TRIGGERnometry - Michael Malice - The Case for Anarchy

Episode Date: August 1, 2021

Michael Malice is a Ukrainian-American podcaster and author of New Right, The: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.PayPal.me/triggerpod https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisham. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is an American author. Michael Malice, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you so much. I'm very excited. It's great to have you on the show. Listen for anyone who's not familiar with you, as with all our guests, just tell everybody a little bit about who you are, how are you where you are. What has been the journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us? Oh, I got to do the work.

Absolutely. What is this? This is how the show works. We do fuck all. Just get you to talk. I win some contest at Burger King and now I got to go on the show and just do all the talking. This is always kind of odd. I guess I was, I'm the author of Dear Reader, the Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong-il,

which is a book about North Korea and pretty much everything you need to know about that awful, awful place. The book after that was called The New Right, which is a look at the kind of alternative right wing, including the alt-right here in the States that culminated in the Trump victory. And my most recent book, which is, I think, where we're here, is the anarchist handbook, which is anarchisthandbook.com, which is a compilation that I've written or compiled, to be more precise, when people kept asking about anarchism means of all the prominent anarchist authors in the last couple hundred years in one handy package. Well, you say the last book is why you're here, and certainly the case, but also your previous book as well,

the new right is something that will incorporate into what we talk about, very much in the spirit of getting you to do the work. One of the things we kind of chart on our show is the political landscape and how that's been evolving over the last many years. And there's so many aspects of that we could get into. But let me ask you a very broad-based question, which is what is happening in the West, particularly in the Anglosphere, in Europe? What would you think are the kind of focus points that we should look at? I don't know about should, but I mean, there's lots of things that are happening that I think are historically unprecedented. I can't speak that well to British politics, although I follow it fairly closely. What happens here, but we import your shit five years later or now two years later.

So you have it backwards. We import your shit. Thatcher led to Reagan, the Fabian Society led to the the council of what is it called the CEA, whatever it is here. So, Britain, Thatcher talked about this for books right behind me, that you guys are kind of the petri dish, and then American ideas follow suit. So I think it's actually Brexit, presage, Trump, you know, those are similar phenomenon. In the states, I think we are at a kind of, and this is always the case in politics, kind of an inflection point, because for the last four years, so much of the sound and fury was about Trump and reacting to him or supporting him and whatever his latest outrage of the day

happened to be, whether synthetic or feigned, now that he has left the Oval Office and his lockdowns are kind of receding into the background, I think among thought leaders, particularly the corporate press, there seems to be a little bit of confusion as to who the latest boogeyman is going to be, who they're going to rile up the masses against and create a little bit of confusion. as the villain of our time. They tried to do it with Tucker Carlson to some extent. Matt Gates was a congressman from Florida. And, you know, what happened on January 6th,

but nothing seems to be sticking. There doesn't seem to be the outrage and the frothing of the mouth, which was so entertaining to watch over the last four years. What we are seeing, I think, and which I'm doing my best, in my very limited power to escalate,

is an increasing division in American politics and an increasing inability of different political worldviews to have any kind of conversation at all. And I think the further that happens, and I think it's increasing at a fairly strong pace, the better it's going to be for everyone involved. Do you think part of the problem, Michael, is that we now conflate politics and morality? So, for instance, people on the left think people are not only wrong about their political opinions, but they also evil, et cetera, et cetera. I'm from the Einran school, so I don't understand how one can separate those two things.

I think the moral and the political are, by and large, synonymous. I don't really understand the claim that one can make politics without a moral basis for it. And I think what we're seeing in Jonathan Haidt covers this very well in his book, The Righteous Mind, there seems to be a sort of this crusade mindset, which I think is absolutely wonderful among people who are in a broad sense of the left and a broad sense of the right, which leaves very little room for moderates, which is something I'm very pleased with, you know, having an enormous amount of contempt for people who describe themselves as moderates. So having that kind of us versus them mindset, you know, as an anarchist is a very useful tool

towards breaking down political discourse, which inevitably ends up in loss of freedom for one group or another. Well, it's actually great that you bring up moderates and why you despise them. Francis and I probably consider ourselves moderates. What's wrong with being moderate? Someone who has no principles in theory is going to be a very little use in terms of putting forth their ideas in practice in a political sense, especially when you're dealing with an enemy class, which is inherently malevolent, and if they had their druthers, would engage in just the

worst kind of atrocities. So to stand up against that and to say, well, we need to hear both sides as a position I don't find to be tenable. I suppose it's a question of definition, and maybe moderate isn't the word. I certainly think of myself more as a centrist, and what I mean by that is I have very strongly held views and principles that are right of center and equally strong and strongly held principles that are left of center. But it's not an absence of principle. It's just my principles don't tend to match neatly onto the right or to the left. Do you see what I'm saying?

Yeah, but that just kind of makes you a bit of a gadfly. It doesn't mean you're in the center. I mean, so I don't, I think that word is, is just to me, just noxious because it just speaks to people who like describe themselves as kind of agnostic because they just don't want to address the issue at all. So I don't, what do you see as the efficacy of describing yourself with that label? Yeah. Your criticism is valid in that I am not satisfied with the label. I just, I know that politically I don't align with either left or right, and there doesn't seem to be another pigeonhole for me. Well, I can resolve that in one question. Do you think some people are better than others? No.

Well, better. Wait, hold on. Benza, do you mean more valuable or do you mean superior in one way or another? Do you think some people are better than others? At some things, yeah. Okay, so you're on the right. If you're on the right, you answer yes, and if you're on the left, you have to give a speech. So that is a litmus test that people can use to figure out if they're in the right or left.

He claims to be old school left wing. Can you debunk him live on that? Many people who are old school left wing would be regarded as the right. There's this very silly idea, which I'm positive you two don't ascribe to, which regard right and conservative and Republican and Tory as synonymous. You know, as people who understand world politics, to claim these three, these terms are interchangeable is very bizarre, but it's very useful for corporate media because if there's two choices

and right equals Republican or Tory in your case and left, equals labor or Democrat, and I dismiss one of the two teams, then in a binary fashion, therefore I've proven the other one, and things get very simple. Right and left are just complicated, nuanced positions, and they depend on what the axis happens to be, but this kind of attempt, and this is also done in political parties as well, to reduce it to, you know, I'm right, therefore I'm for Boris Johnson, who is identical somehow to Theresa May, is as if Sirkir and Jeremy Corbyn are the same phenomenon either. It's a very, or Tony Blair, it's a very wacky way of systemization. And if it is a very wacky way of systemization, doesn't that therefore

mean that our political systems are no longer fit for purpose because they don't represent us adequately? They've never been fit for purpose. That's the basic anarchist critique, that the idea of representation is inherently not just false but nonsensical. What does that mean? Elaborate on that, though. bit. Meaning that if I go to the supermarket, you know, I have infinite choices of what to buy to drink, breads, so on and so forth, but that I have to pick someone who's going to speak for me both for foreign policy and for, you know, health care and for taxation. And I don't get to pick the person I want because a lot of my neighbors think otherwise. This is a very

bizarre claim that if I vote for Tony Blair and I get Theresa May, then Teresa May represents me. I want Tony Blair to represent me. And obviously they didn't run against each other. So that whole basis, which were all, many people seem to accept, would only be regarded even as a hypothesis if we've been trained to believe this since birth in government schools. If someone came to you as an adult and say, if you vote for person A, but a lot of people vote for person B, person B represents you. It wouldn't even make sense as a hypothesis. Like, what are you even talking about? This person represents me. This is my lawyer. This is my accountant. This is my doctor. But when it comes to politics, it's a popularity contest that I really don't

have a choice about. It boggles the mind. And Michael, you make that point, and it is a perfectly valid one. So what is the alternative? Freedom. But what does that mean? It means that if you want someone to be your doctor, this is who you have as your doctor, and it is who you want as your lawyer, this is your lawyer, you can fire them at any time, and anything that is historically done through the state can either be done voluntarily or shouldn't be done at all. So you're leading us nicely down the garden path of the arguments you make in your latest book. I guess the question most people will be asking at this point, well, there's two ways. I can ask a stupid question, which is what most people would ask, which is...

Let's do it. Come on. Let's speak to the masses. Let's do it. It's not even about the masses, actually. I think the masses actually wouldn't ask this question, but a political journalist might. Which is, oh, you think there should be no state? And that's a very simple way of asking it. So let's do that first.

Yes. And what would be there in its place? What would be... What happens when you, I'm going to apologize to you guys across the pond, what happened when we abolish King George? Who's going to be the king? What happens if you leave the Catholic Church? Who's going to be the Pope?

So this concept that you need to have some kind of political figurehead to represent you, and this person is irreplaceable is simply true. No, but those two things, well, not those two things, but King George was replaced with an alternative power structure, one that you guys in America are still fighting to shape exactly as you, He was actually replaced with a power structure that was itself replaced in a coup in Philadelphia, the Constitutional Convention, where it was a conspiracy where everyone swore themselves to secrecy, lock the door and basically overthrew the government through largely peaceful means.

The replacement for any organization would be infinite people providing solutions and everyone else in a position to either use their services or not. Now this applies to security, this applies to healthcare, this applies to education, no matter what field you're thinking about, you want more freedom, more choices, which means more peace and more calm, happy neighborhoods. Are you tired of using bulky old wallets, giving you a bulge where you don't want it to be? My old wallet was massive, so it brought all the ladies to the yard, which was a huge distraction and got in the way of my esteemed work. on trigonometry. Ridge wallets have an incredible solution for you. This is mine, sleek, stylish and with an industrial look to it.

It can fit 12 cards with cash on the back using a clip like this one or a strap. We've got one for the whole team. I've got one. Francis has one. Even our producer, Anton, has one. But he's from Liverpool, so he flogged his on the black market. The great thing about Ridge is that they give you a lifetime guarantee, which means if you want, you can have only one wallet,

for the rest of your life. Ridge are so confident in the quality of their product, they will give you 45 days to test drive their wallets. That means you can get the wallet, use it, and if you don't like it, you can return it within 45 days. Because Ridge are such great guys. They're going to give you 10% off and free worldwide shipping and returns. To take advantage of this incredible offer, go to ridge.com forward slash trigger. That's ridge.com forward slash trigger and use our special code, which is, of course, trigger. Okay, so let me ask the slightly more intelligent question, which is I enjoyed your conversation with Jordan Peterson.

We had Jordan on the show a number of times. The Petersonian question here would be, well, human beings like many animals, or almost all animals, live in hierarchy. Sure. And unable to exist outside of one. 100%. So what would, hypothetically, what would happen

if you get rid of the power structures that exist? is another power structure would emerge, and human history would tend to suggest that the people who are most vicious, most brutal, most well-armed, et cetera, in that power structure would initially take over, and then that would probably settle down

into something a little bit more peaceful. Are you not just opening up the door to like a violent struggle between small groups, essentially, if you do that? Well, no, you're describing as the status quo. So in politics, the most vicious sociopaths are the ones who end up getting at the top. What you would have in a decentralized

system is when you have, like, for example, I don't know how it works over in Britain, but let's talk about here in the states and the police, right? If you have a police officer who engages in ways that is murder or just completely outrageous, and I'm not talking about a racial element, there's things, if you go on YouTube, there's just infinite cases of the police acting in ways that are just completely egregious. There's having a government monopoly on this, as having a government monopoly on anything means there's no accountability, there's no space to really make things better. Whereas, if, I have an issue with, let's suppose, Harrod's, right?

And I want to return a sweater. Harrod's policy is very clear. We have a dispute. I want to return the sweater. They won't take the sweater, or they will. It's resolved quickly and immediately. If Harrod's is, I go into Harrod's and I get beaten or tased for whatever reason, very quickly I can go on social media, and this becomes a huge scandal, even if I was in

the wrong. That's what's amazing. Thanks to things like publicity and dynamic communication, stories blown completely. blown out proportion and out of context, but the issue is very quickly the issue needs to be addressed. Whereas if you look, there's a case here in the States of this young man named Duncan Lemp, and they had a no-knock warrant on him. I don't know if you guys have that over there.

You probably might not. We're basically, the line I always had is even Stalin had the courtesy to knock. So they break down your door, and it was, I think, three in the morning. He was in bed with his pregnant girlfriend. They murdered him through the window, and they dragged her through the broken. and glass, they won't release the body cam footage and none of the police are having any consequences. At the very least, if you had choices in security, there would be some, there would be consequences for the perpetrator and you wouldn't have the ability to choose

another agency as the one providing security for you. And there would be immediate, huge social media and probably corporate media reactions to this consequence, as it is, having a government monopoly and having the corporate media very much in bed with them, which I certainly have in the UK here in the States, there are no consequence for everyone and everything swept under the rug. So that is one example of how if you did not have a government monopoly and had competition and choice, there would be more accountability and less murder by the state. Okay, Michael, so I'm going to push back with you. So let's say that works on a national level.

What about a global level? You're going to have countries like China. You're going to have, you know, countries like Russia, totalitarian regimes, who are interested in power, land grabs, et cetera, et cetera. Doesn't it leave you open and vulnerable to these types of nations? Who's, why aren't we invading Canada? Why aren't you guys invading? Iceland doesn't have a military.

Why hasn't Britain conquered it? And you, it's funny because you're too incompetent, mate. Well, actually, I would argue that because they live under the American umbrella of protection like the West. Right. Sure. So the point is there's just because governments exist on Earth does not mean anarchism is not tenable. I'm not arguing at all that for this perspective to work, it has to work globally. China will still exist, but I don't understand a mechanism if, say, Scotland,

right? If Scotland seceded from the UK and, you know, they just did not have a government, it became a stateless society, how is China going to be invading them or any other nefarious nation other than Britain itself? But you aren't advocating this for Scotland. You are advocating it for America. I think it would be easier to invade Scotland than to invade an anarchist America, don't you? You haven't seen a drink, too. By the way, I'm not many Scots, have you? I'm not even advocating this for America. I'm just advocating this for whoever wants it. And if it has to be a small Isle of White or whatever, that's perfectly fine with me.

I'm not someone who thinks, and, you know, historically, and this is something the West needs to appreciate. If you read comic book, if you read sci-fi movies, the guys who want to conquer the world are the bad guys. So I'm in no case advocating that this has to work and it has to work on a global scale. It is my view that if this does work, it'll certainly attract people towards that area. And if it doesn't work, okay, that area is a disaster. In neither case is there a claim that this is something that needs to happen or should happen on a global scale. And we've been touching actually on authoritarianism.

and this is something that I really wanted to speak to you about, Michael. So you've got your roots in the USSR, Soviet Union. You went to America, I believe, at the age of two years old. Constantin is from the USSR. My mother's Venezuelan. We've all experienced different forms of authoritarianism. One of the things that I found really shocking in the UK, I don't know as much as in America,

is just how willing people in this country were to submit to an authoritarian, let's call it what it was, an authoritarian rule, but not only that, also to snitch on their neighbors. Also, to be to have, you know, to feel this sense of paranoia in everything they did and everything they said. And the way we descended into that just seemed to happen practically overnight. Did that surprise you? It surprised me to the extent, but it's useful information. H.L. Mencken, who I'm sure many of your listeners are familiar with, was a great newspaper man of the early 20th century. And he had a quote which I've been using.

I think on a daily basis in the last few months, which is the average man does not want to be free. He merely wants to be safe. And I do think that's the case. I think if I'm an average person and I really don't want to stick my neck out and I want to be someone in a school of fish, that's not a bad strategy for me. You know, I'm going to put food in the table. I'm going to have some modicum of happiness. People like to claim that we're living in 1984, but I think Aldous Huxley's brave new world is a lot closer to the reality.

Instead of that hard authoritarianism of, you know, the Stalinist 1984, you have the soft corporate authoritarianism of come to the office, do your job, come home, you can watch crap television, eat crap food, but you're never going to have to be worried that you're going to have to think or that anyone is going to threaten you. Given that that's the case of a mindset of the typical human being, democracy on its face is something I do not therefore find palatable. It is, I have a different preference. Their preference is for safety over freedom. That's fine. I'm not interested in changing their mind. What I am interested in is creating mechanisms to make sure they are not in a position to use their fear of autonomy to have restrictions on my freedom.

And now how that would work out is obviously a very complicated long conversation. My gut tells me technology is the best way to make this happen. But I agree with you. But the other thing that I think is of interest that people need to appreciate. is what the lockdowns gave is a position for lowest status people to have ways to increase their status and to a certain dominance over others. Because I saw this on the subway. I had my podcast, so I could actually go into the studio on a daily basis.

And first of all, seeing the New York City Subways dessert in the middle of the day is something very surreal. It's hard to describe as a lifelong New Yorker. It's like being in a movie. And I'll never forget this moment. put on my Instagram, this was a year ago. It takes a lot for me to get offended, and this was really one of those moments. There was an Asian dude in his 30s. He was very Western in his appearance. This wasn't someone who was, you know, some kind of stereotypical immigrant or something like that. This older man, his 50s, white man, stood over him on the subway, literally screaming

at him, why aren't you wearing a mask, you're in America, so on and so forth? Just the most base vulgar, you know, xenophobia, and that's a word I don't think I've ever said before. or even thought about. And I realized, wait a minute, if you were really scared of this virus, which I can understand why you would be, why are you getting physically close to him? The train car is quite large. This guy's a jerk.

He's, you know, in his mindset, okay, he's a moron, doesn't speak English, whatever stereotype you want to ascribe to him, get away from him. But clearly the guy felt empowered and understandably so, given the context of the media and the culture, to scream and stand over in a very aggressive manner, another human being. So given that this is not an uncommon mindset, and we've seen it over and over where people were proud of themselves to turn on their neighbors and call the authorities on them, you know, I had this tweet where there was a huge reaction to it, and I stand by completely.

One of the questions we always had in the West, and I'm sure everyone listening to this has thought about at one point in their life, is how did Naziism happen, right? Were the Germans uniquely evil? Was this something where they just, you know, everyone just like, I got to get along or else I'm the next target? And what we saw is that once enough of the kind of decision

makers create an outclass or an enemy, very quickly everyone is champing at the bit to kind of join in on them. So all these people in social media love to think that they're the ones who would be hiding and Frank in their attic. But what we've seen is they not only would turn them in,

turn her in and her family, They would go on social media boasting that they kind of turned in someone who's the enemy and I'm doing the right thing and I should receive accolades for it. And that kind of scary aspect of the mindless malevolence, which is so common to the average person who does not really a thinking being is something I think more of us are increasingly coming to grapple with. Now, whether this is good or bad, I think is secondary. I think once you have data, you have to accept it as a given and make decisions across. as opposed to thinking in some kind of weird Leninist way, well, we can just remake these human beings and make them something they're not. All the evidence I've seen is to the contrary, that these are roughly the equivalent of barking dogs. And if you have barking dogs, you have

to deal with them as barking dogs. I'm not saying you put them down, but I'm saying, all right, we've got a lot of dogs in this neighborhood. What are we going to do about it? It's interesting because I put a tweet out exactly saying this very thing, what you've seen in the last 18 months is which side of the body? barbed wire fence you would have been on. Yes. Great metaphor. And the thing is, that is quite a scary realization.

So you just think this is what the mass of the people will, in this society, at least, and in your society, will lean to in times of crisis, particularly pandemic. We know historically people become way more, quote, unquote, conservative in times of disease. And you, but you at the same time, you've said, I don't know, whether it was a throwaway commenter, you mean you mentored that you're writing a book called The White Pill, in which you are, in which you're going to express how optimistic you are about the future. Yes.

But for many people, your version of optimism is a kind of perverse optimism, which is you are optimistic about the breakdown of the society we have because you expect a better one to be available down the line. Is that right? No, that's not why I'm optimistic. I'm optimistic because this book, I don't want to spoil. it too much, but when people, this is what I tell people, I go, when you look at Jeremy Corbyn, if you look at, you know, Nancy Pelosi, who's the House Speaker here, or you look at the New York

Times today or, you know, whoever your villain of the moment is, are they really a more competent, powerful threat than Hitler, than Stalin, than the newspaper people of, you know, 80 years ago when we didn't have social media to call them out on their malfeasance and depravity. So when you put it in those, when you look at these people who, the people who are on the side the angels, which I certainly regard myself as being, are up against. And to regard them as unstoppable foes, to me, seems deranged. Michael, sorry to jump in. Let me jump in, though.

The thing is, where I agree with you on that, that's absolutely the case, in my opinion. Where I disagree with you very strongly is that we are up against. those people. I don't think we are. I think we're up against the Jack Dorsey's and the Mark Zuckerbergs who are using the power that they have to shape the way society is going. Apart from Susan Wajicki, who we absolutely love, please don't shadow ban us. Yes, exactly. I'm sorry, but I don't think Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg, even if they were committed ideologues intent on spreading their, you know, adjutrop, which I don't think they are to the full extent at all, are anything comparable to, you know, the same.

Stalinist era and the CP, especially in Britain. If you ask me what Mark Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey's politics are, none of us know really fully. I would regard them as probably these kind of left of center, typical urban elites. But at worst, these people are nothing in terms of both their motivation and in terms of their vision of what a society should look like to be regarded as. What about the fact that they can take down the president of the United States and prevent him from speaking to the people that he normally speaks to, just like that?

I'm not in favor of any politician being allowed to speak. So I don't think that. But that's the glib answer. The serious answer is they are not in a position to completely censor the president. They're in a position to censor him. I don't even like to use the word censor here. But they're the position to block him from using their mechanisms to speak. but there's no shortage of alternative sources for him to have immediately been able to get his message out.

So even when they're doing their best, they can't do anything about it. Meanwhile, if you look at 70 years ago, their entire schools of thought, which were not only were completely invisible, but were regarded as heretical and just nonsensical to even discuss. So I think that, I'm not a utopian. I look at improvement and progress in a context. I think it's asymptotic, but I think that's what people, we have kind of recency bias, right? So we look at things that have they been the last 10 years. I'm taking the longer view.

And I think if people do take that longer view and compare things to how they were to look at the winter of discontent in Britain. I mean, in the 70s, you guys didn't have electricity. I mean, it's just bizarre. People don't realize because we have it so good now. even during these lockdowns, how bad it was basically yesterday. And we forget about it because we weren't there or because we're not living it. And that's just the 70s. That's even talking about the 40s and the 30s, which were just compared to today,

absolute nightmare dystopias. And do you think part of your worldview, Michael, is informed by your roots, as it were, the fact that you probably had parents, grandparents telling you about what it was like to live in the Soviet Union? So you have a point of comparison. I have the same. Constantine has the same. But the reality is for a lot of people growing up in America or the UK, they don't understand that because that has never been explained to them. Someone should write a book about that, don't you think? Yeah. So stay tuned. It'll be out within a year. That is something that you as a fellow countryman appreciate the complete naivete of people in the West of just how bad it can get.

You're from Venezuela. I mean, that's like the unspeakable horrors that are going there. We're just completely oblivious to it. There's this American idea. Like, let's talk about the Russian mindset versus the American mindset, right? I had a, I pay a decent rent. My rent's pretty low. It's below the market because I'm a good tenant.

And I had an issue with my sink. And every American's like, just go complain to your landlord and make him fix it. And I go, you don't, like from the Russian mindset, it's like, okay, if this costs him $100 to fix, he's just going to raise my rent by $100. So now I'm out $1,200 for the year instead of fixing it myself. This concept that authorities are self-serving and catching their attention is a bit like the eye of Soron is something that in the West, maybe until last year, it never even entered their heads.

But as those of us from Eastern Europe and from Venezuela appreciate, we do not have that perspective on authority as neutral or burnout. We, you know, inherently are like, all right, I may have to pick up this snake, but I have to be aware that it has teeth. Yeah, well, it's funny. You mentioned that you're writing a book about it. I'm also writing a book called An Immigrants Love Letter to the West, covering much of the same ground. But we kind of hijacked you when you were on the train of thought about your optimism for the future. And part of that, I hear you, if you take the long view, absolutely.

We live in better times than we have in the past. I guess the question I would have for you is one of the things we also know from the past is things can go from very good to very bad quite quickly. And a lot of the conversations we've had recently haven't exactly left us or our audience with the sense of optimism about the future. So why are you optimistic that things will get better from here rather than a lot worse, a lot very quickly? Sure.

So I think there's an increasing amount, certainly in America. I can't speak for Britain, although I would suspect it's the case. there where the population by and large, certainly the ones who are kind of intellectually curious, are just completely tuning out the adjutop coming out of corporate media and the universities and the politicians. It's no long, it used to be, even 10 years ago, Samo put forth an issue and then you spend time discussing the pros and cons of the issue. Now, increasingly, especially since Trump, you'll have some politician put forth an idea, and it's dead on arrival. There's not even a pretense that we're going to sit down and have this discussion.

Increasingly, people think that the other team, correctly, is not engage in good faith. A good issue on this is gun legislation here in the States. Obviously, we are much more liberal in that subject in the classic liberal sense than they are in the UK. But for a long time, it used to be all right. Democrats will put forth gun restrictions. The conservatives will argue about gun restrictions. Now conservatives are increasingly understanding, okay, this is just a nonsense argument. There's no such thing as an assault weapon, AR-15.

It's a standard weapon. So our answer isn't going to be to discuss things with you. We are going to put forth our bills. We are going to increase gun proliferation, which is the best answer to gun control. So at the end of the day, no matter what you guys are stamping your feet about, there's nothing you're going to be able to do about it. So that kind of change in tactics to, as opposed to we're going to argue issue by issue, as now we're going to look at your techniques, disarm them, and make sure you can't use them in the future. That is very, very healthy.

Anne Coulter, who's obviously a very controversial figure, who says things very provocatively, made a good point in one of her books where she said, if you're a Republican, the New York Times isn't calling you racist, you're losing. There have been school shootings in America. which is something that is just unspeakably horrible and tragic. And whenever these things happen immediately, the next day, you'll have politicians trying to leverage this to argue for gun control. And this used to be for the gun rights people,

something that would knock them on their heels. And there was a huge media campaign after there was a school shooting in Florida, David Hogg and all these kids, you know, regard as propaganda figures, we should listen to the children because somehow they know what they're talking about. Why they're in school, I don't understand if they're so wise, just like Greta Thunberg, but that's a separate issue.

And there was no, no, I was shocked back and forth on the gun rights issue. They're like, yeah, we're not having this conversation. And this is when the bodies were still warm. So to have that kind of change where, you know, they're not engaging good faith, they're not letting a tragedy go to waste, we need to take these people at face value, that's fallen away. And that, I think, is a much more effective strategy where you understand, all right, there's always going to be a group.

They could call themselves Republican. They call themselves Democrat who are interested in oppression and putting forth their cockamamie schemes onto the population. And there's increasing people who are like, all right, what mechanisms can we put in place that whatever BS they put forward in the future, they're not going to be able to do anything about it? Here's another great example. There was a lot of hand-wringing in 2016 about the American election.

Putin, Putin, Putin. the Russians, the Russians, the Russians. It was not legitimate. 2020, the day after the election, oh, this was the most honest election in history. Somehow, Trump in four years went from being complete corrupt to being a complete angel

when it comes to democracy. I don't know how they managed to talk out of both sides their mouth, but they don't care. It's whatever furthers their agenda at the moment. Increasingly, because many of these ballots were mailed in, which is open to fraud, I'm not at all claiming that there was,

systematic fraud. Different Republican states are putting mechanisms in place to restrict one's ability to vote. There's a, oh my God, this is racism, the clan, nazism, blah, blah, blah, but they're realizing you're going to be called racist Nazi clan regardless. We might as well change the rule so that we win because we're paying the cost of having this outrage and insults and deraiment. We might as well reap the benefits. So that kind of approach, is, I think, a big sea change from how things used to be 10 years ago. And that is one big reason for optimism, a change in strategy for those of us who are in favor of freedom, which I do not regard as synonymous democracy, of course, and opposed to what Menchus Moldberg calls the cathedral.

But, Michael, let me push back on that somewhat, because isn't debating ideas the very foundation of our society? And by debating ideas, don't you find that actually you find that actually you find that, find where the strengths are to your argument, you find out where the weaknesses are, and you find actually you truly find what you think, because you have your ideas challenged. And the second part of the pushback is the weapons that you use against your opponents will invariably you be used against you when they are in power? Yeah, sure. So first of all, I don't think the base of a society is good ideas, I mean the basis of a good society is peace. And I think the biggest threat to piece is the state. It is only the state that can wage murder in a systematic way. It is only

the state that can reach theft in a systematic way, both through theft and taxation, excuse me, and something called asset forfeiture. I don't know if you have that over there. Over here, we have something called asset forfeiture, which is a very bizarre legal system, which is, if I'm a police officer and I believe that you used your car, your house, your bank account, in furtherance of the drug trade, I can seize it. It is added to my budget. And then you have a to go through a whole legal process, although you don't have any money or a car anymore, to try to get it back. And as a result of this, the total of asset forfeiture has now in America surpassed the total

of all burglaries combined. So that sort of thing is something that has to change immediately. I'm not interested in having the right ideas or the wrong ideas. That is secondary to me in terms of putting food in the table, being secure in my person, you know, all these other things. I'm perfectly happy being wrong as long as I have like Maslow's hierarchy of needs being met. There's lots of people who have disparate ideas in every country. By definition, many of them are going to be wrong.

I still want them to have food and I still want them to be secure in their property and their person and their family. So that is much more primary than having the right ideas. Well, I'm sorry, in terms of the tactics, it is my view that the enemy class will use any tactics in its capacity. up to an including mass murder. And once you realize this is what you're up against, you have to start fighting back. So I do not agree for one second that the villains in either of our respective countries,

the only thing that is restraining them is their inability or they're not having a need at the moment to put these tactics into practice. But in terms of them, like kind of, oh, should we really do this? I don't think that's a concern in their part at all. They genuinely, if you watch those footage from Belgium, where there were people sitting in a public park and police on horseback were clubbing old men in the face because they're outside in a park. I don't think you can put anything past these people.

There was talk, wasn't there talking Britain of going door to door to make sure people were staying home or being vaccinated? There was talk of that here. It's just, I don't see how you could put anything past these people. So, Michael, I want to ask you actually a question. a longer question, but the short question is who are they? Sure. So it's the power structure. It's the ruling class.

So who is that exactly? Sure, it would be the universities. So the idea start the universities, which are literal monasteries of the progressive faith. They're promulgated and turn into kind of sleeper cells or shock troops via the media and entertainment industries where certain mindset is regarded as not as true. and just a given, and then it's promulgated further through government schools and public school teachers, and then it's implemented, if necessary, by the state via the police. Hey, Francis, think about all the times you've used Wi-Fi at a coffee shop, a hotel, or even at your parents' house.

Happy memories. Well, without ExpressVPN, every site you visit could be locked by the admin of that network, and that's still true even when you're in cognitomode. even when you're in incognito mode. Still happy memories? What? What's more? Your home internet provider, I'm talking Comcast, AT&T, whatever, can also see and record your browsing data, and they are legally allowed to sell it on to others. I'm so screwed!

You are. Trigonometry is now going to be a solo project. And that is why I use ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN is an app that encrypts all of your network data and reroutes it through a network, of secure servers so that your private online activity stays just that private. My career is over. Unfortunately so. Sadly, every site you visit, every video you watch or message you sent gets tracked on data mine. When you run ExpressVPN on your device, the software hides your IP address, so ExpressVPN

makes your activity harder to trace and sell to advertisers. Finish absolutely done for. And the best part is how easy it is to use. The app literally has one button. You tap it to connect and your browsing activities secure from your parents' eyes for answers. Please stop crying. My new suede shoes are getting wet. If you don't want to end up like me and stop your parents from protecting your privacy,

go to express vpm.com slash trigger and get three extra months for free. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash trigger. Go to expressvpn.com slash trigger to learn more. So coming back then to what you were saying about your reasons for optimism, which is if I can translate it correctly and do correct me if I get it wrong, is the left? Can I say that? The left has been using certain tactics against the right,

which is calling them names. You're frowning. I don't like that expression, the left. Right. Because there are many people who we would all agree, are on the left who are amazing human beings, who maybe I disagree with an issue or that, but who would be first and foremost to be fighting these things. So I don't think this is a very kind of boomer conservative mindset, which I'm not saying

you guys hold. No, we're not. The left is a monolith, which is just historically and worldwide, just... Right. So, yeah, exactly. And it's always a struggle when talking about these issues because you're trying to speak to to the way the conversation is being had at the moment. So that side, are they progressives?

Who is it that's been using these tactics of calling everyone names? Sure. So with Britain, I mean, if it was just down to names, we'd be in a utopia, right? Can you imagine this is my goal? My goal is to have a free society where the worst thing someone can do is go up to you and call you the most horrible epithets, which is basically what I do on a daily base on Twitter. If that's the case, right?

And the worst thing someone can do is, you know, insult my mother and call me just a garbage person. They might be right. But at least we're living peacefully and civilly and no one has to worry about a knock on the door and the filth barging in. So what I specifically referred to in my previous book, The New Right, is evangelical progressive. Evangelical progressivism. I'm scared to say it because I'm going to invoke the eye of saron. And it's basically a totalitarian worldview intent on conquering every aspect of society, which does not regard as anything outside its purview. And I'll give you a good example.

If you look at, I talk about this and then you write as well, if you look at video games, if you look at sci-fi movies, right? Even places people go to escape reality, other planets, other dimensions back in time, is not safe to be outside their purview. They genuinely feel that every aspect of our culture, including our bedroom, is something where they are in a position to not only opine, which I can understand that. You can make the case for that. Everything should be up for discussion, but to impose their perspective on how to live. If this is what you are up against, you know, this kind of absolutist, universalist, totalitarian mindset, there is very little room for negotiation and you have to create tact. You're not going to show a creationist fossils and disprove their worldview. They're just going to take whatever evidence they see as furtherance of their perspective.

Right. I agree with that. So maybe aggressive wokeist is a better way to summarize. I don't know if you like that. I don't like calling it wokeist, and here's why. Because in Britain, at least, it has its roots in the Fabian society, which started in the late 1800s. And for those who don't know, their mascot was literally, look this up because it sounds like something like a crazy person is saying, a wolf and sheep's clothing. Because their argument is, all right, we can't have a totalitarian dictatorship voted overnight,

but what we can do is death by a million cuts. Little by little, we implement these ideas, and by the time we're done, we're going to have everything within the context of the state. Later, they were realized, you know, maybe if we're calling ourselves a wolf and sheep clothing, we're showing our hands, so they changed their mascot to a turtle or a tortoise rather.

But these people are playing the long game they have for 100 years. They've been after everyone's children for over a century. The whole point of government schooling is, in their words, to create good citizens, which is a euphemism for breaking young, independent minds, banishing critical thought from their psyche and making them malleable subservient and interchangeable with everyone else. They got the idea from Bismarck in the Prussian model where his idea was, okay, let's take schools and basically create an army starting from age five kindergarten. There's the reason why it's a German word.

So I think when people realize how long this has been going on and how systemic and deep these roots go, there's going to be a lot of epiphanies in terms of what the consequences of this have been. All right. So these evangelical progressives, as you call them, I was just coming back to the question that I'm still desperately trying to ask, but I appreciate the clarifications because they are important. They have been using these tactics against the rest of society or whoever it is that they're targeting them out. And now you are optimistic because some of the people who are, in terms of the examples that you gave in America,

identifiably on the right, the people who care about gun rights, etc., etc. They are now fighting back and ignoring the tactics and not, they're essentially not complicit in their own demonization anymore, right? They're refusing to play along in the stupid game. Right. Now, if I play that movie forward, there's two ways that ends, and I know you're a big advocate for one of them, either you get a civil war or you get a peaceful separation

of the United States into red states and blue states. That's a medium-term goal, yes. I mean, and this claim, this is a, so one of the lies we hear here in the states is that any kind of national separation has to be done violently. And they're like, can you give me one example of a country where allowed secession? It's like, yeah, Czechoslovakia, Brexit, Norway and Sweden. These were all done very peacefully and everyone lived happily ever after as a result. Brexit, of course, was not a smooth transition, but it was hardly, you know, violent or, you know, a civil war situation. got thrown, man. A lot of milkshakes went flying.

A little bit epithets were hold on Twitter. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, we joke. But I mean, the joke is important because one of the techniques they use is, look, as bad as things, if I had the choice between the status quo and another American civil war, I would probably choose the status quo because a civil war was just a complete nightmare situation, the loss of life and property. and recovery was unconscionable. So it behooves them. You know, it's kind of like you don't want your battered wife to leave. It's like, baby, you're not going to find anyone else who's going to love you as much as I do.

And at a certain point, you realize, oh, this is a lie. They're saying this because they realize I do have other options, and they have to persuade me to stay because they have to paint the alternative as full of just blood and destruction. And when you realize that there's plenty of contemporary counter examples, and who's going to do what, who has the will to do this, it becomes very clear which option is preferable. I'll ask a final question in this line of discussion, because this is interesting to explore intellectually if nothing else.

There seems to me the obvious contradiction in your argument is that you've got these people that you refer to who will use any means up to and including mass murder, and at the same time you think they will let half the United States go peacefully if it so chooses. That doesn't seem to square to me. So Al-Qaeda is a good example. Al-Qaeda would have no problem committing mass murder.

They just don't have the power to do so. So at a certain point, it becomes a matter of, do they have the will? Do they have the capacity? And the more people are becoming aware that this is a situation, the hardest going to be to pull off their bull crap. You had, in the American Civil War, you know, it was not at all. inevitable. What happened was the South had something called Fort Sumter, which was the North considered northern property. They had it barricaded, and then they fired a shot. We wouldn't have been in World War II, rightly or wrongly, and I'm not at all implying that it was the wrong

thing to do without the attack on Pearl Harbor. Previously to Pearl Harbor, this is a European war. We just did that with Woodrow Wilson, the Great War. Why are we killing ourselves for them again? We just went through this. This was a complete calamity. Then there's a strike, and it's like all-arm on deck. So it's not at all inevitable that there would be a violence at all or that if there was violence, it would necessarily lead to a large scale. It could be very, the Civil War, for example, is a good example. When it first started, the South, the Confederates, who I do not at all regard as the heroes, let me be clear, had an opportunity to seize Washington, take over the White House and hold Lincoln captive. They were so invested in their ideology of, not

national sovereignty, that they felt, okay, if we cross this line across this Rubicon, we're going to be hypocrites, so they didn't do it. If they had done it and kind of been a little bit hypocritical, the war could have been resolved very, very quickly. So it's not at all the case that if there is a conflict, that it has to be that long or that, and even if they win, look at it this way. Let's suppose there's like 100,000 people who agree with me who want separation. If they're put down with great force, which I, I'm terrified to imagine, that still wouldn't have to take five years. It could be resolved very quickly.

So it's all a matter of willpower, and that, I think, there's decreasing amount on behalf of some of these people, certainly among the masses. So, Michael, the question I want to ask is, what part do the corporations playing this? Because there's many people who argue the corporations are now far more powerful than any government. We can see this with regard to taxation. they essentially do what they want, how they want, whenever they want. They don't do what they want however they want,

because they can't come in your house and kill you. One of the tweets I had, which I certainly think, is that corporate America has done a far better job of spreading Maoism than the Chinese Communist Party ever dreamed of in the States. So when the riots were happening here, I tweeted out that they're about 48 hours from getting corporate sponsorship. It was within minutes when that ended up. happening. But I mean, you laugh, but growing up, we were all taught that corporations are basically

like mild Republicans. They're kind of right of center. Yeah, the fat guy with this cigar, whoever pops out to the golf course. Or like Mitt Romney, you know, or like David Cameron, right? Like, that's the corporations. It's this kind of vaguely right of center, doesn't want to ruffle feathers, you know, just wants business and everyone to get along and is kind of this milkedost mindset, what we're seeing instead is given that corporations are almost exclusively manned by people who are the products of these universities, which are spreading these depraved malevolent ideas. Once they're in place, this is Gramshy's March through the Institutions, then they are going to, without having to have anyone in their earpiece, organically spreading this kind of

ideology and philosophy. Now, does that mean we have to raise Harvard to the ground? No. Does that mean it would probably be a net benefit? Yes. Wow. So you think that because surely that we can reform institutions, can we not, Michael? Or create alternatives. Or create alternatives at the very least. That's the one. Okay. Go for it. Explain why we create alternatives and how and not reform institutions. I think some institutions are inherently irredeemable. And I think it's also useful in terms of morale to watch them raised and burned to the ground because that's a concrete

victory that people who are less intelligent can point to and regard as an accomplishment. In a very evil sense, if you look at 9-11, that must have been incredibly motivating for the terrorist class in the Middle East because North Korea, that's the book I wrote, obviously, dear reader, what they often talk about is we're a shrimp among whales that we're a tiny country and yet we're giving the finger both, to China and to the United States. And from their perspective, there's something to that. You know, they're punching way above their weight class.

So I think many institutions are inherently evil. They've been evil for a very long time. Their complicity in things like the Ukrainian genocide, you know, Hitler, Stalin is something they've never had accountability for. And I'm not interested in accepting their apologies this many years after the fact for what they've done. I'm interesting in watching them be destroyed and suffer in the process. And how do we create alternatives?

That's my Soviet mindset coming through. Yes, I can feel that. Yeah. But we talked about creating alternative institutions. How do you do that? I mean, how does anyone create anything? You have, I have an idea, I get capital, I put my shingle up, and then I attract people to my venue. Creating alternatives to universities is going to be increasingly easy because, for example,

I had a fan who, I'm going to show all of our age now. He sent me a contribution. He said, oh, can I interview for my school paper? I looked at his Twitter, the kid's in high school. I'm like, kid, I'm not taking money from you. And he goes, no, no, I have a hundred grand in the bank. I do e-commerce, right? So it's very hard to tell this person, you should go to university for four years. And if I'm an interviewer, a recruiter, and I have two resumes, this person went to Cambridge, and this kid in high school is making $100 grand a year because he invented a website, who would I want to hire? Now, the Harvard guy is going to serve, or the Cambridge guy, excuse me, is going to have technical knowledge and he's going to bring a lot to the tables,

no question. But in terms of being competitive, it is not at all clear to me, or I don't think to anyone, that it's clearly the Cambridge guy who you want to choose from, as opposed to, let's suppose, 40 years ago, it would have been absolutely clear where, okay, this kid's some young entrepreneur who made some butcher shop, this guy went to Cambridge, you know, if I'm playing roulette, I'm putting my money on Cambridge. There we go. I mean, Michael, it has been an absolutely fascinating interview. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

We've got a couple of questions for our local supporters after this, but our interviews always end with the same question, which is, what's the one thing we're not talking about, but we really should be? That's a great question. I'm not a big should person, but I think what the issue that I think is the least discussed is the increasing inability in European parliaments, which is going to spread to the states to form coalitions. You saw it in the Swedish elections.

You saw in the Italian elections, saw in the Czech elections. increasingly, we used to, and you're seeing in Germany now where the elections are going to be in September, and for the first time in German history, they're going to have to almost certainly have a three-party coalition, whereas historically it's always been one, and then under Merkel, she's had to have a coalition with the social Democrats. This inability to form a majority, well, Iceland's another example, a majority in terms of putting forth the state's vision, I think is a very healthy thing to the breakdown of having a government monotone. properly. Hmm. You're true to the cause all the way to the bitter red, Michael. Listen, it's been a pleasure chatting with you. I recommend everybody get all your books.

The new write I particularly enjoyed. And the Anarchus Handbook, is that, is that the one that's the latest one? Anarchisthandbook.com, yes. Fantastic stuff. Thank you for coming on the show, and thank you all for watching at home. We'll see you very soon with another brilliant interview like this one, Oror Show. And they always go out at 7pm UK time, 2 p.m. East and standard time. Take care and see you soon, guys.

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