Valuetainment - October 14, 2026


Was Vlad The Impaler Dracula or a Hero？

Hosted by
Patrick Bet-David
Mentioned
Muhammad II Count Dracula Vlad Dracula Impaler Radu Bram Stoker Gutenberg
How Islam Spread Through Force NOT Peace

Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

187.94

Word count

2,130

Sentence count

134

Harmful content

Toxicity

13

sentences flagged

Hate speech

53

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 So, your decaf oat milk, extra but not piping hot, four pumps of caramel, no sugar, small latte, and a large cup.
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00:00:30.000 What can you tell us about Vlad the Impaler?
00:00:32.400 You know, what is the true story of this guy?
00:00:35.220 Was he a good guy?
00:00:36.260 Was he a villain?
00:00:36.940 Was he a bad guy? 1.00
00:00:38.220 You know, Vlad the Impaler is actually a perfect mention
00:00:40.340 in the context of what we're talking about, fake history.
00:00:42.460 And so he's in this book, actually.
00:00:44.200 The Chapter 8's all about him.
00:00:46.220 And what's interesting about him is, okay, so we, Vlad the Impaler,
00:00:49.300 we know he's Count Dracula, right?
00:00:50.360 Count Dracula is a book written in, I think, 1890-something
00:00:55.260 by Bram Stoker, some Irish guy.
00:00:57.320 and he just, he needed a name
00:00:59.660 and he got the name from this guy, Vlad the Impaler,
00:01:02.880 whose real name is Vlad Dracula.
00:01:04.760 Dracula means son of the devil or son of the dragon.
00:01:07.560 It's really, his father was a member
00:01:09.480 of the Order of the Dragon,
00:01:11.080 which was actually a Christian knightly order.
00:01:12.720 Vlad's father.
00:01:13.540 Vlad's father and his father,
00:01:15.360 so he was the Dracul, the Order of the Dragon.
00:01:17.880 Vlad is Dracula, meaning son of the dragon, okay?
00:01:20.840 So that's just his name.
00:01:22.460 Now what happened is he just wanted,
00:01:24.320 he wanted a name of some fierce guy
00:01:26.960 And some guy told him, oh, use that name, Dracula.
00:01:29.620 So he put it on his book, and now, lo and behold,
00:01:32.360 Dracula is a blood-sucking vampire who sleeps in the day 0.88
00:01:35.060 and comes up at night. 1.00
00:01:36.180 Okay.
00:01:36.820 Now, if you go back to the actual Dracula and why this all happened is,
00:01:41.300 so what he was was basically Romanian, Wallachia,
00:01:45.340 and he was taken, he was a prince.
00:01:48.560 He should have been, they're known as voivodes,
00:01:51.340 which means like warlord of Romania or Wallachia.
00:01:54.960 He was taken, him and his brother were taken as captives 0.84
00:01:57.540 because that's what the Ottoman Muslim Turks would do. 1.00
00:01:59.540 They would take the most powerful men, the kings, 0.98
00:02:02.640 they'd take their sons as captives or hostages to make sure they behave.
00:02:07.360 And so the two sons were taken.
00:02:09.860 Muhammad the Conqueror, Muhammad II, who conquered Constantinople in 1453,
00:02:14.080 was a young man then. 0.92
00:02:15.820 And basically he turned his brother, Vlad's brother, Radu, into his boy toy 0.93
00:02:21.940 because Muhammad II was bisexual 1.00
00:02:25.080 and he forced 0.99
00:02:26.500 the brother of Vlad
00:02:29.100 to become basically
00:02:30.560 a catamite. 1.00
00:02:33.020 This guy was a bisexual? 1.00
00:02:34.720 Yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. 0.97
00:02:37.320 And a pedophile and everything. 0.95
00:02:39.660 And he's a hero in Turkey, 0.95
00:02:41.160 by the way.
00:02:42.560 But Vlad would not
00:02:45.040 relent to that kind of thing and
00:02:46.400 he was very rebellious and he was always
00:02:49.140 being whipped in the Ottoman prisons.
00:02:51.680 Anyway, he somehow escapes.
00:02:55.000 The brother?
00:02:55.460 No, the brother stays there the whole time, 1.00
00:02:57.580 and he's just basically the sex slave of Muhammad. 0.99
00:03:01.700 Intentionally? Like he enjoys it? 1.00
00:03:03.180 Well, the original story is the first time Muhammad tried to make a sexual advance on him, 0.83
00:03:09.560 he tried to kill him, Radu, the brother. 0.59
00:03:11.700 He freaked out, but then it says he finally succumbed and gave in, okay?
00:03:16.840 And Vlad would not, Vlad escaped,
00:03:19.200 And eventually, he becomes finally the voivode of Wallachia.
00:03:24.820 Now, the situation's a mess there, okay? 0.99
00:03:28.180 You have Hungary, which is a powerful Christian force, 0.98
00:03:31.520 and you have the Ottomans, and Wallachia's right in the middle.
00:03:34.600 And, you know, the leaders, his predecessors, including his father,
00:03:38.180 are being deposed every year, okay?
00:03:41.240 And his father was actually murdered by his own people,
00:03:44.420 and his brother was buried alive, okay?
00:03:47.080 And he, while he was in prison, saw all the torture, experienced the torture,
00:03:51.540 saw Ottomans impaling people.
00:03:54.040 So when he finally comes back, he just becomes so ruthless.
00:03:57.580 His logic is the only way I'm going to have any semblance of order
00:04:02.060 is extreme draconian, you know, just law.
00:04:05.980 Anyone who makes one false move, you're impaled.
00:04:09.040 Okay?
00:04:09.660 And what he was doing, but then, of course, most of his war is against the Ottomans.
00:04:14.080 And so they send and they ask him for tribute.
00:04:16.900 They say, okay, this was the normal behavior. 0.81
00:04:20.920 The Ottomans would go to a Christian power. 0.98
00:04:22.840 If they couldn't conquer them, say, pay us. 0.98
00:04:24.900 Basically, pay us and we'll leave you alone.
00:04:26.780 Become a vassal. 0.99
00:04:28.080 And they would also take their children, their boys, 0.83
00:04:31.060 and they would turn them into janissaries.
00:04:34.680 So they would take the strongest young Christian boys 1.00
00:04:37.580 and convert them to Islam forcibly 0.99
00:04:40.120 and raise them into jihadists, essentially.
00:04:42.460 and they would become the most feared force of the Ottoman army. 0.94
00:04:45.620 Then they would unleash them back on the Christians 0.98
00:04:47.580 and it would be like a perpetual cycle. 0.95
00:04:50.380 So they went to Vlad and said, okay, you owe us some back money.
00:04:53.260 You've been on this throne and we also want like 500 Romanian boys.
00:04:58.220 And he said no.
00:04:59.780 And when the ambassadors came, it's kind of funny,
00:05:02.260 they climbed all these steps to see him and they were wearing turbans
00:05:04.840 and he gets really annoyed with them and he basically says,
00:05:07.640 and by the way, why don't you remove your turban when you're in front of me
00:05:10.260 as a sign of respect?
00:05:11.900 And they said, well, our religion and our custom says we can't.
00:05:14.720 So he had his men nail the turbans on their heads and sent them back to Muhammad.
00:05:20.300 Stop it. 1.00
00:05:20.680 No, no, it's true. 1.00
00:05:21.880 And sent them back to Muhammad saying, well, here, to make sure your turban never falls off your head, I'll help you. 0.76
00:05:27.480 And then he sent them to Muhammad and said, and tell him, you're not taking our sons. 0.91
00:05:31.260 Nail the turban to their heads.
00:05:32.420 Did they die or were they just bleeding? 0.99
00:05:33.720 They were blood.
00:05:34.360 Yeah, it says small nails.
00:05:35.820 So I'm sure they were very damaged.
00:05:37.880 And they're sent off. 0.81
00:05:39.000 And at that point, Muhammad II, who is raping his brother, declares a massive jihad, and he goes and invades Wallachia. 0.90
00:05:50.660 And as usual, this Ottoman war machine, he outnumbered Vlad by something like 1 to 15. 0.90
00:05:56.820 And all that Vlad had were just like farmers with farm tools to fight. 0.87
00:06:02.280 So they engage in guerrilla warfare. 0.91
00:06:04.820 They can't meet the Ottomans head on. 0.80
00:06:07.240 But they engage in terror tactics, okay? 0.82
00:06:09.500 That's what guerrilla fighters do.
00:06:10.700 So at one night, Vlad, at the head of a couple thousand men,
00:06:14.420 actually go into the Ottoman tent, the Ottoman camp,
00:06:17.400 which is like 100,000 men, looking for Muhammad II to kill him.
00:06:20.760 They wanted to assassinate the sultan.
00:06:22.500 Vlad went with them?
00:06:23.320 Vlad, he led the charge, okay?
00:06:26.500 And they killed a lot of people, but they couldn't reach the sultan.
00:06:30.800 And Muhammad was really shook by this.
00:06:33.280 And anyway, after that, they continue, and they finally come to Vlad's castle.
00:06:36.940 And what they see is what's called the Forest of the Impaled.
00:06:39.920 Literally thousands of Ottomans, Turks, impaled on stakes.
00:06:44.440 And it's like a very horrific sight.
00:06:46.880 And eventually, Muhammad leaves at that point. 0.89
00:06:50.200 And he leaves the gay brother, Radu, who eventually, over time, convinces the Wallachians to give up the war. 0.84
00:06:57.580 And Vlad gets thrown in jail. 0.79
00:06:59.920 But then he comes back out and et cetera.
00:07:01.800 But now to the real story is, so later on, this is, Vlad's life coincides with the Gutenberg press, and he was one of the first people who had a lot of propaganda by his enemies done, and he had various enemies, so they created this myth about him as just this extreme sadist who impales and kills, and there's some truth to it, but what we're not told is that's what others were doing too, that's what the Ottomans were doing.
00:07:28.040 So he got really demonized
00:07:29.700 And then when you look in his actual correspondence
00:07:31.700 And letters, and I have them in the book
00:07:33.180 In Defenders of the West
00:07:34.260 He sees himself as a Christian knight
00:07:36.660 Eastern Orthodox
00:07:38.500 Yeah, Eastern Orthodox 1.00
00:07:39.440 Defending his land from the Muslims 1.00
00:07:42.920 From the terrorists 1.00
00:07:43.660 And he was known to be friends with monks
00:07:46.640 And he would hang out at monasteries all the time
00:07:48.680 In fact, after he was killed and decapitated
00:07:50.960 A group of monks took his body and buried it
00:07:53.180 He was a generous patron to monks
00:07:55.480 So he actually was a Christian
00:07:57.540 in that sense, and he saw
00:07:58.920 his crusade as a crusade
00:08:01.360 against invading Islam. But it's funny 1.00
00:08:03.560 because that's not the image we have, right?
00:08:05.740 First, he's a vampire, but
00:08:07.500 then even if you look at the historic sources, he's
00:08:09.400 often presented as one of the most evil men.
00:08:11.780 But again, historians know
00:08:13.500 it's based on propaganda that was
00:08:15.360 created at the time by his enemies, because he had
00:08:17.440 a lot of enemies, and that
00:08:19.100 yes, he was draconian, yes, he engaged
00:08:21.520 in what would be considered cruel,
00:08:24.280 but so did everyone
00:08:25.540 else at the time. See, that's
00:08:27.520 the trick of history where they they make you think that oh like no one else was doing that
00:08:31.640 everywhere lots of people were engaged did he have kids did he end up having kids that ended
00:08:34.820 up becoming leaders and seek vengeance or no no i don't there's not much he had he had two wives
00:08:39.960 and there's very little known about um uh him having kids actually um i don't think he did
00:08:45.160 when he died was he a hero to his people he's a hero till today in romania that you know so yeah
00:08:50.880 and that's an interesting thing in romania vlad is one of the top i think five most respected 0.81
00:08:56.800 figures in their history for the reasons that i gave you but to us he's he's just this monster
00:09:01.780 right has there ever been a depiction has there ever been a movie or documentary that
00:09:05.520 tells a story the right way um no not not the way that i tell it in chapter eight they'll they'll
00:09:12.560 they'll so you have two vlad you have the dracula which is pure fictitious vampire then you have
00:09:17.200 the one we're talking about and there there's i've seen some movies that engage in some of it
00:09:21.620 but not it doesn't come out the way i i read it from who killed him who killed him how did they
00:09:25.980 kill him finally with the ottomans the turks they finally it's supposed to it's unclear what
00:09:30.140 happened but it seems to have been betrayal like some ottoman spy went there pretending to be 0.99
00:09:34.300 a romanian and he worked with him and eventually stabbed him in the back
00:09:37.940 as an insight and they got his head and they put it on the gates of constantinople which by then 0.90
00:09:43.460 were conquered by muhammad ii as a statement for all the impaling that he did to others
00:09:48.700 and what is the number is it 20 000 or something i've read that uh yeah he impaled a lot of people
00:09:53.660 Ottomans.
00:09:55.740 As a way of making a statement to his people or as a way... 0.98
00:09:58.920 I think as a way of fighting fire with fire, which means, look, I'm outnumbered, I'm weak, 0.99
00:10:02.700 you're this Ottoman behemoth war machine, and I'm going to terrify you. 0.95
00:10:06.680 This guy's a warrior mindset to do. 1.00
00:10:08.880 Oh, yeah.
00:10:09.140 So he knew he was going to eventually get killed.
00:10:10.760 Oh, yeah.
00:10:11.000 No, his story is fascinating.
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