#111: Become an Anarchist or Forever Hold Your Peace

The Ex-Worker

This episode offers an audio version of “Become an Anarchist or Forever Hold Your Peace,” arguing that neither courts nor laws will halt the descent into autocracy. Massive numbers of people will have to take it upon themselves to organize concrete acts of resistance, to take direct action on a horizontal and participatory basis—in other words, to become anarchists.

-------SHOW NOTES------

• Table of Contents
  • Introduction {0:36}
  • Tyranny Is the Opposite of Anarchism {1:12}
  • A Three-Sided Conflict {3:45}
  • No Law Will Give You Freedom {8:32}
  • Remember How We Got Here {12:02}
  • Become an Anarchist or Forever Hold Your Peace {15:50}

• This episode offers an audio version of “Become an Anarchist or Forever Hold Your Peace,” published by CrimethInc. on February 21, 2025. The article version includes a variety of hyperlinks offering documentation confirming the claims therein.

• If you’re interested in learning more about anarchist ideas, you could start with To Change Everything, our introduction to anarchism, or with “The Secret Is to Begin,” which offers further points of departure. To learn about direct action, start with this guide.

• You can read our argument that it was naïve for Democrats to invest so much hope in Robert Mueller’s investigation of Donald Trump here. We published it well before that investigation ended in a complete washout. Along similar lines, our text “Take Your Pick: Law or Freedom” has proved prescient, accurately predicting some of the quandaries that fetishizing legality has created for Democrats as Donald Trump and his cronies gain control of more and more aspects of the government and judicial system.

• You can read our critical analysis of democracy in full in our book From Democracy to Freedom. We offer it in print or as a free PDF.

• For more background on the neoliberal nightmare that has unfolded in Argentina since the victory of Javier Milei, read this.

• For background on the damage that the Trump regime is doing to public health, consult this text. For background on the damage that the Trump regime is doing to medical research, consult this one. You can learn about how the cuts to USAID have impacted people around the world here. Elon Musk is even trying to make it impossible to keep up with the weather. Whatever you’re imagining, what’s happening is worse.

• For further discussion of how to resist rising authoritarianism, you could start with “The Case for Resistance: What We’re Up Against—and What It Could Look Like to Fight,” also available in audio form here. You could also listen to the previous episode of this podcast, “It’s Safer in the Front,” which picks up some of the same themes.