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Can Anarchism Work? · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, we're coming to Salt Lake City, Utah and Phoenix,
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Speaker 1: live dot com. Welcome to Stuff you should Know from
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Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:36
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
0:41
Speaker 1: this is getting to be kind of normal, but it's
0:43
Speaker 1: just us today, everybody. Jerry's fine, she's not in the hospital.
0:52
Speaker 1: She's just checked out. She's not in hospice. No, she's
0:56
Speaker 1: just been busy lately. So everything will be back to
0:59
Speaker 1: normal soon. She she said, Guys, ten years is all
1:03
Speaker 1: you get from me. I know, seriously, kind of since
1:06
Speaker 1: that anniversary she's been just didn't care, checked out. As
1:10
Speaker 1: I said, we're kidding, of course. Ish, but speaking of
1:18
Speaker 1: not issues but is ms, let's talk about anarchism. Chuck, Yeah,
1:24
Speaker 1: this one was interesting. I think I pitched this one
1:27
Speaker 1: a long time ago. You never did it for some reason.
1:30
Speaker 1: I think it just probably came at a time when
1:33
Speaker 1: we're we just didn't have enough time to do it. Yeah,
1:37
Speaker 1: I think you're right, But this this was interesting, um,
1:40
Speaker 1: because anarchism can be a lot of different things. Yeah. Yeah.
1:45
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people have the idea that
1:47
Speaker 1: anarchism is anarchy, and that the whole point of it
1:51
Speaker 1: is to just basically demolish all institutions, um, descend into lawlessness,
1:58
Speaker 1: um disorder exactly where you just you just take what
2:02
Speaker 1: you want and you know, you kill somebody and it's
2:04
Speaker 1: fine or whatever. Um, that's not the point of anarchism.
2:09
Speaker 1: That is the definition of anarchy. But anarchy is not
2:13
Speaker 1: what anarchists are actually out for. There's like a couple
2:17
Speaker 1: of threads in there that are the basis of that. Like,
2:21
Speaker 1: it's not just a complete mischaracterization, but it's just so
2:26
Speaker 1: off base that it might as well just be You
2:28
Speaker 1: might as well just be talking about something totally different. Yeah,
2:31
Speaker 1: And there are many many forms that anarchism can take,
2:34
Speaker 1: and there are many schools of thought, um, and there's
2:37
Speaker 1: no way we're going to touch on all of them.
2:38
Speaker 1: But we're gonna We're gonna do what we do, which
2:41
Speaker 1: is a nice overview of some of them. Yes, so
2:43
Speaker 1: our apologies to all anarchists for what we get wrong.
2:47
Speaker 1: But I do want to put a call out. Any
2:49
Speaker 1: follow up info I am totally open for, so send
2:52
Speaker 1: it our way, any corrections anything like that, Yeah, totally So. Um,
2:57
Speaker 1: there are a few things. Like you said, there's a
3:00
Speaker 1: lot of different varieties of anarchism, but there are a
3:03
Speaker 1: couple of tenants that any variety of anarchists would agree with, Like,
3:08
Speaker 1: this is the basis of anarchism, right, So anarchism we
3:12
Speaker 1: should say. Also, it's like it's a political thought. It's
3:14
Speaker 1: a philosophical political idea, and the basis of the idea,
3:21
Speaker 1: no matter how you approach it, is that humans are
3:23
Speaker 1: better off governing themselves then they are in creating lasting
3:31
Speaker 1: institutions where they send people to those institutions to make
3:35
Speaker 1: decisions for them. Right. So, the the power structure as
3:40
Speaker 1: it exists is not doing us any vapors. Vapors, it's
3:46
Speaker 1: even worse than favors favors and that a truly free
3:51
Speaker 1: and equal society. And you know it dips into communism
3:54
Speaker 1: and socialism here and there and we'll cover all that,
3:56
Speaker 1: But that is sort of the goal, like you said,
3:58
Speaker 1: just to down with these government authorities and elected officials.
4:04
Speaker 1: It should be run by the people in full. Yeah, exactly,
4:08
Speaker 1: And I mean it's it's really as simple as that, right,
4:11
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the basis of anarchism. That you're you're
4:14
Speaker 1: just you're better off without them, not not that not
4:18
Speaker 1: that they're they even can be good. Most like died
4:22
Speaker 1: in the wool. Anarchists will say, like, no, any artificial
4:25
Speaker 1: institution that's created by humans to govern other humans is
4:29
Speaker 1: necessarily bad. It um creates disorder, it creates chaos, it
4:35
Speaker 1: creates it is run by violence, like they will point
4:38
Speaker 1: out the whole way that the system is kept going
4:42
Speaker 1: is through the threat of violence. Yeah. It's hard to
4:44
Speaker 1: argue with a lot of this, to be honest, totally. Yeah,
4:46
Speaker 1: it makes a tremendous amount of sense. Um. I think
4:49
Speaker 1: really there are two things going against anarchism and practice today.
4:54
Speaker 1: One the long standing image that was developed at the
4:56
Speaker 1: end of the nineteenth century and beginning a twentieth century
5:00
Speaker 1: that didn't do it any favors. That the image of
5:02
Speaker 1: the terrorists anarchists, which we'll get to and then um
5:06
Speaker 1: to the fact that there hasn't been any longstanding examples
5:10
Speaker 1: of this to point to. But that's not to say
5:12
Speaker 1: that there aren't examples of actual anarchy or anarchism I'm sorry,
5:17
Speaker 1: in practice that have been successful. It's just no one's
5:22
Speaker 1: ever been able to do it, like on a massive
5:25
Speaker 1: national level yet, right, unlike the community scale we've seen
5:29
Speaker 1: it and currently see it. Which we'll get to that
5:31
Speaker 1: stuff too. But um, yeah, you're right, it's it's probably
5:35
Speaker 1: too late with the world as it is not probably
5:39
Speaker 1: there's just no way you could do that today. Well,
5:41
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people who would disagree with you
5:42
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, sure right, you're like, okay, go do
5:48
Speaker 1: it and they'll come over when you got it up
5:50
Speaker 1: and running. But the word, a very word, anarchism is
5:54
Speaker 1: Greek and its root anarchia, means without rulers or without authority. Um,
6:00
Speaker 1: but this art, this article is pretty good. Actually he
6:02
Speaker 1: wrote this one, did Kiger pat Patty Kaiger Patrick? Was
6:07
Speaker 1: it Kreiger or Kaiger Tiger? The r is invisible? Okay? Uh?
6:14
Speaker 1: But he points out that the aim is social change,
6:17
Speaker 1: uh at its heart. M hmm. Yeah, that's another good point.
6:21
Speaker 1: I've left that part out, Like that's like, that's all
6:23
Speaker 1: that's ultimately the goal, and the point is it's like
6:26
Speaker 1: you can do all this stuff, you can get all
6:28
Speaker 1: the services that you get allegedly from government institutions, from
6:34
Speaker 1: your friends and neighbors and community, and that that the
6:37
Speaker 1: point of anarchism is to enact that change. Now. Don't
6:42
Speaker 1: wait for it, don't don't like go petition for it,
6:45
Speaker 1: just go do it and constantly be doing it to
6:47
Speaker 1: make your society better. Yeah, and sometimes they'll depending on
6:51
Speaker 1: where you're coming from with your group, there maybe a
6:53
Speaker 1: little environmentalism thrown in, or a little even religion thrown in. Uh,
6:58
Speaker 1: you know, there's other philosophy that are co morbid or
7:02
Speaker 1: can become morbid anarchism, like like feminism is one that
7:06
Speaker 1: they pointed out to which one feminism, And I ran
7:10
Speaker 1: across that a lot that that there's a lot of
7:12
Speaker 1: people that equate feminism and anarchism, as as feminism is
7:16
Speaker 1: just in and of itself a type of anarchism because
7:20
Speaker 1: feminists have a proven track record of just going and
7:23
Speaker 1: doing being the change that they want to see in
7:26
Speaker 1: the world, rather than waiting around for it or asking
7:29
Speaker 1: for it. One example I ran across was um the
7:32
Speaker 1: rape crisis centers of the seventies that sprung up because
7:36
Speaker 1: the establishment just didn't take violence against women very seriously
7:39
Speaker 1: and women set up clinics to handle this themselves. That
7:44
Speaker 1: was a big time feminist move in the seventies. And
7:46
Speaker 1: it is and it's heart, you know, constantly progressing socially.
7:51
Speaker 1: That's an an anarchistic tactic. I guess, well, yeah, and it.
7:56
Speaker 1: And it seems like depending on what um, how where
8:00
Speaker 1: where you lay your head as an anarchist, you might
8:03
Speaker 1: want to concentrate more on h economy. Other people might
8:08
Speaker 1: want to concentrate more on the um, like how to
8:11
Speaker 1: overthrow the authority. UM, I didn't see like it's it's
8:16
Speaker 1: interesting when you look at like like let's say the
8:19
Speaker 1: mutualism school where they're all about the workers controlling their
8:24
Speaker 1: own factories, controlling the land, or the anarcho communist who
8:29
Speaker 1: say no private property for anyone. It's like a big
8:32
Speaker 1: giant commune and no one competes for anything. Like are
8:36
Speaker 1: there are schools of anarchy where they tackle everything? It
8:40
Speaker 1: seems like they're getting very specific. UM. I think because
8:44
Speaker 1: these came out of like the minds of people who
8:47
Speaker 1: had very specific views on this stuff. Right, Like you said,
8:51
Speaker 1: communism and anarchism cross paths here there, and there's even
8:54
Speaker 1: a variety of them combined, UM, because they I mean,
8:58
Speaker 1: they do share some qualities, right, But the the idea
9:01
Speaker 1: of um communism, Okay, let me play it like this.
9:08
Speaker 1: Liberalism is the idea that people should be free and equal.
9:12
Speaker 1: Communism is the idea that people should all have the
9:17
Speaker 1: same access to everything they need, and that it's the
9:20
Speaker 1: state that is meant to support that stuff. With liberalism,
9:24
Speaker 1: it's the state that's meant to make sure everybody is
9:27
Speaker 1: treated equally and everyone is free. Anarchism says, yeah, we
9:31
Speaker 1: totally agree free and equal, we want everybody to have
9:34
Speaker 1: everything that they need, but it's the state that we
9:37
Speaker 1: disagree with you guys on. So that's the real distinction
9:40
Speaker 1: between communism, communism, and liberalism and anarchism is that they
9:44
Speaker 1: all kind of have the same ideal, which is freedom, equality,
9:49
Speaker 1: equal access to everything, resources, that kind of stuff. But
9:53
Speaker 1: whether or not there should be a state or you
9:54
Speaker 1: need a state to to do this is the big
9:57
Speaker 1: distinction between those, UM, And I think that's where the
10:00
Speaker 1: kind of the narrow mindedness comes from on some of these.
10:04
Speaker 1: That makes sense, thanks, I think so. Um, when it
10:08
Speaker 1: comes to how to get rid of the current establishment,
10:12
Speaker 1: I guess you would say, Uh, there are many schools
10:15
Speaker 1: of thought on that one. It's called the anarcho syndicalists.
10:19
Speaker 1: And I looked into this a bit more. This I
10:20
Speaker 1: think many modern anarchists find this to be a bit
10:23
Speaker 1: old fashioned. But this is the idea that uh, it's
10:27
Speaker 1: called a direct action system where the labor unions affect
10:31
Speaker 1: the change, and uh, they want to abolish the wage system.
10:35
Speaker 1: And by by direct action, that means sort of what
10:38
Speaker 1: you're talking about at the beginning, which is instead of
10:41
Speaker 1: electing someone, even the head of a labor union to
10:44
Speaker 1: go take care of something, we do it ourselves. Right.
10:48
Speaker 1: That's like direct direct representation or direct democracy, I mean yeah,
10:53
Speaker 1: rather than representative democracy. Right. And then there's so another
10:58
Speaker 1: way of putting direct action and is where if you
11:01
Speaker 1: like those rape crisis centers that feminists created in the seventies. Um,
11:06
Speaker 1: if if you go and just create the rape crisis center,
11:11
Speaker 1: as if there's no such thing as the state, you
11:13
Speaker 1: just go take care of it yourself, that is inherently anarchistic.
11:17
Speaker 1: In nature because you're just ignoring the state. You're just
11:20
Speaker 1: going and solving the problem yourself. If you if you
11:24
Speaker 1: went out and protested that the state needed to provide
11:28
Speaker 1: rape crisis centers, you're you're doing the opposite of an
11:32
Speaker 1: anarchistic direct action in that by protesting, you're petitioning the state,
11:38
Speaker 1: and by petitioning the state, you're legitimizing its power. You're
11:42
Speaker 1: saying you have the power, I'm asking you to use
11:44
Speaker 1: it for this. With anarchism, it's like we're not even
11:47
Speaker 1: recognizing that you have the power here. We're just gonna
11:49
Speaker 1: go do it ourselves. Good luck with your your capitalist
11:53
Speaker 1: or communist or whatever experiment. We got this handled ourselves. Yeah,
11:57
Speaker 1: and there can you can go about it through means
11:59
Speaker 1: of non violence or violence. There anarchism or is one
12:03
Speaker 1: of those schools of thought where it's it's really all
12:06
Speaker 1: over the map, from like violent revolution to hippie communes.
12:11
Speaker 1: It's really interesting. Yeah, there's definitely like a pacifist um
12:15
Speaker 1: anarchism for sure. I think that's actually from my understanding,
12:20
Speaker 1: that's a significant portion of anarchists that think violent anarchism.
12:25
Speaker 1: Actually it is still around. Like you see the black
12:29
Speaker 1: block um at protests, which I read up on that
12:33
Speaker 1: that definitely deserves its own episode at some point in time.
12:37
Speaker 1: But you know, the people wearing like bala clavas and
12:40
Speaker 1: um or masks of some sort, throwing Molotov cocktails or
12:45
Speaker 1: breaking windows are dressed in all black. That's that's actually
12:48
Speaker 1: not a group, that's a tactic of protests UM and
12:52
Speaker 1: some of them are anarchists, but not all anarchists are
12:55
Speaker 1: black block, right, There's a big distinction in that in
12:57
Speaker 1: that in that sense, so there are an or kiss
13:00
Speaker 1: out there who do believe in violence at least against property,
13:04
Speaker 1: if not against people, but I really think that they're
13:06
Speaker 1: in the minority, and that most anarchists believe in direct
13:10
Speaker 1: action just going and doing it yourself or some sort
13:13
Speaker 1: of peaceful change um, either within the system or just
13:18
Speaker 1: outside of the system. Yeah, And there's a social theorism
13:21
Speaker 1: journey Germany named Andreas Vittel, and he said he kind
13:26
Speaker 1: of breaks it down into two main groups, which is
13:29
Speaker 1: social anarchism and libertarian anarchism. Obviously, the libertarian anarchism is
13:35
Speaker 1: all about the individual person um and make sure that
13:39
Speaker 1: it just kind of takes it down to that person
13:41
Speaker 1: level as far as freedom goes even at like the
13:44
Speaker 1: expense of society, right where social anarchism is all about
13:48
Speaker 1: the society, that's the one that leans more towards socialism
13:51
Speaker 1: and communism. Yeah, so that's more. Yeah, that's more like
13:54
Speaker 1: creating like a harmonious community that cares for itself, that
13:58
Speaker 1: doesn't have any leaders um. The idea behind that is
14:02
Speaker 1: that organizations will just happen. If you have a need,
14:07
Speaker 1: people will just come together and solve the need, and
14:09
Speaker 1: then the organization will just dissolve as as the need
14:12
Speaker 1: is fulfilled. You don't have to create a permanent structure
14:15
Speaker 1: to fulfill that need, whether it's there or not, that
14:18
Speaker 1: people can be elected into and basically grift from. Yeah,
14:22
Speaker 1: and not to jump ahead too much, but that whole
14:25
Speaker 1: idea is kind of one of the founders of anarchism
14:29
Speaker 1: and uh the mid eight hundreds in France, a man
14:32
Speaker 1: named Pierre Joseph Pruton. That was one of his things
14:37
Speaker 1: that he wrote in his book What his Property Is
14:40
Speaker 1: That his feeling is that and one of his key
14:42
Speaker 1: theories is that when this vacuum is created by getting
14:48
Speaker 1: rid of the government institutions, it will just sort of
14:51
Speaker 1: work itself out right, that people will take care of people,
14:55
Speaker 1: and that that it's actually the organizations in government and
14:59
Speaker 1: the instant threat of violence that is actually the problem,
15:03
Speaker 1: not that people need to be kept in line by
15:05
Speaker 1: those things. It's a radical idea and a big risk
15:10
Speaker 1: that it will be like I mean, he even uses
15:12
Speaker 1: the word spontaneous, like spontaneous order will happen. But again,
15:17
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry to keep going back to the same well,
15:19
Speaker 1: I don't want to use up some of the ones
15:20
Speaker 1: down the line, but the rape crisis center is a
15:23
Speaker 1: good example of that. There was a need in the
15:25
Speaker 1: community and it was fulfilled and there's still a need.
15:29
Speaker 1: So there's still around um, but there's nobody getting fat
15:33
Speaker 1: and rich off of the rape crisis centers that's sprung
15:36
Speaker 1: out of the seventies. Same thing with um uh protecting
15:40
Speaker 1: uh uh lgbt Q. I think I P is that right?
15:47
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I'm sorry for everybody I'm leaving off there,
15:50
Speaker 1: but I definitely know it up to Q for sure.
15:52
Speaker 1: UM there there's there's a lot of violence against kids
15:56
Speaker 1: like that who have been kicked out of their homes
15:58
Speaker 1: and live on the street. So crisis centers have developed
16:01
Speaker 1: to take care of them too, So I mean it
16:04
Speaker 1: is there is actual, real life things you can point
16:07
Speaker 1: to where people do this kind of stuff. There's people
16:11
Speaker 1: who work at nonprofit groups. They don't make much money,
16:13
Speaker 1: but they're there because they're trying to make their society better.
16:17
Speaker 1: They're trying to make their communities better. Like that's a
16:20
Speaker 1: real life example of of what this guy is saying.
16:23
Speaker 1: What happens spontaneously, it actually does happen. Again, the question,
16:28
Speaker 1: Chuck is could you administer hundreds of millions of people
16:33
Speaker 1: like this? And the answer is probably not. But those
16:37
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of people probably wouldn't be connected in
16:41
Speaker 1: any way, shape or form aside from the fact that
16:44
Speaker 1: we're all humans. Um, if if there was no larger
16:48
Speaker 1: federal government keeping everyone together, or even a state government,
16:52
Speaker 1: you know, they would probably dissolve into hopefully harmonious communal bands.
16:57
Speaker 1: That's the that's the ideal version of anarchism. See I
17:02
Speaker 1: think that people would, uh. I think they might dissolve
17:07
Speaker 1: into those bands, but I don't know if it would
17:09
Speaker 1: be harmonious within the bands, are outside of the bands
17:13
Speaker 1: or between them. I think between them. So I totally
17:16
Speaker 1: agree with you, and I think this is kind of
17:18
Speaker 1: an unspoken thing of anarchism at the very least as
17:22
Speaker 1: as far as I whittled down to it. It's been unspoken,
17:25
Speaker 1: but I'm sure they talk about it a lot. Um.
17:29
Speaker 1: If you live in an anarchistic society or group or whatever,
17:35
Speaker 1: like you, you've got to be able to back that up.
17:38
Speaker 1: So that doesn't so the impression that I have is
17:41
Speaker 1: like that wouldn't mean that you are violent, but they
17:44
Speaker 1: would be more than willing to defend themselves against outsiders, right.
17:49
Speaker 1: And there's actually a group in Chiapas um the Zapatistas,
17:54
Speaker 1: which was an indigenous Indian movement in Mexico in the
17:57
Speaker 1: nineties that's still around today. Them they were so remember
18:00
Speaker 1: the guy with the face mask who smoked a pipe,
18:03
Speaker 1: Commandante Marcos. He's still at it today. And there are
18:07
Speaker 1: anarchist villages in Chiapas, Mexico that have been self sufficient
18:12
Speaker 1: since the nineties that you would not want to go
18:15
Speaker 1: in and mess with them. But they're they're they've got
18:18
Speaker 1: it going on. They have equality. There are women who
18:21
Speaker 1: are like commanders in their defense forces. Um, they have
18:25
Speaker 1: their own schools. They they're set, they're fine, they're doing
18:29
Speaker 1: just fine. But they're also heavily armed. Well, I mean,
18:33
Speaker 1: did you ever watch the Wild Wild Country documentary? No,
18:37
Speaker 1: I still haven't yet. All Right, well, we won't dive
18:39
Speaker 1: into that, but uh yeah, I don't want to ruin anything. Okay,
18:44
Speaker 1: let's take a break, all right, and uh and we'll
18:46
Speaker 1: go watch that real quick together. Okay, we'll be back
18:48
Speaker 1: in twelve hours and we'll talk about that famous anarchist
18:53
Speaker 1: symbol in a bit of history right after this. Alright, dude, So,
19:07
Speaker 1: anyone who's ever owned a skateboard, it's probably scribbled the
19:12
Speaker 1: anarchist symbol on their notebook when they were twelve, uh,
19:16
Speaker 1: not knowing what it meant. Uh. This has actually only
19:19
Speaker 1: been around since about the nineteen sixties, which kind of
19:21
Speaker 1: surprised me. Yeah, I guess I I didn't think of
19:25
Speaker 1: when it would have come up. I guess I assumed
19:27
Speaker 1: it was. It just came about the moment I noticed it.
19:31
Speaker 1: It's like a youngster in the eighties. Uh. First proposed
19:35
Speaker 1: by a group called Anarchist Youth of Paris in the
19:37
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties. They needed to logo up and that was
19:41
Speaker 1: very you know, kind of recognizable. It made sense. Um.
19:46
Speaker 1: The black flag is also another symbol of anarchists dating
19:49
Speaker 1: back to the nineteenth century. Uh. And of course the
19:52
Speaker 1: band Black Flag, that's where they got there. Jam had
19:55
Speaker 1: no idea about that one until today or yesterday about
19:58
Speaker 1: the band. Yeah. Mean, I knew about Black Flag, but
20:01
Speaker 1: I didn't know where they got their name. Yeah, and
20:03
Speaker 1: you know, I think it means more than that to them.
20:04
Speaker 1: But they definitely Uh. I don't know if they were
20:07
Speaker 1: died in the wall anarchists, but they certainly didn't shy
20:11
Speaker 1: away from screaming about it, you know, not at all.
20:15
Speaker 1: God bless Henry Rollins. But the point of the black
20:18
Speaker 1: flag from what did you say, the eighteen eighties, Yeah,
20:21
Speaker 1: the point of the black flag was that it was
20:23
Speaker 1: meant to be all the colors of all the flags
20:25
Speaker 1: in the world. You know, if you put the presence
20:28
Speaker 1: of all colors is the color black. Yeah, man, So
20:31
Speaker 1: it kind of like melds them all together, and I
20:34
Speaker 1: guess discredits all of them by doing that. It absorbs
20:37
Speaker 1: them all all those pretty flags just divide us man,
20:41
Speaker 1: melts him down. Make it black. You wow, you sound
20:44
Speaker 1: just like black Flag, all right. So let's go back
20:48
Speaker 1: in time a bit um too. Perhaps the origins of
20:51
Speaker 1: anarchism and the Chinese philosopher Lao Sue who founded is
20:56
Speaker 1: do we say it with a D Taoism? Okay, that's
21:00
Speaker 1: what I thought, even though it spelled with the t uh.
21:04
Speaker 1: And his whole jam was that people live in harmony
21:07
Speaker 1: with each other, with nature. That's how we we get
21:11
Speaker 1: to happiness, is to live in balance. And of course
21:14
Speaker 1: in India, UM the Holy Men there it was espousing
21:17
Speaker 1: some of the same philosophies of giving up property for
21:22
Speaker 1: spiritual enlightenment. Uh. And then of course Greece you had
21:26
Speaker 1: philosophers and Greece that would We're not big fans of government, uh,
21:31
Speaker 1: interfering with what they had going on, which is interesting
21:34
Speaker 1: rights specifically Zeno. Yeah, who is also going to go
21:38
Speaker 1: on to um colonized Earth? Oh gotcha? X E n
21:46
Speaker 1: you Yeah, I know you're just kidding. I knew the X.
21:49
Speaker 1: I didn't realize it was a you. I was being
21:51
Speaker 1: serious about the think it's I think you might be right,
21:54
Speaker 1: but let me check my tattoo of my lower back
21:57
Speaker 1: because oh yeah it does. Uh so weird? Why is
22:02
Speaker 1: it in a whale tale? So? Zeno's whole thing too
22:06
Speaker 1: was that if people are good enough, then we don't
22:09
Speaker 1: even need cops and in courts, which is kind of crazy,
22:15
Speaker 1: is it? Though? Well, I mean that's the whole thing
22:18
Speaker 1: that we were talking about. Like, the whole idea of
22:20
Speaker 1: this stuff working out is is not one person breaking bad,
22:25
Speaker 1: because as soon as one person does, one person gets
22:28
Speaker 1: a little taste of power, then it's corrupted. Yeah. Again, though,
22:35
Speaker 1: I think that comes from the idea that the community
22:38
Speaker 1: takes care of itself, police itself. I think the members
22:41
Speaker 1: of the community would not be very happy about that,
22:45
Speaker 1: especially with social anarchism UM, And I don't know what
22:49
Speaker 1: they would do. I don't know if they would just
22:51
Speaker 1: move and leave the guy out or cast them out.
22:54
Speaker 1: I don't know what you would do in that situation.
22:56
Speaker 1: There are a lot of prickly thing like that that
23:00
Speaker 1: would that would you could only work out in theory now,
23:04
Speaker 1: you know, although maybe it has happened in some of
23:07
Speaker 1: the experiments that have gone on by now, but I
23:10
Speaker 1: don't know. But I don't think that it would necessarily
23:12
Speaker 1: spoil the whole system. You know. I have a pretty
23:15
Speaker 1: dark cynical view of stuff like this. Now. Well, I
23:19
Speaker 1: think I think i've seen that actually, um, in reference
23:23
Speaker 1: not your cynical view specifically, but that that if you
23:27
Speaker 1: do have kind of a dim view of humanity and
23:30
Speaker 1: that you know there are we are generally dark and
23:34
Speaker 1: generally greedy, generally all the bad stuff, then yeah, you
23:38
Speaker 1: would probably not think that anarchism would work. But if
23:40
Speaker 1: you have this idea that humans are genuinely positive, peaceful
23:46
Speaker 1: people who just want to like be happy, that if
23:50
Speaker 1: you remove these institutions, that would be allowed to shine
23:53
Speaker 1: and and a lot of the problems would would come out.
23:56
Speaker 1: Like one way I saw it put was um like, yes,
23:58
Speaker 1: there's a lot of cheating in under under the capitalist system.
24:02
Speaker 1: In democracies, it's just about any form of government, cheating
24:07
Speaker 1: can happen. Right. The writer I was looking into put
24:13
Speaker 1: it like, what a lot of these people, especially in capitalism,
24:16
Speaker 1: are forced to do jobs that they don't want to do.
24:17
Speaker 1: They spend the hours of their lives doing things they
24:20
Speaker 1: don't want to do. How how would that behavior change?
24:23
Speaker 1: How would their personality change? If it was just like,
24:27
Speaker 1: go do whatever you want to do, man, no one's
24:29
Speaker 1: telling you what to do. Go learn to farm and
24:32
Speaker 1: make your own food, or go learn to juggle for
24:35
Speaker 1: money and buy food. Who cares? Go do it? Would
24:39
Speaker 1: that person cheat other people anymore. I I don't know. Yeah,
24:44
Speaker 1: here's my thing. I don't want I don't want to
24:46
Speaker 1: because I am a pretty positive person. Sure I know
24:48
Speaker 1: you are, um, and I do think that people are
24:51
Speaker 1: mostly good and you could probably assemble a pretty great
24:54
Speaker 1: community by and large. But it doesn't take many, is
24:58
Speaker 1: my whole deal of Like you get two or three
25:01
Speaker 1: people in there and it starts to sour and they
25:04
Speaker 1: get a little power grab and they talk another person
25:08
Speaker 1: or two into it, and then that ruins it. So
25:11
Speaker 1: I think an unpleasant minority could spoil it for a
25:14
Speaker 1: group of otherwise, uh, you know, just delightful anarchist, right,
25:20
Speaker 1: the happy kind right? So um, okay, so back to history. Yeah,
25:25
Speaker 1: but because I think, well, we could have this conversation
25:28
Speaker 1: like five more times and we're still going to arrive
25:30
Speaker 1: at the same point. Like we just we just don't know,
25:32
Speaker 1: we don't know what what would happen. It sounds like
25:34
Speaker 1: what you're describing is the beginning of a civil war
25:37
Speaker 1: in the middle in this little community. Yeah you know. Alright, So,
25:41
Speaker 1: so like you said, back to history, we made it
25:43
Speaker 1: as far as knew, and Zeno specifically, who basically was
25:49
Speaker 1: the first one to at least elucidate the ideas behind anarchism,
25:52
Speaker 1: which was maybe we don't need the state, maybe we're
25:55
Speaker 1: better off without it, right, And then not a lot
25:58
Speaker 1: happened until this seventeenth century. Yeah, and this is a
26:02
Speaker 1: classic case of what did you expect to happen? When
26:06
Speaker 1: in England these peasant farmers got a collective together. They
26:10
Speaker 1: called themselves the diggers, and they said, not the duggers,
26:14
Speaker 1: And they said, we are tired of this, uh, all
26:19
Speaker 1: the turmoil that's going on here. We have a civil
26:21
Speaker 1: war going on, and we're gonna try and live without
26:24
Speaker 1: the government, and we're going to cultivate our own land
26:27
Speaker 1: and start our own kind of radical group out here.
26:31
Speaker 1: This guy named Gerard wind Stanley who was the founder.
26:35
Speaker 1: He was a Christian radical, and he put out a
26:38
Speaker 1: pamphlet in sixty nine called Truth lifting up its head
26:41
Speaker 1: above scandals and talked about power corrupting property and compatible
26:47
Speaker 1: with liberty, all the kind of hallmarks of anarchism. And
26:52
Speaker 1: what happens The community gets larger and larger, and then
26:56
Speaker 1: the government and says whoa whoa, whoa, whoa whoa rush
27:00
Speaker 1: that we can't have this at all, and that's what happened.
27:03
Speaker 1: The government, the landowners. They yeah, and they they said,
27:07
Speaker 1: you guys can't camp together anymore, go away, And the
27:11
Speaker 1: diggers they disassembled. Um, we've seen it in our own
27:15
Speaker 1: country anytime. Oh yeah. And I'm not gonna argue for
27:18
Speaker 1: the virtues of branch Davidians or uh preppers like at
27:23
Speaker 1: Ruby Ridge. But if there's one thing our government doesn't
27:26
Speaker 1: like is people kind of hold up in their own
27:30
Speaker 1: trying to do their own thing with it. Then they
27:32
Speaker 1: have guns, right, they don't even like it when they
27:36
Speaker 1: don't have guns. And look at Zukkati Park. Yeah, like
27:39
Speaker 1: they were. They were basically flaunting urban camping laws and
27:43
Speaker 1: they came in with the cops and riot gear and
27:45
Speaker 1: busted the place up. Like they don't. These experiments, they
27:51
Speaker 1: at least in the US and in a lot of
27:54
Speaker 1: Europe too, they they experiments in an anarchism don't have
27:58
Speaker 1: a very long lasting effect because they do tend to
28:02
Speaker 1: attract a lot of followers, especially when they rise up
28:06
Speaker 1: as they tend to when the ruling class is really
28:10
Speaker 1: squeezing the working class. Um, when the when the conditions
28:14
Speaker 1: that you know, the part of the whole reason we
28:17
Speaker 1: live with the government, at least initially was because there
28:20
Speaker 1: was that social contract, right, I'm gonna give up a
28:22
Speaker 1: little bit of my liberty. I'm gonna give up a
28:24
Speaker 1: little bit of my freedom, uh, in return for all
28:27
Speaker 1: these services and protections that the government affords. Well, when
28:31
Speaker 1: the government kind of stops giving you all that stuff
28:33
Speaker 1: it's supposed to give and return for you giving up
28:35
Speaker 1: your freedom and your liberty, you start rethinking how much
28:39
Speaker 1: freedom and liberty you want to give up. And as
28:41
Speaker 1: a result, when anarchists come along and start telling you, hey, man,
28:44
Speaker 1: there's another way. Try changing your mind to think like this,
28:49
Speaker 1: it gets kind of popular, and so as a result
28:52
Speaker 1: of state comes crashing down on it and says, no,
28:55
Speaker 1: stop talking about that. Everybody go to jail. Well yeah,
28:58
Speaker 1: I mean that's why you have and we'll talk a
29:00
Speaker 1: bit more about this. But things like the battle in
29:02
Speaker 1: Seattle and occupy Wall Street. Who I don't know if
29:05
Speaker 1: they do they are they registered anarchists? Do they have
29:09
Speaker 1: their little cards? They had a lot of anarchists um
29:13
Speaker 1: stuff going on, and there are plenty of anarchists there,
29:16
Speaker 1: but I think they were so anarchists that they wouldn't
29:18
Speaker 1: even say that they were anarchists, that would be too
29:22
Speaker 1: much of a label. That's funny. I'm not making fun
29:27
Speaker 1: of them, just you know. Uh So the diggers might
29:32
Speaker 1: have been squashed. But about a hundred years a hundred
29:36
Speaker 1: and twenty years later in England, those ideas sort of
29:39
Speaker 1: lived on with an English philosopher named William Godwin who
29:43
Speaker 1: once again someone rises up, probably stands on that little
29:47
Speaker 1: box in Hyde Park and says that the government is
29:51
Speaker 1: corrupt inherently, they are a bad influence, and we need
29:55
Speaker 1: a decentralized society. And his whole idea was small, little,
30:00
Speaker 1: small autonomous communities, which to me makes a little bit
30:04
Speaker 1: more sense than trying to like win the world over, right, right, Yeah,
30:10
Speaker 1: And he was the first one to really write down
30:14
Speaker 1: like anarchist thought, right Godwin, Uh was he? From what
30:19
Speaker 1: I understand, if Zeno wasn't, this guy was really the
30:21
Speaker 1: first one, not necessarily the first to practice it, but
30:24
Speaker 1: he was the first one to start writing down the
30:27
Speaker 1: tenants of anarchism. But it wasn't until that guy Pierre
30:31
Speaker 1: Joseph Prudon who you mentioned earlier, came along about fifties
30:36
Speaker 1: sixty seventy years after Goodwin or Godwin um that they
30:41
Speaker 1: for the world's first self proclaimed anarchist came along. Yeah,
30:45
Speaker 1: and he came. He interestingly, he came from a very
30:48
Speaker 1: poor family of peasants and won a scholarship to study
30:54
Speaker 1: in Paris, so he had a little bit of his
30:58
Speaker 1: feet in both worlds. When he wrote his book what
31:02
Speaker 1: is Are you going to read the French versions appropriate?
31:08
Speaker 1: What is property? Which in which is contained? The very
31:11
Speaker 1: famous still with anarchist line, property is theft uh? And
31:17
Speaker 1: that was one of the big catch phrases, And it's
31:19
Speaker 1: still a big catch phrase with with the anarchism anarchist groups. Yes,
31:25
Speaker 1: it's frequently a punchline and anarchist jokes. And I said property,
31:33
Speaker 1: property is theft uh. And he was the one that
31:36
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier that he sort of had this radical
31:38
Speaker 1: idea that if the government leaves um, spontaneous order would
31:43
Speaker 1: would come about? Would it just emerge? So he also
31:47
Speaker 1: he was he did believe that property was theft, but
31:50
Speaker 1: too prudon. There was a distinction between say, um, somebody
31:55
Speaker 1: owning their own plot of land that they cultivated, owning
31:58
Speaker 1: their own home, owning something like that. He had a
32:01
Speaker 1: big problem with people owning the things that workers used
32:07
Speaker 1: to make wealth from right people extracting wealth from the
32:10
Speaker 1: work of others and not actually doing anything themselves, which
32:14
Speaker 1: is the current system that we live in now. It's
32:18
Speaker 1: called neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is just basically using all the power
32:23
Speaker 1: of the state, or a significant portion of it, to
32:26
Speaker 1: further the interests of corporations of the people who extract
32:30
Speaker 1: wealth from the people who actually produced the work. That's
32:34
Speaker 1: neoliberalism at court. That also deserves its own episode from
32:37
Speaker 1: us someday. And that was what Prudon, although this was
32:41
Speaker 1: the word wasn't coined at the time, but that was
32:43
Speaker 1: what he really had an issue with, and what basically
32:46
Speaker 1: anyone even remotely anarchistic, has a problem with his neoliberalism. Yeah,
32:52
Speaker 1: and he buddied up with a couple of important figures,
32:54
Speaker 1: historical figures. One Karl Marx, who at the time was
32:58
Speaker 1: just just a little German economists trying to make good.
33:02
Speaker 1: He was not yet the father of communism. And then
33:05
Speaker 1: another guy named Mikhail Bakunin, who was a disciple of
33:12
Speaker 1: prudence but was also an anarchist. And he was different
33:16
Speaker 1: in that he came actually from nobility in Russia, and
33:20
Speaker 1: he was one of these who wanted to leave his
33:21
Speaker 1: privilege behind. Yeah, he definitely walked the walk for sure.
33:25
Speaker 1: Like he said, so long life of privilege. I'm going
33:27
Speaker 1: to become an anarchist anarchy. Yeah he did, but um,
33:34
Speaker 1: he is where anarchy takes a very dark turn. It's
33:39
Speaker 1: it wasn't fully vested in him, but it, Um, it
33:43
Speaker 1: definitely began with him because he was the guy who
33:46
Speaker 1: basically said and he ended up splitting from I think
33:50
Speaker 1: Prudon and Marx definitely marks. He was the guy that said, um,
33:55
Speaker 1: there's only one way to to get this going, and
33:59
Speaker 1: that is you have to smash the state. The state
34:02
Speaker 1: is not going to give up its power. These bureaucrats
34:04
Speaker 1: aren't going to be like you know what, you guys
34:06
Speaker 1: are right. The people who own the capital aren't going
34:10
Speaker 1: to give up their position, their wealth. It's just not
34:12
Speaker 1: gonna happen, right, And the only way to deal with
34:14
Speaker 1: this is to basically wage war against the current system
34:18
Speaker 1: and then replace it with an anarchist system. And he
34:22
Speaker 1: he definitely diverged from Prudon and Mars. I believe he's
34:27
Speaker 1: a little more closely tied to Mars, so its Prudon
34:30
Speaker 1: that he really diverged from in that respect. Yeah. Prudon
34:33
Speaker 1: was the one that was like, hey, like, little by little,
34:36
Speaker 1: we can just shift away from this government in a
34:39
Speaker 1: gradual sense, right, And Bacuna was like, no, we need
34:43
Speaker 1: to go and stomp in there and smash it with violence. Right.
34:47
Speaker 1: Prudon was like, well, wait, let's all just smoke some
34:49
Speaker 1: grass and talk this out. Uh yeah, yeah. But Counan
34:54
Speaker 1: definitely had a little more. He was a little more
34:56
Speaker 1: aligned with Marx because in the eighteen sixties they were
35:00
Speaker 1: co founders of the first International working Men's Association association
35:06
Speaker 1: that uh they tried with their jam was they wanted
35:09
Speaker 1: to free workers uh in European countries from what they
35:13
Speaker 1: considered to be exploitation, low ages, bad conditions, stuff like that. Again,
35:19
Speaker 1: like the ruling class squeezing the working class, and anarchism
35:22
Speaker 1: suddenly starts to get a lot more followers, and that
35:25
Speaker 1: was a real big problem, um, at least for the
35:29
Speaker 1: power in the West. In Europe and the United States,
35:33
Speaker 1: anarchism got really popular for a little while, and specifically
35:37
Speaker 1: the branch espoused by Bakunin and then later on after
35:41
Speaker 1: he died, his follower Peter krop Cropokin. I think I
35:46
Speaker 1: nailed that. Yeah, that was um really took up this
35:51
Speaker 1: violent basically terrorism. There's no other word for it, um
35:56
Speaker 1: anarchist terrorism. It was the tactic they took on. And uh,
36:00
Speaker 1: Cropokin said, you could with a single attack make more
36:04
Speaker 1: propaganda than a thousand pamphlets. And the whole point was
36:08
Speaker 1: to start bombing everything, just just destroy the state by
36:11
Speaker 1: creating foemen in chaos. And it was a really bad
36:15
Speaker 1: time to just be the average person walking around America
36:19
Speaker 1: Europe because you might get blown up by a bomb
36:22
Speaker 1: that somebody planted on Wall Street or something like that. Yeah,
36:25
Speaker 1: and actually, you're kind of right. I see now that
36:27
Speaker 1: after they established that International Workingmen's Association, Bacuna and Marx
36:33
Speaker 1: eventually clashed and sort of their ideas diverged as well.
36:36
Speaker 1: So but but I think you were right. It wasn't
36:38
Speaker 1: necessarily the violence thing. It was Marks thought that you
36:42
Speaker 1: had to have this very strong state to control everything
36:45
Speaker 1: and distribute it equally among people. And Bakunin was like,
36:50
Speaker 1: you're nuts, Marks, You're nuts. Yeah, should we take another break? Sure?
36:56
Speaker 1: All right, Well we're gonna travel state side right after this. Alright, So,
37:11
Speaker 1: like I said, anarchism is starting to get a lot
37:14
Speaker 1: of followers. But it's at like the most dangerous violent
37:18
Speaker 1: period in the history of anarchism, and it like really
37:22
Speaker 1: had a big effect, Chuck, Like it was very much
37:25
Speaker 1: died in the wold terrorism, bomb making, bomb throwing, um
37:30
Speaker 1: rioting assassinations. Yeah, get this, In less than ten years,
37:40
Speaker 1: anarchists killed the President of the United States, the President
37:44
Speaker 1: of France, the Prime Minister of Spain, the King of Italy,
37:48
Speaker 1: and the Empress of Austria Hungary in ten years. Like
37:53
Speaker 1: that's just unimaginable. Um, And so the state quite understandably said, um,
38:00
Speaker 1: we're going to crack it out on you anarchists, and
38:03
Speaker 1: the United States in particular was was successful with the
38:07
Speaker 1: earliest by jail ing um anarchists, jailing immigrants. They really
38:14
Speaker 1: overreached and said, you know a lot of anarchists are immigrants,
38:17
Speaker 1: so he's gonna start jailing immigrants that we even suspect
38:20
Speaker 1: their anarchists. Um. There was a riot previous to that
38:24
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century in Chicago, the Haymarket, right, the
38:27
Speaker 1: very famous one. Yeah, the uh man, this has got
38:31
Speaker 1: a lot of tangential shows. We maybe should do one
38:35
Speaker 1: on the Haymarket affair in general, but this cops came
38:39
Speaker 1: in to break up a meeting and anarchists meeting in
38:42
Speaker 1: Chicago and Haymarket Square. A bomb was thrown. Uh, there
38:47
Speaker 1: were riots that happened. Six cops and a bunch of
38:50
Speaker 1: other people died. And even though they never fingered the
38:53
Speaker 1: actual bomb thrower, they just went in there and basically said,
38:57
Speaker 1: all right, you eight are very prominent anarchists, so we're
39:02
Speaker 1: going to convict you all of this murder. Of these
39:04
Speaker 1: murders and um, I believe there was what four of
39:09
Speaker 1: them were actually hanged, Yeah, and it was that was
39:13
Speaker 1: just completely corrupt justice wise, like those guys were ever
39:17
Speaker 1: Actually they had not thrown a bomb, they hadn't created
39:21
Speaker 1: a bomb. They were they were just scapegoats that were
39:23
Speaker 1: hung because they were anarchist leaders. And they think that
39:27
Speaker 1: probably it was a paid agent provocateur from the other side,
39:32
Speaker 1: possibly like one of the pinkered and detectives who were
39:34
Speaker 1: also super active. That is the I don't know if
39:38
Speaker 1: it's the predominant view, but I've heard that plenty of places.
39:41
Speaker 1: Um that that is a real possibility, that it wasn't
39:44
Speaker 1: even an anarchist, that this was an anarchist meeting and
39:47
Speaker 1: this gave them the cops of reason to break it up.
39:49
Speaker 1: It was the antifa. Uh, and then you talked about it.
39:55
Speaker 1: President William McKinley was assassinated by anarchist Lee on Oh,
40:02
Speaker 1: I would say, zol goes that's pretty good. Goes are
40:08
Speaker 1: uh silent se z O l g O s z uh.
40:12
Speaker 1: We'll just call him Leon and uh, yeah, he assassinated McKinley.
40:17
Speaker 1: He he went to go and again he was another immigrant.
40:21
Speaker 1: And it's of course they shouldn't have rounded up immigrants,
40:24
Speaker 1: but it is interesting and that most of these major anarchists,
40:29
Speaker 1: prominent anarchists, were immigrants. But of course it was a
40:32
Speaker 1: time of immigrants too, for sure, so that has a
40:35
Speaker 1: lot to do with it. But he went to meet
40:37
Speaker 1: McKinley and like a public thing where there was like
40:39
Speaker 1: a greeting line, and had a pistol in his hand
40:43
Speaker 1: covered with a hanky, and McKinley reached out shake his hand.
40:47
Speaker 1: He shot him once and it ricocheted off his coat button.
40:52
Speaker 1: Shot him again and it lodged in his stomach. And
40:55
Speaker 1: as everyone I don't know much about McKinley, but as
40:58
Speaker 1: everyone like descended a on this Leon guy McKinley said,
41:02
Speaker 1: go easy on them boys. Oh really wow. Yeah, and
41:06
Speaker 1: he died of infection from the gunshot women. I think
41:09
Speaker 1: less than a week or maybe nine days later, and
41:12
Speaker 1: Leon was executed in short order. Yeah, and that's electric chair.
41:17
Speaker 1: And I imagine it's not like modern day electric chairs
41:20
Speaker 1: are great, but I imagine when a nineteen o one
41:22
Speaker 1: was pretty brutal. I would guess, so five vaults for
41:26
Speaker 1: five hours. Yeah, I know it took three zapps to
41:30
Speaker 1: get them. So although I would guess, actually it's probably
41:32
Speaker 1: it's probably even faster, I don't know. I could see
41:35
Speaker 1: it going either way. Like back then they were just like,
41:37
Speaker 1: well this we executed an elephant, so let's just use
41:40
Speaker 1: that amount, right exactly, And it would just sometimes go
41:43
Speaker 1: off by itself. Right. So there was one other thing
41:47
Speaker 1: I want to point out. There was a steel strike
41:48
Speaker 1: that you and I have talked about before. It was
41:51
Speaker 1: in Homestead, Pennsylvania. And I don't remember what episode been
41:54
Speaker 1: in the unions. Yeah, I'll bet it was because it
41:57
Speaker 1: was a U. It was there were unions striking. And
42:00
Speaker 1: remember there's like that whole anarchost syndicalism, which is basically
42:04
Speaker 1: like using unions as the source of anarchist power. There
42:08
Speaker 1: was one of these strikes going on and the Pinkerton's
42:11
Speaker 1: showed up for that one. It was definitely Pinkerton's and
42:13
Speaker 1: they killed like eight striking workers. So an anarchist named
42:18
Speaker 1: Um Alexander Berkman shot the I don't even he wasn't
42:23
Speaker 1: even the owner of the steel mill, I don't think.
42:26
Speaker 1: But he was an industrialist, Henry Clay Frick, and he
42:29
Speaker 1: was um executed, I believe. But aside from assassinating Frick,
42:34
Speaker 1: he had the distinction of being the love interest of
42:37
Speaker 1: another prominent anarchist, a much more prominent anarchist named Emma Goldman,
42:42
Speaker 1: who we would be remiss not to mention. She was
42:44
Speaker 1: an early feminist anarchist pioneer writer who was just a
42:50
Speaker 1: just really laid a lot of stuff out. Her writings
42:52
Speaker 1: are collected on the internet. But she was also UM
42:56
Speaker 1: very much involved in the early movement are um female
43:01
Speaker 1: controlled birth control? Oh interesting, yeah, which I don't think
43:04
Speaker 1: she made an appearance in that episode, but we uh,
43:07
Speaker 1: we definitely you can't talk about anarchy without mentioning Emma Goldman.
43:11
Speaker 1: So she and Berkman were uh an anarchist power couple.
43:14
Speaker 1: Pretty much. They were the Branchilina. Yeah they were, Is
43:19
Speaker 1: that still think? No? No, no, they were the Tristan
43:22
Speaker 1: Thompson and Chloe Kardashian of anarchisting him. Um. We we
43:30
Speaker 1: also should mention Sacco and Benzetti. Uh, this was in
43:34
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty, the too immigrant anarchists from Italy, Nicola Sako
43:40
Speaker 1: and Bartolomeo Voncetti. They were they were for sure anarchist,
43:46
Speaker 1: but they were by all accounts, wrongfully convicted of killing
43:49
Speaker 1: a payroll clerk and a guard at a robbery in Braintree, Massachusetts.
43:54
Speaker 1: In n and Um, this was a very big deal.
43:58
Speaker 1: It was. I mean, I think like in nineteen twenty
44:02
Speaker 1: h or maybe it was just after Nyod people went
44:08
Speaker 1: to Boston Commons two in protest, and that's that's a
44:11
Speaker 1: lot of folks in nineteen twenty to gather in support
44:14
Speaker 1: of these two like anarchists, immigrants who people feel like
44:18
Speaker 1: it didn't get a fair shake. Yeah. Well supposedly even
44:21
Speaker 1: before they were convicted. The guy who was there when
44:25
Speaker 1: it happened confessed to it and he was part of
44:29
Speaker 1: I think the Morelli gang, a mafia group that had
44:33
Speaker 1: actually carried out this crime. It was just that the
44:36
Speaker 1: officials in this this area were like, we want to
44:38
Speaker 1: get rid of these two anarchists. We'll just pin this
44:40
Speaker 1: on them and execute them. And that's what happened. And
44:43
Speaker 1: there was a huge that's just in Massachusetts. Bombs went
44:45
Speaker 1: off in New York, Paris, Buenos Aires, UH in protests
44:50
Speaker 1: of this execution, but the government was like, what are
44:53
Speaker 1: you gonna do. They're dead now, yeah, executed UM. Many
44:58
Speaker 1: years later, Michael Dukakis is a Belief governor of Massachusetts. Finally,
45:02
Speaker 1: UH tried to try to right that wrong historically by
45:07
Speaker 1: driving a tank down the highway in their honor. That's funny,
45:12
Speaker 1: So chuck Um. The anarchism kind of died out there,
45:16
Speaker 1: at least the very violent terrorist branch of anarchism died
45:20
Speaker 1: out around this time in the twenties. A little before that,
45:25
Speaker 1: it kept going actually fairly peacefully for a while in Spain,
45:29
Speaker 1: and there were anarchists UM villages all over Spain right
45:35
Speaker 1: before the Civil War. And the Civil War was the fascists,
45:39
Speaker 1: who had assembled in Morocco and were supported by Hitler
45:42
Speaker 1: and Mussolini, came pouring into Spain and managed to overrun
45:46
Speaker 1: the anarchists. During the Spanish Spanish Civil War, so the
45:49
Speaker 1: fascist one. They had a lot of help um again
45:52
Speaker 1: from Hitler and Mussolini, and the Franco um regime took
45:56
Speaker 1: over Spain. But for a little while there anarchists them,
46:00
Speaker 1: not the violent kind, but the peaceful communal kind of
46:04
Speaker 1: anarchism had been successful in Spain for a little while. Yeah,
46:10
Speaker 1: And then years later in the United States in the
46:12
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, the whole counterculture sort of brought back, uh,
46:17
Speaker 1: at least some of the ideas of anarchism, if not
46:20
Speaker 1: outright anarchism through activism and even one of the groups,
46:26
Speaker 1: a hippie activist group was called. They called themselves the
46:28
Speaker 1: Diggers after that group from England. Um. The Anarchist Cookbook,
46:33
Speaker 1: of course, came out in the early nineteen seventies, very famous, legendary,
46:39
Speaker 1: infamous even cookbook. They gave recipes on like how to
46:43
Speaker 1: make bombs and weapons and stuff, how to make drugs
46:46
Speaker 1: from toothpaste. Yeah, all kinds of cool stuff. And you
46:48
Speaker 1: know you've ever been to college. Someone at one point
46:51
Speaker 1: was like, man, yeah, get the Anarchist Cookbook. Check this out.
46:54
Speaker 1: We'll smoke some grass and read the Anarchist cook Book.
46:56
Speaker 1: I was like you say grass like it's sixties seven.
47:01
Speaker 1: I don't even think it was hip in sixty seven.
47:04
Speaker 1: I think dork's have always said crass. But the guy
47:07
Speaker 1: who wrote it, William Powell, said um later on, he
47:10
Speaker 1: renounced all of it, tried to get it taken out
47:12
Speaker 1: of print. But the publisher, of course, is like, you
47:14
Speaker 1: don't know these rights, which is still making money on it?
47:17
Speaker 1: That chuck is an anarchist nightmare. Sure it happened to this,
47:22
Speaker 1: William under the thumb of like an organization making money
47:26
Speaker 1: off of something you don't believe in anymore, right, But
47:29
Speaker 1: that was originally your idea and your work. It's just
47:33
Speaker 1: I'll bet that guy hasn't slept since. Uh. And of course,
47:39
Speaker 1: once the Internet was born, some of these ideas started
47:43
Speaker 1: coming back up because all of a sudden information could
47:45
Speaker 1: be exchanged so freely, and um, people on the outskirts
47:50
Speaker 1: of on the fringes of society who felt like they
47:53
Speaker 1: didn't quite fit in and wanted to be an anarchist
47:56
Speaker 1: could get in the chat room. Well well yeah, some
48:01
Speaker 1: of them, But I mean that's that, you know, there's
48:02
Speaker 1: a mistaking painting them with that brush like they're definitely normal.
48:07
Speaker 1: People who you would not suspect their anarchists that are
48:10
Speaker 1: actually anarchists. They have those views. They again they like
48:14
Speaker 1: work in nonprofits, They work in the rape crisis centers. Um.
48:17
Speaker 1: They that's what they do with their life. They um
48:21
Speaker 1: they use old computer monitors rather than buying like the
48:25
Speaker 1: latest one or anything like that. There's just like a
48:27
Speaker 1: lot of different, I guess, lifestyle choices you can make
48:32
Speaker 1: that are actually anarchistic within the larger society. And I
48:36
Speaker 1: think there's a lot more people doing that than than
48:38
Speaker 1: one might suspect. And again, it is, like you said,
48:41
Speaker 1: in large part, because the Internet makes it so easy
48:44
Speaker 1: to to go find these other ideas, and it's so
48:47
Speaker 1: frequently and I think this is why I really enjoyed
48:50
Speaker 1: researching this episode so much. It's so easy on the
48:54
Speaker 1: Internet to go find a different way of thinking. There's
48:58
Speaker 1: something really joy in finding a way of thinking that
49:01
Speaker 1: you've never really thought about before, or seeing the same
49:05
Speaker 1: things but in a totally different light. That's just probably
49:09
Speaker 1: the greatest gift the Internet has given us. And and
49:12
Speaker 1: this is this definitely falls within that that UM list. Well, yeah,
49:16
Speaker 1: I mean some people say even that, like the rewilding
49:20
Speaker 1: movement and living off grid at its heart is anarchistic. Yeah,
49:25
Speaker 1: Aim and Bundy and his whole crew, they very much
49:28
Speaker 1: denied being anarchists, but they were totally anarchists and still are.
49:32
Speaker 1: They were one of the successful ones. Yeah. I mean,
49:35
Speaker 1: there's probably a there's something attached to that word that
49:38
Speaker 1: I could see some groups not wanting to be associated with.
49:42
Speaker 1: But when they describe it, they're like, no, we're not anarchists.
49:45
Speaker 1: We just like I want to live out here by
49:47
Speaker 1: ourselves and hunt and gather and growing stuff and not
49:50
Speaker 1: have a government over me telling me what to do.
49:52
Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, you're anarchists, right, I just want to
49:56
Speaker 1: reuse my oh an old computer monitor. Right, you're an
50:00
Speaker 1: an anarchist, sorry, pal. Yeah. And then famously, also again
50:05
Speaker 1: as we mentioned before, Zukkati Park and Occupy Wall Street
50:08
Speaker 1: taking over um that park and just setting up basically
50:12
Speaker 1: an anarchist commune. And it wasn't just anarchists. There are
50:16
Speaker 1: a lot of protests, are a lot of different groups
50:18
Speaker 1: with a lot of different agendas. But like they refused
50:22
Speaker 1: to centralize, they refused to elect leadership um and that
50:27
Speaker 1: I mean is at its core anarchy. Like they said,
50:30
Speaker 1: our core our core tenant is anarchism, so it was
50:34
Speaker 1: an anarchist experiment at least. And there's a really good
50:37
Speaker 1: article in Al Jazera called Occupy Wall Streets Anarchist Roots.
50:42
Speaker 1: It's by a guy named David Graber, who is an
50:44
Speaker 1: anthropologist but he's also personally an anarchist, and he's really
50:49
Speaker 1: easy to read, uh, and really does a great job
50:52
Speaker 1: of putting out like what anarchism is. And that's a
50:56
Speaker 1: that was one of the better ones I found of his.
50:59
Speaker 1: So check that one out for sure. All Right. So
51:02
Speaker 1: we've kick this around between each other here whether or
51:05
Speaker 1: not this could work. But smarter people than us actually
51:09
Speaker 1: put thought into this stuff and they write books on
51:13
Speaker 1: it and articles in the Atlantic on it and stuff
51:15
Speaker 1: like that. Um. And there are some examples you can
51:19
Speaker 1: point to, because like you said, you can't really you
51:23
Speaker 1: can't point to any large scale examples of this. You
51:27
Speaker 1: can point to like small communities, for instance, in Denmark.
51:32
Speaker 1: I've heard of this before, uh, Christiana. It's not a person,
51:36
Speaker 1: but it's a place. It is an eight four acre
51:39
Speaker 1: um some say utopia within Copenhagen that kind of popped
51:45
Speaker 1: up in ninete when a bunch of squatters and hippie
51:48
Speaker 1: artists who like to smoke grass took over some abandoned
51:52
Speaker 1: buildings on a military base that was no longer in use,
51:56
Speaker 1: said this is a free zone. We're not under your
51:59
Speaker 1: authority den more Mark, uh, and more and more people came,
52:03
Speaker 1: and because it's Denmark, forty seven years later, it's still
52:07
Speaker 1: around and the government did not squash it. In fact,
52:10
Speaker 1: the government said, you know when, why don't we just
52:12
Speaker 1: sell you that land and they for below market value
52:16
Speaker 1: and they were like great, yeah, so they took him
52:19
Speaker 1: up on it, and there's now Christiana is a free
52:24
Speaker 1: anarchist zone within Denmark. Could you imagine this happening happening
52:30
Speaker 1: in the United States. No? And I think that's a
52:32
Speaker 1: really good point, Chuck, because Denmark is known as the
52:35
Speaker 1: model of representative liberal democracy, so they're like close enough
52:42
Speaker 1: to the cusp of anarchism anyway that yeah, it could
52:46
Speaker 1: happen in Denmark. But no, I like, that's that's not
52:49
Speaker 1: going to happen in the United States. I wonder if
52:52
Speaker 1: Danish government officials were like, geez, I don't know if
52:57
Speaker 1: this is the best idea, but everyone's looking at us
53:00
Speaker 1: and we are Denmark, right, we kind of have to.
53:04
Speaker 1: Everyone's looking at us unless someone says no. Is anyone
53:08
Speaker 1: gonna say no on record? Alright, fine, okay, fine, just
53:12
Speaker 1: give us some money for it. Okay. Forty seven years later,
53:15
Speaker 1: they finally spoke up. I'd like to check it out, man,
53:17
Speaker 1: I bet you that's a fun place to go. Hang.
53:20
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's pretty cool, and I'm sure, um it
53:22
Speaker 1: said there's everything's covered in murals and everything all. But
53:24
Speaker 1: that's pretty great. Um. One of the one of the
53:28
Speaker 1: things that I found kind of interesting from this article
53:30
Speaker 1: that was Somalia. Yeah, that actually serves as a an
53:34
Speaker 1: argument for both sides of the coin, right, Like, a
53:37
Speaker 1: lot of people point to Somalia and say, look, there's
53:40
Speaker 1: your example of what happens when you don't have a
53:42
Speaker 1: state running things. Because Somali's government collapse in and it
53:48
Speaker 1: was never replaced. There's like local warlords, there's pirates, there's um,
53:53
Speaker 1: there's extremists, there's religious extremists, um. And then there's also
53:57
Speaker 1: I think clans and tribes and communities and groups living
54:02
Speaker 1: in peace, and you you can actually point to the
54:08
Speaker 1: living conditions today and say there are factors that are
54:12
Speaker 1: better than it was before. Somalia's government collapsed. So yeah,
54:17
Speaker 1: there's a lot of Sister's pirates, there's warlords, but there
54:20
Speaker 1: are also like a lower infomortality rate. Um, the life
54:24
Speaker 1: expectancy is longer than it was before the government collapsed. Uh,
54:29
Speaker 1: there's more access to sanitation. And so if you're an anarchist,
54:33
Speaker 1: you would point to this and say, actually, Somalia has
54:36
Speaker 1: a lot of evidence that people can take care of
54:39
Speaker 1: themselves without the government. That that there's the anarchism isn't
54:44
Speaker 1: across the board worse than any government at all. That
54:48
Speaker 1: there are some governments that are worse than no government,
54:51
Speaker 1: and Somali is a pretty good example of that. Yeah,
54:53
Speaker 1: because in Somalia's case that it was a corrupt dictator
54:57
Speaker 1: in place, so conde ss were just abhorrent. Conditions still
55:04
Speaker 1: aren't great. It's not like everyone's packing up to move
55:06
Speaker 1: to Somalia. But like you said, there are literal facts
55:10
Speaker 1: and figures that show that it is better than it
55:14
Speaker 1: was in some ways under under this dictatorship, at least
55:18
Speaker 1: really interesting. Do you got anything else? Uh, well, we
55:21
Speaker 1: should mention Greece real quick, because Greece has been, uh
55:26
Speaker 1: undergone a lot of really interesting changes over the best
55:29
Speaker 1: fifteen years or so. Uh, and they have a lot
55:33
Speaker 1: of refugees coming in from from Syria and a lot
55:38
Speaker 1: of social services have gone under. Anarchists stepped in. Apparently
55:42
Speaker 1: in Athens at least they took over fifteen buildings anarchists
55:46
Speaker 1: did and turned them into shelters for three thousand refugees
55:50
Speaker 1: and said that these unauthorized, unauthorized housings are better than
55:56
Speaker 1: the camps that you guys are setting up government. Um,
55:59
Speaker 1: their tear dorble, they're dirty, they're not safe. We're providing
56:02
Speaker 1: food and medicine, and our places are safe, these centers
56:05
Speaker 1: that we ever saved. So that's one kind of other
56:08
Speaker 1: small interesting example. Yeah, still today, right, I don't know,
56:13
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I got to look into that. So, um,
56:16
Speaker 1: I just want to sign off and saying like I'm
56:19
Speaker 1: not espousing one thing over another necessarily. I think it's
56:24
Speaker 1: up to each person to make up their own mind.
56:27
Speaker 1: And if this caught your interest at all, I would
56:29
Speaker 1: encourage you to go read more about it, because you
56:31
Speaker 1: could spend the rest of your days reading about anarchism
56:34
Speaker 1: and still not even get through half of it. But
56:37
Speaker 1: I'll bet along the way you would develop your own
56:39
Speaker 1: ideas about the whole thing, whether positive or negative. Yeah,
56:42
Speaker 1: and at the very least, I hope we cleared up
56:44
Speaker 1: some myths about what that word is, you know, because
56:47
Speaker 1: I think it's a lot different than people think for sure.
56:50
Speaker 1: And hey, if you live in Christiania in Denmark, send
56:53
Speaker 1: us a note, um and send us an invitation. Yeah,
56:59
Speaker 1: and I'm just come there one day and check out
57:02
Speaker 1: what that jam is all about. I might retire there
57:04
Speaker 1: one day. We could do a show there. That'd be awesome. Yeah,
57:08
Speaker 1: like people for for free, that would be pretty cool. Well,
57:14
Speaker 1: they could pay us in old computer monitors, yes, and
57:20
Speaker 1: magic must rooms. Uh. If you want to know more
57:24
Speaker 1: about anarchism again, go out on the internet and read
57:28
Speaker 1: all about it. But you can't start by typing that
57:30
Speaker 1: word in the search bar. How stuff works dot com.
57:33
Speaker 1: And since I said that, it's time for listener mail, Yeah,
57:37
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this, uh a very polite way to
57:41
Speaker 1: talk to us about how we talked about suicide at
57:44
Speaker 1: various times. And this is at a time when just
57:47
Speaker 1: this past week in real time, we lost Kate Spade
57:51
Speaker 1: and Anthony Bourdain. They took their own lives and it's
57:55
Speaker 1: you know, caused it's it's a big it's called a
57:57
Speaker 1: big resurgence, and and people talking out suicide and how
58:00
Speaker 1: we talk about suicide. Anytime someone a big, high profile
58:04
Speaker 1: person takes her own life, it's going to be in
58:06
Speaker 1: the news. So um, it's on everyone's mind right now.
58:08
Speaker 1: So I want to thank Jared for for writing in
58:11
Speaker 1: so kindly. Hey, guys, for I say anything. I want
58:14
Speaker 1: to thank you both for what you do. Years long fan,
58:16
Speaker 1: and can't tell you how much joy fulfillment you brought
58:19
Speaker 1: to my life. After listening to the episode and free
58:21
Speaker 1: to Carlo, I think I might actually have a way
58:23
Speaker 1: to contribute to the knowledge sharing your show is all about.
58:27
Speaker 1: In the episode, the topic of suicide was brought a
58:29
Speaker 1: few times. I thought it'd be worthwhile to share some
58:31
Speaker 1: of the most updated guidelines to how to most safely
58:34
Speaker 1: talk about suicide. So he says this, uh, use preferred
58:39
Speaker 1: language that has died by suicide or took his her
58:42
Speaker 1: her own life. Don't say committed suicide. Because the idea
58:46
Speaker 1: there is, if I remember correctly from another email, is
58:48
Speaker 1: that committed indicates that the it is a crime. Yeah yeah, yeah,
58:54
Speaker 1: that right, Yeah, from what I remember, And you know,
58:57
Speaker 1: apologies for saying this. It's one of those things is
59:00
Speaker 1: so ingrained as how you say it committed suicide, that
59:04
Speaker 1: it's just hard to retrain my brain. Yeah, saying died
59:08
Speaker 1: by suicide. It's it's tough, but I mean, we can
59:11
Speaker 1: retrain ourselves to say that, and we're trying to, he said.
59:14
Speaker 1: Also exclude details about method, location, notes or photos from
59:19
Speaker 1: the scene. And then finally, don't try to guess or
59:21
Speaker 1: in further cause of suicide. Simply indicate that suicide is
59:25
Speaker 1: always caused by multiple factors. Yeah. Good points. Yeah, those
59:30
Speaker 1: are all really good points. And I learned from reading this, so,
59:33
Speaker 1: he said. He thought he passed along not as a critique,
59:35
Speaker 1: but rather there's a way to share information with two
59:37
Speaker 1: people who constantly seem to be doing whatever good they can.
59:41
Speaker 1: Thanks guys, That is from Jared. Thanks Jared, that was
59:44
Speaker 1: very nice of you. It sure was, um And I
59:47
Speaker 1: got the impression from his email, and if not his,
59:49
Speaker 1: from another person who wrote in to say very similar
59:52
Speaker 1: things that the point of all that is to to
59:57
Speaker 1: not um to not help any content agusness that it has,
1:00:01
Speaker 1: because apparently it's it's very contagious. We need to do
1:00:05
Speaker 1: an episode on that, but now I'm scared to death
1:00:08
Speaker 1: about saying the wrong things. Agreed, but you know we'll
1:00:13
Speaker 1: tackle it, okay, so uh. In the meantime, if you
1:00:17
Speaker 1: what was his name, Jared, Jared Jared, thanks again. And
1:00:21
Speaker 1: in the meantime, if you want to get in touch
1:00:23
Speaker 1: with us, I'm at joshum Clark on Twitter and on Instagram,
1:00:29
Speaker 1: and Chuck is all over Facebook these days. He's at
1:00:32
Speaker 1: movie Crush Pod, He's at Charles W. Chuck Bryant, he
1:00:37
Speaker 1: is at Stuff you Should Know? Right? Isn't that the
1:00:40
Speaker 1: official one? Correct her? And then you can send us
1:00:43
Speaker 1: all an email, including Jerry to Stuff podcast at how
1:00:47
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com and it's always just go visit
1:00:49
Speaker 1: us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should
1:00:51
Speaker 1: Know dot com for more on this and thousands of
1:00:58
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how Stuff? What's that? Carm