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Let's get the housekeeping out of the way immediately so we can get to the good stuff.

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Obviously, Will is still on hiatus.

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He's just taking some time away.

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And while I can't confirm he's currently building an off-grid cabin entirely out of
recycled podcast transcripts, I also can't deny it.

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So you're stuck with me yet again, just me, no guardrails, no one to hit the kill switch
when I start ranting about the Federal Reserve or the socioeconomic implications of lawn

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care.

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Today, we're talking about the A word.

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No, not that one.

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Although, given the state of traffic on I-35, I used that one a few times too.

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We're talking about anarchy.

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And I can already feel the reaction.

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I can feel it through the internet.

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You're clutching your pearls.

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You're checking your door locks.

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You're picturing a guy in a ski mask throwing a Molotov cocktail at a Starbucks.

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You're thinking about the purge.

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You're thinking about chaos.

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But you're wrong.

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You're so wrong, it's actually kind of cute.

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Because the truth is, you've been lied to.

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You've been fed a definition of a word that was written by very insanely terrified people
that were scared of you learning what it actually means.

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So today we're gonna fix that.

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Let's strip the paint off this topic.

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We're gonna look at the philosophy, the history, the practical reality, and the modern
resistance.

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But I'm not gonna start with the

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dictionary definition.

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That's pretty boring.

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That's for people who didn't prepare a script or an outline.

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I'm going to start with a story.

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A test.

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I want you to imagine a scenario.

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It's a Tuesday.

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You're at home.

34
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Maybe you're here in, you Oklahoma or maybe you're in Texas or the suburbs of, of
Washington, DC.

35
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But suddenly the sky turns green.

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Sirens go off.

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The big one hits.

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Maybe it's a tornado.

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Maybe it's a hurricane.

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Maybe the power grid finally gave up the ghost after years and years of neglect.

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at a state level, whatever it is, the lights go out.

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Okay.

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The cell phone towers, they're, they're, they're died.

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They've died.

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They're, they're dead.

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The roads are blocked by, by fallen oak trees.

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The police stations flooded.

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The national guard is stuck three counties away for all intents and purposes.

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The government has left the chat.

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Now, if you believe what the state tells you about human nature, if you can believe what
Hollywood tells you about, about anarchy.

51
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you know what happens next.

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It's a bloodbath.

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It should be like Mad Max and, and, you know, post-apocalyptic fiction.

54
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You should be welding spikes to the hood of your Honda and fighting your neighbor to the
death for the last can of SpaghettiOs because without the police to stop us, we're all

55
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just savage beasts waiting to kill each other, right?

56
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But we know that's not what happens.

57
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We know because we've seen it.

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We saw it after Katrina.

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I lived in Louisiana during uh Katrina.

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We saw it after Hurricane Sandy and we saw it in Oklahoma after the more tornadoes.

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um Here's what actually happens, right?

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You walk outside, you see your neighbor, let's call him Bob.

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Bob has a downed fence, right?

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You don't run in and kill Bob.

65
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You don't steal Bob's TV.

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You ask Bob if he's okay.

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You go to your garage, you get a chainsaw.

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Two guys from down the street see you, they grab their chainsaws.

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They didn't talk about it.

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There was no meeting.

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Nobody's a supervisor.

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There's no paycheck.

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Nobody has a badge.

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uh You start clearing the street, right?

75
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Someone realizes the power's out and the meat in everyone's freezer's about to spoil.

76
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So Mrs.

77
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Higgins down the block pulls her grill into the driveway.

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Everyone brings their thawing steaks and chicken.

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Someone brings a case of warm beer.

80
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By the end of day, the entire neighborhood is fed.

81
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There's a patrol schedule set up to watch for looters or anything of that nature.

82
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A first aid station sets up in a garage for minor cuts and scrapes and things like that.

83
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Decisions are being made by people doing the work.

84
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Resources are being shared based on kind of who needs them, not who has the most money.

85
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So order has been created, it's been maintained, safety has been established, and not a
single tax dollar was spent.

86
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Not a single permit was filed.

87
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not a single police officer was present.

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Now, imagine if you're a bureaucrat who showed up right in the middle of the barbecue and
said, you know, excuse me, do you have a license to serve food to the public?

89
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Is that chainsaw OSHA compliant?

90
00:05:02,945 --> 00:05:04,826
You would tell him to get lost.

91
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I mean, you'd realize that in that moment, his authority is kind of irrelevant to your
survival.

92
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Congratulations.

93
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You just participated in anarchy.

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I know, I know it stings a little bit, right?

95
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Like I'm not an anarchist.

96
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I have a 401k.

97
00:05:22,212 --> 00:05:24,854
I voted for a Democrat in the last election.

98
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I own a riding lawnmower, but strictly speaking, that scenario that I just described is
voluntary organization.

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It's mutual aid.

100
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It's order without rulers.

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It's the textbook definition of anarchism.

102
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So let's look at the word anarchy.

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It comes from the Greek anarchy.

104
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which combines and meaning without, archos meaning a ruler.

105
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It literally means without a ruler.

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So you can't measure anything, right?

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No, bad dad joke.

108
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That was in Will's honor.

109
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Notice what it doesn't mean.

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It doesn't mean without rules.

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It doesn't mean without structure.

112
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It definitely doesn't mean without consequences.

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If you act like an asshole in an anarchist society, you don't go to jail.

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You get exiled from the barbecue.

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And honestly, that might be worse depending on who's cooking it, right?

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ah If you've had any of my smoked barbecue stuff, you know that you're worse off for the
wear, believe me.

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The core uh philosophy of anarchism is pretty simple, right?

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Authority requires justification.

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The anarchist asks the state, why do you get to tell me what to do?

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The state says, well, because I have the guns and the badges and the anarchist says,
sorry, that's not good enough.

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So if you believe that human beings are generally decent, if you believe that you don't
need the threat of violence to keep you from murdering your neighbor, then you are closer

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to being an anarchist than you think.

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Anarchy is actually the most optimistic political philosophy that we know of.

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It basically assumes that everyone is not a psychopath.

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The state assumes that everyone is.

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All right, now.

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Before we move on to the history, is nuts, uh let's clear something up.

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Anarchism isn't a monolith, right?

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If we put three anarchists into a room, the same thing with atheists.

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You'll end up with four different political parties and somebody's gonna get a black eye.

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They basically fight over the definitions of what they believe and what they think more
than the theologians fight over scripture.

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So,

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Let's go through a few contestants, I guess, in the who hates the government the most
pageant so that we define the terms you know who we're talking about for the rest of the

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show.

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Number one, you have the Menarchist, Menarche, M-I-N-A-R-C-H-Y.

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This is the just the tip of anti-statism.

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Menarchists who usually populate within the Libertarian Party

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believe that the state is a necessary evil, but they want it to be microscopic.

139
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They want what Robert Nozick, uh well-known philosopher from that group called a night
watchman state.

140
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Here's the the Menarchist pitch, right?

141
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Look guys, we need the government, but only to do three things, police, courts, military.

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That's it, everything else, roads, privatize them, schools, privatize them, fire
departments, send a bill.

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We just want the government to protect property rights.

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Now look, anarchists look at a minarchist and kind of laugh, right?

145
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Because the anarchist says, well, wait a minute, you you want to abolish the post office
and the library, but you want to keep the police in the military.

146
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You basically want to keep the only two things the state uses to violently oppress people
and get rid of the stuff that actually helps people.

147
00:09:10,378 --> 00:09:11,888
To an anarchist,

148
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A Menarchist is just a confused Republican who likes to smoke cannabis, right?

149
00:09:19,283 --> 00:09:23,355
Enter contender number two, we have the anarcho-communist.

150
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We call them Ancoms.

151
00:09:25,237 --> 00:09:27,198
They have a flag, it's red and black.

152
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uh Their intellectual grandfather is the Russian prince, uh Peter Kropotkin?

153
00:09:34,442 --> 00:09:35,802
Kropotkin?

154
00:09:36,063 --> 00:09:37,644
Let's go with Kropotkin, that's fine.

155
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uh Now, just as a side note, giving up being a prince to be an anarchist is a mad flex,
bro.

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He wrote a book called The Conquest of Bread.

157
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And so their philosophy, ant comms believe that capitalism and the state are essentially
two heads of the same monster.

158
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They say that if I'm free from the government, but I have to work for a company that pays
me starvation wages or I starve to death, am I really free?

159
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And they say no.

160
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They say that's wage slavery.

161
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They want to abolish the state and abolish money and abolish

162
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private property.

163
00:10:17,850 --> 00:10:24,275
From each according to his ability to each according to his needs in the Marxist
viewpoints.

164
00:10:24,355 --> 00:10:29,299
So these are people basically running the community gardens, right?

165
00:10:29,299 --> 00:10:32,622
They're the ones organizing the mutual aid networks.

166
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They want to share their toothbrush with you.

167
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Well, not the toothbrush.

168
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I mean, they make a very distinct uh choice and separation between personal property like
your stuff

169
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and private property like factories.

170
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I mean, good luck explaining that distinction to a guy with a Gazdan flag on his Ford
F-150 right next to the Chuck Nuts.

171
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Enter contender number three.

172
00:11:00,052 --> 00:11:02,173
We have the anarcho-capitalist.

173
00:11:02,173 --> 00:11:03,453
We call them ANCAPS.

174
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They also have a flag.

175
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It's yellow and black.

176
00:11:06,334 --> 00:11:09,155
Their hero is Murray Rothbard.

177
00:11:09,175 --> 00:11:14,546
So their aesthetic is like bow ties, Bitcoin and Austrian economics.

178
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These guys are kind of the polar opposite of the Ancoms.

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They love capitalism.

180
00:11:20,590 --> 00:11:23,671
They think the free market is their god.

181
00:11:23,671 --> 00:11:26,212
They just hate the government interfering in it.

182
00:11:26,592 --> 00:11:29,913
Their central philosophy is NAP, the non-aggression principle.

183
00:11:29,913 --> 00:11:38,795
The non-aggression principle says that it is always immoral to initiate force against
someone or their property.

184
00:11:39,435 --> 00:11:44,225
Therefore, they view taxation as theft because if you don't pay taxes,

185
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men with guns will come to your house.

186
00:11:45,945 --> 00:11:47,125
That is force.

187
00:11:47,125 --> 00:11:49,845
So they want to privatize everything.

188
00:11:49,845 --> 00:11:54,465
And I mean everything, private roads, private courts, private police forces.

189
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If someone steals your TV, you don't call 911, you call mixed security services, assuming
your subscription's up to date, right?

190
00:12:03,465 --> 00:12:11,220
These guys believe that your right to own a national McNuke shall not be infringed,
provided that you bought it with gold.

191
00:12:11,220 --> 00:12:15,702
bullion or silver spoons melted down into coins.

192
00:12:16,003 --> 00:12:25,808
Most anarchists, like uh normal anarchists, scream that that and caps aren't real
anarchists because a corporation is just a private government.

193
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So to an and calm and and cap is like a feudal lord with a better marketing department.

194
00:12:33,412 --> 00:12:35,993
So we have the diet state menarchists.

195
00:12:35,993 --> 00:12:38,942
We have the share everything and comes

196
00:12:38,942 --> 00:12:43,434
we have the buy everything and caps, why does this matter?

197
00:12:43,594 --> 00:12:49,717
Well, for the last hundred years or so, the powers that be have been terrified of every
single one of those, right?

198
00:12:49,717 --> 00:12:54,718
They've spent a century trying to erase them from the history books.

199
00:12:55,239 --> 00:13:06,303
So now that we know the players, ah now that we know the difference between the guy who
wants to abolish money and the guy who wants to buy a private army with Bitcoin, let's

200
00:13:06,303 --> 00:13:07,994
talk about where all this comes from.

201
00:13:08,988 --> 00:13:21,325
So if you went to a public school in the United States, and I'm willing to bet that most
of our audience out there, um, learned about anarchists exactly one time, right?

202
00:13:21,325 --> 00:13:24,536
It was probably a footnote in chapter 14 of your history books.

203
00:13:24,777 --> 00:13:33,081
It was involving a cartoon with a, of a guy with a handlebar mustache and a foreign accent
and a round black bomb with a lit fuse.

204
00:13:33,261 --> 00:13:35,883
The narrative we're sold is very specific.

205
00:13:35,883 --> 00:13:38,654
Anarchism is a foreign virus.

206
00:13:39,144 --> 00:13:46,326
It's something that crazy immigrants brought over from Europe to infect the pure freedom
loving soil of America.

207
00:13:46,826 --> 00:13:48,207
But here's the reality check.

208
00:13:48,207 --> 00:13:50,587
And here's the part that they didn't put on the test, right?

209
00:13:50,587 --> 00:13:53,168
Anarchism is not foreign.

210
00:13:53,188 --> 00:13:56,769
It is deeply rooted in the American DNA.

211
00:13:56,769 --> 00:14:06,642
In fact, if you enjoy your weekend, if you enjoy an eight hour workday, if you enjoy the
fact that your six year old is in first grade instead of coughing up black lung in a coal

212
00:14:06,642 --> 00:14:07,352
mine,

213
00:14:07,666 --> 00:14:09,797
you might want to thank an anarchist.

214
00:14:10,058 --> 00:14:11,498
Let's set the scene.

215
00:14:11,578 --> 00:14:15,261
Chicago, 1886, the Gilded Age.

216
00:14:15,441 --> 00:14:17,783
And Gilded is a perfect word for it.

217
00:14:17,783 --> 00:14:25,047
It means covered in a thin layer of gold, but underneath it is a cheap rotting piece of
iron.

218
00:14:25,408 --> 00:14:29,751
We have the Rockefellers and the Carnegie's building palaces literally.

219
00:14:29,751 --> 00:14:36,285
And down the street we have immigrants living in tenements so crowded that people are
sleeping in shifts.

220
00:14:36,605 --> 00:14:42,277
The average workday is 12, 14, sometimes 16 hours, six days a week.

221
00:14:42,277 --> 00:14:43,797
There is no OSHA.

222
00:14:44,318 --> 00:14:46,059
There is no HR department.

223
00:14:46,059 --> 00:14:52,941
If your arm gets ripped off by a carpet loom, you don't get workers comp.

224
00:14:52,941 --> 00:14:55,442
You get fired for bleeding on the fabric.

225
00:14:55,922 --> 00:14:58,983
And so the labor movement decides, look, that's enough.

226
00:14:59,184 --> 00:15:03,145
They coalesce around a single radical demand.

227
00:15:03,165 --> 00:15:06,246
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest.

228
00:15:06,363 --> 00:15:08,588
eight hours for what we will.

229
00:15:08,910 --> 00:15:10,774
So who's leading this charge?

230
00:15:10,856 --> 00:15:12,218
It's the Democrats.

231
00:15:12,469 --> 00:15:13,029
Just kidding.

232
00:15:13,029 --> 00:15:13,650
It wasn't.

233
00:15:13,650 --> 00:15:16,070
They were busy ignoring the problem.

234
00:15:16,691 --> 00:15:18,331
Maybe it was the Republicans.

235
00:15:19,192 --> 00:15:21,683
They were the party of big business actually.

236
00:15:21,683 --> 00:15:23,254
No, so it's not them either.

237
00:15:23,254 --> 00:15:25,295
They were the ones who actually owned the factories.

238
00:15:25,295 --> 00:15:26,855
It was the anarchists.

239
00:15:27,036 --> 00:15:32,358
Specifically, a group of radical, mostly German immigrant anarchists in Chicago.

240
00:15:32,358 --> 00:15:37,380
People like uh Albert Parsons and August Spies.

241
00:15:37,697 --> 00:15:39,677
These guys weren't hiding in the shadows.

242
00:15:39,677 --> 00:15:42,097
They were the celebrities of the working class.

243
00:15:42,097 --> 00:15:46,477
They published newspapers, they gave speeches to thousands of people.

244
00:15:47,037 --> 00:15:57,717
Albert Parsons was actually a former Confederate soldier from Alabama who radicalized and
married a woman of mixed race, which if you've paid attention to history in the 1880s,

245
00:15:57,717 --> 00:16:02,657
America was basically a capital crime rolled into a marriage license.

246
00:16:03,037 --> 00:16:07,877
So on May 1st, 1886, they launch a general strike.

247
00:16:08,234 --> 00:16:14,447
Hundreds of thousands of people walk off of their job across the country.

248
00:16:14,528 --> 00:16:17,569
The city of Chicago was absolutely paralyzed.

249
00:16:17,729 --> 00:16:21,341
And of course, the business owners are freaked the F out, right?

250
00:16:21,341 --> 00:16:24,353
For three days, it's nuts.

251
00:16:24,513 --> 00:16:34,339
Police are beating people, workers are beating police, and on May 4th, a rally is
scheduled called Haymarket Square.

252
00:16:34,339 --> 00:16:37,012
Now, pay attention to the details because

253
00:16:37,012 --> 00:16:40,094
This is kind of where the history books start to lie to you.

254
00:16:40,094 --> 00:16:42,775
The rally was actually very peaceful.

255
00:16:42,775 --> 00:16:43,836
It was raining.

256
00:16:43,836 --> 00:16:44,676
It was cold.

257
00:16:44,676 --> 00:16:46,177
It was miserable.

258
00:16:46,177 --> 00:16:51,800
And the mayor of Chicago, who at the time was Carter Harrison, he actually attended the
rally.

259
00:16:51,800 --> 00:16:52,760
He stood there.

260
00:16:52,760 --> 00:16:54,401
He listened to the speeches.

261
00:16:54,401 --> 00:16:56,062
He smoked a cigar.

262
00:16:56,182 --> 00:17:00,704
He told the police chief, look, everything looks chill and went home to bed.

263
00:17:01,265 --> 00:17:06,080
And as the crowd was starting to, to dwindle, there were

264
00:17:06,080 --> 00:17:10,723
probably 200 people or so left, mostly just kind of shivering in the rain.

265
00:17:10,723 --> 00:17:17,448
uh A column of 176 police officers marched into the middle of it.

266
00:17:17,448 --> 00:17:19,850
They ordered the crowd to disperse.

267
00:17:20,310 --> 00:17:25,654
And suddenly, from a side alley, someone throws a bomb.

268
00:17:26,135 --> 00:17:32,589
To this day, uh 140 years later or so, historians don't know who threw that bomb.

269
00:17:32,721 --> 00:17:34,201
Some say it was an anarchist.

270
00:17:34,201 --> 00:17:48,175
Some say it was an agent provocateur hired by the police to justify the violence, but the
bomb landed, it exploded and one officer was immediately killed and the police panicked.

271
00:17:48,175 --> 00:17:52,356
They started open firing wildly into the crowd.

272
00:17:52,496 --> 00:17:56,318
They even shot their own men in the confusion.

273
00:17:56,318 --> 00:17:58,218
It was a massacre.

274
00:17:58,878 --> 00:18:00,478
Now watch the pivot.

275
00:18:00,499 --> 00:18:02,100
Watch how the state responds.

276
00:18:02,100 --> 00:18:04,001
They don't look for the guy who threw the bomb.

277
00:18:04,001 --> 00:18:05,902
They round up the leaders.

278
00:18:05,902 --> 00:18:08,803
They arrest eight prominent anarchists.

279
00:18:08,803 --> 00:18:10,083
And here's the kicker.

280
00:18:10,083 --> 00:18:11,744
Did they throw the bomb?

281
00:18:11,864 --> 00:18:12,824
No.

282
00:18:13,224 --> 00:18:15,445
Were they even at the rally?

283
00:18:15,465 --> 00:18:16,966
Most of them weren't.

284
00:18:17,246 --> 00:18:21,367
Albert Parsons was actually drinking beer at Zeph's hall down the street.

285
00:18:21,688 --> 00:18:23,468
Another guy was home playing cards.

286
00:18:23,468 --> 00:18:24,429
It didn't matter.

287
00:18:24,429 --> 00:18:25,969
The truth didn't matter.

288
00:18:26,089 --> 00:18:30,831
The state attorney, Julius Grinnell, stood up in court and said this, that

289
00:18:31,121 --> 00:18:45,245
And this is a direct quote, I want you to hear it, quote, law is on trial, anarchy is on
trial, these men have been selected because they are leaders.

290
00:18:45,546 --> 00:18:53,334
Convict these men, make examples of them, hang them, and you save our institutions, end
quote.

291
00:18:53,585 --> 00:18:55,216
He literally admitted it.

292
00:18:56,159 --> 00:18:59,242
We aren't hanging them because they committed a crime.

293
00:18:59,884 --> 00:19:04,068
We're hanging them because we don't like their ideas.

294
00:19:04,330 --> 00:19:11,819
Four men, Parsons, Spees, Fisher, and Engel were actually all hung.

295
00:19:12,070 --> 00:19:12,877
Hanged?

296
00:19:12,877 --> 00:19:13,864
it hanged, hung?

297
00:19:13,864 --> 00:19:15,584
Doesn't matter, they were killed for it.

298
00:19:16,585 --> 00:19:18,876
one actually committed suicide in a cell.

299
00:19:19,836 --> 00:19:22,437
are, there's a name for these people.

300
00:19:22,437 --> 00:19:24,698
They're called the Haymarket Martyrs.

301
00:19:24,698 --> 00:19:34,281
And the backlash was pretty much around the world, the entire world, like Europe, South
America, Asia.

302
00:19:34,281 --> 00:19:39,453
They were so incredibly outraged by this execution.

303
00:19:40,454 --> 00:19:44,797
that they actually established May 1st as International Workers Day.

304
00:19:44,957 --> 00:19:46,237
Think about that.

305
00:19:47,099 --> 00:19:55,044
The entire planet celebrates May Day to honor American anarchists, except the United
States.

306
00:19:55,044 --> 00:19:55,984
Why?

307
00:19:56,425 --> 00:20:09,303
Because President Grover Cleveland and later legislation pushed Labor Day to September,
specifically to dissociate the labor movement from those scary anarchists.

308
00:20:09,433 --> 00:20:15,040
They literally rearrange the calendar to make you forget that these people existed.

309
00:20:15,121 --> 00:20:21,409
That is the level of pettiness only our federal government can achieve.

310
00:20:22,410 --> 00:20:24,081
But the government wasn't done.

311
00:20:24,561 --> 00:20:26,282
They were terrified.

312
00:20:26,382 --> 00:20:28,763
This wasn't just a labor dispute to them.

313
00:20:28,763 --> 00:20:31,725
This was an existential threat.

314
00:20:31,945 --> 00:20:36,127
And in 1901, they finally got the excuse they needed.

315
00:20:36,247 --> 00:20:43,191
President William McKinley is at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.

316
00:20:43,211 --> 00:20:45,012
He's shaking hands.

317
00:20:45,132 --> 00:20:51,275
A man approaches him with a handkerchief wrapped around his hand to hide a revolver.

318
00:20:51,356 --> 00:20:52,496
That man

319
00:20:52,649 --> 00:20:54,674
Leon Zolgos.

320
00:20:54,817 --> 00:20:58,327
He fires two shots and kills William McKinley.

321
00:20:58,611 --> 00:20:59,431
Now

322
00:20:59,682 --> 00:21:01,833
Leon called himself an anarchist.

323
00:21:01,833 --> 00:21:04,605
I'm not gonna say his last name because it's really hard to pronounce.

324
00:21:04,605 --> 00:21:12,859
It's spelled C-Z-O-L-G-O-S-Z, which I believe is Shoal-Gosh.

325
00:21:12,859 --> 00:21:16,541
um But here's the nuance.

326
00:21:16,541 --> 00:21:20,683
The actual anarchist community hated this guy.

327
00:21:20,724 --> 00:21:21,974
He was kind of a loner.

328
00:21:21,974 --> 00:21:23,165
He was a weirdo.

329
00:21:23,165 --> 00:21:24,446
He was awkward.

330
00:21:24,446 --> 00:21:27,041
He tried to join the anarchist groups.

331
00:21:27,041 --> 00:21:31,874
and they literally put out warnings in the newspapers saying, watch out for this guy.

332
00:21:31,874 --> 00:21:42,842
He asks too many questions about secret codes and he's probably a police spy, but he shot
the president and the U S government didn't care about nuance.

333
00:21:42,842 --> 00:21:49,947
They saw an opportunity in 1903, Congress passes the anarchist exclusion act.

334
00:21:50,307 --> 00:21:53,249
This is kind of a massive turning point in American history.

335
00:21:53,650 --> 00:21:56,251
Before this act, immigration was pretty open.

336
00:21:56,558 --> 00:21:58,688
Give me your tired, give me your poor.

337
00:22:00,049 --> 00:22:09,671
This law was the first time, the first time the US banned people from entering the country
based solely on their political beliefs.

338
00:22:09,671 --> 00:22:15,393
So if you showed up at Ellis Island, the inspector would ask, are you an anarchist?

339
00:22:15,393 --> 00:22:17,773
If you said yes, get back on the boat.

340
00:22:17,933 --> 00:22:19,934
They didn't ask if you'd committed a crime.

341
00:22:19,934 --> 00:22:22,154
They didn't ask if you were violent.

342
00:22:22,415 --> 00:22:24,495
They ask what you thought.

343
00:22:24,952 --> 00:22:27,214
They criminalized a philosophy.

344
00:22:27,214 --> 00:22:28,294
And why?

345
00:22:28,514 --> 00:22:29,695
Think about it.

346
00:22:30,356 --> 00:22:37,000
Why was the most powerful government on earth so terrified of a bunch of immigrants
reading books in a basement?

347
00:22:37,620 --> 00:22:41,683
It wasn't because they thought anarchy meant chaos.

348
00:22:41,934 --> 00:22:46,416
It was because they knew anarchy meant order without them.

349
00:22:46,697 --> 00:22:53,227
The idea of anarchism, the idea that people can organize themselves, that we don't need
rulers,

350
00:22:53,227 --> 00:22:56,959
that the state is actually a parasite is contagious.

351
00:22:57,039 --> 00:23:03,122
If people realize they don't need the state, they don't need the government, the state
loses its power.

352
00:23:03,823 --> 00:23:08,345
And the one thing power hates more than anything else is being ignored.

353
00:23:08,786 --> 00:23:14,189
And you cannot, you cannot talk about this without talking about the women.

354
00:23:14,189 --> 00:23:14,529
J.

355
00:23:14,529 --> 00:23:19,091
Edgar Hoover called the most dangerous woman in America.

356
00:23:19,492 --> 00:23:22,213
Red Emma, Emma Goldman.

357
00:23:22,241 --> 00:23:32,229
She was five feet tall, rimless glasses, basically looked like a librarian and a nun that
would shush you for breathing too loud.

358
00:23:32,350 --> 00:23:36,713
But she terrified the establishment.

359
00:23:36,754 --> 00:23:37,104
Why?

360
00:23:37,104 --> 00:23:39,696
Did she have a bomb?

361
00:23:40,037 --> 00:23:40,897
No.

362
00:23:41,518 --> 00:23:43,239
Did she command an army?

363
00:23:43,460 --> 00:23:44,360
No.

364
00:23:44,581 --> 00:23:48,464
She had a voice and refused to shut up.

365
00:23:49,460 --> 00:23:54,423
She traveled the country giving speeches about things that were considered taboo.

366
00:23:54,564 --> 00:23:56,445
She talked about birth control.

367
00:23:56,445 --> 00:24:02,710
At the time, distributing information about contraception was actually illegal under the
Comstock Act.

368
00:24:02,730 --> 00:24:05,732
And she went to jail for handing out those pamphlets.

369
00:24:05,873 --> 00:24:09,195
She spoke about free love, which didn't mean orgies.

370
00:24:09,195 --> 00:24:13,658
It just meant that the government and the church shouldn't tell you who you can love or
marry.

371
00:24:13,879 --> 00:24:15,870
She spoke against the draft.

372
00:24:16,084 --> 00:24:21,390
When World War I started, she stood on soap boxes literally and told men, do not go.

373
00:24:21,391 --> 00:24:25,356
This is a war fought by the poor for the benefit of the rich.

374
00:24:25,677 --> 00:24:34,138
She was arrested so many times that she started bringing a book with her to rallies so
she'd have something to read in the jail cell that night.

375
00:24:34,389 --> 00:24:40,403
That is a level of FAFO that I can only aspire to.

376
00:24:40,844 --> 00:24:47,610
Eventually in 1919, during the Palmer raids, the US government gave up trying to silence
her.

377
00:24:47,610 --> 00:24:56,276
They basically rounded her up along with 248 other people and put them on a boat called
the Buford.

378
00:24:56,317 --> 00:25:01,861
This was nicknamed the Soviet Ark and literally deported these people to Russia.

379
00:25:02,782 --> 00:25:04,383
Now they thought

380
00:25:04,383 --> 00:25:07,945
If they got rid of the women, they'd get rid of the idea.

381
00:25:09,607 --> 00:25:11,748
Spoiler alert, it didn't work.

382
00:25:11,748 --> 00:25:13,549
You can deport a person.

383
00:25:13,850 --> 00:25:18,292
You can hang a person, but you can't hang an idea.

384
00:25:18,633 --> 00:25:20,394
So that brings us to the present.

385
00:25:21,035 --> 00:25:23,066
Because history doesn't just stop, right?

386
00:25:23,066 --> 00:25:24,257
It rhymes.

387
00:25:24,508 --> 00:25:31,861
We had the gilded age of the 1890s, massive wealth inequality, powerful oligarchs, and a
government

388
00:25:31,861 --> 00:25:34,662
bought and paid for by corporations.

389
00:25:34,922 --> 00:25:36,443
Does that sound familiar?

390
00:25:36,463 --> 00:25:37,543
It should.

391
00:25:37,864 --> 00:25:39,264
Because here we are in 2026.

392
00:25:39,264 --> 00:25:45,547
We have a consolidated executive branch under President Donald Trump.

393
00:25:46,007 --> 00:25:51,570
We have a massive corporate monopoly in different sectors.

394
00:25:51,570 --> 00:25:55,692
And once again, people are flying the black flag.

395
00:25:55,943 --> 00:25:59,715
Those are the people that the government is the most worried about.

396
00:25:59,715 --> 00:26:01,466
the tactics have changed, right?

397
00:26:01,466 --> 00:26:05,058
We aren't throwing dynamite in Haymarket Square anymore.

398
00:26:05,058 --> 00:26:08,180
We aren't standing on soap boxes shouting about the draft.

399
00:26:08,180 --> 00:26:12,101
The modern anarchist is fighting a different kind of war.

400
00:26:12,142 --> 00:26:13,643
It's a war of information.

401
00:26:13,643 --> 00:26:15,143
It's a war of logistics.

402
00:26:15,143 --> 00:26:19,205
It's a war of who can feed the neighborhood faster than FEMA.

403
00:26:20,026 --> 00:26:21,387
So how does that work?

404
00:26:21,707 --> 00:26:25,869
How do you practice anarchy in a surveillance state?

405
00:26:26,355 --> 00:26:30,353
How do you fight a regime without becoming a target?

406
00:26:30,435 --> 00:26:33,731
Well, you start by disappearing.

407
00:26:34,732 --> 00:26:35,443
wait, I'm back.

408
00:26:35,443 --> 00:26:42,768
So if Emma Goldman were alive today, she wouldn't be standing on a soapbox in Union Square
screaming at people, right?

409
00:26:42,768 --> 00:26:44,249
She'd be on signal.

410
00:26:44,369 --> 00:26:46,791
She'd be running a node on the Tor network.

411
00:26:46,791 --> 00:26:56,198
She'd be setting up Lora radios throughout the city and towns that she was in to create an
encrypted network.

412
00:26:56,449 --> 00:26:59,471
And she probably wouldn't be wearing an F the police t-shirt.

413
00:26:59,471 --> 00:27:02,052
She'd be wearing a beige cardigan from target.

414
00:27:02,692 --> 00:27:10,416
This brings us to the most important shift in the last hundred years of this philosophy,
the modern front.

415
00:27:10,817 --> 00:27:17,951
Now, if you watch a lame stream news, if you have cable, you're getting over the air, you
know, whatever.

416
00:27:17,951 --> 00:27:22,123
And I assume you don't because you're listening to this podcast and therefore you have a
soul.

417
00:27:22,123 --> 00:27:26,357
Um, but if, if you're your parents or

418
00:27:26,357 --> 00:27:27,466
your friends.

419
00:27:27,717 --> 00:27:32,628
You are told that the modern anarchist is a violent extremist.

420
00:27:33,068 --> 00:27:41,781
They show you footage of a burning trash can in Portland from six years ago on a loop, but
that is the aesthetic of anarchism, not the practice.

421
00:27:41,781 --> 00:27:43,951
That's the branding, not the product.

422
00:27:44,492 --> 00:27:55,995
The modern resistance against the Trump regime, and let's be clear, against the corporate
oligarchy that owns it, the corporate oligarchy, that isn't happening in the streets with

423
00:27:55,995 --> 00:27:57,455
Molotov cocktails.

424
00:27:57,479 --> 00:27:59,539
That's really easy to track.

425
00:27:59,699 --> 00:28:02,539
That's what gets you thrown in a federal holding cell.

426
00:28:02,539 --> 00:28:04,899
The real resistance is happening in the shadows.

427
00:28:04,899 --> 00:28:06,599
It's happening in your neighborhood.

428
00:28:06,599 --> 00:28:10,159
And it relies upon a concept called the gray man.

429
00:28:10,639 --> 00:28:12,639
The gray man theory is simple.

430
00:28:12,899 --> 00:28:17,219
And it's a concept borrowed from intelligence agencies and survivalists.

431
00:28:17,219 --> 00:28:27,199
If you want to survive in a hostile environment, say, I don't know, an authoritarian
surveillance state in 2026, you don't make yourself a target.

432
00:28:27,772 --> 00:28:30,094
You don't dye your hair bright blue.

433
00:28:30,094 --> 00:28:32,636
You don't wear tactical gear to the grocery store.

434
00:28:32,636 --> 00:28:34,908
You don't put political stickers on your car.

435
00:28:34,908 --> 00:28:35,899
You blend in.

436
00:28:35,899 --> 00:28:38,020
You look like everybody else.

437
00:28:38,020 --> 00:28:39,661
You become gray.

438
00:28:40,462 --> 00:28:43,964
The modern anarchist isn't the guy shouting at the cop.

439
00:28:44,165 --> 00:28:52,251
The modern anarchist is the IT guy who quietly installs privacy software on the library
computers so the kids can browse without being tracked.

440
00:28:52,612 --> 00:28:57,305
It's the grandmother who turns her basement into a hydroponic garden.

441
00:28:57,463 --> 00:29:03,144
and distributes the vegetables to families who lost their SNAP benefits without asking for
ID.

442
00:29:03,505 --> 00:29:08,146
It's neighborhood pantries set up with refrigerators so that people can have goods.

443
00:29:08,146 --> 00:29:17,328
It's the person who distributes really good books and literature in a uh lending library
outside their front door.

444
00:29:17,809 --> 00:29:26,361
It's a mechanic who fixes cars for free on the weekends for undocumented immigrants who
can't go to a licensed shop.

445
00:29:26,961 --> 00:29:34,503
So this is a pivot from propaganda of the deed, which is a old school blow stuff up
method, right?

446
00:29:34,503 --> 00:29:36,453
To dual power.

447
00:29:36,704 --> 00:29:42,285
Let's define that term because it's kind of the engine of modern resistance.

448
00:29:42,285 --> 00:29:43,645
Dual power.

449
00:29:44,025 --> 00:29:44,865
It's a strategy.

450
00:29:44,865 --> 00:29:49,186
means you don't just fight the state, you replace the state.

451
00:29:49,727 --> 00:29:55,850
You build institutions that do the state's job better, faster and fairer than

452
00:29:55,850 --> 00:29:56,662
state does.

453
00:29:56,662 --> 00:30:03,979
You build a counter power so that when the state finally collapses or just stops caring
about you, you don't notice.

454
00:30:04,230 --> 00:30:08,773
You have to build the lifeboat while the ship is still sinking.

455
00:30:09,034 --> 00:30:10,976
Let's look at how this is working right now in 2026.

456
00:30:10,976 --> 00:30:16,581
The federal government has slashed funding for disaster relief.

457
00:30:16,581 --> 00:30:17,882
We know this, right?

458
00:30:17,882 --> 00:30:20,243
FEMA is basically a skeleton crew.

459
00:30:20,664 --> 00:30:27,489
So what happens when a flood hits, a tornado hits, a hurricane?

460
00:30:27,990 --> 00:30:29,752
And these things are going to happen.

461
00:30:29,752 --> 00:30:33,008
We live in places where they happen all the time.

462
00:30:33,008 --> 00:30:35,009
In the old days, you waited for the government, right?

463
00:30:35,009 --> 00:30:38,862
You waited for the National Guard and you died waiting.

464
00:30:39,222 --> 00:30:42,805
Today, we see mutual aid networks.

465
00:30:42,805 --> 00:30:50,394
Please, and I cannot stress this enough, do not confuse mutual aid with charity, right?

466
00:30:50,394 --> 00:30:52,031
Charity is vertical.

467
00:30:52,431 --> 00:31:01,177
Charity is a rich person looking down at a poor person and giving them a crumb or a dollar
to feel better about themselves.

468
00:31:01,817 --> 00:31:03,539
Charity comes with strings.

469
00:31:03,539 --> 00:31:06,521
I'll give you this sandwich if you listen to my sermon.

470
00:31:06,681 --> 00:31:08,193
Mutual aid is horizontal.

471
00:31:08,193 --> 00:31:10,865
It's solidarity, not charity.

472
00:31:10,865 --> 00:31:17,271
It says, I'm helping you because my survival is tied to your survival.

473
00:31:17,271 --> 00:31:19,712
I'm not above you, I'm with you.

474
00:31:19,963 --> 00:31:23,966
We see this with groups like Food Not Bombs.

475
00:31:24,206 --> 00:31:26,448
They have been doing this for decades.

476
00:31:26,448 --> 00:31:28,774
They basically recover food

477
00:31:28,774 --> 00:31:37,376
that grocery stores are going to throw away because capitalism is inevitably wasteful and
they cook it and serve it to anyone that's hungry.

478
00:31:37,376 --> 00:31:38,577
And guess what?

479
00:31:39,137 --> 00:31:42,818
Governments, local and federal hate them.

480
00:31:43,578 --> 00:31:49,840
Cities have literally passed laws making it illegal to feed homeless people in parks.

481
00:31:49,840 --> 00:31:50,820
Why?

482
00:31:51,420 --> 00:31:56,581
Why would a city spend money to arrest people for giving away free soup?

483
00:31:56,642 --> 00:31:58,195
Because it

484
00:31:58,195 --> 00:32:01,717
proves that the state is unnecessary.

485
00:32:02,337 --> 00:32:12,602
If a bunch of punks with a propane burner can feed the unhoused better than the Department
of Health and Human Services, why do we need the Department of Health and Human Services?

486
00:32:13,383 --> 00:32:15,103
But it's not just food.

487
00:32:15,284 --> 00:32:16,925
It's digital defense.

488
00:32:16,925 --> 00:32:22,608
We live in the most surveilled society in human history.

489
00:32:22,608 --> 00:32:27,122
Every text you send, every location ping from your phone, every

490
00:32:27,122 --> 00:32:31,665
purchase you make is logged, sold, stored in a data center in Utah.

491
00:32:32,527 --> 00:32:38,172
The modern anarchist is the only one actually fighting for your privacy.

492
00:32:38,172 --> 00:32:40,533
They're the ones building mesh networks.

493
00:32:40,814 --> 00:32:47,049
A mesh network is a network, either radio or internet, that doesn't rely on an internet
service provider, right?

494
00:32:47,049 --> 00:32:49,341
It doesn't go through Comcast or AT &T.

495
00:32:49,341 --> 00:32:51,443
It jumps from device to device.

496
00:32:51,684 --> 00:32:54,898
Your phone connects to my phone, which connects to a router down the street.

497
00:32:54,898 --> 00:32:59,798
It's a web that the government can't shut down because there is no central switch.

498
00:33:00,758 --> 00:33:03,718
They're the ones pushing end-to-end encryption.

499
00:33:03,718 --> 00:33:09,878
If you use Signal, and you should use Signal, you are using anarchist technology.

500
00:33:09,878 --> 00:33:16,998
That code was written by people who believe the government has no right to read your love
letters or your grocery list.

501
00:33:17,738 --> 00:33:21,258
In 2026, OPSEC, operational security,

502
00:33:21,582 --> 00:33:25,804
isn't just for spies and people who work for the federal government.

503
00:33:25,804 --> 00:33:32,506
It's for anyone who wants to organize a protest without getting that dreaded knock on the
door beforehand.

504
00:33:32,757 --> 00:33:35,458
The battle lines aren't drawn on a map anymore.

505
00:33:35,458 --> 00:33:37,277
They are drawn in code.

506
00:33:37,318 --> 00:33:46,962
And then we have the most controversial piece of the modern resistance, community defense,
or as the media likes to call them, the boogeyman.

507
00:33:47,213 --> 00:33:49,504
Yes, I'm talking about Antifa.

508
00:33:49,755 --> 00:33:53,235
Take a breath, unclench your jaw.

509
00:33:53,995 --> 00:33:57,855
Antifa is short for anti-fascist.

510
00:33:57,855 --> 00:33:59,715
It's not an organization.

511
00:33:59,875 --> 00:34:02,435
There is no CEO of Antifa.

512
00:34:02,435 --> 00:34:03,995
There is no headquarters.

513
00:34:03,995 --> 00:34:05,055
You can't sign up.

514
00:34:05,055 --> 00:34:06,735
There are no membership cards.

515
00:34:06,735 --> 00:34:10,115
It is an action.

516
00:34:10,195 --> 00:34:16,275
It's a philosophy that says fascism must be opposed by any means necessary.

517
00:34:16,795 --> 00:34:19,055
In 2026, under a regime,

518
00:34:19,055 --> 00:34:24,197
that openly flirts with authoritarianism, community defense has shifted.

519
00:34:24,677 --> 00:34:27,508
It's not just about punching Nazis in the street, right?

520
00:34:27,508 --> 00:34:32,180
Though, historically, this was a popular pastime.

521
00:34:32,540 --> 00:34:35,101
It's about protecting vulnerable people.

522
00:34:35,421 --> 00:34:46,526
When the Proud Boys or whatever neo-fascist militia group pops up next week, decides to
march through a neighborhood to intimidate immigrants,

523
00:34:47,870 --> 00:34:53,214
or the LGBTQIA plus community, the police usually stand there.

524
00:34:53,875 --> 00:34:54,916
That's it.

525
00:34:54,916 --> 00:34:58,418
Or worse, they face the protesters.

526
00:34:58,539 --> 00:35:03,823
Community defense groups, often armed, often trained, stand in the way.

527
00:35:03,883 --> 00:35:05,464
They are the shield.

528
00:35:05,965 --> 00:35:11,409
They are the ultimate expression of the second amendment, which is pretty ironic, right?

529
00:35:11,470 --> 00:35:17,214
The NRA loves to talk about fighting tyranny, but when actual tyranny shows up,

530
00:35:17,338 --> 00:35:20,658
The NRA is usually selling it the guns.

531
00:35:20,909 --> 00:35:30,349
The anarchists are the ones actually using the second amendment for its intended purpose,
community defense against an aggressor.

532
00:35:30,589 --> 00:35:32,649
So let's pull all this together.

533
00:35:32,689 --> 00:35:36,929
The modern anarchist in 2026 is a gardener.

534
00:35:36,929 --> 00:35:39,609
They're growing food outside the corporate supply chain.

535
00:35:39,609 --> 00:35:43,141
The modern anarchist is a coder.

536
00:35:43,202 --> 00:35:46,804
They are building encrypted channels so you can talk freely.

537
00:35:47,284 --> 00:35:49,506
The modern anarchist is a medic.

538
00:35:49,506 --> 00:35:54,999
They're running street clinics for people who can't afford an ER.

539
00:35:54,999 --> 00:36:00,131
The anarchist is a barber who's giving free haircuts in a church parking lot.

540
00:36:00,452 --> 00:36:09,637
The modern anarchist sometimes is a soldier standing between a torch-wielding mob and a
library.

541
00:36:10,638 --> 00:36:14,860
They are building a new world in the shell of the old one.

542
00:36:15,021 --> 00:36:17,022
So that brings us to the final question.

543
00:36:17,022 --> 00:36:23,306
The question you are probably asking yourself right now, okay, Joshua, this sounds great,
but does it work?

544
00:36:23,346 --> 00:36:26,568
Can you actually run a society like this?

545
00:36:26,628 --> 00:36:30,370
Or is this just a fantasy for people who don't wanna pay taxes?

546
00:36:30,621 --> 00:36:41,123
Well, we're gonna look at the evidence and I'm gonna tell you why you, yes you, are
probably the biggest anarchist in the room and you don't know it yet.

547
00:36:42,124 --> 00:36:42,434
All right.

548
00:36:42,434 --> 00:36:44,686
So we've covered a lot of ground today.

549
00:36:44,686 --> 00:36:50,050
We've talked about the definitions, how anarchy just means no rulers, not no rules.

550
00:36:50,171 --> 00:36:54,654
We've talked about the history, how the people who gave you the weekend were hanged for
it.

551
00:36:54,654 --> 00:37:01,839
We've talked about the present, how the modern resistance is feeding people while the
state argues about budget cuts and snap benefits.

552
00:37:02,260 --> 00:37:12,188
But now for the last few minutes of the show, I want to stop talking about them and I want
to talk about you because I know who listens to this show.

553
00:37:12,640 --> 00:37:14,220
You are smart people.

554
00:37:14,220 --> 00:37:17,641
You're critical thinkers, but you're also normal people.

555
00:37:17,641 --> 00:37:22,022
You have jobs, have families, you pay your taxes reluctantly.

556
00:37:22,022 --> 00:37:24,820
You obey the speed limit mostly.

557
00:37:24,820 --> 00:37:30,645
And if I called you an anarchist to your face, you'd probably be offended.

558
00:37:30,645 --> 00:37:33,265
say, Joshua, look, I'm a civilized person.

559
00:37:33,265 --> 00:37:34,906
I'm a Democrat.

560
00:37:35,006 --> 00:37:36,506
I voted for Harris.

561
00:37:36,506 --> 00:37:38,686
I believe in law and order.

562
00:37:39,547 --> 00:37:40,637
But do you?

563
00:37:40,888 --> 00:37:43,599
Let's run a diagnostic on your actual life.

564
00:37:43,919 --> 00:37:46,179
I want you to think about your relationships.

565
00:37:46,880 --> 00:37:48,400
Think about your family.

566
00:37:48,680 --> 00:37:50,220
Think about your friends.

567
00:37:50,661 --> 00:37:55,642
When you and your friends decide where to go for dinner, do you vote about it?

568
00:37:56,602 --> 00:38:03,604
Do you elect a dinner president who decides for everyone and enforces this decision with a
threat of violence?

569
00:38:04,284 --> 00:38:05,945
No, you talk.

570
00:38:05,945 --> 00:38:07,265
You negotiate.

571
00:38:07,265 --> 00:38:08,115
I want tacos.

572
00:38:08,115 --> 00:38:09,906
Well, I had tacos yesterday.

573
00:38:09,906 --> 00:38:11,016
Let's do pizza.

574
00:38:11,182 --> 00:38:12,923
All right, fine, pizza works.

575
00:38:13,384 --> 00:38:20,729
You come to a consensus, you reach an agreement voluntarily, that is anarchy.

576
00:38:20,980 --> 00:38:25,683
Think about your marriage or your relationship with your significant other or others.

577
00:38:25,934 --> 00:38:30,918
If your SO forgets to do the dishes, do you take them to court and sue them?

578
00:38:31,579 --> 00:38:35,091
Do you call the police and enforce the dishwashing contract?

579
00:38:35,905 --> 00:38:37,656
Do you send them a bill for a fine?

580
00:38:37,656 --> 00:38:38,657
No, you talk about it.

581
00:38:38,657 --> 00:38:40,949
This isn't an HOA, it's a relationship.

582
00:38:40,949 --> 00:38:41,740
Maybe you argue.

583
00:38:41,740 --> 00:38:43,361
I mean, that happens too.

584
00:38:43,361 --> 00:38:44,632
It's fine.

585
00:38:44,632 --> 00:38:50,056
But you work it out based on mutual respect and a desire to keep the relationship going.

586
00:38:50,277 --> 00:38:53,059
That is anarchy.

587
00:38:54,040 --> 00:38:55,821
Think about the grocery store.

588
00:38:56,002 --> 00:39:04,348
When you are walking down the aisle with your cart and someone's coming the other way, do
you need a traffic cop to tell you to move to the right?

589
00:39:05,344 --> 00:39:08,585
Do you need a stoplight at the end of the serial aisle?

590
00:39:09,345 --> 00:39:13,207
No, you move over, you say, let me squeeze past you.

591
00:39:13,458 --> 00:39:15,919
And you move on, you self-regulate.

592
00:39:16,219 --> 00:39:21,281
You coordinate with a stranger about a single law telling you to do so.

593
00:39:22,141 --> 00:39:24,742
You say, I didn't realize we were dancing.

594
00:39:25,223 --> 00:39:27,153
That is anarchy.

595
00:39:27,404 --> 00:39:31,987
Here is a dirty little secret that political science professors don't want to tell you.

596
00:39:32,644 --> 00:39:35,112
99 % of your life is anarchist.

597
00:39:35,112 --> 00:39:43,641
Like 99 % of your interactions with other human beings are voluntary, cooperative, and
non-coercive.

598
00:39:43,641 --> 00:39:47,414
You don't kill people because you don't want to kill people.

599
00:39:48,415 --> 00:39:50,756
Not because the law says it's illegal.

600
00:39:51,636 --> 00:39:56,158
Is the law the only thing holding you back from literally killing people?

601
00:39:56,878 --> 00:40:03,180
You help your friend move a couch because you care about them, not because the government
mandates that we all help move couches.

602
00:40:03,541 --> 00:40:14,385
The only time the government enters your life is when something goes wrong and it usually
has to be catastrophic or when you have to pay them.

603
00:40:14,925 --> 00:40:17,716
Thomas Paine, one of the founding fathers,

604
00:40:17,814 --> 00:40:20,485
uh Said it best in 1776.

605
00:40:20,485 --> 00:40:35,666
He said society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness Society in every
state is a blessing but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil We're

606
00:40:35,666 --> 00:40:46,884
told that without the state society would collapse But the reality is society exists
despite the state Society is you and me helping each other

607
00:40:47,124 --> 00:40:58,064
The state is the entity that taxes the work that we use to help each other and then uses
the money to buy a drone and kill children in Syria.

608
00:40:58,315 --> 00:40:59,695
So where does that leave us?

609
00:41:00,416 --> 00:41:02,377
It's currently January of 2026.

610
00:41:02,377 --> 00:41:05,838
The world is getting harder.

611
00:41:06,599 --> 00:41:10,120
The Trump regime is consolidating power every day.

612
00:41:10,120 --> 00:41:12,441
The safety nets are being cut.

613
00:41:12,621 --> 00:41:15,002
The climate is getting weird.

614
00:41:15,302 --> 00:41:19,404
The price of eggs is, you know, coming down.

615
00:41:19,404 --> 00:41:22,585
The price of gasoline is at an all-time low.

616
00:41:23,366 --> 00:41:24,886
You have two choices.

617
00:41:25,506 --> 00:41:27,178
You can double down on the state

618
00:41:27,178 --> 00:41:28,858
You can vote harder.

619
00:41:28,858 --> 00:41:30,658
You can scream at the TV.

620
00:41:30,658 --> 00:41:36,498
You can hope that if you just elect the right person in 2028, they'll fix the roads.

621
00:41:36,498 --> 00:41:39,458
They'll lower the prices and make everyone nice to each other.

622
00:41:39,458 --> 00:41:51,518
Again, you can wait for a Jesus character in a suit, or you can look in the mirror and
realize that the cavalry isn't coming.

623
00:41:51,818 --> 00:41:54,618
You realize that you are the cavalry.

624
00:41:54,869 --> 00:42:00,934
You can realize that if you want your neighborhood to be safe, you have to talk to your
neighbors.

625
00:42:01,415 --> 00:42:06,659
If you want hungry people to be fed, you have to feed them.

626
00:42:07,260 --> 00:42:11,683
If you want to be free, you have to start acting free.

627
00:42:12,204 --> 00:42:15,567
I just saw Robert Reich say this the other day on one of his YouTube videos.

628
00:42:15,567 --> 00:42:20,791
He said, there is no one coming for us.

629
00:42:20,791 --> 00:42:23,353
We have to be the ones.

630
00:42:23,604 --> 00:42:28,464
that stand up and say, I am the one who's coming for us.

631
00:42:28,464 --> 00:42:30,744
I am going to save us.

632
00:42:30,744 --> 00:42:33,024
We are going to save ourselves.

633
00:42:33,544 --> 00:42:37,304
To be an anarchist in 2026 doesn't mean you wear a black mask.

634
00:42:37,304 --> 00:42:44,144
It doesn't mean that everybody's walking around with those, what do they call those ski
masks that go the whole face.

635
00:42:44,144 --> 00:42:46,404
People use to rob stores.

636
00:42:47,244 --> 00:42:48,064
Balaclava.

637
00:42:48,064 --> 00:42:49,144
Yeah, sorry.

638
00:42:49,424 --> 00:42:51,804
I've been struggling remembering words lately.

639
00:42:52,044 --> 00:42:53,104
Balaclava.

640
00:42:53,355 --> 00:43:03,732
It doesn't mean you're burning everything down, even though every time you talk about
these sorts of things, people bring up something that happened in Portland 60 years ago

641
00:43:03,732 --> 00:43:05,825
that was blown entirely out of proportion.

642
00:43:06,076 --> 00:43:09,358
It means that you have to stop asking for permission.

643
00:43:10,340 --> 00:43:11,380
That's it.

644
00:43:11,721 --> 00:43:12,722
I say that's it.

645
00:43:12,722 --> 00:43:21,568
I mean, it's more than that, but it means you need to build the world you want to live in
right now, right where you are.

646
00:43:21,929 --> 00:43:33,689
It means you become ungovernable, not by being violent, not by being explosive, but by
being so self reliant and

647
00:43:33,761 --> 00:43:43,165
connected to your community and so capable of solving your own problems that the state
becomes irrelevant.

648
00:43:43,866 --> 00:43:47,647
The ultimate goal of anarchy isn't to destroy the government.

649
00:43:48,047 --> 00:43:51,999
It's just to make the government either obsolete

650
00:43:53,000 --> 00:43:54,905
or really just a duplicate.

651
00:43:55,156 --> 00:43:57,877
uh A safety net, if you will.

652
00:43:58,778 --> 00:44:07,983
But it's to get to a point where if the state disappeared tomorrow, we would look around
at each other and say, I didn't notice past the brisket.

653
00:44:08,234 --> 00:44:09,234
That's it.

654
00:44:09,234 --> 00:44:10,434
That's the show.

655
00:44:10,735 --> 00:44:11,955
I'm Joshua.

656
00:44:12,136 --> 00:44:14,477
This has been another solo run of the overlap.

657
00:44:14,477 --> 00:44:15,938
If you learn something, tell a friend.

658
00:44:15,938 --> 00:44:17,998
If you hated it, tell an enemy.

659
00:44:18,979 --> 00:44:23,071
Will should be back eventually unless the squirrels get him until then.

660
00:44:23,071 --> 00:44:24,472
Look, stay safe.

661
00:44:24,574 --> 00:44:26,416
Stay hidden.

662
00:44:26,557 --> 00:44:29,902
And for the sake of Thor, learn how to use a chainsaw.

663
00:44:30,203 --> 00:44:31,784
Be a gray man.

664
00:44:32,266 --> 00:44:33,648
I'll see you next time.

665
00:44:33,648 --> 00:44:35,160
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