September 30

DHP Special: Revisiting “The Iron Law of Oligarchy”

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In this episode, CJ revisits DHP Episode 34, “The Iron Law of Oligarchy,” from 2014, in preparation for an upcoming mini-series on oligarchy & CJ’s argument that modern democracy is just oligarchy with extra steps.

Join CJ as he discusses:

  • A little bit about German sociologist Robert Michels, who first described this law
  • The Iron Law of Oligarchy as described by Michels in his early-20th century book Political Parties
  • The Iron Law of Oligarchy in other contexts
  • Some noteworthy exceptions to the Iron Law that various scholars have found, including the International Typographical Union, the New Left student movement of the 1960s, ancient Athens, and Wikipedia

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September 18

DHP Special: A Cowboy in the Jungle Looks at 43/”Knowledge is Power”

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Yesterday CJ turned 43. Unfortunately, he was sick on his birthday (and still is today), but he decided to look into the vault of vintage DHP episodes to see what DHP Ep. 43 was, and lo & behold, it was a Fun-Size Silver Bullet episode from 2014 that’s quite evergreen & may be even more relevant today than ever, so he decided to reissue it on the podcast feed along with a new intro & some important announcements

“Knowledge is power”: There’s more depth to the old cliche than there might appear at first glance.

Join  CJ as he discusses:

  • Some of the earliest known usages of this phrase in print
  • Some examples from history from ancient to modern of this principle in practice, including the more ‘culty’ religious organizations, laws against slaves learning to read, the connection between literacy & slave uprisings, and the modern US government’s love of keeping its own actions secret while spying on everything you do

Empower yourself by pursuing knowledge!

(“Knowledge is Power” pic courtesy Stuart Miles at freedigitalphotos.net)

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September 13

Ep. 0271: Schencking the First Amendment

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In 1919, the Supreme Court of the United States voted unanimously to uphold the conviction of Socialist Party activists whose only crime was distributing a pamphlet critical of conscription during American participation in the First World War, even though the pamphlet did not advocate any lawbreaking — not even civil disobedience.

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September 11

Ep. 0270: DHP Villains: Woodrow Wilson, Part 12

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In this dozenth episode in the Wilson series, join CJ as he discusses the ways in which the Wilson administration & Corporate America (especially the House of Morgan) was decidedly un-neutral in regard to the First World War over the course of 1915.

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September 11

Ep. 0269: Woodrow Wilson’s Eugenicist: The Curious Case of Dr. Edwin Katzen-Ellenbogen

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What if I told you that we can connect Woodrow Wilson to the Nazis in a single degree of separation?

No, this is not the zillionth illustration of Godwin’s Law that you’ve seen this week; it is simply little-known historical fact.

In this dose of Dangerous History, we’ll talk about the little-known eugenicist psychiatrist who drafted the eugenics sterilization bill that Woodrow Wilson signed into law in 1911 (during his brief tenure as Governor of New Jersey), and who later collaborated with the Nazis who ran the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp three decades later.

Join CJ as he discusses the life and career of Dr. Edwin Katzen-Ellenbogen, and the historical context in which they occurred.

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September 11

Ep. 0268: The Praetorians Strike Back? (Thoughts on the Trump assassination attempt)

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(Originally published Aug., 2024)

Join CJ on 2 work commutes in Silver Bullet v.3.0 as he discusses his provisional thoughts on the near-assassination of Donald Trump that took place in July of 2024, as well as some historical precedents and context for it.

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September 11

Ep. 0267: A Study of Assassination

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(Originally published Feb., 2024)

No, you’re NOT hallucinating — after the longest hiatus between episodes since I started the Dangerous History Podcast back in 2014, I FINALLY managed to record & publish a new DHP episode.

Join CJ as he shares reads excerpts from & discusses a very interesting CIA manual on assassinations from the 1950s.

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September 11

Ep. 0266: DHP Villains: Woodrow Wilson, Part 11

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(Originally published Oct., 2023)

This installment in the Woodrow Wilson series covers the period of the Wilson presidency from the summer of 1914 through the end of that year, when he said he wanted to keep the US neutral & out of the war, & still seemed to at least kinda mean it.

(*Apologies for the lackluster audio quality in some of the middle segments – I accidentally used my laptop’s crummy integral mic instead of my usual podcasting mic for those.)

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September 11

Ep. 0259: A Butterfly Saves the World…from Woodrow Wilson?: An Alt-Hist DHP Microdose

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(Originally published June, 2023)

We’ve all heard of the famous ‘butterfly effect.’ But is there a plausible, realistic, alternative historical scenario in which the US & the world could’ve been spared the worst aspects of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency merely by altering one seemingly minor detail of the 1912 election?

Yes there is. Join CJ in this super-concise DHP episode as he discusses just such a scenario, whereby changing only one seemingly humble variable in 1912 would probably have given the US a POTUS who would’ve kept the country out of WWI & thereby avoided the worst aspects of Woodrow Wilson.

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September 11

Ep. 0258: DHP Heroes: Osceola (CJ’s talk from the 2023 Florida LP Convention)

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(Originally published May, 2023)

Join CJ as he discusses the life & death of the Seminole leader Osceola, who was a key resistance leader in the early stages of the Second Seminole War (1835-42), the longest & costliest Indian war in US history, in which the US government was using force to ethnically cleanse the Seminole people out of Florida.

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