The Auron MacIntyre Show - The Government as Organized Crime ｜ Guest： News Fist ｜ 8⧸24⧸26

00:00:00.000 hey everybody how's it going thanks for joining me this afternoon i've got a great stream with

00:00:12.740 a great guest that i think you're really going to enjoy so the government in classical sense

00:00:18.700 many people think of it as a guardian of the rights of the people it it rules in their stead

00:00:24.240 but ultimately it's subject to them. It's interested in their well-being. It's a benevolent

00:00:30.360 service at some level. We know governments can go wrong, but ultimately they are there for our

00:00:35.420 benefit. But is that the wrong way to understand a government? Are there other ways the government

00:00:40.720 comes about? Is it ultimately more a tool of violence, a tool of crime, a tool of war making?

00:00:47.980 This is an interesting question I think runs through a lot of political theory. Joining me

00:00:52.240 today discuss this is our friend news fist thank you so much for coming on man always a pleasure

00:00:57.100 everyone thanks for having me back right absolutely well you suggested that we look at this topic we

00:01:02.540 finished our john globe series and this is an interesting essay now i've done a lot of reading

00:01:09.020 around this from different authors uh we'll talk about bertrand de juvenile and his book on power

00:01:14.580 we'll also be talking during the series about gaetano mosca's what is the mafia uh so these

00:01:20.580 this idea that perhaps the government is really organized crime at scale is not a new idea all by

00:01:28.260 its own uh we're going to be reading an essay from charles tilly called war making and state

00:01:33.580 making as organized crime now this essay is uh i think wrong about a number of things so please

00:01:41.180 people recognize that just as we found things in glove that we think uh we're wrong and we're

00:01:46.680 pointing those out. This is not an endorsement of Tilly's belief. This is not our taking the

00:01:51.480 entire thing wholesale. No matter what James Lindsay and Joel Berry will tell you, you can

00:01:56.020 actually read stuff and then disagree with it. You could take the things it's right about

00:01:59.500 and expound in them and discard the things that it's wrong about. And so that's what we're going

00:02:04.040 to be doing as we work through here. And as I say, we'll weave other perspectives on this topic

00:02:09.280 as we go uh but that said uh do you have any general impressions from the tilly essay that

00:02:16.540 you want to uh briefly touch on before we dive into the text itself yeah so i first read this

00:02:22.180 um first year of poli sci and uh i remember at the time being like oh wow this is this is really

00:02:29.180 deep and um things have things have really changed because i was looking back over it and i'm like

00:02:33.280 yeah you know it's it's obviously written from a leftist perspective because uh there are no

00:02:38.300 right-wing political works uh at all in the uk university system um but it does sort of get to

00:02:45.760 like a crucial point about security provision and organized violence right so the one of the ways

00:02:53.300 of defining a state or a government is basically whoever it is that provides security now a lot of

00:03:01.220 people will translate this as to who has the most amount of guns but it's a bit more sort of

00:03:05.620 complicated than that right like whoever um resolves disputes amongst the population

00:03:12.780 and can defend the results uh the judgments of these disputes by force is effectively

00:03:18.620 the government this is one of the reasons why talking to anarchists is so frustrating because

00:03:24.400 um no matter what situation you find yourself in a government of sorts will naturally emerge

00:03:32.880 now you know when when it sort of starts from first principles this is often although not always

00:03:38.300 uh a good thing it depends very much on the population if you have a warlord who has a

00:03:43.940 militia and they are all armed and they extort uh the the population they you know they violently

00:03:50.320 take all of their women that is technically a government if there is a dispute they will

00:03:55.160 resolve it probably by force obviously the sort of western european way is is generally you know

00:04:00.920 sort of a a kind of benevolent warlordism but it is warlordism nonetheless and so in the sort of

00:04:07.060 early embryonic stages the difference between government and organized crime is uh you know

00:04:14.400 it's very very much in the eye of the beholder and also just might i might i add that um well

00:04:19.980 what is crime really right like to define a crime you need a law right to have a law you need some

00:04:28.500 way of enforcing it who does this enforcing well the security provider ergo the government so so

00:04:35.840 although people in the modern world tend to think of government as you know this remote thing what

00:04:41.520 you do pay your taxes to um it can be you know particularly in in areas that do not sort of have

00:04:49.020 what they like to call the monopoly on violence uh a very very sort of turbulent thing it still

00:04:53.820 does wind up basically is the same really yeah if you're interested in this subject too i uh man

00:05:01.200 might be two years ago at this point i did a uh a stream with my friend kevin dolan of the exit

00:05:09.020 group uh on this book uh out i think it's down out of the mountain or off off the top of the

00:05:14.760 mountain or something like that which is basically about uh how the taliban became the de facto

00:05:19.540 government of afghanistan by usurping legitimate political functions and becoming the settlers of

00:05:26.880 disputes inside the country uh basically turning themselves from a terrorist organization into a

00:05:32.540 quasi-legitimate government form uh so this is a topic that i've addressed at some level before

00:05:38.140 but i thought diving deeper into this is important because as i said it's reflected in several

00:05:42.660 political works that i think are very valuable and i think that this will give us some time to

00:05:48.240 think about that perspective and interrogate it more thoroughly so that said let's begin again

00:05:53.660 this is war making and state making as organized crime by charles tilly he says if protection

00:05:59.440 rackets represent organized crime at its smoothest then war making and state making quintessential

00:06:04.820 protection rackets with advantages of legitimacy qualify as our largest examples of organized crime

00:06:11.500 without branding all generals and statesmen as murderers or thieves i want to urge and value

00:06:16.440 or urge the value of that analogy at least for the european experience of the last few centuries

00:06:21.760 a portrait of war makers and state makers as coercive self-seeking entrepreneurs bears a far

00:06:27.120 greater resemblance to the facts than do its chief alternatives the idea of a social contract

00:06:32.700 the idea of an open market in which operators and armies and states offer services to willing

00:06:39.520 consumers the idea of societies who whose shared norms and expectations call forth for a certain

00:06:45.440 type of government so just in this first paragraph i want to point out a couple things you'll notice

00:06:50.500 he says the european experience uh as you say comes from a lefty you think yeah i guess we're

00:06:55.500 going to bring war making and this kind of thing is is only a european uh phenomenon of course well

00:07:01.400 you know as you know the great peace of africa is a classic example never had they literally

00:07:07.440 literally did not have a word for murder until the whites turned up did you know that

00:07:12.500 terrible statement phase yeah but but in addition to that um i will say that he uh does attack a

00:07:21.220 couple of what i think are legitimate fallacies that are often propped up here he says you know

00:07:26.780 the idea that governments are built on a social contract uh which you know the social contract

00:07:31.760 theory of lock uh is incorrect the idea of open markets where the operators and states are offering

00:07:38.360 willing services to consumers the idea of some kind of voluntary uh association with government

00:07:43.760 is entirely false people do not choose uh to be involved uh with governments uh the last one here

00:07:50.600 i'm a little less sanguine on the idea of societies whose shared norms and experience

00:07:55.200 expectations call forth a certain type of government i think this is more true than he's

00:07:59.880 giving credit for uh it is true that those things do often manifest themselves initially through

00:08:06.120 violence uh however the shape uh that these take the level of legitimacy granted to these violent

00:08:12.920 organizations is usually commiserate with their ability to uh kind of provide the shared norms

00:08:19.500 and expectations called forth by certain peoples i think that joseph de maestro is more correct

00:08:25.580 about the nature of political constitutions uh be you know kind of emanating from the way of being

00:08:31.560 of the people rather than uh being something that's provided in a social contract or ideological

00:08:36.040 top down uh but we'll have to get to i'm sure he will flesh out that argument and we can uh you

00:08:41.880 know kind of make that more but i will say uh early on he has called out i think what are some

00:08:46.480 real myths about the construction of governments and how they operate and he's done so correctly

00:08:50.580 i would also like to point out that um often when you're you're reading sort of left-leaning stuff

00:08:56.060 um they tend to bundle violence just into one thing whereas you can use violence for good

00:09:03.800 purposes or you can use it for evil purposes, right?

00:09:06.400 Like, you know, if people, if there is a band raiding your shores and carrying off your

00:09:11.660 citizens and torching their settlements and you use violence like the way the Americans

00:09:17.220 attacked the Barbary pirates, which I believe was the first US naval interaction ever, that

00:09:23.460 is a good, a just use of violence.

00:09:27.160 Going around ruthlessly oppressing and doing basically the same thing to your own citizens

00:09:31.760 is not.

00:09:33.800 Yeah, I mean, that's absolutely correct. In the liberal paradigm, whoever is doing the violence is in the wrong, no matter what situation. And it's very clear. Again, we'll have to see how this essay develops as we read. But it's often the case that liberals, even when they deconstruct the basis for kind of a modern liberal state, will then turn around and expect states to behave in the manner of a modern liberal state.

00:10:00.820 So even though he's already attacked social contract theory, even though he's already attacked the idea of a marketplace of voluntary association when it comes to states, he's going to expect that stuff, right?

00:10:12.660 Like, ultimately, that's going to be the values he personifies, even if he's already deconstructed kind of the myth of where those expectations should come from.

00:10:21.320 But that said, we'll continue on with the essay here.

00:10:23.620 The reflections that follow merely illustrate the analogy of war making and state making with organized crime from a few hundred years of European experience and offer tentative arguments concerning principles of change and variation underlying the experience.

00:10:37.920 Our reflections grow from contemporary concerns, worries about the increasing destructiveness of war, the expanding role of great powers as suppliers of arms and military organization to poor countries, and the growing importance of military rule in the same countries.

00:10:50.960 They spring from hope. They spring from the hope that the European experience properly understood will help to grasp what is happening today, perhaps even to do something about it.

00:11:00.420 So, again, the problem here is that war is bad and these European nations are handing weapons to other countries.

00:11:08.100 Otherwise, they would be very peaceful, I'm sure. And so that's the real concern here.

00:11:12.320 We can we can definitely see the intellectual pedigree that this essay is ultimately growing out from.

00:11:18.120 But do you want to grab the next paragraph there?

00:11:20.140 yeah i mean it's it's terrible all of those third world countries without western weapons

00:11:25.660 and would be absolute utopias you know right we all know uh the third world of the 20th century

00:11:32.200 does not greatly resemble europe of the 16th or 17th century i don't know i mean in no simple

00:11:40.240 sense can we read the future of the third world countries from the past of european countries

00:11:44.700 yet a thoughtful exploration of the european experience will serve us well it will show us

00:11:50.960 that coercive exploitation played a large part in the creation of the european states it will show

00:11:57.140 us that popular resistance to coercive exploitation forced would-be power holders to concede protection

00:12:02.780 and constraints on their own action it will therefore help us to eliminate faulty implicit

00:12:08.060 comparisons between today's third world and yesterday's europe is of course he's focusing

00:12:12.760 on the third world very you know very very fashionable in lefty universities of course to

00:12:17.120 um you know endlessly worry about the third world um i guess now that they're all in the west we can

00:12:23.500 worry about the west now are they the same well sadly you guys are doing your best to make them

00:12:28.780 the same yeah this essay then concerns the place of organized means of violence in the growth and

00:12:35.320 change of those peculiar forms of government we call national states is it really that peculiar

00:12:40.560 relatively centralized differentiated organizations the officials of which more or

00:12:45.680 less successfully claim control over the chief concentrated means of violence within a population

00:12:50.980 inhabiting a large contiguous territory the the amount of like ink that gets spilled in in uni on

00:12:59.960 just trying to define stuff like a nation or a state or terrorism if you if you've ever done

00:13:06.620 like a thing on trying to define terrorism there are like at least 20 different definitions

00:13:10.720 war makes states i shall claim banditry piracy gangland rivalry policing and war making all

00:13:17.580 belong on the same continuum they do love their continuance that i shall claim as well for the

00:13:23.100 historically limited period in which national states were becoming the dominant organization

00:13:26.940 in western countries i shall also claim that mercantile capitalism and state making reinforced

00:13:32.460 each other so interesting interesting here that while he does speak about the origin of the nation

00:13:41.340 state he does not acknowledge where that came from or what it means uh core core to that transition

00:13:48.640 from kingdoms to nation states was the idea that each ethnicity should have its own nation and its

00:13:57.900 own self-determination post-world war one the project you know woodrow wilson and all this

00:14:03.220 stuff was to create uh self-determination through what is functionally a leftist project of

00:14:09.640 nationalism breaking up these old uh monarchies these old empires and handing everything to the

00:14:15.760 constituent peoples uh and that's what determined them of course he very much avoids that aspect of

00:14:21.440 the nation state making uh not really uh talking exactly about the transition here so uh interesting

00:14:28.760 to see that early on but this was written in london in about 2017 so you don't to to speak of

00:14:35.460 nations uh would be racism and we don't want any of that obviously obviously all right double-edged

00:14:43.380 protection in contemporary american parlance the word protection sounds uh two or sounds two

00:14:49.280 contrasting tones one is comforting and the other is ominous with one tone protection calls up

00:14:54.640 images of shelter against danger providing provided by a powerful friend a large insurance

00:15:00.380 policy or sturdy roof with the other it invokes the the racket in which a local strongman forces

00:15:06.260 merchants to pay tributes to in order to avoid damage damage the strongman himself threatens

00:15:12.420 to deliver the difference to be sure is a matter of degree a hell and damnation priest is likely

00:15:18.420 to collect contributions from his parishioners, but only to the extent that they believe his

00:15:23.680 predictions of brimstone for infidels. Our neighborhood mobster may actually be, as he

00:15:29.680 claims, a brothel's best guarantee of operating free of police interference. Which image of the

00:15:36.960 word protection brings to mind depends mainly on our assessment of the reality and

00:15:42.820 externality of the threat someone who produces both the danger and at a price shields us against

00:15:49.260 it is a racketeer someone who provides us a needed shield but little uh but has little control over

00:15:55.540 the danger's appearance qualifies as a legitimate protector especially if his price uh is uh no

00:16:01.740 higher than his competitors someone will uh someone who supplies reliably low price shielding

00:16:07.540 from both local racketeers and outside marauders makes the best offer of all so here he's giving

00:16:15.380 the again this is an example that we see very often in several different political texts the

00:16:21.820 idea that a government is basically providing protection from outsiders but also protection

00:16:26.960 from itself and so in this way uh if you looked at a gang in you know chicago that you were paying

00:16:34.020 protection money to, in a way, they are standing in for the government. And that is what

00:16:39.140 Gaetano Mosca says very explicitly in What is the Mafia. He talks about Sicily and how in most of

00:16:46.760 those cases, the mafia boss really takes on most of the roles of government. They're the ones that

00:16:54.600 protect you from other mafia bosses, but also from their own goons who would come after you.

00:17:01.920 uh they also can shove out the state they have the ability to functionally shove out the state

00:17:05.660 and that's what street gangs have done in different corners of major american cities and i imagine uk

00:17:10.580 cities as well ultimately uh turn the area into a no-go zone where the police have little to no

00:17:16.680 authority and then fulfill the same role that the police would pay there and there is of course

00:17:23.140 some truth to this right if we don't pay our taxes to the government for their protection

00:17:27.760 you don't just get a pass on that you'll notice that uh you know you can be a sanctuary city

00:17:34.100 you can allow uh drugs in an area even if they're not legal as a state but the one thing you'll

00:17:40.080 never see like california or san francisco do is stop paying taxes uh they they know they can get

00:17:46.920 away with the not deporting people they know they can get away with uh you know they're not

00:17:50.940 arresting people for heroin use the thing they can't get away with is not paying the taxes that's

00:17:56.500 the final straw because ultimately someone has to pay the security force and the security force

00:18:02.060 in this case is the u.s government uh so there is a lot of truth to this fact uh that ultimately

00:18:08.020 um these are uh differences of degree and not entirely differences of kind also um i i think

00:18:18.000 that more people should be acquainted with the general idea of instilling a problem and then

00:18:24.360 getting people uh to pay you to alleviate that same problem i mean it's called racketeering but

00:18:30.520 this is actually a remarkably effective scam there's uh you know there's like the white

00:18:35.640 night scam that uh was used on a lot of the um black rappers in new york and la apparently

00:18:41.100 um certain groups would like you know set up a uh well a gang to like threaten them

00:18:47.100 and then they call and they'd be like oh we've taken care of it this is really an amazingly

00:18:52.040 effective way of like of not of just to get sort of people into your power basically right and so

00:18:57.720 you know say like oh you know we fixed the problem you get them to be grateful for you uh to you um

00:19:02.920 and this idea i mean like you were saying about taxation really uh if it weren't for the government

00:19:08.280 then you wouldn't have to pay the taxes uh you know so they wouldn't have to come after you for

00:19:13.160 non-payment of of taxes but then of course you have you have the problem with with scale um and

00:19:19.440 sort of, you know, you need a monopoly

00:19:21.260 at least on organised violence in order

00:19:23.280 to prevent, you know, roving

00:19:24.920 bands of armed men

00:19:27.140 which is being done quite less

00:19:29.180 successfully in some parts of the West

00:19:30.620 Okay

00:19:32.560 Apologists for particular governments and

00:19:39.080 for government in general

00:19:40.380 commonly argue precisely that they offer

00:19:43.160 protection from local and external violence

00:19:45.220 They claim that the prices they charge

00:19:47.400 barely cover the costs of protection

00:19:49.280 they call people who complain about the price of protection anarchists subversives or both at once

00:19:55.340 but consider the definition of a racketeer as someone who creates a threat and then charges

00:20:00.660 for its reduction that's what i was saying government's provision of protection by this

00:20:05.540 standard often qualifies as racketeering to the extent that the threats against which a given

00:20:11.540 government protects its citizens are imaginary or are consequences of its own activities the

00:20:17.160 government has organized a protection racket since governments themselves commonly simulate

00:20:22.400 stimulate or even fabricate threats of external war and since the repressive and extractive

00:20:28.200 activities of governments often constitute the largest current threat to the livelihood of their

00:20:33.460 own citizens many governments operate in essentially the same way as racketeers there is of course a

00:20:39.360 difference racketeers by the conventional definition operate without the sanctity of

00:20:45.240 government this guy's still salty about the iraq war by the way almost certainly what he's talking

00:20:50.980 about there how do racketeer governments themselves acquire authority okay wait hang on sorry there we

00:21:02.000 go my bad let me go of my local local copy like it's moving around too much um as a question of

00:21:11.700 fact and of ethics, this is one of the oldest conundrums of political analysis. Back to

00:21:16.860 Machiavelli and Hobbes, nonetheless, political observers have recognized that whatever else

00:21:21.640 they do, governments organize and wherever possible, monopolize violence. We can't really

00:21:27.220 have a state without some kind of monopoly of violence. If you have another group that can

00:21:34.540 meaningfully challenge you in scale or intensity of force, you don't have a state, you have a civil

00:21:40.280 war so it's baked into the definition it matters little whether we take violence in a narrow sense

00:21:45.880 such as damage to persons or objects or in the broad sense such as violation of people's desires

00:21:51.580 and interests um either by by either criterion governments stand out from other organizations

00:21:59.340 by their tendency to monopolize the concentrated means of violence the distinction between

00:22:04.920 legitimate and illegitimate force furthermore makes no difference to the fact if we take

00:22:10.320 legitimacy to depend on conformity to an abstract principle or on the ascent of the governed or both

00:22:16.460 at once these conditions may serve to justify perhaps even to explain the tendency to monopolize

00:22:22.520 force but they do not contradict the fact so a couple things here uh first he's calling back to

00:22:32.920 the Hobbesian construction of state authority.

00:22:37.080 And it is, of course, Hobbes' assertion

00:22:40.480 that it is the ability to protect

00:22:43.000 which confers legitimacy.

00:22:45.300 It is the ability to provide a safe environment,

00:22:48.360 to end the bellus contris omnis,

00:22:50.940 the war of all against all.

00:22:52.900 Like, the attempt to do that

00:22:55.840 is what grants a government

00:22:58.080 its ability to exist in legitimate form.

00:23:02.920 Uh, this is also something that you'll see echoed in people like Carl Schmitt, uh, where

00:23:07.840 Carl Schmitt says that the, you know, whoever provides the protection ultimately has the

00:23:12.340 sovereignty, uh, whoever, uh, if, if you, if a people, if a nation is not willing to

00:23:18.500 defend itself to do violence on its own behalf, then whoever does do violence on their half

00:23:22.960 is the sovereign and the ruler of that, of that people, the ultimate authority.

00:23:27.760 Uh, this is, uh, you know, we can, we can go right to starship troopers, right?

00:23:31.820 violence is the ultimate authority from which all other authority derives and there is a a whole

00:23:39.860 pile of truth here that is just incontrovertible we like to think again because we have this like

00:23:45.320 social contract construction or this idea of popular sovereignty or some kind of voluntary

00:23:51.520 uh you know ascent to the government uh that we have ultimately the final say over whether or not

00:23:57.680 we're going to participate but that's obviously not true in any meaningful sense uh when we look

00:24:02.560 at how we actually understand authority inside a state it clearly as you're pointing out previously

00:24:08.640 comes from that monopoly on violence when you look at uh how we get to a state of law a lot of people

00:24:16.700 think well you have the rule of law and that's that's actually what creates the scenario you

00:24:21.900 want to be in that's not true first you have war and then if you have the intervention of a uh a

00:24:29.520 monopoly of violence you have at least order and once you have order you can have law and once you

00:24:35.960 have law then you can read a state reach a state of being governed by virtue but you have to go

00:24:41.420 through those steps you cannot skip any of those steps you must secure violence first because if

00:24:47.660 you're ever in a scenario where a situation can be solved by violence uh then it will be solved

00:24:53.280 by violence because violence is the ultimate authority from which all other authority derives

00:24:57.340 i don't care how wonderful your arguments are i don't care how virtuous your morality is i do not

00:25:02.880 care how spectacular your intellect is ultimately if you get punched in the face you lose uh and so

00:25:10.160 the the violence is the final argument uh there's there's a reason that john locke even called this

00:25:16.600 the appeal to heaven right if you have no other way to get rid of your government if you have no

00:25:22.580 more redress of grievance the ultimate authority when he said appeal to heaven when he meant was

00:25:27.340 you go to war you fight them and in the classic sense you know we even know this you know from

00:25:32.800 medieval you have a a duel right you have like this this challenge of violence and whoever wins

00:25:39.160 it must have had god's favor like you can have a trial by combat you know if you won the combat

00:25:43.540 then clearly you were the innocent person

00:25:45.620 God has chosen you, you were the favored

00:25:47.580 victor and so however

00:25:49.540 you want to frame it, either medieval

00:25:51.420 or just strictly Hobbesian or Machiavellian

00:25:53.780 the point is there has been

00:25:55.340 always been this understanding that

00:25:57.560 violence is the final authority in any

00:25:59.660 of these matters and so if you want to have

00:26:01.540 to use anything but violence, if there's

00:26:03.640 anything outside of violence that you want

00:26:05.600 to resolve conflicts with, you

00:26:07.600 first have to take violence off the table

00:26:09.180 and you don't take violence off the table by writing a constitution

00:26:11.940 or you know sprinkling nice words across uh your country you stop you take violence off the table

00:26:18.280 by ensuring that only one actor has the authority of violence because that's that that authority

00:26:24.260 that violence does not go away sovereignty is always conserved someone will have the power

00:26:29.080 of violence and so if you want to make it so that your country can be ruled by anything but violence

00:26:34.860 you must concentrate it in that individual or in that state in that in that government and so that

00:26:42.280 is the principle that we're exploring here uh he's calling into question uh whether these motives are

00:26:47.720 good or bad i'm less interested in the motives i'm more interested in the mechanics and when we

00:26:52.400 strip down the mechanics even with his moralizing in the analysis the mechanical description is

00:26:57.640 roughly correct it's um it's quite a fascinating number of people who don't wish to acknowledge

00:27:04.540 um that the violence is is the supreme authority um i don't know what they think it is that that

00:27:13.720 underlies uh government perhaps this is something that always breaks out after a sort of prolonged

00:27:18.980 period of peace and contentment or like we were talking about in the last series like a

00:27:24.660 a decadence where the so much fluffy cushioning has been laid over the raw bones uh of the state

00:27:34.040 that people sort of convince themselves that uh oh it's you know it's not really backed by violence

00:27:39.700 it's backed by consent doubtless of course government would would very much like to play

00:27:44.220 into this right um particularly like modern western governments they don't they don't like

00:27:48.380 to think of themselves as um you know based upon the law of violence right they like to sort of

00:27:54.720 you know oh you sound like you know the social contract right like you know we we rule you uh

00:28:00.600 and you agree uh to be ruled um well what if you don't what if you what if you want out uh what if

00:28:08.040 you i mean i i went to a thing during covid that was like really really funny i was like a farm

00:28:12.940 outside london and these guys there had had decided that they were going to secede

00:28:18.700 from the united kingdom and they were all like sovereign citizens you know what sovereign

00:28:23.160 citizens are like right they're like we're going to we're going to secede and form our own country

00:28:27.980 and i was like well you're not like oh yes we are and i'm like do you have an army and they were

00:28:33.660 just quite stumped at this they just i i think assumed that um the united kingdom would just

00:28:40.580 allow little parts of itself to hive away and start making their own laws and enforcing their

00:28:46.660 own security and that's that's just not going to happen that's you don't have a state if that

00:28:51.300 starts happening unless you're muslim yeah well yes uh but again the the muslims are a sort of

00:28:59.300 large organized force so they can take over entire areas they're not just sort of like one guy on a 0.79

00:29:05.800 farm with a couple of shotguns like they are in fact much closer to a mafia of some kind

00:29:10.960 in fact um they really they really are a mafia an ethnic mafia it's a very very well i mean what

00:29:16.700 is a mafia really except a sort of like a um an ethnic or sort of religious i mean again crime

00:29:24.380 network uh well what if they have different laws to you right i mean you know okay to you it's a

00:29:31.220 crime to take a bride of a certain age but to them it's perfectly legal well how would you

00:29:36.300 enforce this you need to enforce it with violence if you can't you don't have a state anymore

00:29:40.460 that's exactly right legitimacy is the probability that other authorities will act to confirm the

00:29:47.400 decisions of a given authority other authorities are much more likely to confirm that decision of

00:29:52.380 a challenged authority that controls substantial force not only fear of retaliation but also desire

00:29:57.880 to maintain a stable environment recommend the general rule. The rule underscores the importance

00:30:04.200 of the authority's monopoly on force. A tendency to monopolize the means of violence makes a

00:30:09.640 government's claim to provide protection in either the comforting or in the ominous sense of the word

00:30:15.780 more credible and more difficult to resist. Frank recognition of the central place of force

00:30:23.100 in government activity does not require us to believe the government authority rests only or

00:30:27.760 ultimately on the threat of violence, nor does it entail the assumption that a government's only

00:30:32.840 service is protection. Even when a government's use of force imposes a large cost, some people

00:30:40.240 may well decide the government's other services outbalance the cost of acceding to its monopoly

00:30:47.140 of violence. Recognition of the centrality of force opens the way to an understanding of the

00:30:54.280 growth and change of government power here is a preview of the most general argument power

00:30:59.280 power holders pursuit of war involve them willy-nilly in the extraction of resources

00:31:05.840 for war making from the population over which they can control and in the promotion of a capital

00:31:11.960 of capital accumulation by those who help them borrow and buy war makes uh war making extraction

00:31:19.180 and capital accumulation interacting to shape European state-making.

00:31:24.300 Power holders did not undertake these three momentous activities

00:31:30.480 with the intention of creating national states.

00:31:33.720 Centralized, differentiated, autonomous, extensive political organizations,

00:31:38.880 nor did they ordinarily foresee the nation-state would emerge

00:31:44.720 from war-making, extraction, and capital accumulation.

00:31:48.200 a couple things here um he's wrong like he's provably wrong about this uh so the first thing

00:31:55.620 is he is making an argument i don't know if this is where it comes if he understands where it comes

00:32:00.280 from he came to his own uh he's making the same argument that delus and qatari make in anti-edipus

00:32:06.200 uh like like almost blow for blow they make exactly this argument for how states are shaped

00:32:12.320 So I don't know. I mean, these guys are, you know, Marxist postmodernists. So, you know, maybe he's just taking that association directly from them. Maybe he just is generally going across the Marxist materialist lens. And this brings him to this understanding.

00:32:27.700 However, specifically, Machiavelli in The Prince, the entire project is to unify Italy so that it can resist the influence of other countries.

00:32:40.360 He specifically wants one of the Medicis or somebody who's worthy to go around and unify all of Italy and turn it into one unified war-making power that can generate sovereignty for the people under it.

00:32:55.980 so um i don't think it's true in any sense that that's the only way that they understood and i'm

00:33:01.620 sure some states were created this way i think you can find examples of this but the idea that

00:33:07.440 this is generally how everyone approached it and that no one understood this as any kind of

00:33:12.280 other political project that's just directly false and easily provably so also his definition

00:33:19.900 of legitimacy is god-awful um wait let me let me let me back up a little and find it um

00:33:27.480 where is it right legitimacy is the probability that other authorities will act to confirm the

00:33:34.500 decisions of a given authority that is a terrible terrible terrible definition of legitimacy

00:33:42.000 legitimacy is the belief in the um ruling paradigm that you you govern a a people with right this is

00:33:53.940 why it leads to how likely you are to be obeyed it's one of the reasons why uh western governments

00:34:00.480 are running into so much trouble because their legitimacy is declining and there are a number

00:34:06.460 of different ways you can you can have legitimacy that used to be very very simple right like the

00:34:11.140 king has been chosen by god because he is chosen by god nothing he does is is wrong he is you know

00:34:18.420 he is part of a bloodline and then of course with the end of the monarchical period we get into

00:34:24.180 other kinds of legitimacy you know democratic legitimacy so you know the government is is

00:34:29.760 legitimate because 51 of the people voted for that thing but this this was always like

00:34:36.900 conditional on the idea that you have at least some kind of homogenous ethnic national or

00:34:44.120 religious polity because if if a government turns around and starts essentially attacking or

00:34:49.940 disenfranchising its own citizens none of none of these legitimacy plays are going to make any

00:34:56.240 sense the uk is a classic example of this what what is the legitimacy that they are now resting

00:35:00.900 upon i it is called british values it's like five very sort of like vague things that technically

00:35:07.840 anyone can believe in no matter you know as soon as they come across on the boat and step on the

00:35:12.640 the shore and they become british um and lack of legitimacy massively increases the friction

00:35:19.400 of everything in government from collecting taxes although you can just collect taxes by

00:35:24.040 printing money now to just people believing your pronouncements um so i mean yeah but you can see

00:35:32.140 where till he's going with this again pretty sure this is marxist adjacent because everything i

00:35:38.120 read in this when i was at uni was marxist adjacent they just they just took it for granted

00:35:44.800 that marx had been proved right you didn't you didn't even argue you know you you'd go on and

00:35:49.820 study crap like Foucault and they'd be like well given what we know about the

00:35:53.360 the truthfulness of Marx's observations what can this lead us on to 0.93

00:35:57.120 wasn't even really there wasn't anyone really criticizing Marx

00:36:01.240 so you know sorry and interesting interesting to juxtapose

00:36:05.500 this Gatano Mosca's understanding of legitimacy comes

00:36:09.420 from what he calls the political formula and the political formula as you were

00:36:13.180 in some at some measure kind of extolling there was this idea

00:36:17.600 that there has to be a buy-in that both the ruler and rule the ruler and ruled believe

00:36:23.760 in order to have that legitimacy you know plato told us about the noble lie the idea that you

00:36:30.060 would you know come down and tell people you know some of you are made of bronze and some of you are

00:36:34.540 made of silver but some of us are made of gold and that's why we should rule because the gods

00:36:38.100 have made us a particular way and that was a cynical lie at some level but installed the

00:36:43.020 legitimacy of the regime. For Gatano-Moski, he says, no, actually, you need the rulers to believe

00:36:48.460 that they have a real stake. I am in charge because my bloodline gives me this authority.

00:36:54.460 I'm in charge because God has granted it to me. I'm in charge because the people have selected me.

00:36:58.900 I am in charge because I am an expert in my field. Whatever the political formula is,

00:37:04.560 you have to have a reciprocal respect from the ruled and the rulers over this formula. And if

00:37:10.400 either one you know ceases to believe in this construction then the whole thing falls apart

00:37:16.860 so it's not you can't just cynically hold this this myth you have to have real buy-in real uh

00:37:23.200 you know there has to be something at the core of your civilization that tells you and and for

00:37:27.600 instance i think right now we're in rule by experts you know we're we're ruled by the oligarchy and

00:37:33.280 ruled by intelligentsia and so it's either money or expertise that grants you that legitimacy and

00:37:39.820 And I think COVID shook that massively.

00:37:42.880 I think that's one of the reasons we're seeing a real crisis of legitimacy in our Western governments.

00:37:48.760 They were predicated on the idea that they knew how to manage the people.

00:37:52.240 They had done the research.

00:37:53.340 They had gone to school.

00:37:54.440 They had studied the important books.

00:37:55.940 And so they were going to be able to use that scientific knowledge, which, let's be honest, is the religion of our day.

00:38:01.020 Science is a religion.

00:38:02.660 It's not a process in the modern day.

00:38:04.460 and it's the uh it's the epistemological structure from which our elites draw their legitimacy they

00:38:12.440 know this this is how we know things we know things through the scientific process and we

00:38:16.220 are the best at knowing them therefore we are best at applying these universal truths and no one else

00:38:20.580 can grasp it and when you saw that fall apart when you saw that actually know these people will lie

00:38:25.620 they'll cheat they're sealed to fabricate things they'll kill people uh in order to maintain that

00:38:29.740 legitimacy uh it then legitimacy itself fell apart because that was not actually what it stood on

00:38:35.360 uh so i think that that's a far better construction uh for understanding legitimacy than what tilly is

00:38:41.500 providing here as you're pointing out you are missing a crucial part of the modern political

00:38:46.660 formula in my opinion uh yes money yes the experts but it has to be twinned fundamentally with some

00:38:55.740 variant of the whig progressive formula that things will continue to get better uh there will

00:39:04.140 be more doodads there will be cheaper prices there will be more equality there will be more pride

00:39:10.460 flags there will be more democracy spread like confetti over the dark places of the earth and

00:39:18.020 And once countries ruled by this political formula begin to go into decline, this throws the entire thing off.

00:39:28.440 So, for example, what good is an expert government if they cannot continue to improve material conditions fundamentally?

00:39:37.880 This is sort of the devil's bargain, really.

00:39:41.100 You will continue to gain economic stuff, right?

00:39:46.500 um and that will sort of uh solve the problems that we have with uh you know declining spirituality

00:39:55.880 declining homogeneity declining all these other things right you you you may be spiritually

00:40:01.980 unwell but you will have a new laptop sort of thing and but when you don't even get the laptop

00:40:08.420 or you know the football doesn't even work the thing breaks apart very very quickly yeah alistair

00:40:14.340 mcintyre talks about this and after virtue and basically calls the end of uh weberianism that

00:40:19.680 you have this you know max max weber understanding that we've disenchanted the world and yeah we're

00:40:24.860 not going to have the spiritual we're not going to have the glory or the honor or the transcendent

00:40:29.680 but what you will get is experts making your life better one step at a time always improving the

00:40:35.400 quality of life material conditions these kind of things um and if at any point that ceases if that

00:40:41.580 you know that that political formula of you give us power because we make your life better fails

00:40:46.480 uh then we start to see what's happening now uh because people are noticing actually life

00:40:51.200 expectancy is going down i'm materially poor and you can see american political conservative

00:40:57.200 commentators panicking oh no oh no yeah we can't just just eat sawdust in your burrito it's fine

00:41:03.360 you know like that that kind of stuff uh and you know it's very interesting but it's the

00:41:07.480 conservatives that are doing the panicking here uh but it is because they believe the same thing

00:41:12.340 they know that at the core of that neoconservative formula is one of managerialism is one of wig

00:41:19.640 history it is one that is entirely based on america as more or less a a product of a continued

00:41:28.280 technological and material improvement and if at any moment that ceases that engine stops

00:41:34.880 then the very thing that their entire system stands on uh falls apart uh but that said you

00:41:40.280 want to hit the next uh paragraph there sure i mean the left seemed to have given all of that

00:41:44.220 you know the far left seemed to have given all that up in pursuit of i don't know equality or

00:41:50.300 something even yeah they're just here to raid the bank at this point actually you know they're just

00:41:54.780 like well um you know we can't possibly advance the you know the material conditions of everyone

00:42:01.000 so let's go for some i don't know crazy uh okay well for them billionaires are just pinatas if

00:42:08.400 you hit them hard enough they crack open and then all the candy comes out uh you know like it really

00:42:12.880 left is always and everywhere the villagers that want to slay the golden goose they they just can't

00:42:18.860 they can't let them lay an egg every day they think if they crack it open then ultimately they

00:42:22.980 get all the eggs at once they really do believe this i think about the golden the story of the

00:42:28.260 golden goose a lot actually like recently it's an amazing it's an amazing like story uh okay right

00:42:35.800 so where are we up to um instead instead the people who controlled european states and states

00:42:42.860 in the making warred in order to check or overcome their competitors and thus to enjoy the advantages

00:42:48.920 of power within a secure or expanding territory to make more effective war they attempted to locate

00:42:55.120 more capital in the short run they might acquire that capital by conquest by selling off their

00:43:00.320 assets or by coercing or dispossessing accumulators of capital or by making loans from

00:43:09.360 from certain medieval ethnic groups well hey hey hey

00:43:16.800 um in the long run the quest inevitably involved them in establishing regular access to capitalists

00:43:22.000 who could supply and arrange credit in imposing one form of regular taxation or another

00:43:26.640 on the people and activities within their spheres of control. As the process continued,

00:43:32.480 state makers developed a durable interest in promoting the accumulation of capital,

00:43:36.700 sometimes in the guise of direct return to their own enterprises. Variations in the difficulty of

00:43:42.540 collecting taxes, in the expense of the particular kind of armed force adopted, in the amount of

00:43:48.180 war making required to hold off competitors and so on resulted in the principal variations in the

00:43:53.760 forms of european states it all began with the effort to monopolize the means of violence within

00:43:59.280 a delimited territory adjacent to a power holder's base i mean this is very you know you know that's

00:44:10.100 like that's that's how you that's how you get states right people they like they they did more

00:44:15.680 war and then in order to have more war they needed more resources so they expanded their

00:44:20.860 land in order to get more resources to make more war and then found more capital to fund this

00:44:26.700 expansion to like it's i guess this is this is the idea of like how you explain european history

00:44:33.720 without any reference to nationality or ethnicity at all yeah yeah it's a it's a totally materialist

00:44:40.100 construction of history and to be fair this isn't entirely wrong right like there there is truth in

00:44:46.780 this but it's a univariable analysis that creates a blind spot through everything else you're using

00:44:53.740 this one axis by which to judge the development of states and that can reveal certain things to

00:44:59.240 you again i i don't i don't think i would disagree with most of the basic facts in these paragraphs

00:45:06.940 I would disagree with the conclusion that they are somehow alone the determinate factor that by simply looking at this and excluding all other things involved, we could ultimately pick this apart.

00:45:20.500 So, for instance, I'll credit to the good old boys who did a phenomenal episode about this.

00:45:26.900 If you haven't done some of the good old boys podcast, they have a podcast on the history of firearms and the way in which the development of weapons changed politics.

00:45:36.480 So when you are wielding a, you know, when the best thing on the battlefield is a knight that takes, you know, the French have to train for, you know, for years and years and years and invest piles of money, you know, the aristocrats are the only ones who get, you know, the reason the aristocrats are even in charge in the first place is they're the only ones who can afford the weapons, can afford the plate bail, can afford to spend all of their time training, you know, wielding these very difficult hand-to-hand combat weapons.

00:46:02.860 when you have that style you lend yourself to the feudal style of government but as soon as

00:46:09.420 you invent the longbow and the average you know englishman can sit there and uh you know he he

00:46:15.380 still has to train a lot but he doesn't have to train as much as uh the the you know the uh the

00:46:20.940 the knight and you don't need the plate mail and everything else once the french knight is obsolete

00:46:25.280 because the longbowman can kill him at range the entire political order changes in fact the pope

00:46:30.440 tried to ban the crossbow because he understood that the crossbow would functionally remove the

00:46:36.200 aristocracy as they understood it and would collapse the political order and so uh in many

00:46:41.740 ways uh you can look at the development of firearms as the driving force uh in through

00:46:47.980 these different political changes so in that way violence would still be the key right like

00:46:52.440 violence is still the driver but you're looking at at uh military innovation as actually uh the

00:46:58.960 shaper of political constructions. So it's not that this is wrong, but you could also do this

00:47:04.580 with religion. You could do this with military technology. You could do this with concepts of

00:47:11.560 ethnicity or identity. You can take all of these variables, all of which played a real role and

00:47:17.600 make them the only thing which you are analyzing and then produce this kind of result if you really

00:47:22.660 wanted to. So again, it's not that there's anything directly wrong with this, but this

00:47:26.720 like entirely Deleuze and Guattari construction this Marxist construction uh it it freezes one

00:47:32.640 variable it makes it too thin and I then I think then leads you to foolish assumptions about the

00:47:38.640 true origin of all of these political dynamics could you expound a little on the precise formation

00:47:45.100 of Deleuze and Guattari for the audience I could use a refresher as well sure no problem uh so

00:47:50.360 So basically, Deleuze and Qatari talk about territorialization and de-territorialization.

00:47:56.760 And the idea is that you have all of these functions of society that are rooted, they're territorialized in the tribe, the people, you know, the code of the original people.

00:48:06.980 And then over time, those things get de-territorialized out of that deeply encoded way of being.

00:48:15.700 And they get transferred to a warlord or some kind of sovereign who wants to conquer other people. And so to do that, he needs to strip out all of these aspects and he needs to move them into a place where they generate surplus capital, power, very much the language that is being used here.

00:48:32.820 And so over time, basically all of these imperial forces consume these smaller individual cultures, completely de-territorialize them out of their native way of life, their tribal being, turn them into liquid capital, and then use that to expand their power, expand their scope, expand their ability to extract from other peoples along the way.

00:48:55.000 uh so i think uh again i don't know if this is directly inspired by that construction yeah it's

00:49:00.460 or if it just flows from marxism but it's it's very close it echoes it very much that's very

00:49:05.420 yeah it's very very similar by the way i don't know whether this is true or not but there is

00:49:10.060 an urban legend that this hand sign actually came from the english uh longbowmen uh who were

00:49:16.820 fighting the french and the story goes that the french would cut off uh these two fingers uh from

00:49:23.580 the english longbowmen because longbow were incredibly effective they had incredible range and

00:49:27.980 so the english longbowmen would taught the taunt the french by holding up uh their intact

00:49:35.180 fingers and being like interesting um right violence and government

00:49:46.140 what distinguished the violence produced by states from the violence delivered by anyone else

00:49:51.740 good question in the long run enough to make the division between legitimate and illegitimate force

00:49:58.080 credible eventually the personnel of states pervade violence on a larger scale more effectively more

00:50:05.400 efficiently with wider ascent from their subject populations and with readier collaboration from

00:50:10.920 neighboring authorities than did the personnel of other organizations but it took a long time for

00:50:16.380 that series of distinctions to become established early in the state making process many parties

00:50:22.280 shared the right to use violence the practice of using it routinely to accomplish their ends

00:50:27.240 or both at once the continuum ran from bandits and pirates to kings via tax collectors

00:50:33.460 regional power holders and professional soldiers the uncertain elastic line between legitimate

00:50:40.620 and illegitimate violence appeared in the upper reaches of power the long love hate affair between

00:50:47.260 aspiring straight state makers and pirates or bandits bandits illustrates this division behind

00:50:54.060 piracy on the seas acted cities and city states behind banditry excuse me appeared the continual

00:51:01.420 aid of lords writes fernand braudel of the 16th century in times of war indeed the managers of

00:51:09.740 full-fledged states often commissioned privateers hired sometimes bandits to raid their enemies

00:51:15.440 and encourage their regular troops to take booty in royal service soldiers and sailors were often

00:51:22.280 expected to provide for themselves by preying on the civilian population commandeering graping

00:51:27.520 looting taking prizes when demobilized they commonly continued the same practices but without

00:51:33.520 the same royal protection demobilized ships became pirate vessels demobilized troops bandits this is

00:51:40.940 a very slanted explanation of this but anyway it also worked the other way a king's best source of

00:51:47.380 armed supporters was sometimes the world of outlaws robin hood's conversion to royal archer

00:51:53.120 may be a myth but the myth records a practice the distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate

00:51:59.220 users of violence came clear only very slowly in the process during which the state's armed forces

00:52:04.460 became relatively unified and permanent i disagree with this i disagree with this this is this is a

00:52:13.080 this is an argument that the only thing that legitimizes violence from the state is in terms

00:52:18.300 of scale where i would say it's it's much more about the story or the political formula being

00:52:25.420 wielded for that violence so very interestingly there's a there's a couple of things i want to

00:52:32.700 draw on here and it's going to be bertrand de juvenile again on power guys you've not read this

00:52:37.140 book just you know as soon as you're done with the show just stop what you're doing and read this

00:52:41.220 book cover to cover it's one of the most important political texts i've ever seen in my life uh but

00:52:46.160 in this bertrand de juvenile also references one of my other favorite books which is the ancient

00:52:51.560 city by postel de colonge and he discusses the process by which governments accumulated more

00:52:59.160 and more power and legitimacy and in bertrand de juvenile's construction he there is some truth

00:53:06.960 here like there there's a mix as always in this document there is some truth here in the idea

00:53:11.600 that originally there was there were multiple purveyors who were allowed to regularly use

00:53:16.740 violence so for instance in uh in colonge's and uh de juveniles construction talking about uh the

00:53:23.780 romans originally the families had the power the djins had the power in rome the patriarchs of the

00:53:31.560 family had you only went to the government if there was some kind of inter-family dispute

00:53:39.120 if anything was happening inside the auspices of the djinn you went to that elder and they would

00:53:45.680 mete out the punishment they would decide you know who got what uh how this got resolved uh they were

00:53:51.800 the judge just because they were the head of the house the paterfamilias was the head of his

00:53:56.780 household and and he was under the wider uh tribe the wider head of the djinn and then only if you

00:54:04.140 had to go beyond that did you actually go to the state to resolve inter inter family intertribal

00:54:10.100 conflict and so for the state for the for the roman republic to become the empire they basically

00:54:17.760 had to slowly disintegrate the authority of the families the you had to turn this strong tribal

00:54:25.500 uh you know kind of identity into something that was much weaker and you had to get people used to

00:54:32.180 going to the higher authority that you know you had to destroy that tribal or that familial uh

00:54:38.760 power and you had to kick everything up to the state itself and in that way it's true that like

00:54:45.320 it is one of scale it's true that that is you know an a accumulation of power at scale but it's also

00:54:52.820 the notable breaking of family bonds the notable breaking of tribal loyalties uh traditions uh

00:55:00.540 things that were previously demanding of one's honor and one's loyalty and in the juveniles

00:55:05.920 construction and on power this is the metaphysics of power this is how power centralizes it

00:55:10.580 centralizes by destroying other legitimate organizations that at one time held many

00:55:16.000 authorities one of which was the use of violence and so it is true that dissolving of all of those

00:55:21.700 other authorities includes the dissolving the violence on the hands of those smaller social

00:55:27.660 spheres of legitimacy but that's not the only one like that's really important is you have to

00:55:32.340 understand that it was you know the church it was uh you know uh trade organizations unions

00:55:38.180 merchants peasants uh aristocrats uh and then the centralized government itself they were all in

00:55:43.520 tension with each other all of them had different powers inside the society and only by dissolving

00:55:49.400 all of those the state accumulate all of those power including the full power of force you can

00:55:55.260 think of it another way you know back in the 19 uh let's say you know back in the 1860s if you

00:56:02.480 wanted to resolve something you would duel like we literally had presidents who walked around

00:56:06.780 with a bullet lodging their chest because as a man you had the right to resolve grievances

00:56:12.320 with direct violence uh without state authority as you go later on you know maybe the 1890s early

00:56:19.540 1900s you could easily you know get into a real bloody fight with somebody and not expect the

00:56:26.660 state to step in there were lots of understandable reasons why which you would you know enter into

00:56:31.720 violence even as late as you know 30 years ago you would assume that you know if two kids at

00:56:37.420 school got into a scuffle and resolve things through violence well maybe the you know school

00:56:41.920 would step in and punish somebody but ultimately this was not you know this was the way that most

00:56:45.740 people resolve serious uh conflicts like it was very common idea that okay that guy needs to get 0.68

00:56:52.120 his butt but whooped a few times to really learn a lesson right that was now today any amount of

00:56:57.740 violence like the smallest amount of violence the state steps in and punishes everybody involved 0.98

00:57:02.880 right like you can't even get into a fist fight without everybody going to jail uh because

00:57:07.580 ultimately there is no place for non-state violence and so this is something that erodes

00:57:12.600 slowly over time and it's not because the state ran around like shooting everybody who got in a

00:57:16.860 fistfight uh there's a lot more to that uh it it does end up with the central issue of violence

00:57:22.800 uh but i think that again he's turned it into this one variable it's a univariable analysis and it

00:57:28.860 leads us to uh anemic conclusions at the end well the the promise of the state control is an end

00:57:35.480 into nissan uncontrolled into nissan violence right so they you know the state comes along

00:57:40.220 they're like look at all the people being injured in jewels or uh look at the fallout from the civil

00:57:47.980 war between this clan and and this clan right like you know um the problem is of course taken

00:57:53.960 to its logical conclusion you get a situation like you were saying where all violence becomes

00:58:01.400 no matter because you know this the state generally speaking has a tendency to expand

00:58:06.760 sort of like a gas to fill whatever uh vessel it is contained in and then uh you know if you're not

00:58:13.900 careful you'll wind up in like where the UK is where you're not even allowed to carry pepper

00:58:19.420 spray um which may work if you are in a place that has literally no violence but humans being

00:58:26.160 what they are there is always violence so you just wind up in this impossible situation yet again

00:58:31.200 sometimes provoking even more into Nissan violence than you had in the previous iteration

00:58:36.760 all right well i think we should stop there uh we're not quite halfway through uh but we're

00:58:42.100 at a decent pace probably probably looking at three episodes out of this one maybe four

00:58:46.040 uh so uh we'll continue on this probably next monday uh but it's been a pleasure uh i think

00:58:52.820 this is again obviously we do not agree with a lot of this document but i do think it's an

00:58:57.700 interesting jumping uh off place to discuss a lot of these aspects that i think are critical

00:59:03.100 to political theory uh and so it's good to both break this down find where it's right find where

00:59:08.480 it's wrong and use other sources to kind of flesh out uh this uh concept in a more holistic way that

00:59:15.340 i think will help us to understand the functions of government but that said uh mr fist before we

00:59:20.280 go to the questions of the people where should people find your work uh you can find me uh just

00:59:26.020 search for news fist two words on youtube you'll find my channel at the moment i'm doing a uh

00:59:31.500 political comedy podcast once a week on thursdays and you can find me over on rhetorically defectives

00:59:37.840 channel doing a twice weekly live stream arty and fist you can get all my links at newsfist.net

00:59:42.980 and we also have his link down below in the description of the video so you can follow that

00:59:48.360 as well all right guys uh sean whitenland says uh franz oppenheimer's conquest theory of the state

00:59:57.140 i have not read that one but uh probably something i should put in the hopper uh the the very large

01:00:02.860 stack of books that maybe i'll read before i die but the chances are low uh let's see here

01:00:07.700 uh joshua bb says uh might might does not make right but it does decide who's in charge people

01:00:15.660 like to forget about the last part at their own peril yeah and this is very much uh where i think

01:00:21.640 a lot of governments are right now a lot of people are denial about this fact uh this is why i have

01:00:26.700 been on my soapbox discussing the importance of understanding when you've reached existential

01:00:31.100 politics. Actually, given Hassan Piker's mockery of Charlie Kirk's death last week, I think I'll

01:00:37.360 be writing my column on this tomorrow because conservative movement needs to figure this out

01:00:41.800 real quick. These people are going to want to kill you and you are not ready for that and you got to

01:00:47.120 get ready. Politics is ultimately about the application of violence. It is not about

01:00:51.960 parliamentary procedure uh and that is something that everybody needs to get a real firm grasp on

01:00:56.940 real quick manahude says war is father to all and king of all he renders some gods others men

01:01:06.460 he makes some slaves others free heraclitus so true yeah

01:01:11.700 uh the agile warrior says i do declare my support for czar fist a role model of uh for us all

01:01:21.440 Brothers in

01:01:23.280 Trying Times

01:01:24.520 Juan Mills voice I'm not sure what that means

01:01:27.460 You are not familiar with the great work

01:01:29.640 Of Juan Mills

01:01:30.860 It's a sort of

01:01:32.800 Weird blaxploitation

01:01:35.380 Fiction I've been covering

01:01:37.360 On my

01:01:38.160 Thursday podcast thank you

01:01:41.600 Agile Warriors I appreciate that mate

01:01:43.000 That's why it's a brother

01:01:45.000 Yeah well I guess we now get a little

01:01:47.480 Taste of what you'll find over on the News Fist channel

01:01:49.680 Yeah that's right

01:01:51.440 and uh uh sean wyland says ferdinand brodell mentioned uh civilization and capitalism i'm

01:01:59.400 assuming these are a lot of uh libertarian texts uh but i'm not exactly sure well sean wyland knows

01:02:05.920 like all the takes sounds like he sure does he knows what he's talking about he does all right

01:02:10.460 guys we're gonna go ahead and wrap this up as always make sure you're checking out mr fist's

01:02:15.040 work it is excellent if it's your first time on this channel you need to subscribe bell notification

01:02:19.920 like the video comment all the stuff youtube loves if you want to get these broadcasts as

01:02:24.800 podcasts you need to subscribe to or mcintyre show on your favorite podcast platform when you do leave

01:02:29.680 a rating or review it really helps with the algorithm magic and don't forget we are now

01:02:33.560 streaming live on twitch i've got the instagram active facebook everything's getting uploaded

01:02:38.000 so follow us on all your favorite uh socials thank you for watching and as always we'll talk to you

01:02:43.660 next time

The Auron MacIntyre Show - August 24, 2026

The Government as Organized Crime ｜ Guest： News Fist ｜ 8⧸24⧸26

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