Theo Padnos
speaker
157 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Theo Padnos’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And I tossed my life away for that stupid fantasy. And I was angry at myself. But then they kept abasing me. I hadn't changed my underwear in six months. No brushing your teeth. My clothes were full of lice. I was just filthy. And I was ashamed. It's like sexual abuse in the sense that you go into a dark place. There's all these men. Maybe they are enjoying it to some extent. And
they kind of know it's wrong too. What made you think that?
Because the next morning when they come to see you, they're a little bit sheepish. They're like, we did that to you. They see the blood, they see the bruises, and they go, wow, what happened? They didn't understand why they were doing what they had done. And when I would see them, like our relationships after the torture, it would improve.
And then I would sometimes remind them, like, they were all in masks. And I was in a blindfold. Which is the name of your book. Yeah. When they were doing this torture, theoretically, I didn't know which dudes they were, but I did.
So a week or two later, I'd go, I know that you were in there, dude. I know who you are. And they were sheepish and embarrassed.
No, but some of the guys that were trying to have a good relationship with me, they would bring me food every day. Those guys, during the torture, they would be masked. But when they brought me food, they're like, hey, friend, how you doing?
Thinking I didn't know. I didn't know. And I would remind them and they'd be like, oh, well, oh, well. Anyway, the thing you asked me, like, what is the darkest place? And at the time I was like, I can never tell anybody that the shameful thing happened to me, that they brought me to this abject condition that I submitted myself.
It was the psychological condition. I was so in their power. I was so at their feet. I was so like, anything you do, I will, anything you want from me, I will give it to you. I lied so much to them. You know, I betrayed myself so deeply. How so? By telling them everything that they wanted to hear. By acting. Lying about? I'm a CIA agent. Did you kill Anwar al-Awlaki? Of course.
Anwar al-Awlaki was an American preacher who was bombed, droned to death by the CIA.
And his son as well. So this is something I confess to. But they have to have known that this is absolute absurdity, that you were responsible for this. Part of what they're trying to create is like a belief force field. It's like belief that is so intense that you cannot deny it. And when you are down in the torture room... It's dark. There are candles on the floor.
There's men covered in guns and grenades all around you. It's like a community experience. They bring the little kids down there. I'm sorry, stop.
Of course, the little kids participate in the torture.
They had little child-sized cables.
Sometimes, yes, but also they have like galvanized steel cables, the kind of thing that, like a highway guardrail. They take these things, they cut them into like four foot lengths and then they barb up the end so that when they hit you, like the shaft of the cable will wrap around your body and the barbs will sink into the flesh like that and rip it out.
And go like that a bunch of times, whack, whack, sorry. Children. Children participate for a reason, I believe. The reason is that they say to the kid, like, this is an enemy of God. You're hanging from a fucking pipe by your handcuffs. And they go, this is an enemy. You see what he did? You see what this filth is? Do you want to be like that? No, you don't want to be like that.
Do you want to punish him? Show us that you hate this kind of wickedness, this sinfulness. Show us. The kid's like, I don't really want to do it. And they go, go. Well, if you do that to a kid long enough, over time, that's going to change the psychology of the kid. That's why those kids are dangerous. That's why they have an entire generation of young people that have been learning this.
Yeah, that's right. But they have tons of six-year-olds now, too, to bring along in this fashion. And believe me, you go and ask the people in charge in Damascus, like, what are you doing to the kids? They're going to say, oh, we teach them the math and the science. Yeah.
It's shocking. It's terrifying. But I was assuming the reason why they're letting me see this is because they know I'll never come out alive. I'm being explicit about this because I think it's important that we understand who these people, like this is who they are. They're doing this every day for years and years and years. And what do we see on the news? Like how awful the Assad regime is.
Well, the Assad regime does this too, by the way. But it's not like these guys are any better. I believe that they really want to cause a psychological death to all their prisoners so that when you wake up, you are more in harmony with their way of seeing things. This is their dream for Syria.
It's like they're not saying this, but it really is the case that everybody will orient themselves in terms of like, where is Mecca? This is the thing that you submit to. And who are the secular leaders around? Who are the temporal leaders around here? That's Abu Muhammad Jalani. That's the guy you submit to. You don't ask yourself what's right and wrong. You ask him.
Showing 41–60 of 157 · page 3 of 8
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