Franz-Herman Krauel 🌲🔥

According to Murray Rothbard in Anatomy of the State, the State does not preserve itself mainly through force, but through ideology. Since the ruling class is always a minority, it cannot rule permanently by violence alone. It must obtain the passive acceptance of the majority. That is why the State constantly relies on intellectuals, academics, media, court historians, experts, and ideological institutions to convince people that its rule is necessary, inevitable, and morally legitimate. Rothbard argued that intellectuals often become the “opinion molders” of society because the State offers them security, prestige, and institutional power in exchange for ideological support. The alliance between the State and intellectuals is therefore not accidental, but structural. He also explained how States historically use nationalism, fear, tradition, collective guilt, and even “Science” itself as ideological weapons. Wars between ruling classes are transformed into wars between peoples by convincing populations that the rulers and the nation are identical. Independent thinkers are ridiculed as dangerous, irrational, or conspiratorial because the greatest threat to State power is criticism that breaks ideological conformity. Rothbard further argued that modern States replaced the old “divine right of kings” with the cult of experts and technocrats. In previous centuries rulers claimed divine legitimacy; today they claim scientific legitimacy. But the purpose remains the same: convincing the population that centralized power is necessary and that ordinary individuals are incapable of governing themselves. As Rothbard concluded, the State constantly attempts to distinguish itself from ordinary criminality through ideological propaganda, even though most people instinctively understand that government is “a separate, independent, and hostile power” living off the productive population.

Stay tuned . . .

Who is the philosopher with the most annoying fanbase?

Raiders of the Lost Ark is a perfect movie, maybe the only perfect movie. Every scene, every line, every beat propels the story forward.