WBD360 Audio Transcription

Understanding Anarchism with Michael Malice

Interview date: Monday 14th June

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Michael Malice. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.

Michael Malice is a staunch anarchist and author who believes anarchism is an apparatus for achieving human joy. In this interview, we discuss how the world would operate without state intervention, the human propensity for cooperation, and how Bitcoin is a catalyst for change.

“People by their nature prefer to cooperate, not because they are genuinely kind, but because conflict and violence is very very expensive; if you have a knife fight you are getting stabbed, even if you win.”

— Michael Malice

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: Hi, Michael.

Michael Malice: Hello, Peter.

Peter McCormack: We're finally getting going.

Michael Malice: Yes, sir.

Peter McCormack: That's what the weirdest start ever. 

Michael Malice: Yes.

Peter McCormack: We should probably explain to people what happened that, when we were doing the test recording, every time we would play it back, some phantom music was appearing!

Michael Malice: Yeah, very odd.

Peter McCormack: Very odd.  Thank you for doing this.

Michael Malice: Pleasure.

Peter McCormack: I've wanted to talk to you for a long time.  I'm going to set the scene, so you can understand where I'm coming at this from, and then you can help me through my journey of understanding anarchism a bit more.  So I would say, four years ago, pre-Bitcoin for me, I was just living in a small town in England, I just believed that there was a state, I believed we picked a party every four years and that's just the way it was.  I had Stockholm syndrome and that was how it was.  

I discovered Bitcoin, I start making a podcast and I start coming across a lot of bitcoiners who are anarchists and libertarians who are yelling at me and calling me a statist cuck.

Michael Malice: Were they wrong?

Peter McCormack: I think what's happening over time is I'm gradually shedding everything I knew from the past; more recently, even with mainstream media.  So, I'm very much in a lost place, if I'm honest.  I don't know what to believe anymore, but I've also struggled with the idea of where we should be or where we should go.

So, I want to start with you, because for me, my view on anarchism was, it's guys in masks at a G8 Conference smashing up McDonald's.  That's all I knew about anarchism until I started speaking to some of the smarter people.  So, how do you explain anarchism to people?

Michael Malice: Well, it's going to be different for the British, because you had the Sex Pistols' song, so I don't want to destroy pastures by!  Anarchism can be summed up in one sentence, "You do not speak for me" and everything else is just application of that concept.  It is the idea that authority is inherently illegitimate.  It's different if you have a lawyer or a doctor; you're deferring to their authority; it's something that you've chosen.

But the claim that, because a lot of my neighbours think that something is good or desirable has no bearing on truth.  And the claim that morally, they're in a position to impose their view of what's good and desirable upon me is something so nonsensical, we wouldn't even consider it as a hypothesis, unless we are trained to believe this since children in government schools.

One little thing that I'm going to predict you're going to start changing, maybe even by the end of this talk, is to stop referring to them as the "mainstream media", because their views are not mainstream at all; they have a corporate agenda, which is increasingly transparent to, I think, everyone.  Nothing wrong with having an agenda, but to claim that they represent the mainstream, as opposed to form the mainstream, is I think a bit of a slight error in description.

Peter McCormack: Okay, that's fair.  So, what do you refer to them as?

Michael Malice: The corporate press, which is the enemy of the people.

Peter McCormack: The corporate press, enemy of the people, propaganda?

Michael Malice: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Michael Malice: Agitprop, more specifically.

Peter McCormack: Well, as a bitcoiner, I've become increasingly aware of it, because of the misreporting of Bitcoin continually, whether it's the New York Times, whether it's the Guardian.

Michael Malice: And these aren't stupid -- this is something conservatives get very wrong; these aren't stupid people.  You can't work for the New York Times and be dumb; you can't work for The Guardian and be dumb.  These people are very educated; education correlates with intelligence; and, if I was a journalist and I'm covering something, it's going to be inevitable I'm going to get things wrong at some point, right. 

However, once that mistake is pointed out to me, if I had any semblance of commitment to the truth or to decency, I would not only feel humiliated, I would also make it a point to not make that mistake again.  Even in personal relationships; if I misjudged someone because of a lack of knowledge, so I was like, "Oh, he acted this way, not because of you, because something happened with his wife", you feel like a jerk and you're like, "Oh, my God, I've got to make amends".  There's none of that when it comes to corporate media. 

Bitcoin is a perfect example of this.  I'm sure we're days away, if it hasn't happened already, you're more familiar with the space than I am; but, Bitcoin being White Supremacist, I'm sure is just a headline waiting to be written, which is nonsensical of course.  Anyone knows it's a form of currency and many other things, but this is how they operate.  Once you see their machinations, you can't not see them and that's the red pill.

Peter McCormack: Yeah; that's the thing.  I feel like at the moment, I've taken the red pill and it's slowly, slowly working its way through my body.  But I've really struggled to shed some of these beliefs or things that I just held that were true.  For a long time, the BBC for me was an institution of something I could trust.  John Simpson, for me, was a journalist who I believed and I saw him travel the world, interview some of the most important people.  And then, I've travelled here to the US and I've seen how people view the BBC and I've seen a different lens on their reporting, and now I just don't trust anything.

Michael Malice: Good.  The BBC's very mixed.  Obviously, it's a state organisation, so you're going to have trouble there.  However, they're very good, some of the reporters, at asking the tough questions of people on all sides, so you have to give them credit there.  Their three-part documentary on Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, is the best resource on her, I think, out there, which is amazing given the notoriously hostile relationship the two of them had.  And a lot of their nature stuff is second to none.  So, the BBC, you could say very high things about.

But at the same time, their agenda is very hard left, it's very portrayed in a certain thing, and that's fine.  But first of all, I think it's obscene to use tax-payer monies to fund a news organisation; but it's just also interesting that an agency that has state backing is going to be more respectable in many cases than corporate agencies here in the States, like the New York Times and the Washington Post.  I think the BBC gets it right, or gets it more reasonable in terms of displaying all sides of the issue than you'd see here across the pond.

Peter McCormack: Well, I think that's because it is funded by the TV licence in the UK; it is a state tax for it.  It has a certain amount of pressure on it to be as impartial as possible, which I think you've recognised.  Also, did you see the four-part documentary they made about the Iraq War?

Michael Malice: I have not.

Peter McCormack: That is fantastic.  That's probably the best reporting on that.  But yeah, so I'm in this place where I'm shedding these skins and for some people, I haven't got far enough.  I'm regularly still called a statist and I think what it is --

Michael Malice: Sorry to interrupt you; that's not going to change.

Peter McCormack: No, it's not.

Michael Malice: I'm not a real anarchist, because I don't talk about Bitcoin enough.

Peter McCormack: We'll get there.

Michael Malice: Yeah.  So, whenever anyone has some perspective, there's a slur that they'll use to people that don't fall in line completely so.  I think statist; we've got a way to go before statist in this case.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and I think what it is, the reason I want to talk to you is, I can't see the end goal.  I see the state, I see the issues with the state, I've heard you talk about it quite a bit and, yeah, I've talked to other people; but I can't see the end goal, I can't see the alternative, I can't see how it actually works.

Michael Malice: This is the alternative right here.

Peter McCormack: Well, it's the conversation.

Michael Malice: Right.  This is, we're here, we are in an anarchist relationship to one another; neither of us has an authority.  You have some semblance of authority, because this is your show, but we met peaceably.  Anarchism is a relationship; it's not a location.  So, any time you have people exchanging peacefully, that is an anarchist situation despite the state's claim that, but for the state, this would be impossible, which is like claiming, "If it wasn't for all these exorcists, we'd all be possessed".  It's dubious at best.

Peter McCormack: But this is manageable and as neighbours, or maybe even a street, it's manageable.  What I struggle with is the idea of, how does this work at scale with 360 million people; how does that work?  We'll come to that and some of the questions I already knew I had, I started reading the intro to your book, and you almost played those responses back at us.  You know the questions; you've been asked them 1,000 times and I'm going to ask them, so sorry about that!

Michael Malice: No, gladly, please.

Peter McCormack: So, let's start with the state and I want to ask you firstly, what do you think that state does well?

Michael Malice: The state does well in terms of fomenting emotion among the population.  The state does well in terms -- that's one thing.  I mean, you're asking an anarchist to think of things the state does well.  The state isn't even good at waging war.  I mean, it would be very easy to make the argument for government if it was good at war.  If the Iraq war was, "We're in and out in a week; Saddam's gone, minimal or no civilian casualties", we could pat ourselves on the back; you could make that argument.  That has not happened.

So, even things that are regarded as the state at its most glorious, like World War II; that's a very good versus evil situation, although we kind of sweep Stalin under the rug, because we don't know how to fit him into the good versus evil situation.  Even there, the amount of death and destruction is just unconscionable; I don't just mean the Holocaust, I mean civilians and soldiers being killed from every direction.

So, I can't think of anything the state does well, because let's even take this out of the realm of politics.  What is it that gigantic bureaucracies do well?  Well, they're good at organising; they're good at making someone have a job for their life and taking care of their own constituents or employees, whatever you might have.  But I think when people stop thinking of the state as something that's representational and start thinking of it as a giant, violent bureaucracy and ask yourselves, what are things that giant bureaucracies do well, they're going to also struggle to have the same answers, or the answers they come up with will be the same answers that I come up with.

Peter McCormack: Managing borders and tax collection!

Michael Malice: But they don't manage borders well.  Tax evasion and avoidance are both the status quo.  So, if they collected taxes well, we would only have black markets.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean what I don't understand with anarchism, and tell me; I don't know if for you, it's an end goal, an idea, an objective you want to reach; or is it a personal, philosophical way of living?

Michael Malice: Well, I think it's both, which I hate when people ask me the question that way.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I know.

Michael Malice: Whenever you have a world view, it's kind of living the values.  So for me, anarchism is engaging with people peaceably; it is enforcing strictly your borders and your boundaries; it is feeling outrage when innocent people are harmed, especially en masse, which is what the state is very good at: mass carnage and mass destruction.  So, you're saying it as an end goal, but I think what people often don't understand is that anarchism is the norm. 

Lord of the Flies is not reality; Lord of the Flies is not what would happen.  If you watched the show, Survivor, I know there's the British version as well; the point is the only reason these people are antagonistic is because they're being forced to vote off each other.  Where in reality, if they were on a desert island together, extremely diverse cast, sure people would dislike each other so on and so forth, but the Hobbesian idea would not hold true; they would actually work together pretty well, because when you're talking about survival or on lifeboats, you're not getting all violent.  Even in situations like in the Andes where there was a plane crash, people were very hesitant even to eat dead people.  I mean, that's how much people, being social animals, do like and respect each other. 

Now, the big question for anarchism, for any society, okay; what do you do about the murderers; what do you do about the rapists?  And part of this has to come with the recognition that the number of people who are murderers and rapists are very, very low.  It's not that they're low because of the law; it's low because (a) I'm going to put a target on my back; and (b) most people do not think in these terms.  I would bet that 99% of these people who are listening to this show, over 99%, if they had the opportunity to rape someone and get away with it, it would be unconscionable for them and the guilt would follow them for the rest of their lives.

So again, the valid question is, all right, well what do you do about that guy who thinks differently?

Peter McCormack: So, what do you do about that guy?

Michael Malice: Well, there are very different mechanisms.  Unfortunately, there's no system that is going to be utopian.  So, there's criticism of anarchism like, all right, sometimes the guy's going to get away with it.  That is the status quo.  What's his name, Jimmy Saville?

Peter McCormack: Jimmy Saville, yeah.

Michael Malice: Yeah, he was raping children for decades, he was joking about it; everyone was, "Oh, Jimmy, ha-ha".  There are infinite examples of people who are just monsters and they never suffer consequences.  Jack the Ripper was another example.  And also, just at a minor level, people who just commit crimes.

So, under anarchism, you would have much more clearly defined property rights, and you would have things like reputation and people would be much more involved in their neighbourhoods.  But again, this is going to be a tricky situation under any circumstances.

Peter McCormack: What would the base rule or law be though, and how --

Michael Malice: There's no law.

Peter McCormack: There's no law at all?

Michael Malice: There's rules, but just no law.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so there are just rules.  What are the base rules; is it just based on property rights?

Michael Malice: There's no base; that's the whole thing.  Anarchism means freedom.  So for example, if I want to have a store and if you want to come in this store, you have to wear this certain outfit and we could have that now; that's certainly a prerogative.  There are certain venues you go into where you have to dress a certain way; there's a dress code.  If you want to go to the Harvard Club, you have to have a blazer and a tie on, for example.

So basically, what you would have is, everything would be under someone's jurisdiction and they would set those principles.  Now, some places would be a velvet rope, like, "You can't come in here unless X, Y and Z", as I think you would say.  Other places, the supermarket, it's, "Come one, come all", or, "No shirt, no shoes, no service".  So, what anarchism does is allows the maximum freedom for every individual.

Peter McCormack: So for example, here in New York, I'm a smoker, but I'm a vape smoker.  I had to go to the little shop and he kept under the counter the flavoured ones, because there's a rule here now that they've created that you can't have flavoured vapes, which surprised me when I got here; I didn't even realise this was a new thing in New York.  So, the creep of the state is obviously huge.

Michael Malice: Let me ask you this, as a former statist cuck: do you regard that law as legitimate?

Peter McCormack: Well of course not, I'm a grown up.

Michael Malice: Well, it's not "of course", because there's many people who'd say, "Look, maybe this is a law; it's misguided, but certainly we should still respect it".  And once you realise why, then basically everything else follows.

Peter McCormack: Well, that's the thing.  I mean, I'm an adult, I would like to smoke, I'm not smoking in people's face and I would like a flavour.

Michael Malice: And, here's the other thing.  It might even be true; in fact, I would have no problem for the sake of argument saying it is true, that these kinds of things are attractive to teenagers and that it's very, very dangerous when teenagers start smoking because they're trapped and we have to be concerned about that.  Sure, gladly, I don't care.  Peter's an adult, Peter wants his flavoured thing, Peter's not going to give it to children, the end; there's nothing else to discuss.

Peter McCormack: And I'm responsible for my own children's decisions and guiding them and making sure they make those decisions.

Michael Malice: Exactly.

Peter McCormack: Which comes to a bigger issue, is that recently, where I've started to feel challenged, is what's been happening with my children and what are my children being taught.  It's actually kind of scary.

Michael Malice: It's child abuse, yes.

Peter McCormack: Well, to the point of really considering what I want my children to do.  So, my son phoned me up, it was mad.  There's been two incidents he's had.  So, he's a drama and arts student.

Michael Malice: How old is he?

Peter McCormack: He's 17 now.  And he wanted to do this monologue and it was a monologue from, I think it was a US play back in the 1950s or 1940s; I can't remember the actual era.  But it was about the racial conflict at the time.  And it was somebody from a factory and that person in the factory was talking about the different workers, and so there are certain racial connotations there.  But it was a piece of art.

Michael Malice: Historical.

Peter McCormack: A historical piece.  The teacher turned round to him and said, "We would rather you didn't do this piece, because there are going to be some black people in the audience and we don't want to offend them".  So, he came home to me frustrated and he's like, "Dad, I wanted to do this".  I was like, "Just do it, or just refuse --" he didn't want the confrontation; he didn't do it.

Michael Malice: But can I ask: do you notice that this teacher is speaking on behalf of the black people, as opposed to black people who have minds of their own, who are perfectly capable of understanding something in a historical context and who actually have to deal with racism on a daily basis?  But she feels the need to interject herself into this relationship.

Peter McCormack: That was the first incident.  And the second one, which is definitely going to make you laugh and I just found it a bit strange; so, they have this thing called PSHE.  I think that's what it is; my son would correct me.  It's sex education, which firstly I don't really want the school teaching; but, whatever.  If it's responsible, it's fine.

But they then have the two pictures of the anatomy of the male and the female, but they can't refer to them as male and female; they have to refer as "person with a penis" and "person with a vagina", because they don't want to offend people who don't identify as their gender.

Michael Malice: I don't find that funny at all.

Peter McCormack: Well, funny as in stupid funny.

Michael Malice: It's not stupid, it's very smart.  It's a very smart mechanism to control children, because when you start controlling someone's language and how they express themselves, right away they're using in-group jargon and you can identify, within seconds, if this person is being submissive and subordinate to the master class narrative, or if they're thinking for themselves.  So, it's a very sophisticated technique that they're using.

Peter McCormack: But this, Michael, is the stuff that's freaking me out now.

Michael Malice: Well, good.  You should be freaked out.  These people are horrible and I don't think it's funny in the slightest.  I think is a cause for rage.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean when I say funny, that's maybe a figure of speech we use in the UK.  When we say --

Michael Malice: No, you say "taking the piss"; that's a figure of speech you use.

Peter McCormack: No, but also, when we say it's funny, it's not like we're saying it's funny, that you should laugh at it; "it's funny", is just a figure of speech; it's not that it's a comical thing; well, sarcastically comically.  But we don't have to dwell on that.  The point being is that it's just another thing that's making me think, "What the fuck; what is going on here?"  But I'm also like, "What do I do?"

Michael Malice: Here's something.  Have you not picked up that they used to do this to us, that we didn't realise it because we were kids?  That's the thing that you haven't clicked yet.

Peter McCormack: It feels very different now.

Michael Malice: Because you're an adult and you can see it for what it is.  When you're a kid… you know there's that whole metaphor about two fish in a river and one goes, "The water's really warm today" and the other one goes, "What's water?"  We're oblivious to our environment if that's the entirety of our context. 

So, when we're kids and we're in this school and this is how knowledge is being promulgated to us, we do not have that independence to perceive it as other than truth that Moses received on Mount Sinai; and that's why it's so depraved that they're doing this to children, who do not have the capacity or the power to actually do anything about it.  So, this is why I find it, well I say rage; these people are just really despicable human beings.

Peter McCormack: But we also, as humans, as adults, we're accepting this.

Michael Malice: Don't say "we".

Peter McCormack: Okay, other adults are just accepting of this, so in the situation, I'm outraged, I'm concerned, I'm like, "What do I do?  Can I remove my kids?"  I don't think my ex-wife sees it in the same way, but she'll have the conversation.  But I'm aware that plenty of other parents are aware their children are being taught these things, but aren't outraged.  I mean, we're quite subordinate in the UK anyway, but there's this general acceptance of, this is the way it is.

Michael Malice: Oh, yeah, and in the States as well.

Peter McCormack: But people like you and I are made to feel like -- well, certainly maybe more you; I'm on a slower journey.  But sometimes, made to feel like the weirdos, the outcasts.

Michael Malice: Well, good; weirdos are the ones who move any country.  It's always going to be the fringe.  In my last book, The New Right, I have a line about, "On the fringe is where insanity and innovation lay", because when you're in the middle and someone's saying things never heard before, you have no real way of determining, because they're so far, so many standard deviations away from the mean, whether this is a crazy person or this is a great genius of our time.  So, you don't really know; it just sounds unprecedented to you.

But yeah, H L Mencken, who I quote frequently; he was a great cynic of the early 20th century newspaper men.  He had the quote about, "The average man does not want to be free; he simply wants to be safe".  And I think people who are interested in independence and who view life as a wonderful, magical adventure, regard people like this as quite literally soulless.

Peter McCormack: But what if people do want to live like this; how do we coordinate them?

Michael Malice: The beauty of anarchism is they can do whatever the heck they want, and we are free to thrive; whereas, they are free to just have as much consequence on the Earth as a butterfly.

Peter McCormack: But you're not essentially free now; there are limitations to what you can do?

Michael Malice: Oh, of course.

Peter McCormack: You might be free in your mind.

Michael Malice: No, I'm not free; there are many ways I'm unfree.  One of the reasons I'm moving from New York is I can't get a gun here.  Now, this has very different connotations in the UK, but here we have the Second Amendment, which I'm not particularly for or against, I'm not for the Constitution; but I am increasingly getting some cool books for my house, right.  I don't want to worry about being robbed if I put them on Instagram, whereas if I go to Texas, I'll at least some measure of security.

Peter McCormack: Well again, that's another interesting point, because I get asked that a lot, being from the UK.  And I've been thinking, and I mentioned to you, of moving to Austin as well.  And that idea; I would consider that idea of getting a gun.  It would be a huge step for me, because in the UK we don't have guns.  I kind of like that; that's the point.  And I know as a -- I interviewed a British libertarian and he was like, "No, we should be changing the law so everyone should be able to own a gun.  Someone runs into your house, a criminal with a gun, you have nothing to protect yourself".  I agree with his point, but we've established a society where gun crime is very limited.

Michael Malice: We haven't; the British Government has.

Peter McCormack: You haven't, yeah, and I sometimes think that's maybe one good thing we don't have.  Guns are not ubiquitous, and I kind of like that.

Michael Malice: So, one of the ways that anarchism is promoted is not by persuasion, but by putting steps in place to make people imposing their values technically impossible.  Bitcoin is a good example of this.  But 3D printing of guns, Cody Wilson, Defence Distributed.  Now, there are two scenarios: one is, I can sit here and argue why guns are a good thing and more people should have them, or have at least the option; you might argue, "Look, slippery slope.  You have a situation where everyone's armed, you're going to have innocent people being harmed; it's inevitable.  This is not tenable, let's figure something out".

Then you have 3D printing of guns and you have gun proliferation; you're SOL.  There's nothing you can do at this point.  So, the best argument for gun laws isn't gun freedoms; it's gun proliferation, because once there's enough of them out there, the conversation becomes moot.  So, that's where my money is.

Peter McCormack: That's the point where, if I was moving to Austin, it's certainly something I would consider.  I'd like to think I could live without it, but I kind of feel it's one of those things I would have to consider.

Michael Malice: You'd be happy having it, and I'm not a gun owner; you'd be happy having it in a safe, under your bed, under lock so your kids can't get at it just in case.

Peter McCormack: All right, let's talk about the move to Austin and what's happened here.  I've been to New York 20, 25 times, but it's the first time I've been back in 18 months.  It wasn't as bad as I expected.  I took my mask off at JFK and I haven't put it back on since.  A couple of strange looks, but no one's asked me to put a mask on.  I've been to Starbuck's, I've been shopping, but I have seen a lot of boarded up shops and bars, the Irish bars.  Every Irish bar I've seen is boarded up, which is disappointing to me.

Michael Malice: So, there's upsides, I guess!

Peter McCormack: Dude, I'm half-Irish.

Michael Malice: Shh, someone will hear you!

Peter McCormack: Yes, okay.  I always look to the local Irish bar, but I haven't lived through what's happened here, but a lot of people I know, they're leaving; they're going to Miami, they're going to Austin.  What did I miss?

Michael Malice: I've been here all my life; I moved here when I was two.  What they've done to this city, I will never forgive them.  It's as if they took my kid and are beating him in front of me.  You're coming here as a tourist, right.  There are so many cool, little restaurants and stores and boutiques and ice-cream shops and book stores, and they're all gone.

I like to travel, it's something I enjoy, and when you get to a certain point, having the kind of job we do, it's really great that we have that liberty to travel and see the world.  And actually, you come here, now you're doing work, so it's win/win.  One of the things I do is, it's hard to explore a new city, because you don't want to do the touristy stuff; you're going to miss the cool things.  What my trick is, I always go to the weird ice-cream store in whatever town, because you know that's going to be in the cool neighbourhood and you get to try someone being an independent, creative artisan.

The best one happens to be in New York, Ice & Vice; it was on Lower East Side.  It's gone.  So, all these little -- we have seen a sustained attack on what is considered to be the backbone of any thriving economy, the small, independent businessman, the creator, the guy who put up a shingle and is doing something different.  They were the first ones to be destroyed by these lockdowns.  Amazon, Target, Walmart, all the giant conglomerates, they're doing fine.  It's the little guy who did not have the capital in the bank to last for a year.

The quintessential American story is, someone comes from overseas, they open up a fruit stand or a laundromat, and the kids work there as well.  But now, their children are having a far better future than the one they would have had back in the Motherland.  Those have been all destroyed and there's no hand-wringing; there's no, "Oh my gosh, we had to do this, but look at what cost; this is terrible", and it's going to continue until these politicians start having to face personal consequences for what they've done.

It's very, very hard for me, as someone who is a passionate New Yorker, who loves this city, who I was the guy when people were like, "Oh, it's so dirty, it's so hard here, the apartments are small", "Oh you don't get it, you're just weak" and it's like, I'm out; I can't do it anymore; I can't defend what has been done to this city.  The priorities are completely misguided, so there's no mechanism by which things are going to get better, at least for the next four years.  So, I'm out of here, I'm looking for real estate in Austin right now.  Thankfully, the book's doing well!

Peter McCormack: Good, we'll talk about that.  But what do you think they should have done?  What did they get so wrong?  Because, look, every state had a response, even the red states had a response to begin with.

Michael Malice: Sure.  I think all the responses were overblown.  I think it would have been much better as the guy who emailed Fauci; I forget the guy's name, who just recently was released; where if the focus was on the people who were the high-risk targets, which was the elderly and the morbidly obese and people who have lung issues as a whole.  I think they basically have just given up, because the will isn't there anymore.  I think the level of brutality we have seen, especially I think it's in Belgium and in Canada towards peaceful populations is unconscionable and is showing the nature of the state for what it is.  I don't think there is a good answer. 

People are like, "Oh, under anarchism what happens?"  There's no good answer.  If there's a pandemic, there's no country you could point to; some did better than others for sure, and we can follow their lead.  But no one is like, "All right, we emerged unscathed".  So, if you look at the charts in different states, the ones that had the mass mandates and the ones who didn't, they were remarkably similar.

So, I think in a year or two when we look back, people are going to realise they really overreacted; but they also overreacted because that's where all the incentives were.  Because, if I'm a politician and people are dying, the blame's on me.  But if I close down all these stores, it's like, "Well, what else am I going to do, otherwise they'll be dead".  Governor Cuomo had said the same thing effectively during a press conference for all this.

Peter McCormack: Like, "Failing businesses are easier to digest than deaths"?

Michael Malice: Correct.

Peter McCormack: But you look at who has done well, for example Australia would be considered has done fairly well.  My engineer's based down in Australia.  He can't leave the country.

Michael Malice: They couldn't walk their dogs!

Peter McCormack: Well, that as well.  And a couple of cases, they will shut down a whole city for 3 days.  But he literally cannot leave the country, because we had the Conference in Miami and I was like, "Come on, you've got to come out"; just, he's not allowed to leave the country.

Michael Malice: For two years now, my buddy, Chris Williamson, who's a British podcaster, we were going to go to Russia, which I left when I was a kid, and film it; and that hasn't happened.  So, it's going to be, it looks like, next year, so it's very unfortunate.

Peter McCormack: But I do still, this is where you're going to see I've still got some of my old ways in me, I did spend time talking to doctors, people working on the front line.  I've got a friend who's a doctor in London.  He was on the front line when it first exploded.  There was a serious high number of people coming in and getting sick and to begin with, when it first happened, I understood the urgent response; I understood why our government and other governments made strong decisions to block people down; and in some ways, I did agree with it to begin with.

But more recently that I've come to the understanding that they understand how to treat people better in hospital, that it no longer makes any more sense.  But, I kind of understood it at the start.

Michael Malice: But if it worked, the Prime Minister wouldn't have been in the hospital.

Peter McCormack: Well, you see, that was at the very start when he was walking around hospitals shaking people's hands, it was like, "What are you doing?"

Michael Malice: Sure, but the point being, if everything worked, then you wouldn't be seeing that as a consequence.

Peter McCormack: Well, the point I'm trying to get to is that, if you followed the stats to lockdowns, they kind of worked.  For me, it's like, "But is that the right moral choice?"  So, in an anarchist society, it feels to me like there's just an acceptance that this is going to be a wave that comes through the population and we just accept it.

Michael Malice: Well, not necessarily.

Peter McCormack: Well, coordinate in a certain way.

Michael Malice: In an anarchist society, it would be very easy for every store to say, "You can't go in here without a mask" and every store would have their own choices.  It could be, "No elderly people allowed in this store; no obese people allowed in this store", or if I have a grandma at home, I'm going to only have no-contact deliveries.  I mean, every place would have its own mechanism.

Now, as a consequence of this, it might not be ideal in terms of the spread; but again, we're dealing with a disease that has a 99% survival rate.  There's no mechanism where some people aren't going to be dying and I really question the premise that these lockdowns, which were done haphazardly and all over the place, when you're dealing with something that's global, it's kind of like a dam; the water's going to find that hole.

So, when you're dealing with some kind of worldwide thing, where we have flights and people are crossing borders all the time, there does not seem to have been any kind of ideal situation, especially these masks; because, the argument is like, "If you don't wear the mask, you want to kill grandma"; we're not wearing the masks that are effective against the virus, number one; and number two, it's like a condom with two holes in it.  This is a virus and it's not skin-tight.  And the question, "Well, something is better than nothing", but that something, it has a cost?

Peter McCormack: Well, the funny thing on the masks, that got me to the point where I was like, "This is just ridiculous", is flying out, I flew from Germany; from Germany to Costa Rica; etc.  My flight to Costa Rica, I'm sat here, there's a lady sat next to me, and my mask has just slipped down my nose as it always does and they're like, "You need to pull that up over your nose".  I was like, "Fine".  What happened is, my flight to Germany, there was no service in the air; you just sit down for the whole flight.

They had a food and drink service, so I was allowed to take my mask off to eat and drink on the plane, so what I did is kept a glass of wine there the whole time --

Michael Malice: My friend did that, yeah.

Peter McCormack: -- and just slowly sipped it.  I was like, "This is pointless; it doesn't make any sense".

Michael Malice: But, even if that wasn't the case, if you have a mask and there are gaping holes and you're sitting next to someone, you're getting their diseases; there's no other situation.  Either way, if you go to minimallycompliantmasks.com, which I went to, it's just cheesecloth, so it gives the appearance that you're wearing a mask, but has no functionality whatsoever.

Peter McCormack: So, you're not opposed to mask-wearing at all, right?

Michael Malice: Oh, what do you mean opposed?

Peter McCormack: You're not opposed to the idea of wearing a mask; you're not one of these people who's just refusing to wear a mask?

Michael Malice: No, I'm wearing a mask just for cosmetic reasons.

Peter McCormack: Oh, really?

Michael Malice: Well, like I said, this is cheesecloth, it doesn't do anything; you can see me.

Peter McCormack: So, are you wearing a poorly performing mask as a protest?

Michael Malice: No, I'm wearing it because I want to breathe.

Peter McCormack: But you can breathe without the mask?

Michael Malice: But this way, I don't want to have the -- like my gym, you need to wear a mask to work out; okay.

Peter McCormack: Oh right, okay.  Yeah, okay, that's fine.  I mean, I've just got to the point where I'm just kind of done with it.

Michael Malice: Oh no, my new power move, which I like to do is, I'm on the subway in New York and I have the mask on my wrist, so they see that I have it, but I'm not wearing it.  But no one says anything.  And then that encourages other people to be like, "What am I doing?"

Peter McCormack: I think there's a kind of realisation --

Michael Malice: I don't have the symptoms.  First of all, there's something almost demonic about it, because as far as I know, because the science is all over the place on this stuff, there's no such thing as "asymptomatic spread".  So, I have had no symptoms; I'm not sick; I got tested when I was on Rogan and it came back negative.  So listen, at a certain point, you're going to have to take responsibility for your own health, just as with Aids; just assume whoever you're interacting with has it and take precautions, or take those risks and be responsible for them.

Peter McCormack: But you accept it and believe it's a thing, because in the Bitcoin world, we have a spectrum of --

Michael Malice: Spectrum's the right word, isn't it?  So, everyone's on the spectrum there.

Peter McCormack: -- people who do not believe even that this is real.

Michael Malice: That what's real; that COVID doesn't exist?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  There are even people who don't believe it's real.

Michael Malice: I believe COVID is real.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so I believe it's real, I believe it kills people; I believe, like you, it's people who are diabetic, or overweight, old, and then just the odd random person that's unexplainable, could be a 13-year-old kid.

Michael Malice: Sure, just like a 31-year-old kid could pneumonia and die, and it's a tragedy and it's horrible.

Peter McCormack: Of course.  But in terms of containing spreads, say, from country to country, what do you think about border controls in the time of COVID?

Michael Malice: I think it's like the Central American Indians; at a certain point, you can't keep those borders permanently, right?  So, what's going to end up happening, at some point, someone's going to cross that border.  We've all seen the movies.  From my understanding, it's literally impossible to have one country, even North Korea, which obviously I've done work there and been there, to seal a country so hermetically that no one is ever going to come in with COVID.  I don't see how that's possible.

Peter McCormack: So, we have to accept that the wave comes.

Michael Malice: I mean, isn't that basically what they did?  They're like, "We've got this German wave", or whatever, "The Turkish wave".

Peter McCormack: Well, we have the Indian variant in the UK now.  Okay, that's fair.  Back to here, because you said you feel like the politicians here need to face consequences; Cuomo, de Blasio.

Michael Malice: Not just here; everywhere.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but is it de Blasio?

Michael Malice: De Blasio, the Mayor, yeah.

Peter McCormack: What consequences do you feel they should face?

Michael Malice: Well, I mean, I can't be answering that question really!  But, they're pretty bad.  What consequences do you think people who kill the elderly to further their career should face?  That's my answer.

Peter McCormack: I think that's a very direct accusation that they killed the elderly.  How do you explain how they killed the elderly?

Michael Malice: Okay, what consequences do you think people who send children overseas to slaughter or be slaughtered should face?

Peter McCormack: Who…?

Michael Malice: Who send young men and women in the military overseas, where they're safe here, put them into harm's way, to kill or to be killed; what consequences should they face?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and again it depends on the scenario. 

Michael Malice: No.

Peter McCormack: Well, in World War II when we send young men to fight to support the British in defeating the Germans and taking back France, I believe that was a noble goal and I believe it was the right thing to do, despite you said that you can't comprehend the numbers of people who died.  I've been watching that World War II in Colour, and I just cannot get my head around it.  I believe that was a necessary and just war.

Michael Malice: What about World War I?

Peter McCormack: I don't know enough about World War I; that's the problem.  You can tell me.  Teach me about it and I can give you an answer, but I don't know.  All I know is enough for World War II to know that the defeat of the Nazis was something that should have happened.  And there are very few wars that I understand in detail.  When Vietnam, was it Vietnam, they entered into Cambodia to defeat Pol Pot; for me, that was a necessary war.

Michael Malice: I don't think that was to defeat Pol Pot.  I mean, they were bombing the Vietnamese from Cambodia, and they were basically crossing the border illegally, was the situation.

Peter McCormack: Okay, you'll probably know better than be.  But what I'm saying is, there are certain scenarios where a war does feel just.  If you're saying in terms of the Iraq War, I mean I think every one of those people should stand trial.  We've got the guy who's appealing right now from the Balkans War, I forget his name, who's up in the Hague for War Crimes, what happened during those things in Srebrenica; and I think there is more of a reason for Tony Blair to be facing the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague; I think George Bush.  I even think, sadly, Colin Powell.

Michael Malice: This is wonderful; I mean, you're nine-tenths of the way there.

Peter McCormack: But I've been very clear, even before Bitcoin, that I believe Tony Blair is a lying war criminal and somebody opened my eyes recently.  Do you know a guy called Alex Gladstein?

Michael Malice: No, I don't think so.

Peter McCormack: I'll talk to you about him afterwards.  I think you'd love to have him on your show.  He's a bitcoiner, but he works for the Human Rights Foundation.

Michael Malice: Oh, wonderful.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, wonderful human being.  But he was explaining to me recently, because I never understood what the Iraq War was about, and he said it happened not long after Saddam Hussein started selling oil for euros to protect the petrodollar; that's essentially that war.  Now, if people are lying and sending people to war to defend the status of the petrodollar, you're just criminals to me and you should stand trial and you should be tried as a war criminal.  But as an anarchist, do you believe you should have The Hague trying people?

Michael Malice: I'll take what I can get.

Peter McCormack: You'll take what you can get?

Michael Malice: Yeah.  That's one of those compromises I'm happy with.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, within the confines of --

Michael Malice: I don't know about The Hague, but yeah.

Peter McCormack: Well, they should face trial somewhere and they should face time in prison, maybe worse.

Michael Malice: That would be my compromise, yes.

Peter McCormack: That would be your compromise.  Are there just wars?

Michael Malice: Sure.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Michael Malice: I don't think Iraq was even close to a just war.

Peter McCormack: No, I absolutely agree.

Michael Malice: And again, we spoke earlier about what can the state do well; I mean, not only was the Iraq War a disaster, the consequences were completely disastrous, and it set a very bad precedent.  What people tend to forget, you and I are a little older, is that George Bush was inaugurated January 2001, 9/11 was obviously September, so there's nine months there.  They were talking beforehand brazenly about, "Are we going to go and finish the job that George W Bush, his father, started.  So, there was just not even a pretence that, "You know, maybe it's not a good idea for the largest military on earth to be throwing their weight around and just invading countries whenever they feel like it, just because the guy at the top is a dictator".

Now, you can make that argument very easily.  I mean, I do not think Saddam Hussein has some kind of right to life, that he should be respected, that he should be revered, that he should be treated -- you know, someone took him out; it's reason to applaud just that specific thing.  But there's a bigger issue, which I think people would be concerned about, is when you have this kind of "military might makes right" situation; you have to ask yourself, "Are we the bad guys?" because historically speaking, if you read comic books even, the bad guy's the one who wants to conquer the world. 

When you have this kind of Pax Americana that every country on Earth has to basically be some kind of liberal democracy, the American model that is, just because we're the good guys, just ask us, we're the good guys, that is really kind of disturbing.

Peter McCormack: So, you're not the good guys?

Michael Malice: The government?  No.  The government's never the good guys.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, in any scenario?

Michael Malice: Well, they can be the better guys?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, because I'm wondering right now; we saw the news yesterday with El Salvador.  I mean, they've made Bitcoin legal tender.  As an economic agent, you legally have to now accept Bitcoin.

Michael Malice: That's wonderful.

Peter McCormack: It's incredible, amazing.  What is the response from the US State going to be to this, I wonder?  Will they ban remittance now?

Michael Malice: That's a very good question and I'm frankly surprised -- I was on a panel show with the guy, I'm blanking on his name, and he had been Obama's Chief Economic Advisor, and he's very high up in the Democratic Party, which is obviously the centre left party here in the States, and he could not be more for Bitcoin. 

I'm sitting there thinking, "You know this was designed to completely destroy your schemes, right?" and I didn't say this, of course, but I was delighted to have so many people who are statists, maybe not cucks, I don't know; I'm not calling you a cuck, I don't think he's a cuck; but who are absolutely unmitigated statists; he's standing in the Oval Office advocating for increasing economic control by the state.  For someone like that to be pushing Bitcoin, I just think it's absolutely wonderful, because I think's it's just going to be complete poison to them.

Peter McCormack: Well, we have Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming; she is pro-Bitcoin.  We have Congressman Warren Davidson in Ohio; he's pro-Bitcoin.  Mayor Francis in Miami?

Michael Malice: Oh, yeah.  These are all on the right side of the Republican Party, is my understanding, right.  So, we're talking about someone who is really part of this progressive, in the sense of having this elite, basically Fabian Society guide their country.  For him to see the merits of Bitcoin, which are undeniable, but I don't think he appreciated the danger it would be to their control.

Peter McCormack: There are very few people on the left who are big fans of Bitcoin.  It's definitely a libertarian, or right to centre right, something that people from those ends of the political spectrum seem to be a fan of.  And I guess what it is, it doesn't fit within the constructs of a social safety net.

Michael Malice: Or centralised control, more importantly; that's the issue.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, centralised control.  But there is centralised control even on the right?

Michael Malice: Oh, of course, but those are the statist cucks on the right!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I guess so!  I've deviated.  I want to come back to the Bitcoin, because I want to finish on that with you, but one thing I didn't really probably get to with you is this idea of how 360 million do coordinate in an anarchist society.  I'm not going to use the word "utopian"; I saw Lex mention that.

Michael Malice: How does eBay work?

Peter McCormack: Well, eBay is a marketplace, an online digital marketplace; but it has rules.

Michael Malice: Set by eBay, right?  So, that's the one example of -- I'm sure the user base may be something like 300 million, I'm sure it's an extreme number; I'm here in New York, you're in the UK, I buy something from you.  You just screw me over or it gets lost overseas.  eBay has an arbitration system that resolves within a day.  And the possibility of state action between us is zero.  I can't really sue you if you're in Britain and I'm in America, in terms of getting my shirt back; the cost for that would be prohibitive.

This is the other big lie about government is the claim that, "Well, we have to have government, because otherwise the poorest of the poor are screwed".  The poorest of the poor have no access to government as a mediation device.  To be a lawyer is more expensive than buying a surgeon.  They are the first ones who are going to be priced out and the powerful people will always have better access to lawyers.  There's a great essay here by John Hasnas, who's a College Professor at Georgetown Law.  The law will always be interpreted in favour of ideology, and that ideology will inevitably favour the powerful in order to sustain itself.

So, if you have something like eBay, you do have much more of a sense of equality, because here are the facts.  I'm the buyer, I paid him; here's Peter's facts, here's the bill of sale; eBay resolves it.  Even if I don't get the result I want, which would be the case in a court system, at the very least I'm saving myself time and money.  So, right away, you have an enormous advantage.

Now, in terms of scaling to 350 million, it doesn't have to.  Give us Bermuda, you guys do whatever the heck you want, or the Isle of Wight; do whatever you want in the rest of the world, let us be free.  So, even if you're claiming that an anarchist society wouldn't scale, there are plenty of tiny countries on Earth right now and they're thriving.

Peter McCormack: Tiny countries, but they're not anarchists; they still have a democracy.

Michael Malice: Correct.  But my point is if your argument is, this won't work unless it's 350 million people, I don't care.  Let's let 10,000 have whatever they want.  It's not a numbers' game.  And there's many of these small countries that don't have militaries.

Peter McCormack: Why do you stay in the US then, just out of interest?  Are you still a proud American, or are you just, "Forget nationalism"?

Michael Malice: I'm a very, very proud American.  I love this country.  I hate the government because I love this country.  With anything, like when you're buying a car, when you're buying a house, when you're choosing a girlfriend or you're buying a book, there are many, many factors to factor into.  Now, liberty for me is an extremely high factor, but so are things like culture, so are things like my family, my friends and you have to weigh all these factors; every individual does.

What anarchism does is it gives you the maximum amount of those choices and lowers costs to the absolute minimum.

Peter McCormack: So, how do you get there then; what are the steps you can take?  One of the things I imagine is, certainly in our lifetime, we won't see the US as an anarchist society; perhaps, maybe we'll hyperbitcoinise.

Michael Malice: Sure, I don't think so.

Peter McCormack: But for you personally, is it just about teaching people about anarchism, or do you accept that we have the state, there's a pull and pull left and right, and perhaps if there's a growth in anarchism, that also pulls the society into a better direction?

Michael Malice: Yes.  But I also think that, as I said earlier, anarchism is a relationship and anarchism is the norm, number one; number two is, I think we are far faster than I could have ever dreamed.  The success of this book was indicative of this.  It was the top non-fiction book on Amazon for an entire day, number three on all of Amazon behind Dr Seuss and a novel whose name I don't remember.

Peter McCormack: I thought Dr Seuss was banned?

Michael Malice: Well, some of them were, right?

Peter McCormack: Yeah!

Michael Malice: The fact that there was this huge audience for my work, and the work of the people whose essays are in this book, completely threw me off-guard.  I didn't have a big launch, I didn't have a roll-out and it's selling ridiculously highly well.  I think what we're seeing is, you're seeing it in European Parliaments, like the Swedish Government has 9 parties; Czech has 12; now the Greens are picking up speed in the UK; in Germany, the two major parties aren't able between them to get 50%, with countries like the US and UK, to have the two parties who are the top between them not get 50% makes no sense to us, because it's going to be 95%, right, and you're going to have the Lib Dems maybe get their 5%, but it's going to be 95% Tory or Labour.

So, to have this increase; if you go to a supermarket in the 1980s, comedians used to joke about, "Oh, you have caffeine-free Diet Pepsi now?  Ha-ha!"  We have infinite choices in every other endeavour, but in politics it's supposed to be reduced to a binary.  Look, if my choice is Coke or Pepsi, maybe I want water.  So, I think there is an increasing understanding that the state is inherently illegitimate; there's an increasing understanding that many of our neighbours do not think like we do and never will think like we do; and any system that is predicated on getting a large part of our neighbours to think like we do is a Sisyphean affair that's doomed to failure, and people are looking for alternatives.

What anarchism is -- having citizenship by geography, I always say, is landline technology in a post-smartphone world.  If I'm trying to call you, I'm trying to call Peter; I don't call your house in the UK, because you're travelling a lot.  There's no reason your security, your person, can't be a function of that as well, as opposed to which two oceans you happen to be between.

Peter McCormack: Well, I think there are probably many people like me who are slowly, more recently, coming to realise we've been lied to a lot.

Michael Malice: Yes.

Peter McCormack: I think the pandemic, actually, has done a lot for the anarchist movement.  I've got friends at home who previously, by the way, and I've been talking about Bitcoin to them for years; they don't give a shit.  They're like, "Shut up, Pete, about this Bitcoin thing!"  But more recently, it's not that they're asking me about Bitcoin; we've got a friend who's organising a birthday and she was sending texts round and she was saying, "We're going to this one and we have to wear a mask to walk in the entrance".  And then she messaged me privately and she was like, "I don't fucking get it anymore; nothing makes sense anymore".

Michael Malice: What about the restaurants where you wear a mask to walk in and then when you sit down, you take the mask off; because obviously, only standing can you spit COVID?

Peter McCormack: Of course.  But the point being, this is somebody who historically would not have considered maybe a book like yours; but she's peeling back the layers and goes, "This is all fucking nonsense".  And I think there's a lot of people realising this; I think a lot of people are starting to realise; this pandemic, we've just been lied to so much.  Things don't make sense.

Michael Malice: And it's also empowered urban, educated, leftist elites to feel that their constant state of anxiety and depression, or whatever it is, has an external source.  And it has also allowed low-status people to have positions with certain dominance over others, because now you have an excuse to go up to that person and get in their face and enforce the rules like a masterclass.

Peter McCormack: "Put your mask on".

Michael Malice: Yes.  "Now I have a way to assert dominance over someone else, whereas previously I was completely powerless".

Peter McCormack: What is that about though; why are people like that?

Michael Malice: It's just evolutionary psychology, I think, don't you think?

Peter McCormack: But, doesn't it worry you?  Look, who was I talking to?  There's a libertarian guy I talked to, I've forgotten his name.  Scott Horton.  I had a great chat with Scott Horton and we talked about the big, red button; if you had the big, red button.  He said, "No, that would be a terrible idea; everything would be in a mess".

Michael Malice: What's… ?

Peter McCormack: The big, red button.  You can turn off the state immediately; suddenly there's no government.

Michael Malice: He's against it?

Peter McCormack: Yes, because he says that's chaos.  He said, what you need to do is wean yourself off the state in some way.

Michael Malice: Oh, Jesus!

Peter McCormack: Don't hold me to this, I want to check it, but I'm almost certain he said the big, red button would be problematic.  My question more to you is, is this not just a natural way that humans organise?  So, imagine we have the big, red button.  Tomorrow there's no government, we all have to arrange ourselves; do we suddenly just repeat the same mistakes, because of who we are as humans?  Maybe you're an outcast who would want to coordinate and have a free way, but there are people like, "I just want someone else to organise this".

So, we create groups and we create governance and then suddenly, we have the guys with the money and the guns and we end up recreating what we have now.

Michael Malice: So that is, and I'm not trying to use a sort of pejorative sense --

Peter McCormack: No, that's fine if you are.

Michael Malice: -- but that is a fairy tale, because that is how governments claim that they came into being.  But the first essay on this is by William Godwin, I believe his name is; William Godwin, from 1793.  And he goes after Rousseau with this idea of the social contract.  No government has ever so much as even pretended that this is how it created.  All governments are a function of conquest or domination, number one.  Number two is, I strongly disagree, and I think if you think about this you'd agree with me, and this is some mistake people get about anarchism; just because there's some semblance of organisation that therefore it's a government.  It's completely not true.

If I go into Macy's, the department; Harrods, to use your vernacular, and you can only buy -- if you want to buy redcurrants, it's one per customer; males aren't allowed into the women's clothing section, for whatever reason; maybe you have to have a membership card to walk in, they're just setting up a new programme; none of that is government.  These are all systems' organisation.  So, while I agree with you completely that human beings, when we get together, we do organise, this was an organisation right here; that no way implies that this organisation has to be involuntary or has to be imposed by a government.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Michael Malice: But I agree.  None of this is hypothetical.  If you go online, people can find this in two seconds.  There's a video of, there was some place, I forget where it was, I think it was Barcelona, where the traffic lights broke.  It wasn't car accidents.  They very quickly had a system where it's like, one, two, three, four and everyone takes turns, because people, by their nature, prefer to cooperate, not because they're generally kind, but because conflict and violence is very, very expensive.

If you have a knife fight, you're getting stabbed, even if you win.

Peter McCormack: Yes.  So, why does the state exist then?  Is it just certain people, psychopaths are drawn into this role where they want to control people; is it greed?

Michael Malice: Yes, it gives them power, it gives them status.  Think about it; in America, you're spending $1 billion to get a $200,000-a-year job for presidency.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I find the US very different from the UK.  I think one of the big differences is the lobbying system and how much it appears that politicians can monetise their role whilst in power.  In the UK, they tend to monetise it afterwards.

Michael Malice: Sure, that's your opposite, with having literally zero dollars in the bank.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  Tony Blair gets X amount for his speeches, whilst he should be in jail.  But I do also believe there are good politicians who do want to do a good job, who really do support their constituents; it isn't just about power.

Michael Malice: Oh, I agree with you.  A great example of this is the church, the Catholic Church.  So, for centuries, the church had the military and they had the crusades, and they were in a position to basically impose the catholic world view onto the countries where they had dominion.  Then you had things like the antipopes in France where French people said, "This is the Pope", and Rome said, "This is the Pope. 

Now, the Vatican doesn't have an army, or certainly a small one; it's a tiny country contained entirely within Italy; you look at the Pope, with John Paul and the current one, Francis, as a man of peace.  You look at him as a moral exemplar.  I'm not catholic; you can listen to him.  Maybe people don't like him because he's left of centre, whatever.  But it never enters your head, even for a catholic person, many catholic people are, "You know, I'm pro-choice.  I'm a strong catholic, I believe in the Pope [or] I take umbrage with him on this issue", etc. 

So, there's no reason why, in a free society, you wouldn't have people who are community organisers, who are pointing out -- these are busybodies at their best, when they're like, "Hey, this disease has got no attention and these kids are suffering, because there's not that many of them to make enough of a fuss.  I'm going to be the one who's going to get the bullhorn".  Or, "Look what's going on with this river.  Let's all get together and figure out a way to make sure there's no pollution". 

So, there's absolutely a mechanism for people who want to make the world a better place and who, in some ways, are drawn to politics because they have certain talents and are not at all nefarious, but there's no reason for them to be having the mechanism of the state.  And they certainly have a role in a free society, as I just described.

Peter McCormack: So, how do we end the state, how do we do it; how does it happen?

Michael Malice: Well, as Hemingway said, "Gradually, then suddenly". 

Peter McCormack: Gradually, then suddenly; that's a term we use in Bitcoin!

Michael Malice: Yeah, of course.

Peter McCormack: Parker Lewis.  I actually released a show today with a guy called Parker Lewis, and it's from his Gradually, Then Suddenly series.

Michael Malice: Is that his real name?

Peter McCormack: Parker Lewis?

Michael Malice: Because, there was a show in the 1990s, which I was a huge fan of, called Parker Lewis Can't Lose.  It's a rip-off of Ferris Bueller, and Corin Nemec followed me, the actor, on Twitter and it completely blew mind and I was so giddy.

Peter McCormack: Dude, he's another smart -- we've got a lot of smart people in Bitcoin.

Michael Malice: Oh, I know it and I'm very familiar with the space.  So, one of the big things that Trump did very well and that Boris Johnson does well as well, is to encourage people to realise that those people, who are ostensibly our leaders, are often clowns and are deserving of derision, at best.  This certainly applies to both sides of the aisle, or in many sides of the aisle in multiparty parliamentary systems.

So that, I think, once people wake up and they're like, "Wait a minute; why am I bending a knee to these really horrible, mediocre people, who are self-serving?" and you can't blame them.  More power to them, in a sense; what do you expect them to do?  And I think it's just going to be that and also, things where mechanisms are put in place where enforcement becomes impossible, and this cynicism towards law, will be of great use.

Here's an example in the States.  In, I think it was 1990, it was quite a while ago, Colorado decided to have medical marijuana.  Now, it was legal on a state level.  They had, I believe, a referendum; people voted for it.  It was still grossly, completely illegal on a federal level.  So, you have state law and federal law.  They went for it anyway.  There were raids from the Federal Government, this was just system defiance, and at a certain point, you have enough states who have to either decriminalised marijuana, or legalised it entirely.  It's still illegal.  The Federal Government at any moment can go in and shut any of these down; they're blatantly in defiance of federal law.

The point is, at a certain point, the costs of enforcement outweigh the benefits.  The same thing happened with prohibition; same thing with other things.  So, one way to end the power of the state is (a) to decrease its power in terms of legitimacy and respect; but also, (b) increase the costs of imposing its world view.

Peter McCormack: It would almost be helpful if we had a form of money that the government didn't control, that was completely decentralised!

Michael Malice: Or several forms of money?

Peter McCormack: Hm, tricky area.

Michael Malice: Okay, yeah, well that's what freedom's all about.

Peter McCormack: Do you know what; as an anarchist, when Bitcoin came along, that must have been one of the pieces of the puzzle that's missing, because it's very hard to trade with gold and you have to have a form of money; you don't want state money.  What was the solution before Bitcoin?

Michael Malice: There wasn't.  I mean, one way that's going to solve the -- here's two things.  The other good thing about Bitcoin is, it's allowing the right people to get very, very wealthy very, very quietly, and that is a really important thing, number one.  Number two is -- I forgot my train of thought!

Peter McCormack: Well, it tends to attract the weirdos and the outsiders and the outcasts in some way or another.  We've all just been together in Miami having a great time, but everyone seems to have some kind of screwed-up story in the past.  You were talking about maybe many monies and I said that was a tricky subject.  What I was saying is --

Michael Malice: Oh, yeah, so I was telling you; I've remembered my train of thought.  Censorship, right?  I used this example in my previous book, The New Right.  Let's suppose it's 20 years ago.  You and I are having an argument over censorship and you say, "Freedom of speech; you can't ban any book", etc.  And I'm like, "Hold on a minute, what about books like Mein Kampf; what about books that are filled with lies that cause violence in our cultures; what about things like child pornography?" and we can argue back and forth all we want.

Parker Lewis appears magically from 2021 and says, "Hold on, fellas, this argument is moot.  Where I come from, you can duplicate any book infinitely and send it anywhere on earth at the speed of light, and you can also make it so that only someone who knows the magic word can even read the book".  "Oh, okay, Mr Parker Lewis, how much does this cost?"  "Oh, it's free".  We would think he's a lunatic, or this is going to be 1,000 years in the future; but, that's the status quo; that is currently the reality.

So, things like Bitcoin, things like the ability of humans to move quickly, it's really easy.  The problem the state has is, whatever freedom we have with our money or with our books, we can still be locked in jail.  If there was a way, I don't know how this would entail, this would be a technological thing, where that was not a possibility, they're really SOL.  So, I'm all in when it comes to technology being what liberates us.

Peter McCormack: But prior to Bitcoin, what was the anarchists' view on what would be money?

Michael Malice: It was the gold standard and ending the Fed.

Peter McCormack: It was the gold standard?

Michael Malice: Yes, but this has been discussed for a long time. 

Peter McCormack: But gold isn't really a great medium of exchange for a number of reasons, which we know as bitcoiners, which is why we think it's better than gold.

Michael Malice: Correct, but gold is certainly better than the Fed and having fiat currency.

Peter McCormack: Of course.  Are you now in the boat of, "Bitcoin is the best form of money ever; period"? 

Michael Malice: I would say crypto, sure.  I don't know enough about the -- I really don't want to hear it from the audience; I don't know enough about the difference --

Peter McCormack: Do not give him shit!

Michael Malice: They can, I mean I'm pretty block heavy.  I don't know enough about the different shitcoins and Ethereum and so on and so forth; but, yes, I am absolutely a crypto person.

Peter McCormack: I mean, I'm not the smartest bitcoiner; that is known.  My understanding I have come to between Bitcoin and shitcoins is the one thing that Bitcoin has focussed so heavily on, so heavily on, is decentralisation.  We fought a civil war over it.  We keep the block size very small so, whether you're here in New York, or whether you are in El Salvador, living in El Zonte, or you're in Nigeria, or you're in China, you can spin up a laptop, you can download the entire blockchain and you can verify every transaction.

Bitcoin has done that brilliantly and that's what gives us censorship resistance, and that's what helps us maintain it trustless.  It's just that's what it's focussed on.  Whereas, something like Ethereum, it's been created for dapps and smart contracts.  I think the whole Bitcoin blockchain is something like 350 gigabytes.

Michael Malice: That's it?

Peter McCormack: Something like that.  I mean, you can literally download it to your laptop.  Whereas, Ethereum is something like 4 terrabytes.

Michael Malice: But, Peter, how are you going to coordinate a system of 350 million bitcoiners without a state?

Peter McCormack: Well, you have a form of money, so we can coordinate ourselves.

Michael Malice: Right, yeah.

Peter McCormack: So, I'm surprised you haven't gone more down the Bitcoin rabbit hole actually; it feels very aligned to what you're doing.

Michael Malice: Other than pro-life people, I haven't found any population that are more off-putting in terms of being bad at promoting their world view than the Bitcoin people.

Peter McCormack: You think so?!

Michael Malice: Yes.

Peter McCormack: You see, this is what Lex felt; this is what Weinstein felt; this is what Elon is feeling right now; this seems to be a common view.  And it's funny; I sometimes go back and forth.

Michael Malice: I think it's a range, it's a complete range.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, another spectrum.  How do you think we're bad then; what do you think we get wrong?

Michael Malice: I think there's this -- I wouldn't say "we", because it's a big population.

Peter McCormack: Yeah; certain bitcoiners.  What's the bits that you're finding negative?

Michael Malice: Sure.  There is a certain type of bitcoiner who thinks it's just binary.  If you're claiming you're for freedom and you're not talking about Bitcoin as your primary mechanism of achieving that freedom, you're a phony or a liar.  And, there's also kind of this purity test where they're more than happy to dismiss someone.  It's like, "Well, you're not of use, because you're not orange-pilled".  So, cool, if I'm not of use to you, that is certainly your prerogative, and we can both live our free lives.  I hope you thrive, I hope you succeed and we just walk our separate ways.

Peter McCormack: The toxicity thing seems to be this barrier that people hit.  I think it's more of a problem if you've already got a profile. 

Michael Malice: Well, let me take a step back.  So, Dave Smith is trying to be the libertarian candidate for the present Libertarian Party.  He's a comedian and he asked me to be his Press Secretary.  I said, "I will only do it if I have financial security", meaning that if the corporate media comes after me and tries to ruin my life, that I still won't be homeless.  And the only money I'm taking is either Bitcoin or Ethereum.

So, my rate is going to be -- once I have 1 Bitcoin a month and it's going to be a public wallet, I'm going to hodl it until Election Day 2024.  Once that's taken care of, then I'll sign on.  So, I am putting my money where my mouth is.

Now, for a certain round of people, I'm still the enemy or a fellow traveller, or whatever term they want to use, and that's their prerogative; and I'm also a Velvet Road person.  So, I do appreciate that when you find something that really is magical and wonderful, that you want to be protective of it and you want to be its champion and you want to be, "Look, I found this truth, and everything else you're saying is like Plato's Cave.  You don't get it; this is really the way".  I get that mindset a lot.

I'm just saying that, if your strategy is to get me to be more aligned with you, you're not going about it the right way.  I don't mean you personally.

Peter McCormack: No, but actually, this is one of those steps, this conversation was one of those steps.  It's for me to learn a bit about you and for my audience to learn a little bit more about you and find -- because sometimes, you see, I could make the same point about some anarchists.  They don't approach it in the right way for me.

Michael Malice: Yeah, "I'm better than all of you".

Peter McCormack: Yeah, you're great.  I'm asking probably very amateur questions that you're used to, I'm just figuring out my own journey with this.  But some anarchists for me are very toxic with it like, "Fuck you", like I told you, "Fuck you, you're a statist, get the fuck out of here".  There's a group who call me a spook; they think I'm a government spook, and that's quite aggressive there as well.  So, I could make the same point back at some anarchists, but maybe they're just Bitcoin anarchists!

Michael Malice: No, but you're not wrong.  I'm not here to -- people can't wrap their heads around this; I'm not here primarily to promote anarchism; I'm not here to promote anything.  I am interested, if I could spread anything, it's happiness and joy and I believe, very fervently, that anarchism maximises the possibility for people to be able to achieve happiness and joy in their lives, but it's secondary to that goal.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's funny, because I see Bitcoin as maximising the opportunity to achieve freedom.  I mean, we're seeing a country --

Michael Malice: But, it's a means to an end.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  And it's a chance to defund the state, reduce tax payments, it's essentially freeing right now.  We're seeing in live, in real time, a country free itself from the US dollar.

Michael Malice: The advantages are so overwhelming in so many different ways that I don't think -- it's an easy sell.  So, I mean in terms of persuasion, I'm a little good at it, because I probably spread anarchism more than anyone else on earth.  When people are bad at persuasion, it's very useful to come in, very aggressive and antagonistic; then, when you don't persuade the person, it's like, "Oh, it's their fault".  It's not; sometimes it's your fault.  If that is your goal, it's to persuade people.  My goal is not necessarily to persuade people, because I'm not a democracy person.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, that's a fair point and you are persuasive.  Today, I'm -- I don't even know how to put it.  I think I'm at that final stage of fully shedding --

Michael Malice: I think, once you read the book, a lot of things will fall into place.

Peter McCormack: It wasn't the book I expected, firstly.  I just expected a book of your writings.  So, I read the start and I was really into it, and then I was like, "Oh, okay".  So, I found myself picking and choosing and then skipping and skimming.  But actually, I think I need another book before that.  I think I need just like…  I ended up reading, was it Chomsky's book, On Anarchism?

Michael Malice: Manufacturing Consent?

Peter McCormack: No, there's another book.

Michael Malice: Okay, that's a tough one.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and again, I struggled with that.  I just need a book on anarchism, but that's somebody just explaining it to me.

Michael Malice: What about, Economics in One Lesson; have you read that?

Peter McCormack: I've read that, yeah.  That book's fantastic.  What else would you recommend, to the listeners as well?

Michael Malice: I don't know.  What I would recommend is how I learn any subject, is I would read The Anarchist Handbook, there's like 20 thinkers in here from all ranges of the Black Flag.  And if someone pique's your interest, read a whole book of theirs and follow your train of thought where it goes.

Peter McCormack: Okay, yeah.  I'm definitely at that point where I have questioned everything, I am rethinking everything, from my children's education, to money, to work, to my relationships with people.  I've even reflected on how, in the past, I think maybe I've enforced my own authority on people, my children even, in ways that I'm not proud of, like, "You need a job so you must do this; don't waste your schooling".  Now I'm like, my son wanted to be here and it was like, "No, you've got to do your schooling".

Michael Malice: What, here in New York?

Peter McCormack: No, just with me on this trip.  And I was like, "Why the fuck is he not with me?"

Michael Malice: Right?

Peter McCormack: What an education, sat here listening to this.

Michael Malice: Yeah, and I'll give you the parallel.  I think it's very healthy what's happening with you and I'm very excited to hear it.  I'll give you a similar example.

In 2004, I think it was, Harvey Pekar of American Splendor fame, a hit movie coming out, and Ted Hope was the Producer, sent out an email to his company that said, "Harvey's in town with nothing to do.  If you want to hang out with him, this is your chance".  No one took him up on it other than me, and Harvey ended up writing a book about me, which now goes for $500 on eBay, if you can believe it?

Peter McCormack: Wow.

Michael Malice: But the point is, people are so used to having their blinders and just going through the motions that they very rarely even stop, even if it was still the right decision for him to go to school, I think it's very healthy if you're like, "Wait, hold on, I'm on autopilot.  Is this really such a cost and what are the benefits here?"  And, when you start questioning…

Here's another great example.  I used to work, this is 20 years ago, I was tech support for Goldman Sachs, which is a very nefarious organisation.

Peter McCormack: That surprises me!

Michael Malice: Yeah.  It was what it was.  And, they couldn't understand, I'm using very specific and literally, my "teammates", that I would prefer to stay home than to work overtime, because (a) you're getting time-and-a-half, so it's not like you're volunteering, you're getting paid; and (b) the team needs you.  I don't care about Goldman; this place can burn to the ground.  If it does well, or it does not, I'm salaried so I don't care.  Number two is, my time, because I was trying to be an author back then, I would rather have that hour than to have that time-and-a-half money. 

It was like talking to a wall, because most people just basically take what the choices are as given and never even -- and this isn't just specifically an anarchist thing; never like, "Well, hold on a minute.  I'm supposed to send my kid to school, but if we go to New York, we go to some museums, maybe he sits and watches that, he maybe thinks dad's cooler than he is, because he's watching dad work his magic, what are really the costs here?"  And I think I would strongly encourage more people to think in those terms.

Peter McCormack: I definitely am.  I mean, I'm going to have to do some negotiations with the ex-wife, but I'm with you on the time thing as well.  I used to have, not a corporate job; I used to work in London in advertising, and long, stressful hours.  To get to that point where you have the freedom over your time, you can wake up every -- like, this being work is a blessing; I feel very fortunate to do this.

Michael Malice: I wake up at 11.00am every day, bed at 2.00am every day.

Peter McCormack: Well, I still get up at 6.00am or 7.00am, but I get to choose my day.  I mean, my commitment is to you today, but this is pleasure, this is fun, this is incredible.  I get to choose my time, and I think not enough people are lucky enough to have that, or pursue it maybe, because they pursue money or status.

Michael Malice: And, Peter, what is better than, "Hey, I remember 20 years ago, I went to New York with my dad and we got this little magnet!"  This is what life is about.

Peter McCormack: We chat every day.  Actually, I did get some dad points the other day, because I was at the Conference and Jake Paul was there and I got him to FaceTime my son and I was the coolest dad in the world for 24 hours!  But he would like this.  He's questioning everything himself.  He's like, "Why am I at school, dad?"

Michael Malice: Just like any relationship, Peter, your girlfriend, your friend, your nephew; the two of you for three days, like us against the world, that is the best memories ever.  That's quality time of the tenth degree.

Peter McCormack: It's funny you should say that.  I met this girl in Miami.  I haven't dated for ages and we got on really well.  God, she might not even like me saying this.  So, she was working in real estate and she was like, "I just love what you're doing here".  I was like, "Well, why don't you quit your job and come out here".  She quit her job today.

Michael Malice: Hell, yeah!

Peter McCormack: She literally quit her job today.  She is on a plane right now over here.  I'm going to get a load of shit online for this, but yeah, she's literally flying here now.  She's quit her job and I was like, "Just come and do this with me".

Michael Malice: Ayn Rand gets a bad rap, you mentioned earlier.

Peter McCormack: I've interviewed Yaron Brook, yeah.

Michael Malice: You've seen me and Lex with Yaron.  There's this moment, and I just hope everyone just, if you don't like Rand, just give me 30 seconds of your time, because you're going to like this quote.  She's on Donoghue and he goes, "You've liberated thousands of people with your books, where you tell them, 'If you want to do it, do it'" and the audience applauds and she goes, "Thank you and if I've helped them, I'm delighted".

I think we're born knowing that life is a magical adventure and it takes them years to train us to believe otherwise.  So, freedom, like that girl, it's like, this is the thing, this is what drove me crazy.  I was a business major, because I knew that would be the best credential in terms of getting a job, and when I first graduated school, I was temping, because I didn't know what I wanted to do.  I figured if I bounced around, at some point I'm going to get a high-paying job that I enjoy; there's going to be a low-paying job that you don't enjoy; you're going to get all over the bell curve.

Having this kind of sense of the Faustian bargain: you sell your soul and you become top author, or you have a mansion, you have this beautiful girlfriend, or whatever it is.  To sell your soul to make $50,000 a year at the same desk for 20 years; that's not the Faustian bargain.  I get why you'd want to sell your soul, but sell it so you could do this?  Sell it so that at the drop of a hat, you could take your family to Japan, because there's some concert your son or daughter wants to see?  That is what you sell your soul for.

But here's the beauty of it: you don't have to sell it; you can keep it.  You get to keep you soul and do all these things and especially when you're young, I'm so encouraging of young people who ask me this; even if you fail, when you're older you're going to look back and be delighted than you tried, as opposed to driving that desk and dying, in a very real sense, when you're 22.

Peter McCormack: Well, the funny thing is, it feels risky sometimes, quitting the job and --

Michael Malice: Oh, it's very risky.

Peter McCormack: But it's also very risky staying in it.

Michael Malice: Yes.  It's not risky, it's a certainty that you are going to be in a hamster wheel, and you're helping make other people rich.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and ten years are going to pass and you're not going to know what's happened.

Michael Malice: Right.  It's very different when you have a family, so I'll give them credit for that.  You have to make your sacrifices, "I don't have many options, I'm not educated, I've got to get a foot in the table"; I get it.  But if you have that space, do something with it.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean, look; I've got children.  And there's a lot of luck in my own personal situation, but I can at least say to my children, who don't have children thankfully, I can say to them, "You don't have to follow this hamster wheel".  I mean, I'm saying that, there's actually an art college here he wants to go to.

Michael Malice: Which one?

Peter McCormack: I've got it written down somewhere.  It's the one that Ai Weiwei went to and Tom Ford; I can't remember the name.  I'm going to go and see it tomorrow and just find out about it.

Michael Malice: Parsons?

Peter McCormack: Parsons, yeah.  He's interested and as he's an artist, I don't mind.

Michael Malice: Great school.

Peter McCormack: And therefore, he has to finish school to get into that and I'm cool with that.  If he was going to study something like I did, like he was going to study marketing, I would be like, "It's just not worth it, dude".  Because he's an artist, I think that's something worth considering and I think being out in New York would be great for him.

Michael Malice: Very stimulating.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  So, there are two things left that I haven't asked you about that I did want to ask you about.  Libertarians and anarchists; where do they differ?

Michael Malice: Six months.

Peter McCormack: Six months; that's the joke, isn't it?

Michael Malice: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  But the difference to me seems to be that libertarians seem to be more willing to engage in politics; not all, but some are willing to engage in politics.  Ron Paul is a great example, and at least you can try and attack it from the inside.  You talked about multiple parties like we have in the UK; you've got this binary system here.  Wouldn't it be great to have that third libertarian party?

Michael Malice: No.

Peter McCormack: No?  Okay, great.  But you must be a fan of Ron Paul?

Michael Malice: Of course, but Ron Paul ran as a libertarian; he also ran as a republican twice.  Where did he make the Ron Paul Movement?  It wasn't as a libertarian.

Peter McCormack: No, but it seems to me that libertarians are more willing to engage in politics and if you were you, you'd just look at them and go, "I'll see you in six months"?

Michael Malice: Well, I mean I'm very engaged in politics, so I don't believe in the validity of the electoral process, but I'm certainly someone who, basically his job is to be engaged in politics.

Peter McCormack: And, if you're willing to be Press Secretary for Dave Smith?

Michael Malice: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: So, you are willing to engage in the process of something that you think is illegitimate.  How does that compute for me?

Michael Malice: Well, I mean I don't have a choice.  I did jury duty and when I did jury duty, I told them -- I lied, because I said, "I won't vote to convict, I'm an anarchist", because I thought that would get me off, and they said, "Too bad".

Peter McCormack: You're obligated to do jury duty; you're not obligated to be a press secretary for Dave Smith, so it is slightly different.

Michael Malice: No, but I am obligated to be under the thumb of the Federal Government, right.  So, in that case, I am obligated to participate in politics.  My tax money's being taken from me; I'm being rendered defenceless in my own home; so, yeah, I don't have a choice about participating in politics, that's the issue.

Peter McCormack: I think you do though.  Sorry, I'm not sure on this one, because you could just abstain from involvement.

Michael Malice: I could not pay taxes?

Peter McCormack: No, you could pay your tax, because your other choice is to face jail potentially.

Michael Malice: Right, yeah.

Peter McCormack: But you won't face jail by not engaging in politics.

Michael Malice: Right, but in this case, I would get paid and it would be a lot of fun, because I would be unleashing a season of poison on the two major political parties.

Peter McCormack: Well, this is what I'm saying.  Is this what it is, that you can go in and you can cause some problems, you can be destructive?

Michael Malice: I would make Donald Trump look like Julie Andrews, because I have such contempt and hatred for the enemy class, that he would bring me on as a social media person, that I think people would be taken aback and I would revel in it.  I was one of the Soviet Unionists; this is where my Ivan Drago would come out!

Peter McCormack: Rocky IV, man!  That was the first Rocky I saw.

Michael Malice: Was it?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  Because of my age, I saw it before I saw the other ones.  I had such fond memories of it.  I watched it recently and I didn't realise how shit it is!

Michael Malice: Of course, yeah.

Peter McCormack: But the first two Rockys hold up.

Michael Malice: Okay.

Peter McCormack: I still think they're great films.  Okay, my final question: where do anarchists disagree with each other, because I know libertarians disagree; are there certain things that anarchists disagree on?

Michael Malice: This entire book, the slogan I have is, "The Black Flag comes in many colours".  So, they agree; they don't even agree on the definition of anarchism.

Peter McCormack: Brilliant!

Michael Malice: So, the left anarchists are from a European tradition, the original, the Bakunin people, the Proudhon people; they were against any semblance of hierarchy whatsoever.  The more recent, more American version, David Friedman, Murray Rothbart, is against the idea of the state, but they have no issue whatsoever with hierarchy per se.  That's one issue.

Another issue is what an anarchist society would look like.  I mean, again, these essays cover the entire spectrum.  So, when you essentially are opposed to something, anarchism is a negation.  What the positive alternative would look like, there's infinite choice.  It's like saying, "What do fashion people agree on?"  Well, they agree that you should have clothes, but that really doesn't tell you very much.  So, anarchism, what they agree on is that people should interact peaceably without domination imposed upon them by the state, but what that would look like, that's the beauty of having a free country.

Peter McCormack: Wow, okay.  Well, I'm definitely going to go back to the book.  I'm going to work my way through it, I'm going to give myself time, I'm not going to be afraid to -- I won't waste your time.  If I have any really important questions, I will reach out to you.

Michael Malice: Absolutely.

Peter McCormack: I've appreciated your patience today; it's been great to see you.  I'm probably, in six months to a year, going to ask you to come back, because I'll be in a completely different place.

Michael Malice: My pleasure, this is a lot of fun.  And bring your son.

Peter McCormack: I would love to bring my son; God, I would love that.  I'd love to have my daughter here, but she's a bit younger, so there's different things we can do.  But if I can do anything for you, if there are any people you want to talk to in the Bitcoin world, I'd hope you will go a little bit closer on it.  I think there's a couple of people I'd love for you to talk to, especially Alex Gladstein; I think you would have a great conversation with him; my friend, Robert Breedlove, who was on Lex's show, he's worth talking to, he's interesting.

Michael Malice: Oh, isn't he like a hunk?!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, he is --

Michael Malice: I don't like talking to the hunks!

Peter McCormack: Dude, this guy, he's like 6 foot 5, he's ripped, he's as smart as shit, he's the nicest guy and we were in Miami together and we were hanging out and then we met up at a party later, and he literally walks in, carrying his daughter with his Goddess wife; I mean, he's got everything, and he's incredible!

Michael Malice: Yeah, I don't like people like that!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, okay.  Who are the ugly ones?

Michael Malice: There's plenty.  I know them, don't worry!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but there's a lot of smart people.  But I'd love to introduce you to Alex Gladstein.  I think you and him would have a great conversation.  But, all right, tell people where to get the book.

Michael Malice: Anarchisthandbook.com; easy.

Peter McCormack: Okay, easy.  And you want people to get direct, they can buy it with Bitcoin?

Michael Malice: They can't.

Peter McCormack: They can't?

Michael Malice: They can't buy it with Bitcoin.  Oh, will they be able to buy the hard cover with Bitcoin?

Peter McCormack: Because I'm sure I saw it on your website, you can buy some of your books with Bitcoin?

Michael Malice: When I did, Dear Reader, which was my North Korean book, you could buy signed copies with Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: Right, okay.

Michael Malice: That was in 2014, so I was there before you.

Peter McCormack: Wow, you were early.  Did you hodl it?  Well, actually, I was there in 2013, but I was spending it buying cocaine on the Silk Road.

Michael Malice: I was at a party at some major, major personality's house; I'll tell you off air, because I love messing with the audience, and it was me and a Pulitzer winner and another prominent person.  I'm there for comic relief.  And they go, "Who has ever bought anything with Bitcoin anyway?"  I'm like, "Well, I bought drugs", and they all looked, because they were all in their 50s.  I'm like, "Ha-ha" and I had to back-pedal and it was really funny!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I lost 3 Bitcoin when the Silk Road closed down and then Tim Draper bought them off the FBI, I think, and I said to him the other day, "I'd like my 3 Bitcoin back, please"!

Michael Malice: Yeah, yes please!

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  You had 35,000; 3 of those were mine, come on!  I'll even give you what you paid for them, now the price is where it is!  No, I appreciate your time, I appreciate your patience with my questions and, yeah, this is just part of my journey, so it's really good for me to talk to you, so thank you so much.

Michael Malice: You are welcome.