Why was Chomsky giving Epstein advice on how to deal with attacks against him in the media, months after a series of exposés appeared in the press detailing the extent of his crimes?  

Why was Chomsky bemoaning the “hysteria about the abuse of women” to someone accused of having sex trafficked dozens of under age girls?  

At first glance all of this seems completely as inexcusable as it is incomprehensible.  Chris Hedges’ declaration that Chomsky was seduced by the pimpin’ jetset superstar lifestyle that Epstein gave him access to, seems to be the only sensible explanation.  

But when you actually read the relevant emails, and look at them in the context and timeline of the accusations, and of Chomsky’s life and contemporary events – things very quickly start to make sense, and what becomes inexcusable is Hedges and the army of posturing leftfluencers throwing Chomsky under the bus so quickly, without even examining the evidence first.  

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00:00 Hello fellow kids: into

1:06 Chomsky’s Intellectual class: the Clergy of Capitalism

4:06 “Brand of Me” politics and cancel culture

5:46 Chomsky’s early activism vs. O.G. cancel culture

8:24 A lone left voice in the 1980s to early 2000s

9:39 Chomsky’s message vs Capitalists, Stalinists and Post-Modernists

12:50 The accusations against Chomsky

14:18 What most people knew about Epstein in 2015

15:57 Epstein’s 2008 conviction

17:31 Jerome Seinfeld vs Noam Chomsky

18:34 How did Chomsky and Epstein become BFFs?

20:28 The crime of hanging out with “literal fascists”

24:11 Chomsky vs Finkelstein: why we need to read a variety of authors

24:46 Chomsky’s shocking advice to Epstein in context

29:05 The total incongruence of Chomsky’s advice vs Epstein’s crimes

31:10 Chomsky’s advice in the context of late #MeToo and peak cancel culture

35:36 Interpreting the evidence: Professor Hedges X vs Normal Humans

38:21 Chomsky vs. Leftfluencer rat finks: who would you rather have as a friend? 

39:56 Chomsky & Epstein vs other great buddy combos

41:48 Another bad call that Chomsky made that was also used against him

43:13 Who benefits from ignoring the evidence?

44:15 Michael Parenti vs Noam Chomsky?

50:23 Tuition increases replace left wing scholars with pseudo-left wing wankers

54:57 Chomsky vs. Parenti continued: what is socialism?

57:52 Why the USSR became authoritarian

59:13 Go do something!

Why is this happening, and what can we do to stop the decline of civilization?

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0:00 How do you do fellow kids!

2:57 Four reasons why the left is weak and unpopular

5:10 What does the left even stand for?

7:16 The left becomes the right, the right pretends to be the left

9:46 Equality as synonymous with democracy

10:10 Bureaucratic, urban and anti-rural socialism

11:52 Why can’t the left deliver anymore?

13:17 The crises of the 1970s and the birth of neoliberalism

16:42 Why socialists gut the welfare state

18:16 What it will take to implement serious left wing policies in the neoliberal era

20:14 How D.E.I. spells D.I.E. for the left

21:31 Discrimination as a tool for competition over resources

23:35 Racism and american unions in the 1930s vs 1950s

25:09 Why left wing parties abandoned class for identity politics

26:47 How class-first politics fights discrimination

31:03 How identity-first politics creates discrimination

39:33 Identity-first politics as right wing politics in left wing disguise

40:14 Racial imperialism: buying off minority elites

43:01 Cancel culture: burning witches is right wing religious politics

43:33 Free speech as inseparable from democracy

44:42 Censorship of the Nazis in Weimar Germany

45:20 Cancel goblins accomplished more for the right than anyone since WW2

47:07 Cancel culture is the greatest right wing election campaign ever invented

49:48 How cancel Chucky-dolls benefit when the right to wins

51:34 Moving forward: flushing the toilet of the left

52:40 Cooperating with cancel gremlins, Stalinists, DEIdiots and other right wingers

54:05 Looking outside the bubble: Charlie Kirk viewers

55:08 Ditching a majority of the fake “left” in order to gain the majority of the population

But in the 19th century, it was socialists who touted the wonders of the market and decried state interference with free trade, which they blamed for causing the inequality and oppression of the working classes.

This is the introductory episode in a series aimed at “flushing the toilet of the left,” which will demonstrate that it’s the rules of unlimited property rights, backed by the state, that are the cause of inequality, exploitation, and lack of freedom, while the market is simply a form of democratic decision-making, which is entirely compatible with socialism and socialist ideals.

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0:00 Intro: Property rights lead to dictatorship unless constrained by democracy

1:36 the Matthew Effect

3:23 Markets vs capitalism and unlimited property rights

4:20 Adam Smith vs economics 101

6:03 Mercantilism vs. markets

7:13 Smith’s free market as an equalizing force

8:40 Adam Smith vs unlimited private property rights

9:12 The state forms to protect the wealthy from the poor

9:38 Property as power: rent and enclosure

12:15 Contracts as coercion by property owners, backed by the state

14:34 Contracts between equals

15:35 Contracts between unequals: master and hireling

16:29 Adam Smith: prophet of socialism

17:55 Thomas Hodgskin: property rights as modern feudalism

19:42 The Labour movement and Adam Smith

20:48 From free market socialism to communism in the era of laissez-faire

23:59 Marx and Bakunin: anti-market socialists

26:12 Summary / next time

How to build enough affordable housing for everyone using an existing housing model that’s proven to work.

How to pay for it.

How to convert existing market rate housing into affordable housing.

How we can accomplish all of this even within current neoliberal economic constraints.

THIS IS NOT AN INTELLECTUAL EXERCISE, IT’S A REAL POLICY PLAN, MAKE IT HAPPEN!

Art by Khosro Berahmandi

Khosro Berahmandi Instagram

Khosro Berahmandi website

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Gary Stevenson – Why Is Housing So Expensive? 

Gary Stevenson – Inequality is Driving Everything

Gary Stevenson – Why the Rich Get Richer

Gary Stevenson – The Covid Inflation Crisis Explained

Gary Stevenson – How Covid Makes the Rich Richer

0:00 Hello fellow kids / Introduction

2:32 Khosro Berahmandi’s $435, 2 bedroom apartment

4:08 The no-equity cooperative

8:12 Why aren’t there more cooperatives?

9:58 Financing cooptopia

10:41 Problems of taxation

13:04 Problems of borrowing

13:51 Problems of printing money

14:53 How to overcome these problems 

18:00 The problem with public housing

19:15 How to deal with inflated land costs

20:19 Densification vs building new neighbourhoods

21:27 How to phase out rental housing

22:40 Gremlin children of landlords

24:25 A massive boon to the economy

25:33 Freeing landlords from rent dependency

25:54 Rent control

26:59 Try a test run in your city!

28:03 Do dis now!

28:30 In the meantime / gimme

These events set the stage for much of the conflict to come between Zionists and the majority fellahin class.  

We also look at the 19th century origins of Palestinian identity, and early stirrings of proto Arab nationalism.  

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0:00 Hello fellow kids

1:59 The Tanzimat: the great 19thC reform programme

3:29 Political reform: disenfranchisement of the fellahin

7:21 Land reform: theft of the fellahin’s land

10:00 My horse!  My money!

14:35 From tribal peasants and sheikhs to capitalist tenants and landlords

18:37 The underlying philosophy of “What is Politics?”

20:16 The Nobility, Clergy, Bourgeoisie, Financier and Professional classes, all rolled into one

22:17 Patrons and clients in unequal societies

32:21 Who were the Ay’an?

38:08 The middle class

39:25 19th century Palestine as a backwater in decline

46:51 Palestinian identity

52:59 National identity vs political consciousness

56:234 Palestinian identity continued

59:12 South Syrians?

1:00:33 The 19th Century origin of Palestinian identity among urban classes and Christians

1:06:41 Democratic reform and the 1876 constitution

1:07:47 Islamic arguments for democracy

1:09:21 Abdülhamid II shuts down the parliament and constitution

1:10:37 Proto-Arab-nationalism

1:11:54 Next time on Secret History of Israel/Palestine

1:12:48 Gimme, seeya!

This episode focuses on the fellahin – the peasants of Palestine who comprised 70% of its population in the late 19th century, who are the first to clash with Zionist immigrants, and who later bore the brunt of the 1948 war which established the modern state of Israel.    

We also look at the Bedouin, whose social structure and culture are the archetype for fellahin culture, and who were the founders of Arab civilization as a whole.  

This is the 2nd in a multipart series about the “secret” or hidden origins of the Israel/Palestine conflict, focusing on episodes of history that both Israeli and Palestinian nationalist historians and partisans ignore and overlook because they don’t fit into either nationalist narrative.

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cover image: 19th century tatreez / embroidery on a dress from an unspecified village between Hebron and Jaffa

0:00 Hello fellow kids

1:53 Diaper Warning

3:25 Secret History?

6:51 Why focus on peasants and Bedouin?

10:59 Origins of Palestine

13:48 Origins of the Palestinians

14:45 Ottoman Palestine

15:48 Europe and the Ottoman Empire

26:35 The Millet System

30:27 Ottoman social structure

31:33 Intro to the fellahin

36:00 Tribes vs the state: Bedouin social organization

46:05 Material roots of Bedouin culture

57:44 Advantages/disadvantages of tribal organization

59:16 Urban vs Rural religion

1:01:13 Fellahin social organization

1:10:20 Fellahin attachment to land

1:15:01 Male dominance

1:26:22 Slavery 

1:27:51 19thC population pressure

1:31:38 Communal land vs. economics 101 vs. Papa Smurf

1:47:13 Village religion

1:52:16 Village sectarian relations

1:55:17 Next time on Secret History of Israel/Palestine

Very quickly, billionaires and powerful donors have rallied to fund American politicians who campaign on an “Abundance Agenda”.

Why is big money so excited about Abundance?  What will happen if the “Abudance Agenda” that they’re funding is adopted by the U.S. Democratic party?

00:00 Introduction

01:39 Bloodbundance: the analogy

07:50 IRL

08:47 The Abundance book thesis

11:03 Who’s supporting the “Abundance agenda”?

12:06 Why zillionaires support the “Abundance agenda” trojan horsery

15:50 Neoliberalism vs Welfare Capitalism vs. Fascism

19:40 Divide and conquer, blame democracy

22:41 The “Abundance agenda” in action: California

27:16 Next time on What is Politics

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What is “human nature” in this regard?

A new theory about inequality of wealth and power in human societies.

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My message to Jewish supporters of the war in Gaza.

(TIMESTAMPS BELOW)

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BLURB

00:00 hello fellow jews: competing israeli and palestinian moral universes

04:31 moral justifications for the war “we have no choice”

06:43 “all the atrocites are fake, but they deserve it”

07:46 defeating the Nazis

08:40 moral poisoning by fake history

10:53 how to protect Israel

14:00 how Israel could have had all the hostages back in October 2023

15:31 Tamir Pardo ex-Mossad chief’s view on the hostages

16:38 the prisoner exchange

18:03 the need to “do something”

18:32 identity politics and the state

19:30 public reactions to Israel’s war in Gaza vs to Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen

21:45 how an ordinary person sees October 7th and the response to it

24:25 ex-PM Ehud Olmert’s view on the war

25:36 Israeli reactions to civilian deaths in 2002 vs 2025

28:06 polls in favour of ethnic cleansing

29:17 comedian Gil Kopatz’ Holocaust remembrance day thoughts

30:12 the Israeli Knesset debate on starvation in Gaza

37:39 how we got here: historical propaganda about 1948 and Oslo

39:31 The original vs current Israeli explanation for the Palestinian refugees of 1948

43:31 The lessons that Israelis and Palestinians learned from the failure of Oslo

45:53 the official Israeli/US version of the failure of Oslo vs reality

54:03 recent polls of Israelis and Palestinians on co-existence

56:10 Netanyahu on making it impossible for people to stay in Gaza

57:14 Israeli soldiers’ testimony on destroying neighbouhoods in Gaza, Lebanon and West Bank

1:05:00 Smotrich on preventing people from returning to Gaza

1:05:42 Genocide

1:11:05 Blocking aid for 90 days 

1:13:08 The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation 

1:14:52 Netanyahu and Smotrich on why they resumed aid to Gaza

1:16:29 daily mass shootings at GHF aid distribution lines

1:18:16 human shields

1:22:09 outtro

This video explains:
1. What the political left and right actually mean
2. Why elites don’t want us to know what they mean
3. How confusion about left and right is a major cause of growing inequality
4. How understanding what they mean is a crucial to the survival of democratic civilization
5. How to vote in your own economic interest!

And I finally explain why communism is on the left and fascism is on the right, even though both systems produced similar authoritarian, nationalist political systems.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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(spotify)

Why isn’t the populist left enjoying the same success?

Why does inequality keep getting worse nomatter who gets elected?

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TRANSCRIPT: (TBA) 

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https://ia601201.us.archive.org/18/items/the-rise-of-the-far-right/THE RISE OF THE FAR RIGHT.mp3

This series focuses on those aspects of the origins of the Israel/Palestine conflict that partisans on both sides mutually ignore.

This episode examines jewish life in Europe and the conditions leading to the rise of Zionism until the first wave of Zionist immigration in 1882. 

Cover image: Marc Chagall, Falling Angel (1923-1947)

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BIBLIOGRAPHY: (TBA)

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CHAPTERS

0:00 introduction

2:43 when both sides hide the same facts

4:27 The Haïtian revolution: Silencing the Past

8:28 Palestinian and Israeli versions of history

19:24 Class conflicts of interest in hierarchical societies

23:03 Origins of the Jewish diaspora in Europe

26:00 Origins of the Ashkenazi Jews

28:06 Origins of Christian hostility towards the Jews

32:44 The Jews between al-Andalus and Christian Europe

36:23 Medieval anti-semitism as an instrument of class rule

37:17 European Jewish class structure: financiers, beggars and thieves

41:13 Jewish migration to Eastern Europe

42:05 The rise of liberalism and decline of anti-Judaism

43:04 Jews in the Russian Empire

45:45 The Rise Nationalism and Anti-Semitism

46:04 What is nationalism? The psychology of group identity

51:55 Identity politics and class in hierarchical societies

55:38 Nationalism, democracy and class conflict

1:00:32 Nationalism vs democracy and socialism

1:03:27 Nationalism, anti-Semitism and Socialism 

1:10:30 The Socialism of Imbeciles: Anti-Semitism as an instrument of class war

1:17:18 Anti-Semitism vs anti-Jewish discrimination

1:18:55 Nationalism in the European Empires

1:20:32 Assimilation, Integration, Socialism, Autonomism and Zionism: Jewish reactions to the rise of industrialization and anti-semitism

1:24:15 The purpose of the Jewish state in early Zionism

1:25:25 Jewish secular and religious hostility to Zionism

1:26:35 The Dreyfus affair and the rise of popular Zionism in the West

1:28:56 The assassination of Alexander II and the rise of popular Zionism in the East

1:33:06 What is Colonialism?

1:46:45 Power imbalances vs Worbs: Colonialism, Capitalism, Patriarchy and manipulation

1:50:55 Secret #1: Zionism, The Jewish province?

1:57:45 Zionism before Autoempancipation

1:59:11 Muhammad Ali Pasha and the birth of modern Zionism

2:01:19 19th Century religious Zionism

2:05:26 Romanian independence and the rise of Zionism

2:07:28 Autoemancipation 1882

2:24:49 The Jewish Province: Ottoman Pashalik / American Territory

2:30:32 The BILU Manifesto

2:37:58 Why Palestine?  Zionism and Judaism

2:46:16 Early Zionist thoughts about the Arabs in Eretz Israel

2:50:14 Outro, donation info, seeya!

TIMESTAMPS BELOW!

BIBLIOGRAPHY: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102834580 (no paywall)

I purposefully don’t monetize my channel in order to spare you the annoying ads, and it takes me months to make the scripted episodes, so please help if you can!

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0:00 intro

1:55 Rashid Khalidi on the Comedy Cellar Podcast

5:33 Why I Became a Lawyer

11:36 Israel’s assaulton Gaza is pointless

13:28 Hamas’ 2020 conference on what to do after victory

14:31 Oct 7 happened because the IDF was AWOL

15:56 israeli vs palestinian propaganda

18:12 Israelis unconsciously aware that the war is just for revenge

20:26 Mowing the lawn and keeping Gazans on a diet

22:12 Why I don’t cover current events
24:54 How hard it is to figure out what’s true with Israeli/Palestine history:
27:32 Did Zionists do terror against Jews in Baghdad to convince Jews to emigrate?
28:34 Did Israel steal Yemeni Jewish babies to give to holocaust survivors?

33:50 What I’m bringing to the table 

36:15 Israeli views on Arab civilian casualties, 2002 vs 2024

43:09 Hamas isn’t nationalist
43:29 Hamas vs Fatah members’ teeth
44:01 Hamas did not “win by a landslide”

46:40 the Hannibal directive

51:52 victories for activism: forcing Israel to let more aid into gaza

55:22 BEGIN Q&A

55:56 left and right / the social psychology of voting

57:20 critique: i “both sidesed” the conflict
57:53 cancer eviction story
59:35 could we make a little interpersonal violence legal?
1:01:08 why present both sides?

1:09:58 cancel culture in pro-Israel politics
1:18:12 academia’s role in neutralizing activism
1:20:33 “you don’t understand the nuances” David Graeber critiques
1:22:47 pomo as poetry, not scholarship
1:27:20 back to cancel culture
1:28:48 Gina Carano

1:32:46 Cancel culture in palestinian activism:
972+ Project Lavender article
1:35:18 cancelling Norman Finkelstein

1:37:44 back to Q and A

1:38:23 why is the US so involved in the Israel/Palestine conflict?

1:46:26 why don’t i call it genocide?

2:13:58 The culpability of the original zionist settlers vs holocaust refugees and jews from the arab world

2:19:48 Atlantic article disputing that Israeli leaders made genocidal statements

2:33:29 Do Arabs in Israel really have equal rights?

2:43:51 75 years of occupation since 1967?  Whose land is it?

2:48:39 college “leftist” activists supporting hamas uncritically

3:01:57 “we must support a liberation movement, no matter how reactionary it gets”?

3:04:26 Are American settler colonialists guilty 250 years later?

3:12:07 From authoritarian child rearing to children raising their parents: why do we always do everything idiotically?

3:17:45 One state, two states, no states

3:21:05 Should Israelis have to leave?

3:27:08 Reading Hamas’ 2024 “Our Narrative” pamphlet

3:41:59 outtro

0:00 intro: ‘why is everything so stupid and shitty?’ / the “alignment problem” of our society

12:46 the social function of academia and universities from pre-WWII to today

31:17 freedom of speech is to protect the weak

41:06 recent activism victories regarding the assault on gaza (Canada and USA)

49:10 why i’m doing “brainstorm” episodes in between scripted episodes

1:10:00 Israel Palestine disinformation in news and history

1:20:40 why the assault on gaza is pure sadistic revenge and does the opposite of its purported goal of protecting israelis

1:31:38 war and violence

1:36:00 what israel could have done in response to oct. 7

1:45:50 who started the israel/palestine conflict?

BIBLIOGRAPHY: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102824946 (no paywall)

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But before we can understand this, we need an ABC of the conflict, to get a grasp of the basic events, and the conflicting historical narratives that Israelis and Palestinians learn, which interpret all of these events in completely different ways, with opposite moral implications, so that we can then proceed to look at what actually happened, and what the moral implications of that are for the present and future.

Doctors Without Borders in Gaza and West Bank: https://www.doctorswithoutborders.ca/gaza-msf-provides-medical-care-and-donates-supplies-amidst-conflict/

Palestine Children’s Relief Fund: https://www.pcrf.net

If you’re in the U.S. demand that your representative vote to stop funding this massacre.

This episode took me almost five full time months to make – there’s no way that I can do these without your help:

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TRANSCRIPT: (coming soon)

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The replacement of the word “equality” by the word “equity” in the worlds of academia, NGOs, activism, and corporate HR departments, is an example of the attempts by elite people and institutions to transform historical movements for racial and gender equality, into ideas that promote the interest of elites – in particular, economic inequality and the division of the working classes.

In this episode we explore how forms of oppression based on cultural factors like skin colour or gender or religion, etc, can only be understood and effectively combatted by understanding them in the context of economic exploitation and economic competition which is what the human propensity to discriminate evolved for in the first place.

PLEASE SHARE AND LET PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THIS SERIES!!

I purposefully don’t monetize my channel in order to spare you the annoying ads, and it takes me weeks to make these (this one took almost 3 months!), so please help if you can!

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Instead the revolutions resulted in the establishment of the Soviet Union: an authoritarian state where the government became the sole employer and the state controlled the workers instead of the other way around.  This then became the model for “communist” countries around the world.  

Why did the Soviet Union fail at socialism? 

What can we learn about this failure to apply to our political struggles in the present and future?

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Is it something inherent to Socialism or Marxism?  

Is human nature incompatible with political equality?  

Has “true” communism never been tried yet?  If so, then why not?

Is it “capitalist encirclement”?

Richard Wolff can’t answer this question for some reason.

Neither can Freddie de Boer. 

Yet the answer is very simple, and we can learn a lot from it.  

Listen, and find out…

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In doing so we also look at the difference between dominance hierarchy and democratic hierarchy, and what the necessary criteria are in order to establish a a dominance hierarchy.  

We also discover that Graeber & Wengrow actually have no arguments for why human inequality supposedly has no origins!

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In doing so, we look at the following:

How the book’s underlying thesis: that human social structure is ultimately a matter of choice and experimentation, is fundamentally incoherent, and how this idea sets us up for future dramatic political failures, similar to those of Occupy Wall Street or the Great Peasant’s Revolt of 1381.

What the standard narrative of human origins actually is, vs. the caricature elevator pitch version that Graeber & Wengrow claim to be debunking.

Why most anthropologists believe that human beings began as egalitarian hunter-gatherers despite knowing about all of the evidence that Graeber & Wengrow present in order to argue the otherwise.

How and why Graeber & Wengrow flush down the toilet the analytical tools that they need in order to answer their own questions about how we got stuck in dominance hierarchies.

How social structure actually works.

How Graeber & Wengrow’s arguments are great material for right wing talking points.

Why there is room for deliberate social change in a world where social structure is largely a matter of conditions and relative bargaining power, rather than a matter of “choice”.

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Given that the conclusion of the chapter is a tirade against the concept of “equality” we first examine what the world equality means in a political context, and what the term “egalitarian society” implies, followed by an examination of the history of the anthropological literature on egalitarian hunter gatherer societies.  

We also cover material from Graeber’s Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology and On Kings in order to look at how his treatment of egalitarian societies over his career routinely ignored 50 years of research on extremely egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies, a practice which he and Wengrow continue in this chapter.   

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BIBLIOGRAPHY / SUGGESTED READINGS

GRAEBER AND WENGROW

Graeber & Wengrow 2021 – The Dawn of Everything

Graeber & Wengrow 2019 – La Sagesse de Kandiaronk (deepl or googl translate will give you a decent English translation)

Graeber & Wengrow 2015 – Farewell to the Childhood of Man

Graeber & Wengrow 2020 – Hiding in Plain Sight, Democracy’s indigenous origins in the Americas.

David Graeber 2004 – Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

David Graeber and Marshall Sahlins 2017 – On Kings

David Graeber & Andrej Gubačić 2020 – Introduction to Pyotr Kropotkin 1902 – Mutual Aid

CRITIQUES OF GRAEBER AND WENGROW

Chris Knight 2021 – Did Communism Make Us Human? The Anthropology of David Graeber 

Christ Knight 2021 – The Anthropology of David Graeber (video)

Camilla Power 2018 – Gender egalitarianism made us human: A response to David Graeber & David Wengrow’s ‘How to change the course of human history’

GENERAL 

Robert Kelly 1995/2014 – The Foraging Spectrum 

James Woodburn 1982 – Egalitarian Societies

James Woodburn 2005 – Egalitarian Societies Revisited, in Widlock & Gossa (eds) – Property and equality, Volume 1: ritualisation, sharing, egalitarianism

Richard Lee 2004 – Power and Property in Twenty-first Century Foragers: A Critical Examination

Richard Lee & Irving Devore (Eds.) 1968 – Man the Hunter

Richard Lee & Eleanor Leacock (eds) 1983 – Politics and History in Band Societies

CENTRAL AFRICAN FORAGERS

Jerome Lewis 2017 – Bayaka Elephant Hunting in the Congo

Lewis, J., 2014. Egalitarian Social Organization: The Case of the Mbendjele BaYaka

Morna Finnegan 2013 – The politics of Eros: ritual dialogue and egalitarianism in three Central African hunter-gatherer societies

Hewlett 2017 ed – Hunter-Gatherers of the Congo Basin

Colin Turnbull 1961 – The Forest People

KALAHARI BUSH PEOPLE

Richard Lee 1969 – Eating Christmas in the Kalahari [“Shaming the meat”]

Richard Lee 1979 – The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society  

Richard Lee 1982 – Politics, Sexual and Non-Sexual, in an Egalitarian Society

Richard Lee 1984/2013 – The Dobe Ju/Hoansi

Helga Vierich 2021 – ‘Hunting is boring and unreliable. Let the men do it!’ (video)

HADZA

Frank Marlowe 2010 – The Hadza Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania

Frank Marlowe 2004 – Dictators and ultimatums in an egalitarian society of hunter-gatherers, the Hadza

Fearless & Far 2021 – Asking Hunter-Gatherers Life’s Toughest Questions (video)

Coren Lee Apicella 2018 – High levels of rule-bending in a minimally religious and largely egalitarian forager population

NAYAKA

Nurit Bird-David 1990 – The Giving Environment, Another Perspective on the Economic System of Gatherer-Hunters

Nurit Bird-David 1999 – “Animism” Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology

BATEK

Kirk & Karen Endicott 2008 – The Headman Was a Woman: The Gender Egalitarian Batek of Malaysia

MONTAGNAIS-NASKAPI

Eleanor Leacock 1981 – Myths of Male Dominance

CRITIQUES/DEBATES ON FORAGER EGALITARIANISM

Alan Barnard 1992 – The Kalahari Debate, a Bibliographical Essay

Edwin Wilmsen 1989 – Land Filled With Flies

Roy Richard Grinkger 1991 – Houses in the Rainforest

Richard Lee & Mathias Guenther 1991 – Oxen or Onions? The Search for Trade (and Truth) in the Kalahari

Ted Kaczynski 2008 – The Truth About Primitive Life: A Critique of Anarchoprimitivism

In this chapter Graeber & Wengrow argue that:

The European Enlightenment was heavily influenced by Native American critiques of European culture.

That European intellectuals reacted against this by developing the theory of “stages of human progress” where we went from from egalitarian hunter-gatherers to pastoralists to farmers to market civilization.

That Jean-Jacques Rousseau synthesized the Native American critique and the stages of progress theory into a seemingly egalitarian critique of European social hierarchies which resigns us to accept hierarchy as the price of civilization. 

That this synthesis was the birth of the “intellectual left”. 

That the concept of human equality has no meaning and should be discarded [these guys *really* needed to listen to this podcast before writing this…]

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BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Graeber & Wengrow 2019 – “La Sagesse de Kandiaronk, la critique indigène, la mythe du progrès et la naissance de la gauche“, chapter from The Dawn of Everything (2021), published in French in Journal du MAUSS

Sally Roesch Wagner 2015, How Indigenous Women Inspired The Feminist Movement, Bust Magazine

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I highly recommend everyone check out his show, and dig deep into the extensive bibliographies for every episode, which in and of themselves are a gold mine.

And look for my interview on Arnolds show in the coming days

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In this segment, by seeking to properly define these terms, we look at:

The Class Filter: how ideas that are a threat to power historically get mutated into tools of power once they pass through elite institutions, in this case Ivy League universities, and corporate HR departments.  

The Interloper Left: how elites and aspiring elites (who by definition are right-wing actors) will disguise dominance behaviour in egalitarian language in order to gain legitimacy and prestige in democratic societies.

Poison/Sugar Pilling: how elites will de-legitimize popular ideas which are a threat to power by conflating them with unpopular ideas, and how they will convince people to accept things they don’t like by associating them with popular terms.

How egalitarian language and ill conceived “anti-racism” trainings like “White Fragility” are being used in the corporate world to divide workers and prevent them from banding together in defence of their rights. 

How to spot some of the red flags that distinguish movements rooted in equality and solidarity from toxic “cancel culture” and “political correctness” power plays.

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ARTICLES QUOTED:

Corey Robin, Chris Bertram and Alex Gourevitch 2012 – Life at Work, Crooked Timber

Amanda Hess 2013 – How Sexy Should A Worker Be? The Plight of the Babe in the American Workplace, Slate

Yvonne Abraham 2015 – Tom Brady has more rights than most American workers, Boston Globe

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In this episode we look at:

The relationship between economic activity and the high status of women in traditional Haudenosaunee / Iroquois society

How World War I helped women win the right to vote in Europe and North America 

How World War II catalyzed the Black civil rights movement in the United States.  

The success, failure, and accidental success of the English Peasant’s Revolt of 1381

The implications of the Anarchist Revolution in Spain in 1936-1939 for the future of industrial civilization.  

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RELATED READINGS:

Ember & Ember 1971 – The Conditions Favoring Matrilocal Versus Patrilocal Residence, American Anthropologist, Vol. 73, N° 3 

Pasternak 1997 – Family and Household: Who Lives Where, Why Does It Vary, and Why Is It Important? in Ember & Ember (eds.) 1995 – Cross-Cultural Research for Social Science

Abigail Higgins 2019 – American Women Fought for Suffrage for 70 Years. It Took WWI to Finally Achieve It, history.com 

Sally Roesch Wagner 2015, How Indigenous Women Inspired The Feminist Movement, Bust Magazine

Cathleen D. Cahill / Sarah Deer 2020 – In 1920, Native Women Sought the Vote. Here’s What’s Next, New York Times

Annette McDermott 2018 – Did World War II Launch the Civil Rights Movement?, history.com

Paul Foot 1981 – “This bright day of Summer”: The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381; see also the lively original audio version of this speech

Sam Dolgoff 1973 – Anarchist Collectives

Thomas Kuhn 1962/2012 – The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Why we need to target material and practical conditions if we want to eliminate cultural hierarchies.

A thought experiment about political strategy which lays bare the whole class reductionism vs. race reductionism debate, and which is crucial for any kind of effective political strategy on any issue.

Backed up by a real “pink pill” example of how post-revolutionary rural China totally failed at fighting patriarchy and male baby preference via education and propaganda campaigns.  

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According to anthropologists David Graeber & David Wengrow, it’s because people were “self-consciously experimenting with different social possibilities,” and then we somehow got stuck this way.  Meanwhile according to Jordan Peterson, it’s just human nature.  

Thankfully for humanity, both of these views are very, very wrong.  

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How do we know the left and right refer to equality and hierarchy?

To answer this, we look at who was considered as being on the left and on the right in three different time periods: 

1. The early French revolution in 1789, which is what the whole left-right political spectrum is an analogy to.
2. The 3^rd republic in France where seating in the National Assembly was first purposefully arranged on a left-right spectrum, analogous to the early French Revolution.   
3. The different branches of late 19^th and early 20^th Century socialist movement: Anarchism, Revolutionary Party Socialism and Parliamentary Socialism.

And we apply all of the junk cold war definitions – the market vs. the state, the individual vs. the collective, big vs. small government, equality vs. liberty – and we watch them all crash and burn, leaving only the equality vs. hierarchy / class conflict paradigm left standing.

Apply this exercise on your own to any historical period from 1789 until the rise of the USSR and the cold war, and you get the same results.  

Now can everyone accept it and move on?

Bonus episode to follow shortly to explain why Fascism is on the far right and Communism is on the far left when Nazi Germany and Stalin’s USSR are both archetypical “totalitarian” societies.

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The definition of government that journalists and academics use makes us blind to the people who rule over us in our private lives.

Popular definitions of left and right propagated by media and academia (the state vs. the market, big vs. small government, liberty vs. equality), frame the world in right-wing terms, while the historical definition (hierarchy vs. equality) frames the world in left wing terms.

Competing definitions of racism have different consequences in terms of peoples’ ability to discuss racism, and on how we relate to people from different cultural categories than our own.

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POLITICS
PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE POLITICS
POLITIES
GOVERNMENT
DEMOCRACY
AUTOCRACY
CONSENSUS
POLITICAL CONSTRAINTS
ECONOMICS
CAPITALISM
IDEOLOGY
CLASS
THE MARKET
BARGAINING POWER
CONTRACTS

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This rots our brains. It makes us easy to manipulate and it divides people who share many common goals into competing tribes of hooting apes, and prevents us from achieving common goals.

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