It Could Happen Here - Defining Anarchism feat. Andrew

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

Andrew and Mia discuss what anarchism actually is as an ethic and a practice. Links:https://davidgraeber.org/interviews/david-graeber-on-acting-like-an-anarchist/https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/glossary/a-new-glossary/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Mark Seale. And I'm Nathan King. This is Leave the Gun, Take the Canole. The five families did not want us to shoot that picture. This podcast is based on my co-host Mark Seale's best selling book of the same title. Leave the Gun, Take the Canole features new and archival interviews with Francis Ford Coppola, Robert

Evans, James Kahn, Talia Shire, and many others. Yes, that was a real horse's head. Listen and subscribe to Leave the Gun, Take the Canole on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, man. What are you into? I have the hookup. The hookup? The hookup for what?

I'm solving a mystery through sex and haven't made a private dick joke until now? Poppers? Why are there so many poppers? All roads lead to... The hookup. You think it's causing people to turn aggro? I'm gonna rip poppers? All roads lead to... The hookup. You think it's causing people to turn aggro? I'm gonna rip your arms off and use them to... Yeah, that's a word for it.

[♪ music playing in background, then fades out to music playing in background again. Listen to The Hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. [♪ music playing in background, then fades out to music playing in background again. This is John Cameron Mitchell, and my new fiction podcast series, Cancellation Island, stars Holly Hunter as Karen, a wellness influencer who launches a rehab for the recently canceled. In the future, we will all be canceled for 15 minutes, but don't worry. We'll take you from broke to woke or your money back.

Cancellation Island's revolutionary rehab therapies like Bad Touch Football, Anti-Racism Spin Class, and mandatory Ayahuasca ceremonies are designed to force the cancel to confront their worst impulses. But everything starts to fall apart when people start disappearing. Karen, where have you brought us? Cancellation Island, where a second chance might just be your last. Listen to Cancellation Island on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Celebrate black excellence with decisions decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network during Black History Month. From the deepest conversations and the most authentic storytelling, you're going to get it every Monday on Decisions Decisions. If you could go back in time and witness a historical event, which one would you choose? When you're in the elevator with the lawn, I won't be the... Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here, because it could.

My name is Andrew Sage and I'm also Andrewism on YouTube and at time of recording the year is still technically new. So I wanted to start it off with some refreshes on anarchism. In the first episode we'll look at the meanings of anarchism, authority and anarchy. And the next time we'll look at free association, mutuality, mutual aid and the role of solidarity. And don't worry, next month I'll be getting back into the Latin American anarchism series as I still haven't done Uruguay and Mexico yet. Oh, by the way, I'm not talking to myself.

I'm here with the one and only... Beowong. Oh, I keep forgetting that you do an actual throw instead of actually saying the name. I do a cue. I do a cue, yeah. So not to worry. Only been doing this for several hundred episodes now. You'd think, you'd think, but no. You got it, you got it.

Hello, I'm excited to do this. Also excited for the Mexico episodes because Mexican anarchism is a trip. Iroquois anarchism is also a whole lot of people digging tunnels out of prisons, but we'll get to that later. We will, we will. So to start off with, I want to find out, and I ask this question with tongue in cheek, of course, how familiar would you say you are with anarchism? You know, I have a very silly, like, kind of, like, how did I like actually finally become

an anarchist? Because I've been around anarchists for a long time but like the thing that like actually convinced me to be an anarchist is I sat down and I got a bunch of like anarchist history books from a library and started reading them. Like Marksnet Law and them sorts of people. So specifically it was a lot of like, corrupts like Hadeshuza and pure anarchism in interwar Japan, which I've talked about on the show, a hundred billion times, stuff like that. I actually think I read Capuletis,

anarchism, Latin America around that time too. It's a very good resource. Yeah, yeah. So pretty, pretty familiar with, with stuff. But yeah, we'll see, we'll see. I'm excited to talk about it. Yeah, But yeah, we'll see. We'll see. I'm excited to talk about it. Yeah.

I mean, we'll see is right because let's say I've been an anarchist, well, I was supposed to introduce to anarchism, I would say somewhere around 2017, 2018, through Christian anarchism, actually. That was during my deconstruction. I stumbled upon Christian anarchism and briefly flated with it, but didn't really get seriously into the study of anarchism until late 2019, early 2020, around the time, at least in 2020s when I started my channel.

Let's say I've been studying anarchism for about five years seriously. I feel like I'm now getting started. You know, like I'm now starting to grasp what it is. And the thing is, there's so many interpretations of anarchism, you know, so many different schools of thought. I mean, that's not to say that it can't be defined or that any attempts to define anarchism is like exclusionary or un-anarchist. You know, I see that argument floating around that like, well, no, you can't define anarchism

because that's actually authoritarian. But you know, there are such a thing as definitions, but there is room, of course, for a negotiation of meaning. Yeah, it's a very, it's a very, well, usually it's a very syncretic ideology. It pulls from a lot of different places and it pulls from lots of different of its own strands. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

But let's say if you had to like define anarchism, like right now, like what would you see as a non-negotiable, basic, fundamental definition for you? I mean, the opposition to hierarchy on a basic level, the opposition to the state, to capitalism, to patriarchy, to systems of hierarchical power is, I guess, like the baseline definition and then also in terms of what it's, you know, the replacement for that can be a lot of things. But yeah, it's the building of a society where we don't have power over one another. I think it's like a very baseline kind of thing. Yeah, I think that's pretty solid.

For me, I find it fairly similarly. I would say that I think the opposition to authority is the most important part. I would say the definition I've been sort of workshopping, sculpting over time, as a writer I really like to play with words a bit and find the best ways to put things. So for me, what I've come up with is that anarchism is the political philosophy and practice that opposes all authority along with its justifying dogmas and proposes the unending pursuit of anarchy. A world without rule where self-determination, mutuality and free association form the basis of our society. And so basically the rest of this episode is going to be me breaking down how I came

to this definition, what I'm expounded upon with this definition. So for one, just taking a look at the structure of it, we are looking at an oppositional stance and a propositional stance, opposing and proposing. We're not just for the negation of all things, although there are schools of anarchism that do lean in that direction. But also, of course, we want to be constructive. We're not, as some people seem to presume, obliterating the states and then leaving warlords in their wake. Yeah, Bakunin sucks in a lot of ways, but the creative verge is a destructive one.

Has the order of events correctly, where like the point is to create something? Exactly. Exactly. And as you know, Bakunin is one of the earlier thinkers of anarchism. Though I've never really been partial to him, you know? Yeah. To me, usually I've been more of a Kropotkin and Malatesta kind of guy. But lately, as you know, somewhat problematic as he is as well, I haven't gotten into a bit more Proudhon.

I recently got the pictures of Proudhon reader that Ian McKay put together for AK Press. Extremely problematic guy. Oh boy. Hahaha. Yeah, but he certainly wrote a lot. And so I want to dig through and see what gemstones of his work I can find, you know? Yeah. I think that's important to sift through. He's a mixed and baffling figure who also was a pretty large influence on Marx if you

like read him even though Marx hates him which is very funny. Marx also didn't always understand Fridon's definition. Honestly I don't think Fridon necessarily always had like a very consistent application of his ideas. Hence the misogyny, despite being an anarchist and becoming a politician at one point in his life and all that jazz. Yeah. And people may know this who listen to this show, but the term libertarian was invented by anarchists specifically to describe how they were different from for Don because they weren't sexist. Like it's it's it's a whole thing.

Actually wasn't aware of that. Yeah. That's why, that's why in most parts of the world, libertarian is like, is a term that means anarchist. It's just, it's mostly largely in the US where that's not a thing because the right libertarians like took it. Yeah. Unfortunately, the US's cultural hegemony has sort of propagated that American version of the term as the popular one.

But yeah, whether you're talking about anarchists or libertarians or mutualists, you're all getting it from basically that same sort of original hool of late 19th century, early 20th century thinkers. And we're sort of using their sort of explorations to build something of a political philosophy. But in my definition I call it a political philosophy but that can be a contentious way of describing it you know. Anti-politics is a term that's used to describe opposition to or distrust in traditional politics. Traditional politics is usually associated with the art and science of

government. So there are anarchists who would argue that anarchism is not a political philosophy. It's actually an anti-political philosophy. I think these people are very, okay, this is one of the things about being an anarchist, right? This is the thing about being a leftist and it's something you have to be able to set aside when you have to do things but a lot of being a leftist is being annoyed at other leftists and I could put together an actual detailed theoretical critique of Anti-politics, but mostly the people who talk about anti-politics just annoy me. It's It's like an affect thing I feel you To me, it's like It's not an affect thing. I feel you.

To me, it's like, um, it's not like to pick up, look around at, you know, play with for a little bit, put it back down kind of thing, you know, I'm not that committed to it. Um, but I think it's like, it's good to look at more than one angle of definition and understanding. Yeah. I mean, of course I suppose a critique that could be made of the final anarchism as anti-politics is a sort of a narrowing of the definition of politics to just that sort of art and science of government, when politics can also be defined

really broadly as just about the relationships between people and groups, which anarchism is concerned with primarily. So, but I do find it an interesting point to wrestle with. And so other than it being a political philosophy or anti-political philosophy, we could also define anarchism as a practice. This is something that I believe Graeber did in his life. He saw anarchism in one interview, he said, quote, it's possible to act like an anarchist, to behave in ways that work without bureaucratic structures of coercion to enforce them without calling yourself an anarchist or anything. In fact, most of us act like anarchists, even communists a lot of the time.

To be an anarchist for me is to do that self-consciously as a way of gradually bringing a world entirely based on those principles into being. End quote. So this is basically the idea that anarchism is not just something you're thinking ahead. It's a method of change. It's something that you practice. It's something that, in fact, some anarchists don't even want to call themselves anarchists because they see anarchists as something that you do rather than something that you are. Yeah, those with Graeber line. I think Ursula K. Le Guin kind of had a similar relationship towards calling herself an anarchist.

Yeah, that's possible. That sounds really familiar. Yeah, I think Alime was like she didn't feel like she could because you had to do it. But yeah, it's a pretty common way of thinking about anarchism that I like a lot. Yeah, for sure. Another part of the definition of anarchism that I put forward is the opposition to all authority and that statement could actually get me some pushback, get me in some trouble with some anarchists surprisingly and I'm sorry, I blame Noam Chomsky. Oh my god. As a historian, as a linguist, okay, whatever. Sure. But it was not historically controversial among anarchists to say that you were opposed to all hierarchy and all authority.

Yeah. The definitions of those terms do get confused often because like a lot of words in English language, they do have multiple meanings. You know, you don't want to fall into the equivocation fallacy where you use a word or phrase in one way and then you use it in another way in the same argument. So someone might say for example, anarchism opposing authority is stupid because authority just means having a difference in expertise or a difference in influence. Or that opposition to hierarchy is stupid because food chains or the hierarchy of needs.

But as we know anarchists are focused on very specific things or we use these terms. So arguing against it with other definitions doesn't make sense. And by hierarchy anarchists refer to the stratification of society which gives some individuals, groups or institutions authority over others. An authority refers to the recognised right above others in a social relationship to give commands, to enforce obedience, to control property, to exploit and so on. And I really don't see the benefit in Chomsky's sort of unjust authorities or unjust hierarchies approach to define him and I feel so.

Yeah, because I mean the thing about hierarchies is that every hierarchy argues that it's just, like, you would get slave owners, like, doing these whole speeches about, like, the inherent morality of slavery. Like, it's not actually a... it's not actually, like, an ethical position that leads you to, like, the opposition to hierarchy, because again, every hierarchy is self-justifying. Exactly, which is why I say opposition to all authorities and every hierarchy is self-justifying. Exactly which is why I say opposition to all authorities and their justifying dogmas. Because all of them have dogmas, including the example that Chomsky uses, which is typically

of the parent pulling their child away from traffic. That is not an exercise of authority. And the relationship between a parent and a child is something that can and should be interrogated. You know, that is a caretaking relationship primarily, a relationship of responsibility. It does not have to be a relationship of authority in the sense that I suppose. Yeah. And the way that it turns into a relationship of ownership is something that genuinely can and should be opposed, but it's also something that like gets a lot harder to oppose when you're sort of stuck up on this like, well, actually no,

it's good because this is authority or whatever. So I think the way that Chomsky obfuscates this stuff makes it like harder to actually do politics that's useful. Exactly. Because then it also makes it harder for people to sort of question the authority they're more comfortable with or the hierarchies they're more comfortable with. So you'll see that way. So go down and say, oh no, we don't actually oppose all hierarchies, you know, you know, parents thing. And you really, you see it in ground in a sense, because you make it harder to identify and really question those things because you're you're shutting down that avenue of questioning.

And so when we speak of authority, we're really speaking about that right, the rights that authority gives to certain people over other people, privileges that are recognized and enforced and a right being a sort of a priority that is above others. The right of authority is a guarantee to actions or resources that absolve the individual holding that right of consequences. The right of authority compels and support needs the desires and needs of those below that authority. So authorities have the right to command, recognized and enforced by their underlings. They have the right to enforce the obedience of their underlings. They have the right to enforce the obedience of their underlings.

They have the right to control all the properties the earth has been carved into. The right absorbs them of certain consequences and sort of goes in one direction. It's a unilateral sort of thing. So the authority can take your house. The bank, the government, the landlord, they can take your house. But you can't take theirs. An authority can assault you. It could be be a soldier, police officer, whatever. You cannot assault them.

An authority can take the fruits of your labor. They can take from the wealth of what you produce, but you can't take from them. That's theft. Right? An authority cannot be an authority by themselves. They have to have authority over, they have to have a hierarchical social relationship that deprives some to their benefit. An anarchist opposes authority because, among other reasons, those subject to authority

become controlled, they become dependent, exploited, prevented from accessing their full potential and even their bare necessities. And really that prevented from accessing their full potential is why a lot of anarchists have spent a lot of time targeting our approach to parenting and our approach to education. Just this morning I was reading a bit of Emma Goldman as she was talking about Ferrer's schools. The way that she speaks honestly she was an excellent writer and an excellent speaker but the way that she did so and the way she approached and recognized this need

to tap into our potential particularly from young to prevent it from being limited by the imposition of authority is just extremely profound. It's necessary. It's necessary to start at particularly at that age but really at any age to break away from that condition that recognizes and enforces and obeys and accepts authority and the right of authority. You know, if everybody, if everybody, including their underlings, decided tomorrow not to recognize and enforce the authority of presidents, of kings, of capitalists, that frankly would be gone in an instant. It ultimately starts with us being able to actually question, to challenge, to resist

authority. And that's something that has existed since humans have been humans. Throughout history, we see this sort of compulsion to resist authority. And that sort of seed of resistance is what anarchists good to have thrash. Fortunately, we have to go to ads, disaster, fiasco, principles in shambles. But here's ads. I'm Mark Seale. And I'm Nathan King. This is Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli.

The five families did not want us to shoot that picture. Leave the Gun, Take the Canoli is based on my co-host Mark's best-selling book of the same title. And on this show, we call upon his years of research to help unpack the story behind the godfather's birth from start to finish. This is really the first interview I've done in bed. Ha ha ha ha! We sift through innumerable accounts. I see 35 pages in the real world. many of them conflicting.

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I met Santi at a luau party in October. I'm Santi. Damien. Oh, it was bizarre. The guy just disappeared one day. Santi has been missing ever since. The hookup. What is that?

I'm solving a mystery through sex and haven't made a private dick joke until now? Like, no matter how hard I try, all roads lead to the hookup. You think it's causing people to turn aggro? I'm gonna rip your arms off and use them to- Yeah, that's a word for it. This is such terrible representation, I'm so sorry. Poppers?

These aren't just any poppers. Mama always used to say, God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. No. My psychiatrist didn't laugh at that one either. Listen to the hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is John Cameron Mitchell, and my new fiction podcast series, Cancellation Island, stars Holly Hunter as Karen, a wellness influencer who launches a rehab for the recently canceled.

In the future, we will all be canceled for 15 minutes. But don't worry, we'll take you from broke to woke or your money back. Cancellation Island's revolutionary rehab therapies like Bad Touch Football, Anti-Racism Spin Class, and mandatory Ayahuasca ceremonies are designed to force the cancel to confront their worst impulses. But everything starts to fall apart

when people start disappearing. Karyn, where have you brought us? Cancellation Island, where a second chance might just be your last. How serious is youth vaping? Irreversible lung damage serious, 1 in 10 kids vape serious, which warrants a serious is The best person to talk to your child about vaping is you. To start the conversation, visit TalkAboutVaping.org, brought to you by the American Lung Association and the Ad Council. We are back. So like I said before, authority gets confused with a lot of different things. Force and violence is a main one.

It's one that Marxists in particular love. That sort of conflation of authority with any use of force. You know, the slave resistance slave owners actually example of authority. Incredibly silly. People who are otherwise reasonably intelligent will just say this stuff. It's like, really? What are we doing here? Just come on. Yeah, yeah. I mean, force and violence are associated with authority and they can be a mechanism of defending authority, but they're not in and of themselves

authority. They're not the source of authority. They don't constitute authority and you could just as easily use them to resist authority. Yeah. I want to go back to the slavery thing specifically about authority, because the argument that it's an imposition of authority for slaves to free themselves is an argument that was specifically made by the Southern plantation class. Like that was that was their argument about federal tyranny was that specific argument. So it's probably not a good theoretical basis for understanding what authority is. If you're making the same argument as the Southern plantation class is going to just get just going to leave the wood out there.

Exactly. Exactly. And really, we have to understand violence force, those are things that are used by authorities. But if I punch somebody in the face, that doesn't make me an authority over them. You know, if I defend myself from being a punch, that doesn't make me an authority over the person trying to punch me. The source of authority is really about that right, that position, that recognised right above others, that position, that social relationship above others, that's what grants authority, it's recognition. The general of an army is not an authority because he's holding a gun to the heads of all the other soldiers and making them do things.

The generals are reckoning his authority because of his position and the privileges and rights and powers that that position gives him. If tomorrow all the soldiers decide to tune on their general as has happened historically, that is 100% possible. That is an instance of force or violence being used to resist authority rather than being used to be authority. Another thing that gets confused with authority is influence or respect. So influence is really something.

I mean, I might find somebody's abilities or qualities or achievements admirable, I respect that about them. That doesn't mean they have an authority over me. I might be inspired by someone in a way that affects my character or development or behaviour. But again that influence doesn't automatically translate into authority. You'll find that a lot of the anarchist thinkers of the late 19th or early 20th century were very influential. They were not

authorities, but they had a profound impact on the people around them, and they were a profound inspiration to us even to today. Yeah, there's a paper I always think about where I found it, like a kind of liberal, well, like a maybe center-lefty academic writing about Malatessa, who we've talked about a lot on this show. This Italian anarchist did a whole bunch of stuff. So when the Italian revolutions are happening in 1918, 1919, like Malatessa comes back to Italy because he'd been all over the world doing a bunch of other stuff. And he gets called like Italy's Lenin.

For those who have listened to some of my anarchist history episodes, you know that he kind of shows up sometimes. You know, like he shows up in Egypt. Literally everywhere. He shows up all over the place. Yeah, all over Latin America. He's in the US. And so he gets called like the Lenin of Italy. And this paper was about like, did he actually act like Lenin? And the conclusion that they came to was like, well no, he didn't come back to Italy to attempt to seize control of the country. He simply did not because he was an anarchist, because

that's what it means to sort of, you know, have influence, but not like rule. Exactly. Exactly. And that really gets into some of the interesting conversation around anarchism and leadership and the different ways that you can sort of interpret the concept of leadership. But I'll save that for another discussion. There are two other things that authority gets confused with that I want to address. The first is coordination and what's interesting about coordination is that it's very much tied to authority a lot in the present day. A lot of the rules we have in the current system, coordination and authority get tied

up together. So you have a manager of an enterprise and that manager coordinates all of the workers in that enterprise, but the manager also has authority over those workers, you know, to fire, to discipline, to do all these sorts of things. Or a general in an army might have a coordination role of ensuring that there's communication between various militias or, youias or various regiments and that the soldiers within that regiment know exactly what their goal is, what their task is and how they can go about accomplishing it. That is in many ways a coordinating role but it's also tied up with the authority of the general as in the right above the soldiers to command them, to enforce obedience, to

punish and that sort of thing. So we get tied up between coordination and authority a lot, but coordination does not have to be ties to authority. In its simplest form, coordination can just be the communication of information between parties to ensure they work together smoothly and effectively. That can and already does take place between equals. So okay, here's a good example. You're trying to move a couch into a house or an apartment. And for those of you who have had to squeeze a couch through a doorway, you kind of know

what I'm talking about already. Because you have to kind of come at it at a certain angle. You know, the size of a doorway and the dimensions of a couch require a very particular approach. So you might have somebody who stands to the side and they tell that person, okay, all right, so you're going to slightly this way. Because when you're lifting a heavy couch, you kind of just want to put it down. You know, you can't really think, okay, what angle should I take it at? So you might have somebody in a position to say, all right, back up, okay, come forward,

okay, so you're going to slightly turn to the left, all right, back up. Okay, come forward. Okay. Turn it slightly to the left. That kind of thing. That's a coordinator role, but that person doesn't have authority over anybody there. It's just communicating information to ensure the shared task that the people involved have can be executed effectively. So that's a long way of saying that we can't have coordination and organization in anarchy, it doesn't have to to be or doesn't have to involve authority. Finally one of the pet favorites of confusion is the confusion between authority and expertise. An authority and expertise is a really good example of the equivocation I was

talking about earlier because authority is a synonym for expertise by certain definitions. But the kind of authority anarchy is supposed to have has nothing to do with expertise which is is a synonym for expertise by certain definitions. But the kind of authority that anarchists oppose has nothing to do with expertise, which is what Bakun was talking about with his authority, the bookmaker argument. Now if I could go back in time, I would just go and tell Bakunin, listen, a lot of people are not going to read this in full and understand the full context. So maybe don't use the word authority here. Maybe be more specific and use the word expertise or something so people don't get confused.

Because I mean, written context, it becomes very clear. But there are people who take the title of that article or they take one quote or one passage that's taken out of context from the whole or they take like, for example, there's a version of that article that is cut off from the entire thing on marxist.org I think. So there's like an incomplete version of that text available in one page and then the full versions available in the anarchist library. Incredible. See, there are people who basically use that article to argue that actually, you know,

the Qudin wasn't against authority, but in context it makes sense. But he's talking about authority there, he's specifically talking about expertise. He still says that in the end, he's not going to be commanded by that expert. He's just going to take their perspective into account because he understands the incompleteness of his own perspective. That is a very different relationship from the sort of command and support nation that we see in an authoritarian relationship. different relationship from the sort of command and support nation that we see in an authoritarian relationship. And while expertise often gets conflated with authority in positions in the

current system, that often is damaging to authority itself. If you think about the relationship people have for example with, and this is sort of a contentious one, but if you look at the relationship people have with like their own like personal doctor, their family doctor, which is the relationship that they might have with a public health professional. When people go to their personal doctor, it's very easy for them to sort of, you know, accept that sort of expertise. They have a relationship with them. They understand that they trust them, whatever the case may be. Of course, there are places where because healthcare is inaccessible, people don't have

that relationship with their doctor, but but you know, speaking internationally here. Yeah, also I need to put the trans note here, which is that like, it is very hard if you're trans to find a doctor that you personally trust because, oh boy! That is true. That is a time. That is true. That's the influence of, you know, cisheteropatriarchy and its impact. Yeah, and so it's also an example of why you can't just sort of blindly accept the authority, you can't accept the authority of people who have expertise because it's like, sometimes they don't. Exactly, exactly. Like, a lot of times, in fact, the credentials don't actually mean that this person knows anything about trans healthcare.

Like, fiasco. Exactly. It often just means that the person has been given the stamp of approval by an institution that has been granted authority. But the institution being granted authority does not necessarily or should not have a monopoly on expertise and often does not in practice have the full understanding that the people who are produced by that institution do not necessarily have that full grasp and everything to see that they can be treated as an unquestioned authority or expert. Yeah, and it's something that you have to have

a kind of balance between what, kind of like neoliberal technocracy, where you get like, we put the experts in charge and the quote unquote experts who are running the economy like did 2008. Or come out to like right wing think tanks. Yeah, yeah. And on the other hand, the kind of like reflexive contrarianism and desire to build a new expert that gets you like RFK Jr. as the future like secretary of health and human services.

So, you know, you have to sort of like... Jesus. You have to sort of like balance between sometimes these people fuck up and also vaccines are good. This is not a problem that requires us to like fly through the pin of a needle. We do have to have a little bit of, I don't know, it's not that difficult of a problem to deal with, but the way that authority is construed has created a sort of backlash to it that has been used to sort of delegitimate genuine useful expertise and create sort of like false expertise.

Yeah and that's exactly the point I was going to make to the institution of authority and the fact that authority so frequently you know mess up and so frequently like abuse the trust of people. Increase the sense of mistrust a rightful and valid mistrust in authorities that can often be misdirected or exploited towards ends that are not necessarily equivalent. So because these people in public health positions are tied up with the government, people already don't trust any legitimate expertise that they may have gets soured essentially by that position of authority poisoned by their association with

a government that has clearly proven itself to not have the best interests of people in mind. I'm Mark Seale. And I'm Nathan King. This is Leave the Gun, Take the Canoli. The five families did not want us to shoot that picture. Leave the Gun, Take the Canoli is based on my co-host Mark's best-selling book of the same title. And on this show, we call upon his years of research to help unpack the story behind the Godfather's birth from start to finish. This is really the first interview I've done in bed.

Ha ha ha ha! We sift through innumerable accounts. I see 35 pages in the real world. Many of them conflicting, and try to get to the truth of what really happened. Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli features new and archival interviews with Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Evans, James Kahn, Talia Shire, and many others. Yes, that was a real horse's head. Listen and subscribe to Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? Owl goes lower? I met Santi at a luau party in October. I'm Santi. Dam luau party in October. I'm Santi.

Damien. Oh, it was bizarre. The guy just disappeared one day. Santi has been missing ever since. The hookup. What is that? I'm solving a mystery through sex and haven't made a private dick joke until now? Like, no matter how hard I try, all roads lead to... The hookup? You think it's causing people to turn aggro? I'm gonna rip your arms off and use them to-

Yeah, that's a word for it. This is such terrible representation, I'm so sorry. Poppers? These aren't just any poppers. Mama always used to say, God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. No. My psychiatrist didn't laugh at that one either. ["I Heart Radio App"] Listen to the hookup on the I Heart Radio App,

Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is John Cameron Mitchell and my new fiction podcast series, Cancellation Island, stars Holly Hunter as Karen, a wellness influencer who launches a rehab for the recently canceled. In the future, we will all be canceled for 15 minutes, but don't worry, we'll take you from broke to woke or your money back.

Cancellation Island's revolutionary rehab therapies like Bad Touch Football, Anti-Racism Spin Class, and mandatory ayahuasca ceremonies are designed to force the cancel to confront their worst impulses. But everything starts to fall apart when people start disappearing. Karen, where have you brought us?

Cancellation Island, where a second chance might just be your last. Listen to Cancellation Island on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast the greatest true crime stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast, the greatest true crime stories ever told. Join me every week as I tell some of the most enthralling true crime stories about women who are not just victims, but heroes or villains, or often somewhere in between.

Listen to the greatest true crime stories ever told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Anarchism is a political philosophy and practice that opposes all authority, along with its justifying dogmas, and proposes the unending pursuit of anarchy. A world without rule where self-determination, free association and mutuality form the basis of our society. So I mean I've spoken a bit about that those justified dogmas came at Tromsky a little

bit and we spoke about how that's sort of incoherent because every ideology opposes unjust hierarchies. So I think it's important that anarchism calls out all the justifications. I'm sure you could think of some of the main justifications that tend to be used. One of the oldest justifications is of course the divine rights of kings. Yeah. That one's mostly been broken. Hopefully we don't have to deal with that shit anymore, but I, you know, I don't know. I have eternal cynicism. I don't know.

Maybe the, maybe the American people yearn for the Trump dynasty. Yeah. We're going to create their God King. Oh, yeah. His Imperial presidency. But yeah, I mean, in more liberal circles, the justification for authority is usually the social contract theory that individuals implicitly consent to authority. But I don't know about you Mia, nobody asked for my consent. And also I don't have any way of

relinquishing my consent. So is it really consensual? No, like some fucking assholes in Philadelphia like 200 years ago, were like, we're going to set up a thing and also slavery is good. That's like, really? What are we doing here? What do how? What meaningful way did I agree to this? Yeah, exactly. And it's not like I can step out of it. I mean, you you hold a monopoly on literally every inch of territory on Earth. Some stately some claim to some part of the world, there's no escape. So it's not a contract you can opt out of. Another justification that authorities tend to use is an idea of meritocracy and economic Darwinism. That the best of the best, they rise to the top.

That there aren't really any systemic inequalities or structural barriers. That there's a survival to the fittest and the fittest win and the losers are losers and they fail because they're losers. That's a very cynical sort of take that I don't think many people openly espouse outside of right wing circles but it's definitely one of the justifications for authority that gets used. Another one is also in conservative circles the idea of natural hierarchy. The idea is that hierarchies are part of the natural order.

People will use evolutionary biology or religious texts or pseoscientific claims to justify the inequality between genders or races or classes. Colonial and imperialist powers for example would justify their dominance by claiming cultural superiority. They would use ideas like the white man's burden and civilizing missions to enforce their authority over other people's and their lands. And that justification, while questioned and challenged to be, still is at the basis at the root of almost every institution in our modern world. Yeah, it's something I think is going to become increasingly visible

in the US over the next few years, coming out of a period where it was like slightly more obfuscated But you know all of the people who are about to be coming into power If you if you spend like even the tiniest amount of time you will see them start talking about like fucking racial IQ shit and like all of this really pretty pretty explicit ideology that they have that like of this sort of like racial superiority that they think they have that's like you know that is like the motivating ideological factor and also

the thing that you serve justify their power yeah it's unfortunately becoming more and more open and common to see that sort of discourse on mainstream platforms like Twitter. The necessity of order and efficiency tends to also be used as a justification for authority. The idea that authority is needed to maintain order, to keep things in place, to make decisions. This is really ignoring the capacity that people have already proven historically and presently to organise cooperatively, to organise without authority, to take on horizontal and decentralised approaches. Because it's something that is treating complexity as synonymous with hierarchy that you have

to organise this way. It ignores all the inefficiencies of bureaucratic systems. It ignores all the harm caused by authoritarian systems. It just says that we need these things to function, but we don't. One of the weirder artifacts of the 2010s was David Graeber had an argument with Peter Teel. They did a debate. One of Graeber's arguments is like, well, what do you mean? Like our technical technological systems mean that we have to organize your society in a way like I like it is the argument that you're making that technological possibility makes

us less free. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, What are you talking about? You know, there's a lot of people who make these arguments don't necessarily have an

understanding of our systems. The internet is not organized by one central body. The internet is already fairly decentralized. It's become more centralized upon certain platforms. But as an infrastructure, the internet is really a network of nodes that are all over the world and all over space. Or we could take for example the international postal system. All the mail that gets distributed around the world internationally

is not one central global body that's in charge of that. It's multiple organizations that coordinate their activities to ensure that you get your mail. Or if you look at even basic supply chains of goods and resources, it's not all handled by one central industrial body. It's not all handled by the government or by one corporation. It's a set of relationships between groups, between companies, between mining companies and resource extraction companies and shipping companies and processing plants and factories and all these networks already not undertaken entirely by one central body.

They may be organised internally hierarchically but that can very easily change. Finally final justification I want to get into is this idea that authority is the lesser evil. That authority might be imperfect but it's preferable to boost alternatives like total anarchy. And of course some people say anarchy here, but they mean it in the pejorative sense. They don't mean like actual anarchy in the sense of the political philosophy. They mean it in the sense of instead of having one central authority, they have one to compete

in authority and power. It's a bunch of warlords fighting for power. That is not anarchy in the sense of anarchists pursue, that is petty authority fighting for dominance. Which is, if you think about it really, how historically states came into being. Yeah, well it's like what do you think we have now? Like what do you think the like hundred ninety something states are doing? Like I don't know. I feel like a lot of these arguments are just

describing the current state of affairs and going well it could be like that. It's like oh what if uh how how would like communes deal with war? It's like wouldn't the communes just start going to war with each other? It's like well okay like what look at the world right now and ask yourself the question how are states dealing with the problem of war? The answer is they're dealing with the problem of war by going to war with each other. Like what are we doing here? Exactly, exactly. So the more positive side of the definition of anarchy is one that I haven't quite gotten into yet and I haven't broken down the ideas of mutuality and free association.

But I'll save all that for the next episode. If you can't wait until then my videos on how anarchy works and what anarchy needs should whet your appetite. But until then, I've been Andrew Sage, you can find me on YouTube at Andrewism and Peter and at St. Drew. This is It Could Happen Here, the show where we chronicle collapse as it happens and explore how we might build a better future. And in my case, occasionally take a look at the past as well. And that's it. All power to all the people.

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. I'm Mark Seale. And I'm Nathan King. This is Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli.

The five families did not want us to shoot that picture. This podcast is based on my co-host Mark Seale's bestselling book of the same title. Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli features new and archival interviews with Francis Ford Cobola, Robert Evans, James Kahn, Tawai Ashyar, and many others. Yes, that was a real horse's head. Listen and subscribe to Leave the Gun, Take the Canoli on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey man, what are you into?

I have the hookup. The hookup? The hookup for what? I'm solving a mystery through sex and haven't made a private dick joke until now? Poppers? Why are there so many poppers? All roads lead to... The hookup?

You think it's causing people to turn aggro? I'm gonna rip your arms off and use them to... Yeah, that's a word for it. -♪ Listen to the hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. -♪ This is John Cameron Mitchell, and my new fiction podcast series,

Cancellation Island, stars Holly Hunter as Karen, a wellness influencer who launches a rehab for the recently canceled. In the future, we will all be canceled for 15 minutes. But don't worry, we'll take you from broke to woke or your money back. Cancellation Island's revolutionary rehab therapies like Bad Touch Football, Anti-Racism Spin Class, and Mand mandatory ayahuasca ceremonies are designed to force the cancel

to confront their worst impulses. But everything starts to fall apart when people start disappearing. Karyn, where have you brought us? Cancellation Island, where a second chance might just be your last. Listen to Cancellation Island on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Celebrate Black excellence with Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network during Black History Month. From the deepest conversations and the most authentic storytelling, you're going to get it every Monday on Decisions Decisions. If you could go back in time and witness a historical event, which one would you choose? Put me in the elevator with the lawn. I won't be the... Oh!

Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.