You can download this episode on MediaFire here (30MB).
In this episode, we discuss some of the problems we have with Christmas, including sweatshops, animal exploitation and religion. When discussing Christmas, we introduce the brand new segment ‘When Karl Pilkington Makes Sense’! Before we get in to this, we give some updates on issues we covered on previous issues and some other stories, including: Labor’s policies on same-sex marriage and refugees, the first intersex mayor for Melbourne, police brutality against the Occupy movement in Perth, Australia and the U.S., sexism in men’s magazines, vegan recipes for Christmas, and problems with the education system.
Book recommendation: No Logo by Naomi Klein
Clips: Peep Show (series 7, episode 5), Seinfeld (episode 166), Justin Bieber ‘Drummer Boy’, The Boat that Rocked, Herman Cain Quotes Pokémon: Ex-Candidate Admits ‘Pokémon 2000’ Inspiration, Valedictorian Speaks Out Against School, Lagwagon from the album ‘Live in a Dive’, DRI ‘Dead Meat’, Ricky Gervais podcast, Ricky Gervais ‘Science’, Dark Place (episode 4), Cursive ‘Rise Up! Rise Up!’.
We apologise for the poor sound quality at times on this episode – our lap top which we usually record on was playing up which meant that we had to use another microphone.
progressivepodcastaustralia 
So I just saw this video : (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s94uE6wJMw&feature=fvsr) and as you will see from watching it, it is bull shit on several levels. First of all I know friends who have done things far more illegal than making a quilt, so why the FBI isn’t going after them is beyond me. I feel attacked by the fact that the FBI is going after Anarchist, but all governments go after us. What really offends me is that after all this fucking time people still do not know what Anarchism is. HOW CAN THIS BE POSSIBLE? It seems like most liberals are willfully ignorant of Anarchism because it may make them feel uncomfortable and put them outside of their ideological schema. So they just say “I don’t understand, doesn’t that just mean you don’t want things to be organized.” Instead of, oh I don’t know, fucking reading one Anarchist writer. Because reading just one of them (Bakunin, Kropotkin, Emma Goldman) would tell you exactly what Anarchism stands for. Fuck Emma Goldman has a fucking essay called What Anarchism really stands for. Could it really be that difficult to type in “the idelogy of Anarchism” into google, before speaking about Anarchism. And if it were just this video I wouldn’t care. But it is every person in the media who talks about Anarchism, this video simply represents the view of the rest of the media. Thank you so much for letting me rant about this, thank you so much for hanving this show.
With Much Love,Eric
Hey Eric, thanks a lot for sharing the video. I agree that it is annoying to hear the total misrepresentation of anarchism as against being organised – especially from The Young Turks – you’d expect it from the mainstream media.
We’ll definitely do a show on anarchism down the track and we’ll try and dispel some of these myths about anarchism that seem so persuasive – even, as you pointed out, amongst progressives/liberals. We’ve got a few other episodes planned first, but we’ll definitely get onto anarchism and maybe we’ll play a bit of that clip and discuss it then. We’d love to talk about the book The Dispossessed and anarchism – not sure if I’ve already mentioned that.
Thanks so much for your support,
Nick
Holy fuck you’ve heard of the book the dispossessed. I can’t believe anyone one else knows about that book. Thank you so much for your show, I felt totally alone in the intellectual stuff I liked as an Anarchist. Listening to your show is like the first time an Atheist meets another Atheist or goes to an Atheist convention and realizes that other people have read Richard Dawkins too. Did you get the Bakunin e-mail I sent you guys? Bakunin was such a bad ass, he wrote his Atheist book “God and the State” in the mid 1800’s. If you think Atheism is unpopular now, think about how unpopular it was then. Did you know he and Marx were alive at the same time? The two biggest figures that created the two strains of European leftism (Anarchism and Communism), alive at the same time. In fact they had many of the same arguments that Anarchists and Communists (today they call themselves socialists) have today. Bakunin totally predicted what would happen with Communism, he said that what would happen is that instead of having a Capitalist state bureaucracy we would have a Communist state bureaucracy. Wow, he was really wrong on that one, oh wait, he was 100% correct, my mistake.
Thank you for listening, Eric
Yeh we both love The Dispossessed and will definitely talk about that with the anarchism episode we will eventually get done! Great that the book not only criticised society as it was, but gave lots of great ideas on what some alternatives could be.
Thanks for the reminder about the email, just replying now =)
Really interesting stuff about Bakunin. I’m reading 1984 by George Orwell now and there are similar critiques of communism. He said that no one seizes power only to relinquish it – which is why the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat leading to some stateless, democratic society was flawed.
Glad you’re enjoying the show – thanks a lot for getting in touch and for your support!
Nick
Thank you for responding, I really think that you guys will love Bakunin. He does not pull any punches on religion, every sentece of the book is a logical attack on the morality of religion. At one point he says “The rest, the immense majority of the generations present and to come, will burn eternally in hell. In the meantime, to console us, God, ever just, ever good, hands over the earth to the government of the Napoleon Thirds, of the William Firsts, of the Ferdinands of Austria, and of the Alexanders of all the Russias.” He talks like that on every page and doesn’t stop until the last sentence. And I totally agree with you on Orwell, you do not create a power structure that will intentionally destroy its self. That is why we shouldn’t have power structures. Thank you for listening!
Your compassionate comrade, Eric
Sounds great, I’ll definitely have to look more into Bakunin – down with power structures! – Nick
Up with humanity!
Your comrade, Eric