2459 – Oh Sovereign, My Sovereign feat. Quinn Slobodian (2022 Trashfuture podcast)

“This week’s free episode is all about William Rees Mogg and James Dale Davidson’s book “the sovereign individual,” which describes a wonderful world in which fifty rich men live in armoured citadels and everyone else scrapes a living off the land. Do not become addicted to water, my friends!

If you want to learn more about Quinn Slobodian’s work, check out his site here: https://www.quinnslobodian.com

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WARNING (decided to put this warning for each post that contains injurious and otherwise insulting content. The images and books mentioned are not endorsements in any way, they are here given as critical examples. There is enough hate speech online and techno-fascist homophobic-mysoginous-transphobic propaganda everywhere, so this posting does not aim to add more suffering to injury. None of this will be tolerated in the comments, goes without saying)

The 1997 book The Sovereign Individual (from here on SI) sits on top of top-selling Amazon lists, and holds the dubious title of  “Das Kapital of the Ayn Rand worldview” (E. Glenn Weyl). This is an extension of a must-read article by historian Quinn Slobodian (Crackup Capitalism, The Globalists etc) about the aftermath and popularity of SI amongst the crypto-bro neo-monarchist anarcho-capitalists Silicon Valley crowd (Peter Thiel, Balaji Srinivasan). It is lively, very funny, and informative talk – in the sense that you won’t have to read this book, which I would not advice anyone to do.

How many bad, idiotic future takes, bad airport self-help bestsellers peddled by hucksters and self-aggrandizing charlatans can we take? A lot it seems. This book is so wrong on so many levels why would anyone bother to analyze or devote 1 h of their lives to it. In Romania “sovereign individuals” have been a media sensation making the news since they refuse to show their papers or refuse to recognize the Romanian state. Most of them are caught driving without a driving license, and while Romanian media branded them as weird ‘radicals’ and ‘sectarians’ (which is not far from the truth) nobody bothers to actually place them in this libertarian continuum.

The Romanian cases, from a country that nobody even bothers to mention in the news, and is basically a ‘standing reserve’, are at bottom end of our discussion, yet they are still influenced (attracted) by the book by William Rees Mogg and James Dale Davidson and their antistate worldview. It is perhaps ironic that sovereign individuals in the East appear like petty criminals or juvenile deliquents (I will get to that), completely out of place from the chummy exclusivity of the SI. This for the simple fact that they do not have many privileges (other than having a Romanian EU passport – that in fact translates to being a second-ranked citizen). The initial SI conceit – is made for rich individuals who want (and have the money) to escape the grasp of the state and of democratic rule. They feel that the elite is not elitist enough and surely not interested in allowing anyone to join their ranks without the necessary monetary power, and most importantly – they are citizens of a decrepit empire, not citizens of a satellite, second-rate, second-world country.

This anarcho-capitalist cookbook failed on all accounts – but it has achieved notoriety since the claims made by its authors are constantly being dusted off, revived, and repackaged as brand new. In a sense this is exactly one of those bad novums that Darko Suvin, theoretician of the SF wrote, it is those new things that are not new but are constantly attracting attention just because they are based on notoriety and self-confidence, not on facts or any sort of valuation. They always have the same solution, shrink the state, minimize governments, and establish freeports. For them, elites are not enough isolated, and the ivory towers are not high enough. The tech geniuses should never mix, mingle or even dilute their gene pool. According to SI, globalization should be not just about going to exotic locations, but enjoying your privileges, and celebrating cheap labor and ‘sweatshop’. about our sovereign right to retreat, the fantasy of “opt-outing” of everything (of course taxes and inflation).

What (according to Quinn Slobodian) makes this book a special case is that it is completely proud of its dystopian outlook and cynical about its statements before such cynicism (not the Greek one) became the rule. It basically heralds (and proclaims) the collapse of the nation-state in the wake of cyberspace expansion. It is basically an unadorned, unapologetic, and stripped-down version of free markets triumphalism and elitism. Everyone who is not part of the breakaway ‘zone’ the have-nots, the ‘wasteoids’, ‘welfare queens’ (what would be an anarcho-capitalist text without the enemies of the ‘free society’), and losers of the market economy are left on the outside, in the Cursed Land of the collapsing state. Maybe the most annoying thing is that our world has started to look more and more like what was endorsed by SI propagandists. Milei in Argentina, Trump in US, and Netanyahu in Israel are both pro-free markets and enemies of democracy. This is also the world of bitcoin con artist Sam Bankman Fried, who was both one might say incredibly successful and an appalling disaster (these are both characteristics of the SI way).

Another good observation (among other funny and caustic jabs) is that the anarcho-capitalist mindset has a juvenile inclination, it sounds a bit like a R L Stevenson adventure. You get your pirate gold and you stash it away preferably on an empty offshore fiscal paradise island (forgetting that there are no more ’empty places’ (or emptied by colonial genocides). The Goldbug has something of tabletop game, their outlook is gamified, where you ‘farm’ and transform yourself into the king of the castle.

A big blindspot is of the cognitariat (the authors pretend they are part of that) is a complete lack of social imagination. They actually indulge in the dream of complete isolation of the information society. You isolate yourself from labour but you still have nannies and servants. They are also very prone to de-growth dreams in the sense of devolving the state but they are not off-the-grid preppers, they are thinking about having a top position in comfy super-rich semi-feudal enclave. Nowhere does the book worry about who cooks for you or who takes out your garbage. Everyone is disconnected from the material base and productivism is not even mentioned as if computers will supply everything like in an elitist version of full luxury communism.

There are a couple of interesting (much more interesting than the SI) science fiction who actually work trough all the details of such a vision. Two of them were mentioned at the cusp of the late 70s and early 80s which seems to be a time when Reagan turbo-charged such speculative worldbuilding. First is

Alongside Night is an agorist SF from 1979 (there is also a trashy movie adaptation with Kevin Sorbo apparently) pits agorist (black market fanatics) Milton Friedmanians and Hayekians to battle it out among the ruins of the collapsing US state.

Considered a classic libertarian SF, the 1981 is again an example of what if an arcology (that feels pretty feudal) would emerge after some riots, with citizens of the arcology living like a state inside a state or city within a city in future LA. All of these fictions became part of the freefan’s subjectivity.

Anti-woke pro-gun sentiment also runs high in cryptobro and yellow-black milieus, as can be seen from this t-shirt design posted by some German anarcho-capitalist TW account.

2403 – The Century of the SELF (2002 BBC documentary by Adam Curtis)

timespace coordinates: the long 20th century

To say that this epochal documentary with all its flaws, its non-sequiturs, and under-theorizing has marked our generation is an understatement. Some things are left unsaid in retrospect (it is almost 10 years or more since I have watched this series), particularly one should situate this in the context of modernity and the transfer of peoples of ideas that went on between Europe and the US, none of which went one way only. Again this is a very Eurocentric history (for a different perspective on techno-modernity check here), so it has definite and clear limits as it is mostly about the Euroatlantic world and Central Europe. The Century of the Self is also the triumph over the European Old World bourgeois civilization of the US consumer culture zeitgeist aptly described by Victoria de Grazia in her magisterial study Irresistible Empire.

Source: Charnysh 2022 quoted by Adam Tooze (not Curtis!)

But then, on the other hand, you have had the immense impact of these foreigners with bad Middle European or Eastern European accents forced to flee, outernational émigrés escaping anti semitism arriving in troves from the continent. Besides the German Frankfurter Schule critical theory – you also had another cultivated emigree diaspora from the former Habsburg Empire that brought to the East Coast with them the vivaciousness and sophistication of Viennese 1900 cultural life and went on to define advertising, marketing, and even how Western liberalism identity started defining itself during the Cold War against the Communist bloc. Another history that barely gets mentioned is how the Western democracies have been using for example – “rational choice theory” (and here the names of William Riker, Kenneth Arrow, and James Buchanan stand out) – to try and immunize the ‘Free World’ and its values by constructing a ‘scientific’ approach to social science research against the Marxist critics of Western democracies. Some ideas found a better reception across the ocean,

Psychoanalysis is just one such example to follow in the wake of the fall of the Habsburg Empire. One could pinpoint others, starting with the Genevese school of neoliberal economics. Another one, followed in detail by Adam Curtis is the trajectory of Freud and his nephew Edward Bernays (developer and early pioneer of PR) and Anna Freud in the United States. We should be wary of a pharmakon way of explaining everything or giving too much attention to ‘interiority’ and inner mental states, but since Foucault, detailing such genealogies and discoursive fields helps us understand how we came to be where we are. This documentary is also influenced by The Century of the Self is still a very compelling history of how the SELF became so central not only to advertising but also to identity politics and individual freedom of liberal capitalism also to the anthropotechnics – ways in which Western counterculture has tried to free the human subject or a hidden identity through mindfulness, techniques of meditation, human potential, yoga retreats, actualization what is known as New Age – especially as developed by the Esalen Institute since the 1960s California. It is also the perfect documentary about control after “decentralization”, or what follows in the wake of the uneven transition from the disciplinary society to what Deleuze has termed the society of control in his seminal essay from 1990 (some even say that this was his most important testament). The century of the self has become even more evident in the 21st century – the time when protocols or algorithmic capitalism is really ruling the day and when AI-driven scams, influencers, and deep fakes abound. The century of the self should be also put into dialectical relation with its inverse – the “personality cults” and authoritarian styles of the former East it was meant to overcome, and such a retreat into interiority and VR, when faced with the horrors of Vietnam War, and the government of the US supporting dictators abroad or signaling a failure of nation-building abroad or a certain developmental model. Silicon Valley is itself a piece in this puzzle, an innovation hub based on a startup model supported by Venture Capital funding to ensure US technological hegemony by sponsoring former dropouts of the counter-cultural revolutions of 1968, raised on psychotropics and weaned on petro-dollars.

2275 – Free To Choose with Milton Friedman (TV series 1980)

All the episodes here.

Depending on where you stand on the political-economic spectrum – you might find (like me) this documentary enlightening but also completely horrific and appalling at the same time. One cannot watch this popular show from the early Reaganite 1980s without making it responsible for a lot the troubles we are facing today. One can describe it as incredibly farcical, hypocritical and sincere at the same time. It is a unapologetic encapsulation of what free market fundamentalism is purported to support (not what it actually is). It was primarily a response to an earlier landmark book and television series The Age of Uncertainty, by the noted economist John Kenneth Galbraith.

I am not posting this here in order to endorse or platform the heinous views represented and propagated here, but only because under various forms and expressions or undercurrents they are very well represented and at work all around us. Ok, cannot stop myself saying that it is also a 70s baldie porn 🙂 like one friend put it. This PBS documentary hosted by that baldie at height of his fame, a Nobel prize winner – Milton Friedman features the most known face of libertarian neoliberalism today (just consider that the Mont Pelerin Society of which he was a member called themselves proudly neoliberal way back in the 1950s!).

Hailing from the Former East, having lived through the 1990s, I have been one of these (ex-commie) socialist kids that has been raised and reeducated on free market dogma but who has lived trough Big Bang liberalization, and has seen anti statist dogma take over much of the Romanian intelligentsia. I do not think that today’s political class in Romania, with small exceptions, caters to anything less than some form of libertarian thought or pro entrepreneurial policies represented here in this documentary. Although I remember both rationing, solid education, state provided vacations in the balneo-climateric localities and the days of the planned economy where I lived my teenage years, it is hard to reconstitutie this vision today, mostly because of 30 years plus of liberalisation and free market reign dogma have wiped all that. I agree also with the fact that under containment and inner nationalistic excess Romania became more and more a sort of buffer state used by the west against Soviet Union, while Ceaușescu was courted by Kissinger and Thatcher. Also fucking hated the PTTAP exercises in front of the school even if they kept you healthy and where supposed to build up patriotic spirit. Pionieri organizations was also not for loosers with poor school track record like me. Anyway those years are indelible. Under the circumstance Romania had it easier than Russia during it’s Privatisation phase, but it was still a time of hustling, being poor and waiting for visas, losing all your saving in pyramid schemes, and witnessing how the state was being captured from the 90s on by oligarchic interests, punctured ny US military black sites and enslaved by public private /corporate deals.

It is a good bet to say that the kind of free-market libertarian militantism represented by this series and this episode, in particular, guided many governments and brought us to where we are right now, especially in terms of fighting against democracy, denying climate change and deflating politics. Since the late 70s we have seen the cavalcade of the Chicago Boys (Friedman was perhaps the most famous Chicago boy) from Chile to South Africa to Bucharest and to Moscow. The dreams of Reagan and Thatcher in the UK were spiked by the holy word of these economists. They come in several flavors – and Quinn Slobodian a historian of neoliberalism has in his last (great) book Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of A World Without Democracy (2023) basically made a taxonomy of their anti democratic dreams and also made me search for this documentary series and try and watch it. Far from being the end of history the nation state was seen as an impediment in the face of the Zone. And I also mean here the Romanian Km Zero – in Piața Universității Bucharest. This used to be called anti communist zone, basically a zone free of communism and also protection. In the end the protesters from the early 90s dreamed about full capitalism.

To be precise – I wanted to watch the first chapter on Hong Kong, because it was the first on the freedom index, the fist city-state model idolized by the neoliberal free market radicals. Why? Quinn discusses at large the context of the series and of “uncle Miltie” standing smiling with the back on the HK skyline of tall thin scrapers. For many HK was just Jackie Chan, the martial arts kung fu movies or the toy industry. HK was one of the “Asian Tigers” but it was also a model for deregulation which amounted to the fact that the tiny city-state and financial capital of Asia was being ruled like a corporation. The highest position was that of an economic Chief Executive (like the CEOnof a company), more powerful than the governor (till 1997 HK was still a colony of the UK and one built initially on the Opium trade). Quinn recalls time and time again how HK became something of a mirage, the first ‘smart city’, the first example of what became plans for Hong Kong on Hudson or Hong Kong on Thames (Canary Wharf). And although it had a unique colonial history, a local history and local situation connected with the Pearl River and Guangdong, ij the minds of the free market radicals it came to be seen as eminently transplantable and easy to copy.

Basically all that because the principle of “the sweatshop” and no labor protection legislation, no voting rights – became its. key to economic success. Everything that the West forgot or lost in the words of Friedman. This reverse Orientalism (reverse in the sense that it takes all the tropes of the lazy, unchanging Orient and turns it on its head) was taken directly from the very tycoons and wealthy families who steered the city towards “prosperity”.

This is for Friedman the place where the free market is unfettered and undirected and where the states exist only to protect the interests of the investors and business elite. To be sure, and even of James Clavell Noble House is half true – it eas a den of spies and it’s corporate world was totally enmeshed in Cold War dealings. It is also the place where workers have no protection whatsoever, where the market prices signal is clear, and where you do not need any coordination from above (oh yeah the invisible hand). He does not miss any moment to poke fun at the Soviet Model and to consider HK something completely inimical to the ‘unnatural’ socialist planned economy. It is both bland and incredibly annoying to hear him express his ideas about how his mom worked in a sweatshop and how that has been the birthplace of success. While this may be true like it was for so many East European migrants, the story was also one of racism, eugenics and anti-immigration and working class struggle. Working conditions got improved with demands and growing capacity to unionize. This is completly missing. So this is basically a propaganda documentary (or a dogma) that has helped bring about a dystopia we’re living in right now. This is not sci-fi, and this is not cyberpunk, it is future inequality sold as present solution. Here we have the origin of the destruction of the welfare state, the divestment from education, ecological concerns, health, and why we lack infrastructure.

One had to lower or eliminate tariffs, offer incentives for investors and corporations, and forget about voting rights, forget about labor rights, and forget about colonialism. So ethno states and tariffs and trade wars feel anti free market only of one realizes that all the protectionist authoritarians such as Orban or Trump have actually permitted free trade only in chosen areas. The bet was to import this model and hope that the carrots (or sticks) will work out. If one wanted to be “free” (free to be poor could be another subtitle for this episode) one had to work under horrific conditions and just be infinitely adaptable, resilient, and exploitable/flexible. Voting with your feet – its the first time when this expression makes sense. HK existed because a tightly controlled pool of migrant pool was always at its disposal. It was this combination of Confucianism, lack of democracy, and unfettered capitalism that HK was exuding in the 70s and 80s. That’s why it came to be seen as the way forward for both the new turbo-charged capitalism that both US, as well as the UK and Germany, saw as the way forward out of an economic slump, generally high wages and rising oil prices. One should never forget that the so-called Californian ideology – the deregulatory thinking behind Big Tech (Musk and Co) was a subset of this school of economic thinking. Apple amd Foxconn stems as much from Friedman’s ode to the markets power to innovate and keep the labor force disenfranchised and disorganized. When Peter Thiel talks about escaping the nation state – or establishing as maby secessionist micro nations he speaks the language of free market radicals. The pattern of Global Cities had to be eminently reliable, not interested in redistribution, only in absorbing and ejecting the global flows of capital. And that is where we are now.

The Flat Tax was also basically an HK fiscal innovation that became the rule in the 1990s in the former East and a lot of the EU countries (including Germany where it is called tax brake – basically a brake on how much the state may be allowed to invest in public facilities, infrastructure, education etc). Its ideals were basically to circumvent the barriers of politics by any means and to establish “zones” of exception within the state. Fragmenting the planet and supporting the formation of micro-nations and crypto coin enclaves all over the planet (there are currently over 5400 special zones grouped into around 81 categories) was the aim of such free market radicals. Anarhapulco – the libertarian convention in Mexico was also modeled around the same ideals. We know how that turned out.

The secret story is that even in HK the government action was at work, just that this government action was never in the interest of the immigrants (cheap labor from the Chinese mainland), and all the rights were also achieved with the cost of blood (and protests from the late 60s on. There’s also a total mesh of contacts and friendships across ths border even as HK became the bottle neck and preparatory area for China’s extensive reforms. It is ironic to see this whole idea of the free market zone taking root in China and being completely overturned (hear the Adam Tooze talk) after China joined the WTO with the US became sudden gatekeeper. China had just invited the world community to join its investment bank anf Cameron eas the only one to join. This was the first crack in the US/UK pact. Suffice to say Eastern Europe (including Russia) has become the playground of ‘intentional community’ micro nation building. The Rothbardian decomposition of the state and of the nation state is strongest there, and even it’s warlordism is a case in point.

One small detail, libertarians who advocate for a minimal state are usually called minarchists, and those who advocate for no state are anarcho-capitalists. One final word – Friedman filmed there while he was on a trip invited to the Mont Pèlerin Society meeting at the most luxurious hotels in town sitting on Plot Nr 1. PBS series was sponsored by Getty Oil and Sara Scahill Foundation.

2246 – Rebranded Mickey Mouse (2023)

spacetime coordinates: in the near future of a zoned and enclaved United States of America with Disneyland city-states

Production:

Damaged PowerAid vending machine
Edited by Jason Harvey
Executive produced by Reggie Henke
Produced by Mackenzie Jamieson
Ny Footage shot by Johnny Frohman
Music by Jerry Paper
Staring Nate Varrone, Danny Catlow, Rich Sohn

Thanks a lot to Felix Petrescu (my main source for many things vimeo, cinematic, musical & digital culture related outside of this blog) for suggesting one of the most emblematic videos I have seen lately. On one side it is a fictitious, humourous, unruly dark anti-Disney nightmare. Frankly, the horrific ride and family trip to Disneyland gone bad from Escape from Tomorrow (2013) directed by Randy Moore appears benign in comparison with Rebranded Mickey Mouse. The rampage and amok generated by this short are on par with our daily media offerings , an experience exposed to the overdrive of the post-truth (military-entertainment powered) era.

On the other – Disneyland – is revealed as something else completely, not the Twilight Zone of Escape from Tomorrow, but a way to understand what capitalism looks like nowadays, how -using the title of a new critical reader -these forms of “mutant neoliberalism“ have proliferated. In a way, nothing appears familiar, mainstreamed or standardized because the most fringe things have been amplified by platform capitalism. We are dealing with a growing fragmentation and vectoring of oddity that no longer seems to stick to the old liberal mold. In a world where everything is reduced to self-promotional activity, Rebranded Mickey Mouse is also a parody of the “pitch”, of finding something out-of-the-box, of something “new”. Original satiric horror movies like the 2020 I blame Society movie or Brand New Cherry Flavor series start exactly when the pitch does not work, or when as a women horror director, you get an asshole ripping you off or geting all the credit.

You can only pitch your ideas to a mega-franchise and it is the only way to make an impact. An anarchic and sadistic Steamboat Mickey has already attracted the attention of Walter Benjamin early on (something that I tried discussing here). Benjamin remarked on both the liberatory potential of the Disney anthropomorphized mascot as well as how (later on) the brutality of this misbehaving surreal cartoon could be channeled into unhinged fascism for real. I hope I can elaborate elsewhere about the ventures of military-entertainment-Disney complex.

Rebranding Mickey Mouse format and style and technique is quite interesting. It is almost like a found footage short, but not quite. It looks more like a nature wildlife (or urban wildlife) movie because it uses a lot of infrared or at least night vision shots, surveillance footage, multiple CCTV screens and even at some point the ubiquitous Chinese facial recognition software shots – becoming a staple signifier in Western pop for high-tech dystopian authoritarianism. But instead of some hyenas or some foxes, you get a grotesquely painted guy with M Mouse ears talking into the camera while he roams trough the bushes, city or private homes.

Today’s geopolitical or technological fears have a certain look. Real or imaginary they show the impact on Western pop culture of more general trends or alignments and decoupling. Witch-house bands making a few years ago goth or healthgoth style video clips (thanks pnea for signaling this) have suddenly switched to something more geopolitically attuned. They are using in their latest music videos (in contrast with earlier standards) graphics and footage that shows or mimics easily recognizable surveillance aesthetics associated with “social credit” in China, or the facial recognition apps or traffic videos of Chinese jaywalking. Dark-tinted glasses are not dark enough today if they do not point in the direction of your currently preferred dystopian outlook.

I liked the fact that complete commodification has ensured that every extreme act (killing a Disney exec for example) by the Rebranded M Mouse is part of a promo campaign or a pitch to the mother company. One can only get the attention of higher echelons, and find employment as their new mascot if you are basically a break-in, and attract the attention of the police or law enforcement, that collaborates (almost like in the recent Trump indictment) to somehow achieve even more notoriety. More media coverage is good and the violence attracts attention. Violence is the only way today to show that one means business. Mayhem ensues when a supposed Disney fundamentalist stabs and kills the Rebranded Mickey M during a live press event. The whole media/platform environment works as a trampoline for such extreme acts and even contributes to aggravating and launching the 3 WW.

What I found refreshing is that is is not a war against an enemy from the outside, but an enemy on the inside: the very American household brand Disney. President G I Joe Biden is himself a deep fake president – and uses a deep fake voice to launch an all-out nuclear attack on all the Disneylands within US borders. It comes as no surprise that such an extraterritorial state model has become a reality. If as historian Quinn Slobodian reminds us in his latest book Crackup Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy (that I haven’t had the chance to read yet), we deal with a long history of bizarre but very specific neo-liberal heretics, this video also highlights the difficult road towards an indefinitely postponed “market utopia” or catastrophe libertarianism. From the beginning, such individualist zoning has been aimed against Socialist states but was also a way to circumvent all market controls and discard both democratic mechanisms and gun controls (in the US case). This is a typically Western dream about Asian-Pacific development as a libertarian prosperity solution, an entrepreneurial wishful thińking about Free Economic Zones or freeports plans that has taken hostage the startup community. The reality has been that this economic model of anti-democratic success, based on specific Asian (HK or Singapore) precedents has been very difficult to replicate elsewhere, particularly without major state support and steady flow of subventions.

Disneyland in this short fictive video has in the meantime acquired the status of a “land”, opposed to the very idea of the 19th century nation-state. Well, anyway such Disneyland corporation separatism (always with US backup) has amassed more power than an average small country. At the same time, because of its association with Western values (both specifically American conservative values & individual freedoms), Disney is still open to sanctions or boycotts from the outside (see cancel culture in a larger global and non-Euroamerican context). So at the moment when Disney has become the American Dream export par excellence, the global giant has ij this video morphed into a smaller Lichtensteins or Luxembourgs or Singapores with their own laws (its own constitution?), its own private army, and a Disney Ministry of Defense.

One can see a lot of collusion between the global ailing (or at least reconfiguring) US hegemon and its autonomous entertainment arm with embassies in Paris and Tokyo. Disney has been a global arm of the US influence everywhere including Eastern Europe but it has also achieved a sort of untouchable autonomy. So let’s speculate further. As much as Google, Apple, FB, Microsoft, the Disney+ streaming service functions as a monopoly to elbow out Netflix, but also as a potential chain of extraterritorial microstates. You do not have only US army bases but also a chain of “degenerate utopias” masked as theme-parks (a term reprised by Darko Suvin from Louis Marin 1973), that have complete discretion over their non national labor force (hire-fire-and-dump them model), but also upon what is considered illegal or unwanted.

Disney as form of soft power certainly, but also one could easily spill over into hard power and global conflict. That is, whenever and wherever US interests and cultural imperial status quo in this matter seems threatened. It is really interesting to hear the calls for Big Tech regulation following the ridiculous but very telling bipartisan hearing of the TikTok CEO recently and hopefully this won’t be just a witch hunt. At this moment, no one sees the Disney conglomerate as a threat to national security, nor do they see Palo Alto BIG TECH as such a planetary threat closer to home, although these platforms were the ones spreading disinformation at home and destabilization across the globe. For me, this is actually the whole scope of this short mad video – to find a situation where a US household brand triggers the actual downfall of the US, not China or any other external power vying for global hegemony. What escapes most of the current analysis, and what Quinn Slobodian achieved in his recent book I think is making neoliberals wake up from their “Hayek island” dream. This is how the whole democracy rhetoric has been hollowed out from the inside by the very promoters of free trade within special economic zones. Ethno populism tends to obscure the fact that the whole national state discourse and ‘bring back prosperity’ or ‘make America great again’ at home is “perforated” (as Slobodian observes) by numerous tax-free special zones that aim to attract global investors and hope to emulate Dubai in UK, US or elsewhere.

As some have remarked earlier, the Joker villain – from the Batman (DC franchise) isn’t so much a villain but a sort of exemplary broker gone loose, a total libertarian freedom fighter nutcase that rearranges everything to his contingent liking. He’s not so much a nutcase but a perfectly unpredictable entrepreneur, someone that does not try to save the sinking ship of capitalism but helps to sink it with various antics and unpredictable moves, a disaster capitalist riding the Schumpeterian waves of capitalist destruction. How do you turn Mickey Mouse into a Joker?

My final point is that during an already divided, uncertain situation in big part made more uncertain by Big Tech stakes, only an external enemy can promote more unity among the PPP (public-private projects). So one could consider the Disney US civil war parody a sort of nationalist (Trumpian?) parody call for more unity and for tighter integration at home with companies that have been deemed too treacherous, too global or selling their soul to transnational interests rather than foment economic growth and jobs at home. Following this Cold War logic, we have to ignore the ‘feral’ nature of this video because its true meaning lies in the fact that it is framed as an experiment of a Public-Private consortium or a DARPA-style agency that wants to upgrade or pitch and infiltrate Disney, a conglomerate that has become too complacent or too soft, but that still has a global reach.

2127 / The Anarchists (HBO docuseries 2022)

spacetime coordinates: a US enclave in Acapulco Mexico cca 2015 till now

It showcases a series of events that unfold over six years. An impulsive one-time gathering in Acapulco, turns into an annual event. Directed by Todd Schramke. It showcases a series of events that unfold over six years.

I have posted in the past an in-depth documentary in 3 parts directed by Ramonet (Tancrède) about anarchist history, thinking and various experiments, and even mentioned in passing the figure of Murray Rothbard (1925-1995). In comparison this documentary feels like a joke or a mock-up but for many it might still spell the truth about current anarcho-capitalist trends. Others have done a much better job at outlining the intellectual history of that particular school of extreme market capitalism from which it sprung called neoliberalism, and how its birth after WW1 out of the ashes of the multi-national Habsburg Empire was much more than the usual key figures everybody mentions (Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises), yet they are the ones who left a lasting and one might say pretty damaging imprint on today’s brand of globalism. It is in this context that historian Quinn Slobodian mentions a few important others (such as Wilhelm Röpke and Michael Heilperin), that struck a different path than their predecessors or contemporaries not supporting the usual laissez-faire economics but ending up on some bizarre intellectual paths of their own (including preparing some of the actual racist enthno- politics or one might say).

As capitalism arrived in Romania after 1989 with layoffs, unprecedented deindustrialization, price liberalisation (and the follow-up: gig economy and precarity), the usual fare of shock therapy (at least in Eastern Europe) was also accompanied by a sleuth of translations from some of these and other writers. Since these ideas suddenly started being so pervasive, so ‘natural’ in our societies, their influence ranges from government edicts to from movies and (sadly) school textbooks. Hard to trace their history or to even question them nowadays as presentism rules. Still there’s family resemblances. One characteristic they have in common (even the Wilhelm Röpke and Michael Heilperin might agree on that) is in the words of another important historian – Ellen Meiksins Wood – the differentiation of ‘spheres’ in capitalism, in particular the separation of the ‘economic sphere’ from the ‘political sphere’. The way in which capitalism exploitation works along in history is by transforming certain “essential political issues—struggles over domination and exploitation that historically have been inextricably bound up with political power—into distinctively ‘economic’ issues.”(check Ellen M W essential article from 1981 on that!).

Here come the anarcho-capitalist of today. Californian Ideology is drenched with that too. It is a direct child-brain of the Reagan-Tatcher compact. In other obnoxious ways it keeps vaunting its purity & pseudo outcast veneer – by affirming its libertarian credo. Year they have a mottled base and have drawn members from all sorts of corners (and this docu makes it amply clear): affluent types ex-finance ex-Wall Street types, Tech Billionaires, Dark Web traffickers dominante to which one might add gun ownership rights promoters, preppers, ex vets, home-schooling activists, tax-resistence activists, even the odd pacifist, conspiracy theorists etc. Still, most vizibile in the end are PROMOTERS OF HYPERBITCOINITIZATION and its almost as if this subtends their whole experiment, without any questioning ot tech scepticism (as long as they sponsor you & coin pays). But to talk about real – thermodynamic costs. It’s a crypto data mining bonanza world where thermodynamics (Gottfried Leibniz’s point about mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace’s demon – an argument wisely made jn regard to Blade Runner by C Mudede) is forgotten, magically suspended. It’s not at all far-fetched to say ideas espoused or ideological commitments expressed by ancaps had a say in both the alt-right and the 2021 United States Capitol Attack as well as the current crypto boom and bust. Bitcoin and blockchain tech are part of what could be coined Silicon Valley Solutionism – of preffering a technological fix for everything or pushing their inventions and solutions especially if they benefit the providers of those very solutions (sold with an invisible higher prize tag than what the city administrations have payed to make it snug & comfy for them). Anarhapulco seems like a bizarre neocolonial enterprise in US backyard: Latin America. Since end of 19th c ghe rising US Empire has played dirty, brutally pushing its interests and orchestrating numerous anti democratic political coups in the name of democracy, subverting local power and increasing misery and instability. It’s NSS apparatus, it’s corporations and elites have been instrumental in that. Important to understand that these flimsy overnight positions and ideologies are not at all as spontaneous or self-made meaningless Anarcapulco ‘joke’ had deep roots in the Cold War era narratives and paranoia of movies such as Red Dawn or books such as Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand where the enemy was either US state (or IRS) described as a hideout for ‘commies’ or ‘parasites’ at home. Movies such as Tge Hunt also speak of this shifting paranoia that characterizes uses of ‘RINOs'(Republican In Name Only) to blame those deemed un-loyal, ‘bad actors’ and especially the strawman of Cultural Marxism or malefic liberal elites at home.

The reality is much more complex, and there is actually historically and institutional reasons why this complicity btw the National Security State and its covert support for such radical free market elements or entrepreneurial ideas works almost because of ideals that otherwise would deny all state involvement and all goverment aid. Did the at any point ask or consult even the local communities were they landed? Did they use any democratic means to inquire what the locals think prior to their arrival there? Noy at all. All this whining over taxation and constant victimizing over government interference actually hides the way cities in the US have been declared “failed cities” (see Detroit – who also makes an appearance in The Anarchist as a ‘white’ commune ? almost the counterpart of Anarcapulco). They ignore the almost complete systemic racism, non existent welfare, rampant environmental injustice sjd unwillingness to act on it, a minuscule public spending and endemic lack of goverment interference – since for all its global reach, tech supremacy, influence in world affairs and military over reach (800 mil basis around the world) the US internally is built on feet of clay.

Important to understand that these anti- government ideas did not go away with Tatcher or Reagan, but have been very cooking up, alive in the dotcom boom rise & fall, the foundation & impunity of (national asset) Big Tech entrepreneurship since the early 1990s, well before COVID 19 pandemic struck and expose how the trust in much public institutions had been eroded, or if public infrastructure and even liberal democracy was itself worth saving, well before the UBER leaks scandal hit us.

So maybe you won’t find anything of the above in this docuseries, and on watch lists and recommendation. I find these things pretty blaring. The Anarchists is more about the celebertarians and seasteading than their actual history of ancap encrouchment (although u see a lot of Ron Paul and even clips with Ayn Rand – tough that would be enough to put you off). Watch it if you must, keeping in mind all of the above or enjoy a conventional beach resort party gone sore. The only interesting part (beside its almost cheapo reality TV feel) is how made-up and how unconvincing sound this cries for freedom from normal affluent mostly white (apart from very few notable exceptions) mostly bachelor, well educated and mostly male (the women had almost scripted exclusive nurturing roles). The only unstable elements – the sad PTSD vets are almost colateral, but they are the only shadow of constant wars abroad (Irak, Afganistan) and the way imperial foreign policy strikes back, becomes war as mass culture. Militarism abroad has a tendency to spill over into militarization of police violence and disastrous & multiplying mass shootings.

Apart from a vegan place there is NOTHING absolutely nothing about the local Mexican anarchists or rich local resistance and anti-exploitation anti imperialist histories. Where is the history of the Mexican Revolution, of of the earliest revolutions of the XX c? Where are the Trots’s in exile or the Zapatistas in the South? All these counter-histories seem forgotten, delete. Nothing about the terrible costs inflected upon migrants that want to move North in search of a better life no matter what the cost to their personal liberty and freedom or the risk from de-hiydration or being hunted down by vigilante right wing border patrols. None of that here! It is a history in a bubble of another bubble. Nobody is questioning the criteria on which this on rush for so-called boundless optimization, efficiency and guaranteed benefits is built. Here are the absolute total normies you might say – and look how easy it is nowadays to self-identify as ‘anarchist’ or be reborn overnight as libertarians or have a friend in crutches hand you a book on the EVIL gov, and then instant ‘alternative’ lifestyles suddenly feel part of ‘your’ orientation and mission. This generally tends to end bad for the unprotected. Is it odd, is it ‘radical’ to be one of those suddenly moving from the rich Global North to the Global South being moved by ‘vibes’ and crypto-currency sponsorship and blogging platforms?! Don’t think so. It’s striking that most ‘crypto scheme’ promoter plan to revolutionize the economy only in impoverished, deregulated, and de-funded countries and mostly having suffered directly under the US neo-colonialism. They are either reeling after neoliberal ‘shock therapy’ or finding themselves squeezed under crushing private international debt & austerity measures. This possible explains how crypto arrived in Salvador via goverment promises and Philippines via gaming. The whole cheaper than at home (low cost) hotel- ballardian (Cocaïne Nights) environment living in Anarchapulco is actually what the utopia of this seasteding (fiscal paradise) crowd was all about.

IMDB