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June 26, 2018 61 mins

Teenage punks going through a phase probably come to mind when you think of anarchists, but anarchism is a legitimate political philosophy based on the idea that governments are unnecessary and do more harm than good. Could we actually live without them?

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everyone, we're coming to Salt Lake City, Utah and Phoenix,
Arizona this fall. Yeah, October, we're gonna be at Salt
Lake Cities Grand Theater and then the next night October
will be in Phoenix. And we added a second show
to our Melbourne show, right, that's right, a second earlier
show in Melbourne. So you can get all the information
for all of these shows at s y s K

(00:22):
live dot com. Welcome to Stuff you should Know from
how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
this is getting to be kind of normal, but it's

(00:43):
just us today, everybody. Jerry's fine, she's not in the hospital.
She's just checked out. She's not in hospice. No, she's
just been busy lately. So everything will be back to
normal soon. She she said, Guys, ten years is all

(01:03):
you get from me. I know, seriously, kind of since
that anniversary she's been just didn't care, checked out. As
I said, we're kidding, of course. Ish, but speaking of
not issues but is ms, let's talk about anarchism. Chuck, Yeah,

(01:24):
this one was interesting. I think I pitched this one
a long time ago. You never did it for some reason.
I think it just probably came at a time when
we're we just didn't have enough time to do it. Yeah,
I think you're right, But this this was interesting, um,
because anarchism can be a lot of different things. Yeah. Yeah.

(01:45):
I think a lot of people have the idea that
anarchism is anarchy, and that the whole point of it
is to just basically demolish all institutions, um, descend into lawlessness,
um disorder exactly where you just you just take what
you want and you know, you kill somebody and it's
fine or whatever. Um, that's not the point of anarchism.

(02:09):
That is the definition of anarchy. But anarchy is not
what anarchists are actually out for. There's like a couple
of threads in there that are the basis of that. Like,
it's not just a complete mischaracterization, but it's just so
off base that it might as well just be You
might as well just be talking about something totally different. Yeah,

(02:31):
And there are many many forms that anarchism can take,
and there are many schools of thought, um, and there's
no way we're going to touch on all of them.
But we're gonna We're gonna do what we do, which
is a nice overview of some of them. Yes, so
our apologies to all anarchists for what we get wrong.
But I do want to put a call out. Any
follow up info I am totally open for, so send

(02:52):
it our way, any corrections anything like that, Yeah, totally So. Um,
there are a few things. Like you said, there's a
lot of different varieties of anarchism, but there are a
couple of tenants that any variety of anarchists would agree with, Like,
this is the basis of anarchism, right, So anarchism we
should say. Also, it's like it's a political thought. It's

(03:14):
a philosophical political idea, and the basis of the idea,
no matter how you approach it, is that humans are
better off governing themselves then they are in creating lasting
institutions where they send people to those institutions to make

(03:35):
decisions for them. Right. So, the the power structure as
it exists is not doing us any vapors. Vapors, it's
even worse than favors favors and that a truly free
and equal society. And you know it dips into communism
and socialism here and there and we'll cover all that,

(03:56):
But that is sort of the goal, like you said,
just to down with these government authorities and elected officials.
It should be run by the people in full. Yeah, exactly,
And I mean it's it's really as simple as that, right,
I mean, that's the basis of anarchism. That you're you're
just you're better off without them, not not that not

(04:18):
that they're they even can be good. Most like died
in the wool. Anarchists will say, like, no, any artificial
institution that's created by humans to govern other humans is
necessarily bad. It um creates disorder, it creates chaos, it
creates it is run by violence, like they will point

(04:38):
out the whole way that the system is kept going
is through the threat of violence. Yeah. It's hard to
argue with a lot of this, to be honest, totally. Yeah,
it makes a tremendous amount of sense. Um. I think
really there are two things going against anarchism and practice today.
One the long standing image that was developed at the
end of the nineteenth century and beginning a twentieth century

(05:00):
that didn't do it any favors. That the image of
the terrorists anarchists, which we'll get to and then um
to the fact that there hasn't been any longstanding examples
of this to point to. But that's not to say
that there aren't examples of actual anarchy or anarchism I'm sorry,
in practice that have been successful. It's just no one's

(05:22):
ever been able to do it, like on a massive
national level yet, right, unlike the community scale we've seen
it and currently see it. Which we'll get to that
stuff too. But um, yeah, you're right, it's it's probably
too late with the world as it is not probably
there's just no way you could do that today. Well,
there's a lot of people who would disagree with you

(05:42):
about that. Yeah, sure right, you're like, okay, go do
it and they'll come over when you got it up
and running. But the word, a very word, anarchism is
Greek and its root anarchia, means without rulers or without authority. Um,
but this art, this article is pretty good. Actually he
wrote this one, did Kiger pat Patty Kaiger Patrick? Was

(06:07):
it Kreiger or Kaiger Tiger? The r is invisible? Okay? Uh?
But he points out that the aim is social change,
uh at its heart. M hmm. Yeah, that's another good point.
I've left that part out, Like that's like, that's all
that's ultimately the goal, and the point is it's like
you can do all this stuff, you can get all

(06:28):
the services that you get allegedly from government institutions, from
your friends and neighbors and community, and that that the
point of anarchism is to enact that change. Now. Don't
wait for it, don't don't like go petition for it,
just go do it and constantly be doing it to
make your society better. Yeah, and sometimes they'll depending on

(06:51):
where you're coming from with your group, there maybe a
little environmentalism thrown in, or a little even religion thrown in. Uh,
you know, there's other philosophy that are co morbid or
can become morbid anarchism, like like feminism is one that
they pointed out to which one feminism, And I ran
across that a lot that that there's a lot of

(07:12):
people that equate feminism and anarchism, as as feminism is
just in and of itself a type of anarchism because
feminists have a proven track record of just going and
doing being the change that they want to see in
the world, rather than waiting around for it or asking
for it. One example I ran across was um the

(07:32):
rape crisis centers of the seventies that sprung up because
the establishment just didn't take violence against women very seriously
and women set up clinics to handle this themselves. That
was a big time feminist move in the seventies. And
it is and it's heart, you know, constantly progressing socially.
That's an an anarchistic tactic. I guess, well, yeah, and it.

(07:56):
And it seems like depending on what um, how where
where you lay your head as an anarchist, you might
want to concentrate more on h economy. Other people might
want to concentrate more on the um, like how to
overthrow the authority. UM, I didn't see like it's it's

(08:16):
interesting when you look at like like let's say the
mutualism school where they're all about the workers controlling their
own factories, controlling the land, or the anarcho communist who
say no private property for anyone. It's like a big
giant commune and no one competes for anything. Like are
there are schools of anarchy where they tackle everything? It

(08:40):
seems like they're getting very specific. UM. I think because
these came out of like the minds of people who
had very specific views on this stuff. Right, Like you said,
communism and anarchism cross paths here there, and there's even
a variety of them combined, UM, because they I mean,
they do share some qualities, right, But the the idea

(09:01):
of um communism, Okay, let me play it like this.
Liberalism is the idea that people should be free and equal.
Communism is the idea that people should all have the
same access to everything they need, and that it's the
state that is meant to support that stuff. With liberalism,

(09:24):
it's the state that's meant to make sure everybody is
treated equally and everyone is free. Anarchism says, yeah, we
totally agree free and equal, we want everybody to have
everything that they need, but it's the state that we
disagree with you guys on. So that's the real distinction
between communism, communism, and liberalism and anarchism is that they
all kind of have the same ideal, which is freedom, equality,

(09:49):
equal access to everything, resources, that kind of stuff. But
whether or not there should be a state or you
need a state to to do this is the big
distinction between those, UM, And I think that's where the
kind of the narrow mindedness comes from on some of these.
That makes sense, thanks, I think so. Um, when it
comes to how to get rid of the current establishment,

(10:12):
I guess you would say, Uh, there are many schools
of thought on that one. It's called the anarcho syndicalists.
And I looked into this a bit more. This I
think many modern anarchists find this to be a bit
old fashioned. But this is the idea that uh, it's
called a direct action system where the labor unions affect
the change, and uh, they want to abolish the wage system.

(10:35):
And by by direct action, that means sort of what
you're talking about at the beginning, which is instead of
electing someone, even the head of a labor union to
go take care of something, we do it ourselves. Right.
That's like direct direct representation or direct democracy, I mean yeah,
rather than representative democracy. Right. And then there's so another

(10:58):
way of putting direct action and is where if you
like those rape crisis centers that feminists created in the seventies. Um,
if if you go and just create the rape crisis center,
as if there's no such thing as the state, you
just go take care of it yourself, that is inherently anarchistic.
In nature because you're just ignoring the state. You're just

(11:20):
going and solving the problem yourself. If you if you
went out and protested that the state needed to provide
rape crisis centers, you're you're doing the opposite of an
anarchistic direct action in that by protesting, you're petitioning the state,
and by petitioning the state, you're legitimizing its power. You're

(11:42):
saying you have the power, I'm asking you to use
it for this. With anarchism, it's like we're not even
recognizing that you have the power here. We're just gonna
go do it ourselves. Good luck with your your capitalist
or communist or whatever experiment. We got this handled ourselves. Yeah,
and there can you can go about it through means
of non violence or violence. There anarchism or is one

(12:03):
of those schools of thought where it's it's really all
over the map, from like violent revolution to hippie communes.
It's really interesting. Yeah, there's definitely like a pacifist um
anarchism for sure. I think that's actually from my understanding,
that's a significant portion of anarchists that think violent anarchism.

(12:25):
Actually it is still around. Like you see the black
block um at protests, which I read up on that
that definitely deserves its own episode at some point in time.
But you know, the people wearing like bala clavas and
um or masks of some sort, throwing Molotov cocktails or
breaking windows are dressed in all black. That's that's actually

(12:48):
not a group, that's a tactic of protests UM and
some of them are anarchists, but not all anarchists are
black block, right, There's a big distinction in that in
that in that sense, so there are an or kiss
out there who do believe in violence at least against property,
if not against people, but I really think that they're
in the minority, and that most anarchists believe in direct

(13:10):
action just going and doing it yourself or some sort
of peaceful change um, either within the system or just
outside of the system. Yeah, And there's a social theorism
journey Germany named Andreas Vittel, and he said he kind
of breaks it down into two main groups, which is
social anarchism and libertarian anarchism. Obviously, the libertarian anarchism is

(13:35):
all about the individual person um and make sure that
it just kind of takes it down to that person
level as far as freedom goes even at like the
expense of society, right where social anarchism is all about
the society, that's the one that leans more towards socialism
and communism. Yeah, so that's more. Yeah, that's more like
creating like a harmonious community that cares for itself, that

(13:58):
doesn't have any leaders um. The idea behind that is
that organizations will just happen. If you have a need,
people will just come together and solve the need, and
then the organization will just dissolve as as the need
is fulfilled. You don't have to create a permanent structure
to fulfill that need, whether it's there or not, that
people can be elected into and basically grift from. Yeah,

(14:22):
and not to jump ahead too much, but that whole
idea is kind of one of the founders of anarchism
and uh the mid eight hundreds in France, a man
named Pierre Joseph Pruton. That was one of his things
that he wrote in his book What his Property Is
That his feeling is that and one of his key
theories is that when this vacuum is created by getting

(14:48):
rid of the government institutions, it will just sort of
work itself out right, that people will take care of people,
and that that it's actually the organizations in government and
the instant threat of violence that is actually the problem,
not that people need to be kept in line by
those things. It's a radical idea and a big risk

(15:10):
that it will be like I mean, he even uses
the word spontaneous, like spontaneous order will happen. But again,
and I'm sorry to keep going back to the same well,
I don't want to use up some of the ones
down the line, but the rape crisis center is a
good example of that. There was a need in the
community and it was fulfilled and there's still a need.
So there's still around um, but there's nobody getting fat

(15:33):
and rich off of the rape crisis centers that's sprung
out of the seventies. Same thing with um uh protecting
uh uh lgbt Q. I think I P is that right?
I think, yeah, I'm sorry for everybody I'm leaving off there,
but I definitely know it up to Q for sure.
UM there there's there's a lot of violence against kids

(15:56):
like that who have been kicked out of their homes
and live on the street. So crisis centers have developed
to take care of them too, So I mean it
is there is actual, real life things you can point
to where people do this kind of stuff. There's people
who work at nonprofit groups. They don't make much money,
but they're there because they're trying to make their society better.

(16:17):
They're trying to make their communities better. Like that's a
real life example of of what this guy is saying.
What happens spontaneously, it actually does happen. Again, the question,
Chuck is could you administer hundreds of millions of people
like this? And the answer is probably not. But those
hundreds of millions of people probably wouldn't be connected in

(16:41):
any way, shape or form aside from the fact that
we're all humans. Um, if if there was no larger
federal government keeping everyone together, or even a state government,
you know, they would probably dissolve into hopefully harmonious communal bands.
That's the that's the ideal version of anarchism. See I

(17:02):
think that people would, uh. I think they might dissolve
into those bands, but I don't know if it would
be harmonious within the bands, are outside of the bands
or between them. I think between them. So I totally
agree with you, and I think this is kind of
an unspoken thing of anarchism at the very least as
as far as I whittled down to it. It's been unspoken,

(17:25):
but I'm sure they talk about it a lot. Um.
If you live in an anarchistic society or group or whatever,
like you, you've got to be able to back that up.
So that doesn't so the impression that I have is
like that wouldn't mean that you are violent, but they
would be more than willing to defend themselves against outsiders, right.

(17:49):
And there's actually a group in Chiapas um the Zapatistas,
which was an indigenous Indian movement in Mexico in the
nineties that's still around today. Them they were so remember
the guy with the face mask who smoked a pipe,
Commandante Marcos. He's still at it today. And there are
anarchist villages in Chiapas, Mexico that have been self sufficient

(18:12):
since the nineties that you would not want to go
in and mess with them. But they're they're they've got
it going on. They have equality. There are women who
are like commanders in their defense forces. Um, they have
their own schools. They they're set, they're fine, they're doing
just fine. But they're also heavily armed. Well, I mean,

(18:33):
did you ever watch the Wild Wild Country documentary? No,
I still haven't yet. All Right, well, we won't dive
into that, but uh yeah, I don't want to ruin anything. Okay,
let's take a break, all right, and uh and we'll
go watch that real quick together. Okay, we'll be back
in twelve hours and we'll talk about that famous anarchist
symbol in a bit of history right after this. Alright, dude, So,

(19:07):
anyone who's ever owned a skateboard, it's probably scribbled the
anarchist symbol on their notebook when they were twelve, uh,
not knowing what it meant. Uh. This has actually only
been around since about the nineteen sixties, which kind of
surprised me. Yeah, I guess I I didn't think of
when it would have come up. I guess I assumed

(19:27):
it was. It just came about the moment I noticed it.
It's like a youngster in the eighties. Uh. First proposed
by a group called Anarchist Youth of Paris in the
nineteen sixties. They needed to logo up and that was
very you know, kind of recognizable. It made sense. Um.
The black flag is also another symbol of anarchists dating

(19:49):
back to the nineteenth century. Uh. And of course the
band Black Flag, that's where they got there. Jam had
no idea about that one until today or yesterday about
the band. Yeah. Mean, I knew about Black Flag, but
I didn't know where they got their name. Yeah, and
you know, I think it means more than that to them.
But they definitely Uh. I don't know if they were
died in the wall anarchists, but they certainly didn't shy

(20:11):
away from screaming about it, you know, not at all.
God bless Henry Rollins. But the point of the black
flag from what did you say, the eighteen eighties, Yeah,
the point of the black flag was that it was
meant to be all the colors of all the flags
in the world. You know, if you put the presence
of all colors is the color black. Yeah, man, So
it kind of like melds them all together, and I

(20:34):
guess discredits all of them by doing that. It absorbs
them all all those pretty flags just divide us man,
melts him down. Make it black. You wow, you sound
just like black Flag, all right. So let's go back
in time a bit um too. Perhaps the origins of
anarchism and the Chinese philosopher Lao Sue who founded is

(20:56):
do we say it with a D Taoism? Okay, that's
what I thought, even though it spelled with the t uh.
And his whole jam was that people live in harmony
with each other, with nature. That's how we we get
to happiness, is to live in balance. And of course
in India, UM the Holy Men there it was espousing

(21:17):
some of the same philosophies of giving up property for
spiritual enlightenment. Uh. And then of course Greece you had
philosophers and Greece that would We're not big fans of government, uh,
interfering with what they had going on, which is interesting
rights specifically Zeno. Yeah, who is also going to go

(21:38):
on to um colonized Earth? Oh gotcha? X E n
you Yeah, I know you're just kidding. I knew the X.
I didn't realize it was a you. I was being
serious about the think it's I think you might be right,
but let me check my tattoo of my lower back
because oh yeah it does. Uh so weird? Why is

(22:02):
it in a whale tale? So? Zeno's whole thing too
was that if people are good enough, then we don't
even need cops and in courts, which is kind of crazy,
is it? Though? Well, I mean that's the whole thing
that we were talking about. Like, the whole idea of
this stuff working out is is not one person breaking bad,

(22:25):
because as soon as one person does, one person gets
a little taste of power, then it's corrupted. Yeah. Again, though,
I think that comes from the idea that the community
takes care of itself, police itself. I think the members
of the community would not be very happy about that,
especially with social anarchism UM, And I don't know what

(22:49):
they would do. I don't know if they would just
move and leave the guy out or cast them out.
I don't know what you would do in that situation.
There are a lot of prickly thing like that that
would that would you could only work out in theory now,
you know, although maybe it has happened in some of
the experiments that have gone on by now, but I

(23:10):
don't know. But I don't think that it would necessarily
spoil the whole system. You know. I have a pretty
dark cynical view of stuff like this. Now. Well, I
think I think i've seen that actually, um, in reference
not your cynical view specifically, but that that if you
do have kind of a dim view of humanity and
that you know there are we are generally dark and

(23:34):
generally greedy, generally all the bad stuff, then yeah, you
would probably not think that anarchism would work. But if
you have this idea that humans are genuinely positive, peaceful
people who just want to like be happy, that if
you remove these institutions, that would be allowed to shine
and and a lot of the problems would would come out.

(23:56):
Like one way I saw it put was um like, yes,
there's a lot of cheating in under under the capitalist system.
In democracies, it's just about any form of government, cheating
can happen. Right. The writer I was looking into put
it like, what a lot of these people, especially in capitalism,
are forced to do jobs that they don't want to do.

(24:17):
They spend the hours of their lives doing things they
don't want to do. How how would that behavior change?
How would their personality change? If it was just like,
go do whatever you want to do, man, no one's
telling you what to do. Go learn to farm and
make your own food, or go learn to juggle for
money and buy food. Who cares? Go do it? Would

(24:39):
that person cheat other people anymore. I I don't know. Yeah,
here's my thing. I don't want I don't want to
because I am a pretty positive person. Sure I know
you are, um, and I do think that people are
mostly good and you could probably assemble a pretty great
community by and large. But it doesn't take many, is
my whole deal of Like you get two or three

(25:01):
people in there and it starts to sour and they
get a little power grab and they talk another person
or two into it, and then that ruins it. So
I think an unpleasant minority could spoil it for a
group of otherwise, uh, you know, just delightful anarchist, right,
the happy kind right? So um, okay, so back to history. Yeah,

(25:25):
but because I think, well, we could have this conversation
like five more times and we're still going to arrive
at the same point. Like we just we just don't know,
we don't know what what would happen. It sounds like
what you're describing is the beginning of a civil war
in the middle in this little community. Yeah you know. Alright, So,
so like you said, back to history, we made it
as far as knew, and Zeno specifically, who basically was

(25:49):
the first one to at least elucidate the ideas behind anarchism,
which was maybe we don't need the state, maybe we're
better off without it, right, And then not a lot
happened until this seventeenth century. Yeah, and this is a
classic case of what did you expect to happen? When
in England these peasant farmers got a collective together. They

(26:10):
called themselves the diggers, and they said, not the duggers,
And they said, we are tired of this, uh, all
the turmoil that's going on here. We have a civil
war going on, and we're gonna try and live without
the government, and we're going to cultivate our own land
and start our own kind of radical group out here.

(26:31):
This guy named Gerard wind Stanley who was the founder.
He was a Christian radical, and he put out a
pamphlet in sixty nine called Truth lifting up its head
above scandals and talked about power corrupting property and compatible
with liberty, all the kind of hallmarks of anarchism. And

(26:52):
what happens The community gets larger and larger, and then
the government and says whoa whoa, whoa, whoa whoa rush
that we can't have this at all, and that's what happened.
The government, the landowners. They yeah, and they they said,
you guys can't camp together anymore, go away, And the
diggers they disassembled. Um, we've seen it in our own

(27:15):
country anytime. Oh yeah. And I'm not gonna argue for
the virtues of branch Davidians or uh preppers like at
Ruby Ridge. But if there's one thing our government doesn't
like is people kind of hold up in their own
trying to do their own thing with it. Then they
have guns, right, they don't even like it when they

(27:36):
don't have guns. And look at Zukkati Park. Yeah, like
they were. They were basically flaunting urban camping laws and
they came in with the cops and riot gear and
busted the place up. Like they don't. These experiments, they
at least in the US and in a lot of
Europe too, they they experiments in an anarchism don't have

(27:58):
a very long lasting effect because they do tend to
attract a lot of followers, especially when they rise up
as they tend to when the ruling class is really
squeezing the working class. Um, when the when the conditions
that you know, the part of the whole reason we
live with the government, at least initially was because there

(28:20):
was that social contract, right, I'm gonna give up a
little bit of my liberty. I'm gonna give up a
little bit of my freedom, uh, in return for all
these services and protections that the government affords. Well, when
the government kind of stops giving you all that stuff
it's supposed to give and return for you giving up
your freedom and your liberty, you start rethinking how much
freedom and liberty you want to give up. And as

(28:41):
a result, when anarchists come along and start telling you, hey, man,
there's another way. Try changing your mind to think like this,
it gets kind of popular, and so as a result
of state comes crashing down on it and says, no,
stop talking about that. Everybody go to jail. Well yeah,
I mean that's why you have and we'll talk a
bit more about this. But things like the battle in

(29:02):
Seattle and occupy Wall Street. Who I don't know if
they do they are they registered anarchists? Do they have
their little cards? They had a lot of anarchists um
stuff going on, and there are plenty of anarchists there,
but I think they were so anarchists that they wouldn't
even say that they were anarchists, that would be too

(29:22):
much of a label. That's funny. I'm not making fun
of them, just you know. Uh So the diggers might
have been squashed. But about a hundred years a hundred
and twenty years later in England, those ideas sort of
lived on with an English philosopher named William Godwin who

(29:43):
once again someone rises up, probably stands on that little
box in Hyde Park and says that the government is
corrupt inherently, they are a bad influence, and we need
a decentralized society. And his whole idea was small, little,
small autonomous communities, which to me makes a little bit

(30:04):
more sense than trying to like win the world over, right, right, Yeah,
And he was the first one to really write down
like anarchist thought, right Godwin, Uh was he? From what
I understand, if Zeno wasn't, this guy was really the
first one, not necessarily the first to practice it, but
he was the first one to start writing down the

(30:27):
tenants of anarchism. But it wasn't until that guy Pierre
Joseph Prudon who you mentioned earlier, came along about fifties
sixty seventy years after Goodwin or Godwin um that they
for the world's first self proclaimed anarchist came along. Yeah,
and he came. He interestingly, he came from a very

(30:48):
poor family of peasants and won a scholarship to study
in Paris, so he had a little bit of his
feet in both worlds. When he wrote his book what
is Are you going to read the French versions appropriate?
What is property? Which in which is contained? The very

(31:11):
famous still with anarchist line, property is theft uh? And
that was one of the big catch phrases, And it's
still a big catch phrase with with the anarchism anarchist groups. Yes,
it's frequently a punchline and anarchist jokes. And I said property,

(31:33):
property is theft uh. And he was the one that
I mentioned earlier that he sort of had this radical
idea that if the government leaves um, spontaneous order would
would come about? Would it just emerge? So he also
he was he did believe that property was theft, but
too prudon. There was a distinction between say, um, somebody

(31:55):
owning their own plot of land that they cultivated, owning
their own home, owning something like that. He had a
big problem with people owning the things that workers used
to make wealth from right people extracting wealth from the
work of others and not actually doing anything themselves, which
is the current system that we live in now. It's

(32:18):
called neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is just basically using all the power
of the state, or a significant portion of it, to
further the interests of corporations of the people who extract
wealth from the people who actually produced the work. That's
neoliberalism at court. That also deserves its own episode from
us someday. And that was what Prudon, although this was

(32:41):
the word wasn't coined at the time, but that was
what he really had an issue with, and what basically
anyone even remotely anarchistic, has a problem with his neoliberalism. Yeah,
and he buddied up with a couple of important figures,
historical figures. One Karl Marx, who at the time was
just just a little German economists trying to make good.

(33:02):
He was not yet the father of communism. And then
another guy named Mikhail Bakunin, who was a disciple of
prudence but was also an anarchist. And he was different
in that he came actually from nobility in Russia, and
he was one of these who wanted to leave his
privilege behind. Yeah, he definitely walked the walk for sure.

(33:25):
Like he said, so long life of privilege. I'm going
to become an anarchist anarchy. Yeah he did, but um,
he is where anarchy takes a very dark turn. It's
it wasn't fully vested in him, but it, Um, it
definitely began with him because he was the guy who

(33:46):
basically said and he ended up splitting from I think
Prudon and Marx definitely marks. He was the guy that said, um,
there's only one way to to get this going, and
that is you have to smash the state. The state
is not going to give up its power. These bureaucrats
aren't going to be like you know what, you guys
are right. The people who own the capital aren't going

(34:10):
to give up their position, their wealth. It's just not
gonna happen, right, And the only way to deal with
this is to basically wage war against the current system
and then replace it with an anarchist system. And he
he definitely diverged from Prudon and Mars. I believe he's
a little more closely tied to Mars, so its Prudon

(34:30):
that he really diverged from in that respect. Yeah. Prudon
was the one that was like, hey, like, little by little,
we can just shift away from this government in a
gradual sense, right, And Bacuna was like, no, we need
to go and stomp in there and smash it with violence. Right.
Prudon was like, well, wait, let's all just smoke some
grass and talk this out. Uh yeah, yeah. But Counan

(34:54):
definitely had a little more. He was a little more
aligned with Marx because in the eighteen sixties they were
co founders of the first International working Men's Association association
that uh they tried with their jam was they wanted
to free workers uh in European countries from what they
considered to be exploitation, low ages, bad conditions, stuff like that. Again,

(35:19):
like the ruling class squeezing the working class, and anarchism
suddenly starts to get a lot more followers, and that
was a real big problem, um, at least for the
power in the West. In Europe and the United States,
anarchism got really popular for a little while, and specifically
the branch espoused by Bakunin and then later on after

(35:41):
he died, his follower Peter krop Cropokin. I think I
nailed that. Yeah, that was um really took up this
violent basically terrorism. There's no other word for it, um
anarchist terrorism. It was the tactic they took on. And uh,
Cropokin said, you could with a single attack make more

(36:04):
propaganda than a thousand pamphlets. And the whole point was
to start bombing everything, just just destroy the state by
creating foemen in chaos. And it was a really bad
time to just be the average person walking around America
Europe because you might get blown up by a bomb
that somebody planted on Wall Street or something like that. Yeah,

(36:25):
and actually, you're kind of right. I see now that
after they established that International Workingmen's Association, Bacuna and Marx
eventually clashed and sort of their ideas diverged as well.
So but but I think you were right. It wasn't
necessarily the violence thing. It was Marks thought that you
had to have this very strong state to control everything

(36:45):
and distribute it equally among people. And Bakunin was like,
you're nuts, Marks, You're nuts. Yeah, should we take another break? Sure?
All right, Well we're gonna travel state side right after this. Alright, So,

(37:11):
like I said, anarchism is starting to get a lot
of followers. But it's at like the most dangerous violent
period in the history of anarchism, and it like really
had a big effect, Chuck, Like it was very much
died in the wold terrorism, bomb making, bomb throwing, um
rioting assassinations. Yeah, get this, In less than ten years,

(37:40):
anarchists killed the President of the United States, the President
of France, the Prime Minister of Spain, the King of Italy,
and the Empress of Austria Hungary in ten years. Like
that's just unimaginable. Um, And so the state quite understandably said, um,
we're going to crack it out on you anarchists, and

(38:03):
the United States in particular was was successful with the
earliest by jail ing um anarchists, jailing immigrants. They really
overreached and said, you know a lot of anarchists are immigrants,
so he's gonna start jailing immigrants that we even suspect
their anarchists. Um. There was a riot previous to that

(38:24):
in the nineteenth century in Chicago, the Haymarket, right, the
very famous one. Yeah, the uh man, this has got
a lot of tangential shows. We maybe should do one
on the Haymarket affair in general, but this cops came
in to break up a meeting and anarchists meeting in
Chicago and Haymarket Square. A bomb was thrown. Uh, there

(38:47):
were riots that happened. Six cops and a bunch of
other people died. And even though they never fingered the
actual bomb thrower, they just went in there and basically said,
all right, you eight are very prominent anarchists, so we're
going to convict you all of this murder. Of these
murders and um, I believe there was what four of

(39:09):
them were actually hanged, Yeah, and it was that was
just completely corrupt justice wise, like those guys were ever
Actually they had not thrown a bomb, they hadn't created
a bomb. They were they were just scapegoats that were
hung because they were anarchist leaders. And they think that
probably it was a paid agent provocateur from the other side,

(39:32):
possibly like one of the pinkered and detectives who were
also super active. That is the I don't know if
it's the predominant view, but I've heard that plenty of places.
Um that that is a real possibility, that it wasn't
even an anarchist, that this was an anarchist meeting and
this gave them the cops of reason to break it up.
It was the antifa. Uh, and then you talked about it.

(39:55):
President William McKinley was assassinated by anarchist Lee on Oh,
I would say, zol goes that's pretty good. Goes are
uh silent se z O l g O s z uh.
We'll just call him Leon and uh, yeah, he assassinated McKinley.

(40:17):
He he went to go and again he was another immigrant.
And it's of course they shouldn't have rounded up immigrants,
but it is interesting and that most of these major anarchists,
prominent anarchists, were immigrants. But of course it was a
time of immigrants too, for sure, so that has a
lot to do with it. But he went to meet
McKinley and like a public thing where there was like

(40:39):
a greeting line, and had a pistol in his hand
covered with a hanky, and McKinley reached out shake his hand.
He shot him once and it ricocheted off his coat button.
Shot him again and it lodged in his stomach. And
as everyone I don't know much about McKinley, but as
everyone like descended a on this Leon guy McKinley said,

(41:02):
go easy on them boys. Oh really wow. Yeah, and
he died of infection from the gunshot women. I think
less than a week or maybe nine days later, and
Leon was executed in short order. Yeah, and that's electric chair.
And I imagine it's not like modern day electric chairs
are great, but I imagine when a nineteen o one
was pretty brutal. I would guess, so five vaults for

(41:26):
five hours. Yeah, I know it took three zapps to
get them. So although I would guess, actually it's probably
it's probably even faster, I don't know. I could see
it going either way. Like back then they were just like,
well this we executed an elephant, so let's just use
that amount, right exactly, And it would just sometimes go
off by itself. Right. So there was one other thing

(41:47):
I want to point out. There was a steel strike
that you and I have talked about before. It was
in Homestead, Pennsylvania. And I don't remember what episode been
in the unions. Yeah, I'll bet it was because it
was a U. It was there were unions striking. And
remember there's like that whole anarchost syndicalism, which is basically
like using unions as the source of anarchist power. There

(42:08):
was one of these strikes going on and the Pinkerton's
showed up for that one. It was definitely Pinkerton's and
they killed like eight striking workers. So an anarchist named
Um Alexander Berkman shot the I don't even he wasn't
even the owner of the steel mill, I don't think.
But he was an industrialist, Henry Clay Frick, and he

(42:29):
was um executed, I believe. But aside from assassinating Frick,
he had the distinction of being the love interest of
another prominent anarchist, a much more prominent anarchist named Emma Goldman,
who we would be remiss not to mention. She was
an early feminist anarchist pioneer writer who was just a

(42:50):
just really laid a lot of stuff out. Her writings
are collected on the internet. But she was also UM
very much involved in the early movement are um female
controlled birth control? Oh interesting, yeah, which I don't think
she made an appearance in that episode, but we uh,
we definitely you can't talk about anarchy without mentioning Emma Goldman.

(43:11):
So she and Berkman were uh an anarchist power couple.
Pretty much. They were the Branchilina. Yeah they were, Is
that still think? No? No, no, they were the Tristan
Thompson and Chloe Kardashian of anarchisting him. Um. We we
also should mention Sacco and Benzetti. Uh, this was in

(43:34):
nineteen twenty, the too immigrant anarchists from Italy, Nicola Sako
and Bartolomeo Voncetti. They were they were for sure anarchist,
but they were by all accounts, wrongfully convicted of killing
a payroll clerk and a guard at a robbery in Braintree, Massachusetts.
In n and Um, this was a very big deal.

(43:58):
It was. I mean, I think like in nineteen twenty
h or maybe it was just after Nyod people went
to Boston Commons two in protest, and that's that's a
lot of folks in nineteen twenty to gather in support
of these two like anarchists, immigrants who people feel like

(44:18):
it didn't get a fair shake. Yeah. Well supposedly even
before they were convicted. The guy who was there when
it happened confessed to it and he was part of
I think the Morelli gang, a mafia group that had
actually carried out this crime. It was just that the
officials in this this area were like, we want to
get rid of these two anarchists. We'll just pin this

(44:40):
on them and execute them. And that's what happened. And
there was a huge that's just in Massachusetts. Bombs went
off in New York, Paris, Buenos Aires, UH in protests
of this execution, but the government was like, what are
you gonna do. They're dead now, yeah, executed UM. Many
years later, Michael Dukakis is a Belief governor of Massachusetts. Finally,

(45:02):
UH tried to try to right that wrong historically by
driving a tank down the highway in their honor. That's funny,
So chuck Um. The anarchism kind of died out there,
at least the very violent terrorist branch of anarchism died
out around this time in the twenties. A little before that,

(45:25):
it kept going actually fairly peacefully for a while in Spain,
and there were anarchists UM villages all over Spain right
before the Civil War. And the Civil War was the fascists,
who had assembled in Morocco and were supported by Hitler
and Mussolini, came pouring into Spain and managed to overrun

(45:46):
the anarchists. During the Spanish Spanish Civil War, so the
fascist one. They had a lot of help um again
from Hitler and Mussolini, and the Franco um regime took
over Spain. But for a little while there anarchists them,
not the violent kind, but the peaceful communal kind of
anarchism had been successful in Spain for a little while. Yeah,

(46:10):
And then years later in the United States in the
nineteen sixties, the whole counterculture sort of brought back, uh,
at least some of the ideas of anarchism, if not
outright anarchism through activism and even one of the groups,
a hippie activist group was called. They called themselves the
Diggers after that group from England. Um. The Anarchist Cookbook,

(46:33):
of course, came out in the early nineteen seventies, very famous, legendary,
infamous even cookbook. They gave recipes on like how to
make bombs and weapons and stuff, how to make drugs
from toothpaste. Yeah, all kinds of cool stuff. And you
know you've ever been to college. Someone at one point
was like, man, yeah, get the Anarchist Cookbook. Check this out.

(46:54):
We'll smoke some grass and read the Anarchist cook Book.
I was like you say grass like it's sixties seven.
I don't even think it was hip in sixty seven.
I think dork's have always said crass. But the guy
who wrote it, William Powell, said um later on, he
renounced all of it, tried to get it taken out
of print. But the publisher, of course, is like, you

(47:14):
don't know these rights, which is still making money on it?
That chuck is an anarchist nightmare. Sure it happened to this,
William under the thumb of like an organization making money
off of something you don't believe in anymore, right, But
that was originally your idea and your work. It's just
I'll bet that guy hasn't slept since. Uh. And of course,

(47:39):
once the Internet was born, some of these ideas started
coming back up because all of a sudden information could
be exchanged so freely, and um, people on the outskirts
of on the fringes of society who felt like they
didn't quite fit in and wanted to be an anarchist
could get in the chat room. Well well yeah, some

(48:01):
of them, But I mean that's that, you know, there's
a mistaking painting them with that brush like they're definitely normal.
People who you would not suspect their anarchists that are
actually anarchists. They have those views. They again they like
work in nonprofits, They work in the rape crisis centers. Um.
They that's what they do with their life. They um

(48:21):
they use old computer monitors rather than buying like the
latest one or anything like that. There's just like a
lot of different, I guess, lifestyle choices you can make
that are actually anarchistic within the larger society. And I
think there's a lot more people doing that than than
one might suspect. And again, it is, like you said,

(48:41):
in large part, because the Internet makes it so easy
to to go find these other ideas, and it's so
frequently and I think this is why I really enjoyed
researching this episode so much. It's so easy on the
Internet to go find a different way of thinking. There's
something really joy in finding a way of thinking that
you've never really thought about before, or seeing the same

(49:05):
things but in a totally different light. That's just probably
the greatest gift the Internet has given us. And and
this is this definitely falls within that that UM list. Well, yeah,
I mean some people say even that, like the rewilding
movement and living off grid at its heart is anarchistic. Yeah,
Aim and Bundy and his whole crew, they very much

(49:28):
denied being anarchists, but they were totally anarchists and still are.
They were one of the successful ones. Yeah. I mean,
there's probably a there's something attached to that word that
I could see some groups not wanting to be associated with.
But when they describe it, they're like, no, we're not anarchists.
We just like I want to live out here by
ourselves and hunt and gather and growing stuff and not

(49:50):
have a government over me telling me what to do.
They're like, yeah, you're anarchists, right, I just want to
reuse my oh an old computer monitor. Right, you're an
an anarchist, sorry, pal. Yeah. And then famously, also again
as we mentioned before, Zukkati Park and Occupy Wall Street
taking over um that park and just setting up basically

(50:12):
an anarchist commune. And it wasn't just anarchists. There are
a lot of protests, are a lot of different groups
with a lot of different agendas. But like they refused
to centralize, they refused to elect leadership um and that
I mean is at its core anarchy. Like they said,
our core our core tenant is anarchism, so it was

(50:34):
an anarchist experiment at least. And there's a really good
article in Al Jazera called Occupy Wall Streets Anarchist Roots.
It's by a guy named David Graber, who is an
anthropologist but he's also personally an anarchist, and he's really
easy to read, uh, and really does a great job
of putting out like what anarchism is. And that's a

(50:56):
that was one of the better ones I found of his.
So check that one out for sure. All Right. So
we've kick this around between each other here whether or
not this could work. But smarter people than us actually
put thought into this stuff and they write books on
it and articles in the Atlantic on it and stuff
like that. Um. And there are some examples you can

(51:19):
point to, because like you said, you can't really you
can't point to any large scale examples of this. You
can point to like small communities, for instance, in Denmark.
I've heard of this before, uh, Christiana. It's not a person,
but it's a place. It is an eight four acre

(51:39):
um some say utopia within Copenhagen that kind of popped
up in ninete when a bunch of squatters and hippie
artists who like to smoke grass took over some abandoned
buildings on a military base that was no longer in use,
said this is a free zone. We're not under your
authority den more Mark, uh, and more and more people came,

(52:03):
and because it's Denmark, forty seven years later, it's still
around and the government did not squash it. In fact,
the government said, you know when, why don't we just
sell you that land and they for below market value
and they were like great, yeah, so they took him
up on it, and there's now Christiana is a free

(52:24):
anarchist zone within Denmark. Could you imagine this happening happening
in the United States. No? And I think that's a
really good point, Chuck, because Denmark is known as the
model of representative liberal democracy, so they're like close enough
to the cusp of anarchism anyway that yeah, it could

(52:46):
happen in Denmark. But no, I like, that's that's not
going to happen in the United States. I wonder if
Danish government officials were like, geez, I don't know if
this is the best idea, but everyone's looking at us
and we are Denmark, right, we kind of have to.
Everyone's looking at us unless someone says no. Is anyone

(53:08):
gonna say no on record? Alright, fine, okay, fine, just
give us some money for it. Okay. Forty seven years later,
they finally spoke up. I'd like to check it out, man,
I bet you that's a fun place to go. Hang.
I'm sure it's pretty cool, and I'm sure, um it
said there's everything's covered in murals and everything all. But
that's pretty great. Um. One of the one of the
things that I found kind of interesting from this article

(53:30):
that was Somalia. Yeah, that actually serves as a an
argument for both sides of the coin, right, Like, a
lot of people point to Somalia and say, look, there's
your example of what happens when you don't have a
state running things. Because Somali's government collapse in and it
was never replaced. There's like local warlords, there's pirates, there's um,

(53:53):
there's extremists, there's religious extremists, um. And then there's also
I think clans and tribes and communities and groups living
in peace, and you you can actually point to the
living conditions today and say there are factors that are
better than it was before. Somalia's government collapsed. So yeah,

(54:17):
there's a lot of Sister's pirates, there's warlords, but there
are also like a lower infomortality rate. Um, the life
expectancy is longer than it was before the government collapsed. Uh,
there's more access to sanitation. And so if you're an anarchist,
you would point to this and say, actually, Somalia has
a lot of evidence that people can take care of

(54:39):
themselves without the government. That that there's the anarchism isn't
across the board worse than any government at all. That
there are some governments that are worse than no government,
and Somali is a pretty good example of that. Yeah,
because in Somalia's case that it was a corrupt dictator
in place, so conde ss were just abhorrent. Conditions still

(55:04):
aren't great. It's not like everyone's packing up to move
to Somalia. But like you said, there are literal facts
and figures that show that it is better than it
was in some ways under under this dictatorship, at least
really interesting. Do you got anything else? Uh, well, we
should mention Greece real quick, because Greece has been, uh

(55:26):
undergone a lot of really interesting changes over the best
fifteen years or so. Uh, and they have a lot
of refugees coming in from from Syria and a lot
of social services have gone under. Anarchists stepped in. Apparently
in Athens at least they took over fifteen buildings anarchists

(55:46):
did and turned them into shelters for three thousand refugees
and said that these unauthorized, unauthorized housings are better than
the camps that you guys are setting up government. Um,
their tear dorble, they're dirty, they're not safe. We're providing
food and medicine, and our places are safe, these centers
that we ever saved. So that's one kind of other

(56:08):
small interesting example. Yeah, still today, right, I don't know,
I'm not sure. I got to look into that. So, um,
I just want to sign off and saying like I'm
not espousing one thing over another necessarily. I think it's
up to each person to make up their own mind.
And if this caught your interest at all, I would

(56:29):
encourage you to go read more about it, because you
could spend the rest of your days reading about anarchism
and still not even get through half of it. But
I'll bet along the way you would develop your own
ideas about the whole thing, whether positive or negative. Yeah,
and at the very least, I hope we cleared up
some myths about what that word is, you know, because
I think it's a lot different than people think for sure.

(56:50):
And hey, if you live in Christiania in Denmark, send
us a note, um and send us an invitation. Yeah,
and I'm just come there one day and check out
what that jam is all about. I might retire there
one day. We could do a show there. That'd be awesome. Yeah,
like people for for free, that would be pretty cool. Well,

(57:14):
they could pay us in old computer monitors, yes, and
magic must rooms. Uh. If you want to know more
about anarchism again, go out on the internet and read
all about it. But you can't start by typing that
word in the search bar. How stuff works dot com.
And since I said that, it's time for listener mail, Yeah,

(57:37):
I'm gonna call this, uh a very polite way to
talk to us about how we talked about suicide at
various times. And this is at a time when just
this past week in real time, we lost Kate Spade
and Anthony Bourdain. They took their own lives and it's
you know, caused it's it's a big it's called a

(57:57):
big resurgence, and and people talking out suicide and how
we talk about suicide. Anytime someone a big, high profile
person takes her own life, it's going to be in
the news. So um, it's on everyone's mind right now.
So I want to thank Jared for for writing in
so kindly. Hey, guys, for I say anything. I want
to thank you both for what you do. Years long fan,
and can't tell you how much joy fulfillment you brought

(58:19):
to my life. After listening to the episode and free
to Carlo, I think I might actually have a way
to contribute to the knowledge sharing your show is all about.
In the episode, the topic of suicide was brought a
few times. I thought it'd be worthwhile to share some
of the most updated guidelines to how to most safely
talk about suicide. So he says this, uh, use preferred
language that has died by suicide or took his her

(58:42):
her own life. Don't say committed suicide. Because the idea
there is, if I remember correctly from another email, is
that committed indicates that the it is a crime. Yeah yeah, yeah,
that right, Yeah, from what I remember, And you know,
apologies for saying this. It's one of those things is
so ingrained as how you say it committed suicide, that

(59:04):
it's just hard to retrain my brain. Yeah, saying died
by suicide. It's it's tough, but I mean, we can
retrain ourselves to say that, and we're trying to, he said.
Also exclude details about method, location, notes or photos from
the scene. And then finally, don't try to guess or
in further cause of suicide. Simply indicate that suicide is

(59:25):
always caused by multiple factors. Yeah. Good points. Yeah, those
are all really good points. And I learned from reading this, so,
he said. He thought he passed along not as a critique,
but rather there's a way to share information with two
people who constantly seem to be doing whatever good they can.
Thanks guys, That is from Jared. Thanks Jared, that was
very nice of you. It sure was, um And I

(59:47):
got the impression from his email, and if not his,
from another person who wrote in to say very similar
things that the point of all that is to to
not um to not help any content agusness that it has,
because apparently it's it's very contagious. We need to do
an episode on that, but now I'm scared to death

(01:00:08):
about saying the wrong things. Agreed, but you know we'll
tackle it, okay, so uh. In the meantime, if you
what was his name, Jared, Jared Jared, thanks again. And
in the meantime, if you want to get in touch
with us, I'm at joshum Clark on Twitter and on Instagram,

(01:00:29):
and Chuck is all over Facebook these days. He's at
movie Crush Pod, He's at Charles W. Chuck Bryant, he
is at Stuff you Should Know? Right? Isn't that the
official one? Correct her? And then you can send us
all an email, including Jerry to Stuff podcast at how
Stuff Works dot com and it's always just go visit

(01:00:49):
us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should
Know dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how Stuff? What's that? Carm

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