Rad Geek People's Daily

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The Revolution Will Be On YouTube

Here's a pretty old post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 14 years ago, in 2010, on the World Wide Web.

As you may know, I gave a talk on March 20th at the Free State Project’s 2010 Liberty Forum in Nashua, New Hampshire:

The Revolution Will Be Made Of People: Anarchy, Direct Action, and Free-Market Social Justice

Freedom is not a conservative idea. It is not a prop for corporate power and the political-economic statist quo. Libertarianism is, in fact, a revolutionary doctrine, which would undermine and overthrow every form of state coercion and authoritarian control. If we want liberty in our lifetimes, the realities of our politics need to live up to the promise our principles — we should be radicals, not reformists; anarchists, not smaller-governmentalists; defenders of real freed markets and private property, not apologists for corporate capitalism, halfway privatization or existing concentrations of wealth. Libertarianism should be a people's movement and a liberation movement, and we should take our cues not from what's politically polite, but from what works for a revolutionary people-power movement. Here's how.

With many thanks to Antonio from blog of bile, here is a recording of the talk and the Q&A session that followed. (Split into 10 minute segments, as per YouTube constraints.) A couple of quick notes before we begin:

  1. Props where props are due. I intended to mention this in the talk, but barrelled through without remembering to. The story that I told at the beginning, about the Spokane Free Speech Fight of 1909-1910 is a story that I first heard through the late, great Utah Phillips, and he got it from FW Herb Edwards, who was there in Spokane working in logging at the time. I told the story just about the way Utah told it (and he says he was telling it just about the way he heard it from Herb Edwards, minus the Norwegian accent). If you want to hear Utah’s version of it, it’s Track 5, Direct Action, on Fellow Workers, the second album he put out in collaboration with Ani DiFranco.

  2. Time constraints forced me to skip over a substantial portion towards the end of the talk, which was largely concerned with methods. If I had it to do over again, I would have spent less time on opening matters and the case against minarchism, and spent more time (as I originally hoped to) talking about why libertarians should not waste time or energy on voting, parties, paper constitutions, nationalist politics, or conservative mythology about Founding Fathers or the stupid slave empire so often passed off as a Republic; and would also have talked about how partisan politics punishes radicalism and rewards compromise (hence, effectively, locking us into the statist quo), whereas direct action politics rewards principle, radicalism, and political courage. Ah well; next time, next time.

Now, on with the show:

The Revolution Will Be Made of People (2010-03-20), Part 1 of 9.

The Revolution Will Be Made of People (2010-03-20), Part 2 of 9.

The Revolution Will Be Made of People (2010-03-20), Part 3

The Revolution Will Be Made of People (2010-03-20), Part 4

The Revolution Will Be Made of People (2010-03-20), Part 5

The Revolution Will Be Made of People (2010-03-20), Part 6

The Revolution Will Be Made of People (2010-03-20), Part 7 — Q&A

The Revolution Will Be Made of People (2010-03-20), Part 8 — Q&A

The Revolution Will Be Made of People (2010-03-20), Part 9 — Q&A

More left-libertarian material from the Liberty Forum coming soon as I collect it. Expect to hear a bit more from me, and to see and hear from Darian Worden and other ALLies and agorists gathering in the Shire.

14 replies to The Revolution Will Be On YouTube Use a feed to Follow replies to this article · TrackBack URI

  1. Discussed at littlealexinwonderland.wordpress.com

    Charles Johnson: ‘The Revolution Will Be Made Of People: Anarchy, Direct Action and Free Market Social Justice’ (Video) « Little Alex in Wonderland:

    […] US, wage slavery, Wagner Act, warfare-welfare state, welfare state, Wobblies, WTO via Charles “Rad Geek” Johnson’s blog: Freedom is not a conservative idea. It is not a prop for corporate power and the […]

  2. bile

    You should be able to post the playlist as I did on blogofbile.com though I don’t know how you embed them.

  3. Discussed at topsy.com

    Tweets that mention Rad Geek People's Daily 2010-03-23 – The Revolution Will Be On YouTube -- Topsy.com:

    […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by James Tuttle and Josh, Josh. Josh said: RT @JamesTulsaALL: RT @radgeek: From radgeek.com: The Revolution Will Be On YouTube http://bit.ly/9nlip9 […]

  4. Discussed at www.echoesandmirrors.com

    Echoes and Mirrors » Standing up for yourself is patriotic:

    […] Charles Johnson (Radgeek) mentions something similar in an historical context here: […]

  5. c.t.mummey

    anyway you can post just the audio?

  6. George Donnelly

    Is the text version available?

  7. c.t.mummey

    will the talk be serialized in a web comic?

  8. Discussed at www.ideasandminds.com

    Ideas And Minds | Blog | The Revolution Will Be Made Of People: Anarchy, Direct Action, and Free-Market Social Justice:

    […] March 26, 2010 in Civil Disobedience, Civil Liberties, Free market, History, Liberty, Preparedness, Society/Culture, Syndication, economics, labor, socialism, statism, voluntaryism by Ideas&Minds The Revolution Will Be Made Of People: Anarchy, Direct Action, and Free-Market Social Justice […]

  9. Counterclockwise

    Actually, I’d prefer if you’d release an interpretive dance. With those streamer thingies, please.

  10. Rad Geek

    Counterclockwise,

    Did you see my hand gestures in the video? My speeches are already halfway to interpretive dance as it is.

  11. Discussed at darianworden.com

    DarianWorden.com» Blog Archive » Liberty Forum Videos:

    […] In case you missed it, Charles “Rad Geek” Johnson’s Liberty Forum talk is online, and you can view it with some commentary by Charles over at Rad Geek People’s Daily. […]

· June 2010 ·

  1. Discussed at www.theanarchisttownship.freedom-blogs.com

    The Anarchist Township» Where is libertarianism? (Part 2 of 3):

    […] to the discussion with his talk of how the revolution that libertarians should support would be one made of people and therefore a sort of revolution in the politically “left” sense of it. I feel […]

  2. Discussed at darianworden.com

    DarianWorden.com» Blog Archive » Charting Politics:

    […] also Charles “Rad Geek” Johnson, Kevin Carson, Roderick T. Long, Sheldon Richman, and The Alliance […]

— 2012 —

  1. Discussed at bleedingheartlibertarians.com

    The Distinctiveness of Left-Libertarianism | Bleeding Heart Libertarians:

    […] of just possessory claims, they stress non-aggressive solidaristic action as the appropriate means of dealing with persistent discrimination. They promote marriage equality while seeking the departure of the state from the marriage […]

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