General Butt Naked

Oh. My. God.

I have just been researching the story of General Butt Naked. The cannibal berserker turned evangelical preacher. Don’t read on if you’re easily revolted.

From Coming Anarchy:

Ahha, you haven’t heard of General Butt Naked! Liberia produced the most outrageously wild characters in its decade of war: General No-Mother-No-Father, General Peanut Butter, General Fuck-Me-Quick, General Dragon Master, General Housebreaker, and perhaps the most famous, General Butt Naked. This guy was particularly… erm… “visible.” He fought stripped to the buff save a pair of tennis shoes and a kalishnikov. Read a PG-13 rated version account of his drugged youth army here. I’ll give you a more brutal narrative of his work below.

Most of the aforementioned generals met a sticky end, but not General Butt Naked. Today, he’s found a more reputable line of work as a preacher. Yes, preaching the word of God on Broad Street in Monrovia is the Reverend Joshua Milton Blahyi.

It gets worse:

He admitted to killing and ordering the killings of over 10,000 people and eating the hearts of some of his victims to solidify his charms and to fulfill the rules of his rituals… He said parts extracted from his victims were then sold on demand to traditional voodoo and witch doctors, who would in turn produce the necessary charms that were sold out to people who were seeking higher and public offices in Liberia.

And worse 

So, before leading my troops into battle, we would get drunk and drugged up, sacrifice a local teenager, drink their blood, then strip down to our shoes and go into battle wearing colourful wigs and carrying dainty purses we’d looted from civilians. We’d slaughter anyone we saw, chop their heads off and use them as soccer balls. We were nude, fearless, drunk and homicidal. We killed hundreds of people – so many I lost count.

Then this

But in June last year God telephoned me and told me that I was not the hero I considered myself to be, so I stopped and became a preacher.

I thought this must be a joke but it seems the BBC has screened a documentary and others have reported on it seriously as well.

And I thought the American political and religious scene was crazed.