Derek: 00:28

Welcome back to the Fourth Wave Podcast. In the last couple years, since having become convinced of Christian anarchism, it's been really interesting to me that my ears have perked up to hear Anarchy being talked about quite a lot. But it's almost exclusively talked about in a very particular way. And you should probably notice this too when I mention it, but you know, I constantly hear on the news or from other people or as I'm reading various books just talking about something leading to anarchy or, you know, something bad happening and anarchy would ensue. And this idea of anarchy and anarchism is always put in this really negative light to mean very specifically that chaos or disorder would come about.

Derek: 01:25

So, of course, it's always a bad thing when you talk about anarchy or when you hear anarchy talked about. And it's almost always in the context of the dissolution of governmental power or governmental structure. The main assumption here, of course, is very Hobbesian, right? Like this idea of the Leviathan, the need for a very strong governmental structure in order to keep chaos at bay. It is strong, violent power that is able to subdue all of, you know, all of these other more base, lesser people from developing into unstructured chaotic anarchy.

Derek: 02:09

And sure, the Leviathan might produce a lot of violence and not so good things in and of itself, But overall, that violence that it does is what keeps order and structure and an even greater violence of anarchy at bay. So by the Leviathan defining this idea of anarchy, it essentially defines anarchy as the loss or absence of itself. So power says, Hey look, if you're missing me, this is what you're going to get, this anarchy. Now that right there seems to be a little bit of a conflict of interest where you have the group in power telling you that this other thing which is them being unseated from power is this horrible, terrible monster. You know, Hobbes himself is telling you that there's this monstrous Leviathan that's ruling over you, but hey, you should want that monstrous Leviathan ruling over you because the alternative would be worse.

Derek: 03:16

And that's a huge conflict of interest for those in power to kind of say that you need them to remain in power. Now they might not be wrong about it, Hobbes might be perfectly right, but there should be a whole lot of questioning going on rather than what is kind of standard today and through a lot of history, which is the assumption that yeah, they're right, we do need this Leviathan. Because of this conflict of interest, we should really take a much deeper look at whether or not anarchy is what people tell us that it is. Now it reminds me a bit of the movie Rapunzel, you can tell I have kids, but Rapunzel is at least the more modern Disney version of it. You've got Rapunzel who is stuck up in this tower because this, like this person who calls herself her mother says, Hey look, you can't go out in the world, like there's all this that could hurt you and that that could hurt you and it's really, it's not what you think it is, like you need to stay stuck up in this tower.

Derek: 04:16

And this mother, so called mother, is really her kidnapper and she's somebody who stole her a long time ago when she was a baby because Rapunzel had this power to, you know, help her stay youthful or whatnot. And so the mother who has the power and who is controlling Rapunzel tells her how bad the outside is and how bad it would be to not be under her control. And there's this, there's the great song you should look up, I'll try to link in the show notes, but the mother's talking about how when Rapunzel tries to assert herself she's like, Oh Rapunzel knows best, right? And then in the end mother, the mother says, No, mother knows best. And it's a I think it's a great picture of this idea of anarchy and how it gets thrown around by those in power.

Derek: 05:06

Government knows best. Leviathan knows best, right? Telling you that the outside world without them would really be anarchy, be chaos and disorder. What should give you some extra pause here is if you know the last hundred or so years of US history, if you've listened to our propaganda season, if you've listened to our season on government, have gotten glimpses of how The U. S.

Derek: 05:35

Handles things. A great book to see this would also be called, I think it's Overthrow. I forget the guy who wrote Stephen something, I think it starts with a K. Anyway, I'll put that in the show notes. But you can see that over the years, The US has overthrown a whole lot of governments and most of them were communist or socialistic.

Derek: 06:00

Lots of great examples of this, lots in South And Central America with Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, and then you've got places like Iran or Cuba. And Cuba is one of my favorite examples because if you take a look at Cuba, they are like the poster child for how bad communism is in our hemisphere, at least as it's put forward by The US, right? Cuba is really poor and they, you know, they don't have the freedoms that we have and, know, they don't have the elections like we have the it's just not a good place, right? Well, you start looking into Cuba and you realize that they were on the side of some positive justice things like fighting for various African countries trying to get rights while The US was supporting Apartheid South Africa. You take a look and they've got a whole lot of doctors, their healthcare is actually pretty good, their literacy rate is really high and their life expectancy is pretty good and their infant mortality and mother mortality.

Derek: 07:11

Like, man, I'd expect them to be a whole lot worse if communism was as bad as they say it is. And then you figure out that why it is the way that it is that The U. S. Took control of Cuba in the late 1800s, early 1900s. They took advantage of them.

Derek: 07:31

They stole land from them. They were disadvantaging them and then they installed a dictator there, The US backed dictator who was horrible, which forced a revolution. You got Castro there and Castro is a smart guy and he looks around and he sees all of these other countries that have ousted The US supported vicious dictator and tried to get rights for their people, for the poor people, what ends up happening to those leaders? They get assassinated one way or the other. And so, he sees all of this going on and he's like, we basically, yeah, we can't let other groups, dissenting groups have like free speech and stuff.

Derek: 08:20

We have to kind of be fairly isolated and because I don't want to get assassinated because I know how The US works. And so, because of The US and all of their actions, it kind of pushes them to be more reclusive and it pushes him to be more violent or maybe more repressive than he probably otherwise would have been. And in fact, it's come to light that there were, I forget the number, but it's like 600 proposed ideas to assassinate Fidel Castro. There's a book on it, I believe I haven't read it, but there's some articles and books that talk about all the different ways the CIA had planned to kill Castro. So of course, he's going to be reclusive and of course, they're going be isolated but then on top of that, what does The US do?

Derek: 09:09

They don't let there be free trade. They have various embargoes and things on Cuba, something to the extent of like any ship that docks there and trades with Cuba cannot trade with The U. S. For like six months or a year or something to that extent. And so you look at all the embargoes and the things that The U.

Derek: 09:27

S. Has against Cuba and well, if you're on an island and you can't trade with people because then they wouldn't be able to trade with The US, well of course they're not going to trade with you. And if you have to be fearful of The US fomenting coups because they've done it in tens of other places, they assassinate leaders all the time, like of course you're going to create a state like Cuba is. And so for as horrible as The US has been, Cuba is doing pretty darn well in a lot of various metrics despite US negative influence. But what The US does is they say, Oh, see, look, that's what communism gets you.

Derek: 10:11

That's what socialism gets you. So when it comes to alternative forms of government and such, you should have zero faith in what The US Leaders tell you about how viable other forms are. Because all of these other smaller countries, which nobody's as big as The US in terms of influence and power and money, like all of these other smaller countries that try to form their governments, don't do them in a test tube. They do them in light of who The US is and all the ways that they've, The US bullies people, either through violence, coups, assassinations, but also as we've talked about before, through, you know, the like as exemplified in the book Confessions of an Economic Hitman, how they manipulate them economically. There's a great quote, I forget, I think it's in season nine on Government, but talking about The United States, One of the earlier episodes in, but where Thomas Jefferson has this quote where he talks about what they're going to do to the Native Americans and how they're going to, you know, basically economically manhandle them and undercut them through various policies and things to essentially force them to hand over their land.

Derek: 11:34

The point is, you just can't trust what governments, what empires are going to tell you about other forms of governments or what the world would look like if they didn't exist because they want you to think that you need them. It's in the interest of power to get you to fear alternatives. They want to present to you false choices and they want you to fear others. So, you know, I've been thinking, what if the government is not the dam holding back chaos like they want you to think? What if instead the government tends to be the creator of the chaos that this river of chaos that it produces and that actually builds up against the dam.

Derek: 12:23

And this thing that they call anarchy, this chaos, is really the product of government and empire and it's this river of chaos that ensues from the government, from the empire when the dam breaks. And so what you see with the fall of a government is not anarchism, it's the product that has been held back for so long by the dam. And what is this dam? Well, the dam like we've seen before is these bread and circuses, right? The government figuring out how to provide for needs to keep people appeased and how to keep people distracted to keep them appeased.

Derek: 13:10

Talked about how in Prudhon's book, What is Property? He talks about the Romans and how what they would do is if there were people who were unhappy, they try to appease them with bread and circuses and if that doesn't work, then you go to wars because then you can provide by taking from other people, by enslaving other people and that's essentially what The U. S. Has done. That's what empires do, not just The U.

Derek: 13:34

S, but what empires do, whoever's in power at the moment. They are going to end up taking from other people. The U. S. Has conquered lots of different territories and it used to be through land but in the last fifty to one hundred years that has come through economic leashing.

Derek: 13:55

And what's going to happen when The U. S. Falls? What happens when empire falls? Horrible things.

Derek: 14:01

Chaos ensues, right? You get all the people who are used to having leisure, used to having luxuries, used to having power, who all of a sudden don't and they end up grabbing at power and they end up trying to take it and they do the only thing that the empire has taught them to do which is to use violent force and to just claw their way. And so this violent power, this violent government, this empire teaches people that that's how you kind of handle things and when the structure that it does provide collapses because people see through it for what it truly is or it, like the sun, expends all of its energy, all of its social capital, all of its financial capital and it runs dry, it creates a black hole and that is a black hole of its own creation, not this bugaboo anarchy that is coming in and taking over. But true anarchism, the one that, you know, Elul and others would advocate is more of a mutual power. It's not this power over like a government is, this Leviathan that grasps that power and tries to lord that over other people.

Derek: 15:18

It's more of a mutual power, true anarchism anyway. It's kind of like a playground. You go to a playground and you observe kids playing a game and kids always have all kinds of games, you know, sometimes they play the normal tag but like sometimes kids are, they're so creative and they come up with these like new games. They're always coming up with new games. And somehow, all the kids on the playground or a bunch of them will agree to do something and they might kind of, modify rules as they go.

Derek: 15:49

And there might be some squabbles and things throughout the game, but they kind of all just play a game together and somehow make it work. And sometimes a kid gets bored with a game or sometimes a kid doesn't like the rules or thinks it's unfair and that kid leaves that group and just goes and plays on the slide instead of running around with the other kids or goes and plays on the swing. And that's fine because they don't have to all play the game the same way. They can do their own things and they can group if they want to or they don't have to. It's free association.

Derek: 16:26

Everybody has mutual dignity, mutual rights and can freely associate with who they want to or choose to not associate with anybody. Now of course, I recognize that we don't live in an ideal world. Things could probably be sort of like the walking dead. Some people are gonna group up and some groups are gonna recognize that, Hey, we're bigger than other groups and we can just take stuff. And so you can get groups that try to lord power over others and create violence and that kind of thing.

Derek: 17:01

And then that group maybe gets big enough and strong enough and it calls itself a government. I mean isn't that essentially what governments are? Just a bunch of warlords other people who've domineered others and decided that they're big enough to be able to call themselves a government and they can do that because they're big enough to fight off other domineering groups that call themselves governments. I mean by the logic of modern government, by the logic of the modern US, right, these big powerful groups, these Leviathans that provide structure and order, that legitimizes things like drug cartels, I mean they're pretty huge at this point in time. It legitimizes warlords like Afghani warlords, you know, some of their territories are significant.

Derek: 17:54

I don't know how big you have to be to be considered a government by U. S. Standards but you've got places like Andorra and whatnot that are pretty small. And we see that The US empires are no different. We know the horrors of the British Empire.

Derek: 18:08

We know the horrors of the US Empire. Again, if you've listened to our season on government and propaganda, all the horrible things. I mean, the nineteenth century, the twentieth century was, you know, one of the worst for The US in terms of the atrocities that we are responsible for. From slavery and native extermination in the nineteenth century to genocides and coups and the supporting of rebel groups that have just slaughtered so many people, there are tens of millions of lives on U. S.

Derek: 18:42

Hands in the last two hundred years alone. So the idea of mutual power, mutual dignity, all of that, that anarchism truly is, is that ideal? Sure. But is thinking that your government, thinking that your government is going to be beneficent, thinking that your government is going to avoid atrocity, thinking that your government that sees itself as a Leviathan that spends so much money on the military that sees violence as power, do you think it's a little bit idealistic to think that they're not going to be producers of chaos? Of course they are.

Derek: 19:23

And so my question isn't, what is idealistic? My question is, what is the ideal? If the right thing, if the good thing is mutual power and free association, even if I don't achieve that, If I don't seek that, am I not gonna lose my soul to give my soul to the Leviathan? Of course, if you're a US citizen or if you're a citizen of empire, whatever that empire of the day is, you know, it's really tempting to give your soul to the Leviathan, to put your hand over your heart and pledge to it and to sing songs about it and all of that and to think that it's good to have this myth of, you know, American benevolence, imperial benevolence. But, that ultimately is not going to be freeing to your soul, it's not going to be morally correct, it's going to produce chaos in the long run.

Derek: 20:23

It might not be something that you experience, it might be something that your kids or your grandkids experience with a vengeance as the blood of the oppressed and the exertion of power builds up the chaos behind the dam until that dam one day breaks. So, anyway, those are just some musings that I was, I've been thinking about over the past couple weeks and it was sort of more of an off the cuff episode and hopefully that format didn't throw you off too much and you still found it something that you could, that could help you think. That's all for now. So peace and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it. This podcast is a part of the Kingdom Outpost Network.

Derek: 21:30

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