Latest / The Overlap / The A Word: No, the OTHER A Word!

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The A Word: No, the OTHER A Word! · The Overlap

0:01
Let's get the housekeeping out of the way immediately so we can get to the good stuff.
0:05
Obviously, Will is still on hiatus.
0:07
He's just taking some time away.
0:09
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.
0:16
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
0:25
care.
0:26
Today, we're talking about the A word.
0:45
No, not that one.
0:46
Although, given the state of traffic on I-35, I used that one a few times too.
0:53
We're talking about anarchy.
0:56
And I can already feel the reaction.
0:58
I can feel it through the internet.
1:00
You're clutching your pearls.
1:02
You're checking your door locks.
1:04
You're picturing a guy in a ski mask throwing a Molotov cocktail at a Starbucks.
1:09
You're thinking about the purge.
1:11
You're thinking about chaos.
1:14
But you're wrong.
1:15
You're so wrong, it's actually kind of cute.
1:18
Because the truth is, you've been lied to.
1:21
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.
1:32
So today we're gonna fix that.
1:34
Let's strip the paint off this topic.
1:35
We're gonna look at the philosophy, the history, the practical reality, and the modern resistance.
1:43
But I'm not gonna start with the
1:45
dictionary definition.
1:47
That's pretty boring.
1:48
That's for people who didn't prepare a script or an outline.
1:51
I'm going to start with a story.
1:54
A test.
1:56
I want you to imagine a scenario.
1:58
It's a Tuesday.
1:59
You're at home.
2:01
Maybe you're here in, you Oklahoma or maybe you're in Texas or the suburbs of, of Washington, DC.
2:08
But suddenly the sky turns green.
2:12
Sirens go off.
2:14
The big one hits.
2:15
Maybe it's a tornado.
2:17
Maybe it's a hurricane.
2:19
Maybe the power grid finally gave up the ghost after years and years of neglect.
2:24
at a state level, whatever it is, the lights go out.
2:26
Okay.
2:27
The cell phone towers, they're, they're, they're died.
2:30
They've died.
2:30
They're, they're dead.
2:32
The roads are blocked by, by fallen oak trees.
2:35
The police stations flooded.
2:36
The national guard is stuck three counties away for all intents and purposes.
2:41
The government has left the chat.
2:44
Now, if you believe what the state tells you about human nature, if you can believe what Hollywood tells you about, about anarchy.
2:53
you know what happens next.
2:55
It's a bloodbath.
2:57
It should be like Mad Max and, and, you know, post-apocalyptic fiction.
3:02
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
3:11
just savage beasts waiting to kill each other, right?
3:14
But we know that's not what happens.
3:17
We know because we've seen it.
3:19
We saw it after Katrina.
3:21
I lived in Louisiana during uh Katrina.
3:24
We saw it after Hurricane Sandy and we saw it in Oklahoma after the more tornadoes.
3:30
um Here's what actually happens, right?
3:33
You walk outside, you see your neighbor, let's call him Bob.
3:37
Bob has a downed fence, right?
3:40
You don't run in and kill Bob.
3:42
You don't steal Bob's TV.
3:44
You ask Bob if he's okay.
3:46
You go to your garage, you get a chainsaw.
3:48
Two guys from down the street see you, they grab their chainsaws.
3:52
They didn't talk about it.
3:53
There was no meeting.
3:53
Nobody's a supervisor.
3:55
There's no paycheck.
3:56
Nobody has a badge.
3:57
uh You start clearing the street, right?
4:00
Someone realizes the power's out and the meat in everyone's freezer's about to spoil.
4:05
So Mrs.
4:06
Higgins down the block pulls her grill into the driveway.
4:09
Everyone brings their thawing steaks and chicken.
4:11
Someone brings a case of warm beer.
4:14
By the end of day, the entire neighborhood is fed.
4:17
There's a patrol schedule set up to watch for looters or anything of that nature.
4:23
A first aid station sets up in a garage for minor cuts and scrapes and things like that.
4:28
Decisions are being made by people doing the work.
4:31
Resources are being shared based on kind of who needs them, not who has the most money.
4:36
So order has been created, it's been maintained, safety has been established, and not a single tax dollar was spent.
4:45
Not a single permit was filed.
4:47
not a single police officer was present.
4:50
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?
5:00
Is that chainsaw OSHA compliant?
5:02
You would tell him to get lost.
5:05
I mean, you'd realize that in that moment, his authority is kind of irrelevant to your survival.
5:12
Congratulations.
5:13
You just participated in anarchy.
5:17
I know, I know it stings a little bit, right?
5:19
Like I'm not an anarchist.
5:20
I have a 401k.
5:22
I voted for a Democrat in the last election.
5:24
I own a riding lawnmower, but strictly speaking, that scenario that I just described is voluntary organization.
5:32
It's mutual aid.
5:33
It's order without rulers.
5:37
It's the textbook definition of anarchism.
5:42
So let's look at the word anarchy.
5:44
It comes from the Greek anarchy.
5:47
which combines and meaning without, archos meaning a ruler.
5:52
It literally means without a ruler.
5:54
So you can't measure anything, right?
5:56
No, bad dad joke.
5:58
That was in Will's honor.
6:00
Notice what it doesn't mean.
6:02
It doesn't mean without rules.
6:05
It doesn't mean without structure.
6:07
It definitely doesn't mean without consequences.
6:10
If you act like an asshole in an anarchist society, you don't go to jail.
6:15
You get exiled from the barbecue.
6:17
And honestly, that might be worse depending on who's cooking it, right?
6:20
ah If you've had any of my smoked barbecue stuff, you know that you're worse off for the wear, believe me.
6:27
The core uh philosophy of anarchism is pretty simple, right?
6:31
Authority requires justification.
6:35
The anarchist asks the state, why do you get to tell me what to do?
6:40
The state says, well, because I have the guns and the badges and the anarchist says, sorry, that's not good enough.
6:48
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
6:59
to being an anarchist than you think.
7:02
Anarchy is actually the most optimistic political philosophy that we know of.
7:09
It basically assumes that everyone is not a psychopath.
7:13
The state assumes that everyone is.
7:15
All right, now.
7:17
Before we move on to the history, is nuts, uh let's clear something up.
7:23
Anarchism isn't a monolith, right?
7:26
If we put three anarchists into a room, the same thing with atheists.
7:31
You'll end up with four different political parties and somebody's gonna get a black eye.
7:36
They basically fight over the definitions of what they believe and what they think more than the theologians fight over scripture.
7:43
So,
7:44
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
7:55
show.
7:56
Number one, you have the Menarchist, Menarche, M-I-N-A-R-C-H-Y.
8:03
This is the just the tip of anti-statism.
8:08
Menarchists who usually populate within the Libertarian Party
8:13
believe that the state is a necessary evil, but they want it to be microscopic.
8:18
They want what Robert Nozick, uh well-known philosopher from that group called a night watchman state.
8:27
Here's the the Menarchist pitch, right?
8:29
Look guys, we need the government, but only to do three things, police, courts, military.
8:34
That's it, everything else, roads, privatize them, schools, privatize them, fire departments, send a bill.
8:42
We just want the government to protect property rights.
8:46
Now look, anarchists look at a minarchist and kind of laugh, right?
8:51
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.
9:01
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.
9:10
To an anarchist,
9:13
A Menarchist is just a confused Republican who likes to smoke cannabis, right?
9:19
Enter contender number two, we have the anarcho-communist.
9:23
We call them Ancoms.
9:25
They have a flag, it's red and black.
9:27
uh Their intellectual grandfather is the Russian prince, uh Peter Kropotkin?
9:34
Kropotkin?
9:36
Let's go with Kropotkin, that's fine.
9:37
uh Now, just as a side note, giving up being a prince to be an anarchist is a mad flex, bro.
9:47
He wrote a book called The Conquest of Bread.
9:50
And so their philosophy, ant comms believe that capitalism and the state are essentially two heads of the same monster.
9:59
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?
10:08
And they say no.
10:09
They say that's wage slavery.
10:11
They want to abolish the state and abolish money and abolish
10:16
private property.
10:17
From each according to his ability to each according to his needs in the Marxist viewpoints.
10:24
So these are people basically running the community gardens, right?
10:29
They're the ones organizing the mutual aid networks.
10:32
They want to share their toothbrush with you.
10:35
Well, not the toothbrush.
10:37
I mean, they make a very distinct uh choice and separation between personal property like your stuff
10:46
and private property like factories.
10:49
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.
10:58
Enter contender number three.
11:00
We have the anarcho-capitalist.
11:02
We call them ANCAPS.
11:03
They also have a flag.
11:04
It's yellow and black.
11:06
Their hero is Murray Rothbard.
11:09
So their aesthetic is like bow ties, Bitcoin and Austrian economics.
11:14
These guys are kind of the polar opposite of the Ancoms.
11:18
They love capitalism.
11:20
They think the free market is their god.
11:23
They just hate the government interfering in it.
11:26
Their central philosophy is NAP, the non-aggression principle.
11:29
The non-aggression principle says that it is always immoral to initiate force against someone or their property.
11:39
Therefore, they view taxation as theft because if you don't pay taxes,
11:44
men with guns will come to your house.
11:45
That is force.
11:47
So they want to privatize everything.
11:49
And I mean everything, private roads, private courts, private police forces.
11:54
If someone steals your TV, you don't call 911, you call mixed security services, assuming your subscription's up to date, right?
12:03
These guys believe that your right to own a national McNuke shall not be infringed, provided that you bought it with gold.
12:11
bullion or silver spoons melted down into coins.
12:16
Most anarchists, like uh normal anarchists, scream that that and caps aren't real anarchists because a corporation is just a private government.
12:25
So to an and calm and and cap is like a feudal lord with a better marketing department.
12:33
So we have the diet state menarchists.
12:35
We have the share everything and comes
12:38
we have the buy everything and caps, why does this matter?
12:43
Well, for the last hundred years or so, the powers that be have been terrified of every single one of those, right?
12:49
They've spent a century trying to erase them from the history books.
12:55
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
13:06
talk about where all this comes from.
13:08
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?
13:21
It was probably a footnote in chapter 14 of your history books.
13:24
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.
13:33
The narrative we're sold is very specific.
13:35
Anarchism is a foreign virus.
13:39
It's something that crazy immigrants brought over from Europe to infect the pure freedom loving soil of America.
13:46
But here's the reality check.
13:48
And here's the part that they didn't put on the test, right?
13:50
Anarchism is not foreign.
13:53
It is deeply rooted in the American DNA.
13:56
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
14:06
mine,
14:07
you might want to thank an anarchist.
14:10
Let's set the scene.
14:11
Chicago, 1886, the Gilded Age.
14:15
And Gilded is a perfect word for it.
14:17
It means covered in a thin layer of gold, but underneath it is a cheap rotting piece of iron.
14:25
We have the Rockefellers and the Carnegie's building palaces literally.
14:29
And down the street we have immigrants living in tenements so crowded that people are sleeping in shifts.
14:36
The average workday is 12, 14, sometimes 16 hours, six days a week.
14:42
There is no OSHA.
14:44
There is no HR department.
14:46
If your arm gets ripped off by a carpet loom, you don't get workers comp.
14:52
You get fired for bleeding on the fabric.
14:55
And so the labor movement decides, look, that's enough.
14:59
They coalesce around a single radical demand.
15:03
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest.
15:06
eight hours for what we will.
15:08
So who's leading this charge?
15:10
It's the Democrats.
15:12
Just kidding.
15:13
It wasn't.
15:13
They were busy ignoring the problem.
15:16
Maybe it was the Republicans.
15:19
They were the party of big business actually.
15:21
No, so it's not them either.
15:23
They were the ones who actually owned the factories.
15:25
It was the anarchists.
15:27
Specifically, a group of radical, mostly German immigrant anarchists in Chicago.
15:32
People like uh Albert Parsons and August Spies.
15:37
These guys weren't hiding in the shadows.
15:39
They were the celebrities of the working class.
15:42
They published newspapers, they gave speeches to thousands of people.
15:47
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,
15:57
America was basically a capital crime rolled into a marriage license.
16:03
So on May 1st, 1886, they launch a general strike.
16:08
Hundreds of thousands of people walk off of their job across the country.
16:14
The city of Chicago was absolutely paralyzed.
16:17
And of course, the business owners are freaked the F out, right?
16:21
For three days, it's nuts.
16:24
Police are beating people, workers are beating police, and on May 4th, a rally is scheduled called Haymarket Square.
16:34
Now, pay attention to the details because
16:37
This is kind of where the history books start to lie to you.
16:40
The rally was actually very peaceful.
16:42
It was raining.
16:43
It was cold.
16:44
It was miserable.
16:46
And the mayor of Chicago, who at the time was Carter Harrison, he actually attended the rally.
16:51
He stood there.
16:52
He listened to the speeches.
16:54
He smoked a cigar.
16:56
He told the police chief, look, everything looks chill and went home to bed.
17:01
And as the crowd was starting to, to dwindle, there were
17:06
probably 200 people or so left, mostly just kind of shivering in the rain.
17:10
uh A column of 176 police officers marched into the middle of it.
17:17
They ordered the crowd to disperse.
17:20
And suddenly, from a side alley, someone throws a bomb.
17:26
To this day, uh 140 years later or so, historians don't know who threw that bomb.
17:32
Some say it was an anarchist.
17:34
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.
17:48
They started open firing wildly into the crowd.
17:52
They even shot their own men in the confusion.
17:56
It was a massacre.
17:58
Now watch the pivot.
18:00
Watch how the state responds.
18:02
They don't look for the guy who threw the bomb.
18:04
They round up the leaders.
18:05
They arrest eight prominent anarchists.
18:08
And here's the kicker.
18:10
Did they throw the bomb?
18:11
No.
18:13
Were they even at the rally?
18:15
Most of them weren't.
18:17
Albert Parsons was actually drinking beer at Zeph's hall down the street.
18:21
Another guy was home playing cards.
18:23
It didn't matter.
18:24
The truth didn't matter.
18:26
The state attorney, Julius Grinnell, stood up in court and said this, that
18:31
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.
18:45
Convict these men, make examples of them, hang them, and you save our institutions, end quote.
18:53
He literally admitted it.
18:56
We aren't hanging them because they committed a crime.
18:59
We're hanging them because we don't like their ideas.
19:04
Four men, Parsons, Spees, Fisher, and Engel were actually all hung.
19:12
Hanged?
19:12
it hanged, hung?
19:13
Doesn't matter, they were killed for it.
19:16
one actually committed suicide in a cell.
19:19
are, there's a name for these people.
19:22
They're called the Haymarket Martyrs.
19:24
And the backlash was pretty much around the world, the entire world, like Europe, South America, Asia.
19:34
They were so incredibly outraged by this execution.
19:40
that they actually established May 1st as International Workers Day.
19:44
Think about that.
19:47
The entire planet celebrates May Day to honor American anarchists, except the United States.
19:55
Why?
19:56
Because President Grover Cleveland and later legislation pushed Labor Day to September, specifically to dissociate the labor movement from those scary anarchists.
20:09
They literally rearrange the calendar to make you forget that these people existed.
20:15
That is the level of pettiness only our federal government can achieve.
20:22
But the government wasn't done.
20:24
They were terrified.
20:26
This wasn't just a labor dispute to them.
20:28
This was an existential threat.
20:31
And in 1901, they finally got the excuse they needed.
20:36
President William McKinley is at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.
20:43
He's shaking hands.
20:45
A man approaches him with a handkerchief wrapped around his hand to hide a revolver.
20:51
That man
20:52
Leon Zolgos.
20:54
He fires two shots and kills William McKinley.
20:58
Now
20:59
Leon called himself an anarchist.
21:01
I'm not gonna say his last name because it's really hard to pronounce.
21:04
It's spelled C-Z-O-L-G-O-S-Z, which I believe is Shoal-Gosh.
21:12
um But here's the nuance.
21:16
The actual anarchist community hated this guy.
21:20
He was kind of a loner.
21:21
He was a weirdo.
21:23
He was awkward.
21:24
He tried to join the anarchist groups.
21:27
and they literally put out warnings in the newspapers saying, watch out for this guy.
21:31
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.
21:42
They saw an opportunity in 1903, Congress passes the anarchist exclusion act.
21:50
This is kind of a massive turning point in American history.
21:53
Before this act, immigration was pretty open.
21:56
Give me your tired, give me your poor.
22:00
This law was the first time, the first time the US banned people from entering the country based solely on their political beliefs.
22:09
So if you showed up at Ellis Island, the inspector would ask, are you an anarchist?
22:15
If you said yes, get back on the boat.
22:17
They didn't ask if you'd committed a crime.
22:19
They didn't ask if you were violent.
22:22
They ask what you thought.
22:24
They criminalized a philosophy.
22:27
And why?
22:28
Think about it.
22:30
Why was the most powerful government on earth so terrified of a bunch of immigrants reading books in a basement?
22:37
It wasn't because they thought anarchy meant chaos.
22:41
It was because they knew anarchy meant order without them.
22:46
The idea of anarchism, the idea that people can organize themselves, that we don't need rulers,
22:53
that the state is actually a parasite is contagious.
22:57
If people realize they don't need the state, they don't need the government, the state loses its power.
23:03
And the one thing power hates more than anything else is being ignored.
23:08
And you cannot, you cannot talk about this without talking about the women.
23:14
J.
23:14
Edgar Hoover called the most dangerous woman in America.
23:19
Red Emma, Emma Goldman.
23:22
She was five feet tall, rimless glasses, basically looked like a librarian and a nun that would shush you for breathing too loud.
23:32
But she terrified the establishment.
23:36
Why?
23:37
Did she have a bomb?
23:40
No.
23:41
Did she command an army?
23:43
No.
23:44
She had a voice and refused to shut up.
23:49
She traveled the country giving speeches about things that were considered taboo.
23:54
She talked about birth control.
23:56
At the time, distributing information about contraception was actually illegal under the Comstock Act.
24:02
And she went to jail for handing out those pamphlets.
24:05
She spoke about free love, which didn't mean orgies.
24:09
It just meant that the government and the church shouldn't tell you who you can love or marry.
24:13
She spoke against the draft.
24:16
When World War I started, she stood on soap boxes literally and told men, do not go.
24:21
This is a war fought by the poor for the benefit of the rich.
24:25
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.
24:34
That is a level of FAFO that I can only aspire to.
24:40
Eventually in 1919, during the Palmer raids, the US government gave up trying to silence her.
24:47
They basically rounded her up along with 248 other people and put them on a boat called the Buford.
24:56
This was nicknamed the Soviet Ark and literally deported these people to Russia.
25:02
Now they thought
25:04
If they got rid of the women, they'd get rid of the idea.
25:09
Spoiler alert, it didn't work.
25:11
You can deport a person.
25:13
You can hang a person, but you can't hang an idea.
25:18
So that brings us to the present.
25:21
Because history doesn't just stop, right?
25:23
It rhymes.
25:24
We had the gilded age of the 1890s, massive wealth inequality, powerful oligarchs, and a government
25:31
bought and paid for by corporations.
25:34
Does that sound familiar?
25:36
It should.
25:37
Because here we are in 2026.
25:39
We have a consolidated executive branch under President Donald Trump.
25:46
We have a massive corporate monopoly in different sectors.
25:51
And once again, people are flying the black flag.
25:55
Those are the people that the government is the most worried about.
25:59
the tactics have changed, right?
26:01
We aren't throwing dynamite in Haymarket Square anymore.
26:05
We aren't standing on soap boxes shouting about the draft.
26:08
The modern anarchist is fighting a different kind of war.
26:12
It's a war of information.
26:13
It's a war of logistics.
26:15
It's a war of who can feed the neighborhood faster than FEMA.
26:20
So how does that work?
26:21
How do you practice anarchy in a surveillance state?
26:26
How do you fight a regime without becoming a target?
26:30
Well, you start by disappearing.
26:34
wait, I'm back.
26:35
So if Emma Goldman were alive today, she wouldn't be standing on a soapbox in Union Square screaming at people, right?
26:42
She'd be on signal.
26:44
She'd be running a node on the Tor network.
26:46
She'd be setting up Lora radios throughout the city and towns that she was in to create an encrypted network.
26:56
And she probably wouldn't be wearing an F the police t-shirt.
26:59
She'd be wearing a beige cardigan from target.
27:02
This brings us to the most important shift in the last hundred years of this philosophy, the modern front.
27:10
Now, if you watch a lame stream news, if you have cable, you're getting over the air, you know, whatever.
27:17
And I assume you don't because you're listening to this podcast and therefore you have a soul.
27:22
Um, but if, if you're your parents or
27:26
your friends.
27:27
You are told that the modern anarchist is a violent extremist.
27:33
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.
27:41
That's the branding, not the product.
27:44
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
27:55
Molotov cocktails.
27:57
That's really easy to track.
27:59
That's what gets you thrown in a federal holding cell.
28:02
The real resistance is happening in the shadows.
28:04
It's happening in your neighborhood.
28:06
And it relies upon a concept called the gray man.
28:10
The gray man theory is simple.
28:12
And it's a concept borrowed from intelligence agencies and survivalists.
28:17
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.
28:27
You don't dye your hair bright blue.
28:30
You don't wear tactical gear to the grocery store.
28:32
You don't put political stickers on your car.
28:34
You blend in.
28:35
You look like everybody else.
28:38
You become gray.
28:40
The modern anarchist isn't the guy shouting at the cop.
28:44
The modern anarchist is the IT guy who quietly installs privacy software on the library computers so the kids can browse without being tracked.
28:52
It's the grandmother who turns her basement into a hydroponic garden.
28:57
and distributes the vegetables to families who lost their SNAP benefits without asking for ID.
29:03
It's neighborhood pantries set up with refrigerators so that people can have goods.
29:08
It's the person who distributes really good books and literature in a uh lending library outside their front door.
29:17
It's a mechanic who fixes cars for free on the weekends for undocumented immigrants who can't go to a licensed shop.
29:26
So this is a pivot from propaganda of the deed, which is a old school blow stuff up method, right?
29:34
To dual power.
29:36
Let's define that term because it's kind of the engine of modern resistance.
29:42
Dual power.
29:44
It's a strategy.
29:44
means you don't just fight the state, you replace the state.
29:49
You build institutions that do the state's job better, faster and fairer than
29:55
state does.
29:56
You build a counter power so that when the state finally collapses or just stops caring about you, you don't notice.
30:04
You have to build the lifeboat while the ship is still sinking.
30:09
Let's look at how this is working right now in 2026.
30:10
The federal government has slashed funding for disaster relief.
30:16
We know this, right?
30:17
FEMA is basically a skeleton crew.
30:20
So what happens when a flood hits, a tornado hits, a hurricane?
30:27
And these things are going to happen.
30:29
We live in places where they happen all the time.
30:33
In the old days, you waited for the government, right?
30:35
You waited for the National Guard and you died waiting.
30:39
Today, we see mutual aid networks.
30:42
Please, and I cannot stress this enough, do not confuse mutual aid with charity, right?
30:50
Charity is vertical.
30:52
Charity is a rich person looking down at a poor person and giving them a crumb or a dollar to feel better about themselves.
31:01
Charity comes with strings.
31:03
I'll give you this sandwich if you listen to my sermon.
31:06
Mutual aid is horizontal.
31:08
It's solidarity, not charity.
31:10
It says, I'm helping you because my survival is tied to your survival.
31:17
I'm not above you, I'm with you.
31:19
We see this with groups like Food Not Bombs.
31:24
They have been doing this for decades.
31:26
They basically recover food
31:28
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.
31:37
And guess what?
31:39
Governments, local and federal hate them.
31:43
Cities have literally passed laws making it illegal to feed homeless people in parks.
31:49
Why?
31:51
Why would a city spend money to arrest people for giving away free soup?
31:56
Because it
31:58
proves that the state is unnecessary.
32:02
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?
32:13
But it's not just food.
32:15
It's digital defense.
32:16
We live in the most surveilled society in human history.
32:22
Every text you send, every location ping from your phone, every
32:27
purchase you make is logged, sold, stored in a data center in Utah.
32:32
The modern anarchist is the only one actually fighting for your privacy.
32:38
They're the ones building mesh networks.
32:40
A mesh network is a network, either radio or internet, that doesn't rely on an internet service provider, right?
32:47
It doesn't go through Comcast or AT &T.
32:49
It jumps from device to device.
32:51
Your phone connects to my phone, which connects to a router down the street.
32:54
It's a web that the government can't shut down because there is no central switch.
33:00
They're the ones pushing end-to-end encryption.
33:03
If you use Signal, and you should use Signal, you are using anarchist technology.
33:09
That code was written by people who believe the government has no right to read your love letters or your grocery list.
33:17
In 2026, OPSEC, operational security,
33:21
isn't just for spies and people who work for the federal government.
33:25
It's for anyone who wants to organize a protest without getting that dreaded knock on the door beforehand.
33:32
The battle lines aren't drawn on a map anymore.
33:35
They are drawn in code.
33:37
And then we have the most controversial piece of the modern resistance, community defense, or as the media likes to call them, the boogeyman.
33:47
Yes, I'm talking about Antifa.
33:49
Take a breath, unclench your jaw.
33:53
Antifa is short for anti-fascist.
33:57
It's not an organization.
33:59
There is no CEO of Antifa.
34:02
There is no headquarters.
34:03
You can't sign up.
34:05
There are no membership cards.
34:06
It is an action.
34:10
It's a philosophy that says fascism must be opposed by any means necessary.
34:16
In 2026, under a regime,
34:19
that openly flirts with authoritarianism, community defense has shifted.
34:24
It's not just about punching Nazis in the street, right?
34:27
Though, historically, this was a popular pastime.
34:32
It's about protecting vulnerable people.
34:35
When the Proud Boys or whatever neo-fascist militia group pops up next week, decides to march through a neighborhood to intimidate immigrants,
34:47
or the LGBTQIA plus community, the police usually stand there.
34:53
That's it.
34:54
Or worse, they face the protesters.
34:58
Community defense groups, often armed, often trained, stand in the way.
35:03
They are the shield.
35:05
They are the ultimate expression of the second amendment, which is pretty ironic, right?
35:11
The NRA loves to talk about fighting tyranny, but when actual tyranny shows up,
35:17
The NRA is usually selling it the guns.
35:20
The anarchists are the ones actually using the second amendment for its intended purpose, community defense against an aggressor.
35:30
So let's pull all this together.
35:32
The modern anarchist in 2026 is a gardener.
35:36
They're growing food outside the corporate supply chain.
35:39
The modern anarchist is a coder.
35:43
They are building encrypted channels so you can talk freely.
35:47
The modern anarchist is a medic.
35:49
They're running street clinics for people who can't afford an ER.
35:54
The anarchist is a barber who's giving free haircuts in a church parking lot.
36:00
The modern anarchist sometimes is a soldier standing between a torch-wielding mob and a library.
36:10
They are building a new world in the shell of the old one.
36:15
So that brings us to the final question.
36:17
The question you are probably asking yourself right now, okay, Joshua, this sounds great, but does it work?
36:23
Can you actually run a society like this?
36:26
Or is this just a fantasy for people who don't wanna pay taxes?
36:30
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.
36:42
All right.
36:42
So we've covered a lot of ground today.
36:44
We've talked about the definitions, how anarchy just means no rulers, not no rules.
36:50
We've talked about the history, how the people who gave you the weekend were hanged for it.
36:54
We've talked about the present, how the modern resistance is feeding people while the state argues about budget cuts and snap benefits.
37:02
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.
37:12
You are smart people.
37:14
You're critical thinkers, but you're also normal people.
37:17
You have jobs, have families, you pay your taxes reluctantly.
37:22
You obey the speed limit mostly.
37:24
And if I called you an anarchist to your face, you'd probably be offended.
37:30
say, Joshua, look, I'm a civilized person.
37:33
I'm a Democrat.
37:35
I voted for Harris.
37:36
I believe in law and order.
37:39
But do you?
37:40
Let's run a diagnostic on your actual life.
37:43
I want you to think about your relationships.
37:46
Think about your family.
37:48
Think about your friends.
37:50
When you and your friends decide where to go for dinner, do you vote about it?
37:56
Do you elect a dinner president who decides for everyone and enforces this decision with a threat of violence?
38:04
No, you talk.
38:05
You negotiate.
38:07
I want tacos.
38:08
Well, I had tacos yesterday.
38:09
Let's do pizza.
38:11
All right, fine, pizza works.
38:13
You come to a consensus, you reach an agreement voluntarily, that is anarchy.
38:20
Think about your marriage or your relationship with your significant other or others.
38:25
If your SO forgets to do the dishes, do you take them to court and sue them?
38:31
Do you call the police and enforce the dishwashing contract?
38:35
Do you send them a bill for a fine?
38:37
No, you talk about it.
38:38
This isn't an HOA, it's a relationship.
38:40
Maybe you argue.
38:41
I mean, that happens too.
38:43
It's fine.
38:44
But you work it out based on mutual respect and a desire to keep the relationship going.
38:50
That is anarchy.
38:54
Think about the grocery store.
38:56
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?
39:05
Do you need a stoplight at the end of the serial aisle?
39:09
No, you move over, you say, let me squeeze past you.
39:13
And you move on, you self-regulate.
39:16
You coordinate with a stranger about a single law telling you to do so.
39:22
You say, I didn't realize we were dancing.
39:25
That is anarchy.
39:27
Here is a dirty little secret that political science professors don't want to tell you.
39:32
99 % of your life is anarchist.
39:35
Like 99 % of your interactions with other human beings are voluntary, cooperative, and non-coercive.
39:43
You don't kill people because you don't want to kill people.
39:48
Not because the law says it's illegal.
39:51
Is the law the only thing holding you back from literally killing people?
39:56
You help your friend move a couch because you care about them, not because the government mandates that we all help move couches.
40:03
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.
40:14
Thomas Paine, one of the founding fathers,
40:17
uh Said it best in 1776.
40:20
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
40:35
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
40:47
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.
40:58
So where does that leave us?
41:00
It's currently January of 2026.
41:02
The world is getting harder.
41:06
The Trump regime is consolidating power every day.
41:10
The safety nets are being cut.
41:12
The climate is getting weird.
41:15
The price of eggs is, you know, coming down.
41:19
The price of gasoline is at an all-time low.
41:23
You have two choices.
41:25
You can double down on the state
41:27
You can vote harder.
41:28
You can scream at the TV.
41:30
You can hope that if you just elect the right person in 2028, they'll fix the roads.
41:36
They'll lower the prices and make everyone nice to each other.
41:39
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.
41:51
You realize that you are the cavalry.
41:54
You can realize that if you want your neighborhood to be safe, you have to talk to your neighbors.
42:01
If you want hungry people to be fed, you have to feed them.
42:07
If you want to be free, you have to start acting free.
42:12
I just saw Robert Reich say this the other day on one of his YouTube videos.
42:15
He said, there is no one coming for us.
42:20
We have to be the ones.
42:23
that stand up and say, I am the one who's coming for us.
42:28
I am going to save us.
42:30
We are going to save ourselves.
42:33
To be an anarchist in 2026 doesn't mean you wear a black mask.
42:37
It doesn't mean that everybody's walking around with those, what do they call those ski masks that go the whole face.
42:44
People use to rob stores.
42:47
Balaclava.
42:48
Yeah, sorry.
42:49
I've been struggling remembering words lately.
42:52
Balaclava.
42:53
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
43:03
that was blown entirely out of proportion.
43:06
It means that you have to stop asking for permission.
43:10
That's it.
43:11
I say that's it.
43:12
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.
43:21
It means you become ungovernable, not by being violent, not by being explosive, but by being so self reliant and
43:33
connected to your community and so capable of solving your own problems that the state becomes irrelevant.
43:43
The ultimate goal of anarchy isn't to destroy the government.
43:48
It's just to make the government either obsolete
43:53
or really just a duplicate.
43:55
uh A safety net, if you will.
43:58
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.
44:08
That's it.
44:09
That's the show.
44:10
I'm Joshua.
44:12
This has been another solo run of the overlap.
44:14
If you learn something, tell a friend.
44:15
If you hated it, tell an enemy.
44:18
Will should be back eventually unless the squirrels get him until then.
44:23
Look, stay safe.
44:24
Stay hidden.
44:26
And for the sake of Thor, learn how to use a chainsaw.
44:30
Be a gray man.
44:32
I'll see you next time.
44:33
Follow us on our socials.