Rev Left Radio - From Diplomat to Anarchist: The State, War, and the Fight for a Better World

Episode Date: December 3, 2017

Carne Ross is a former British diplomat, and Middle East and WMD expert, who resigned in 2004 after giving then-secret evidence to a British inquiry into the Iraq war.  After he quit, he founded the world’s first non-profit diplomatic advisory group, Independent Diplomat, which advises democratic countries and political movements around the world. In 2007, his critique of contemporary diplomacy was published: “Independent Diplomat: Dispatches from an Unaccountable Elite”.   Carne is now an outspoken anarchist, and in this episode he sits down with Brett to discuss The State and Anarchism. Topics Include: Thomas Hobbes, the Social Contract theorists, moral culpability as agents of the State, the Iraq War, spontaneous mutual aid, the Rojavan Revolution, Participatory Budgeting, Emma Goldman, and much, much more. You can find Carne Ross's work here: http://www.carneross.com You can see more about Independent Diplomat here: www.independentdiplomat.org Follow Carne on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/carneross?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.carneross.com%2F Outro Music by QELD, you can find their music, and support them here: https://qeld.bandcamp.com Follow Bob Savage from QELD on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/bobbynechayev?lang=en Follow Jenre from QELD on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/jenreqeld Intro Music by The String-Bo String Duo, you can find their music here: https://tsbsd.bandcamp.com/releases Donate to Revolutionary Left Radio's Patreon, and help us to continue putting out high quality content, here: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio This Podcast is officially affiliated with The Nebraska Left Coalition and the Omaha GDC. 

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I am your host, Anne Comrade Brett O'Shea And today we have on Karn Ross To talk about anarchism and his experiences At high levels of the British government Karn, do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself And say a little bit about your background? Sure, thanks for having me, first of all. I was once a British diplomat working on lots of things.

I resigned over the Iraq war. I used to be our Iraq expert, and I testified in secret to the first official inquiry into the war. And that triggered a big kind of epiphany, I suppose, about the state of government, and I began to look for alternatives and became an anarchist. Yeah, and that whole story is extremely interesting. There might not be people that are totally familiar with your career, so do you mind maybe going a little bit more in depth and kind of summarizing your career a little bit more for people

that don't know about you? Sure. Well, I joined the British Foreign Office in 1989. Great time to join, of course, the triumph of the Western model, end of the Cold War. I served as a British diplomat for 15 years. I was speechwriter for the foreign secretary. I did, served in Germany, Norway, Afghanistan shortly after the Allied invasion. And my final posting was at the UK mission to the UN,

where I covered Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction. And because of my knowledge of that issue, I knew that my government was lying about its reasons for going to war. And I eventually testified to that effect to an official inquiry into the war and resigned from the foreign office in protest at that point. But I already kind of started to become a dissolution with government as the right way to manage our affairs and had begun above all to think that it was actually not competent to do that effectively and sort of started a philosophical journey through reading initially but also experience and travel. began to realize that the ideas that were hopping around in my head could be described as anarchism.

So I guess that's the summary. Yeah, and what's so fascinating is that I think for a lot of us, you know, on anarchist, socialist, communists, we rarely get to talk with somebody who has been on the inside, has been to such high levels inside governments and know how they operate intimately. so it's very unique and very interesting to have somebody like you on the show so we are going to talk about the state we're going to talk about anarchism

but I think a good starting point I'm kind of a philosophy nerd as people may know a good starting point I think would be to talk about the Enlightenment the 17th and 18th century social contract theorists who kind of came up with the ideas that eventually gave rise to what we now call

modern Western democracies but specifically you've talked about Hobbs and the Hobbsian conception of the state in human nature. So can you talk about the Hobbesian view of the state a little bit and how modern governments reflect his sort of views on human nature? Sure. Well, Hobbes, of course, wrote the Leviathan, which was this kind of the ultimate justification of authoritarian government or of government itself, authority, if you like.

And that justification is basically that if you don't have authority, man will have a life, mankind will have a life that is nasty, brutish and short, and there will be what Hobbes called a war of all against all. And the only way to prevent that was by having the Leviathan, the state, to impose rules, to stop people killing each other. And in Hobbes's day, one can understand why he made that argument. He just lived through many years of the English civil wars, incredible turmoil, bloodshed, and, you know, saw this as the only answer. And that justification is at the core of our view of government today, that indeed is a kind of a deep social assumption when you ask people, they think that if government

collapses, then that is how people will behave. There will be warfare between people, though, of course, actually the evidence suggests otherwise. Yeah, and we'll get into some of that evidence in a little bit, but I also think there's a deep irony in the ideas of the Hobbesian view of human nature saying that you need a government to come in and prevent sort of, you know, chaotic violence that would ensue in a non-authoritative context because so much of what, especially Western imperialism does to the rest of the world, is kind of impose a sort of chaos and a brutality and a war.

and an insecurity on people all over the globe. So it's kind of using a justification that it ultimately turns around on and promotes the very things that it was supposed to protect the world from. There's definitely an irony there. I think you're absolutely right. There's almost a kind of profound contradictions

built into the nature of government, which is that government exists in order to provide security and stop people killing each other. And for that purpose, it has declared that only it has a monopoly of violence or the use of violence. Only can the government legitimately use force. But one of the paradoxes of that situation is that periodically, I think, governments are required to use force in order to demonstrate their legitimacy. That if you had a condition of peace, if that endured, then eventually people would stop needing government or stop thinking they needed.

government. So in a sense, governments, the state as it's currently constructed, require a degree of chaos and violence, require the periodic use of violence in order to justify themselves. And we can see that, for instance, after 9-11, where the contract between the people and state, namely that the state provides security in return for us giving up our liberties, was broken because the state had not provided security for the American people. it had allowed large numbers of its people to be killed, and that therefore the state had to re-legitimize itself. And the only way it could re-legitimize itself in the eyes of the people

was by using violence. And it used violence against Iraq and against Afghanistan and, of course, Iraq. Yeah, absolutely. And as someone who has been in high-level positions within the government and has interacted with a diverse array of political operatives, you have made it clear that you think there is an important. important difference between individual and collective, like, moral culpability when it comes to how the state and its representatives behave? Can you explain how otherwise good people are forced into

amoral or immoral behavior by virtue of their position within the state apparatus? Well, they're not forced. They go willingly, I'm afraid to say, because states are permitted to do amoral things, indeed immoral things, like kill people. And, you know, surveil people interfere in their privacy, imprisoned people, all things that we're not entitled to do as individuals. The state is given that permission

in theory by all of us, you know, that there is in theory this public contract between us and the state. So the people inside government think that they're entitled to do those things. They think that the normal rules and morality do not apply to them. And that if they're acting in the name of the government,

they are separated. from normal moral rules and are immune from accountability in that regard. So it creates a kind of whole atmosphere of moral permissiveness. And in that atmosphere, people who are otherwise decent people will do terrible things. And I know that because I was once one of them. What is it like on the internal psychology? I know you've talked, like you hinted at the cognitive dissidents with regards to morality. is there an internal dialogue where somebody in those high-level positions

kind of has to wrestle with the outcome of what they've done in their position as a state official and rectify that with their view of themselves, which I assume is like I view myself as a good person. Is there a psychology there that's interesting? I think you're pointing at something very important and very interesting. Yes, I think that process is there, that necessity of reconciling, reconciling your immoral actions with your sense of yourself as a moral person, I'm afraid that process is not that difficult because, A, you're surrounded by people who think

that your actions as a government service are okay because they're doing them too. So there's a degree of group permissiveness about it. But B, you know, you only need to say to yourself, look, I was told to do this. I'm required to do it by my job. States have to do these awful things sometimes for the. the greater good. And this greater good argument, the good of the many over the few, is a very a very persuasive argument in that context of the individual trying to excuse themselves from moral accountability. And of course it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of moral

behavior, which is the confusion of means and ends. Government embodies that confusion. Government is entitled to do bad things in order to secure good things for its people, and that is a total contradiction, because if you do bad things, you're not ultimately doing good things, you're just doing bad things, means our ends. And government servants don't apply this logic to themselves. There isn't a moral debate inside government. People are not sitting around saying, is this a good or bad thing to do in moral terms? Discussion and morality in my experience was excluded. It was not encouraged. It was, you know, almost felt to be kind of immature, silly to talk about morals in the context of government. Yeah, you've kind of, you kind of talked about on other

podcasts. I think it's on It's Going Down, you talked about the sort of, the way that you're kind of met with, with suspicion when you even, when you even bring up topics of morality, or you take a reflective position on, on the effect and harm that you're causing within the state. I think that's, that's extremely interesting. aside from I mean obviously you've just talked about how people normal people can push aside you know the moral qualms but aside from that there is this well-known book that I enjoyed entitled the psychopath test by John Ronson and a primary argument in that book is that the nature of the state and of corporations are such that there's a disproportionate amount of what they call

psychopathic or sociopathic individuals that hold high-ranking positions in the high institutions of state and capital, does that seem right to you? The argument is that, you know, there's about 1% of the general population that has sociopathic tendencies, but in high position levels in state and capital, that number goes as high as 4 or 5%. Does that sound right to you? And is there an incentive system within government that sort of attracts unsavory people in that way?

I wouldn't go as far as that. And I'm a bit suspicious of that whole argument because. was I think what it tends to do is it tends to individualize the problem and say that the problem is psychopathic or sociopathic individuals rather than, you know, acknowledging that the problem is a system. It may well be that more sociopathic or psychopathic individuals are attracted to work in a system that allows them to behave in a way, you know, that's in accordance with their disorder. But I don't have much insight into that. And I'm not sure that John Ronson's book really proves that point wholly convincingly, even though it may in fact be true.

I prefer to think about the reality that systems cause or enable people to behave badly. I think we're all capable of behaving badly. I think, you know, certainly I did in different contexts when I was in government, but I think almost all of us will behave badly if certain circumstances pertain. You look back at the history of the Second World War and soldiers, German soldiers, but also Russian soldiers, even American soldiers, behave dreadfully on occasions, appallingly committed the worst atrocities. I'm not creating an equivalence between all of them, obviously some were worse than others. But these were often very ordinary, supposedly decent people who executed people, raped them, tortured them. And there but for the grace of God, go us.

I think the more important question is why. Why is it? What happens that permits these acts to take place? I don't think people are inherently bad by and large. But I do think there are circumstances in which most of us will behave badly. Yeah, I think that's actually a perfect and wonderful critique of that thesis put up by John Ronson. And now that you've told that to me, I kind of think, you know, I read that book back when I was, was liberal-minded, when I had that bourgeois individualism in my head a lot. And so those

arguments made sense to a younger, naive, liberal me. But now that you've talked about how the systemic institutional collective pressures create sort of bad behavior and bad outcomes, I think that's totally on point, very well said. But moving on a little bit, many of the issues that we face today are global, from climate change to the rise of the fascist right, to the ravages of neoliberal capitalism. Why are governments, as they are today, structurally unable to address these issues, in your opinion? Well, there's several reasons. The first is that when a small group of people manage the affairs of lots of people, that small group is inherently corruptible. It doesn't matter on the nature of the government, whether it's democratic or authoritarian.

in power, as in people with money or other forms of power, will always be more able to get to that small group of people than everybody else. And so the mechanism of corruption, whether it's legal or illegal, a lot of corruption in America is actually legal. It's legal to give large amounts of money to politicians to write legislation that's in your interests. That corruption is or that corruptibility is inherent. That's one problem.

The second problem is that the nation-state is the organizing unit of our affairs, but the problems we confront are not organized so neatly, whether it's climate change or transnational violence, migration, you know, the vicissitudes of globalized economics. All of these things are problems that transcend borders that require solutions that are not within the gift of individual sovereign, government. And the theory used to be, or the theory still is, that you put all these governments together in institutions like the UN or the WTO, and they sort out these problems

in a way that's satisfactory. And quite clearly, that is not working, particularly in the case of climate change, but also in the other cases, it's not working. And so, you know, in various intrinsic ways, it's clear that the current model of government, is inadequate for the problems we confront today. Absolutely. And in what ways, in your opinion, does the underlying global economic system of capitalism influence the most powerful governments?

Like, how complete is the overlap between the state and capital, in your opinion and experience? Overlap probably isn't the word I'd use, but I understand why you use it. I think, you know, I think the influence of capital, within government is a complicated and subtle thing. I don't think corporations run governments.

I think, you know, most politicians think that they are making decisions that are independent and that are accountable to their legislature and which are made in a way that is roughly in accordance with the people's wishes as they understand them. I think that's what they think. The influence of capital is in shaping their choices, their choices, is in influencing the discourse, and of course, in its most overt forms, is actually buying influence and buying legislation that suits the purposes of capital rather

than people, and that is, of course, the result that we see. So it's very clear from the outputs of government legislation, the rules that government creates, both nationally and internationally, that the interests of capital are preferred over the interests of the whole. of the population as a whole. There is a fundamental misalignment there. So I think the evidence of that capture of government by capital is absolutely overwhelming and compelling.

The mechanisms by which it happens, I think, are often quite obscure and subtle. And they are that way because the people who pull those levers are well aware that if they make it too blatant and brazen, you know, the revolution will be triggered or is more likely to be triggered. Right. Yeah, there are, you know, like right-wing libertarian types

who think that just getting rid of government or decreasing the size of government will fix the problem and that capitalism left to free markets would be okay. Obviously, nobody here believes that. But as an anarchist from your perspective, the state and capital must be confronted together and the alternative institutions building up alternative mechanisms and ways of life

inside the belly of the beast, sort of speak, it must simultaneously confront the state and capital. Would you basically agree with that? I agree with that, absolutely. I think economics and politics are basically the same thing. I think the separation of the discourses is a false separation that serves above all to confuse us, but also to obscure the nature of power. We think that because we have democracy where people can vote or so-called democracy where people can vote and elect representatives and it's got all the kind of surface attributes of accountable democracy. We think therefore we've got democracy. But what we fail to understand is that power is what matters, not the name,

not the structure. It's power. Who has it and who doesn't? And power is money. Who has the most money has the most power? And they're the ones calling the shots and influencing the legislation according to their own needs. So I think that's, that's, that's kind of self-evident. But I think folks are still liable to be very confused about it, because, you know, on the surface, we have this thing. We have elections. You think this amounts to having real representation, but in fact, it doesn't.

Absolutely. Yeah, I totally agree. So in this, in this current age of climate change, we're starting to see an uptick. in the amount of catastrophes from, I mean, Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane that destroyed, you know, destroys Puerto Rico, lots of instances of this. And it seems to be accumulating and piling up on one another. And every hurricane season, you know, over the span of time seems to be worse and worse. You've talked about how in the wake of disasters, whether they're natural disasters or economic disasters, war, whatever it may be, there's a sort of spontaneous coming together

of people in mutual aid. There's no need for direction. There's no need for oversight. And oftentimes the state comes in late to the game and has various levels of incompetencies to it. So could you kind of talk about how people come together after disasters and kind of what that says about a possible world where we don't need the state? Sure. Well, I would first of all recommend books by Rebecca Solnit, who's written about this and researched this far better than I could ever do, and her work was a great influence on me. And, you know, the evidence that she talks about is multiple that after disasters, Katrina is an example, Hurricane Sandy in New York City is another example, but there are many from around the world. That, as you say, when the state is removed, authority is removed by a disaster, people come together spontaneously.

I think the important thing to understand is that these movements that emerge of mutual aid are spontaneous. they're already this desire to help one another. This isn't something that is imposed or comes about because people make decisions to do it. They do it. People do it spontaneously. We have this natural impulse to help one another, which, of course, is not what neoclassical economics says we want.

Neoclassical economics says we want to maximize our own utility, as they call it this false word, but maximize consumption, our own pleasure. But in fact, it turns out we also want to help each other. And another kind of thing that seems completely obvious when you think about it is the people who are best place to help one another, the people who are right there who know their circumstance is best. And that means, you know, these spontaneous movements that arise in times of disaster are highly

effective are inevitably going to be more effective than government authority. they're cleverer, they're more mobile, they're more dynamic, they're more adaptable. What they don't, unfortunately, have, is resources, because of course the resources often are monopolized by government, and therefore we are encouraged to think that government is the answer in all of these cases and that only government can fix these problems, these kind of mega problems. And this creates, and that's a sense of kind of anesthetized apathy and impotence, which, you know, when there's a disaster, when your roof is blown off, you can't afford to feel like that. You have to act. And this is why these moments are so interesting, because I think

they do reveal a deeper pattern and culture in society of what society would be capable of, what we as individuals as humans relating to one another are capable of in the right circumstances or even if we only believed that we were capable of acting like this this is one of the great tragedies of it i think is that it takes a hurricane for us to realize how humane and cooperative we can be to one another and i think that's both so these examples are both inspiring but also sad. Absolutely. Yeah, there's something very much about a lack of community and the sort of the little glimmer of community that we get in the wake of a disaster. This last summer we, here in Nebraska, there is a tornado that went through our town. And, you know, I live on a third floor in an apartment

building with my two-year-old son, and I saw the storm start getting really, really bad. In an apartment complex, I don't talk to, you know, none of the neighbors talk to each other. We just kind of go from our cars to our little units and we don't say much to each other. But I was really scared and I went downstairs and I had a knock on a random neighbor's first floor apartment door and like can me and my son come in and take cover. And they totally, they, you know, totally opened up their arms, welcomed us in after the tornado had passed. Everybody from the apartment, we all came out. We all walked out of our units. We all met in front of our buildings. We all started talking for the first time. We were all checking on each other, making sure like, are you okay? Do you need anything?

There's this beautiful coming together of community, and it brought me to tears because I realized how much we lack that in everyday life, how we don't know our neighbors, how because of the way we're atomized and reduced to consumers and workers, we don't get this chance to talk to one another as much as we should. But there's like a very real spontaneous combustion of community in the wake of a disaster that I found really beautiful and like a little bit of hope of what we can achieve if we put our minds to it. Absolutely. No, that's a very powerful story. So let's shift gears a little bit and let's talk about the Iraq War because I find what happened there to be extremely interesting. We have a lot of listeners in the millennial generation. They can get quite young and some of them were very young during the beginning stages of the Iraq War and the justification. So can you talk about your testimony on the Iraq War, what happened, why you decided to do it and what ultimately came of it? Sure. Well, like I was saying, I was saying, I was, I was, was Britain's Iraq expert at the UN. I was responsible for the issue of weapons inspections and

weapons of mass destruction. So I really knew the issue really well. I helped set up the UN weapons inspection body. I was extremely deeply versed in the intelligence on WMD. I knew a great deal about it. I would organize briefings of other countries diplomats about WMD, what we thought was the threat from Iraq. So when the war happened and the government started talking about why it needed to go to war, I was extremely well equipped to understand what they were and were not saying. And what I immediately realized was that they were grossly exaggerating what we knew about the threat from Iraq because we thought there were some potentially some residual stocks of certain types. of weapons, and mass destruction, chemical weapons in particular.

But we didn't think that was enough to constitute a threat. We didn't think Iraq had the means to send chemical or biological or nuclear warheads to their enemies through missiles or aircraft. Or have the technology to develop these things to scale. And this was a pretty clear consensus across intelligence agencies and actually between us, the UK and the U.S. too. And these things are very deeply discussed within and between governments. And that was very shocking to me that my government lied essentially about war. And I didn't understand it. And I went through a period of being really confused, I guess, about it. And I thought maybe they knew something I didn't. But eventually, it's a long story, but eventually I was asked

along with my colleagues who also worked on it to testify to the first official inquiry into the war in Britain. You've had no inquiry in America, of course, but in Britain there had been two inquiries into the war. And I testified to both. And the first one I was invited to testify. I testified in secret because I was then still a British diplomat. And I said what I knew, which was that the government had exaggerated the case for war. That also ignored alternatives to war, which is almost as bad or just as bad, actually, if not worse. because there were alternatives to war. I'd written policy papers about them for my government.

And the war was illegal. I think that matters less, but that's another story. And I wrote this down, I sent it off as my testimony, and when I delivered that testimony, I realized I could not, with a glad heart, continue to work for the government. And so I sent my testimony to the foreign secretary, the foreign minister, as my resignation letter.

What was the reaction of, like, your colleagues and the circles that you ran in? What was their reaction to your resignation? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, some people turn their backs on me. Some were pretty nasty about it. I think for a lot of people inside the government, when one of their colleagues resigns over something like this is a big challenge to them because it makes them look bad, you know, for staying in, and some people were very nice about it, you know, just as you would expect.

I mean, some friends were loyal to me and defended me, and there was an attempt to prosecute me by the British government, and some of my colleagues tried to stop it, and they did stop it. So, you know, it's a funny thing. I mean, I think whatever the reaction, people knew that I was the expert, it wasn't like a resignation of conscience. I actually was the expert on this subject. It was like my subject. I probably knew as much about it as almost anybody in the British government. And therefore, nobody was really in a position to contradict me. And that gave me some authority. And I was, of course, eventually vindicated when the results of these inquiries were, you know, took a long time,

but they were eventually published. And, you know, they absolutely 100% vindicated in what I were saying. Absolutely. So last question on the topic of Iraq, and I know it's kind of a big one, so you can take it in any direction you want to, but in your opinion, what were the real reasons behind the Iraq war, and how did our governments deceive their populations about it? Well, the first one I don't know, because Blair and Bush and the others continued to tell lies about it.

They continued to say that they were misled by the intelligence, that there was a threat from WMD. not true. The intelligence was clear. There was no threat. That was the intelligence assessment for all the years I worked on it, and we can go through the details of it, but I'm afraid Blair and the others continue to lie about it. So why they really did it, I don't know. I can make some educated guesses, but that's all they would be. As for how they got away with it, that's more interesting. And there, I think the culpabilities can be more widely shared, including to the press and indeed to the public themselves. I think the press did a phenomenally bad job of

scrutinizing what government was saying before the war because actually the evidence that they were lying was actually in plain sight. The contradictions between what the government had said even as recently as six months before the war and what they were saying immediately before the war was so grotesque that all you had to do was kind of go back through the history of government statements and you would see the glaring inconsistencies and contradictions in what they said. But very few journalists bothered to do that i in all the years i worked on wmd i never came across a journalist who properly educated themselves about wmd as an issue it's quite a complex technical issue but it's not um well i was going to say it's not rocket science but it kind of

is rocket science at least it's missile science but it's not that complicated you know for somebody like me can understand it's not that difficult and no journalists ever did and i think the you know, the theory that the press holds government to account is a theory. It didn't work in practice at all. And then the next part of the equation is the public themselves. You know, why did they go along with it? You know, you could say, oh, they were told that was the case by politicians in the press and blah, blah, blah. But I don't think that's a good enough excuse.

I think after what we have all seen, for instance, in the Vietnam War, where they were systematic lying by the government about that war, systematic for many, years and we all know that now and yet when a government comes along and says we think there needs to be a war against this country which is doing nothing to us not attacking us it's not threatening us but we think we need to invade it why on earth people don't stand up on mass and say what the hell are you thinking because it's not only a disaster for iraq the iraq war has been a catastrophe for america a lot of young men and women have lost their lives completely needlessly and it's cost, you know, the U.S. a huge, an epic amount of money, and the Middle East is broken.

Not that Saddam was a good man, I was profoundly hostile to him. But the Middle East is a disaster now, you know, from Syria to Saudi Arabia, from Libya to Lebanon. It's a total mess, and it's not going to do anything for America's security for a very long time. Absolutely. Yeah, it's a horrific. to look back and see how everything has played out. Let's go ahead and zoom out a little bit and let's turn the conversation towards anarchism, towards the philosophy, towards your experiences with it.

In what ways does anarchism offer a vision for a better future and a solution to so many of the problems that plague us today and so many of the problems that we've been discussing thus far in this interview? I think that, you know, there's a kind of way of thinking about it as an individual way I think about it as an individual. Why is it better? It's better because I think it allows us to be our true best human selves, because we only flourish when we deal with people as equals, when we're respected as an equal and where there is no huge discrepancy of power between us and other people. And that's at the heart of anarchism, that nobody should have power over anybody else.

If there's one cardinal principle of anarchism, it is that. And I actually think that's a very beautiful principle. and when that exists. I was thinking the other day I met a friend and I really enjoyed meeting him and I thought, God, it's good to see him and I thought, why is it so good to see him? And I realized it's because

it's one of the very few relationships outside of my family where I'm not either being bossed by somebody or bossing somebody, either asking somebody for something or being told to do something because the vast majority of my relationships outside of a few friendships and my family are like that.

And I think that's what most of us experience. And, you know, that's tragic, absolutely tragic. So at a very basic level, I think anarchism is the answer. In terms of our contemporary circumstance, I profoundly think that people themselves know the best solutions to their issues and their problems and that when people have a stake in the decision over their concerns, their affairs, then they tend to exercise that agency with great care and intelligence. I have trusted in people.

And I think, you know, those proponents of government basically don't trust people. And I think, you know, over and over again, I've worked all over the world, you know, from the Balkans to the Middle East to Africa, Latin America, I see extraordinary people doing extraordinary things. And I honestly think that when people have agency over their affairs, they are better at managing those affairs than anybody else, as long as certain principles are observed. And I think those principles are very obvious, but they're not beyond us to embody those principles in everything we do. And the few people who would challenge those principles who would be, you know, aberrant in a society like that, I think there are ways to

deal with that, which are much better than, you know, this absolutely grotesque system of criminal justice that certainly you have in the United States, but there's also the case in other countries, you know, which I don't think is any way to deal with wrongdoing. But anyway, that's in general why I think it's a better system. Absolutely. And when you're talking about your experiences with your friend and that sort of relationship that was authentic in a world plagued by inauthenticity and forced sorts of relations between people, it very much reminds me of like the alienation between coworkers in a workplace. It's like a false, like, you know, this notion of boss or be bossed. It's this false community of people where we

come together, but under the pretense and the context in such a way that we're kind of divided from each other, we're segmented into our social roles in the workplace, and therefore there's there's this like wall between people in a workplace and you can very much go home after a long day of work where you've interacted with dozens if not hundreds of people and feel like you're totally lonely you're totally isolated you never had any authentic human interaction that entire day so it's very much crushing to the human spirit to be placed in the context of a capitalist workplace and be reduced to that social relation I think that's absolutely right you put it very, very powerfully.

You know, and I think what is so sad is we are so accustomed to inauthenticity to not having authentic relations with other people that we think it's okay, that we think the kind of horrible similicrum of jolliness that goes on in the office place is actually what happiness looks like. We think that, you know, the master's... servant relationship, the boss and the managed is a natural form of human interaction. You know, we think it's okay that people should have power over other people, and I actually think it's grotesque.

Absolutely. And I think it humiliates, obviously humiliates the person being bossed, but I actually thought, I actually also think it humiliates the boss because it makes them less than they are. It forces them into certain modes of behavior, which are ugly. and I think even the worst bosses know that they're being ugly and nobody really wants to be ugly. We all want to be our best selves.

I know this sounds kind of a bit dewy-eyed and idealistic, but I actually think that's one of the things that motivates us that we actually want to be decent people and we want our peers to think we're okay. And I think we're constantly placed in situations where it's very difficult to be our best selves. and you know you're right you end the day after day at the office

feeling not only lonely but also kind of hollowed out you know something is not only that you feel isolated but something has been taken from you some part of you that really matters and that's why I think it's so important to emphasize the core principle of anarchism which is about

power relations which is that we should not have power over one another I honestly truly think that that is the poison in most commercial relationships relationships in the workplace, often sexual relationships. It's very interesting, the Weinstein stuff that's coming up. Every one of those abusive relationships was a power relationship

where one person had power over another. Weinstein, of course, have power over these actresses and others who needed his patronage. But abuse is much more difficult in places where people have equal power. I mean, I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's much, much more difficult. Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. Well said. So you've been to Rojava and you've seen firsthand the ongoing attempt by segments of the Kurdish population to repel ISIS and build a truly democratic and

egalitarian alternative to capitalism, theocracy, and even top-down state socialism. Can you briefly summarize your experiences on the ground there? Sure. Well, I went briefly and the story of that trip is in this film that I made called accidental anarchist, which hopefully will be online at some point soon. But it's really remarkable. It's a corner of northeast Syria where, because of various political circumstances, a new ideology of self-government and bottom-up self-management administration has taken root.

It's called Rajava, which is the Kurdish name, in fact, confusingly for Western Kurdistan. But it's actually a multi-ethnic entity. It includes Arabs and Assyrians as well. as Kurds. It's not a Kurdish nationalist project. And basically what they're doing there is governing themselves at the lowest possible level, at the communal level. Decisions are made at the lowest possible level. Women are always put in leadership positions alongside men. In fact, women fight alongside men in the battle against ISIS, which has reached a particular de Nurement in recent days, but that's another discussion. It's an extraordinary thing. It's a really extraordinary thing

that's going on there. Nobody talks about it except in anarchist circles, but it's, it's a model for all of us in the world. It's really, really extraordinary moving to see it. Yeah, I mean, you kind of touched on it a little bit, but in what other ways does it reflect some of the most essential and beautiful aspects of anarchism, in your opinion? The commitment to equality of voice, I think, is the big one. I'm sure they have haven't achieved it. And I don't think they would say they've achieved it. I think one of the things about anarchism is that its work is never done. It's not offering utopia. It is a process where you're implementing these principles every day, but you're not going to create

the perfect society. That doesn't exist. And I think the folks in Rajava would be perfectly willing to confess that. But the political system is designed in such a way to ensure that everybody has an equal voice. The way they organize meetings, the way they sit in meetings, the way meetings are moderated is designed, all designed to make sure that everybody has a chance to have their say on equal terms. And that's at the heart of anarchism too. Yeah, and one of the most interesting things that, you know, I've learned about it is when they're fighting ISIS, there's a call put out to the international community in many ways reflecting the international

brigades of the Spanish Civil War coming to the defense of Catalonia. But there was a, you know, people come and help us fight ISIS, and many people all over the world did. But another thing that they soon realized is that their revolution can't just be fighters and guns and fighting off ISIS.

It's a big part of it because you have to clear the way to even attempt to build this alternative system. But they soon realized that they needed artists, they needed musicians, they needed a cultural revolution in which people came and donated their other talents to the cause and sort of have a broad cultural rethinking

of every aspect of society and I think that really cuts to the core of their commitment to not only building up a revolutionary territory but to really a new way of life. I think that's absolutely right and something I have failed to appreciate in my understanding of anarchism because I'm a very political person

I'm a kind of forced person And I think about wars. I'm involved in a lot of conflicts around the world. And I think about political structure. And I think I failed to appreciate the cultural aspect of it, which is absolutely central. It's cardinal. I think unless you build a different kind of society that values different things to commodities and money, then the project's going to fail. We have to re-envisage society as completely different.

We have to celebrate the things that, you know, like solidarity, meaning our love for our fellow human, but also, you know, play, celebration, silliness, laziness. These are all important aspects of the anarchist canon, people have written about it, and, you know, all of which is of a piece of a much better society. So yes, that commitment's there I mean, it's a funny thing in Rajava because it's going through a social revolution as well as a political one at the moment, many places it's still strong vestiges

of a very patriarchal traditional society but they realize that this is a long process as it would be for us if we were going through the same thing. Definitely. And for any listeners out there that want to learn more about that, we did do an episode with Dr. Thoreau Redcrow, who was embedded with the PKK and wrote a 900-page dissertation on the Rojavan Revolution and the Kurdish struggle. So if anybody's interested in that full

discussion, they can find that in our back catalog. But, you know, this is interesting. I heard it first from actually a short video you made online about Porto Alegre in Brazil. Now, clearly this is not a full-on anarchist project. It's just one little policy that can make a big difference and can kind of hint at what a more democratic society would look like. And especially in the context of what's happening here in the U.S. with this disgusting transfer of wealth in the GOP tax bill where they're taking $1.5 trillion away from the lower and middle classes and funneling it to the already extremely rich,

this notion of implementing participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre is really interesting. So can you inform listeners about what that policy looked like and what its results were? Sure. Well, Porto Alegre is a kind of medium-sized city in Brazil, and the mayor of Puerto Allegre decided to institute what is rather boringly called participatory budgeting PB. But basically what it means is mass decision-making about the priorities of the city, what the city's budget should be spent on. And tens of thousands of people took part in debates and decision-making about the budget priorities should, and this experiment, this project went on over several years

and the World Bank, not known as a radical institution, assessed this experiment after several years and found that it had had extraordinary outcomes in terms of equality in the city of a fairer provision of city services like water and sanitation, education, health care, roads, that kind of stuff, which of course should be no surprise, because if everybody's participating in a process on equal terms, then the outcomes are likely to be more egalitarian, but likely to be fairer, kind of obvious, except that that's not what we do in our so-called democracy. And unfortunately, it's still a fairly isolated example of that kind of process, but its results were absolutely black and white, completely clear what had happened there,

And you're quite right, it wasn't termed as anarchism at all. I think people would rejected that label completely. Direct democracy, if you like, mass participation in democracy. And what they found in Puerto Allegra is, of course, confirmed elsewhere and other social experiments, but also smaller scale examples at P.B, which have taken place all over the world. And so I think it's got enormous potential as a kind of very doable, practical inoffensive, unprovocative form of social political revolution.

And it very much speaks to this notion that you've mentioned a few times in this interview about people on the ground knowing what they need and that sort of knowledge that only people who live in those communities can possibly have. It's just a little glimmer of something that could be implemented that would help out a lot of people. And especially in the U.S. when you're spending trillions of dollars on illegal wars, trillion dollars on a fighter jet, huge transfers of wealth to the already extremely wealthy. I mean, having any sort of control by the people over where our money goes would just be a

nice little step in the right direction. I feel bad for the U.S. I mean, I have a lot of love in my heart for America and for Americans. I lived there for a long time. I've only just recently left. My wife is American, my children are American, and I think it's absolutely tragic what's going on there. Right now, this is not democracy. You haven't had democracy for a long time. You know, your democracy has been corrupted in all kinds of ways. The constitution is clearly

totally dysfunctional. My only weak, faint hope of this disaster that is the tax bill is that it will open people's eyes to what is really going on. In a way, what has been concealed beneath the surface in early administrations that the government does not serve, the interests of the whole. This is only the most brazen and shameless example of something that's been happening in a smaller scale, but gradually for some time. I mean, inequality doesn't come out of nowhere. Median incomes were flatlining during the Clinton administration didn't take Trump to create inequality. He's only just making it worse. So my hope is that maybe this will be a wake-up call to Americans, though, of course, the immense divisions over Trump and the cultural kind of

warfare that he wages and systematizes across different institutions will, of course, obscure that deeper truth about what's really going on, and that's, of course, exactly the program. Yeah, exactly. It's an uncertain, scary time right now, but there's revolutionary potential in these horrible historical movements and I think I don't know how many people but I think a lot of people are starting to wake up especially in my generation and see this scam for what it is and start to fight back and so that gives me a little optimism about the future good good well you've got my total support for anything I can do to help just let me know absolutely I appreciate that okay final question

before we go into where listeners can find your work this is just kind of interesting to me but what anarchist works movements or thinkers have had a particularly large impact on you oh um well they're all from different contexts you know um all extraordinary stories in one way or another uh emma goldman's autobiography her memoir new york good new york anarchist that was pretty good um extraordinary what people would sacrifice for their beliefs i think that's one thing we've got to learn in the 21st century we think politics is just about you know sounding off i certainly think that, rather than actually sacrificing, you know, your body and your liberty for the things you believe in, because that's certainly what she did.

And so she's great. I think a more contemporary writer as a British writer called Colin Ward, actually, no longer with us, sadly, but he just talks about the very, very practical ways that anarchism can be implemented, you know, at a small scale, very much a believer in the small becomes the large. I think there are some super little books. Actually, there's a very short introduction of anarchism, one of those little penguin books that's actually by Colin Ward.

That's very good. There's some great anthologies of anarchism. There's a new handbook coming out. I could go on. Lots of great resources. And lots of interesting things going on now. I mean, we try on our Facebook page with the accidental anarchist to kind of track some of the things that are going on,

interesting movements around the world, good articles. So if you go there, you can find some resources, I hope. And included there are some much larger academic resources of academic writing and original writing about anarchism. Yeah, there's a funny little historical fun fact is that Emma Goldman actually came to Omaha back in the day, a long time ago, to came through Omaha on one of her speech. speaking tours and the Omaha Police Department were all up in arms about it, and she hung a bright red flag up over her platform, and the cops eventually went and tore it down all angrily.

So I just think it's a little interesting, yeah, historical tidbit. But thank you so much for coming on. It's been a pleasure to talk with you. It's been a pleasure to learn from you and to hear your other interviews. Can you please point our listeners in the direction of your work, your films, your other interviews, and where they can find out more about you? Sure. Well, thank you. It's a really, really super discussion, really made me think. So thank you. I really appreciate it. My website, karnross.com, C-A-R-N-E-R-O-S-com. That's got, I think, most of the things I've written or appearances I've made. The film Facebook page, as I say, has got a bunch of resources. So those are probably the two best places to go.

All right, and we will link to those in the show notes. Thanks again, Karn. It's been a pleasure. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Have a good one. You too. Peace abake hell we ain't the least afraid You got right to Theresa May take them each away

Have the whole class leave the way We stroll past police today in the future cold smashed teeth away Many pros can eat today Yeah we gotta claim peace marching A to be up on the same streets Man is way deep they find a way of charging me Sell us revolution back in fucking shake with rarities I don't need no idols that ain't a part of me No need to look up all around me there is starts to see

This score before the harmony and this alarming me How far the world been torn apart from me Raid the armoury, straight shots, cops dead, Sherlock Holmes with a Blakelock chopped head. Show them what's red, there ain't no gods left, taking your roses and eating your posth bread. We ramble away now, better rat me a day now,

no paschran like we're Gandalf the grey now, gotta keep fascist to pay now. We ramble away now, better rat me a day now, no paschran like we're Gandalf the grey now, got to keep fascist to pay now, Ignoring your raps like Louis Mench said it Now you're left out in the cold like old mensheviks

Them dreaded bourgeois forced into more reforms But that's their working class claw reform No time to occupy Wall Street I'd rather Alexandria Colin Tide Wall Street He's a revolutionary, Sergei Semenov Where blanket rappers still trying to clean the seamen off My Flood blows up a load of cops, Mostutoffs know that you'll go like the Romanovs

Oh my God I'd agree, fuck Buckingham Palace, IEDs stuck under the the carriage ducking the damage and stabbing the tyrants fucking I'm savage with Jacobin violence no double seven though I haven't the license state apparatus under Stalinist guidance we ramble away now better rap me a day now no has a ran like we're gand off the grey now gotta keep fascists to play now we ramble away now better rat me a j now no pass around like we're gand off the grey now got to keep Fascists a bang

Enter a nation A gentrification We can't afford to live in our present location Rich kids treat this like a pleasant vacation But one of these days these peasants will chase them Your barges aren't strong But we float and gruesome And start to harp on like with Joanne Newsome

Irritating voice the accents Prostolia Living in a country that's acting dystopian Britannia rule the waves Rape the natives and traded slaves Now they question anarchist ways to behave Put your bracelet away and racial hatred obey me A-C-A-B, take it away Cause zombies rise on the 28th day

We don't give a fuck what you many fakes say If man style, make plenty men play Rate AK press, hate lay pay cheques Cause zombie appetite crave brains and flesh Slave, empiric parasites stake they chest Damn sick a thatcher rights break they next Demand in a fatter slice Stab with a dagger like

That's what these rapatotypes may face next But we stand with the masses like Chanting for Palestine Stamping the fascist rights Spray paint red Then we ate they flesh While the pricks still swoblin Cush on be star

Or the rich still goblin Fed like a gremlin The feds are all trembling Remembering Kelti red like the Kremlin And they'll see dead men avenging The wealth ever ending The wealth they're dependent So while you're defending

The rich pricks gambling The workers shirk on a quick trip rambling We ramble away now Better rap me a J now. No pass and ran like we're Gandoff the Grey now. Gotta keep fascists at bay now. We ramble away now. Better rat me a J now. No pass and ran like we're Gandalf the Grey now. Gotta keep fascists a bay. You know, I'm going to be able to Thank you.