Speaker 1: Welcome to It could happen here a show about things
Speaker 1: falling apart, and is for one final time this week
Speaker 1: about why and how things have fallen apart in this
Speaker 1: specific way. Um, I'm I'm I'm your host Christopher, and
Speaker 1: today with me I have Garrison. Well, Garrison, Hello, how
Speaker 1: you doing. I'm doing fine. We're gonna talk about something
Speaker 1: that's not fine. It's not fine at all, is in
Speaker 1: fact extremely grim and bad, which is part four of
Speaker 1: our series of deal Liberalism, i e. All of the
Speaker 1: bad things happened at once so in in in in
Speaker 1: a last episode, we talked about how throughout throughout most
Speaker 1: of the Third World or you know what was at
Speaker 1: the time known as the Third World, new liberalism is
Speaker 1: not really imposed by people voting for it. It's mostly
Speaker 1: imposed by either external forces via coup or by just
Speaker 1: the I M going okay, just we're running the country now. Um,
Speaker 1: but this this, yeah, We're we're gonna shift our focus
Speaker 1: a bit this episode with the people who were I
Speaker 1: don't know, unfortunate enough, misguided enough, decided that they hated
Speaker 1: each other enough to actually choose neoliberalism for themselves. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the sort of stories we've been tracing here
Speaker 1: on sort of a very broad arc is the reaction
Speaker 1: by Neil Bulls to kind of kind of compromise it
Speaker 1: have been worked out between labor and capital, particularly the
Speaker 1: US after sort of the open class warfare in the
Speaker 1: reteen thirties, and you know, they're essentially there's there's a
Speaker 1: kind of deal that's set up informally, which is so
Speaker 1: the we're working class will stop literally constantly going on
Speaker 1: strike and showing up the strikes with like enormous numbers
Speaker 1: of guns and shooting at people, and they will you know,
Speaker 1: stop trying to overshow the government in exchange, the state
Speaker 1: gives you welfare programs, the state will give you a house.
Speaker 1: And this is this is particularly after what we're too
Speaker 1: the Americans say, just you know, does this matter homeownership campaign?
Speaker 1: And you know, if if you're if you're, if you're
Speaker 1: you know, a union worker, particularly if you're a white
Speaker 1: man like this, this, you know, working working, working one
Speaker 1: of these union jobs will put you into the middle class.
Speaker 1: You can take vacations, you can have a house, um,
Speaker 1: you can get pensions. Your unions are legal now, which
Speaker 1: is the thing that like you know, hadn't happened before.
Speaker 1: And this is essentially, you know, this is essentially a
Speaker 1: kind of insurgency tool. Um. The goal of this is
Speaker 1: to stop people from you know, doing the kinds of
Speaker 1: revolts that were happening in at the dirties. But by
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies it's becoming very clear that this sort
Speaker 1: of the like can't it can't really be maintained because
Speaker 1: it's too expensive for sort of the capital states to
Speaker 1: maintain and trying to maintain both well. And you know,
Speaker 1: the secondary thing here is is, you know, okay, so
Speaker 1: this deal specifically goes out to white men right now,
Speaker 1: throughout the sixties and seventies, you get a bunch of
Speaker 1: other people who are not white men attempting to enter
Speaker 1: the workplace, attempting you get the same bargain, and you know,
Speaker 1: they're in a lot of way significantly one militants. And
Speaker 1: this causes en normal sponsetermentional strife. You get you know,
Speaker 1: the US is murdering the black panthers. You get similar
Speaker 1: stuff in the UK and the neoliberals basically are the
Speaker 1: people who just fully called this to tants off and
Speaker 1: are you know, essentially going to return to full scale
Speaker 1: class war. And so now now we are we are
Speaker 1: finally getting to Reagan and Thatcher, and one day we
Speaker 1: will do a full episode about how Ronald Reagan, in
Speaker 1: a weird, shadowy cabal of Italian intelligence services rigged the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty election by planting fake stories about Jimmy Carter's
Speaker 1: brother and the press, which is if you hear the story, Garrison, No,
Speaker 1: but it sounds like regular media manipulation that happens all
Speaker 1: the time. Now, Yeah, yeah, it's it's yeah, there, there's,
Speaker 1: there's there's there's there's a whole three line there because
Speaker 1: you know a lot of those like same kind of
Speaker 1: intelligence tactics are gonna be used South the Iraq War,
Speaker 1: and there's there's this whole sort of thing. Then you
Speaker 1: know that there's also the specific Italian angle of uh yeah,
Speaker 1: the Italian States being run by this rogue Masonic lodge
Speaker 1: led by a fascist and it's it's a time this
Speaker 1: is all going on there. But that's you know, I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm just thinking like Hunter Biden laptop and all
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah, yeah stuff. It's like, oh so that's
Speaker 1: just the same playbook. Yeah, it's it's the same thing,
Speaker 1: except like they were like actual intelligence people running it
Speaker 1: instead of just sort of like whatever, Tucker carloson Tucker Carlson,
Speaker 1: Glenn Greenwaal, trying to get people to care about this
Speaker 1: thing that just nobody gives a single ship about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it was, it was, but the the Ages
Speaker 1: version of it was significantly more effective. And you know,
Speaker 1: the product of this is that Reagan sort of Reagan
Speaker 1: finds like the secret sauce for right wing politics, which
Speaker 1: is kind of you know, in in in some ways,
Speaker 1: and Nixon had been trying to develop it hadn't quite
Speaker 1: gotten right, which is no, yeah, yeah, yeah. He he
Speaker 1: figures out that, you know, if you want to do
Speaker 1: new liberalism, if you want to destroy the unions, you
Speaker 1: want to show the welfare state, the way you do
Speaker 1: it is basically a combination of racist tax and welfare
Speaker 1: recipients and you mobilize new religious right. And this is
Speaker 1: extremely effective and it's but I think it's also interesting
Speaker 1: and worth noting that, you know, if if you got
Speaker 1: all the back to episode one, like this is this
Speaker 1: is rope keys like white nationalism, like short German white nationalism.
Speaker 1: Thing is this is explicitly a ropeky sort of strategy
Speaker 1: for implenting the liberalism was the problem is he was
Speaker 1: German and Catholic, which meant that like it could never
Speaker 1: work in the US. But you know, you get Reagan,
Speaker 1: suddenly you get the American version of it, that is,
Speaker 1: you know, white but American, and then also works off
Speaker 1: the sort of of off of the sort of mass
Speaker 1: Protestantism in the US, and this becomes a force study
Speaker 1: is responsible for like almost every bad thing that exists
Speaker 1: today in some form or another lot of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean not not often, but you know, I the thing,
Speaker 1: things go extremely badly. And so Reagan wins this election
Speaker 1: and then almost exactly the same time, Margaret Thatcher wins
Speaker 1: the wins her election in in the UK, and that
Speaker 1: the combination of those two things, and also, as we
Speaker 1: talked about last episode, the Vulcar shock, where Volca raises
Speaker 1: the interest rates raised, defendation become so Vulcar is installed weirdly,
Speaker 1: not by Ronald Reagan but by Jimmy Carter, but is
Speaker 1: given this sort of mandate to just do whatever, literally
Speaker 1: do whatever you have to to to get inflation under control.
Speaker 1: The thing that he decides to do is just literally
Speaker 1: nuke the entire world economy. You know, when we talked
Speaker 1: about the effects of this hat ont of the world
Speaker 1: and the last episode. But in the US this sets
Speaker 1: off a recession at last, basically from like nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine to Night two. At the height of it, it's
Speaker 1: like it's I think we finally got more people unemployed
Speaker 1: during the pandemic, but I'm like sure that between World
Speaker 1: War Two and the pandemic, that was the single largest
Speaker 1: number pop who have been unemployed in the US, which
Speaker 1: just yeah, it was just apocle, just apocle devastation. And
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's there's a whole thing here where
Speaker 1: the head of the a f l C. I OH
Speaker 1: is literally begging Vulcar like, please don't do this, like
Speaker 1: we can get inflation under control after, you know, after
Speaker 1: the economy recovers, and vocals just like no. The consequence
Speaker 1: of this is that you have you have an economy
Speaker 1: in which is no more sumber of people unemployed, and
Speaker 1: the unions are weak, and both Reagan and Thatcher sort
Speaker 1: of see this. Now the unions in the UK are
Speaker 1: in a sniffulty better position the American unions. Reagan is
Speaker 1: able to sort of smash the American unions very quickly
Speaker 1: there's there's the you know, the famous air traffic control
Speaker 1: strike where a bunch of American air traffic controllers go
Speaker 1: on strike technically illegally, and Reagan just has literally every
Speaker 1: single one of them fired and replaces them with just
Speaker 1: like like people from flight school, like people who just
Speaker 1: just like apt literally anyone he can just like pull
Speaker 1: off the street who sort of kind of knows how
Speaker 1: to how to land an aircraft, like they put on
Speaker 1: people from the military. It's it's just like this absolutely
Speaker 1: wild sort of feet of strike breaking. And then you know,
Speaker 1: and when when when that falls and that that strike fails,
Speaker 1: you know, the air traffic controllers well, okay, funnily so,
Speaker 1: the air traff controllers had actually backed Reagan. They were
Speaker 1: like the only union that backed Reagan in the election,
Speaker 1: and they immediately just get you know, they get gutted
Speaker 1: for it, which, like I have mixed feelings about because like,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, like, yeah, that's that's, that's what
Speaker 1: you get. But on the other hand, this is basically
Speaker 1: what the stories this, This is the consequences that this
Speaker 1: is basically what the stories like trade unions in the
Speaker 1: US because at this at this point, everyone realizes that
Speaker 1: the unions are weak and they just start you know,
Speaker 1: there's you get to the point where employers are deliberately
Speaker 1: provoking strikes so that they can just fire all the
Speaker 1: unionized employees. And it's extra to be effective. In in Britain,
Speaker 1: the fight is a lot more intense um in in
Speaker 1: in Entity. For Thatcher cuts cold, like basically Thatchery wants
Speaker 1: to provoke a fight with with the coal unions and
Speaker 1: so she basically wants to shut down a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of coal production and fire like twenty miners, and the
Speaker 1: miners go on strike, and they go on strike for
Speaker 1: over a year. But Thatcher had basically stockpiled enough cold
Speaker 1: to stave off the worst effects of the strike. And
Speaker 1: then she makes these incredibly elaborate network of deals with
Speaker 1: like She's like this this whole scab driver like union,
Speaker 1: like basically this whole network of scab drivers, like make
Speaker 1: sure you can move the coal around while the strike's
Speaker 1: going on. There there's all of this stuff, and you know,
Speaker 1: and and she eventually is able to crush the coal strike.
Speaker 1: And this also just just completely annihilates like the British
Speaker 1: trade union movement, I mean union participation. I think dreaming
Speaker 1: Thatcher's term alone falls and it's gotten way worse since then.
Speaker 1: So so with those two incidents, the air traffic control
Speaker 1: and the coal did did those just kind of make
Speaker 1: people be disillusioned or did that just like pave the
Speaker 1: way for similar tactics to be acceptable for every other
Speaker 1: union that tried to do the same thing both And
Speaker 1: then the everthing was fear because you know, so with
Speaker 1: the air traffic controllers, right, the air traffic controllers are
Speaker 1: you know, these are the most highly skilled like people
Speaker 1: people in there there, These are a bunch of people
Speaker 1: who are incredibly have the skilled and they're in there,
Speaker 1: in there in a logistic industry, right, so you know,
Speaker 1: in theory, these are the people who have like the
Speaker 1: maximum amount of impact if they would go on strike.
Speaker 1: And when Reagan shows that you can literally just fire
Speaker 1: twenty four thousand people of like the most highly skilled
Speaker 1: sort of workers in the in the US, you can
Speaker 1: fire them and just break the strike and nothing will happen,
Speaker 1: and you know the result is total defeat and none
Speaker 1: of these people ever work again. That basically spreads this
Speaker 1: massive wave of fear through the union movements because you know,
Speaker 1: if they can fire those guys, they can fire anyone
Speaker 1: and then you know, the the employers just start doing it.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that's been happening here is that
Speaker 1: for really since the end of the forties, the unions
Speaker 1: have kind of So we'll we'll talk about this more
Speaker 1: in in in an interview that's gonna come out probably
Speaker 1: next week about sort of the history American union movements,
Speaker 1: but American unions basically so American, like the union movement
Speaker 1: was built by radical organizers and in the forties and
Speaker 1: sort of moving on from there, all these people get
Speaker 1: expelled from the labor movement and labor fights this basically
Speaker 1: incredibly intense battle against its own left flank, and you
Speaker 1: have you know, like for example, in in there's this
Speaker 1: thing called the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, right, which is
Speaker 1: a bunch of mostly black workers in Detroit, who are
Speaker 1: you know, they're there there there forming unions, they're going
Speaker 1: on a strike, but they're also fighting against the the
Speaker 1: u a W because the U a W is cooperating
Speaker 1: too closely. But the bosses etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And there's
Speaker 1: there's there's these you know, there's there's basically this battle
Speaker 1: between like not even just basically between the unions ranked
Speaker 1: and file and the radicals and the sort of business
Speaker 1: union management, and in fighting that battle, the unions had
Speaker 1: basically like massively weakened themselves and then you know, and
Speaker 1: bye bye bye. By the time you hit the eighties,
Speaker 1: especially in the US, the unions are just sort of
Speaker 1: a shell out their form ourselves, and and Reagan just
Speaker 1: sort of like smashes them aside. And Thatcher the British
Speaker 1: unions are much stronger, but you know, I mean that
Speaker 1: Thatcher is preparing to like like there she she has
Speaker 1: plans to like the army is going to come in
Speaker 1: and suppress the strike. There's these and especially there's there's just,
Speaker 1: i mean just an absolutely incredible amount of police violence.
Speaker 1: Um that's you know, I mean, this is this is
Speaker 1: something that had happened before during strikes, but the the
Speaker 1: the the level of intensity of it is just like
Speaker 1: massively increased. And there's also another thing that's happening basically
Speaker 1: at the same time with this, which is squeezing the
Speaker 1: units on the other side, which is there's this I
Speaker 1: guess you could call it like an internal class war
Speaker 1: inside the ruling class between well specifically inside inside of
Speaker 1: the sort of corporate management between the sort of traditional
Speaker 1: like manager CEO class and the sort of like I
Speaker 1: guess you could call them, I don't know, the sort
Speaker 1: of Wall Street finance bank types and so so yeah,
Speaker 1: so one of the other things that that happens at
Speaker 1: the end of you know, basically after the war is
Speaker 1: the sort of class compromise was talking about like this,
Speaker 1: this happens inside of the company too, and people start
Speaker 1: to see the corporation as like a social institution. It
Speaker 1: has you know, it's like, well, okay, so there's this
Speaker 1: alliance between middle management and the workers, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, so we we both worked with each other,
Speaker 1: and you know, the compromises that you guys got to
Speaker 1: have unions, but the unions won't sort of disruptroduction. We'll
Speaker 1: all work together and we'll just make like I don't know,
Speaker 1: we'll we'll make really really good ballpoint pens together. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, you have this in lince between sort of
Speaker 1: middle managements and these unions, you know, and this this
Speaker 1: is embedded into the structure of the corporation because you know,
Speaker 1: you not you not only have the unions, but you
Speaker 1: have corporations paying pensions. One of the things that that
Speaker 1: Reagan does is that Reagan starts, you know, Reagan does
Speaker 1: this massive series of financial deregulations. And the other part
Speaker 1: of this agreement basically had been that like the high
Speaker 1: level of finance class has sort of stayed out of
Speaker 1: the way of management, and so management kind of like
Speaker 1: you know, the you get this like this independent sort
Speaker 1: of CEO class that that's that's a distinct thing that
Speaker 1: you know, that the people who come up through the
Speaker 1: company who managers and they worked away at the top,
Speaker 1: and this is a distinct thing from sort of the
Speaker 1: finance people who are like they're not supposed to be
Speaker 1: allowed to like, you know, the touch production. But in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, the finance people start to look at
Speaker 1: this and go, wait, hold on, why are we not
Speaker 1: running things? And the finance people have because they have
Speaker 1: the two things on their side. One they have a
Speaker 1: sort of neoliberal ideology, and the second thing they have
Speaker 1: is so Michael Milken he figures out how to do
Speaker 1: this thing called a leverage buyout option. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's a kind of complicated financial instrument. The short
Speaker 1: and simple explanation of what it is is he figures
Speaker 1: out a way too basically go into a bunch of debt,
Speaker 1: and he he gets he gets people to give him
Speaker 1: a bunch of money, like in the form of these bonds,
Speaker 1: and then he uses it to just buy out entire companies.
Speaker 1: He buys of the company. And if you own fit
Speaker 1: of the company, now you control, you have controlling interest.
Speaker 1: And so he goes in and she just he just
Speaker 1: raises the stock prices of all these companies. And now
Speaker 1: you know, but I mean, now he's gone into an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of debts right in order to buy in
Speaker 1: order to buy this company, and so you know, in
Speaker 1: order to pay off that debt, he just starts strip
Speaker 1: money in the company. And so he starts, you know,
Speaker 1: anything that can be sold for money that he can
Speaker 1: put in his pocket to pay off his debt starts
Speaker 1: getting sold. And you know, every anything the corporate that
Speaker 1: the company is doing, it doesn't immediate make money or
Speaker 1: doesn't immediately raise the stock price gets cut. And so
Speaker 1: you know, there there, there, there are there are two
Speaker 1: major things that a company has that don't immediately make
Speaker 1: money and don't raise the stock price, and that is
Speaker 1: pensions and research and development. And this this has you know, this, this, this, this,
Speaker 1: this becomes known as the sort of this is the
Speaker 1: hustle takeover waves. It gets rebranded as mergers and acquisitions
Speaker 1: in the nineties, but it's it's this huge sort of wave,
Speaker 1: those these corporate scripts corporate America, and it turns the
Speaker 1: corporation from this kind of social body where it's like, well,
Speaker 1: everyone's cooperating and companies sort of have this responsibility to
Speaker 1: like provide for their workers and provide sort of for
Speaker 1: like the social good into literally the only like the
Speaker 1: single entire purpose of any company is to raise the
Speaker 1: stock price. And this, yeah, this is really bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and you know the part about it that's
Speaker 1: awful is that, you know, okay, so all all literally
Speaker 1: all a corporate rad has to do in order to
Speaker 1: buy out one of these companies is be able to
Speaker 1: is be able to offer a price for the stock
Speaker 1: that's higher from the stock price of the company now.
Speaker 1: And this means even so they're they're they're there's a
Speaker 1: very famous series of battles they buy out. An enormous
Speaker 1: number of companies get bought out into strip minds like this,
Speaker 1: and you know, and the over and again these are
Speaker 1: these are very very profitable companies, right, These are companies
Speaker 1: with large research and development budgets. These are companies that
Speaker 1: are making enormous amounts of money and they're just completely
Speaker 1: destroyed in order to sort of just like satiate these
Speaker 1: just like absolute Google corporate, like vulture raider people. This
Speaker 1: is you know, if you remember, might be too young
Speaker 1: for this, but Romney's campaign for so yeah, one one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why Mitt Romney loses is that like
Speaker 1: he's one of these guys like he's he's like he's
Speaker 1: the big bang capital guy, and everyone's kind of looks
Speaker 1: at him and goes like, you're the reason we'd like
Speaker 1: guide to this mess in the first place. But the problem,
Speaker 1: the problem is that these people who have enough money
Speaker 1: and they have enough power, they're able to do this
Speaker 1: and in order to stop them, so either there there
Speaker 1: there's a massive there's a massive fight. A bunch of
Speaker 1: people try to take over good Year, who you know,
Speaker 1: they make the tires, they have the blimps, and Goodyear
Speaker 1: CEO is like fanatically opposed to all of this because
Speaker 1: you know, she she's she's from the old ceo crop
Speaker 1: who's like, well, okay, we're here to like make things
Speaker 1: instead of you know, increased stock prices. But the problem
Speaker 1: is the only way he can save off the raiders
Speaker 1: is by increasing a stock price. And the only way
Speaker 1: to increase stock prices is by doing the things the
Speaker 1: corporate raiders are already doing. So she starts slashing contentions,
Speaker 1: he starts flashing with your development budgets. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: and this. This sort of cycles because now you have
Speaker 1: you know, there's there, there's it's it's it's you're not
Speaker 1: only having pressure from you know, like the government, that's
Speaker 1: that's anti union. The corporations themselves are being forced to
Speaker 1: become more anti union because they're you know, they now
Speaker 1: have this pressure on them from the top down, from
Speaker 1: from these sort of these sort of finance schools, and
Speaker 1: the finance schools in a lot of ways just the
Speaker 1: perfect nilable subjects, right because they only see the world
Speaker 1: in money. They see everything as a market that they
Speaker 1: literally think that like they they are like these like
Speaker 1: shamans if if if there's a really good ethnography that
Speaker 1: I've plugged before on here called liquidated and an ethnography
Speaker 1: and void yet liquidated and ethnography of Wall Street, where
Speaker 1: an anthropologist goes onto Wall Street and works there for
Speaker 1: a while, and then you cannot much of interviews, doesn't
Speaker 1: it doesn't athethpological stuff. And the way they talk about
Speaker 1: the market, they literally talk about it as if they're
Speaker 1: channeling it, right, like it's like something and they're like,
Speaker 1: these are yea, these are these are that's that's one
Speaker 1: of the new gods of of our world. That yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I mean, that's that. That's not an uncommon term
Speaker 1: of phrase to describe stuff like this. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: what what what what I think is they just think
Speaker 1: about it though, is that you know that conception of
Speaker 1: the market of like every person is just like a
Speaker 1: peer like completely socially unbounds like thing of capital all
Speaker 1: that you Oh, well, okay, if you lose your job here,
Speaker 1: you can just move to another firm, right, So this
Speaker 1: makes sense inside of the context of Wall Street because
Speaker 1: these people like like these Wall Street firms they have
Speaker 1: they have like like thirty turned over a year, and
Speaker 1: so all these people are constantly being fired and shuffle
Speaker 1: on to the next job, and fired and shuffle onto
Speaker 1: the next job, and so you know, they so they
Speaker 1: they do they do this very common sort of fallacy
Speaker 1: thing where they assume that because this is the way
Speaker 1: that it works for them, but this is the way
Speaker 1: it's gonna work for everyone else. And then they genuine
Speaker 1: and a lot of these people genuinely believe this. They're like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so the things we're gonna with things that we're about
Speaker 1: to do, like, you know, when we destroy these workers
Speaker 1: entire lives when we should be you know, when we
Speaker 1: close their factories, when we take their pensions, when we
Speaker 1: literally destroyed like every community and every like thing that's
Speaker 1: every just in your lives, they're like, oh, they'll just
Speaker 1: pick themselves up and go to another place and they'll
Speaker 1: be fine, because you know, if you're if you're you know,
Speaker 1: a Wall Street finance school, like, yeah, that's that's what
Speaker 1: happens when you get fired every three months. And so
Speaker 1: these people, these people basically take control of the entire
Speaker 1: overspective they do. They do this very quickly by you know,
Speaker 1: they start this in the sort of early eighties. And uh, Milliken,
Speaker 1: the guy who comes up with the junk bonds leveraged
Speaker 1: buyout scheme, like he he goes to jail for I
Speaker 1: think securities fraud. Do they get him for fraud. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't it a lot of those guys got all
Speaker 1: of these people like he again, all of these people
Speaker 1: are just doing crime, Like now, yeah, that's how finance standards,
Speaker 1: this is how this is how the Action Park guy
Speaker 1: got kicked out. You got kicked out doing doing all
Speaker 1: the same stuff. And again, I want to put this out,
Speaker 1: like the stuff they're doing is so illegal that like
Speaker 1: even the Reagan administration was like, no, we have to
Speaker 1: prosecute you. Like that's like, this is the this is
Speaker 1: the Ronald Reagan Justice departments. And they're like it was
Speaker 1: it was so much crib. Yeah, it's it's really bad.
Speaker 1: And and you know the result of this is just
Speaker 1: basically the total visceration of the working class just like
Speaker 1: as a movement. And you know, all the left wing
Speaker 1: parties are sort of shaped by this. And you know,
Speaker 1: and you know, we've been focusing on on the US
Speaker 1: and uh in the UK here, but this is not
Speaker 1: the only place this happens. And you know, so one
Speaker 1: of the you know, like this this happens, this, this
Speaker 1: also starts happening like in socialist states. Um And we
Speaker 1: talked about this in more detail in our interview with
Speaker 1: Arnessa Kasutra about Bosnia. But one of the big things
Speaker 1: that Miloshevik is doing in Yugoslavia and when when he
Speaker 1: takes power and he starts like actually being a real
Speaker 1: political force inins in eighties, is he starts doing basically
Speaker 1: all of the same stuff that that that reagan A,
Speaker 1: thatacher doing. He starts, he starts implementing shock adoction, he
Speaker 1: starts privatization, he starts um like marketization, he starts cutting stutting,
Speaker 1: cutting price controls, he starts sort of he starts doing
Speaker 1: I don't know if decollectimization is quite the right word,
Speaker 1: because Yugoslavia's economic system is complicated and weirder than uh
Speaker 1: the SSRs. But you know, he does this, and this
Speaker 1: is one of the things that starts Yugoslavia's dethspiral, because
Speaker 1: you know, you have this enormous economic devastation from the
Speaker 1: increase in oil prices from the oil shock, and then
Speaker 1: that gets paired with, you know, the the economic devastation
Speaker 1: from everyone losing their benefits, people losing de pensions, the
Speaker 1: state on the industries going under and getting privatized, um
Speaker 1: the sort of like collective ownership structures imploding and the
Speaker 1: product of this is that you know, Melosivic looks at
Speaker 1: this and it's like, Okay, how can I stay in power?
Speaker 1: And his answer is just genocide on that. It's just
Speaker 1: genocide on nationalism. And this sort of collapse a sort
Speaker 1: of state and social life is you know, and and
Speaker 1: the leaders at the top realizing that they can weaponize
Speaker 1: sort of nationalism is one of the things at least
Speaker 1: directly to the Boston and genocide. Now, towards the end
Speaker 1: of the eighties, the whole Soviet block starts coming apart um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, the Berlin Wall falls and eventually, you know,
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union dissolves, and the people who are trying
Speaker 1: to end the Soviet Union, the things that they want
Speaker 1: basically are like freedom of speech, the ability to like
Speaker 1: leave the country, and basically like Scandinavian style social democracy.
Speaker 1: And it was like reasonable coming from the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and you know, I mean, these these people
Speaker 1: like you know, this is these you know, like they
Speaker 1: they they wanted to leave in Scandinavia and instead they
Speaker 1: got hey, welcome to the US, but like even worse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's really bad. And
Speaker 1: you know what they getting said, is just these this
Speaker 1: enormous wave of privatizations. H the weldfare state just vanishes,
Speaker 1: and you know this this causes basically like total societal collapse. Um.
Speaker 1: Like one of my one of my professors, and this
Speaker 1: this happens basically across the whole Soviet Block one of
Speaker 1: professions in college, and I think she was fumble Gary. Um.
Speaker 1: She she told me about how dream the nineties like
Speaker 1: when she when she was growing up, like she and
Speaker 1: her family would just the only thing they had to
Speaker 1: eat was raw millet because there's no food. There's there's
Speaker 1: literally no food anywhere. The entire economy is collapsed. Nobody
Speaker 1: has any money, and so you know, it was like, well, okay, everyone,
Speaker 1: she's eating raw grain because you know that that's what
Speaker 1: that's that's the only thing you can you can you
Speaker 1: have to survive. And you know it's this it's it's
Speaker 1: literally so bad that in Russia it causes the single
Speaker 1: largest life expectant to drop in post World War Europe.
Speaker 1: It's like like it's the life expected to decrease is
Speaker 1: about like four years because so many people die from this. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, and one of the one of the ways
Speaker 1: this happens is that there's so the way they're they're
Speaker 1: going to deal with like the state owned industry thing
Speaker 1: is they they okay, and I've never been able to
Speaker 1: figure this figure out if it was like they they
Speaker 1: actually took Murray Rothbard's plan for this, or if they
Speaker 1: just independently developed were a roth whereas plan for for
Speaker 1: for dissolving stated on the industries, which is give like
Speaker 1: everyone who worked in a share of the company. And
Speaker 1: so they do this right, and everyone has these shares,
Speaker 1: but these shares are just like paper, and you can't
Speaker 1: eat this paper. So a bunch of sort of like
Speaker 1: organized crime guys and the people who have been you know,
Speaker 1: like like the sort of the people who've been richer
Speaker 1: or like had been sort of connected party people who
Speaker 1: were just like I'm just gonna cash out start, you know,
Speaker 1: just just going through cities, and they're they'll you know,
Speaker 1: they'll be like, okay, we'll give you a pair of genes,
Speaker 1: like we'll give you some food if you give us
Speaker 1: their share, and you know, everyone people just give up
Speaker 1: the shares. And the result of this is that like
Speaker 1: just every industry in Russia immediately falls under the control
Speaker 1: of just just like absolutely psychotic oligarchs, and you know,
Speaker 1: the the West definitely sharing this on that this this
Speaker 1: whole process is engineered by just a bunch of just
Speaker 1: like pure neoliberal Google like Harvards, like weird Harvard grads
Speaker 1: who gets sent into Russia and who are like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna run the Russian economy and we're
Speaker 1: gonna like fix everything, and they just just absolutely destroy it.
Speaker 1: And you know, the West has the thing that they're
Speaker 1: they're you know, they're they're they're cheering on this whole process.
Speaker 1: They have this thing about how like everyone has to
Speaker 1: do belt tightening and you're gonna suffer for a bit
Speaker 1: and it'll all be worth it. And meanwhile, Boris Jelson
Speaker 1: is just completely drunk off his asked like shelling the
Speaker 1: parliament with tanks, while like the U. S. Press is cheering,
Speaker 1: and you know there's the sort of like you know,
Speaker 1: the tragedy this is like it's not really like Russia
Speaker 1: got like more free, you know, like they still they
Speaker 1: still torture and disappeared anarchists and secret prisons, like you know,
Speaker 1: there's there they still just like randomly assassinated political dissidence
Speaker 1: with through increasingly bizarre, like poison bullshit. Yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know, the big difference is that a bunch of
Speaker 1: Harvard grads made an indescribable amount of money. Now no
Speaker 1: one has any pensions, um, and there's there's this is
Speaker 1: great like this is a great Russian joke from this
Speaker 1: period that goes he's talking about the communists. Everything they
Speaker 1: ever told us about communism was a lie, but everything
Speaker 1: they ever told us about capitalism was absolutely true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that seems to be roughly accurate. Yeah, it's basically true.
Speaker 1: And you know, and and the product is sort of
Speaker 1: neoliberalism coming to Russia is that by by by the
Speaker 1: end of the nineties, Russia is just literally controlled by
Speaker 1: the mob and these sort of monsters, oligarchs. And Putin's
Speaker 1: campaign is like I am better than the mob, and
Speaker 1: I will bring them, I will bring the mob in,
Speaker 1: the oligarchs under control. And this is you know, this
Speaker 1: is how Putin takes power because and he has failed
Speaker 1: to hold up to that probless to be fair, to
Speaker 1: be fair, the you are significantly less likely to just
Speaker 1: like randomly be kidnapped and ransoms. Not me, No, I
Speaker 1: have I have wrote for a website. He does not,
Speaker 1: like I cannot that's true. That's true. If yeah, if
Speaker 1: you kiss off Putin, you might be held for ransom.
Speaker 1: But it's like, you know, the number of random people
Speaker 1: who don't do anything political, who are just like randomly
Speaker 1: held for ransom did kind of go down a bit
Speaker 1: and like that's all right, all right, you gotta hand
Speaker 1: it to Putin, Okay, I give him. Yeah, well, okay.
Speaker 1: The thing on hand to Putin is that he restored
Speaker 1: the state's monopoly on violence. Now that's not a good
Speaker 1: things now, but he did it. Yeah, he well, he
Speaker 1: did it. And you know this this was the basis
Speaker 1: of sort of because his power and political support was
Speaker 1: that in sort of nationalism. And this is like you know,
Speaker 1: and and there's always just the sort of liberal line
Speaker 1: on on on Putin. He's like, oh he's an SKGB guy,
Speaker 1: and like oh, it's still communism again, and it's like no,
Speaker 1: like no, no, and and that this this brings me
Speaker 1: back to the single thing that I I need everyone
Speaker 1: to understand about near liiberalism, which is that near liberalism
Speaker 1: does not decrease the size of the state. Like the
Speaker 1: there there were more, there were more bureaucrats now in
Speaker 1: the Russian State than there were under the Soviet Union. No,
Speaker 1: and it definitely in order for it to operate, definitely
Speaker 1: extends drastically that like the hands of the state in
Speaker 1: terms of like like like military, police, law enforcement, like
Speaker 1: all those things. In order to keep this weird market
Speaker 1: driven thing alive, you need to have a lot of
Speaker 1: like enforcement on people who don't have but both both
Speaker 1: people who like actually make money and but most of
Speaker 1: the people who don't make very much money. So it
Speaker 1: increases not only like the bureaucratic state, but also like
Speaker 1: the enforcement armor the state. Yeah, and I think there's
Speaker 1: there's there's there's there's two interesting ways this happens. One
Speaker 1: is that, well, okay, there's three ways happens. One is
Speaker 1: that anytime someone says they're gonna they're gonna do deregulation,
Speaker 1: like the deregulation does not mean that they're going to
Speaker 1: decrease the number of regulations there are. What it means
Speaker 1: is that the regulations are bad for this company, and
Speaker 1: so they're they're going they're going to they're going to
Speaker 1: add more regulations in a way that is good for
Speaker 1: this company. And the thing is this actually this, you know,
Speaker 1: this net increases the size of the state right there.
Speaker 1: They're not like they're not like they're not decreasing the
Speaker 1: number of laws or whatever. They're you know, they're they're
Speaker 1: they're they're they're writing like incredibly like absolutely incomprehensible banking
Speaker 1: legislation that like, let's banks charge like interest rates that
Speaker 1: previously only organized crime could do. And then there's there's
Speaker 1: another aspect of this, which is that, you know, so
Speaker 1: the the welfare that remains right, you know, it becomes
Speaker 1: means tested, and you know that means that there's so
Speaker 1: you have the bureaucracy right that like gives you things,
Speaker 1: and then you have another bureaucracy on top of that
Speaker 1: that decides whether or not you should be allowed to
Speaker 1: do the thing it puts you know, there's this this
Speaker 1: is just just this like process of abject humiliation that
Speaker 1: you have to go through to receive anything, yeah, from
Speaker 1: the state. And it's like that sucks. And then because
Speaker 1: that is so awful, there's another layer of bureaucracy, which
Speaker 1: is like social workers and stuff, whose job it is,
Speaker 1: in large part is to help you bypass the second
Speaker 1: layer of bureaucracy, so that creates another layer. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's there's there's so much. Yeah it is, and but
Speaker 1: but this is you know this, this, this is one
Speaker 1: of the things in the ribals do, which is okay,
Speaker 1: so you know, you you have you have, you have
Speaker 1: your two doctrines. Right, you have the thing they actually believe,
Speaker 1: which is enormous, bureaucratic, military, state, and then you have
Speaker 1: the thing they claim to believe, which is, oh, the
Speaker 1: state needs to be smaller, the state needs to be decentralized,
Speaker 1: the state shouldn't interfere in the market. And so whenever, whenever,
Speaker 1: like the things that they do get too bad, they
Speaker 1: have this other thing they can turn to you to go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: the reason there's too much bureaucracy is because the state's
Speaker 1: getting involved too much. Elect us and we will get
Speaker 1: rid of the bureaucracy. And then you elect them and
Speaker 1: they make the state bigger, and you know, you get
Speaker 1: this started, perpetual cycle. I think the reason people get
Speaker 1: confused by this is that when when people when most
Speaker 1: people think of the state, right, they think of the
Speaker 1: state is something they provide services. You know that the
Speaker 1: quintessential thing of state does is build roads roads. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, and when you know, when we can
Speaker 1: talk about how like the US building roads probably doomed
Speaker 1: the entire earth climate change. Oh yeah, no, like the
Speaker 1: way that we've done roads around cars and the type
Speaker 1: of things we make roads. Yeah, it's horrible, but yeah
Speaker 1: it's awful. Yeah, but but there there's there's there's another
Speaker 1: thing about roads which is interesting, which is that roads
Speaker 1: are you know, so the original reason why states built
Speaker 1: roads was they can move armies around. And if this
Speaker 1: comes back to the core of what a state is, right,
Speaker 1: there is nothing in the actual core definition of a state,
Speaker 1: which is basically it's a higerarch couple of localized monopoly
Speaker 1: on violence. Right, there's nothing in that that has that
Speaker 1: like says at all the state has to do anything
Speaker 1: for you, right like if if you know, if two
Speaker 1: guys with guns show up and sees a place, right,
Speaker 1: they can create a state. They don't have to give
Speaker 1: you anything. The state is the fundamental core of the
Speaker 1: state is just a bunch of armed people who can
Speaker 1: order people around. And you know, but people people sort
Speaker 1: of can people sort of confuse the two and the
Speaker 1: neil Isms entire thing is increasing the increasing the military.
Speaker 1: You know that the part of the state that takes
Speaker 1: things from you at gunpoint and decreasing the part of
Speaker 1: the states that like gives you things. And you know,
Speaker 1: one of one of the there's one of one of
Speaker 1: the other things that that happens in this period is
Speaker 1: that labor increasingly stops being about making or doing anything
Speaker 1: and just becomes pure guard labor. So, you know, the
Speaker 1: the the last big neliberal project that doesn't really get
Speaker 1: talked about as a deliberal project ever, is that mass
Speaker 1: incarceration is a deliberal project. It started under under Nixon
Speaker 1: and under Carter. But you know, so when when Reagan
Speaker 1: takes office that the American prison population is about three thousand.
Speaker 1: When he leaves office, he has basically doubled it to
Speaker 1: uh six, seven thousand. We have now more than doubled
Speaker 1: it again. And you know it basically it you know,
Speaker 1: when whenever you get a large ne liberal administration, they
Speaker 1: they you know, they double it, right, it basically doubles
Speaker 1: again drained dwen the Clinton administration. You know, it keeps accelerating,
Speaker 1: and you know this is this is this is the
Speaker 1: other thing that that neoliberalism brings in, which is that Okay,
Speaker 1: so neo liberals and produces this enormous population of people
Speaker 1: who don't have any jobs, have no opportunities whatsoever, are
Speaker 1: just screwed. So what do you do with them? And
Speaker 1: the answer is slavery. And basically everywhere that you stay
Speaker 1: u see neoliberalism. You see massive increases into prison population
Speaker 1: espect like the US is by far the worst example
Speaker 1: of this, but this happens. You know that the seven
Speaker 1: is basically across the world and what what what you
Speaker 1: see is in place of you know, it's this is
Speaker 1: this one of the things that drives politics in sort
Speaker 1: of in rural reasons in the US, which is that
Speaker 1: you have these places that used to sort of have
Speaker 1: industry is used to particularly coal mining things like that,
Speaker 1: and it gets replaced by prisons because prisons, you know,
Speaker 1: having a prison in your sort of rural town is
Speaker 1: is the only way to sort of ensure that you
Speaker 1: have a large economic base. And so you know, like
Speaker 1: local local city councils are you know, incredibly pro prison
Speaker 1: because it's like, oh, well, the president will bring your
Speaker 1: jobs and you know this means that Okay, so so
Speaker 1: the people a lot of people who are prison guards
Speaker 1: are just you know, fascists. But there's also people who
Speaker 1: are prison guards who normally would just be workers. Yeah no, absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: who have just been sort of but you know, there's
Speaker 1: nothing left right and there they're fighting, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: Mike Davis talks about this, that they're finding this just
Speaker 1: incredibly desperate, ferocious struggle to like stay in the places
Speaker 1: they love and stay with their families, and stay with
Speaker 1: their friends, stay with their communities. And the only way
Speaker 1: they can do this is, you know, by becoming part
Speaker 1: of this like just the neo liberal health state. And
Speaker 1: you know they don't like it either, but that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's what the liberalism is, right, is you no longer
Speaker 1: have a job. The only job available to you is
Speaker 1: picking up a gun and pointing it at someone who
Speaker 1: is exactly the same as you, except you know, they've
Speaker 1: been thrown into the slavery part of the system instead
Speaker 1: of the people holding the guns at the slavery part
Speaker 1: of the system. And one of the things that that
Speaker 1: happens a lot of people just really conflate about what
Speaker 1: neoliberalism is is they can use it with libertarianism and
Speaker 1: they're not the same thing. And and this this is
Speaker 1: a condus is a very confusing problem because well, a,
Speaker 1: the term nea liberals don't get used in the US
Speaker 1: all that much. When people use it, they usually use
Speaker 1: it to mean something bad. And that's just about it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and you know and and also another part of
Speaker 1: the problem is that even if you go into like
Speaker 1: the Montpellion Society, right which you know this is this
Speaker 1: is this is the arch new liberal institution, and it's
Speaker 1: just like basically like a think tank generator, there are
Speaker 1: there are libertarians in there. There there are there are
Speaker 1: narco capitalists in the Montpellion Society, and the one Pellion
Speaker 1: Society is fighting this sort of constant internal battle between
Speaker 1: the people who actually believe the things that they say publicly,
Speaker 1: like you actually believe you should have a small state
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah, and the people who understand
Speaker 1: that all the small states stuff is just like stuff
Speaker 1: you tell the masses in order to get them to
Speaker 1: like slash welfare things while you just hire more cops.
Speaker 1: And probably the single biggest distinction between the libertarians and
Speaker 1: and the neo liberals is about border control. Now, if
Speaker 1: if you listen to New Liberals on Twitter, or you
Speaker 1: listen to Neil, or you listen to libertarians right, capitalism
Speaker 1: is supposed to have open borders, is supposed to be
Speaker 1: free movement to people, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Um, if you
Speaker 1: look at literally everything every neo liberal government has ever done,
Speaker 1: it's exactly the opposite. It's they don't like that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they hit it. And you know, the this whole thing
Speaker 1: about like oh you need workers to uh yeah, if
Speaker 1: if you, if you, if you let workers from other
Speaker 1: countries go into into the US, like oh they'll they'll,
Speaker 1: they'll decreased wages, blah blah blah blah. So the period
Speaker 1: in which the US like had strong unions and strong
Speaker 1: wages and stuff, with the period where there was like
Speaker 1: basically no militarization on the Mexican border. I mean there
Speaker 1: were some and you know there there's there's there's a
Speaker 1: build up sort of dream the Vietnam War and they're
Speaker 1: they're there sort of been one back like around election
Speaker 1: revolution era. But you know it's it's nothing. It's literally
Speaker 1: nothing like it is today. Today. The US border is
Speaker 1: this just absolute hellscape. Um. I mean just like there's
Speaker 1: there's there's this enormous perimeter of the U. S border
Speaker 1: where just the Constitution doesn't apply where like the Bill
Speaker 1: of Rights just doesn't exist. If if if you're if you're,
Speaker 1: if you're close enough to the border, it's just it's
Speaker 1: all suspended. Uh, it's not entirely suspended, but like basically
Speaker 1: the border patrol can just do whatever the funk they
Speaker 1: want to you, and you know, like this is this,
Speaker 1: this is this is how the border patrol was able
Speaker 1: to be deployed in Portland, right because Portland's technically on
Speaker 1: the border and the border patrol has increased power is
Speaker 1: there and the actual goal is so people people are
Speaker 1: always going to move right, And what the new labels
Speaker 1: figured out was that you know, these these these enormous
Speaker 1: miket labor populations, the best way you can exploit them
Speaker 1: as if they're just absolutely terrorized by just this, you know,
Speaker 1: an incredible sort of ferociously hostile, murderous just border regime
Speaker 1: run by fascists, and it works, like they kill, they
Speaker 1: kill enormous numbers of people, They do horrible things, They
Speaker 1: put people with concentration camps, they sterilize people they like,
Speaker 1: they sexually assault children, they disappear people they like, still
Speaker 1: people's babies, and this is you know, this is what
Speaker 1: neoliberalism is, right, This, this is what it actually is
Speaker 1: in practice. This is you know, like, this is the
Speaker 1: this is the this is the policy that is imposed
Speaker 1: money liberal states. And I think I want to end
Speaker 1: on that, and I want to end on a note
Speaker 1: about what the quintessential sort of figure of neoliberalism is,
Speaker 1: because I think, you know, in the neoliberals mind, right,
Speaker 1: the quintessential neoliberal figure like the small entrepreneur who's like
Speaker 1: guy who's you know, turned their own creativity and like
Speaker 1: harnessed it into like the ability to create value, and
Speaker 1: you know, they're creating things in the world and they're
Speaker 1: reaching themselves. And I think a lot of leftists think
Speaker 1: of it as like the quintession of the liberal is
Speaker 1: you know, a Chicago, Chicago School of Economics person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I want to suggest that they quit. The single
Speaker 1: quintessential like neoliberal figure is a riot cop, and specifically
Speaker 1: specifically that the you know, if if you know, every
Speaker 1: everyone might now knows what a riot cop looks like. Right.
Speaker 1: I want everyone to go back and even even from
Speaker 1: from like two thousand one, look at what a riot
Speaker 1: police officer looks like in two thousand one versus what
Speaker 1: they look like now, and then go back to even
Speaker 1: like the nineteen sixties and look look at look at
Speaker 1: what those guys look like. Yeah, I know, looking at
Speaker 1: the footage from the sixties and riot cops is really
Speaker 1: depressed it because they're like, I could take these guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're just wearing T shirts. They're just guys. It's
Speaker 1: it's way more of a fair fight. They have T
Speaker 1: shirts and sticks. We could have T shirts and sticks.
Speaker 1: That is that that's like the a arriety of the sixties.
Speaker 1: It sounds like now they also in some cases will
Speaker 1: be much more willing just to murder tons of people.
Speaker 1: Now there is that exception, but in like a big
Speaker 1: street brawl, it is it is generally a bit of
Speaker 1: a fair fight. I mean, I will say also, sixties
Speaker 1: police love love dogs. They love like sicking dogs and people,
Speaker 1: which is really bad. Yeah, I'm I'm looking at it,
Speaker 1: looking at at the two thousand one riot cops, and yeah,
Speaker 1: they are not nearly as robot copy. Nope, that's what
Speaker 1: they are now. During the Chilean uprising in I was
Speaker 1: talking to someone in Chile and they were talking about
Speaker 1: how like they were describing it as like the cops
Speaker 1: were just like like something had a change, beating ninja
Speaker 1: turtles like it was like fighting the shredder. There. There's
Speaker 1: even even even the l a p. D. Riot cops
Speaker 1: for the nineteen two riots. They're also still just wearing
Speaker 1: like shirts like they just have they just have colored
Speaker 1: shirts and one stick. Yeah and now versus now they're
Speaker 1: wearing there whatever dumb armor they have. Yeah. But you know,
Speaker 1: and this is this is you know and this, this
Speaker 1: is this is if if you want to trace the
Speaker 1: path in near liberalism, it's this. It's a lot of
Speaker 1: the army surplus stuff that like the police have gotten
Speaker 1: a lot of. It's really scary. A lot of it
Speaker 1: also sucks, like a lot of those a t v
Speaker 1: S every like everyone who's ever had to drive them
Speaker 1: hates them. But you know, like like my my like
Speaker 1: absolutely tiny dinky town has a bear cat and that
Speaker 1: shouldn't that shouldn't be. And I know where it is too,
Speaker 1: Like I know where the bear cat is. It's like,
Speaker 1: there shouldn't be a bear cat. My town is a
Speaker 1: tax cutout, like it's it's literally a tax carve out
Speaker 1: like that. That's the reason that's the really recent it exists,
Speaker 1: and it a bear cat and like, you know, this
Speaker 1: is this is sort of the this is the consequence
Speaker 1: of of of what ne o liiberalism, isn't it. Vicky
Speaker 1: uster Well talked about this on on on the Occupy episode.
Speaker 1: It's it's the cops become more like become more like
Speaker 1: the army. The army becomes more like the cops, and
Speaker 1: you know, the the result is this sort of pen
Speaker 1: out to con surveillance states, where like if you and
Speaker 1: seven people stand on a sidewalk, sixteen cops will show up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've they've really uh excelled in making the capitalist realism
Speaker 1: Dumer philosophy be almost like the base philosophy for anyone
Speaker 1: who takes two seconds to think about the world that
Speaker 1: they live in. And you know, and this has been
Speaker 1: really effective in a lot of ways. But you know,
Speaker 1: David Graeber point pointed this out, which is that the
Speaker 1: problem with doing this is that, you know, okay, so
Speaker 1: like the the the enormous amount of guard labor, right,
Speaker 1: the enormous amount of sort of prison guards, Like that's
Speaker 1: all unproductive labor, right, you know, you you you you
Speaker 1: make you make some of that money back off the
Speaker 1: companies make some of the money back off the slave labor, right,
Speaker 1: but like, but that in general there the guards aren't
Speaker 1: adding anything. They're not they're not they're not producing any
Speaker 1: goods um and not really much service either. No, and
Speaker 1: and and this is you know this this this is
Speaker 1: a problem right because because neoliberalism is profit driven, and
Speaker 1: so you know, what you have is is that the
Speaker 1: system has a choice between either it functioning or it
Speaker 1: making it appear as if it's the only system. And
Speaker 1: it that's the thing is that it's it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of profit driven. But honestly, the more that I the
Speaker 1: more that you've been talking, like, no, it's just about
Speaker 1: eliminating any alternative. So it's not not even profit driven.
Speaker 1: It's that it's forcing itself to be the only acceptable option. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how it gets so much of its power. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but you know the problem with this is that
Speaker 1: all of that sort of ideological coercion only last as
Speaker 1: long as the police can hold the streets. And which
Speaker 1: is they're good at it there there sometimes they're decent.
Speaker 1: You know. One of the story I want to end
Speaker 1: on is so there's you know, there has been in
Speaker 1: some with more varying degrees of success. There has actually
Speaker 1: been resistance in neoliberalism, and there are places where people
Speaker 1: have won the people. There are places where people have
Speaker 1: run the I m f out those people. There's places
Speaker 1: where people have you know, defeated coups where they've like
Speaker 1: you know, where they've where they've they've they've successfully sort
Speaker 1: of taken over the state. There's places where, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean there's there's there's places like you know, we're
Speaker 1: gonn talking about couple of things in Mexico, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's there's the Zapatistas who have you know,
Speaker 1: are constantly besieged, but have carved out a territory in
Speaker 1: which they have you know, like totally defeated the Mexican
Speaker 1: almost really defeated the Mexican state. And I think one
Speaker 1: of the sort of forgotten incidents in in the two
Speaker 1: thousands is this uprising in Wahaka where they, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a there's an enormous sort of a bunch of teachers
Speaker 1: are going on strike. And you know, Wahawka's teachers unions
Speaker 1: are enormously powerful and incredibly radical, and so you know
Speaker 1: that they one of the things they do is that
Speaker 1: they go into the city and they have these like
Speaker 1: these giants started protest tents that they showed up and
Speaker 1: they have these like giant camps and she in six
Speaker 1: the police attack them, and so they start attacking and
Speaker 1: the and the teachers fight back, and so you have
Speaker 1: this you know this, this this massive battle erupts um
Speaker 1: it's just in this city and you know this is
Speaker 1: this is all The police attack at like three in
Speaker 1: the morning, right, but they can they there's not enough
Speaker 1: of them. The clear teachers out and the teachers hold
Speaker 1: and they hold and they hold, and that the city
Speaker 1: of Wahaka wakes up to this just enormous battle in
Speaker 1: the streets between a bunch of just like teachers and
Speaker 1: the cops. And when Wahawka wakes up, they are just
Speaker 1: like what the fuck is the us? And you know,
Speaker 1: they joined the teachers and they go fight the cops
Speaker 1: and they they they're largely successful in like like they
Speaker 1: beat them, they drive, they drive the police from the
Speaker 1: city and you know, and and for for for for
Speaker 1: for several months, the city is basically under the control
Speaker 1: of these like direct democratic councils and like they're there
Speaker 1: are these there are these things they call them mega
Speaker 1: marshes whire just a million people will do a march
Speaker 1: to the streets and the police there's the police just
Speaker 1: can't stop them because you know, there's a million people.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's that's the only way that I've seen
Speaker 1: it be successful, whether it be you know, just to
Speaker 1: sure sheer massive people driving cops out of a police station,
Speaker 1: or you know, an entire city rallying behind people like
Speaker 1: in in in Portland when the fence came, it's like
Speaker 1: you need to have like everybody to show up, because
Speaker 1: they could fight two hundred like twin canarchists, they pretty easily.
Speaker 1: You usually, um, but when you have like all of
Speaker 1: the moms and dads and regular people come up, that
Speaker 1: is much more of a complicated of fight on like
Speaker 1: on on their end, because yeah, we'll still have the
Speaker 1: teenage front liners throwing of the cops, but when you
Speaker 1: have like regular people behind them, that creates the whole
Speaker 1: media narrative and to be something totally different. And it
Speaker 1: got the Feds to back down in Portland when Trump
Speaker 1: really wanted to not happen. And I think also the
Speaker 1: thing the thing that that was incre incredible hawk is
Speaker 1: it wasn't just people sort of like standing behind them,
Speaker 1: like like tens of thousands of people just joined the
Speaker 1: fight in in a way that you know, it like
Speaker 1: if you know, if if there's like fifty tho people
Speaker 1: in a city throwing bricks at you, like you you
Speaker 1: either have to start shooting into the crowd or try
Speaker 1: to hold them. Can't You can't. And even when he
Speaker 1: started shooting into the crowd, yeah, they tried it, and
Speaker 1: disaster it made it made even the crowds were larger,
Speaker 1: and like, you know, one of the things that happens
Speaker 1: is that the the revolutionaries try to like you know,
Speaker 1: they go to the radio station or like okay, well
Speaker 1: you broadcast this radiotation says no, and they start seizing
Speaker 1: radio stations all over all over the city. Yeah and
Speaker 1: they yeah, and then you know, and then they had
Speaker 1: they had these they had these like bonfires at the
Speaker 1: edge of the city where if it's at the meets,
Speaker 1: and like they're there's they're they're sending there, They're they're
Speaker 1: sending radio like messages like over over the radio stations
Speaker 1: they've taken over from like barricade to barricade, and you know,
Speaker 1: eventually the police and like the like the Mexican Army
Speaker 1: shows up and at that point they're able to sort
Speaker 1: of retake the city. And there's a couple of other
Speaker 1: things happening in Mexico at this point that are sort
Speaker 1: of this is giants are left wing tied. And the
Speaker 1: way that it gets stopped is that the Mexican army
Speaker 1: basically fully kicks off the drug war and they kill
Speaker 1: I mean, I've seen numbers up to like eight hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people in ten years. They just they basically basically
Speaker 1: genocides the indigenous population of of of Mexico. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think I think that's that's that's sort of a
Speaker 1: place to leave it, because you know, more big hopeful
Speaker 1: note to end to the show on. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: mean I think I think it is it is worth
Speaker 1: it is you know, it's it's it's it's worth thinking about.
Speaker 1: Is one. It is possible to beat the police too.
Speaker 1: The ruling class will literally bathe the entire country in blood,
Speaker 1: like they will destroy their own country is different the
Speaker 1: way I mean this gets discussed in the season happen here,
Speaker 1: But like the way the American military works, I think
Speaker 1: it will be less likely to do that. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean and I want I want to put this oi, like,
Speaker 1: so what the thing that the army doesn't directly murder
Speaker 1: people what they do is but what they do is
Speaker 1: basically like they they set off a bunch of fighting
Speaker 1: between the cartels and then and the cartels fucking murder
Speaker 1: enormous numbers people. You know, we will happily murder each other.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, well and also you know, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's also this is this is you know, the
Speaker 1: thing with the Mexican state. It's it's very very difficult
Speaker 1: to tell where the cartels stop and where the Mexican
Speaker 1: Army begins because a lot of them are the same thing.
Speaker 1: And like you know, there's yeah, that's hopeful. Note to
Speaker 1: end on and just but just to make the ending
Speaker 1: a bit better, I do want to say I'm no
Speaker 1: longer going to call anyone uh neoliberal. I made this
Speaker 1: joke in the group chat yesterday and nobody responded to it,
Speaker 1: so it was set, So I'll say it now. I'm
Speaker 1: only going they called them Thomas Anderson liberals. That that
Speaker 1: that that that's that is what I'm calling them now. Um,
Speaker 1: And I'll make everyone wait two seconds to understand what's
Speaker 1: going on and then sigh and then motion to get
Speaker 1: me out of the room. So thank you Chris for
Speaker 1: talking about them, and thank thank thank thank you all
Speaker 1: for joining us. That this this has been It could
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Speaker 1: joined the Panopticon. Throw bricks at it. It is pretty
Speaker 1: funny how they tricked everyone into carrying around gps is
Speaker 1: wherever they go. It's pretty funny. Yeah, it's it's amazing. Ever,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh everyone everyone everyone in by town is like, oh,
Speaker 1: we can't get the vaccine. They have microchips in. It's
Speaker 1: like you have a phone. It's hilarious. They tricked us
Speaker 1: into carry around speakers, cameras and gps is everywhere we go.
Speaker 1: It is really funny. It's amazing. All right, Well five
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