic development.
It goes on to state that no interference and free exercise of religion would be permitted. And the Mohammedan holy places in Jerusalem and elsewhere shall be under Mohammedan control. Okay.
Yeah, I mean, it's presented a fairly reasonable idea. I mean, like, obviously, like, that's clearly not what large-scale immigration meant. It's not what's going to happen. But when we say that he's a Zionist, he's not supporting what exists currently, right? Like, that is the result, and it's worthy of criticism. Faisal is worthy of criticism, too. And it's important to note that, like, Faisal, this guy seeking to be the king of this Arabic state,
is supportive of this measure, right? There's some economic reasons for it. Yeah. At the very beginning where he's like, you know, the long standing, um, British between Arabic and Jewish folks. I mean, that's, that is real. And like, yeah, yeah, there is like, you know, when you study Ottoman Empire before it started falling apart, it's like, well, that's where European Jews went because they were like second class citizens in the Ottoman Empire, but like,
They were, yeah, we all know what happened in Russia, right? They were way worse than something else were in your life. Yeah. When the other thing that happened in 1492 is relates to Spain is that all the Jews were kicked out and forced to convert, you know, they're just massive immigration into, into the Ottoman Empire. Yep.
Yeah, so this is messy, and obviously none of this works out the way that Faisal and Lawrence had hoped. While researching this, I've come across several extremely pro-Israel publications, including the Israel Forever Foundation, who published articles trying to remake Lawrence into a hardcore supporter of the modern state of Israel.
I found this line in an article they republished from the Jerusalem Post. You won't find this truth in the lengthy biography of Thomas Edward Lawrence, the legendary Lawrence of Arabia, in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Don't expect to hear about this on the BBC. The world remembers Lawrence as a guide, friend and champion of Arabs, but hardly knows that he believed in Zionism as a force to restore Palestine to which ancient glory brought about by active British Jewish Arab cooperation.
And that's not really like that is making him into that he is not nothing that he has described sounds like the modern state of Israel, right? He was not in favor of Palestinians being forced out of their land. Now we could say that was a foolish thing for him to hope. And he should have known that there was very likely this was going to get ugly, right? But.
you know, he he he he winds up doing what he does, right? And a big part of like what he and Feisler most about hoping for is that if we allow Jewish immigration to Palestine, that will bring in a lot of money to this economically depressed area and it will be good for these like Palestinian farmers and peasants, right? It will like a rising tide will kind of lift all boats. That is what they are writing about, right? There were ways it could have worked out differently than it did, right? But you know, it it's also worth noting that
Whatever their plans and whatever their hopes for how this works out, Lawrence winds up on the side of what becomes a major calamity for the Middle East, right, is how bloody and brutal everything that results from this eventually is, right? And I actually think it's the same problem he has in general, which is that even though he doesn't want England to control these things, he's still on some level, he's more okay with fucking around with England controlling things.
Yeah. And so it's like, and that is the same problem that happened with British mandate Palestine. Yeah. Is that, is that the British? We're again, it's like Clayton writes, right? We don't know what we're doing. Like we're going to fuck a bunch of things up because we don't really understand what we're messing around with here. Yeah. And yeah, like probably just shouldn't have been fucking around with any of this. Yeah.
Maybe a bunch of British guys should not have been making all of these calls. And maybe, and to be fair, a bunch of guys like Faisal, rich guys from Mecca, shouldn't have been making all of these calls, right? None of it works very well. Yeah.
I will say for as much because of what's happening right now, this gets a lot of focus. We're going to inherently think a lot about Lawrence's support of this of the Balfour Declaration of all this stuff. This probably was not a big part thing on his mind when he thought about his failures here in the wake of the peace agreements and stuff.
Nothing happens during his lifetime, right? He dies in 35, right? So none of this like leads to anything while he is around, you know? Yeah, and there's like a couple riots and stuff, but it's not. Yeah, there's some riots, you know, there's some stuff that does result from this, but he's probably not super plugged into it, right? Yeah. He is what really is occupying his mind as he sees the wheeling and dealing and the immediate wake of the war as a fucking calamity for this cause that he cares about.
Nearly every piece of the cause that he cared about goes down in flaming failure. The French get their mandate in Syria. The British wind up running much of his imagined Arab state, including Palestine and Iraq. And once it becomes clear that Arabs had fought and won a war of independence, only to wind up ruled by Europeans, the response was bloody as this passage from an article in Smithsonian Magazine makes clear.
Lawrence was particularly prescient about Iraq. In 1919, he had predicted full-scale revolt against British rule there by March of 1920, if we don't mend our ways. The result of the uprising in May 1920 was some 10,000 dead, including 1,000 British soldiers and administrators. And man, that's a good prediction, right? He calls March, it happens in May, not bad.
Um, tasked to clean up the debacle was the new British colonial secretary, Winston Churchill, who turned for help to the man whose warnings had been spurred, T.E. Lawrence. At the Cairo conference in 1921, Lawrence helped to redress some of the wrongs. In the near future, Faisal, deposed by the French in Syria, would be placed on a new throne in British-controlled Iraq.
Out of the British buffer state of Trans-Jordan, the nation of Jordan would be created with Faisal's brother Abdullah at its head, right? And obviously, Faisal and his family don't wind up in charge of Iraq for all that long, you know, thanks to our friend of the pod Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party.
And then Faisal's brother, Abdullah, that is still the ruling family in Jordan, right? That's where that all gets started. Now, the fact that this is the result, right? You know, it's not a total failure. You do have Arab states that are independent, you know, that get come out as a result of this. But largely, you know, during his lifetime, it's France and Britain kind of calling the shots in a large lot of this region, the Shatters Lawrence, right? He never really recovers from his failure here.
And you know who else has never recovered from their failures? Is it the casinos?
Yeah, the casinos, they're, they're, they're failure to, to, to give you too much money, right? Yeah. You know, they just can't wait to give you money. No, they lose money more often than they win. That's why gambling, if you gamble enough, you always win. The house always loses. That's why they say that. Yeah, exactly. The house always loses. It's always safe, always safe to gamble. Keep your money in a casino, right?
It's an investment. I mean, if it's controlled by the casino, yeah. Yeah, they do. They will succeed. In the quiet town of Avela, Pennsylvania, Jared and Kristi Akron seem to have it all a whirlwind romance, a new home and twins on the way. But no one knew was that Kristi was hiding a secret. So shocking, it would tear their world apart.
Please, my baby! One woman, two lives, and the truth more terrifying than anyone could imagine. They had hers, one of the suspects, but they could never prove it. You're going to go to jail. You don't come with us right now. Throughout this whole thing, I kept telling myself, nobody's that crazy, crazy. Uncover the chilling mystery that will leave you questioning everything. A story of the lengths we go to protect our darkest secrets. She went fashion crazy, shot and killed all her farm animals.
slotted him in front of the kids, tried to burn her house down. Audio represents the unborn on the iHeartRadio Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Whenever a homicide happens, two questions immediately come to mind. Who did this and why? And sometimes the answer to those questions can be found in the where. Where the crime happened. I'm journalist Sloan Glass, and I host the new podcast American Homicide.
Each week, we'll explore some of this country's most infamous and mysterious murders. And you'll learn how the location of the crime became a character in the story.
On American homicide, we'll go coast to coast and visit places like the wide open New Mexico desert, the swampy Louisiana Bayou, and the frozen Alaska wilderness, and we'll learn how each region of the country holds deadly secrets.
So join me, Sloan Glass, on the new True Crime Podcast, American Homicide. Listen to American Homicide on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Is your country falling apart? Feeling tired, depressed, a little bit revolutionary? Consider this, start your own country. I planted the flag and just kind of looked out of like, this is mine, I own this. It's surprisingly easy. There's 55 gallons of water, 500 pounds of concrete.
Everybody's doing it. I am King Ernesti Manuel. I am the Queen of Ladonia. I'm Jackson I. King of Capriburg. I am the Supreme Leader of the Grand Republic of Montonia. Be part of a great colonial tradition. Why can't I try my own country? My full father's did that themselves. What could go wrong? No country willingly gives up their territory. I was making racquet with a black powder, you know, with explosive waterhead. Oh my god. What is that? Boys. Boys. We need help.
We still have the off-road portion to go. Listen to Escape from Zacostan. And we're losing daylight fast. That's Escape from ZAQA Stan on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Cina McFarland, therapist, light coach, change agent who helps everyone from celebrities, athletes, to ex-king members through their addictions and help them wake up.
At each episode by podcast, we hear inspirational stories. We draw lessons from those who have made it through their addiction and recovery to a better place, including legendary boxer, heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson. I feel like there's always been a calling for you, something higher.
I don't know, I feel that way as well. But I guess everybody feels in here for a reason. Yeah, okay. Even if it's the stuff that helps other people understand stuff and it's not as bad as we believe it is. I believe everybody loves them to be each other. Why you hear anything? To show people that you know anything possible, you don't give up anything possible. Listen to the Cino Show on iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey guys, I'm Kate Maxx. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together.
You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High.
It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's light-hearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're bad. Robert, I have terrible news. I followed our advice and now I have no money left. Oh, no.
Well, maybe you should just put all of your remaining money on black and just do a shadow roulette. I think that'll fix your problems, Margaret. Yeah, the 48.5% chance of success. That's more than 50, so it'll work. Yeah, absolutely.
So, Lawrence is shattered, he's very depressed, he has seen all of his hopes for a better future, go down in flames, he's never going to recover from his failure here, or the attendant PTSD as a result of his wartime experiences. And honestly, this is a big part of what makes him a sympathetic figure to me, right? But he has not seen that way by a lot of the men who fought for him or his descendants.
One of my favorite articles, Analyzing Lawrence's Legacy, was that piece in Smithsonian Magazine by Scott Anderson in 2014. He followed in Lawrence's shadow during the early years of the Syrian Civil War, and interviewed descendants of the Bedouins who'd fought by Lawrence's side. One, Sheikh Al-Atun of Mudawara in southern Jordan lamented that after the war, the badly damaged Hijaz railway was allowed to fall apart entirely, isolating many communities once connected by the Imperial Project.
The partitioning of the Arab world had made the maintenance and rebuilding of such a railway impossible, and there's no real way to conceive of such a project working out and preserving such a complex piece of infrastructure through all of the conflicts that have royal be area sense. Quote, my grandfather thought that these destructions were a temporary matter because of the war, but they actually became permanent.
You have to remember, this railway had been backed and funded by donations from Muslims in places like the Hijaz, because this was their future. This would have connected them to the world, and there's no way to keep this going in these carved up conflicting states that are the ultimate result of the actual
you know, post-war period. And Lawrence had kind of convinced people to blow up this railway and the promise that, and then you'll get a state and we can fix things, right? And that never happens, right? Now, Lawrence tries, right? How much credit does that get him? You know, maybe not a lot if you're living in the rusting shadow of this dead railway, watching any hope of a better future, you know, fade away, right? So they kind of like,
You know, in the end, it was better under the Ottomans. No, I think it's a little more complicated than that. Ultimately, when I read kind of analyses of Laura, you know, you can find some good pieces of like Muslim scholars talking about like how Lawrence gets talked about. It's mostly just like.
He's not really seen as a major figure in all of this, right? They're more interested in like guys like Faisal. They're more interested even in like British people like Allen B. There were some other, you know, British agents who were moving around like Lawrence, because I think in part of how much attention he gets.
has for a long time been kind of like, well, he wasn't really as important as everyone thinks he is, right? Now that is, there's a reappraisal that's going on in the present day, and you can find some Muslim historians who are essentially like
Yeah, he actually was a very significant part. His book is a fairly accurate accounting of things. And he seems to have really tried to do what he thought was best, even though a lot of it didn't work out. There is a reappraisal going on here, in part because modern historiography has found that Lawrence was actually telling the truth about a lot of stuff that he had been believed to be bullshitting about for a while.
Now, that said, attitudes about him are very complicated over there, right? Now, I want to refer back to that article in the Smithsonian Magazine, because later in that article, Sheikh Al-Atun says this. Some people think he was really trying to help the Arabs, but others think it was all a trick that Lawrence was actually working for the British Empire all along. When I press for his opinion, the shape grows slightly discomforted. May I speak frankly?
Maybe some of the very old ones still believe he was a friend of the Arabs. But almost everyone else, we know the truth. Even my grandfather, before he died, he believed he had been tricked. And that's a common attitude towards Lawrence over there. It's not universal. His old friend, Amir Faisal, who became king of Iraq, said in 1920 that Lawrence had been truthful in his promises, a matter that made the Arabs trust him. But a lot of people disliked Faisal, right? You know? I mean, this gets into the, like,
Why I believe so strongly and honesty is that well to the people that you're working alongside of is that you set yourself up for that when you lie to people, even if you're trying to like his paternalism. Yeah. In the end, makes people realize that he was fucking them over, you know, because he didn't treat them as equals and make decisions alongside of them.
Yeah, because they might have reached the same conclusions. They might have been like, well, cynically, I guess we should side with the British because dynamite and British gold will accomplish everything. Yeah. And there's a lot of like, you could argue, probably maybe part of why Faisal is, you know, so positive.
Towards Lawrence is that Lawrence is kind of honest with Faisal in a way that maybe he isn't to a lot of these other people, right? Because a lot of these Arab tribes that he was getting in line behind the rebellion weren't super pro Faisal, but they were like, well, but we hate the Ottomans and he's saying it'll work out better. Maybe we'll just give it a shot. The rebellion seems to be working pretty well.
And then they wind up being like, oh, well, we just kind of got fucked on this, right? We sent our sons to die and this asshole became a king, but like, what did we get, right? Yeah.
So, after his brief stint with Churchill, Lawrence changed his name and asked to be allowed to re-enlist in the British military, this time as a private. He told a friend that he never wanted to be responsible for anyone or anything significant again for the rest of his life. Like, this is how broken he is that he was like, I don't want any of this fame. I'm not going to take a new name and re-enlist as a private, so I just don't have to do anything but follow orders for the rest of my life.
Yeah, I have kill and die. That's killing died. Sure. I'm fine with that. Literally anything like I've done lots of killing. I'm okay with that. I just can't like I have failed so utterly in what were my goals in this thing, right? That I just I don't want to make another decision for the rest of my life.
Yeah, well. So we spend the next, I think, 14 years stationed on a series of small bases around Britain. He lives a quiet, almost solitary life, reading voraciously, listening to music, writing letters to friends, and writing his motorcycle through the countryside.
Through this time, the legend of Lawrence grew and grew, spurred on by the publication of an edited version of his book, which is there's a fascinating story here, Margaret, about like what happens to Lawrence's manuscript here. And this is one of the, there's a great article by Robert New, that's just an author's worst nightmare.
So Lawrence, he writes while he's like in the start of the 1920s, after all of this had fallen apart, he wants to write his great memoir, which he'd planned for a long time. He'd planned to publish a book called Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Initially, this was going to be based on his before the war, his travels.
through the Muslim world. And he writes that book and then he destroys it. He gets like anxious about it. He decides it's no good. And before he goes off to war, he destroys the entire book, right? And then he takes the title of that book and he uses it for the book that he writes about his time fighting in this desert war.
and he puts together using all of these notes that he's taken, a 250,000 word manuscript. And then after finishing the manuscript, he destroys his notes. I don't know why. I've never heard a good reason as to like, why does he destroy all of his original notes once he finishes it? But he does, and he only has a single copy of this manuscript. And then when he is at Reading Station, he leaves it in a bathroom and loses it.
Yeah, I see why every author's worst nightmare. That's a nightmare. Now, I once lost a file of about 35,000 words of the note. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.
Ooh, that hurts a year. No, I never finished that book. There is debate, Margaret, about this, right? Some biographers or some people will argue he probably didn't lose this. He probably, he was so angry about this guy who is
uh, you know, this, this journalist who has made him into like the center, like a celebrity, right? And he's just so ashamed of what happened that he destroys this manuscript, right? And then like regrets it immediately, right? But that like maybe that's what happened, right? And he's destroyed a manuscript before it wouldn't be weird, right?
Whatever the case, Lawrence gets back to work working on a new version of the book. And the second draft of this, which he has to make from memories, since he's destroyed most of his notes, is 400,000 words. And he writes this in three months.
It was just like, that's like some Stephen King as shit. I do wonder if I know cocaine was available over the counter back then. What were you doing, Laura? How do you do 400,000 words in three months? That's nuts. Yeah. I was like, well, like 5,000 words a day or something. Yeah. That's an insane rate of something like that.
I could do that for like three weeks if I had to. Yeah. And he's unhappy with it, so he throws that out. And then he writes a third version of the book from memory. Oh my God, he's on his fourth seven dollars. He's on his fourth seven dollars. And that's what we call seven manuscripts of wisdom.
Ha, he almost does right fucking seven. The fourth version of this comes in at 335,000 words. And this time he has the Oxford Times press print eight copies of it, right? He's not gonna lose this fucking one, right? He sends some of these, and this is the text from which we get the final version. And Lawrence would kind of regret for the rest of his life. He would say that the first draft was more accurate. Like I fucked up less, like I got more of the basic than nuts and bolts, right?
Some people will say like, well, it's actually probably much better because in the process of writing a million words of this story over and over again, he got better at writing. I'm sure the prose is better and I'm sure the accuracy is better in the first one. Yeah, that's probably fair to say. And that's like, my God, what a fucking nightmare. I know.
I would not be able to live with myself, but would the first version have helped the Vietnamese defeat? Yeah, would the first version have helped the Vietnamese war strategy, right? Maybe not. I think it's at this point here, like when we talk about all these different versions of the truth and the question of like how accurate is this, that we get dragged back once again to the question of Lawrence's sexuality, right?
One of the key arguments against the rape in Dora story is that some of Lawrence's comrades in the Tank Corps would later claim that he asked them to beat and whip him for sadomasochistic pleasure. Now, there is a lot of reason to doubt these claims.
Even if they are true, we could just as easily interpret this as Lawrence working through his trauma as a result of having been gang raped. But one piece of evidence to the contrary is that in the original version of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence's description of his rape was that this is wild 200 pages longer than the version that wound up in print, which is a lot.
And so some people will be like, this kind of reads like he was more putting out a fantasy, right? That's a lot of time to spend talking about yourself being tortured in this kind of like very graphic detail that is, it is tinged with romance too. Like it's very, it's an odd bit of writing. Now that's just the way Lawrence writes. Yeah. And also,
There's a huge difference between romanticizing the bets that happens to you and romanticizing bad stuff in general, right? If the way that you want to process something bad is by romanticizing being like, at least my life is interesting and beautiful, even though it's terrible and tragic, good on you.
So the journalist that we get these claims that Lawrence he's basically writing pornography right you know just because he's so into this stuff that didn't really happen is a guy named phillip nightly and when i say journalist you might put some air quotes around this but he reports heavily on Lawrence right like and he's kind of the origin of a lot of this and he says quote.
It was so redolent of the sort of sadomasochistic literature that you get in the Charing Cross Road. It sort of cried out that this is Lawrence writing for his own interest in delectation, right? This reads like a lot of the sadomasochistic like smut that was being published at the time. And so that's why I think it's fake.
quote, Lawrence continued these sadomasochistic practices with the help of a man called John Bruce. Bruce was paid to birch Lawrence and then write an account of Lawrence's beating bearing under the birching. The letters were collected by Lawrence who read them again and got two kicks for his buck, so to speak, right? This is Knight's Knightley's claim, right? Now, the unedited version of the book
that also paints a darker and more self-serving and consciously imperialist picture of Lawrence. In the original text, for example, he describes Feisel as a very weak man, an empty man. You were able to use Feisel to get what you wanted. And is that a more accurate depiction of Lawrence, or is that just kind of him in a much darker frame of mind after three versions of this story, right? How do we know what the first one said?
Is it because he's later saying- We know what earlier drafts say, right? We have that draft of the 400,000 word one, I think. Oh, we do have that draft. I think that's what he's talking about, not the original draft that's lost forever, or the 335,000 word one or something like that. There are earlier longer drafts than what got published that we have access to. I don't actually know exactly- There's so many copies of Seven Pillars floating around, right?
I admit that if I were to write that and I spent 200 pages describing a thing that happened to me. Yeah, I could imagine being like, it's time for a third draft. Never a third draft. I might need to cut this down a little bit. Kill your darlings.
Maybe the torture scene is a little long. There's this classic thing with writing where your first novel, you can't get away with spending eight pages describing stained glass. But by the time you're on your fifth novel and audience. There's a fucking window. Yeah. But by the time you're on your fifth novel, you can spend eight pages talking about stained glass because you already have the author buy-in. So, Lawrence, your problem was that it was your first book. It was your first book, buddy. Well, actually, it was like his
or second or third through like fifth bucks or something like that. In the quiet town of Avela, Pennsylvania, Jared and Kristi Akron seem to have it all a whirlwind romance, a new home and twins on the way, but no one knew was that Kristi was hiding a secret. So shocking, it would tear their world apart.
One woman, two lives in the truth more terrifying than anyone could imagine. They had hers, one of the suspects, but they could never prove it. You're going to go to jail. You don't come with us right now. Throughout this whole thing, I kept telling myself, nobody's that crazy, crazy. Uncover the chilling mystery that will leave you questioning everything. A story of the lengths we go to protect our darkest secrets. She went fashion crazy, shot and killed all her farm animals.
slotted him in front of the kids, tried to burn her house down. Audio represents the unborn on the iHeartRadio Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
Whenever a homicide happens, two questions immediately come to mind. Who did this and why? And sometimes the answer to those questions can be found in the where. Where the crime happened. I'm journalist Sloan Glass, and I host the new podcast American Homicide.
Each week, we'll explore some of this country's most infamous and mysterious murders. And you'll learn how the location of the crime became a character in the story.
On American homicide, we'll go coast to coast and visit places like the wide open New Mexico desert, the swampy Louisiana Bayou, and the frozen Alaska wilderness, and we'll learn how each region of the country holds deadly secrets.
So join me, Sloan Glass, on the new True Crime Podcast, American Homicide. Listen to American Homicide on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Is your country falling apart? Feeling tired, depressed, a little bit revolutionary? Consider this, start your own country. I planted the flag and just kind of looked out of like, this is mine, I own this. It's surprisingly easy. There's 55 gallons of water, 500 pounds of concrete.
Everybody's doing it. I am King Ernesti Manuel. I am the Queen of Ladonia. I'm Jackson I. King of Capriburg. I am the Supreme Leader of the Grand Republic of Montonia. Be part of a great colonial tradition. Why can't I try my own country? My full father's did that themselves. What could go wrong? No country willingly gives up their territory. I was making racquet with a black powder, you know, with explosive waterhead. Oh my god. What is that? Boys. Boys. We need help.
We still have the off-road portion to go. Listen to Escape from Zacostan. And we're losing daylight fast. That's Escape from ZAQistan on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Cina McFarland, therapist, light coach, change agent who helps everyone from celebrities, athletes, to ex-king members through their addictions and help them wake up.
At each episode by podcast, we hear inspirational stories. We draw lessons from those who have made it through their addiction and recovery to a better place, including legendary boxer, heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson. I feel like there's always been a calling for you, something higher.
I don't know. I feel that way as well. But I guess everybody feels in here for a reason. Even if it's the stuff that helps other people understand stuff, and it's not as bad as we believe it is. I believe everybody belongs to me each other. Why do you hear anything? To show people that you know anything possible, you don't give up anything possible. Listen to the Cino Show on iHeart, RadioApp, Apple Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey guys, I'm Kate Maxx. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together.
You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High.
It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's light-hearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Now, Knightley, I should say, who is making this case that, like, Lawrence was an asshole. He was a real imperialist. He was a bad person. He was this, like, masochist who lied about what happened to him. Knightley's not a great source himself. The first articles I found about him that were like, well, there's this guy who says, you know, all this bad stuff about Lawrence described him as like a scholar. That's not really who Knightley was. And to describe, like, who this guy is, I want to read a quote from The New York Times.
Early in 1965, Philip Knightley and Colin Simpson, journalists specializing in feature pieces for the London Sunday Times, were assigned to follow up a 60-ish Scottman story that when he was 19 and Loris 33, he was paid by the hero of Arabia to administer periodic beatings.
The Lawrence that Lawrence relished testing his body in other ways was nothing new, but the revelation was clearly of a kind, when stretched into a front page Sunday series to stimulate both reader and newspaper circulation. And by early June of the same year, the sensationally headlined articles began to appear, the shake who made Lawrence love Arabia and how Lawrence of Arabia cracked up a full and exclusive confession from the man who shared his tragic secret.
With the global facilities established press power and generous pocketbook with the Sunday Times at their disposal, Knightley and Simpson could locate and interview people from Turkey to Australia, pay for information, pry open library doors and foreign office files long locked shut and do it all in time to meet their newspaper deadlines.
You know, maybe take this with a grain of salt, some of these things they're claiming, these recollections from other people decades later, you know, these guys who are hungry for big stories that they can sensationalize about, you know, T.E. Lawrence, right? I just don't care if it was like, whether it was a kink or
Yeah, trauma dealing with because there's a related anyway and like whatever. Yeah, I'm interested in like whether or not it happened, right? But like, yeah, I have no moral claim based on it. Yeah, right, right. Now, Jeremy Wilson, Lawrence's officials, biographer interprets the original text or at least what we have of the earlier texts of seven pillars very differently from nightly. The fact that you have Lawrence being more of a dick, you know, about some of this stuff as this segment from an article in the independent makes clear.
Wilson said the text shows that Lawrence felt guilty after he encouraged the Arabs to rise up and fight. He knew they would not get an independent state in exchange for their help because France and Britain had other plans. Wilson told BBC Radio 4, when he realized how duplicitous his role was, he became upset about it and went off on a spying mission to Damascus. But the point is he was hoping to get killed on the way. There is no reference to that in the final text, but there is an allusion to it in the original texts.
So Wilson, who is more of a scholar, certainly the Knightley, is like, well, no, actually, like the original text includes him kind of talking about how he tried to get himself killed because he felt so bad about what he had done, right? Which does not portray him as like this cold imperialist, right? Just fucking over people, right? And is more a man who did some very immoral things, but was also trapped in this just fucked up situation, right?
And that's the version that I feel like has been that I've certainly taken away from this is the like, the man who always wants to do right and realizes he can't and then feels trapped and like. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's probably the closest to the reality that we're going to get. He would have made such a good Catholic like he wants to get. He would have made a nice, yeah. He wants forgiveness. He would have been a great monk, right? Yeah. Like in Italy, come about in the medieval era, he would have been so happy as a monk. Yeah.
Yeah. Now, partly as a result of the war on terror and largely pushed by the work of scholars like Barr and shedding doubt on aspects of Lawrence's narrative, Lawrence saw a reappraisal in the early 21st century that was largely negative, right?
the Arab revolt has regularly been described as a sideshow in World War I, which I really hate to hear whenever people are like, well, actually, it wasn't even that big a deal that any of this went on because one in 10 of the people living in the region died in the fighting. Right? Like this is not a sideshow. This is a major historical event. No matter how you slice it, it's really fucked up when people argue otherwise. Sorry, fewer white people were there.
Sorry, there weren't as many white people there, right? Lawrence has been described as a braggart, a liar, a fantasist, and a historic reappraisal of the man has to caution against taking this interpretation too far. Again, Barr, who's very properly critical, I would say responsibly in a historical sense, critical of Lawrence, also describes seven pillars as essentially accurate, right? And more recent scholars, including the leftist academic Neil Faulkner, have urged a reappreciation of Lawrence as a titanic figure in world history and that
of the region. Now, Margaret, you asked a little earlier, are we going to hear about what, like, happened to Doe, right? And it's time for us to tell that story, which is... Okay. I know it's a bummer. Yeah. Yeah. So after Lawrence left the car, the Carkamish Diggs site in 1914, the two never met again, because during the war, partly as a result of the war, there's a typhus epidemic in Dome's hometown, and he dies in 1916.
Oh, shit. So he's only like 16 or something. He was, yeah, I think he might have been 18. Yeah. Cause like he was like 16 when Lawrence left, right? So it was probably like 18. Yeah. But he does not get a long life. You know, this is partly as a result of the war, although not Lawrence's part in it. Lawrence is not an active participant in the fighting until domes dead. Yeah.
Now, if you don't find the claims made in Knightley's reporting credible and instead take Lawrence at his word and the words that he sent along to close friends, he never had any other kind of intimate relationship, sexual or otherwise, in his life. I want to quote now from an article in salon.com by Anthony Saturn.
In 1927, he wrote to his friend the homosexual novelist E.M. Forster, I'm so funnily made up sexually. And later that same year went further. Having read Forster's ghost story, Dr. Wollicott, in which a man dies after a gay sexual encounter, Lawrence wrote that, the Turks, as you probably know, or have guessed through the reticences of seven pillars, did it to me by force. I couldn't ever do it, I believe. The impulse strong enough to make me touch another creature has not yet been born in me.
And that is, that kind of sounds like, yeah, like this is someone who- Yeah, that means- Ace, that means very ace, right? Like, the following year with Robert Graves, the poet, and at that point his biographer, he had a discussion about fucking. As I wrote with some courage, I think, few people admit the damaging ignorance. I haven't ever, and I don't much want to.
And that's part of what's so interesting to me is that like, this isn't really some, if we're looking at Lawrence, this isn't something we have to be like wondering about, because he not only is he right about it, he is aware and open to homosexuality. He is talking to his gay friends about his sexuality, which is so interesting to me. So unexpected, right? I really didn't think that we would have him directly talking about like fucking and being like, yeah, I never wanted to do it. Like, yeah, that's fascinating to me.
Perhaps there's so many historical figures that I wish I knew that about, right? Because you're like, oh, why did this woman never have children or get married? Was she gay? Was she ace? Was it just never work out? Like, was she just actually loved it? But it was doesn't want to marry. Like, who knows? Yeah. And it's like with Lawrence, this is as clear as you can get a figure in this era talking about asexuality.
Probably, I think the best final source on this is one of Lawrence's homosexual friends, Vivian Richards. It's spelled V-Y-V-Y-A-N. It's a man's name, but I think it's just pronounced Vivian. The two met at Oxford and Vivian is in the audience.
No, I have it. Oh, there's a there's a man named. Anyway, well, Vivian is in love with Lawrence, right? Vivian is a homosexual man who has a massive crush on Lawrence. And he was like, I can fix him. Yeah, horribly sad that Lawrence was never reciprocated. He wrote later, he had neither flesh nor cardinality of any kind.
He received my affection, my sacrifice in fact, eventually my total subservience, as if it was his due. He neither gave the slightest sign that he understood my motives or fathomed my desire. In return for all I offered him, with admittedly ulterior motives, he gave me the purest affection, love and respect that I have ever received from anyone, a love and respect that was spiritual in quality. I realize now that he was sexless, at least that he was unaware of sex.
And yeah, that's beautiful. That's kind of sweet. And that's like what sometimes like when people who have sexuality, who date people who are ace, you know, might be like, oh, well, there's something else that's beautiful about this. Yeah. Yeah. And that that's very much what Vivian is saying. I think if Dome had lived and he might have written something similar, right? Like this was never a physical thing, but he was the best and most, most dedicated friend I ever had. Yeah.
And this is where we will conclude the life of Lawrence, Margaret. After one of the most action-packed first acts in history, the remainder of his military career in existence was not the stuff great movies are made of. The simple reason seems to be that he was just absolutely shattered by war. Lawrence's nerves never recovered, and in 1935, at age 46, he opted to retire from the military. As he was settling into his new home, he wrote one friend of his discomfort with this situation.
I imagine leaves must feel this way after they have fallen from their tree and until they die. Let's hope that will not be my continuing state. Alas, it was. A week after writing this, Lawrence crashed his motorcycle and perished in the accident.
And that, yeah, again, just like beautiful writer. Yeah. It's like when there's like several relief, sad musicians who accidentally drowned and you're like, yeah, I'll let you have it. Yeah. I'll let the world pretend that's an accident. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Lawrence accidentally crashed his motorcycle. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, whoa. Yeah. I would watch the movie about the second half of his life, but it'd be more like watching the lighthouse or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That I would as well. Also, I'll be watching the lighthouse. Great movie. I think Lawrence of Arabia probably would have liked the lighthouse.
Yeah, that would have been too. He wouldn't have gotten all the masturbation. I didn't get all the masturbation. He would not have been a fan of all of the masturbation. Yes, not interested in that. I'll make a new edit for me. Yeah. Yeah. Explaining the mermosi to Lawrence of Arabia. If I get my time machine working, I'm going to go back in time and be like, Lawrence, wait a second before you get on that motorcycle. Yeah. All right. First off,
This is a photo of a man named William Defoe. He's going to be born in a couple of decades. Great actor. Now, I need to explain to you something called a book series called the Twilight series. This is not your time to books. There are vampires, which I feel like you might be in do, but not in the way that you're into them. Yeah.
I didn't know the first thing about him. I've read about the Ottoman Empire. I've read about British Midnight Palestine. I knew that there was this guy. I never saw Lawrence Morabian the movie. Oh, it's great. You should see it. Yeah. And I think by the time I would have watched it, I would have been like, oh, another movie about a white guy and off to go save the world or whatever. Yeah. And well, now I want to watch the movie, but yeah, I recommend it.
No, he's he's interesting. And it's like most of the really simple narratives that are around available for him don't seem accurate. Yeah. You know, because like absolutely is Orientalism part of his story completely for sure. Yes. And like, but it's, but you can compare his Orientalism to the guy, the like daddy guy who like want to go around the Ottoman Empire or whatever. Yeah. And then also, you know, he's still
doing bad while trying to do good. And man, he's interesting. Yeah. Fascinating character. Yeah. And that's Lawrence of Arabia. Well, Margaret, you going to go blow up a train now?
Legally no, legally not. Well, yeah, go listen to cool people do cool stuff if you like complicated moral stories about people that are kind of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, this was kind of that from me. Because that is, I guess we should answer the question. I said, we were going to be asking this. Where do you land? Lawrence of Arabia, bastard? Yes or no? Bastard in the way that we're all doomed to be.
Yeah, yeah, that might be it. You can't go into it. You talk all the time on the show about how you can't go into war and come out with your hands clean. And I'm always like, yeah, but I probably could. I could do it. I could make it work. Yeah. I would just, I would just stay morally clean, even if it kills me, whatever. Yeah. And here's someone who wanted to stay morally clean, even though it would kill him. And then he's like, Oh, no, never mind. I'm just going to gun down everyone.
Time to machine gun hundreds of people. He is a bastard, and he's a bastard almost by accident of birth and thing he's involved in, rather than a character trait. He's up to some bastardry. Yeah. It's tough. It's tough.
He did his best, but he also probably shouldn't have been doing some of the things he was doing. It's a mix. Don't stumble around in the fog. Don't stumble around in the fog of a foreign country and try to institute new states. Maybe you don't know what you're doing. Maybe that's a bad idea.
Maybe, maybe there's more wisdom in the prime directive, not that this is a less advanced, I'm not saying that, but like, just in the idea that like, don't just go stick in your dick in every fucking situation you see, right? Maybe the fact that some people are having a war doesn't mean that you need to like make a call there, right? Even though you fell in love with one of them, even though you fell in love with one of them. And even though it is very sweet to say I'm going to liberate his entire race. Yeah. Yeah.
It's also pretty fucked up and orientalist to do, so maybe just don't do that. Maybe just buy him some chocolates. Maybe chocolates are better than launching a rebellion. Maybe the ring of power needs to be cast into the fiery pits of Mount Doom. There is some strong Boromir vibes to T.U. Lawrence. He was Boromir maxing there for a little while. I wonder.
Some of the story about like going across the desert to go get the allies to attack the city. I'm like, did Tolkien read that? And then everyone going to go find the like undead army to bring it to bear? Like, Tolkien obviously would say like, no, you know, this is none of it because that was always his stance. But like, also it like obviously World War One influenced what he wrote. And this is part of World War One. This definitely who definitely takes from this. This is the basis of doom.
Right? Yeah. Like this is directly, like this is not, I'm not like going out on a limb here. This is directly what inspires a lot of doom. Yeah. Right. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And it's not really all that hard to see why, you know? Yeah. And it's also, it's interesting because it shows that Frank Herbert, I think understood this similarly to we do, to how we do because dude is fundamentally about how like, yeah, it's a really bad idea to have this white savior stumble into another culture.
It just starts leading to war. It does not end well. He goes crazy. It's a shitload of war crimes. He becomes an absolute monster. And like, okay, you got it. You really took the right thing out of the T.E. Lawrence story. Unfortunately, everyone is going to interpret your book wrong for forever because you made the horrible mistake of doing it, making it all look really cool. Yeah. And that's why I don't like it.
Yeah, this is why I don't write fiction about, for example, anarchist militant characters who are meant to be very complicated and not necessarily good people, but I also like writing about cool people so they wind up sounding cool. And then people are like, oh, is this guy a good guy? No, no, he's not.
And for anyone who's curious, they should go read Robert's book after the revolution, because that is what that is talking to us. A book full of morally compromised people who regret their actions in war. Just to say, wear sunscreen, drink lots of water, touch grass, and pet a dog if that dog says they want to be petted. And if you want to do a moral action that is essentially never wrong, feed people. Feed people. Feed people. Don't blow up bridges. You know what? Honestly, more often than not, blowing up bridges works out badly.
Yeah, sure. Don't blow up a bridge. Unless you're a hurricane, then like that's your business, you know? Yeah. Not that I support it, but you know, you have that right, hurricane. And if you do want to, if you do want to do a hurricane, just call up Nancy Pelosi because she's got that hurricane on speed dial. Oh, I don't know what that's a reference to. I only know about the drink. What the fuck is? I assume it's about uncontrollably in the weather. Okay. I was just doing, I've been doing a bunch of episodes about witches recently. Yeah.
they were believed to control the weather. And that was a, it was actually not actually what caused the witch hunts, but a lot of them were people were like, oh, the witches control the weather. And I'm like, ha, ha, ha, look at you silly early modern fools thinking people. Oh, crap. Nope, that's happening now. Yep. Yeah. Anyway. Anyway, bye.
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