The Pete Quiñones Show - Pete Reads 'Coup D'état' by Edward N. Luttwak - Part 1 w/ Darryl Cooper

Episode Date: August 3, 2024

71 MinutesPG-13Pete begins his reading of Edward N. Luttwak's "Coup D'état." In this episode he welcomes Darryl Cooper to comment on Chapter 1 and the beginning of chapter 2.The Martyrmade PodcastThe Martyrmade SubstackThe Unraveling PodcastAntelope Hill - Promo code "peteq" for 5% off - https://antelopehillpublishing.com/FoxnSons Coffee - Promo code "peter" for 18% off - https://www.foxnsons.com/Coup d'ÉtatPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on Twitter

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The Liddle New Bridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Liddle, more to value. If you want to support the show and get the episodes early and ad free, head on over to freemam Beyond the Wall.com forward slash support. There's a few ways you can support me there. One, there's a direct link to my website. Two, there's subscribe star. Three, there's Patreon. Four, there's substack. And now I've introduced Gumroad, because I know that a lot of our guys are on Gum Road and they are against censorship. So if you head over to Gumroad and you subscribe through

there, you'll get the episodes early and ad-free, and you'll get an invite into the Telegram group. So I really appreciate all the support everyone's giving me, and I hope to expand the show even more than it already has. Thank you so much. I want to welcome everyone to part one, the official part one, first part of my reading of Kudaita. And I have a special guest here, Daryl Cooper. How you doing, Darryl? Doing great, man. It's always good to be on. Yeah, yeah. So tell me, I asked John, when I had him on before, when did Kudita by Lutbuk, come onto your radar? I think I read this book of maybe, gosh, it must have been 15 years ago now. Yeah, around 2009, 2010.

And I was reading a lot of that kind of stuff. You know, I was reading a lot of Peterdale Scott and, you know, reading a lot about just like the Banana Award, just all the 20th century kind of Cold War stuff. And I read through it back then. But I'll tell you, it's one of those books that I think the last 15th, years that have passed since that time have really given the book a new flavor in a way because I read it back then and I enjoyed it. I've been rereading it because we're going to talk about it

and I've been getting a lot more out of it. There's a lot more to draw on for sure. So I'm looking forward to it. Cool. So what we're going to do is the preface to the first edition is one page. I'll read it and then skip to the first chapter. If there's anything you want to comment in on a comment on here on the preface, just let me know. All right, let's go. This is a handbook. It is therefore not concerned with the theoretical analysis of the coup d'etat, but rather with the formulation of the techniques,

which can be employed to seize power within a state. It can be compared to a cookery book in the sense that it aims at enabling any layperson equipped with enthusiasm and the right ingredients to carry out his own coup, Only a knowledge of the rules is required. Two words of caution. In the first place, in order to carry out a successful coup, certain preconditions must be present. Just as in cooking boule-based,

one needs the right sorts of fish to start with. Second, readers should be aware that the penalty of failure is far greater than having to eat out of a tin. The rewards, too, are greater. it may be objected that, should such a handbook be inadequate or misleading, the readers will be subject to great dangers, while if it is an efficient guide to the problems, it may lead to upheavals and disturbances. My defense is that coups are already common, and if, as a result of this book, a greater number of people learn how to carry them out, this is merely a step towards the democratization of the coup, a fact that all persons of liberal sentiments should applaud.

Finally, it should be noted that the techniques here discussed are politically neutral and concerned only with the objective of seizing control of the state and not at all with subsequent policies. When jump into chapter one? Let's do it. All right. Chapter one, what is Akuta Taa? I got a couple quotes here. I shall be sorry to commence the era of peace by Akuta Tah such as that I had in contemplation.

Duke of Wellington, 1811. No other way of salvation remained except for the Army's intervention. Constantine Collius, April 21, 1967, Athens. All right, starting with the text. Though the term coup d'etat has been used for more than three centuries, the feasibility of the coup derives from a comparatively recent development, the rise of the modern state with its professional bureaucracy and standing armed forces. The power of the modern state largely depends on this permanent machinery,

which, with its archives, files, records, and officials can follow intimately, and, if it so desires, control the activities of lesser organizations and individuals. Totalitarian states merely use more fully the detailed and comprehensive information available to most states, however, democratic. The instrument is largely the same, though it is used. used differently. Right off the bat when you start reading this, it really seems like he's describing the managerial state, right? What has existed since, let's call it the...

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Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Late 20s to early 30s. You're muted. Yeah, I forgot about that. There's like a Weberian aspect to it too, right? Like Max Weber describes three forms of like organizational or political authority. You got like the charismatic or the traditional.

or the legal rational, and that's what he's talking about here. And, you know, for Lutwok, the coup is really only possible with the legal rational. When you get that distinction between the political authority and the state machinery, where there's sort of two distinct things, and you can swap people out at the top, and they are conferred genuine power from their position. You know, in a traditional authority structure, which is just basically like a patronage system, everything from, you know, say Saudi Arabia today to feudal systems in the past, you know, these things were built on organic relationships. Like that's what the system of power represented was the totality of these organic relationships. and a coup, you can't really pull off a coup unless you're maybe, you know, a brother taking out the, you know, the crown prince and taking his place or something like that.

But that's about it. And same with charismatic authority where leader, you know, leadership sort of coalesces around the person of a single charismatic individual. A lot of times you don't have much of an organization to go with that. the organization is, you know, the gathering of people around the man. And it's very hard to pull off a coup in that environment. Once the legal rational system gets in place, though, and especially once it gains a sort of autonomy and self-awareness, you know, of itself as a class and as a function, it starts to learn how to defend itself,

and it'll start to, you know, fend off challenge from charismatic leaders or traditionalist, you know, patronage type type networks. And, you know, and it's only that type that, yeah, that you can run a coup against. All right. Onward. The growth of modern state bureaucracies has two implications that are crucial for the feasibility of the coup. The emergence of clear distinctions between the permanent machinery of state and the political leadership and the fact that state bureaucracies have structured hierarchy,

with definite chains of command. The distinction between the bureaucrat as an employee of the state and as a personal servant of the ruler is a new one, and both the British and the American system show residual features of the earlier structure. The importance of this development lies in the fact that if the bureaucrats are linked to the leadership and a legal seizure of power must take the form of a palace revolution,

which essentially concerns a manipulation of the person of the ruler. that ruler may be forced to accept new policies or new advisors or may be killed or held captive, but whatever happens, the palace revolution can only be conducted from the inside and by insiders. An insider might be the commander of the palace guard as in ancient Rome or the Ethiopia of the 1960s, and if the dynastic system is preserved, the aim is to replace the unwanted ruler with a more malleable descendant. The coup is a much more democratic affair. It can be conducted for, the outside and operates in the area outside the government, but within the state. The area formed by the permanent professional civil service, the armed forces, and the police.

The aim is to detach the permanent employees of the state from the political leadership, and usually this cannot be done if the two are linked by political, ethnic, or traditional loyalties. I don't know that people saw, like when you read that last paragraph, how clearly you can see what he talks about with, the aim is the detached to permanent employees, which we would call the deep state now from the political leadership,

and usually this cannot be done. I don't know that when he wrote this, it was even sure Burnham had written the managerial revolution 30 years, 33 years earlier, or 30 years earlier. But I don't know that that was as widely understood

as it is. now the fact that we're basically run by managerialism. Yeah, and it's interesting given that the people who kind of put over that revolution were quite explicit about their goal in doing that, in detaching political authority and government machinery, right? If you go back to like the late 1800s, most American cities, local and even state governments, which the federal government was much smaller and weaker back then. So that meant most of government in America, you know, was run by ethnic patronage networks that sort of emerged more or less organically as a way of organizing people for political activity. And the progressive

movement was a very explicit, you know, the good government movement, very explicit sort of attack on those patronage networks. And, you know, you can take that all the way up to like Colonel House's book or all the way eventually in the apotheosis, obviously, in the New Deal Revolution when that all really came together. And they're quite explicit about it, but for some reason, yeah, it's something that's been lost a bit today. You know, when you, when you, when we were kids, we watched Schoolhouse Rock. They had that little commercial, you know, where there's like the piece of paper and he's like, hey, folks, I'm a bill. And here's how I get past. There's three branches of government and so forth and like you know and this is how your government works

and that you know that's that that's not how the government works at all right i mean the government 99% of the government and certainly all of the functional parts of the government the ones that actually take action um it's this unelected bureaucracy that that that's purpose is to be completely detached from political authority which is to say you know quote you know in an ideal world or if our system worked the way it was supposed to, which is to say that it's detached from accountability from the population. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th

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Cooper. design that moves finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen financial services Ireland limited subject to lending criteria terms and conditions apply Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland limited trading as Cooper financial services is regulated by the central bank of Ireland all right onward in the last dynasty of imperial China as in present-day African states it was primarily an ethnic bond that secured the loyalty of the state apparatus the Manchu dynasty was careful to follow native Chinese customs and it employed Han Chinese in the civil service at all levels,

but the crucial posts in the high magistracy and the army were filled by the descendants of the Jurchans who had entered China with their chiefs, the founders of the dynasty. Similarly, African rulers typically appoint members of their own tribe to the key posts in the armed forces, police, and security services. When a party machine controls civil service appointments, either as part of a more general totalitarian control or because of a very long period in office, as in post-war Italy till the late 1980s, political associates are appointed to the senior levels of the bureaucracy, partly in order to protect the regime and partly to ensure the sympathetic execution of policies. In the communist countries of yesterday year, all senior jobs were, of course, held by party, apparition.

Saudi Arabia provides an instance of traditional bonds. In this case, the lack of modern know-how on the part of the traditional tribal affiliates of the Royal House has meant that what could not be done individually has been done organizationally. The modern army, manned by some hundred thousand unreliable city dwellers, is outnumbered by the 125,000 or so enrolled in the white army of the Bedouin, or at least nominally Bedouin, followers of the Saudis, officially known as the Haras Al-Watani, Guard of the Homeland, or National Guard. The so-called White Army,

it includes a tribal militia of some 25,000 officially designated the Imam Muhammad bin Saud-mechanized brigade, based in the capital of Riyadh, and plainly meant as an anti-coup force. Have you been to Saudi? I have been to Riyadh once, and other than that, I got stuck on a tarmac and a helicopter in 120-degree heat for about eight hours one time. All right, I'll keep going. such ethnic or traditional bonds between the political leadership and the heads of the bureaucracy and the armed forces are not typical of the modern state, while looser class or ethnic affiliations

will tend to embrace groups large enough to be successfully infiltrated by the planners of the coup. As a direct consequence of its sheer size, in order to achieve even a minimum of efficiency, the state bureaucracy has to divide its work into clear-cut areas of competence, which are assigned to different departments. Within each department, there must be an accepted chain of command and standard procedures have to be followed. Thus, a given piece of information or a given order is followed up in a stereotyped manner, and if the order comes from the appropriate source at the appropriate level, it is carried out. In the more critical parts of the state apparatus, the armed forces, the police, and the security services, all these characteristics are intensified with an even greater

degree of discipline and rigidity. The apparatus of this state is, therefore, to some extent, a machine that will normally behave in a fairly predictable and automatic manner. What happens if it stops... Pst, did you know? Those Black Friday deals everyone's talking about? They're right here at Beacon South Quarter. That designer's sofa you've been wanting?

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Well, I mean, I think what Lubach's saying here is that, you know, he's pointing out that I think he's probably setting up to defend his thesis that you can actually speak, for lack of a better word, like scientifically about these processes. you know, that this is something that these are systems that have certain rules and laws and guidelines that they run by. And so you can actually speak about them in general terms. But what happens if they stop reacting in a predictable manner? I mean, at that point, you're very, very, very close to the edge. You know, the whole purpose of the, I mean, if you think about the base level of all guys, government, right? And maybe this has something to do with Weber's traditional, you know,

patrimony-based system of authority. But at the bottom of it is whoever can provide physical security and whoever can distribute resources that people need to live or secure and distribute those resources, then that's going to, that's the government in time. Like it might not be today, but eventually if the government that you think you have can't do those things, then that's not going to be the government for long. You know, you see this with like a terrorist organ. I mean, we had to come to terms with this, like in Iraq, for example, right? When we went into Iraq, people really did go in with all of these,

you know, for all the cynicism of the neocons and everything, like these people when they, you know, they really had sort of siop themselves into believing that, you know, the people of the world are just Americans in embryo, and as soon as they're given the opportunity, we get rid of Saddam Hussein or whoever, then they're going to throw roses at our feet and be happy to become, because they were thinking of, you know, Poland in 1989, you know, Czechoslovakia in 1989. Like you just take that boot off their neck and they want to wear blue jeans and basically be Americans.

Like if they're given the opportunity. And they really did sigh up themselves into believing that to a degree. But then once we got in there, we had to deal with the reality, which the, which the terrorist. organization, the insurgents understood much better than we did at first, which was, you know, they knew that if they could prove that the Americans could not protect you, could not provide physical security, and that the Americans weren't able to ensure that you and your family could eat or have water, then we weren't going to be governing that country for very long, you know, and the people who are capable of turning those things, the violent spigot or the resource

spigot on and off. If the insurgents through violence could make that be them, then they would, you know, replace us. And they understood that. We had to kind of, we had to kind of adapt to that. And we got to the point once you got up to like 0-607, where we did kind of just accept that. You know, Petraeus went out with like hundreds of millions of dollars and just started paying off tribal cheeks, not so much so that, you know, it wasn't so that they could go stuff it in their Swiss bank account and flee the country if things go bad later on. It was so that we were conferring upon them the legitimacy they needed as distributors of resources. You know, they could actually give their people things that they needed while we provided physical security to actually get them on our side.

You know, that's like really the fundamental kind of base level of all government. And so at that, I mean, in that sense, if it starts acting unpredictably at that point, then you're already in a period of, you know, of severe breakdown. There's so much rugby on Sports Exter from Sky, they've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end. Here goes. This winter sports extra is jam-packed with rugby. For the first time we've got every Champions Cup match exclusively live, plus action from the URC, the Challenge Cup, and much more.

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Yeah, I remember a couple of years ago, my friend Rachel and I were discussing, texting back and forth, asking about, well, if everything collapsed, who's in charge? And she said, well, obviously, whoever can feed you. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, I think if you go back, even to just the origins of human government, you know, once you get past the sort of band level of organization, you know, where, you know, the guy in charge is your grandfather or whatever. You see this, I mean, it's built into our myths. You see it in history where we have access to it. Is it the basic form of government is a warrior and his friends.

If you're a farmer and you're out here and you have a bunch of lions terrorizing your livestock and, you know, threatening your children when they go outside. And it's a pack of lions and you're a farmer, you know. in the days before firearms, you know, that's a real problem for you. In fact, that's like a, that's a life or death problem for you, not just whether or not you get killed by a lion, but whether you can actually do the things you need to do to eat. And so a guy shows up on a horse with six of his friends and says, where are the lions? They're that way. And he goes and kills those lions.

That dude's in charge. And you're fine with that, you know. And that's a legitimate basis of human government in a lot of ways. All right. A coup operates by taking advantage of this machine-like behavior, both during and after the takeover, during the coup, because it uses parts of the state apparatus to seize the controlling levers over the rest, and afterward because the value of the levers depends on the degree to which the state really functions as a machine. We will see that some states are so well organized that the machine is sufficiently sophisticated to exercise discretion, according to a given conception of what is proper and what is not in the orders that it executes. This is the case in the most advanced countries, and in such circumstances, a coup is very difficult to carry out. In a few states, the bureaucracy is so small that the apparatus is too simple and too intimately linked with the leadership to allow room for a coup, as is still the case, perhaps, in the ex-British protectorates of Southern Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland.

Fortunately, most states are between those two extremes, with bureaucratic machines both large and unsophisticated, and thus highly vulnerable to those who can identify and seize the right levers. One of the most striking developments of the 20th century was the great decline in general political stability. since the French Revolution, governments have been overthrown at an increasing pace. In the 19th century, the French experienced two revolutions and two regimes collapsed following the military defeat. In 1958, the change of regime that brought Charles de Gaulle to enduring power was a blend of those elements. People everywhere have followed the French example, and the lifespan of regimes has tended to decrease while the lifespan of their subjects has

increased. This contrasts sharply with the relative attachment to the system of constitutional monarchy displayed in the 19th century. When Greeks, Bulgarians, and Romanians secured their freedom from the Turkish colonial system, they immediately went over to Germany in order to shop around for a suitable royal family. Crowns, flags, and decorations were designed and purchased from reputable English suppliers. Royal palaces were built. And where possible, hunting lodges, royal mistresses, and a local aristocracy were provided as fringe benefits.

The 20th century peoples have, on the other hand, showed a marked lack of interest in monarchies in their paraphernalia. When the British kindly provided them with a proper royal family, unhappy Iraqis made numerous efforts to dispense with it before finally succeeding by massacre in 1958. Military and other right-wing forces have, meanwhile, tried to keep up with violent mass movements, using their own illegal methods to seize power and overthrow regimes.

Why did the regimes of the 20th century prove to be so fragile? It is, after all, paradoxical that this fragility increased while the established procedures for securing changes in government were becoming more flexible. The political scientist will reply that, although the procedures became more flexible, the pressures for change were also becoming stronger, and the increase in flexibility did not keep up with the increased

social and economic stresses. Violent method? You want to say something? Yeah, I actually wanted to go back a little bit to, I was thinking about when he was talking about, you know, that you have to kind of have this Goldilocks bureaucracy, right? This Goldilocks

state where it is developed enough that it's worth taking the reins of, you know, that if you get the control of it, then you actually have power. that it's developed enough for that but that it's not so mature that it can exercise self-will you know if it doesn't like who the leader is or what the leader wants to do and um you know there's a there's a sense in which like if you think of like the the national socialist revolution in germany you know obviously that wasn't a coup or coup dutata or anything but it really was like a

i mean it was a revolution in the system of government there for sure that that if you were to go back, you know, before that, well, it was something that like it, like not understanding this, the, this part, I think kind of led to, it was part of what led to the conflict that eventually emerged between, uh, the regime and the sort of the old school, hardcore revolutionaries of like the essay, for example, right? Because once Hitler got into power, he had to deal with the fact that this machinery existed that he was now at the controls of that he had to compromise with on some level, you know, because it was developed enough to resist anything he wanted to do if he couldn't co-opt it like that. And he had to make certain compromises

to accommodate it. And, you know, the Ernst Roams of the world and stuff, these were hardcore, like street revolutionaries, and they didn't like that. And you see that in a lot of these revolutions and it's why, you know, in revolutions all over the world throughout the 20th century, the first thing that happens is the revolutionary sees control, the government, and the second thing that happens is most of the revolutionaries get killed off by the boss, you know. There's so much rugby on Sports Extra from Sky, they've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end. Here goes. This winter sports extra is jam-packed with rugby. For the first time, we've got every Champions Cup match exclusively live, plus action from the

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Stand up pressing applies after 12 months for the terms apply. Yeah, for, um, and if you study, you know, if you study the rise of the national socialist and they're taking power, it's pretty clear why. you know, Thomas went over that. We did a whole episode on that. And, you know, he just looked at it from a real politic standpoint. It's like, yeah, these are the guys who brought you here. But, I mean, some of these guys

just, they weren't going to be along for the ride. And they were not going to let go on their own. Yeah, this is a total off-topic digression real quick. But I'm just going to throw it out there in case you have anybody who wants to pick this one up. Like, if I was, if I had any talent, as a fiction writer, like as a novelist.

You know the book I would write? I would love to read a book that is about, it's a biography or a mini biography of the period of Hitler's life from the rise to power, like through the 20s, you know, from the putch and on its way up, all the way up and ends in 1934 when he had to kill Rome and a lot of these essay guys and just the inner turmoil that he had to have gone through,

you know, having to take out so many of the people who had, you know, been, who had ridden with him up to that point and been through everything with him and coming to the conclusion and having to carry out something that, you know, that was necessary, but maybe very distasteful to him. I think that would be a great story. Yeah, I think most people,

most people hear that story just think he was an absolute madman and don't take into consideration you know what he thought what he believed was coming and what needed and you know what the what the fight was actually going to be and well yeah well let's go let's go on we can stay we get detoured on that one for a while all right violent methods are generally used when legal methods of securing a governmental change are useless because they are either too rigid, as in the case of ruling monarchies where the ruler actually controls policy formation, or not rigid enough. It was once remarked, for example, that the throne of Russia was, until the 17th century, neither hereditary nor elective, but occupative. The long series of

abdications forced by the great boyar landlords and the Strzzi, the Kremlin palace guards, had weakened the hereditary principle so that whoever took the throne became czar. Precedents by birth counted for little. Some contemporary republics have ended up in this position, which comes about when a long series of illegal seizures of power leads to a decay of the legal and political structures needed to produce new governments. Thus, Syria went through more than a dozen coups before the Assad family dynasty was established by Hafez al-Assad's 1970 coup and the provisions for all open general elections written in the Haurani constitution could no longer be applied because the necessary

supervisory machinery decayed and disappeared. Assuming, however, that there is an established procedure for changing the leadership, then all other methods must be. must fall within some category of illegality. What we call them depends on what side we are on, but skipping some of the details, we use one of the following terms. All right, so a bunch of listed terms here, though, with brief explanations.

Revolution. Oh, sorry. I was just gonna jump in real quick and say like, you know, there's a, like the obvious geopolitical reason that the post-columnies, states in the 20th century were the places where coup you know coups happened more than any other places one part of its geopolitical and it's obvious right that was the the those were the places that were up for grabs in the

Cold War right and so they had both sides sort of vying for them but also from like a loopwalk perspective you know it's interesting because they those were like those were the countries that kind of fit the model that he's talking about here the best in the sense that you had these say an Africa, you had these countries that really were only countries because the French and the British drew some lines on a map, right? That's why it's a country that has a state machinery that is somewhat well developed because it was either left in place or put in place as the colonizers were leaving. And so there's this machinery that can kind of run the country, can kind of

defend itself against interlopers and so forth that exists and whoever controls it, you know, is sort of in charge. But there's no, you know, the population itself is just broken up into tribes. They don't identify with each other. There's no nation underlying this thing. In other words, the power structure doesn't actually represent any organic power. It's just this thing that's there that's sort of imposed on people. It's not, it's not representative of anything that, really like on the ground right like if you look at afghanistan for example you know there are people who are going to call them geniuses or anything there's people with basic common sense who back in 2001 were saying this is a this is just never going to work in the long term for the very simple

reason that the northern alliance all these people that like we're going over there and wanting to to ally with that these people it's a it's a big coalition of all the different minority groups in afghanistan and you want to bring this coalition together they have nothing in common and they really don't have, you know, anything that they share other than their opposition to the posthune majority. And so it's going to make them completely dependent on the United States occupation forces. And once that occupation forces leave, whether it's now, whether it's in 100 years, those people are going to scatter to the winds. Because the real power, the organic power in this country is the posthum majority that is organized under the Taliban. And, you know, and that's real power.

Whether or not they are represented in the government or not, usually, you know, reality wins out. And so you have a lot of these African countries and other post-colonial countries that had that state machinery with nothing underneath it. And even a place like Liberia, Liberia is actually a great example because it was never a colony. You know, it was like you had essentially like Monrovia was like a city state where, you know, a bunch of former American slaves had gone to,

had gone to live. And they never really even left Monrovia or the immediate environs of Monrovia much. They didn't go out to the hinterlands, you know, or anything. But then once the French and the British really started to get on their colonization spree in Africa, we started putting pressure on the Americo-Liberians in Monrovia. We're like, you need to become a country. You can't just be a city-state. We need you to form the country of Liberia, and we're going to define its borders so that we can say to the French and British, like, you can't come in here. You have to stay out of this area. And so they did. And they went and they created a quote-unquote country of Liberia with a government of Liberia, you know, and they created a sort of national, quote-unquote, police force that went out

and found which tribal authorities and chiefs could be co-opted, getting rid of the ones that couldn't, and then reinforcing the co-opted ones authority with the national security forces. But it was always just very, very, very inorganic. You know, it never had any purchase like on the ground in most of the country. It was something that existed on paper to a large degree. And you saw in the 20th century that, you know, with the slightest push, a place like that comes apart. Don't let foot pain or discomfort hold you back. At foot solutions, we specialize in high-quality supportive footwear.

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First one, revolution. The action is conducted initially at any rate by uncoordinated popular masses and it aims at changing the social and political structures, as well as the personalities and the leadership. The term revolution has gained a certain popularity, and many coups are graced with it because of the implication that it was the people rather than a few plotters who did the whole thing.

Thus, the obscure aims Abed al-Karim Qasim had in mind when he overthrew the Iraqi regime of King Faisal the second and Prime Minister Nourri Asaid are locally known as the sacred principles of the July 14th Revolution. Next one is Civil War. Civil War is outright warfare between elements of the armed forces and or the population at large. The term is perpetually unfashionable.

Whenever there is a civil war, all sides typically deny its existence, variously passing it off as an international war, such as the war between the states or of the Confederacy, or more often as a foreign aggression, though in Franco's Spain, the Civil War of 1936 to 1939, was always the Crusade. Pronunciamianto. This is an essentially Spanish and South American version of the military coup d'Ata, but many recent African coups have also taken this particular form. In its original 19th century Spanish version, it was a highly ritualized process. First came to the Troubos, literally the works, in which the opinions of army officers were sounded.

The next step was the compromisos in which commitments were made and rewards promised, then came the call for action, and finally the appeal to the troops to follow their officers in rebellion against the government. The pronunciamanto was often a liberal rather than a reactionary phenomenon, and the theoretical purpose of the takeover was to ascertain the national will, a typical liberal concept. Later, as the army became increasingly right-wing, while Spanish governments became less so, the theory shifted from the neoliberal national will to the neo-conservative real-will theory. the latter postulates that the existence of a national essence a sort of permanent spiritual structure

which the wishes of the majority may not always express the army was entrusted with the interpretation and preservation of this essential Spain and the obligation to protect it against the government and, if need be, against the people. The pronunciamiento

was organized and led by a particular army leader, but it was carried out in the name of the entire officer corps, unlike the Putsch, which is carried out by a faction within the army, or the coup, which can also be executed by civilians using some army units. The pronunciamiento leads to a takeover by the army as a whole. Many African takeovers in which the army had participated as a whole were therefore very similar to the classic pronouncinge, pronunciamiento what do you how do you this was written before um before chile

1973 how would how would that be how would that even fit into that yeah i think it would fit in to what he's saying you know in the sense of representing at least the majority of the armed forces you know it's another interesting example is like uh when um cecy and egypt throughout the Muslim Brotherhood and you know you saw in that situation I mean in a way you could say that wasn't it wasn't quite a coup in the sense that what was really happening was the real power in the in the country was revealing itself you know that the that the deep state there was always in charge election or no election and it was it was making that clear but still like that's how it played out but it but when that happened

you know, sure Mubarak was in jail and everything, but if you looked at it, I mean, uh, every time Cici was on stage, like if he was on camera somewhere, it's just nothing but four stars, flanking them on either side. And if you look at something like the, uh, 20, was it 15 or 16, uh, attempt against Erdogan. And I remember when they first went on, uh, the, the, the people who were pushing the putch or coup, whatever you want to call, I guess this would be a push in loot walks terms. And I remember watching it and, seeing like, I think there was like a two star on stage talking, but then there was like a couple kernels and then there was like a captain on stage. I'm like, if you got a captain on stage for

your coup, like it's over. This is not going to work. There's just no, he should be like getting coffee for somebody for all the four stars that are out or else. This is not going to work. And sure enough, it didn't work. All right. Let's move on to the putch. Essentially a wartime or immediately post-war phenomenon, a putch is attempted by a formal body within the armed forces under its appointment, under its appointed leadership, excuse me. The Cornylov putch is a clear example. Lavier-Cornollove, a general in charge of an army group in northern Russia, attempted to seize the then-petrograd, St. Petersburg, in order to establish a fighting regime that would prosecute the war. Had he succeeded, the city would perhaps have borne his name instead of Lenin,

as it did until 1991. Liberation. A state may be said by supporters of the change to be liberated when its government is overthrown by foreign military or diplomatic intervention. A classic case of this was the installation of the communist leadership in Romania in 1947. The USSR forced to then King Michael to accept a new cabinet by threatening direct military force by the Soviet army. Do you ever read what Evela had to say about the Iron Guard? No, I've read a lot of Evela, but I can't remember anything about that. It's like a 10-page article, and he said that if anybody was going to defeat Bolshevism in Europe, it would have been the Romanian Iron Guard. It would have been Corgiano and the Romanian Iron Guard.

He said just because not only a nationalistic feeling, but also the orthodox, the orthodox feeling. And then just a, they had recognized the influence of certain groups in Bolshevism very early on and were, and we're writing about it. Yeah, and maybe that's why, you know, the Legionnaires probably got it worse than just about every other anti-communist group in your. you know, in Peteschi prison and some of the other places. Oh, man. All right. Let me keep telling you. I don't want to talk about that.

It makes it. It makes me ill. War of National Liberation, Insurgency, etc. In this form of internal conflict, the aim of the initiating party is not to seize power within the state, but rather to set up a rival state structure. This can be politically, ethnically, or religiously based, as with the Taliban, whose aim is and Afghanistan wholly converted to their own deobandi or Wahhabi Islam, which contrives to be both the official state religion of Saudi Arabia and a rigorously fanatical ideology that denies

any legitimacy whatsoever to any other form of Islam, let alone non-Muslim faiths. As for secessionist insurgencies, they are necessarily ethnically based, though ethnicity can be all in the mind, as with the Eritreans and Ethiopians, as with the Kurds of Iraq, as well as Iran and Turkey, the Somalis of Kenya and Ethiopia, the Karen people in Burma, and formerly the Nagas of India. All right. The definition of the coup d'etat. Let me get a drink real quick. A coup d'a involves some elements of all these different methods by which power can be seized, but unlike most of them, the coup is not assisted by the intervention of the masses or by any large-scale form of combat by military forces. The assistance of these forms of direct force would no doubt make it easier to seize power,

but it would be unrealistic to think that they would be available to the organizers of a coup. Because we will not be in charge of the armed forces, we cannot hope to start planning of a coup with sizable military units already under our control, nor will the pre-coup government usually allow us to carry out the propaganda and organization necessary to make effective use of the broad masses of the people. A second distinguishing feature of a coup is that it does not imply any particular political orientation. Revolutions are usually leftist, while the putsch and the pronunciamiento are usually initiated by right-wing forces. A coup, however, is politically neutral.

and there is no presumption that any particular policies will be followed after the seizure of power. It is true that many coups have been of a decidedly right-wing character, but there is nothing inevitable about that. If a coup does not make use of the masses or of warfare, what instrument of power will enable it to seize control of the state? The short answer is that power will come from the state itself. The long answer makes up the bulk of this book. The following is our formal,

and functional definition of a coup. A coup consists of the infiltration of a small but critical segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder. And there's a footnotes for chapter one. Start chapter two and see how far we get. Whenever you need to break off, just let me know. Chapter 2. When is a coup d'etat possible? Quoting,

The Bolsheviks have no right to wait for the Congress of Soviets. They must take power immediately. Victory is assured, and there are nine chances out of ten that it will be bloodless. To wait is a crime against the revolution. That's Vladimir, Ilyov, Lennon, October, 1917. The process of decolonization that started soon after the end of the second war, World War, first doubled and then more than tripled the number of independent states so that the opportunities open to us have expanded in a most gratifying manner. We have to recognize, however,

that not all states make good targets for our tensions. There is nothing to prevent us from carrying out a coup in, say, the United Kingdom, but we would probably be unable to stay in power for more than a short time. The public and the bureaucracy have a basic understanding of the nature and legal basis of the government, and they would react in order to restore a legitimate leadership. This reaction renders any initial success of the coup meaningless, and it would arise even though the pre-coup government may have been unpopular, and the new faces may be attractive. The reaction would arise from the fact that a significant part of the population takes an active interest in political life and regularly participates in it. This implies a recognition that the power

the government derives from its legitimate origin, and even those who have no reason to support the old guard have many good reasons to support the principle of legitimacy. I guess that's really important when you have so many people, a good percentage of your population who's actually employed by the government or living off of its teeth. Yeah, it is, and I think you see exactly what he's talking about in in how the way a lot of conservatives in the United States today, you know, they can be locked up for 15 years for trespassing in the capital. They can be spied on for their political activity, whatever, all of these things. And they still will fall back on my constitution, you know, and it's because they do.

And that's, look, that's a noble impulse. You know, I mean, it's a sense that they have that, you know, know, we have this bulwark that if we give up, you know, we give that up, then there's going to be real chaos in the other side of it. And so we have to suffer what we must in order to sustain it. But that's that, you know, principle of legitimacy. The people hold on to long after it really has any reality to it. We are all familiar with the periodic surveys which show that, say, 20% of the sample failed to correctly name the prime minister. And we know that a large part of the population has only the vagus contact with politics. Nevertheless, in most developed countries,

those who do take an active interest in politics form, in absolute terms, a very large group. Controversial policy decisions stimulate and bring to the surface this participation. Pressure groups are formed, letters are sent to the press, and the politicians, petitions and demonstrations are organized, and this adds up to a continuing dialogue between the rulers, and the ruled. I automatically think of Uncle Ted over socialization when I read those two paragraphs right there. This dialogue does not depend necessarily on the existence of a formally democratic political system, even in one party states where power is in the hands of a few self-appointed leaders, a muted but nevertheless active dialogue can take place. The higher

organizations of the party can discuss party decisions and in time of relative relaxation, The discussions extend to the larger numbers in the lower echelons and to publications reflecting different currents, though only within the wider framework of the accepted ideology and the broad policy decisions of the leadership. The value of the dialogue from that takes place in non-democratic states. Let me repeat that again. The value of the dialogue that takes place in non-democratic states varies greatly. In the former Yugoslavia, for example, the Communist Party contrived Okay, so I'm assuming this is, these are updates that he wrote in the, he wrote in the new edition.

I think what is it, the 2016 edition? Yeah, I think so. 2016, yeah. Yeah, yeah. In the former Yugoslavia, for example, the Communist Party contrived to remain in control for decades, while nevertheless functioning to an increasing extent as a semi-open forum for increasingly free, increasingly wide-ranging debates on major political issues. The press, though, unable to assert truly independent opinions, at least echo those debates.

In the process, while there was still no democracy, the population evolved from subjection to participation, learning to scrutinize and question orders instead of simply obeying them, so that they were increasingly likely to resist a coup. In the Arab world, by contrast, the nominal ruling parties that functioned from the 1960s, the Arab Socialist Union of Egypt and the Ba'ath Party of Syria and Iraq, very soon degenerated into mere rubber stamps for the ruling dictators, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Havez al-Assad, and Saddam Hussein. As time went on, their pretended deference to party councils dissolved, But all along, they made every significant decision by themselves, while the parties could only cheer them on. When the question came up of whether Egypt's ASU-dominated National Assembly would accept Nasser's withdrawal of his resignation following the June 1967 debacle known as the Six-Day War,

an observer pointed out that the Assembly will jolly do what it is told. You want to comment on that at all? I think it's safe to say that that was an English observer. With the Yugoslav Communist Party, the ASU and the Rolling Bath Party now but a memory, the very greatest of questions across the entire horizon of global politics, is, of course, the future of the Zhangu, the Communist Party of China. Can't help you. Yeah, the Communist Party of China.

until the 2012 appointment of Xi Jinping as party general secretary, president of the people's republic of China, and the chairman of the central military commission, significantly the most powerful of all three. The party's future seemed quite predictable. It was becoming a holding company for all the public wealth and much of the private wealth of China, whereby officials continued to receive their modest salaries

that did not exceed R&B, 11,385, or basically $1,554 U.S. dollars per month in 2015, even in the very highest rank. Meanwhile, the party officials collected large amounts of bribes, ensuring a degree of affluence, even at the village level, rising to sometimes very great wealth at the top. As a faithful fan of Beijing's top discos, I grew accustomed to seeing the young sons of party officials driving up in their Ferraris and Lamborghinis. A little aside there by Ludvok. Yeah, a lot of those young sons of party officials

who were driving Ferraris and Lamborghinis are the people we call political prisoners in China right now that Xi had locked up for corruption. So, you know, that previous part you read too, it's like, you know, it's an interesting point because, you know, it kind of, it speaks to the fact, like we have this bias over here in most of the West. I mean, definitely in America,

that representative government, you know, the people being, gaining, having representation, is synonymous with democracy. And I think that, you know, if you really think about it for more than two seconds, you know, we can see that there are functional democratic systems like ours, like so many in Europe, that don't represent their people at all,

that everybody's very unsatisfied with and that go their own way. but that even in one-party states or dictatorial states, that there are other means of allowing people to dialogue with the government and express their needs and their interests. There are other ways to do it other than mass democracy. And I think, you know, there have been plenty of examples of governments throughout the 20th century. Usually, you know, they didn't last too long,

partly because we placed them in the crosshairs for one reason or another, who managed to represent their people and involve them in the participation of their own governance without having everybody go to the polls every two or four years. All right. Moving on, we're going to finish up this section before he breaks off into, before he breaks off, starts breaking off down like he did in the last section where he's doing revolution and he was doing, and we'll just finish this and I'll let you go. All right.

But the continued transformation of the Communist Party of China into a megacorporation, manned by the ambitious, duly rewarded with increasingly overt payoffs, was interrupted by the decision of Xi Jinping's high party colleagues to elevate him to a seat of unprecedented power. They did so most likely, because they feared that the party's further degeneration into an open, corrupt enterprise would lead to an outright collapse. The problem with bribes is that their distribution is very uneven generating corrosive resentments and embarrassing leaks.

As a result, Xi Jinping is left with the pretty problem of finding a substitute for both a putrefying ideology and the lost incentive of corruption with only Han nationalism ready at hand. Still for the time being, the Communist Party persists, as does subjection rather than citizenship.

I think that's actually pretty insightful, I think. I think that's a pretty clear description of what's happening, right? Yeah. A running dialogue between rulers and the rule that precludes any coup can only exist if there is large enough section of society that is sufficiently literate, well-fed, and secure enough to talk back. Even then, certain conditions can lead to a deterioration of the relationship, and this sometimes generates sufficient apathy or outright distrust of the regime

to make a coup possible. The events of 1958 in France were marked by a formal adherence to the then-constitutional rules, but were, nevertheless, analogous to a coup. 20 years of warfare, which had included the ignanimous defeat of 1940, the German occupation, the installation of the authoritarian Vichy regime, and from 1946, long and losing continual wars in Indochina and Algeria, had thoroughly undermined the country's democratic consensus. The continual changes of government had dissipated the interest and respect of most voters

and left the bureaucracy leaderless because the complex business of the ministries could not be mastered by ministers who were only in power for months or weeks. The French army was left to fight the bitter Algerian war with little guidance from Paris authorities because, more often than not, the ministries were too busy fighting for their survival in the Assembly to worry about the other bloodier war. The cost of the Algerian war in both money and lives antagonized to general public from both the army and the government, and many of the French felt a growing fear and distrust of the army's leadership, whose national sentiments and martial ideology seemed alien to many of them,

and against the spirit of the times. While the structures of political life under the Fourth Republic were falling apart, Charles de Gaulle, the grand heroic figure long and simulated retirement, gradually emerged as the only alternative to the chaos that threatened. When the army in Algeria appeared to be on the verge of truly drastic action, and yet another government was on the verge of collapse, De Gaulle was recalled. He was able to impose his own terms.

On May 29, 1958, when René Cote, the last president of the Fourth Republic, called on him to form a government which was invested, on June 1st, De Gaul was given extraordinary powers to rule by decree for six months and to write a new constitution. Under the terms of this constitution presented for consultation in mid-August and approved by referendum in September, elections were held in which de Gaul's newly formed union for the new republic, UNR party, won a majority. On December 21st, DeGal became the first president of the 5th Republic. He was an American-style president with wide executive powers, but without an American-style Congress to restrain them.

By 1958, France had become politically inert and therefore ripe for a coup. The circumstances were unique, of course, but while the political structures of all highly developed countries may seem too resilient to make them suitable targets, if acute enough, even temporary factors can weaken them fatally. of those temporary factors, the most common are A, severe and prolonged economic crisis with large-scale unemployment and runaway inflation. B, a long and unsuccessful war or a major defeat, whether military or diplomatic. C. Chronic instability under a multi-party system.

Italy is an interesting example of an economically developed, socially dynamic, but politically fragile country. Between 1948 and circa 1990, end of the Cold War, the persistence of a large communist party that opposed Italy's alignment with the West, if less vehemently, after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, forced the moderate majority to keep voting for the increasingly corrupt D.C.D.C., which itself ruled with a smaller but even more corrupt socialist party, its leader, Metino Grazzi, would die a few. fugitive outlaw in Tunisia. Because even the two parties did not attain a parliamentary majority, every government required a broader coalition whose formation amounted to an intricate puzzle. The D.C. was the largest party, but with only 30% of the votes, it could not rule alone. Even with the Socialists, it only reached a 40% mark. If it brought in the two small left-of-center parties, the Social Democrats and the Republicans,

the right-of-center parties, including the MSI neo-fascists, would not join in. But if the latter were invited to join the coalition, the left would break away and no government could be formed. In the end, of course, votes were procured one way or another, mostly by handing over control of parts of the vast array of state-owned businesses, everything from oil and gas to ice cream, in exchange for parliamentary support. The votes, however, did not stay bought for long, and coalitions had shorted. lives. Between 1945 and 1994, there were 33 governments until the 1994 election victory of the television and advertising tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, whose brand new party, Forza Italia,

was originally formed by its own employees and the Milan's football team fan club. Do you remember that? Oh, yeah, I remember. Yeah. Italian politics. I, you know, my buddy Danieli Bellelli, he doesn't follow. I mean, he's, you know, he's been in America for a long time, but he still can talk about it. And he knows the 20th century pretty well. And he starts describing telling me stories, just, you know, different eras in the 20th century.

And I just get lost immediately because it's just, like he said, it's like a new government every two years, different players. It's very hard to follow. I did two hours on the years of lead. And it was, I mean, you're jumping from governments to government while you're, while you're explaining exactly what they were doing. Yeah, yeah. And all of these countries in Italy is obviously such a perfect example of this.

You know, there are countries that are battlegrounds in the Cold War. And so they're facing like forces of destabilization from the outside that are kind of amorphous and hard to identify, but often, you know, very, very powerful, whether you want to talk about, you know, gladio and the, in the, in the, Soviet control, the Communist Party there. You know, that's what you've seen in a lot of these countries, is that a lot of the chaos and instability is caused because they're being bide for. While the D.C. was unable to modernize Italy's increasingly outdated state institutions,

it nevertheless presided over decades of economic growth. The combination of communist and Catholic anti-capitalism made it impossible to introduce either American-style higher and fire labor flexibility or German-style economic discipline enforced by sophisticated trade unionists, but the D.C. had its own remedy. Every time wage rates were pushed too high, it devalued the lira to restore the competitiveness of Italian exports. Equally, the inability to make the state efficient was offset by the lax enforcement of tax collection, thus Italian entrepreneurs ill-served by an inefficient. state only had to pretend that they were paying their taxes.

First one and then the other of these practices came to an end once Italy adopted the common European currency, the euro, in 1999, prohibiting competitive devaluations, and since then its economy has stagnated with little or no growth and chronically high unemployment. Politically, on the other hand, Berlusconi's combination of A, economic power, his enterprises could offer very many jobs, consultancies, and contracts, B, media influence through the control of publishing houses, newspapers, magazines, and three television channels, and C, of course, electoral power through the votes he won by vigorous and well-organized campaigning, ensured his political preponderance from 1994 until 2011, even went out of office. As of 2015, the government of

Mateo Renzi is sustained by a parliamentary majority that still requires Berlusconi's votes. You know, it's interesting that it looks like you're about to at the end of a section. I'll let you get there. Yeah, and then we'll be done. You can close us out. Berlusconi's leading role in Italy's public life over more than 20 years has coexisted with the most blatant conflicts of interest. He was operating state regulated businesses, a long series of trials for tax evasion and vote buying, and numerous personal scandals arising from his delight in cavorting with young or very young or very young prostitutes.

Hence, his prominence in Italian politics is quite enough to describe the country's political order as fragile. He could not have survived in a fully functioning democracy that requires of its leader some semblance of discretion in their personal conduct and the careful concealment of significant conflicts of interest. Yeah, I was going to say in the case of de Gaulle, and even Berlusconi, I think you can speak of in the same way. You have two countries, you had two countries where, to go back to Max Weber's terms, where that legal rational authority system is breaking down or becoming decrepit and having to turn back to a charismatic leader who can come in and actually be the organizing principle for the state, because, you know, the machinery itself is, is too gumbed up. I think both of those, I mean, especially de Gaulle, you know, where they were very aware of the fact that they were, they were reaching this, this point of crisis in the government. And they turned to him almost in a, you know, Paraclan sort of Cincinnati's type type of way to be the guy

who has the weight who can come in and be that guy. And Berlusconi wasn't quite that direct, but, you know, just the fact that he stayed in power as long as he did in a system that had previously been so unstable and just changing out all the time, it kind of shows you that he played that role as well. You know, you see that very often where, and you see that in a person like Putin, right, for example. You know, people in the United States who watch regime media, you know, often have this idea of Putin in all dictators, really,

and even like historical monarchs or whatever, but they have this idea that, you know, these are like god emperors who can just, you know, order the top generals of the army to be tortured and executed with their families and nothing will happen because they're in charge and obviously that's that's never been

reality it's not reality. You look at somebody like Putin. Why is Putin there? Putin is there because he's the only person in Russia who all the different power centers, all the different interest groups that have and can wield

organized power. He's the only person that they actually trust to mediate and arbitrate their, you know, their conflicts of interest and their disputes. And they know that if they get rid of that guy, you know, maybe I want to take his place. You know, I'm from this interest group or that power center and I want to be Putin. I want to take his place. But I know that if I get up there, I'm not going to have the buy-in of all of these people and my power is not going to last.

And so, you know, that's the source of like real sustainable power in a person like that. It doesn't, you know, you can exercise all the force you want. But unless you're, I wouldn't even say unless, because I was going to cite Stalin, but that's not even really true. Like, you can exercise all the force you want. If you're not able to occupy that central position as the one that's recognized as like, if we get rid of that person, then we're all going to fall into chaos. Then you're not going to sustain your power.

Well, let me conclude by asking you a question. So say there is this, we're looking at an election this year, and one side has this plan, let's call it Project 2025. And anyone who, someone may have looked at it and been like, huh, this looks like it wants to dismantle the administrative state. with dismantling the administrative state in the United States and giving the power back to the three branches of government and basically like return even returning the power of the presidency to FDR levels, would that be considered a coup? I think Lute Walk would say no. But the sort of the level of almost.

The level of extraordinary action that would really be necessary to carry that out would meet the threshold. You know what I mean? Like it's something that would face so much resistance that you would have to be willing to override, you know, technical rules and legal boundaries in order to carry it out. And so in that sense, you know, I suppose you could call it a coup. You know, it's an illegal seizure of power, illegal exercise of power for the purpose of transferring. the center of gravity in the government from one place to another. So I guess you could maybe say that. Cool.

And by saying that, I'm totally okay with it. And they should do it, by the way. Yeah, I'm 100%. I mean, of course, you can be so blackpilled to the point where it's just like, just get some of it done, please. I mean, I'll be happy with some of it. But, you know, really, I think as Yarvin has said over and over again, if you're going to cross to Rubicon, you can't wait on the other side.

And you can't, you can't wade in the water on the other side. And if you do climb onto the shore, you can't set up camp there. You have to keep going. And the only way you're going to dismantle the administrative state is to keep going. So, yeah. Never take the black pill. Despair is a sin. Oh, yeah, man.

Tell everybody where they can find your work. I have a podcast, the Martyr Made podcast. If you like really a long-form deep-dive historical podcast, then that's the one for you. I do another one with my friend Jocko Willink called The Unraveling, where we talk more about contemporary and sort of more recent historical stuff, 20th century things, stuff like that. And I've got a substack. If you really, really like those things, you can come support me at Martyrmaid atsubstack.com. I appreciate it. Always good, Pete.

Keep pushing boundaries. Later, brother. There's so much rugby on Sports Extra from Sky, they've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end. Here goes. This winter sports extra is jam-packed with rugby. For the first time we've got every Champions Cup match exclusively live,

plus action from the URC, the Challenge Cup, and much more. Thus the URC and all the best European rugby all in the same place. Get more exclusively live tournaments than ever before on Sports Extra. Jam-packed with rugby. Phew, that is a lot of rugby. Get Sports Extra on Sky for 15 euro a month for 12 months. Sports Extra. New Sports Extra customers only.

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