Bonus Sample: Graeber vs Bannon, Anarchism vs Leninism (Part 2)
This bonus episode is Part 2 of Graeber vs Bannon, Anarchism vs Leninism.
I start in the 1870s with Marx and Bakunin fighting over the joys and traumas of the Paris Commune. Marx sees it as an imperfect but historic prototype of a workers’ transitional state, cut down before it could consolidate power. Bakunin reads it as a betrayal of anarchist principles — too willing to replicate the machinery it meant to overthrow. Out of that conflict comes a rift that still haunts us: should revolution be disciplined, organized, and strategic, or spontaneous, horizontal, and permanently suspicious of institutions?
I explore David Graeber as a hopeful modern anarchist, highlighting his idea of “everyday communism”—the mutual aid and cooperation we already practice—and his vision of Occupy as a revelation of our capacity to act as if we’re free. I contrast this with Marxist-Leninist critiques: the exhaustion of consensus, obstructionism, spectacle without strategy, and the refusal to make demands. A story about my late friend Michael Stone at an Occupy “mic check” shows how openness can invite opportunism. Finally, I contrast No King’s vagueness with MAGA’s fusion of mystical energy and disciplined technocracy—QAnon shamans backed by P2025 architects, vibes condensed to machinery.
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This bonus episode is part two of Graeber versus Bannon, Anarchism versus Leninism, with part one dropping on Saturday, this past Saturday, on the main feed.
I'm Matthew Remsky.
This is Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersection of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism.
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So to recap, in episode one, I framed a clash of revolutionary imaginations through two avatars, David Graeber, the late anarchist anthropologist of Occupy, and Steve Bannon, the right-wing tactician of January 6th and Project 2025, who openly borrows from Leninist playbooks.
Both hate the status quo, but from opposite directions.
Graeber bet on prefigurative politics, acting as if we're already free through horizontal consensus-based organizing.
Bannon and his allies, by contrast, pursue disciplined cadre-building and long-march institutional capture.
This is a transitional machinery that's designed to actually seize and hold power.
I talked about January 6th, providing MAGO with a cautionary tale about spontaneity without a plan.
This was a riot that blended magical thinking, conspiratuality, and grievance with a lot of fervor and, you know, an absence of planning.
People died.
Many radicalized afterward, even further towards the right.
But on that day, they failed because emotion is not a substitute for strategy, logistics, or a parallel governing architecture.
I drew on Vincent Bevins' excellent If We Burn from 2023, in which he examines Brazil's 2013 transit fair protests.
This was a small anarchist-inspired movement that sparked mass sympathy after police brutality, but it was swiftly outflanked as better organized right-wing forces rebranded its slogans, filled the vacuum, and helped pave the road to Bolsonaro.
And the lesson of all of that is that explosions of leaderless energy or ideology-free or ideology-light or ideologically incoherent energy can be co-opted when they reject durable structure.
I also revisited May 1968 and the new left's allergy to hierarchy, which helped to make sacred the idea of spontaneous awakening in politics.
Occupy channeled that spirit, expanding horizons, shifting rhetoric, as in We Are the 99%, while struggling to translate moral spectacle into durable power.
Lenin's unfashionable and frankly dangerous argument for a disciplined vanguard capable of planning, seizing, and defending gains is in the shadows here.
In this part two, I'm going to further ground the anarchist versus Marxist history.
I want to describe why Graeber is so wonderful and compelling.
And I want to tell a story about spontaneity and spiritual opportunism, and then I'm going to try to land the plane somehow.
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