Neoliberalism Part 4: This is What Democracy Looks Like

In the final part of our Neoliberalism series we watch Reagan and Thatcher destroy the unions, gut the welfare state, and construct an enormous police-prison-slave state in its place.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to It could happen here a show about things
falling apart, and is for one final time this week
about why and how things have fallen apart in this
specific way. Um, I'm I'm I'm your host Christopher, and
today with me I have Garrison. Well, Garrison, Hello, how

(00:25):
you doing. I'm doing fine. We're gonna talk about something
that's not fine. It's not fine at all, is in
fact extremely grim and bad, which is part four of
our series of deal Liberalism, i e. All of the
bad things happened at once so in in in in
a last episode, we talked about how throughout throughout most
of the Third World or you know what was at

(00:48):
the time known as the Third World, new liberalism is
not really imposed by people voting for it. It's mostly
imposed by either external forces via coup or by just
the I M going okay, just we're running the country now. Um,
but this this, yeah, We're we're gonna shift our focus
a bit this episode with the people who were I

(01:10):
don't know, unfortunate enough, misguided enough, decided that they hated
each other enough to actually choose neoliberalism for themselves. Now,
one of the sort of stories we've been tracing here
on sort of a very broad arc is the reaction
by Neil Bulls to kind of kind of compromise it
have been worked out between labor and capital, particularly the
US after sort of the open class warfare in the

(01:33):
reteen thirties, and you know, they're essentially there's there's a
kind of deal that's set up informally, which is so
the we're working class will stop literally constantly going on
strike and showing up the strikes with like enormous numbers
of guns and shooting at people, and they will you know,
stop trying to overshow the government in exchange, the state

(01:53):
gives you welfare programs, the state will give you a house.
And this is this is particularly after what we're too
the Americans say, just you know, does this matter homeownership campaign?
And you know, if if you're if you're, if you're
you know, a union worker, particularly if you're a white
man like this, this, you know, working working, working one
of these union jobs will put you into the middle class.
You can take vacations, you can have a house, um,
you can get pensions. Your unions are legal now, which

(02:15):
is the thing that like you know, hadn't happened before.
And this is essentially, you know, this is essentially a
kind of insurgency tool. Um. The goal of this is
to stop people from you know, doing the kinds of
revolts that were happening in at the dirties. But by
the nineteen seventies it's becoming very clear that this sort
of the like can't it can't really be maintained because

(02:38):
it's too expensive for sort of the capital states to
maintain and trying to maintain both well. And you know,
the secondary thing here is is, you know, okay, so
this deal specifically goes out to white men right now,
throughout the sixties and seventies, you get a bunch of
other people who are not white men attempting to enter
the workplace, attempting you get the same bargain, and you know,

(02:59):
they're in a lot of way significantly one militants. And
this causes en normal sponsetermentional strife. You get you know,
the US is murdering the black panthers. You get similar
stuff in the UK and the neoliberals basically are the
people who just fully called this to tants off and

(03:19):
are you know, essentially going to return to full scale
class war. And so now now we are we are
finally getting to Reagan and Thatcher, and one day we
will do a full episode about how Ronald Reagan, in
a weird, shadowy cabal of Italian intelligence services rigged the
nineteen eighty election by planting fake stories about Jimmy Carter's
brother and the press, which is if you hear the story, Garrison, No,

(03:41):
but it sounds like regular media manipulation that happens all
the time. Now, Yeah, yeah, it's it's yeah, there, there's,
there's there's there's there's a whole three line there because
you know a lot of those like same kind of
intelligence tactics are gonna be used South the Iraq War,
and there's there's this whole sort of thing. Then you
know that there's also the specific Italian angle of uh yeah,

(04:02):
the Italian States being run by this rogue Masonic lodge
led by a fascist and it's it's a time this
is all going on there. But that's you know, I'm
just I'm just thinking like Hunter Biden laptop and all
of that. Yeah, yeah stuff. It's like, oh so that's
just the same playbook. Yeah, it's it's the same thing,
except like they were like actual intelligence people running it

(04:23):
instead of just sort of like whatever, Tucker carloson Tucker Carlson,
Glenn Greenwaal, trying to get people to care about this
thing that just nobody gives a single ship about. Yeah,
you know, it was, it was, but the the Ages
version of it was significantly more effective. And you know,
the product of this is that Reagan sort of Reagan

(04:45):
finds like the secret sauce for right wing politics, which
is kind of you know, in in in some ways,
and Nixon had been trying to develop it hadn't quite
gotten right, which is no, yeah, yeah, yeah. He he
figures out that, you know, if you want to do
new liberalism, if you want to destroy the unions, you
want to show the welfare state, the way you do
it is basically a combination of racist tax and welfare

(05:06):
recipients and you mobilize new religious right. And this is
extremely effective and it's but I think it's also interesting
and worth noting that, you know, if if you got
all the back to episode one, like this is this
is rope keys like white nationalism, like short German white nationalism.
Thing is this is explicitly a ropeky sort of strategy
for implenting the liberalism was the problem is he was

(05:26):
German and Catholic, which meant that like it could never
work in the US. But you know, you get Reagan,
suddenly you get the American version of it, that is,
you know, white but American, and then also works off
the sort of of off of the sort of mass
Protestantism in the US, and this becomes a force study

(05:47):
is responsible for like almost every bad thing that exists
today in some form or another lot of them. Yeah,
I mean not not often, but you know, I the thing,
things go extremely badly. And so Reagan wins this election
and then almost exactly the same time, Margaret Thatcher wins

(06:08):
the wins her election in in the UK, and that
the combination of those two things, and also, as we
talked about last episode, the Vulcar shock, where Volca raises
the interest rates raised, defendation become so Vulcar is installed weirdly,
not by Ronald Reagan but by Jimmy Carter, but is
given this sort of mandate to just do whatever, literally

(06:30):
do whatever you have to to to get inflation under control.
The thing that he decides to do is just literally
nuke the entire world economy. You know, when we talked
about the effects of this hat ont of the world
and the last episode. But in the US this sets
off a recession at last, basically from like nineteen seventy
nine to Night two. At the height of it, it's
like it's I think we finally got more people unemployed

(06:53):
during the pandemic, but I'm like sure that between World
War Two and the pandemic, that was the single largest
number pop who have been unemployed in the US, which
just yeah, it was just apocle, just apocle devastation. And
you know, there's there's there's a whole thing here where
the head of the a f l C. I OH
is literally begging Vulcar like, please don't do this, like
we can get inflation under control after, you know, after

(07:14):
the economy recovers, and vocals just like no. The consequence
of this is that you have you have an economy
in which is no more sumber of people unemployed, and
the unions are weak, and both Reagan and Thatcher sort

(07:38):
of see this. Now the unions in the UK are
in a sniffulty better position the American unions. Reagan is
able to sort of smash the American unions very quickly
there's there's the you know, the famous air traffic control
strike where a bunch of American air traffic controllers go
on strike technically illegally, and Reagan just has literally every
single one of them fired and replaces them with just

(08:00):
like like people from flight school, like people who just
just like apt literally anyone he can just like pull
off the street who sort of kind of knows how
to how to land an aircraft, like they put on
people from the military. It's it's just like this absolutely
wild sort of feet of strike breaking. And then you know,
and when when when that falls and that that strike fails,

(08:22):
you know, the air traffic controllers well, okay, funnily so,
the air traff controllers had actually backed Reagan. They were
like the only union that backed Reagan in the election,
and they immediately just get you know, they get gutted
for it, which, like I have mixed feelings about because like,
on the one hand, like, yeah, that's that's, that's what
you get. But on the other hand, this is basically

(08:42):
what the stories this, This is the consequences that this
is basically what the stories like trade unions in the
US because at this at this point, everyone realizes that
the unions are weak and they just start you know,
there's you get to the point where employers are deliberately
provoking strikes so that they can just fire all the
unionized employees. And it's extra to be effective. In in Britain,
the fight is a lot more intense um in in

(09:06):
in Entity. For Thatcher cuts cold, like basically Thatchery wants
to provoke a fight with with the coal unions and
so she basically wants to shut down a whole bunch
of coal production and fire like twenty miners, and the
miners go on strike, and they go on strike for
over a year. But Thatcher had basically stockpiled enough cold
to stave off the worst effects of the strike. And

(09:27):
then she makes these incredibly elaborate network of deals with
like She's like this this whole scab driver like union,
like basically this whole network of scab drivers, like make
sure you can move the coal around while the strike's
going on. There there's all of this stuff, and you know,
and and she eventually is able to crush the coal strike.

(09:47):
And this also just just completely annihilates like the British
trade union movement, I mean union participation. I think dreaming
Thatcher's term alone falls and it's gotten way worse since then.
So so with those two incidents, the air traffic control
and the coal did did those just kind of make
people be disillusioned or did that just like pave the

(10:09):
way for similar tactics to be acceptable for every other
union that tried to do the same thing both And
then the everthing was fear because you know, so with
the air traffic controllers, right, the air traffic controllers are
you know, these are the most highly skilled like people
people in there there, These are a bunch of people
who are incredibly have the skilled and they're in there,
in there in a logistic industry, right, so you know,

(10:31):
in theory, these are the people who have like the
maximum amount of impact if they would go on strike.
And when Reagan shows that you can literally just fire
twenty four thousand people of like the most highly skilled
sort of workers in the in the US, you can
fire them and just break the strike and nothing will happen,
and you know the result is total defeat and none
of these people ever work again. That basically spreads this

(10:52):
massive wave of fear through the union movements because you know,
if they can fire those guys, they can fire anyone
and then you know, the the employers just start doing it.
And the other thing that's been happening here is that
for really since the end of the forties, the unions
have kind of So we'll we'll talk about this more

(11:14):
in in in an interview that's gonna come out probably
next week about sort of the history American union movements,
but American unions basically so American, like the union movement
was built by radical organizers and in the forties and
sort of moving on from there, all these people get
expelled from the labor movement and labor fights this basically

(11:38):
incredibly intense battle against its own left flank, and you
have you know, like for example, in in there's this
thing called the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, right, which is
a bunch of mostly black workers in Detroit, who are
you know, they're there there there forming unions, they're going
on a strike, but they're also fighting against the the
u a W because the U a W is cooperating

(11:59):
too closely. But the bosses etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And there's
there's there's these you know, there's there's basically this battle
between like not even just basically between the unions ranked
and file and the radicals and the sort of business
union management, and in fighting that battle, the unions had
basically like massively weakened themselves and then you know, and
bye bye bye. By the time you hit the eighties,

(12:21):
especially in the US, the unions are just sort of
a shell out their form ourselves, and and Reagan just
sort of like smashes them aside. And Thatcher the British
unions are much stronger, but you know, I mean that
Thatcher is preparing to like like there she she has
plans to like the army is going to come in
and suppress the strike. There's these and especially there's there's just,
i mean just an absolutely incredible amount of police violence.

(12:45):
Um that's you know, I mean, this is this is
something that had happened before during strikes, but the the
the the level of intensity of it is just like
massively increased. And there's also another thing that's happening basically
at the same time with this, which is squeezing the
units on the other side, which is there's this I

(13:07):
guess you could call it like an internal class war
inside the ruling class between well specifically inside inside of
the sort of corporate management between the sort of traditional
like manager CEO class and the sort of like I
guess you could call them, I don't know, the sort
of Wall Street finance bank types and so so yeah,

(13:27):
so one of the other things that that happens at
the end of you know, basically after the war is
the sort of class compromise was talking about like this,
this happens inside of the company too, and people start
to see the corporation as like a social institution. It
has you know, it's like, well, okay, so there's this
alliance between middle management and the workers, and you know,
it's like, okay, so we we both worked with each other,

(13:49):
and you know, the compromises that you guys got to
have unions, but the unions won't sort of disruptroduction. We'll
all work together and we'll just make like I don't know,
we'll we'll make really really good ballpoint pens together. And
so yeah, you have this in lince between sort of
middle managements and these unions, you know, and this this
is embedded into the structure of the corporation because you know,
you not you not only have the unions, but you

(14:09):
have corporations paying pensions. One of the things that that
Reagan does is that Reagan starts, you know, Reagan does
this massive series of financial deregulations. And the other part
of this agreement basically had been that like the high
level of finance class has sort of stayed out of
the way of management, and so management kind of like

(14:30):
you know, the you get this like this independent sort
of CEO class that that's that's a distinct thing that
you know, that the people who come up through the
company who managers and they worked away at the top,
and this is a distinct thing from sort of the
finance people who are like they're not supposed to be
allowed to like, you know, the touch production. But in
the nineteen eighties, the finance people start to look at

(14:51):
this and go, wait, hold on, why are we not
running things? And the finance people have because they have
the two things on their side. One they have a
sort of neoliberal ideology, and the second thing they have
is so Michael Milken he figures out how to do
this thing called a leverage buyout option. It's it's it's
a it's a kind of complicated financial instrument. The short

(15:13):
and simple explanation of what it is is he figures
out a way too basically go into a bunch of debt,
and he he gets he gets people to give him
a bunch of money, like in the form of these bonds,
and then he uses it to just buy out entire companies.
He buys of the company. And if you own fit
of the company, now you control, you have controlling interest.

(15:34):
And so he goes in and she just he just
raises the stock prices of all these companies. And now
you know, but I mean, now he's gone into an
enormous amount of debts right in order to buy in
order to buy this company, and so you know, in
order to pay off that debt, he just starts strip
money in the company. And so he starts, you know,
anything that can be sold for money that he can
put in his pocket to pay off his debt starts

(15:55):
getting sold. And you know, every anything the corporate that
the company is doing, it doesn't immediate make money or
doesn't immediately raise the stock price gets cut. And so
you know, there there, there, there are there are two
major things that a company has that don't immediately make
money and don't raise the stock price, and that is
pensions and research and development. And this this has you know, this, this, this, this,

(16:19):
this becomes known as the sort of this is the
hustle takeover waves. It gets rebranded as mergers and acquisitions
in the nineties, but it's it's this huge sort of wave,
those these corporate scripts corporate America, and it turns the
corporation from this kind of social body where it's like, well,
everyone's cooperating and companies sort of have this responsibility to

(16:39):
like provide for their workers and provide sort of for
like the social good into literally the only like the
single entire purpose of any company is to raise the
stock price. And this, yeah, this is really bad. Yeah,
and and and you know the part about it that's
awful is that, you know, okay, so all all literally

(17:01):
all a corporate rad has to do in order to
buy out one of these companies is be able to
is be able to offer a price for the stock
that's higher from the stock price of the company now.
And this means even so they're they're they're there's a
very famous series of battles they buy out. An enormous
number of companies get bought out into strip minds like this,

(17:23):
and you know, and the over and again these are
these are very very profitable companies, right, These are companies
with large research and development budgets. These are companies that
are making enormous amounts of money and they're just completely
destroyed in order to sort of just like satiate these
just like absolute Google corporate, like vulture raider people. This
is you know, if you remember, might be too young
for this, but Romney's campaign for so yeah, one one

(17:46):
of the reasons why Mitt Romney loses is that like
he's one of these guys like he's he's like he's
the big bang capital guy, and everyone's kind of looks
at him and goes like, you're the reason we'd like
guide to this mess in the first place. But the problem,
the problem is that these people who have enough money
and they have enough power, they're able to do this
and in order to stop them, so either there there

(18:08):
there's a massive there's a massive fight. A bunch of
people try to take over good Year, who you know,
they make the tires, they have the blimps, and Goodyear
CEO is like fanatically opposed to all of this because
you know, she she's she's from the old ceo crop
who's like, well, okay, we're here to like make things
instead of you know, increased stock prices. But the problem

(18:29):
is the only way he can save off the raiders
is by increasing a stock price. And the only way
to increase stock prices is by doing the things the
corporate raiders are already doing. So she starts slashing contentions,
he starts flashing with your development budgets. Yeah, and this
and this. This sort of cycles because now you have
you know, there's there, there's it's it's it's you're not
only having pressure from you know, like the government, that's
that's anti union. The corporations themselves are being forced to

(18:52):
become more anti union because they're you know, they now
have this pressure on them from the top down, from
from these sort of these sort of finance schools, and
the finance schools in a lot of ways just the
perfect nilable subjects, right because they only see the world
in money. They see everything as a market that they
literally think that like they they are like these like
shamans if if if there's a really good ethnography that

(19:13):
I've plugged before on here called liquidated and an ethnography
and void yet liquidated and ethnography of Wall Street, where
an anthropologist goes onto Wall Street and works there for
a while, and then you cannot much of interviews, doesn't
it doesn't athethpological stuff. And the way they talk about
the market, they literally talk about it as if they're
channeling it, right, like it's like something and they're like,

(19:34):
these are yea, these are these are that's that's one
of the new gods of of our world. That yeah,
that's I mean, that's that. That's not an uncommon term
of phrase to describe stuff like this. Yeah, and and
what what what what I think is they just think
about it though, is that you know that conception of
the market of like every person is just like a
peer like completely socially unbounds like thing of capital all

(20:00):
that you Oh, well, okay, if you lose your job here,
you can just move to another firm, right, So this
makes sense inside of the context of Wall Street because
these people like like these Wall Street firms they have
they have like like thirty turned over a year, and
so all these people are constantly being fired and shuffle
on to the next job, and fired and shuffle onto
the next job, and so you know, they so they
they do they do this very common sort of fallacy

(20:22):
thing where they assume that because this is the way
that it works for them, but this is the way
it's gonna work for everyone else. And then they genuine
and a lot of these people genuinely believe this. They're like, well, okay,
so the things we're gonna with things that we're about
to do, like, you know, when we destroy these workers
entire lives when we should be you know, when we
close their factories, when we take their pensions, when we
literally destroyed like every community and every like thing that's
every just in your lives, they're like, oh, they'll just

(20:43):
pick themselves up and go to another place and they'll
be fine, because you know, if you're if you're you know,
a Wall Street finance school, like, yeah, that's that's what
happens when you get fired every three months. And so
these people, these people basically take control of the entire
overspective they do. They do this very quickly by you know,
they start this in the sort of early eighties. And uh, Milliken,

(21:06):
the guy who comes up with the junk bonds leveraged
buyout scheme, like he he goes to jail for I
think securities fraud. Do they get him for fraud. But
it doesn't it a lot of those guys got all
of these people like he again, all of these people
are just doing crime, Like now, yeah, that's how finance standards,

(21:29):
this is how this is how the Action Park guy
got kicked out. You got kicked out doing doing all
the same stuff. And again, I want to put this out,
like the stuff they're doing is so illegal that like
even the Reagan administration was like, no, we have to
prosecute you. Like that's like, this is the this is
the Ronald Reagan Justice departments. And they're like it was

(21:53):
it was so much crib. Yeah, it's it's really bad.
And and you know the result of this is just
basically the total visceration of the working class just like
as a movement. And you know, all the left wing
parties are sort of shaped by this. And you know,
and you know, we've been focusing on on the US

(22:13):
and uh in the UK here, but this is not
the only place this happens. And you know, so one
of the you know, like this this happens, this, this
also starts happening like in socialist states. Um And we
talked about this in more detail in our interview with
Arnessa Kasutra about Bosnia. But one of the big things
that Miloshevik is doing in Yugoslavia and when when he

(22:34):
takes power and he starts like actually being a real
political force inins in eighties, is he starts doing basically
all of the same stuff that that that reagan A,
thatacher doing. He starts, he starts implementing shock adoction, he
starts privatization, he starts um like marketization, he starts cutting stutting,
cutting price controls, he starts sort of he starts doing
I don't know if decollectimization is quite the right word,

(22:57):
because Yugoslavia's economic system is complicated and weirder than uh
the SSRs. But you know, he does this, and this
is one of the things that starts Yugoslavia's dethspiral, because
you know, you have this enormous economic devastation from the
increase in oil prices from the oil shock, and then

(23:17):
that gets paired with, you know, the the economic devastation
from everyone losing their benefits, people losing de pensions, the
state on the industries going under and getting privatized, um
the sort of like collective ownership structures imploding and the
product of this is that you know, Melosivic looks at

(23:38):
this and it's like, Okay, how can I stay in power?
And his answer is just genocide on that. It's just
genocide on nationalism. And this sort of collapse a sort
of state and social life is you know, and and
the leaders at the top realizing that they can weaponize
sort of nationalism is one of the things at least
directly to the Boston and genocide. Now, towards the end

(23:58):
of the eighties, the whole Soviet block starts coming apart um. Yeah,
you know, the Berlin Wall falls and eventually, you know,
the Soviet Union dissolves, and the people who are trying
to end the Soviet Union, the things that they want
basically are like freedom of speech, the ability to like
leave the country, and basically like Scandinavian style social democracy.

(24:22):
And it was like reasonable coming from the Soviet Union.
Yeah yeah, and you know, I mean, these these people
like you know, this is these you know, like they
they they wanted to leave in Scandinavia and instead they
got hey, welcome to the US, but like even worse. Yeah,
and so yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's really bad. And

(24:45):
you know what they getting said, is just these this
enormous wave of privatizations. H the weldfare state just vanishes,
and you know this this causes basically like total societal collapse. Um.
Like one of my one of my professors, and this
this happens basically across the whole Soviet Block one of
professions in college, and I think she was fumble Gary. Um.

(25:06):
She she told me about how dream the nineties like
when she when she was growing up, like she and
her family would just the only thing they had to
eat was raw millet because there's no food. There's there's
literally no food anywhere. The entire economy is collapsed. Nobody
has any money, and so you know, it was like, well, okay, everyone,
she's eating raw grain because you know that that's what
that's that's the only thing you can you can you
have to survive. And you know it's this it's it's

(25:28):
literally so bad that in Russia it causes the single
largest life expectant to drop in post World War Europe.
It's like like it's the life expected to decrease is
about like four years because so many people die from this. Um.
You know, and one of the one of the ways
this happens is that there's so the way they're they're
going to deal with like the state owned industry thing

(25:49):
is they they okay, and I've never been able to
figure this figure out if it was like they they
actually took Murray Rothbard's plan for this, or if they
just independently developed were a roth whereas plan for for
for dissolving stated on the industries, which is give like
everyone who worked in a share of the company. And
so they do this right, and everyone has these shares,

(26:09):
but these shares are just like paper, and you can't
eat this paper. So a bunch of sort of like
organized crime guys and the people who have been you know,
like like the sort of the people who've been richer
or like had been sort of connected party people who
were just like I'm just gonna cash out start, you know,
just just going through cities, and they're they'll you know,
they'll be like, okay, we'll give you a pair of genes,
like we'll give you some food if you give us

(26:29):
their share, and you know, everyone people just give up
the shares. And the result of this is that like
just every industry in Russia immediately falls under the control
of just just like absolutely psychotic oligarchs, and you know,
the the West definitely sharing this on that this this
whole process is engineered by just a bunch of just
like pure neoliberal Google like Harvards, like weird Harvard grads

(26:54):
who gets sent into Russia and who are like, oh,
we're gonna we're gonna run the Russian economy and we're
gonna like fix everything, and they just just absolutely destroy it.
And you know, the West has the thing that they're
they're you know, they're they're they're cheering on this whole process.
They have this thing about how like everyone has to
do belt tightening and you're gonna suffer for a bit
and it'll all be worth it. And meanwhile, Boris Jelson

(27:15):
is just completely drunk off his asked like shelling the
parliament with tanks, while like the U. S. Press is cheering,
and you know there's the sort of like you know,
the tragedy this is like it's not really like Russia
got like more free, you know, like they still they
still torture and disappeared anarchists and secret prisons, like you know,

(27:37):
there's there they still just like randomly assassinated political dissidence
with through increasingly bizarre, like poison bullshit. Yeah, yeah, but
you know, the big difference is that a bunch of
Harvard grads made an indescribable amount of money. Now no
one has any pensions, um, and there's there's this is
great like this is a great Russian joke from this

(27:59):
period that goes he's talking about the communists. Everything they
ever told us about communism was a lie, but everything
they ever told us about capitalism was absolutely true. Yeah,
that's that seems to be roughly accurate. Yeah, it's basically true.
And you know, and and the product is sort of
neoliberalism coming to Russia is that by by by the
end of the nineties, Russia is just literally controlled by

(28:22):
the mob and these sort of monsters, oligarchs. And Putin's
campaign is like I am better than the mob, and
I will bring them, I will bring the mob in,
the oligarchs under control. And this is you know, this
is how Putin takes power because and he has failed
to hold up to that probless to be fair, to
be fair, the you are significantly less likely to just

(28:42):
like randomly be kidnapped and ransoms. Not me, No, I
have I have wrote for a website. He does not,
like I cannot that's true. That's true. If yeah, if
you kiss off Putin, you might be held for ransom.
But it's like, you know, the number of random people
who don't do anything political, who are just like randomly
held for ransom did kind of go down a bit

(29:05):
and like that's all right, all right, you gotta hand
it to Putin, Okay, I give him. Yeah, well, okay.
The thing on hand to Putin is that he restored
the state's monopoly on violence. Now that's not a good
things now, but he did it. Yeah, he well, he
did it. And you know this this was the basis

(29:26):
of sort of because his power and political support was
that in sort of nationalism. And this is like you know,
and and there's always just the sort of liberal line
on on on Putin. He's like, oh he's an SKGB guy,
and like oh, it's still communism again, and it's like no,
like no, no, and and that this this brings me
back to the single thing that I I need everyone
to understand about near liiberalism, which is that near liberalism

(29:48):
does not decrease the size of the state. Like the
there there were more, there were more bureaucrats now in
the Russian State than there were under the Soviet Union. No,
and it definitely in order for it to operate, definitely
extends drastically that like the hands of the state in
terms of like like like military, police, law enforcement, like

(30:08):
all those things. In order to keep this weird market
driven thing alive, you need to have a lot of
like enforcement on people who don't have but both both
people who like actually make money and but most of
the people who don't make very much money. So it
increases not only like the bureaucratic state, but also like
the enforcement armor the state. Yeah, and I think there's

(30:29):
there's there's there's there's two interesting ways this happens. One
is that, well, okay, there's three ways happens. One is
that anytime someone says they're gonna they're gonna do deregulation,
like the deregulation does not mean that they're going to
decrease the number of regulations there are. What it means
is that the regulations are bad for this company, and
so they're they're going they're going to they're going to
add more regulations in a way that is good for

(30:50):
this company. And the thing is this actually this, you know,
this net increases the size of the state right there.
They're not like they're not like they're not decreasing the
number of laws or whatever. They're you know, they're they're
they're they're they're writing like incredibly like absolutely incomprehensible banking
legislation that like, let's banks charge like interest rates that
previously only organized crime could do. And then there's there's

(31:14):
another aspect of this, which is that, you know, so
the the welfare that remains right, you know, it becomes
means tested, and you know that means that there's so
you have the bureaucracy right that like gives you things,
and then you have another bureaucracy on top of that
that decides whether or not you should be allowed to
do the thing it puts you know, there's this this
is just just this like process of abject humiliation that

(31:36):
you have to go through to receive anything, yeah, from
the state. And it's like that sucks. And then because
that is so awful, there's another layer of bureaucracy, which
is like social workers and stuff, whose job it is,
in large part is to help you bypass the second
layer of bureaucracy, so that creates another layer. Yeah, there's
there's there's there's so much. Yeah it is, and but
but this is you know this, this, this is one

(31:57):
of the things in the ribals do, which is okay,
so you know, you you have you have, you have
your two doctrines. Right, you have the thing they actually believe,
which is enormous, bureaucratic, military, state, and then you have
the thing they claim to believe, which is, oh, the
state needs to be smaller, the state needs to be decentralized,
the state shouldn't interfere in the market. And so whenever, whenever,
like the things that they do get too bad, they

(32:19):
have this other thing they can turn to you to go, oh, yeah,
the reason there's too much bureaucracy is because the state's
getting involved too much. Elect us and we will get
rid of the bureaucracy. And then you elect them and
they make the state bigger, and you know, you get
this started, perpetual cycle. I think the reason people get

(32:41):
confused by this is that when when people when most
people think of the state, right, they think of the
state is something they provide services. You know that the
quintessential thing of state does is build roads roads. Yeah,
and you know, and when you know, when we can
talk about how like the US building roads probably doomed
the entire earth climate change. Oh yeah, no, like the

(33:04):
way that we've done roads around cars and the type
of things we make roads. Yeah, it's horrible, but yeah
it's awful. Yeah, but but there there's there's there's another
thing about roads which is interesting, which is that roads
are you know, so the original reason why states built
roads was they can move armies around. And if this
comes back to the core of what a state is, right,

(33:25):
there is nothing in the actual core definition of a state,
which is basically it's a higerarch couple of localized monopoly
on violence. Right, there's nothing in that that has that
like says at all the state has to do anything
for you, right like if if you know, if two
guys with guns show up and sees a place, right,
they can create a state. They don't have to give

(33:46):
you anything. The state is the fundamental core of the
state is just a bunch of armed people who can
order people around. And you know, but people people sort
of can people sort of confuse the two and the
neil Isms entire thing is increasing the increasing the military.
You know that the part of the state that takes
things from you at gunpoint and decreasing the part of

(34:07):
the states that like gives you things. And you know,
one of one of the there's one of one of
the other things that that happens in this period is
that labor increasingly stops being about making or doing anything
and just becomes pure guard labor. So, you know, the

(34:29):
the the last big neliberal project that doesn't really get
talked about as a deliberal project ever, is that mass
incarceration is a deliberal project. It started under under Nixon
and under Carter. But you know, so when when Reagan
takes office that the American prison population is about three thousand.
When he leaves office, he has basically doubled it to

(34:52):
uh six, seven thousand. We have now more than doubled
it again. And you know it basically it you know,
when whenever you get a large ne liberal administration, they
they you know, they double it, right, it basically doubles
again drained dwen the Clinton administration. You know, it keeps accelerating,
and you know this is this is this is the
other thing that that neoliberalism brings in, which is that Okay,

(35:16):
so neo liberals and produces this enormous population of people
who don't have any jobs, have no opportunities whatsoever, are
just screwed. So what do you do with them? And
the answer is slavery. And basically everywhere that you stay
u see neoliberalism. You see massive increases into prison population
espect like the US is by far the worst example
of this, but this happens. You know that the seven

(35:36):
is basically across the world and what what what you
see is in place of you know, it's this is
this one of the things that drives politics in sort
of in rural reasons in the US, which is that
you have these places that used to sort of have
industry is used to particularly coal mining things like that,
and it gets replaced by prisons because prisons, you know,

(35:57):
having a prison in your sort of rural town is
is the only way to sort of ensure that you
have a large economic base. And so you know, like
local local city councils are you know, incredibly pro prison
because it's like, oh, well, the president will bring your
jobs and you know this means that Okay, so so
the people a lot of people who are prison guards
are just you know, fascists. But there's also people who

(36:20):
are prison guards who normally would just be workers. Yeah no, absolutely, yeah,
who have just been sort of but you know, there's
nothing left right and there they're fighting, you know, uh,
Mike Davis talks about this, that they're finding this just
incredibly desperate, ferocious struggle to like stay in the places
they love and stay with their families, and stay with
their friends, stay with their communities. And the only way
they can do this is, you know, by becoming part

(36:42):
of this like just the neo liberal health state. And
you know they don't like it either, but that's you know,
that's what the liberalism is, right, is you no longer
have a job. The only job available to you is
picking up a gun and pointing it at someone who
is exactly the same as you, except you know, they've

(37:03):
been thrown into the slavery part of the system instead
of the people holding the guns at the slavery part
of the system. And one of the things that that
happens a lot of people just really conflate about what
neoliberalism is is they can use it with libertarianism and
they're not the same thing. And and this this is
a condus is a very confusing problem because well, a,

(37:26):
the term nea liberals don't get used in the US
all that much. When people use it, they usually use
it to mean something bad. And that's just about it. Yeah, yeah,
and and you know and and also another part of
the problem is that even if you go into like
the Montpellion Society, right which you know this is this
is this is the arch new liberal institution, and it's
just like basically like a think tank generator, there are

(37:50):
there are libertarians in there. There there are there are
narco capitalists in the Montpellion Society, and the one Pellion
Society is fighting this sort of constant internal battle between
the people who actually believe the things that they say publicly,
like you actually believe you should have a small state
blah blah blah blah blah, and the people who understand
that all the small states stuff is just like stuff
you tell the masses in order to get them to

(38:12):
like slash welfare things while you just hire more cops.
And probably the single biggest distinction between the libertarians and
and the neo liberals is about border control. Now, if
if you listen to New Liberals on Twitter, or you
listen to Neil, or you listen to libertarians right, capitalism
is supposed to have open borders, is supposed to be
free movement to people, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Um, if you

(38:34):
look at literally everything every neo liberal government has ever done,
it's exactly the opposite. It's they don't like that. Yeah, yeah,
they hit it. And you know, the this whole thing
about like oh you need workers to uh yeah, if
if you, if you, if you let workers from other
countries go into into the US, like oh they'll they'll,
they'll decreased wages, blah blah blah blah. So the period

(38:56):
in which the US like had strong unions and strong
wages and stuff, with the period where there was like
basically no militarization on the Mexican border. I mean there
were some and you know there there's there's there's a
build up sort of dream the Vietnam War and they're
they're there sort of been one back like around election
revolution era. But you know it's it's nothing. It's literally
nothing like it is today. Today. The US border is

(39:19):
this just absolute hellscape. Um. I mean just like there's
there's there's this enormous perimeter of the U. S border
where just the Constitution doesn't apply where like the Bill
of Rights just doesn't exist. If if if you're if you're,
if you're close enough to the border, it's just it's
all suspended. Uh, it's not entirely suspended, but like basically
the border patrol can just do whatever the funk they
want to you, and you know, like this is this,
this is this is how the border patrol was able

(39:41):
to be deployed in Portland, right because Portland's technically on
the border and the border patrol has increased power is
there and the actual goal is so people people are
always going to move right, And what the new labels
figured out was that you know, these these these enormous
miket labor populations, the best way you can exploit them

(40:02):
as if they're just absolutely terrorized by just this, you know,
an incredible sort of ferociously hostile, murderous just border regime
run by fascists, and it works, like they kill, they
kill enormous numbers of people, They do horrible things, They
put people with concentration camps, they sterilize people they like,

(40:24):
they sexually assault children, they disappear people they like, still
people's babies, and this is you know, this is what
neoliberalism is, right, This, this is what it actually is
in practice. This is you know, like, this is the
this is the this is the policy that is imposed
money liberal states. And I think I want to end

(40:45):
on that, and I want to end on a note
about what the quintessential sort of figure of neoliberalism is,
because I think, you know, in the neoliberals mind, right,
the quintessential neoliberal figure like the small entrepreneur who's like
guy who's you know, turned their own creativity and like

(41:05):
harnessed it into like the ability to create value, and
you know, they're creating things in the world and they're
reaching themselves. And I think a lot of leftists think
of it as like the quintession of the liberal is
you know, a Chicago, Chicago School of Economics person. Yeah,
And I want to suggest that they quit. The single
quintessential like neoliberal figure is a riot cop, and specifically

(41:31):
specifically that the you know, if if you know, every
everyone might now knows what a riot cop looks like. Right.
I want everyone to go back and even even from
from like two thousand one, look at what a riot
police officer looks like in two thousand one versus what
they look like now, and then go back to even

(41:52):
like the nineteen sixties and look look at look at
what those guys look like. Yeah, I know, looking at
the footage from the sixties and riot cops is really
depressed it because they're like, I could take these guys. Yeah,
they're they're just wearing T shirts. They're just guys. It's
it's way more of a fair fight. They have T
shirts and sticks. We could have T shirts and sticks.

(42:12):
That is that that's like the a arriety of the sixties.
It sounds like now they also in some cases will
be much more willing just to murder tons of people.
Now there is that exception, but in like a big
street brawl, it is it is generally a bit of
a fair fight. I mean, I will say also, sixties
police love love dogs. They love like sicking dogs and people,

(42:34):
which is really bad. Yeah, I'm I'm looking at it,
looking at at the two thousand one riot cops, and yeah,
they are not nearly as robot copy. Nope, that's what
they are now. During the Chilean uprising in I was
talking to someone in Chile and they were talking about
how like they were describing it as like the cops

(42:55):
were just like like something had a change, beating ninja
turtles like it was like fighting the shredder. There. There's
even even even the l a p. D. Riot cops
for the nineteen two riots. They're also still just wearing
like shirts like they just have they just have colored
shirts and one stick. Yeah and now versus now they're
wearing there whatever dumb armor they have. Yeah. But you know,

(43:18):
and this is this is you know and this, this
is this is if if you want to trace the
path in near liberalism, it's this. It's a lot of
the army surplus stuff that like the police have gotten
a lot of. It's really scary. A lot of it
also sucks, like a lot of those a t v
S every like everyone who's ever had to drive them
hates them. But you know, like like my my like

(43:39):
absolutely tiny dinky town has a bear cat and that
shouldn't that shouldn't be. And I know where it is too,
Like I know where the bear cat is. It's like,
there shouldn't be a bear cat. My town is a
tax cutout, like it's it's literally a tax carve out
like that. That's the reason that's the really recent it exists,
and it a bear cat and like, you know, this

(44:03):
is this is sort of the this is the consequence
of of of what ne o liiberalism, isn't it. Vicky
uster Well talked about this on on on the Occupy episode.
It's it's the cops become more like become more like
the army. The army becomes more like the cops, and
you know, the the result is this sort of pen
out to con surveillance states, where like if you and

(44:23):
seven people stand on a sidewalk, sixteen cops will show up. Yeah,
they've they've really uh excelled in making the capitalist realism
Dumer philosophy be almost like the base philosophy for anyone
who takes two seconds to think about the world that
they live in. And you know, and this has been
really effective in a lot of ways. But you know,

(44:48):
David Graeber point pointed this out, which is that the
problem with doing this is that, you know, okay, so
like the the the enormous amount of guard labor, right,
the enormous amount of sort of prison guards, Like that's
all unproductive labor, right, you know, you you you you
make you make some of that money back off the
companies make some of the money back off the slave labor, right,
but like, but that in general there the guards aren't

(45:11):
adding anything. They're not they're not they're not producing any
goods um and not really much service either. No, and
and and this is you know this this this is
a problem right because because neoliberalism is profit driven, and
so you know, what you have is is that the
system has a choice between either it functioning or it
making it appear as if it's the only system. And

(45:33):
it that's the thing is that it's it's it's kind
of profit driven. But honestly, the more that I the
more that you've been talking, like, no, it's just about
eliminating any alternative. So it's not not even profit driven.
It's that it's forcing itself to be the only acceptable option. Yeah,
that's how it gets so much of its power. Yeah,

(45:54):
but but you know the problem with this is that
all of that sort of ideological coercion only last as
long as the police can hold the streets. And which
is they're good at it there there sometimes they're decent.
You know. One of the story I want to end
on is so there's you know, there has been in

(46:18):
some with more varying degrees of success. There has actually
been resistance in neoliberalism, and there are places where people
have won the people. There are places where people have
run the I m f out those people. There's places
where people have you know, defeated coups where they've like
you know, where they've where they've they've they've successfully sort
of taken over the state. There's places where, you know,

(46:39):
I mean there's there's there's places like you know, we're
gonn talking about couple of things in Mexico, but yeah,
I mean there's there's the Zapatistas who have you know,
are constantly besieged, but have carved out a territory in
which they have you know, like totally defeated the Mexican
almost really defeated the Mexican state. And I think one
of the sort of forgotten incidents in in the two

(47:01):
thousands is this uprising in Wahaka where they, yeah, there's
a there's an enormous sort of a bunch of teachers
are going on strike. And you know, Wahawka's teachers unions
are enormously powerful and incredibly radical, and so you know
that they one of the things they do is that
they go into the city and they have these like
these giants started protest tents that they showed up and
they have these like giant camps and she in six

(47:24):
the police attack them, and so they start attacking and
the and the teachers fight back, and so you have
this you know this, this this massive battle erupts um
it's just in this city and you know this is
this is all The police attack at like three in
the morning, right, but they can they there's not enough
of them. The clear teachers out and the teachers hold

(47:44):
and they hold and they hold, and that the city
of Wahaka wakes up to this just enormous battle in
the streets between a bunch of just like teachers and
the cops. And when Wahawka wakes up, they are just
like what the fuck is the us? And you know,
they joined the teachers and they go fight the cops
and they they they're largely successful in like like they

(48:08):
beat them, they drive, they drive the police from the
city and you know, and and for for for for
for several months, the city is basically under the control
of these like direct democratic councils and like they're there
are these there are these things they call them mega
marshes whire just a million people will do a march
to the streets and the police there's the police just
can't stop them because you know, there's a million people.

(48:30):
And yeah, that's that's the only way that I've seen
it be successful, whether it be you know, just to
sure sheer massive people driving cops out of a police station,
or you know, an entire city rallying behind people like
in in in Portland when the fence came, it's like
you need to have like everybody to show up, because
they could fight two hundred like twin canarchists, they pretty easily.

(48:54):
You usually, um, but when you have like all of
the moms and dads and regular people come up, that
is much more of a complicated of fight on like
on on their end, because yeah, we'll still have the
teenage front liners throwing of the cops, but when you
have like regular people behind them, that creates the whole
media narrative and to be something totally different. And it

(49:18):
got the Feds to back down in Portland when Trump
really wanted to not happen. And I think also the
thing the thing that that was incre incredible hawk is
it wasn't just people sort of like standing behind them,
like like tens of thousands of people just joined the
fight in in a way that you know, it like
if you know, if if there's like fifty tho people
in a city throwing bricks at you, like you you

(49:40):
either have to start shooting into the crowd or try
to hold them. Can't You can't. And even when he
started shooting into the crowd, yeah, they tried it, and
disaster it made it made even the crowds were larger,
and like, you know, one of the things that happens
is that the the revolutionaries try to like you know,
they go to the radio station or like okay, well
you broadcast this radiotation says no, and they start seizing

(50:01):
radio stations all over all over the city. Yeah and
they yeah, and then you know, and then they had
they had these they had these like bonfires at the
edge of the city where if it's at the meets,
and like they're there's they're they're sending there, They're they're
sending radio like messages like over over the radio stations
they've taken over from like barricade to barricade, and you know,
eventually the police and like the like the Mexican Army

(50:22):
shows up and at that point they're able to sort
of retake the city. And there's a couple of other
things happening in Mexico at this point that are sort
of this is giants are left wing tied. And the
way that it gets stopped is that the Mexican army
basically fully kicks off the drug war and they kill
I mean, I've seen numbers up to like eight hundred

(50:47):
thousand people in ten years. They just they basically basically
genocides the indigenous population of of of Mexico. And you know,
I think I think that's that's that's sort of a
place to leave it, because you know, more big hopeful
note to end to the show on. Yeah, but I
mean I think I think it is it is worth

(51:08):
it is you know, it's it's it's it's worth thinking about.
Is one. It is possible to beat the police too.
The ruling class will literally bathe the entire country in blood,
like they will destroy their own country is different the
way I mean this gets discussed in the season happen here,
But like the way the American military works, I think

(51:28):
it will be less likely to do that. Yeah, Well,
I mean and I want I want to put this oi, like,
so what the thing that the army doesn't directly murder
people what they do is but what they do is
basically like they they set off a bunch of fighting
between the cartels and then and the cartels fucking murder
enormous numbers people. You know, we will happily murder each other.

(51:50):
But yeah, yeah, well and also you know, I mean
it's it's also this is this is you know, the
thing with the Mexican state. It's it's very very difficult
to tell where the cartels stop and where the Mexican
Army begins because a lot of them are the same thing.
And like you know, there's yeah, that's hopeful. Note to
end on and just but just to make the ending
a bit better, I do want to say I'm no

(52:11):
longer going to call anyone uh neoliberal. I made this
joke in the group chat yesterday and nobody responded to it,
so it was set, So I'll say it now. I'm
only going they called them Thomas Anderson liberals. That that
that that that's that is what I'm calling them now. Um,
And I'll make everyone wait two seconds to understand what's

(52:32):
going on and then sigh and then motion to get
me out of the room. So thank you Chris for
talking about them, and thank thank thank thank you all
for joining us. That this this has been It could
happen here. Um, you can find us on Instagram and Twitter.
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(52:52):
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joined the Panopticon. Throw bricks at it. It is pretty
funny how they tricked everyone into carrying around gps is
wherever they go. It's pretty funny. Yeah, it's it's amazing. Ever,

(53:16):
it's like, oh everyone everyone everyone in by town is like, oh,
we can't get the vaccine. They have microchips in. It's
like you have a phone. It's hilarious. They tricked us
into carry around speakers, cameras and gps is everywhere we go.
It is really funny. It's amazing. All right, Well five
funny five It could happen here is a production of

(53:41):
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