It Could Happen Here - Anti-War Movements feat. Andrew

Episode Date: August 4, 2025

Andrew is joined by James to discuss the history and efficacy of anti militarism and anti-war movements. Sources: Anarchist Encyclopedia by Sebastien Faure et al https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/james-herod-the-weakness-of-a-politics-of-protest https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jeff-shantz-p-j-lilley-striking-against-the-work-war-machineSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. So what happened at Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to. There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond. And left a woman behind to drown. Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control.

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Listen now to Uncle Chris on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant. For my iHeart Podcasts and Rococo Punch, this is The Turning, River Road. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse.

But in 2014, the youngest escaped. Listen to The Turning, River Road on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The stuff you should know, guys, have made their own summer playlists of their must-listen podcasts on movies. It's me, Josh, and I'd like to welcome you to the Stuff You Should Know summer movie playlist. What screams summer more than a nice darkened air-conditioned theater and a great movie

playing right in front of you? Episodes on James Bond, special effects, stunt men and women, disaster films, even movies that change filmmaking, and many more. Listen to the Stuff You Should Know Summer Movie playlist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Callzone Media Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Andrew Sage, also known as Andrewism on

YouTube, and I'm here with... Sweet, it's James. And honestly, I shouldn't say welcome to It Could Happen Here. I should really say welcome to It Is Happening Here because, I mean, just a second with you, James. How are you doing? You safe? I'm okay. Yeah, I'm safe right now. We are living through wild times in the United States. Every day is a new hell. Indeed, indeed.

And although I'm not in the US, the flames of that hell definitely lick the rest of the world in ways big and small. Yeah, they definitely do. I was just talking to some people in Syria yesterday and like the alibis, alawites, whatever you want to call it, alibis, whatever you want to say it, are facing quite substantial persecution currently. And like one of the larger refugee accepting countries in the world just isn't doing that anymore. Unless you're a white South African, of course. And like that has these massive trickle down effects for everywhere. It's just one example of how like America so goes in us, so goes the world, you know? Indeed, indeed.

And not just in Syria are the flames of conflict tearing our world apart. Um, I think most people I now know about the situation in Palestine, the way that Israel is carrying out a genocide there, you know, the Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the civil war in Myanmar and Sudan, the, you know, the Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the civil war in Myanmar and in Sudan, the struggle between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and the Kashmiri people who are left on the other way side. You know, the Tamil genocide taking place in Sri Lanka. I mean, there's so many things happening across the world right now.

It's really difficult to keep up. Yeah, the friends in Myanmar would prefer the framing of revolution to civil war. They're pretty explicit about that. Okay, yeah, you're right. You're right. You're right. I should be using that terminology. Yeah, it's not it's not appropriate everywhere. but in their case, like there has been a civil war since 48 and there's a substantial change with the 2021 revolution. Right. Right, right, right.

Thank you for that correction. Yeah, yeah, of course. I think now is a really good time to have a general, almost strategic discussion on anti-war struggle. And so today I really want to look at how we can counter the propaganda around war, the actions that are possible to take against militarism at home and how we can build solidarity across oceans and borders. Yeah.

So to understand how to agitate against war, we first need to agitate against militarism and for those who don't know, militarism is the belief or policy that a nation should maintain a strong military and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote its interests. It often involves glorifying military virtues and ideals and prioritizing military strength and readiness above other aspects of society. So that's your basic Google definition. My copy of the Anarchist Encyclopedia is the English version, which is abridged sadly, but the original French has the full unabridged Anarchist Encyclopedia, so with a bit of shaky online translation magic, I managed to pull its definition of militarism as well.

Militarism is a system that consists of having and maintaining military personnel. Its essential and evolved goal is the preparation for war. The recruitment of a standing army and the organization of the cadres of a reserve army, the accumulation, the putting in place, the maintenance, and the state of service of ever more modern, more perfected war material. In short, it is the preliminary organization of war. But what are the implications of that? Well, all over the world, I think we can see, you know,

the consequences of statism, the might makes right pursuit of conquest, the fighting wars abroad or at home for strategic interests, ideological commitments, resource claims, whatever the case may be, the rivalries within the ruling class and how that plays out and how it's that that blows back on all of our faces. You know, the profits, the military industrial complex, which keeps this whole system churning on, you know, the blood of innocence. Of course, the long standing consequences and continued work of colonialism. And of course, the ways that militarism gets turned inward, with the suppression of strikes, of activism, of popular unrest, when the now militarised police aren't enough, they often bring in the military itself.

And of course with militarism you also have the narrative component, you know, the building of patriotism that so plants the seed of fascism. States can survive without militaries, it's true. The state typically depends upon some effort or some attempt at a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence within a territory by some definitions. But the states which do not have militaries often can do so because they have outsourced the military functions to another state and or because they have other systems in place to control dissent, to develop a second degree of

social conditioning and pacify the population. I was just trying to think of states that are militaries, like in my experience, I guess you have like the, the Panama, Panama, right? Doesn't have a military. It has the center front, which are like the frontier protection, I guess, but essentially like a militarized border patrol and they do have Marines and stuff as well, I guess, so they, they kind of do have a military, but it's a kind of a renaming exercise more than anything.

Indeed. The same thing with having a militarized police, but it's not a military technically. Yeah. Or have it a militarized Coast Guard and it's not a military technically, you know. Yeah, yeah. You have countries like the Republic of the Martial Islands, which just outsources its militarization to the United States, right? Like the US. Well, I think that is a distinct thing. People in the Marshall Islands have seen the horrors of war very closely. And also the dangers of militarization, right? Like the United States nuked the Marshall Islands, a country with which it had no quarrel,

with which it was not at war, just to practice in case it needed to nuke a country with which it did have a quarrel, I guess. The legacy of that is very obvious and continues to this day there. But if Marshallese people wish to join a military, they can join the US military and the US guarantees their security in theory. But it's yeah, it is distinct. For instance, if you join the US military in the Marshall Islands, wish to access your veterans benefits, easiest way to do so is take a five hour flight to Hawaii, like they don't have any benefits for actual veterans there. So I guess in that case, like, maybe it does give people a different relationship to like state violence. S. Yeah, it's, I mean, obviously different

places have different histories as to how they came to those arrangements, but you definitely see to how they came to those arrangements, but you definitely see a relationship between colonialism and the outsourcing of military functions. Yeah, definitely. Now, historically, anarchists have been anti-militarist. The encyclopedias call this aspect of the anarchist struggle, the aim to disqualify militarism, to denounce its terrible and painful consequences, to combat the warlike and barrack spirit, to stigmatize and dishonour war, to abolish the regime of the armies. So abolishing militarism looks like material relief from the oppression, military violence, the redirection of resources that go toward military, toward instead things that actually benefit the lives of everyday people, you know, the reduction of pain

and suffering throughout the world, the abolition of borders, which so often are the motivating force behind military exercise. And while no anarchists would deny that armed struggle is necessary for defense, it's all the same as having an imperialistic or hierarchical ambition toward power over, toward dominating our populations of people. Yeah. This reminds me of the discussion that happened in the CNT in Spain in the 1930s, previous to the civil war, even before that, right? Where they, there was a very profound and obvious discussion on like how to defend the revolution, how to defend communities, whilst maintaining anti-militarism. And that's why we didn't see that there was not a Sanite like, like standing army beyond, you had affinity groups, right?

And then you had like defense committees of six, six to eight people. And those people like took on the role of organizing for a potential violent, like, like in order to defend the community, right? Like to use violence, to defend the community, right, like to use violence to defend the community against violence. But even as it became clearer and clearer that Spain was like spiraling towards conflict, they resisted the idea of establishing and I think more militarized than that. Yeah, I think so for Spain is really good place to look at first, we some experimental efforts or ideas would have played out, strategies would have played out. I think it's really important to take those experiments and see how we can iterate on them

Yeah. and build upon them. Because, I mean, what I've always admired that we've carried on this anti-militarist torch. It's very important to remember the landscape has changed from wartime's past. You know, we're not in World War times anymore. Yes. You know, the strategies and the discussions and the approaches that may have worked back then, it doesn't work in the same way now. You don't even have to declare war officially anymore in this day and age. You can just say that, oh, you're doing a special military operation, or you can just send billions of dollars of aid to a country that you want to support and even

troops to countries want to support and technically you haven't declared war yet. Yeah. And, you know, not only that, you also get to unleash generational trauma and poison upon generations of people, but it's okay because you were going after some terrorists. You know, you just get to push money and supplies toward this camp or that and where the US is concerned. It at least used to have to seek congressional approval. But as we see, that's not really a thing now, especially post 9-11. You know, back in the day, people thought putting pressure on the elected officials through protests would be enough.

And, you know, there's a debate we had to the extent to which that worked for situations like the Vietnam War. But as we've seen with this song and dance again and again and again, the protests are not hitting like they used to. You know, the response to the protests has been so routine at this point. You know, you just send the police to bash some heads in or back to get the military because the movers and the shakers are the people who can actually be reached with these protests.

You know, and no matter how peaceful we proclaim our protests to be, we're talking about moneyed interests here. You know, a military industrial complex that has to have line go up, you know, who doesn't have to give a damn about some people walking on the road. You know, the system has grown since the 1910s to 1940s. It has grown in such size and complexity to the point where you don't have to care necessarily about a single move in part, about a single action or protest. Yeah, and the two kind of combine and what we're seeing in the United Kingdom right now, like there's the complete dismissal of protest and this like, I'm thinking of a better word

than imprecise, but like, the vagueness of the definition of terrorism has allowed the government of the United Kingdom and in combination with the absence of a bill of rights in the United Kingdom, right, to just be like, oh, Palestine action and terrorists, like you are the same as the Islamic State, because Palestine action undertook it in nonviolent direct action, Right. But it's ludicrous to suggest that that that was terrorism. And that doesn't mean any reasonable definition of the term, but we're in a stage now where governments can declare anyone that the enemy without any particular oversight. And that's the logical conclusion of two decades of this. Yeah.

I mean, to an extent that has always been the case. I think what's different now is that they're not even really attempting of this. Yeah. I mean, to an extent that has always been the case. I think what's different now is that they're not even really attempting to hide behind any sort of consistent principles or consistent standards. You know, cause even back, back then, you know, the anarchists were being called terrorists and being, you know, chastised for that. Yeah. You know, chastised for that. Yeah.

I guess also like our class system is more entrenched than it ever has been in a sense. I'm just thinking like wars are not fought by the mass of middle class and the people who become senators for the most part. Right. I mean, in the US, sometimes senators will have done military service. It can sort of boost their career opportunities. I get that, but like it is not for the most part, the sons of the, uh, of the people who, who stopped the wars, who die in the wars, right? It's, uh, it's people of a different class in a way that even in a distinct

way from like the era of the world wars, right. When, when large numbers of people of the middle class, especially, maybe not the very privileged people that did die in those wars. And I think the memory of the first world war probably did have some impact on the reticence of some politicians to dive into the second one. But we don't really have that now. Indeed. You Should Know Summer Movie Playlist. What screams summer more than a nice, darkened, air-conditioned theater and a great movie playing right in front of you? Episodes on James Bond, special effects,

stunt men and women, disaster films, even movies that change filmmaking, and many more. Listen to the Stuff You Should Know Summer Movie Playlist on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. From iHeart Podcast podcasts and Rococo Punch, this is The Turning, River Road. I knew I wanted to obey and submit,

but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. Why did I think that way? Why did I allow myself to get so sucked in by this man and thinking to the point that if I died for him, that would be the greatest honor. But in 2014, the youngest of the girls escaped and sparked an international manhunt. For all those years, he was the predator and I was the prey. And then he became the prey.

Listen to The Turning River Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the biggest party of the summer. WWE SummerSlam is here and wrestling with Freddie is all over it. We're talking wild matches, big surprises and our boldest predictions yet. From celebrity showdowns to the chaos inside a steel cage, we're breaking down every match and calling who we think walks out on top. This card is loaded from Cody Rhodes, John Cena, Rhea Ripley and Tiffy.

Just to name a few, this lineup is ready to tear down the house. We'll give you our unfiltered takes, honest debates and you already know a ton of laughs along the way. We're covering the upsets, the wild returns and the championship moments nobody expects. We'll get into the matches that steal the show, the storylines that explode and those oh my god did that just happen moments that make SummerSlam legendary. Don't miss it. Listen to Wrestling with Freddie as part of the My Kultura podcast network. Find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The summer of 1993 was one of the best of my life. I'm journalist Jeff Perlman and this

is Rick Jervis. We were interns at the Nashville Tennessean. But the most unforgettable part? Our roommate, Reggie Payne, from Oakley, sports editor and aspiring rapper. And his stage name? Sexy Sweat. In 2020, I had a simple idea. Let's find Reggie. We searched everywhere, but Reggie was gone.

In February 2020, Reggie was having a diabetic episode. His mom called 911. Police cuffed him face down. He slipped into a coma and died. I'm like thanking you, but then I see my son's not moving. No headlines, no outrage, just silence. So we started digging and uncovered city the protest and I know that the inevitable question is so what can we even do at this point and You know, this is why I consider it very important to take a step back and look at what is actually

Keeping the system with right and what's keeping the system going is and has always been Labor, right? Yeah, not to say that labor and labor struggles to be all and end all of our politics, but it is to say that if we want to make a significant impact, that is what we have the greatest control over our labor. And so when I talk about things we can do to affect change, I always have to take it back to the ongoing process of social revolution. The things you do to oppose and the things you do to propose.

You know, on the opposing side of things, that includes counter messaging. You know, even though we may not have the resources of mainstream media or government communications, we have weight of mouth, we have trust between ourselves, and we have alternative media that can be, especially in this day and age, just as powerful if sparked right. Especially considering the fact that the general sentiment, the populist sentiment has, whether you're coming from a leftist direction or a rightist direction, the general sentiment

has been moving toward anti-establishment politics. The anti-establishment sort of momentum is what's growing right now. And the issue of course being that sometimes that anti-establishment momentum can be hijacked, such as what Trump did, you know, to get himself elected the first time. Yeah, he rode that wave. And, you know, this whole Epstein situation, we may see that foundation of his base potentially crumbling apart a bit. But we have to look at what is actually motivating people right now and how they can be reached. And alternative media with an anti-establishment message is I think one of the better ways to do so.

You know, wherever you see it, you need to be out there, you know, on social media or through other avenues calling out the ridiculous, cautious bellies used to manufacture consent for war. You know, to be wary of potential force flags can be used as a justification for military action to consistently poke holes in narratives that have allowed, you know, nationalist and xenophobic sentiments to become the force that they have become today. And of course, even engaging in that messaging, of course, try not to let campism infect your counter messaging either. Yeah. You know, that's how you get people who are, you know, they're, they're going, who about a free Palestine?

And then they start when you ask them about Ukraine, all of a sudden it's actually really complicated. It's actually the fault of the U S and the EU and NATO and not Russia, even though Russia is the one who actually invaded and is actively killing people and destroying infrastructure as we speak. Yeah. Right. I mean, this conversation to be had about the US and what the EU and about NATO, obviously,

but it's very clear. Yeah, it's very uncomplicated. Who's actually killing people right now, you know? Yeah. There is one country which is taking children, right? Like in trying to like re-educate them, give them to families in Russia, which is committing murders of civilians. Like, we don't have to like resort to like 10 year geopolitical trajectories to say that it's wrong and it should be opposed.

Exactly. Exactly. And also, I want to make this point about counter messaging, because it's a consistent gripe I've had. In fact, one of the main reasons I started my channel in the first place, with your counter messaging, whether it's in person or on the internet or wherever, those stayed perpetually on the back foot. In other words, don't just count a message. Yeah. You know, right now, and this is what irritates me so much, the right wing sets the conversation. Yeah. You know, you have people, they say, oh, we want to talk about critical race

theory, and then everybody's talking about critical race theory because they talk to them or they want to target trans people. And all of a sudden we have to scrabble to respond to all their erroneous and ridiculous claims about trans people. Yeah, that counter message is important, but it cannot be all that we do. Right. Yeah. And this is a bit out of left field, but, you know, of course, I'm not one who is partial to electoral approaches, but you can see some of that, not just counter messaging, but also actively messaging taking place with Zoran Mamdani strategy. When you look at how he speaks, how he addresses some of the bad faith arguments that are made

against him, his rhetorical strength and popularity in part lies on his refusal to carry on the conversation on the enemy's toes. So they will go at him for something and he's going to spin it right back around to talking about the things that really matter to people, to set the conversation, to get people to respond to that. Because a lot of the responses toward him have been trying to distract from his actual messaging and his ability to stay on message is something I find really admirable, despite, you know, my concerns about the investment of energy in electoral strategies.

Sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there are still things we can admire about these people if we don't agree with everything. And I do think like, in that sense, something I think about a lot with like messaging and counter messaging, especially around war, it's like, I spent some time in the AANES, what people call Rojava. And like, one of the framings that I've consistently seen, and it's mostly in like, the, the the lean leaning mass media, I guess, is that people went to Rajabah to fight against IS or Daesh or ISIS, whatever you want to call it, right. And like, in doing so, that is how the revolution in Rajabah is not understood by most people, right? And they have taken the power away from it in their framing of it, because people didn't just go, some people did go justify IS, right? That they went because they saw what IS was doing, they understood it as inhumane,

and they wanted that to stop, and that's admirable. But people also went because they saw what people were building in Rojava, and they thought thought that was beautiful and they wanted to defend it. And that's admirable too. And sometimes the messaging around specifically Rojava, Myanmar to an extent, right, there are international volunteers there too. And of course, like folks from Myanmar who have picked up weapons who never thought they would. And they didn't just do it to oppose the junta.

They did it because like in the, despite all the horrible things about war, and then like the, it should be avoided at all costs in the conflict, they have built liberated spaces and they've experienced freedom and they have experienced how that feels and they've built a revolution that is beautiful in spite of the war. Not, not because of it. And they want to defend that. And I think that's a messaging that we should, we should consider, right, like, because the messaging that everything has to be against

something bad, always, sort of, it presupposes that there can't have been something good. And in some cases, there has been something good. And like, we won't fully understand what was happening there unless we understand that. And I think we should push back on that messaging when we see it, especially in like, great legacy media. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that really connects to the, you know, the other aspect of the social revolution paradigm, because it's

not just about opposing. It's also about proposing that something different. Yeah. And that is often far more energizing than simply talking about everything that's wrong with the world. Yeah, definitely. And I think also for those who maybe have concerns about the risks of oppositional messaging, there's another area where you can direct your energy to support the opposition without

necessarily actively being involved in it. You know, because it's not enough to just oppose the system, you have to build something else and you could be part of that building something else. You know, swim a message in, you want to be able to redirect people's energies to the actual frustrations and interests, to re-sensor the conflict in the lens on the actual divisions of society such as class, to make moneyed interests known, and even though it's never been easy to be anti-war, especially in the center of empire. And in many ways, technologies today have empowered much greater oppression. In Russia, individual and mass protests are met with severe oppression, mass fines, jail sentences, etc.

In the US, you can face police brutality, censorship, even deportation. And in Israel, I haven't seen or heard anything from the Israeli populace in terms of resisting what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. But I know that those who do stand against the mandatory conscription do face jail time for their refusal. So it's not easy to be anti-war, especially in militarized and empire-building territories. I get that stress and that worry. That opposition is still necessary, but there's other things that we can be doing than just messaging. You know, there are things that take on less risk, such as building an alternative, and there are things that take on more risk. Now protests, even peaceful protests, are no longer risk free endeavors. And I know when most people hear about, you know, we need to push back, they hear, okay, let's organize a protest.

Honestly, we could use a bit more imagination. The stuff you should know guys have made their own summer playlists of their must-listen podcasts on movies. It's me, Josh, and I'd like to welcome you to the Stuff You Should Know summer movie playlist. What screams summer more than a nice darkened, air-conditioned theater and a great movie playing right in front of you? Episodes on James Bond, special effects, stunt men and women, disaster films, even movies that change filmmaking, and many more.

Listen to the Stuff You Should Know Summer Movie playlist on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. For my iHeart Podcasts and Rococo Punch, this is The Turning, River Road. I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant.

In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. Why did I think that way? Why did I allow myself to get so sucked in by this man and thinking to the point that if I died for him that would be the greatest honor? But in 2014, the youngest of the girls escaped and sparked an international manhunt. For all those years, you know, he was the predator and I was the prey.

And then he became the prey. Listen to The Turning, River Road, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the biggest party of the summer. WWE SummerSlam is here and wrestling with Freddie is all over it. We're talking wild matches, big surprises, and our boldest predictions yet. From celebrity showdowns to the chaos inside a steel cage, we're breaking down every match

and calling who we think walks out on top. This card is loaded. From Cody Rhodes, John Cena, Rhea Ripley, and Tiffy, just to name a few, this lineup is ready to tear down the house. We'll give you our unfiltered takes, honest debates, and you already know a ton of laughs along the way. We're covering the upsets, the wild returns,

and the championship moments nobody expects. We'll get into the matches that steal the show, the storylines that explode, and those oh my god, did that just happen moments that make SummerSlam legendary. Don't miss it. Listen to Wrestling with Freddie as part of the My Kultura podcast network. Find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York state number, and we own you. Shock Incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life,

emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was so overwhelming, and you don't know who's next to you. And we didn't know what to expect in the morning.

Nobody tells you anything. Listen to Shock Incarceration on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In this day and age, like I said, the protests is not hitting like it used to. It's become like a pressure valve or a tool of pacification that can be tolerated for a time and then met with repression the moment it's time to wrap it up. that could be tolerated for a time and then met with repression the moment it's time to wrap it up. And they have a couple of reasons why protests are not able to do as much. They have the money interests. They can end up being divided according to various arguments over strategy. And I'm sorry to say this, but the protests as of late haven't accomplished very much.

I'm sorry to say this, but the protests as of late haven't accomplished very much besides getting people mutilated or jailed or worse in the past few years. And in fact, a lot of the resources that could be spent, you know, building alternatives are being spent instead on, you know, paying people's bonds and getting people out of jail, prison relief, that sort of thing. Not to say those things are not necessary. You know, don't leave your comrades to rot in jail, but I think we need to consider the free data that we've basically been giving away to the ruling class

in the form of pictures, names, addresses, identifying data that can be used to repress or disrupt or infiltrate protesters and protestant organizations down the line. As James Herrod, and it's another James, as James Herrod wrote in The Weakness of Our Politics of Protest, we have been getting some of these critiques of protests from, he says, Thus, instead of powerfully concentrating our mental and physical energies on solving this problem, to eliminate this obstacle to defeating capitalism, we are taken to the streets once again, merely protesting, merely engaging in what is basically

mindless activism." Later he says, it's easy to agree on what to protest against. The list of things that need to be stopped under capitalism is long. So long in fact that we don't even need to agree. There's plenty to choose from, so just pick something that suits you. Perhaps this is why so many activists got involved in protesting. It's not so easy though to figure out what we want to replace capitalism with. To work out convincing arguments about how it will possibly work, and to set about creating such a social world, especially since so little energy

has been devoted to the task." End quote. And, you know, I get why protests are popular. You know, as he says, it has a low barrier to entry. You just have to show up. And in a society that has been so deliberately atomized, where mass collective actions were made so difficult, protests has become pretty much a very easy avenue to get those things done.

Yeah. And you know, protests can work in certain instances for limited goals, but I think that those uses are diminishing day by day in the cost benefit analysis. Yeah. I'm just thinking about like, there was there was a letter to George Orwell wrote to one of his readers on the subject of anti-fascism where Orwell was lamenting that like the anti-fascism that he was encountering in England, right? In between his participation in the Spanish civil war and the second world war

was always centered on hate. And like it, it's sort of an idea where we get the two minutes of hate later in 1984, right? But maybe it comes from here and like it never proposed an alternative. It just said, it pointed to something that said bad, something I've tried not to do in my journalism, right? It is very often we do this as journalists too. We point something and say bad.

And we don't look for the ways that it could become better. And so like, protesting can become such an identity for people. Like you see it, I'm just thinking of like, every time I get sent a link to Instagram, right, which is a platform I don't really participate on, but I will look at things and they'll be like, Oh, San Diego protest news, San Diego protester, so Cal protester. And like, I think we should resist that being an identity because we, we want to build something beautiful as well as oppose what is bad.

And if we don't have something beautiful to propose, what are we doing out there? Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, there's room for protests. I don't want to give off the impression that there isn't. Yeah. You know, but for all the lovely talk about peaceful protest that works when there's an actual threat backing up those protests. You know, you don't just do the peaceful protest. You know, Gandhi didn't single handedly win India's independence by marching peacefully. Yeah. You know, there has to be something back in itself or else it's going to be very easy

to ignore and suppress. Yeah. And I think that protests should not be our default. Right now they are our default. And I think they are better uses of our collective time, energy and resources. Even though protests are very easy compared to some of the things that are more necessary right now. You know, but if protests is where you're dead set on fun and energy, I would just say

that you should at least learn the rest strategies, you know, their resources online to get some information on that on the arrest strategies, you can look it up. But if it's possible, if you see the situation playing out, you know, try not to sit by and let your comrades get pulled away. You know, it is very possible, the numbers on your side, to prevent the police from harassing, targeting and taking away people. You know, there's other stuff you can do as well besides protests that I keep alluding to because, you know, sadly, the media is no longer media is no longer a safe space to share things

in depth in some cases. But just remember that the key is actual disruption. The media will not be with you, it will be trying to manufacture consent on everything that you do, manufacture consent against any action taken on the things that you do, and the only way to counteract that is to maintain relationships on the ground to maintain actual local solidarity Because once you have those local relationships in that local solidarity There's no amount of things that the media can do the media could stir up that can Prevent the people who see that you're on their side see that you stand up for them to turn against you. Right. What problem happens is when you don't have any relationships, you don't have

any networks, you don't have any community building, you're just doing stuff. The messaging is unclear. You know, that's where I think the media could really pounce on that. I would also say, you know, sabotage, you know, hit their pockets. And the main thing, the thing that I've alluded to earlier is to strike. You know, to organize strikes, to use your labor power. Workers power still comes from our participation in production and the threat of withdrawing our participation. We have to realize that in this time we're living in, even the effectiveness of strikes have come under threat in two ways.

The first way is that the permanence of employment is not what it used to be. And with the rise and spread of AI, you have to ask yourself how long will strikes in certain fields be effective anymore? You know I have my doubt that AI will ever reach a point where it can replace people but honestly for a lot of these companies they don't necessarily care about whether it's capable of replacing people or not. They will still try and use it to replace people. So we have to be cognizant of the fact that this is the direction they're pushing things in.

And we have to be able to stand up against that before we reach a point where between AI and, you know, the nature of temporary work of the gig economy, it becomes harder and harder to organize ourselves. The other thing that I've noticed that has made striking so difficult and that we have to be aware of is the pacification or the domestication of unions. There was a time historically where unions were a powerful, influential, revolutionary even for us. Such is not the case today, unfortunately. Yeah.

You know, there has been legislation put in place that many unions are terrified of crossing. Every I has to be dotted, every T has to be crossed. And so the things that would actually make union action the most effective are for the things that unions nowadays will refuse to do. Sympathy strikes, general strikes. And so what can we do if we are in an industry where the union is collaborating with management, where the union is utterly reformist, where the union refuses to actually step up and represent the people it's supposed

to represent. And this is where historically Wildcat illegalist strikes have had to come in to play. Strikes that do not depend upon legality, that do not sit back and waive permission, that carry far more risk, of course, that are far more difficult to organise but are going to be necessary if we want to liberate ourselves from this constant capitulation toward the machine. In the article Striking Against the Work War Machine by Jeff Shantz and PJ Lilley, they said quote, wartime strikes and sabotage, partly because of their illegal and unsanctual nature, bring rank and file workers together outside of union structures. Workers have to make crucial decisions about running the strike directly, in face-to-face

meetings or on the picket lines. Bureaucrats, who are left to their fundamental role of broken with the bosses, can be relegated to their sidelines in such situations. In Germany in 1917, illegal strikes helped to sweep the Union structures right out of the wood places. Strikes increasingly took on an anti-Union as well as anti-boss character, with wild cats occurring in growing numbers throughout the armistice and beyond. So I wanted to of course pull on this example because this is not a unique issue, right?

Even historically, where unions have stood against the struggle of workers against war or against, you know, actually defending their class interests, the rank and file have had to organize themselves accordingly. So that's also something to keep in mind. Yeah. And last but not least, I just wanted to touch very briefly on the proposed side of the social revolution equation when it comes to anti-war struggle. And as usual, this is going to take solidarity materially, not just saying that oh, we stand in solidarity with such and such and such, actually sharing aid, sharing notes,

supporting refugees, and going further because this I think is where a lot of our energy needs to be right now. Our efforts to oppose are going to be for the most part toothless as long as we don't have an underlying structure that we are building upon that we are seeking to defend and to expand. You know we are not at a position right now where we pose much of a threat yet. And we also have to consider that merely posing a threat is not going to liberate us by itself. So I want you to consider as we wrap up this episode, what you can do to put forward that alternative, to actually try to create the new social arrangements

that we think should replace the Catholic, statist, militarist order. And this is something that I talk about on my channel, of course, I talk about building the commons, building alternative media, alternative economy, and developing our powers, our drives, and our consciousness. And so you can check that out if you'd like. Unfortunately, this is it is happening here. And don't forget, you can check out the YouTube, the Patreon, etc. All power to all the people. Peace. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us

out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. So what happened at Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to. There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond. And left a woman behind to drown.

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