Speaker 1: One day the state was there, and the next it wasn't.
Speaker 1: The cops and soldiers those who were left all pulled
Speaker 1: out in the night. Even now, months later, you weren't
Speaker 1: really sure why they left. The rumor mill called it
Speaker 1: a strategic retreat, brought on by heavy losses from insurgent
Speaker 1: attacks in the hills and the fighting in the capital.
Speaker 1: For whatever reason, the government considered your city dispensable. You
Speaker 1: heard their trucks that night, armored vehicles and tanks rolling
Speaker 1: out towards the highway. Most of the police evacuated with
Speaker 1: their families, scared of reprisals. You assume they'll be rehomed
Speaker 1: somewhere in regime controlled territory. The first morning after the
Speaker 1: government left was weird and kind of scary. You and
Speaker 1: your surviving neighbors all gathered together on the roof of
Speaker 1: your building to see if anything was burning down. You
Speaker 1: expected looting, mass of violence, some form of chaos. But
Speaker 1: that first day was quiet, and so was the second
Speaker 1: day and the third. It wasn't until the fourth day
Speaker 1: that representatives from the separatist side of town made it
Speaker 1: to your neighborhood. Some of them looked like the private military. Contrast,
Speaker 1: actors that the government had hired before, burly bearded dudes
Speaker 1: with huge black rifles and tattooed arms, but most of
Speaker 1: them just looked like regular civilians. They brought food with them,
Speaker 1: the first fresh produce you'd seen in months. Someone told
Speaker 1: you they'd converted a couple of the old bank buildings
Speaker 1: downtown into urban farms. You also heard they'd struck a
Speaker 1: deal with some of the separatists out in the country,
Speaker 1: sending them manufactured drone parts in exchange for eggs and potatoes.
Speaker 1: The food did a lot to buy your goodwill, but
Speaker 1: it came with strings attached. You were told, rather matter
Speaker 1: of factly that your neighborhood was now part of their
Speaker 1: municipal alliance, and you'd be expected to take part in
Speaker 1: a weekly local council. You figured it'd be boring as hell,
Speaker 1: like a forced PTA meeting, but now a few weeks in,
Speaker 1: you kind of like it. Most of you had been
Speaker 1: technically unemployed for a while, but now everyone had something
Speaker 1: to do, preparing food, keeping the lights on, scavenging equipment
Speaker 1: from abandoned office buildings. For the first time since the
Speaker 1: fighting started, some semblance of normal life returned. The power
Speaker 1: was more regular. Some of the cafes and restaurants reopened.
Speaker 1: A few people with projectors set up regular movie and
Speaker 1: TV nits. Now folks gather to watch old episodes of
Speaker 1: the Office or Marvel movies, rather than doing it alone
Speaker 1: in their apartments. There's less food than there was before
Speaker 1: the war, of course, but no one's starving anymore. Coffee
Speaker 1: is still a distant memory, but a few of your
Speaker 1: neighbors busted into an old energy drink factory and liberated
Speaker 1: several crates of the stuff, so at least you have
Speaker 1: caffeine again, And right as you start to feel optimistic
Speaker 1: about the world, once more, mortars start landing just a
Speaker 1: few blocks from your door. You and your neighbors take
Speaker 1: to the rooftops again. As the angry chatter of gunfire
Speaker 1: pops up once more, you're able to spot the culprits,
Speaker 1: not the government forces as you'd expected. It appears to
Speaker 1: be another militia driving up armored pickup trucks and captured
Speaker 1: police vehicles. You don't know who they are, but they're
Speaker 1: pushing into your town from the suburbs. With your neighbor's telescope,
Speaker 1: you could just barely make out the logo and blastomed
Speaker 1: on their vehicles, a single fiery cross war as health.
Speaker 1: That's obvious, right. We've all seen horrifying videos of air
Speaker 1: strikes and street to street fighting in places like Syria,
Speaker 1: Leveled cities and hollow wide refugees. It's undeniably terrible. Here's
Speaker 1: the thing, though, War doesn't always make everything worse, or
Speaker 1: at least it doesn't make everything worse for everybody. Do
Speaker 1: you struggle with depression, anxiety, overwhelming and almost crippling self loading,
Speaker 1: there is a shockingly good chance that war might actually
Speaker 1: come as a relief. In the years before World War Two,
Speaker 1: military planners all around the world realized that the bombing
Speaker 1: of cities by airplanes was going to be a major
Speaker 1: feature of the next war. As the British government watched
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany rise and rise and boil over its borders
Speaker 1: into Western Europe, they knew the Luftwaffa would soon fly
Speaker 1: over their shores, and that meant that war was coming
Speaker 1: to London. Aside from a few blimp attacks in the
Speaker 1: last war, no modern state had ever dealt with the
Speaker 1: problem of a dense civilian population being suddenly exposed to
Speaker 1: the inferno of total war. Most planners instantly assumed it
Speaker 1: would be a nightmarish disaster. People would be driven instantly
Speaker 1: mad from the bombing. They expected four million people at
Speaker 1: least would suffer from complete psychiatric breakdown in the face
Speaker 1: of the horrors of war. Instead, literally the opposite happened.
Speaker 1: Roughly two Londoners per week showed up in hospitals with
Speaker 1: cases of bomb neuroses. The people they had worried about
Speaker 1: the most, the chronically ill, and the fragile often reported
Speaker 1: feeling better than ever. According to Sebastian Younger's Tribe quote,
Speaker 1: psychiatrists watched and puzzlement as long standing patients saw their
Speaker 1: symptoms subside during the period of intense air raids. Voluntary
Speaker 1: admissions to psychiatric wards noticeably declined, and even epileptics reported
Speaker 1: having fewer seizures. Chronic neurotics of peacetime now drive ambulances,
Speaker 1: one doctor remarked. Another ventured to suggest that some people
Speaker 1: actually did better during wartime. The positive effects of war
Speaker 1: on mental health were first noticed by the great sociologist
Speaker 1: Emil Durkheim, who found that when European countries went to war,
Speaker 1: suicide rates dropped. Psychiatric wards in Paris were strangely empty
Speaker 1: during both World Wars, and that remained true even as
Speaker 1: the German army rolled into the city. In nineteen forty.
Speaker 1: Researchers documented a similar phenomenon during the Civil Wars in Spain, Algeria, Lebanon,
Speaker 1: and Northern Ireland. In Germany, where millions of teachers, in
Speaker 1: patricians and bakers and waitresses and children suddenly found themselves
Speaker 1: subjected to the burning hell of daily Allied bombardment, the
Speaker 1: same phenomenon rang true. Normal people with no military experience
Speaker 1: held up incredibly well under the horrors of conflict. Charles fitz,
Speaker 1: a captain with the United States Army Air Corps, was
Speaker 1: posted in England during the war. He saw a lot
Speaker 1: of this first hand, and it inspired him to put
Speaker 1: together a massive study after the war. By nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: fits in a team of n o RC researchers had
Speaker 1: collected testimonies for more than nine thousand people and studied
Speaker 1: every piece of data they could find on the mental
Speaker 1: health impacts of other large scale disasters. He used this
Speaker 1: data to put together a paper in nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: Disasters and Mental Health Therapeutic Principles drawn from disaster research.
Speaker 1: It opened with the line why do large scale disasters
Speaker 1: produce such mentally healthy conditions? Fits His conclusions, all rooted
Speaker 1: in hard data and impeccable science, found that disasters created
Speaker 1: what he called a community of sufferers. Rather than being
Speaker 1: made worse by the rigors of war, the violence and
Speaker 1: starvation and suffer ring people banded together with their neighbors
Speaker 1: to find food, dig survivors from rubble, and make sure
Speaker 1: everyone had a place to sleep at night. He concluded,
Speaker 1: quote as social animals, people perhaps come closer to fulfilling
Speaker 1: their basic human needs and the aftermath of a disaster
Speaker 1: than at any other time, because they develop a form
Speaker 1: of life highly compatible with these needs. This conception of
Speaker 1: the fulfillment of the utopian prototypic image of society helps
Speaker 1: to explain many otherwise inexplicable phenomena of disaster behavior. Time
Speaker 1: and time again over the decades, sociologists and disaster researchers
Speaker 1: have come to the same conclusions as Charles fitz In
Speaker 1: his book Tribe, which I can't recommend enough. Sebastian Younger
Speaker 1: quotes from a nineteen seventy nine paper by an Irish
Speaker 1: psychologist named Lands. He found that during the Belfast riots
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine and seventy suicide rates fell by
Speaker 1: and the paper Lions published on his research. He noted, quote,
Speaker 1: when people are actively engaged in a cause, their lives
Speaker 1: have more meaning with resulting improvement in mental health. It
Speaker 1: would be irresponsible to suggest violence as a means of
Speaker 1: improving mental health, but the Belfast findings suggest that people
Speaker 1: will feel better psychologically if they have more involvement in
Speaker 1: their community. Now, this is something you have to talk
Speaker 1: carefully about. The last thing I want to do is
Speaker 1: suggest second Civil War as treatment for all of our
Speaker 1: ongoing mental health issues. But there is a good chance
Speaker 1: that many people would find life during that conflict to
Speaker 1: be more meaningful than their current day to day existence.
Speaker 1: On May tenth, two thousand eighteen, NBC published an article
Speaker 1: based on Blue Cross Blue Shield data on the reach
Speaker 1: of major depression nationwide. The title pretty accurately sums up
Speaker 1: the information major depression on their rise among everyone. NBC
Speaker 1: interviewed doctor Laurel Williams, chief of psychiatry at Texas Children's Hospital.
Speaker 1: Williams explained, quote, many people are worried about how busy
Speaker 1: they are. There's a lack of community there's the amount
Speaker 1: of time that we spend in front of screens and
Speaker 1: not in front of other people. If you don't have
Speaker 1: a community to reach out to, then your hopelessness doesn't
Speaker 1: have any place to go. Now. I've asked you all
Speaker 1: to imagine quite a lot over the course of this podcast,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it will be a struggle for
Speaker 1: many of you to imagine working at a job you
Speaker 1: don't really love, living alone in a small apartment and
Speaker 1: feeling disconnected from many of the people around you. If
Speaker 1: you've ever gone a few weeks without seeing your friends
Speaker 1: or family socially because you just had so much ship
Speaker 1: to do, you get how easily that can contribute to depression.
Speaker 1: If that's your life, too much time alone at work,
Speaker 1: in a pervasive feeling that an awful lot of what
Speaker 1: you do doesn't matter, well, then our hypothetical civil war
Speaker 1: might present you with an opportunity for some meaning. You
Speaker 1: don't have to be a fanatic on one side or
Speaker 1: the other out of strong political beliefs you're willing to
Speaker 1: die for and Kiev, the Maidan protest camp was kept
Speaker 1: alive by a network of activists who provided food, medical supplies,
Speaker 1: and other perishables to the activists in the camp. I've
Speaker 1: mentioned this before, but I'd like you to imagine what
Speaker 1: it would feel like to be involved in something like that.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't need to support one side or the other
Speaker 1: in the civil war. You just need to have friends
Speaker 1: over there, hungry and scared and fighting against the state
Speaker 1: that feels less worth supporting every single day. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: would be terrifying, but it might be fun too. My
Speaker 1: friend Alexander, a young Ukrainian man whose prior relevant experience
Speaker 1: included volunteering to help set up burning Man at night
Speaker 1: after night delivering hot soup to activists manning barricades meant
Speaker 1: to block police from directly assaulting the main camp. He
Speaker 1: described it as immensely satisfying work, a clear and moral
Speaker 1: choice he could make in the midst of a confusing
Speaker 1: and frightening conflict. Alexander didn't set out to be a revolutionary,
Speaker 1: but on one of those visits out to provide soup
Speaker 1: to the troops, he wound up fighting against a line
Speaker 1: of heavily armored riot police. A decision to cook soup
Speaker 1: for his hungry friends led to him taking up arms
Speaker 1: against the state and ultimately helping to overthrow his nation's
Speaker 1: head of state. We don't imagine finding yourself gradually, through
Speaker 1: bits and pieces of minor activism, drawn into an armed
Speaker 1: and fortified camp of activists resisting the government. You may
Speaker 1: believe wholeheartedly in their demands, or you might just think
Speaker 1: the violence the police and soldiers have deployed against protesters
Speaker 1: is unconscionable. Regardless of why you'd do it, you probably
Speaker 1: would find it more fulfilling than another day at the office.
Speaker 1: But what if you're further from the action, in a
Speaker 1: town or city that doesn't wind up an open rebellion
Speaker 1: against the state. For a while, your life might not change,
Speaker 1: at least not for the better. Food would grow more expensive,
Speaker 1: of course, law enforcement would become more authoritarian. But if
Speaker 1: this thing keeps going, if separatist succeed in choking the
Speaker 1: food supply, if the economy collapses, if the state is
Speaker 1: pushed to the brink, you might actually see the government
Speaker 1: retreat from your life. There are only so many cops
Speaker 1: and soldiers, and only so much money in the government
Speaker 1: store box. After two or three years of escalating conflict,
Speaker 1: perhaps even less, you and your neighbors might find yourselves
Speaker 1: sitting outside the state's protection. That probably sounds terrifying to you.
Speaker 1: During the Blitz, Londoners still had the government functioning, trying
Speaker 1: its best to protect them. What would happen without that?
Speaker 1: We have relatively few examples that might tell us how
Speaker 1: a large group of modern day Americans would react to
Speaker 1: the temporary collapse of organized government. One of the few
Speaker 1: clear case studies would have to be Hurricane Katrina. If
Speaker 1: you just followed the mainstream news during that whole mess,
Speaker 1: you probably know it wasn't exactly the state's finest hour.
Speaker 1: Most reports at the time described the city after the
Speaker 1: hurricane as a lawless waste land. On September one, two five,
Speaker 1: the Associated Press wrote, quote, storm victims were raped and beaten,
Speaker 1: fights and fires broke out, corpses lay out in the open,
Speaker 1: and rescue helicopters and law enforcement officers were shot at.
Speaker 1: As flooded out New Orleans descended into anarchy. Today, news
Speaker 1: anchors described hotels is overrun with gangs. New Orleans police
Speaker 1: chief at a compass, stood before the cameras and told
Speaker 1: lurid stories of desperate gunfights between overwhelmed cops, dangerous gangsters,
Speaker 1: and mad snipers. For a very long time, it was
Speaker 1: taken as a given that Hurricane Katrina had brought anarchy
Speaker 1: in its wake, and actually that is sort of true,
Speaker 1: But the reality of the situation is that anarchy isn't
Speaker 1: always terrible. Louisiana National Guard Colonel Thomas Barron showed up
Speaker 1: at the Superdome five days after Katrina made landfall. He'd
Speaker 1: been primed by dozens of horrifying headlines to expect piles
Speaker 1: and piles of corpses. His convoy included a refrigerated eighteen
Speaker 1: wheeler and three doctors to work as a makeshift Morgan
Speaker 1: process the dead. He arrived expecting at least two hundred bodies.
Speaker 1: He found six. Four had died of natural causes, one
Speaker 1: from an overdose and the other from a suicide. No
Speaker 1: one had been killed inside the Superdome. There was very
Speaker 1: little evidence of any violence there at all. I found
Speaker 1: this in a great rite up by NOLA dot com.
Speaker 1: They interviewed a National Guard sergeant who commented on the
Speaker 1: stories of nightmarish violence in the wake of Katrina. Quote,
Speaker 1: I think it is bullshit. Don't get me wrong. Bad
Speaker 1: things happened, but I didn't see any killing and raping
Speaker 1: and cutting of throats or anything of the people in
Speaker 1: the dome were very well behaved. Orleans Parish d a
Speaker 1: Eddie Jordan confirmed four murders in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Speaker 1: This meant that nightmarish week was no more violent than
Speaker 1: normal week in the city. Those stories the police chief
Speaker 1: told about cops getting into multiple gunfights with gangsters that
Speaker 1: never happened either. Quote. Security was non existent at the
Speaker 1: convention Center, which was never designated as a shelter. Authorities
Speaker 1: provided no food, water, or medical care until troops secured
Speaker 1: the building a Friday after the storm. While the convention
Speaker 1: Center saw plenty of mischief, including massive loot in an
Speaker 1: isolated gunfire, and many inside coward and fear, the hordes
Speaker 1: of evacuees, for the most part, did not resort to
Speaker 1: violence as legend has it. There was quite a lot
Speaker 1: of looting, of course, both of food and alcohol, but
Speaker 1: Jimmy four, one of the few government employees who stayed
Speaker 1: in the Superdome, did not see a single violent crime committed.
Speaker 1: There was one report of a man trying to sexually
Speaker 1: assault a young girl one report, but he was beaten
Speaker 1: up by civilians and turned into the police. There were
Speaker 1: a number of gangsters at the Superdome, of course, but
Speaker 1: according to Major David Baldwin, they tended to help rather
Speaker 1: than hinder the rescue work. He noted that once the
Speaker 1: convoy arrived and started treating people and handing out supplies, quote,
Speaker 1: some of these guys look like thugs with pants hanging
Speaker 1: down around their asses, but they were working their asses off,
Speaker 1: grabbing litters, and running with people to the New Orleans Arena.
Speaker 1: That reality is very much out of line with what
Speaker 1: the mainstream media might lead you to expect. But the
Speaker 1: simple fact of the matter is that most people in
Speaker 1: most situations want things to be nice and reasonable. Even
Speaker 1: when resources are strained, when danger lurks at every corner,
Speaker 1: and when all familiar forms of order collapse, the majority
Speaker 1: of human beings are more likely to work together than
Speaker 1: turn into shrieking, violent madmen raping their way through post
Speaker 1: apocalyptic ruins. There is an extraordinary amount of data on
Speaker 1: this phenomenon. I found a study published by the International
Speaker 1: Institute for Environment and Development back in two thousand seventeen.
Speaker 1: It gathered data from disasters all around the world and
Speaker 1: showed Fitz's findings have not gotten any less relevant over
Speaker 1: the years. Most current research suggests that if you find
Speaker 1: yourself in the wake of a calamity, spontaneously organized civilian
Speaker 1: groups won't be more likely to help you out than
Speaker 1: the state, local, or federal government. Here's a quote from
Speaker 1: that two thousand seventeen report quote. In Kathmandu, after the
Speaker 1: April two thousand fifteen earthquake, local residents were the first responders,
Speaker 1: rescuing family members and neighbors from collapsed buildings, erecting temporary
Speaker 1: tent shelters for those who had lost their homes, providing
Speaker 1: food to survivors, distributing relief packages when these arrived, and
Speaker 1: raising funds online. In the first days after the nineteen
Speaker 1: Marmor earthquake in Turkey, which killed more than seventeen thousand
Speaker 1: people and caused widespread damage and disruption, state and other
Speaker 1: official agencies were initially unable to deliver or core innate
Speaker 1: humanitarian assistance. Relief and rescue activities were carried out mainly
Speaker 1: by neighbors, relatives, spontaneously formed volunteer groups, and some NGOs.
Speaker 1: In one survey, thirty four percent of earthquake victims interviewed
Speaker 1: said that they received most help immediately after the earthquake
Speaker 1: from family members and neighbors, as well as through their
Speaker 1: own efforts. Only ten point three percent mentioned help from
Speaker 1: state authorities. There is also evidence of such emergent activity
Speaker 1: in several countries after the two thousand four Indian Ocean tsunami,
Speaker 1: Surveys in Indonesia and Sri Lanka showed the predominant influence
Speaker 1: of private citizens and local communities and relief assistants such
Speaker 1: as rescue, burying of the dead, and provision of food, water,
Speaker 1: and clothing. In Sri Lanka and Thailand, almost all life
Speaker 1: saving and immediate relief activity in the first one two
Speaker 1: days after the tsunami was by local people from neighboring areas. Now.
Speaker 1: This report also noted that while media tends to focus
Speaker 1: on panic and looting in the wake of disasters, and
Speaker 1: emergency planners generally assumed that's how folks will react, that
Speaker 1: kind of behavior, while not unknown, is not typical. Quote
Speaker 1: groups and individuals typically become more unified, cohesive, and ultru
Speaker 1: whist dick in such events. It is also a myth
Speaker 1: that affected communities essentially are passive in disasters, waiting for
Speaker 1: help from emergency organizations and are unwilling to become involved
Speaker 1: in response work. Disasters put enormous strain on societies and organizations,
Speaker 1: but they also stimulate civilians to halt their everyday activities
Speaker 1: and take on new roles and responsibilities in relief and recovery.
Speaker 1: The desire to help any crisis is very strong. It
Speaker 1: is often a compelling need to do something. When do
Speaker 1: you think you'd feel compelled to do something? The answer
Speaker 1: to that question is different for everyone listening. Some of
Speaker 1: you would take to the streets as soon as the
Speaker 1: protests started. Others would be like my friend Alexander, sympathetic
Speaker 1: to one side or the other at the beginning, but
Speaker 1: only gradually dragged from providing moral support to actively resisting
Speaker 1: the state. It's hard to predict when any given individual
Speaker 1: will do when chaos and war up into the routines
Speaker 1: of daily life. I'm going to guess that most of
Speaker 1: you would not choose to take up arms, one way
Speaker 1: or the other. Most people in most countries during most
Speaker 1: civil wars do not take it upon themselves to fight,
Speaker 1: But past a certain point, there would be no staying
Speaker 1: truly neutral either, especially if you happen to reside in
Speaker 1: a part of the country where government control collapsed and
Speaker 1: or a rebel group took control. Millions of Syrians have
Speaker 1: already found themselves in that exact situation. Some group, like
Speaker 1: the Free Syrian Army or job At al Nusra would
Speaker 1: wind up in control of their neighborhood. Generally, constellations of
Speaker 1: loosely allied and often conflicting groups wound up running a
Speaker 1: city or a province, roughly equivalent to a state. Being
Speaker 1: militant groups, the rebels sort of had their hands full
Speaker 1: fighting against their dictator and against each other. In many
Speaker 1: parts of Syria, this left the responsibility for governing in
Speaker 1: the hands of the area's civilians. Enter the local councils
Speaker 1: next time. Going to quote from an International Review article
Speaker 1: on this phenomenon, quote, individuals have sought to provide basic
Speaker 1: needs and stability to their communities by creating local councils.
Speaker 1: Local councils mostly exist in rural towns, but have also
Speaker 1: formed around neighborhoods, in cities and at the governorate level.
Speaker 1: Estimates for the number of local councils in Syria vary
Speaker 1: from four hundred sixteen in late two thousand fifteen to
Speaker 1: four d twenty seven in early two thousand sixteen to
Speaker 1: four hundred four following the fall of Aleppo. According to
Speaker 1: a two thousand sixteen survey by the Omran Center for
Speaker 1: Strategic Studies of a hundred and five local councils and
Speaker 1: opposition held territory, fifty seven percent of local councils were
Speaker 1: formed through consensus and thirty eight percent were formed through elections,
Speaker 1: with lack of security and legal expertise cited as the
Speaker 1: major reasons why more elections were not held. This claim
Speaker 1: is supported by other surveys as well. The majority of
Speaker 1: these councils were created in two thousand, twelve and thirteen
Speaker 1: and go through restructuring on average once a year now.
Speaker 1: These local councils handled most of the day to day
Speaker 1: work necessary for keeping an area livable. Big of US
Speaker 1: an idea of how American communities might handle the retreat
Speaker 1: of the state. In some cases, councils and their work
Speaker 1: were funded by wealthy expats and foreign aid organizations. In
Speaker 1: other areas, councils became dominated or heavily influenced by elected
Speaker 1: officials who represented various rebel groups, from extremest Islamist organizations
Speaker 1: like r R al Sham to more secular groups like
Speaker 1: the f s A. Obviously Islamist Shura councils aren't the
Speaker 1: sort of thing we'd likely see in the United States,
Speaker 1: but in many communities, the most powerful non governmental organizations
Speaker 1: are churches. In urban areas, churches are often own the largest,
Speaker 1: most solid legal real estate in the area. They also
Speaker 1: tend to be the sort of buildings that military forces
Speaker 1: and extremists would be less likely to target from an
Speaker 1: optics point of view. On the benevolent end of things,
Speaker 1: it's not hard to imagine many churches and local religious
Speaker 1: organizations taking the responsibility for helping to feed and provide
Speaker 1: basic medical care to people in their area of influence.
Speaker 1: I can picture churches, particularly large networks of cash rich churches,
Speaker 1: as able to provide potential islands of sanity and compassion
Speaker 1: through the food shortages, electrical outages, and people hit are
Speaker 1: made homeless in the crossfire. But I can also picture
Speaker 1: things getting darker in some parts of the country we don't.
Speaker 1: Christian dominionists believe that the entire nation should be run
Speaker 1: by and according to the rules of a very specific
Speaker 1: subset of Christian Pentecostalism. Raphael Cruz, father of Ted Cruz,
Speaker 1: is one prominent American dominionist, according to a political research
Speaker 1: Associal Each report on the dominionist movement. Quote during a
Speaker 1: sermon at the New Beginnings Church in Bedford, Texas in
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, Rafael had described his son senate campaign
Speaker 1: as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy that God would anoint
Speaker 1: Christian kings to preside over an in time transfer of
Speaker 1: wealth from the wicked to the righteous. According to his father,
Speaker 1: New Beginnings pastor Larry hutch Ted Cruz is anointed by
Speaker 1: God to help Christians and their efforts to go to
Speaker 1: the market place and occupy the land and take dominion
Speaker 1: over it. Rafael continued, this in time transfer of wealth
Speaker 1: will relieve Christians of all financial woes, allowing true believers
Speaker 1: to ascend to a position of political and cultural power
Speaker 1: in which they can build a Christian civilization. When this
Speaker 1: Christian nation is in place or back in place, Jesus
Speaker 1: will return. Now, it's hard to say how large the
Speaker 1: dominionist movement is precisely right now, they mostly focus on
Speaker 1: gaining power in legitimate ways by election. But if legitimate
Speaker 1: power collapses in large areas, what then? I can't imagine
Speaker 1: Ted cruze taking up arms and ruling as some sort
Speaker 1: of bearded warlord. Although I will admit that premise would
Speaker 1: make a great graphic novel. But dominionists are heavily represented
Speaker 1: among the American militia movement. Power hungry adherence to that
Speaker 1: belief system would try to build their violent fiefdoms. Some
Speaker 1: of them would succeed. Now, if Sirious experiences any kind
Speaker 1: of guide, these extremist groups would probably have trouble exercising
Speaker 1: total control over a very large area, especially if they're
Speaker 1: engaged in regular struggle with the state. Many Americans would
Speaker 1: find themselves forced into the kind of devil's bargain. Millions
Speaker 1: of Syrians know all too well co operating with violent
Speaker 1: extremists in order to protect themselves from an even worse fate.
Speaker 1: This often means working with people who you know are
Speaker 1: doing something terrible just not to you, or it can
Speaker 1: just be sort of awkward and weird. I found an
Speaker 1: article on pbs dot com that included interviews with a
Speaker 1: bunch of Syrians living and participating in these local councils.
Speaker 1: One of these subjects, a fellow identified as Yasin Kasam,
Speaker 1: said this, there are members who are liberals and Democrats,
Speaker 1: and then the more moderate sort of Islamist as well
Speaker 1: has been involved, and then nationalists and ex bothists and
Speaker 1: so on, but in a way it's not been so important.
Speaker 1: In general, they're non ideal, logical bodies, particularly at the
Speaker 1: local level, which in a way looks like a way forward.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if one guy is a leftist and
Speaker 1: the guy next to him as an Islamist. They're there
Speaker 1: because one of them knows something about how to get
Speaker 1: the water system working, and another knows something about education,
Speaker 1: and they're working about practical things for the sake of
Speaker 1: the community. Now, the best case scenario, and the event
Speaker 1: that the state falls where you happen to live probably
Speaker 1: looks something like Rohava in northern Syria. Roughly three million
Speaker 1: people live in the region, and they manage their affairs
Speaker 1: with a system called democratic confederalism. At the local level,
Speaker 1: it looks sort of like the best case scenario with
Speaker 1: local councils. Their word for these structures translates roughly to
Speaker 1: commune or municipality. Three thousand issue of these councils handle
Speaker 1: basic services and security for most of the three million
Speaker 1: people in Rohava. These bodies do a lot of the
Speaker 1: basic grunt level work of what we rely on the
Speaker 1: government for here, but they cannot legislate. Higher level administrative
Speaker 1: functions are performed by the Northern Democratic Federation of Syria
Speaker 1: or in DFS, an umbrella organization created by the p
Speaker 1: y D or the Democratic Union Party of Syria. The
Speaker 1: p y D was originally a political party, although it
Speaker 1: was essentially formed out of aspects of a very old
Speaker 1: Kurdish separatist and militant tradition that existed in the region,
Speaker 1: just not in Syria. You're not here for Syrian politics,
Speaker 1: and I'm not an expert in them. The important thing
Speaker 1: is there are aspects of the Rahavan phenomenon that are
Speaker 1: inherently rooted in Kurdish culture and local history, and there
Speaker 1: are big aspects of it that could potentially be replicated
Speaker 1: in the United States Democratic confederalism. The ideology behind the
Speaker 1: ind f S and Rohava was cooked up by a
Speaker 1: guy named Abdola Oshlon Ashlan is by most descriptions, a terrorist,
Speaker 1: although he's one of those terrorists that an awful lot
Speaker 1: of people would rather call a freedom fighter. You can
Speaker 1: make a strong case for both. He's been in a
Speaker 1: Turkish prison for a while now, but he's been able
Speaker 1: to keep writing books. Ashlon did not dream up democratic
Speaker 1: confederalism entirely on his own, though his work was based
Speaker 1: partly on the ideas of an American anarchist philosopher, Murray
Speaker 1: book Chin. Now. Extreme participatory local government is the idea
Speaker 1: that undergirds Rohava. These communes contribute council members to coordinate
Speaker 1: functions on a higher level and manage the lives of
Speaker 1: millions alongside the region's military force, the YPG. The YPG
Speaker 1: or People's Protection Units, are the largest chunk of the
Speaker 1: Syrian democratic forces, who are the folks the US has
Speaker 1: thrown most of its recent military aid and Syria towards.
Speaker 1: One reason I find Rohava fascinating is that for the
Speaker 1: most of the Syrian Civil War, they haven't directly opposed
Speaker 1: the government, and in fact, they've received a lot of
Speaker 1: criticism from other groups in the area for working with
Speaker 1: the Assad regime at times. But I think Rohava represents
Speaker 1: the kind of movement that would have better odds of
Speaker 1: capturing the sentiments of millions of Americans than a hardcore
Speaker 1: communist or religious extremist movement. In fact, Rohava first came
Speaker 1: to world prominence and established itself as a power in
Speaker 1: the region when it carried out a desperate and ultimately
Speaker 1: successful battle against its local religious extremists. Isis most people
Speaker 1: listening to this would probably be more likely to find
Speaker 1: themselves swept up in a movement like this as opposed
Speaker 1: to something more extreme and initially ideological. If it started
Speaker 1: in America, it would start with a lot of people
Speaker 1: volunteering to keep their local communities safe. Not taking up
Speaker 1: arms against the state, but manning barricades and chef points
Speaker 1: to ensure bad actors don't enter the area and people's
Speaker 1: safety is respected. Coordinating with other neighborhoods to grow and
Speaker 1: transport food, pooling medical knowledge, and defensive resources in order
Speaker 1: to keep things as nice as possible while the government
Speaker 1: retreats and the extremists make their bids for power. It's
Speaker 1: probably not a huge stretch to imagine yourself taking part
Speaker 1: in something like this, at least is a short term thing.
Speaker 1: If you watched footage of the flooding in Houston in
Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen, you saw lots of examples of community
Speaker 1: members organizing search parties and gathering food and supplies for
Speaker 1: each other spontaneously. As I stated earlier, overwhelming evidence says
Speaker 1: this is normal human behavior in the face of any
Speaker 1: kind of calamity. Organization on a larger than neighborhood scale
Speaker 1: is just sort of a given if things last long
Speaker 1: enough that the state loses enough power. Most people don't
Speaker 1: live in areas where it's possible to grow enough food
Speaker 1: to sustain the population, at least not in the immediate term,
Speaker 1: although a number of urban planners have noted that the
Speaker 1: increasingly vacant big box stores that litter America's urban and
Speaker 1: suburban spaces could be turned into giant indoor farms with
Speaker 1: a sufficient amount of elbow grease. But in the immediate term,
Speaker 1: America's urban and suburban areas where most of us live,
Speaker 1: would be unable to feed themselves without extensive, wide ranging
Speaker 1: cooperation with their neighbors, including the rural communities that provide
Speaker 1: most of our food In the North and Northeast United States,
Speaker 1: roughly eighty percent of food is important areas like the
Speaker 1: rural Midwest in the Pacific Northwest would be less vulnerable
Speaker 1: to starvation, But any kind of conflict, particularly one that
Speaker 1: saw Central California's water supply throttled, even temporarily, would lead
Speaker 1: to soaring food prices. Urban and rural America currently have
Speaker 1: pretty extreme political divides, but both also have a lot
Speaker 1: of things that the other wants and needs. The benefit
Speaker 1: of a system like the one in Rohava is that
Speaker 1: it would allow local areas to handle their own ship
Speaker 1: and live their own way, while still cooperating on a
Speaker 1: larger scale to make sure food and goods get where
Speaker 1: they need to go. In Syria, where this system actually
Speaker 1: does work, albeit imperfectly, local communities there have still have
Speaker 1: massive religious and cultural differences. Political radicals who evangelize a
Speaker 1: shared far left, radically egalitarian ideology are able to coexist
Speaker 1: and mostly cooperate with deeply religious tribal communities of different
Speaker 1: races and religions. According to an Atlantic Council report on
Speaker 1: Rohava and the in d f S quote, the structure
Speaker 1: allows for some local autonomy, but within the confines of
Speaker 1: INDIFS control and SDF command. Essentially, the p y D
Speaker 1: and its affiliates have introduced an entirely new political system
Speaker 1: to ensure the security of areas they have taken from Isis,
Speaker 1: While the underlying socio political dimensions of these localities remain
Speaker 1: unchanged for now. The best chance for Arabs to gain
Speaker 1: political access within the Kurdish dominated structure appears to be
Speaker 1: to run for local councils at the commune level, join
Speaker 1: municipal civilian protection units, or join the SDF, which is
Speaker 1: increasingly recruiting Arabs. Revolutionary politics, particularly of the far left valariety,
Speaker 1: often rely too much on pie in the sky visions
Speaker 1: of complete social reorganization, the kind of thing that can
Speaker 1: only be achieved by a mass revolution an enormous top
Speaker 1: down state control see the U S s R. The
Speaker 1: reason I think the Rohavan model might be popular in
Speaker 1: parts of the United States is that it allows for
Speaker 1: substantial local autonomy will still getting shipped done on a
Speaker 1: larger scale. This model of economic organization doesn't require are
Speaker 1: everyone to read a lot of political theory. It's what
Speaker 1: we call a municipalized economy. Janet Beale, a political theorist
Speaker 1: who wrote a book on libertarian municipalism, explained it this way.
Speaker 1: Libertarian municipalism advances a form of public ownership that is
Speaker 1: truly public. The political economy it proposes is one that
Speaker 1: is neither privately owned, nor broken up into small collectives,
Speaker 1: nor nationalized. Rather, it is one that is municipalized, placed
Speaker 1: under community ownership and control. Could you organize the economic
Speaker 1: lives of tens or hundreds of millions of people this way?
Speaker 1: Nobody really knows, but it's worked for a couple of
Speaker 1: million people for several years so far, And in my opinion,
Speaker 1: the impulses that lead people to organize such as system
Speaker 1: are instinctive and basic enough that I could see big
Speaker 1: chunks of this country that are more inherently able to
Speaker 1: sustain themselves, like the Northwest and Midwest, and chunks of
Speaker 1: the South and Southeast embracing similar situations in order to
Speaker 1: make up for the retreat or collapse of federal power.
Speaker 1: There are people in the United States right now who
Speaker 1: are preparing for this world too. While there are dominionist
Speaker 1: militiamen preparing to fight for what they believe in, groups
Speaker 1: like Mutual Aid Disaster Relief have started building national networks
Speaker 1: dedicated to community self defense, making sure people have the
Speaker 1: things they need in the wake of hurricanes and tornadoes.
Speaker 1: Mutual Aid Disaster Relief has its genesis in a group
Speaker 1: called the Common Ground Clinic, which provided necessary medical care.
Speaker 1: In the immediate wake of Hurricane Katrina. Common Ground was
Speaker 1: a complex organization. There were stories of FBI infiltration and
Speaker 1: things got kind of messy. But as I talked about
Speaker 1: in the first episode, the more than ten years since
Speaker 1: this have led to a lot of growth and evolution
Speaker 1: in America's protest and resistance infrastructure. Mutual aid disaster relief
Speaker 1: is just one outgrowth of that. There are hundreds of
Speaker 1: people around the country right now who are learning to
Speaker 1: coordinate and communicate to make sure at risk communities have
Speaker 1: the supplies they need. It's a seed like the DOMINIONUS
Speaker 1: preppers loading a rs and carving crosses in the butt
Speaker 1: stocks of their rifles. It's possible neither of those seeds
Speaker 1: will sprout. It's also possible that both will rain but
Speaker 1: sto like a streak Anywhere match like a Streak Anywhere match,
Speaker 1: Like a streak Anywhere match, waiting for the sparker started
Speaker 1: like a strike anywhere match. They building condors while you sleep, Mama,
Speaker 1: up goes another as we speed my man and by
Speaker 1: them time you out. If she's my man. They ever
Speaker 1: placed every dead building on your street, Mama, Every single
Speaker 1: look the same to me. Mit sdiocrity, class, concrete and
Speaker 1: strong and happens privately. Better get in now before they
Speaker 1: price you at your privately or reinforcing doors, lay and teuble,
Speaker 1: love that lock and key. What's starting to light? Luxury?
Speaker 1: What's starting this taste like God? Really justus? Love ugly?
Speaker 1: Or he never just listened to you? How long in
Speaker 1: the street term lady, absolutely come from you. Women in
Speaker 1: Roy just came coming in. Then the voling play for you,
Speaker 1: get the violing stay in tune? What's strong gonna break
Speaker 1: your back? Boy? You turn your ass into something new?
Speaker 1: What's your thing gonna act? Boy? Until they take it
Speaker 1: all right back? I remember that, and I'm just exhausted
Speaker 1: from reading all of that. You can find me on
Speaker 1: Twitter at I right okay. You can find this show
Speaker 1: on Twitter at happen here pod, and you can find
Speaker 1: this show online at it could happen here pod dot com.
Speaker 1: Our music, as always, is from Four Fists