The Anarchists (2022) s01e02 Episode Script

If you can't appreciate
the world around you
and the beauty it holds,
I feel sorry for you. You suck.
I left a lot behind in my travels,
especially my family
and friends from home.
Some have told me to document
the insanity of traveling
from Northeast Pennsylvania
to Acapulco, Mexico.
So, here we go.
My adventure began
where the land
was already drained
of life energy
by the parasitical empire.
Forced to seek a better reality,
I journey far,
searching for people
worth calling my tribe.
This quest was never
about my comfort or well-being.
I fully understand,
I am the broken
and damaged-
beyond-repair traveler,
sent to protect those
with a fighting chance.
I'm a beast born in the violence
of a dead paradigm.
I am the obsolete tool
of a world
that must give way for the new.
And I never harbored
any illusion
of surviving until the end.
You see people
waking up every day.
You see, like, 70-year-old moms
this is a whole fraud.
And where's all my money
the government took?
And why am I standing
for this national sing-along?
And why do I think cops
are good?"
Like, hundreds of millions
or billions of people right now
are having these conversations
in their own mind.
And we'll see, it's up to them.
'Cause I can't change
this whole place.
We're gonna need some help.
The momentum of Anarchapulco
and the local
anarchist community
continued to accelerate
with Jeff's hands-off approach,
allowing the movement to take
on a life of its own.
One of my main messages
is that every single person,
everyone, no one excluded,
can change this world.
Look at Jesus, and I don't
even know if he is real.
I don't trust anything
in this world,
but if he was,
look at what he did.
He was an anarchist and he said,
"Fuck the government."
And he only got angry
and violent
with central bankers.
Sounds familiar.
We'll see what happens.
All right, let's go.
As the Anarchapulco
community was growing,
so was my crew.
Joining me now was producer
and sound recordist,
Kim Kylland,
who quickly became an essential
part of this project.
Hola. Buenas tardes.
Buenas tardes.
I'm sorry?
Do you want help with something?
Oh, I'm waiting
for an appointment.
And while I'm waiting,
we're just getting
a little footage of the hotel.
We have a conference
- Oh, okay.
For the upcoming
2017 conference,
the Freemans were taking
a new approach to expansion.
I want to help
all these people figure out
how to get filthy rich.
I mean that quite sincerely.
If this community manages
to accumulate wealth
while being a beacon
for a voluntary society
in such a beautiful location,
then I think
we'll be able to attract
more and more people.
Wealth and comfort are something
that most people do,
in fact, aspire to
we should try to be able
to demonstrate that.
in the camera when you speak?
I am looking
in the camera lens.
I never do!
We moved
the conference
to the biggest hotel
in Acapulco.
So there's,
plus a hot tub.
And then there's a wave pool
on the far side.
It's way more modern,
touristy, high-end.
My personal
favorite thing about it
is this beautiful bar.
I'm very much looking forward
to filling it up
with anarchists.
Unlike the hotels
where we've stayed in the past,
this one is open until three
in the morning.
It was kind of like
the decision you make
when you have a business,
when you go
from a national company
to an international,
it's time to start being
in the big boy ring.
How would you pitch
the conference to someone?
It's simple.
It will change your life.
Every single person
who's attended
has said the same thing.
If you're a person
who's interested in peace
and freedom,
then, when you come here,
you're gonna be in your tribe,
more than you ever
have been anywhere else.
So, this is the main stage, right?
The main conference room
was huge!
Which sucked
for the walkthrough,
because I was pregnant.
I remember having to walk
all the time.
So many people
that are part of the conference
are just the people I cherish
more than almost anyone else
in my life,
- except for my family.
- No, don't cry.
He almost cut the fat off,
and he was like, "Wait."
We knew
that we weren't going
to make very much money
just trying to live in Mexico.
We tried selling
cannabis edibles
in the community.
And then I was basically,
like, trying to pimp out
all my skills,
which really my skills
at that point was that I could cook.
Like every night
we would just say,
"We're making this,
come up to our house,
pay us a little money."
And that expanded
because people were like,
"I hear you guys
are making good food."
What kind of steaks are these?
Those are Denver strip.
These are picanha.
I was impressed
because they got shit done.
They got shit done,
with little to nothing.
To this day, I still don't know
if I have met as resourceful
a couple as John and Lily.
It was just like a process
of like bringing people
into our homes, feeding them,
telling them our story.
"This is who we are,
this is how we got here."
And people were fascinated.
and we decided we were just
gonna tell our story.
Steemit is a blogging site
that rewards users
in cryptocurrency
for popular posts.
It's known for being resistant
to censorship.
So when it launched in 2016,
it quickly became a common forum
for the movement.
We had written
our first post,
which was literally just
and it made like 50 dollars.
And it was just like,
"Oh, this is pretty good."
John was trying to find ways
to inspire me
to post more content to attract
our people to Acapulco.
And Paul was one
of those people.
Well, hey there.
I have no fucking idea
what to write.
I guess I'll start off
by introducing myself.
My name's Paul,
I'm a veteran
and I'm now an anarchist.
I consider myself
a peaceful person,
but I will not hesitate
to crush skulls
to defend myself.
After Anarchapulco 2016,
I bought this beast,
and then my mind began
to churn with possibilities.
Why not move into the bus?
It makes the whole thing
I'm about to do
even more insane.
Paul's Steemit page
had the feel of a comic book
and was filled with self-made
fantasy imagery,
often based on his real life.
Along with my battle rifle,
body armor, and a stockpile
of supplies,
I devised a plan to evacuate
and party my way
down to the conference.
So, what's gonna be new this year
for the conference?
The biggest change
is the fact that there's gonna
be a dedicated cryptocurrency lounge.
So, it'll be a full-time room
that's just there
for our
crypto-oriented sponsors.
The last day of the conference,
we're actually redubbing
to Cryptopulco.
Using your credit card to buy stuff,
that is so 20th century.
Let me tell you what's in right now.
Electronic currency.
Everyone is talking about
cryptocurrencies right now.
Okay, I get it,
this is complicated.
If you're worried that we're going
to get too technical, don't.
Let's get some serious explanation
here from Jeff Berwick.
This is a voluntary
decentralized currency, anonymous.
It can't be shut down by anyone,
there is no central servers.
And it's really catching on
because people are getting
a little tired of these central banks.
Cryptocurrency is so valuable
because it is all about end-user control.
No banks, no fees, no inflation.
No Visa, no PayPal, no regulators.
I love that there's potential
for so much undermining
of centralized currencies,
it serves to disempower ruling classes
and empower the people.
The disruptive backbone
of cryptocurrency is called blockchain.
When using traditional money,
government-chartered banks
keep track of all electronic transactions.
But blockchain software takes
your entire financial ledger
and records it across a massive,
open network of computers.
Bitcoin is an attempt to separate
money and state,
kind of like how the separation
of church and state
was a sort of pivotal change
in human history.
Fundamentally, it's a limit
on political will and political power.
If enough people start using it,
we will get rid of most poverty on Earth,
all wars will end,
all big governments will go away.
We're on the cusp of it right now.
I can buy all kinds
of shady things.
- Drugs.
- Yeah, drugs.
- Guns.
- Whatever you'd like.
Currently, there are over 10,000
cryptocurrencies in the world.
But only one has risen
to mainstream prominence.
How many of you have heard of Bitcoin?
Bitcoin!
We have something called the Bitcoin,
We've seen evidence
that the value
of Bitcoin can actually fluctuate
by about 20 percent on a daily basis.
It has a fundamentally limited supply,
there can only be 21 million Bitcoin.
And so it makes it
kind of a digital gold.
You have to really stretch
your imagination to infer
what the intrinsic value of Bitcoin is.
I am confident that Bitcoin
is the most important invention
in the entire history
of the world since the internet.
People are willing to buy it
because they think they can sell
to somebody else at a higher price.
That's not money,
that's a Ponzi scheme.
I love the fact that anyone in the world
can trade these things.
And yeah, they might lose a lot,
or they might gain a lot,
you know?
I wouldn't call it gambling,
but it's similar.
But you have to be smart.
Just like when you play poker,
if you don't know how to play poker,
and you play with guys
who know how to play poker,
you're just gonna lose.
Well, Bitcoin, today, the cryptocurrency
And it looks like Bitcoin
still has room to run
The cryptocurrency world
was really starting to pick up.
And I told Nathan, we need a crypto ATM.
This machine is getting a lot of buzz.
The main objective?
Basically allowing people
to buy Bitcoins with cash,
cash Bitcoins out right on the spot.
If we're gonna be a crypto conference,
we need to have a Bitcoin ATM here,
so people can actually practice
what we're talking about.
And so I got a hold of Joby Weeks
and he's like, "I can get you an ATM."
I'm here with a longtime friend
and Bitcoin fan, Joby Weeks.
Joby Weeks, seems like I see you here
every few months now.
Joby Weeks is a network marketing
entrepreneur, turned Bitcoin evangelist.
Literally, this is a machine
that prints money
in the form of Bitcoin.
He'd been a regular face
at the conference since it began,
and always seemed
to come through
with some of the most
interesting connections
in the crypto world.
And then I created a chat,
and Paul's like,
"I can get it here, no problem."
If you can't appreciate
the world around you, you suck.
Paul had been acquainted
with the Freemans
for about a year.
They met at the 2016 conference,
where he fell in love
with the movement
and decided to rebuild
his entire life around it.
The Paul crowd were the ones
hanging out late at night,
drinking and partying.
But fundamentally,
he had a really great heart.
He's just the person
that jumps right in to helping people.
I cannot wait to party
with y'all again.
If I don't get gunned down
I'll be crash-landing
at the party in a few days.
It's been, what, almost one full year,
- or just over a year?
- Just about a year.
Just about a year
John and Lily's
Steemit adventure had taken off.
They gathered over 6,000 followers,
which drew the attention
of independent journalists.
Fortunately, we became one of the top 100
personalities within Steemit
fairly early on, like people
just kind of liked our story.
People have had bigger payouts than us,
but we consistently have decent payouts,
which has kind of allowed us
to make a living.
We were essentially making history,
like who else was doing
what we were doing?
Not only were we, like, on the run,
but we were vocal about it.
We were like, "Hey, look at us,
we're on the run!"
"We got charges!"
Were you worried at all,
putting your image
out there for the world?
After about six months,
we were kind of like,
"If it was gonna happen,
it would have."
Like if they were just gonna
come down and swoop us out
and take us back, it would have.
The idea of statism, you know,
taxation and stuff,
like, these are inherently wrong concepts,
- Yeah.
And this is how they affect
real people's lives.
And that's all we're trying to show,
is how it's affected our life.
At a certain point, we realized
that if we could come to Mexico
and survive with nothing,
then anybody
who was determined enough could.
And they did.
That's how I dry my clothes.
Can you tell me what led to your decision
to leave the United States?
I was controlled
through the banking system,
and through, you know,
just arbitrary laws,
like building codes and whatever.
I thought I owned this property
because I had bought a house.
But every time I wanted to do something,
people were like, "No, no, no,
you have to go get a permit."
I'm like, "Why do I need permission?
Like, isn't it my house?"
to realize it wasn't my house.
It was the village's house,
it was the county's house,
who was levying taxes on me.
I just felt really trapped.
I was wanting more freedom
and wanting to be controlled less.
And then I found
John and Lily on Steemit.
Their story inspired me.
So I obsessed about Acapulco,
just seeing it on Google Maps,
just flipping through the streets,
imagining I'd live there someday.
But my wife didn't like that at all.
She put the stipulation
that I had to pay
for everything on this vacation,
and she was our only source of income.
We were just gonna
show up down there
for the conference,
and just stay 30 days
and then go home.
I basically traded in my life's savings
to get this done and make it happen.
It's about 5:30 at night,
just winding down after a day
enjoying life.
Like, I loved it.
A beautiful 73 degrees out here.
I know you're all suffering
back in Chicagoland.
How did your wife feel
about being in Acapulco?
She hated hot weather.
She hated Mexico.
And she didn't want anything
to do with it, really.
But we met John and Lily,
and then we immediately jumped
into the back of that yellow truck.
And he is yanking us
through these side streets
as hard as he can.
I loved those days,
just sitting in the back
of the truck.
Eventually, I made him make me sit
in the front seat 'cause I felt like
I was gonna fly out half the time.
All the freedom,
all the shit that you get to do,
He was very starstruck, like,
"Oh, everything's amazing,
this is exactly what I wanted it to be!"
We drove him and his dog and his wife
all over Acapulco all day long,
looking at places.
And then we went over
to his friend's house.
We called him Modprobe.
And today I'd like to tell you
a little bit about blockchains.
He built this blockchain
that was supposed to replace
the stock market.
He was very personal, very nice,
really deep voice.
He loved to be the bass
and he had,
like, a seven-bedroom mansion.
There's a nice pool over here,
it was a really cool atmosphere
and everything like that.
I'm in this kick-ass mansion,
and it's pouring out there,
looking over Acapulco Bay.
But this thing's awesome.
There's Sammy.
He seemed very chill
and everything was all good.
And he only wanted 500 bucks
a month to stay
in that beautiful house.
I was like, "Hell, yeah."
Did your wife warm up at all
after settling in with Modprobe?
It was a little rocky at first.
She talked about how she didn't like him.
And then after about a week or so,
and he was using big words,
which suddenly she's like,
"Oh, I'm talking to someone
who's smart."
You know, and like,
"They can speak my language."
And then eventually, you know,
they became pretty good friends
and they were really close.
By the 21st Century,
the statists had taken over the world.
After 9/11, the savage union
of the war on terror
and the war on drugs
squelched the last flickers of freedom.
Central banking-backed wars raged.
Violence, imprisonment
and theft had become the norm.
But then, when things
looked their darkest,
something happened just in time.
The third annual Anarchapulco.
Good to see you,
thank you for coming.
Third annual Anarchapulco,
kinda hard to believe, really.
It's actually sort of my first one,
'cause last year I had dengue fever
and I was delirious.
And then the first year,
I was actually
just black-out drunk
the entire conference.
When you were three, when you were four,
when you were six,
and it didn't seem fair.
Or when you were in school
and you had to ask permission
for basic human rights,
that it was wrong.
And you were all right,
- they were all wrong.
- Fuck the troops!
They work for the one organization
that is actually a threat to the freedom
of the American people,
which is the United States
fucking government!
People who want to control others,
people who want to rule the world
and live as a parasite class
leeching off of our productivity,
use our ideas and our beliefs against us.
We have so many great speakers
who want to come and break new ground.
Break into new ideas,
break into new areas.
This was, by far,
the biggest Anarchapulco yet.
Attendees were packed in for the speakers.
I started engaging in the liberty space
about three and a half years ago.
And the parties at night seemed endless.
but the energy across the first few days
felt like there were thousands.
What's really going on
at the very most basic level
is creation.
That's what we're all doing here.
That's where this all came from.
The anarchists, like,
they started to come in herds.
They show up 50 or 60 or 80
at the same time
in the restaurant and the store.
And we were not used to that.
thanks to the Freemans,
that it was a community here in Acapulco.
We have to know what we believe in,
as well as what we want out from.
I felt like I wouldn't be alone.
Every idea I had,
people were like, "I get you, man."
Like my dugout in my baseball team,
this family, this camaraderie
I can't even tell you.
It felt right.
It felt right to me.
Paul and the ATM
finally made it to Acapulco.
I had to guide him
through some of the drive,
because as you're driving alone
in Mexico for days on end,
you get a little loopy.
So I had to be the mommy bear
and kind of,
"No one's following you.
You need to go to sleep."
You know?
But delays along the way caused him
to miss the first three days
of the conference.
He was telling us what was going on
the whole way down. He was like,
"Oh, I got in a car accident.
Oh, I got in another car accident,
and these Mexicans helped me!"
I remember meeting Paul
the morning after he drove
the battle bus through hell.
And he still was so disheveled,
I just wanted him to be fed
The battle bus broke down again
immediately after Paul's arrival.
So the ATM was loaded
into John and Lily's pickup
and delivered to its final resting place.
Gustavo and Amparo's restaurant.
I remember the first time I saw it,
and I was like, "What is this?"
He was told, "I don't know."
Nathan asked me,
"Hey, Gustavo,
what do you think about it?
We're gonna bring
the first Bitcoin ATM to Mexico."
"Okay. Sounds cool.
Like, who wants to go to our organic store
and exchange or pay with Bitcoin?"
"Don't worry about it,
like, this is just the beginning."
The day Paul brought the ATM,
he said, "Of course, I'm an ex-Army,
this was like a mission.
Of course, I was going to get it done."
He was very proud to bring
the Bitcoin ATM to Acapulco.
We started a club called BitClub.
We basically are selling
machines that print money,
that's what this is.
Bitcoin-mining hardware
is a machine that prints money.
We've got a huge data center,
whatever the data center
generates each day
is paid out to our investors,
and we're paying these people
in Bitcoin every single day.
On its final day,
the conference transformed
into Cryptopulco,
taking on an entirely different feel.
The security of crypto market
has improved.
Here, we will be the first crypto currency
to come out with a wallet.
I made over 120,000 dollars
in Bitcoin in this last 11 months.
The group was laser-focused,
mesmerized by the allure of a new way
to build wealth outside
of the established systems.
The last speaker was Roger Ver,
the Bitcoin Jesus.
The only way to stop Bitcoin
would be to turn off
the entire internet
in the entire world
and keep it turned off.
Good luck stopping that.
The first couple of days
a lot of the people
I was talking to were saying,
"Are you here for the Bitcoin conference?"
And I'm like, I guess, sort of.
But I thought it was
an anarchy conference.
What's a good investment, okay?
I would say a lot of them
are more like business types
or finance types that have only heard
about some of this stuff
because of Bitcoin.
I was kind of going through
the disappointment
the first year of it,
but I was like,
"Oh, it's just the first year,
people don't understand it."
But by the second year,
I was just like, "Okay,
now, what the fuck?"
Like, most of these people are like,
"Yeah, we're anarchy
and we're living the dream."
And it's like, "Y'all still
pay taxes, you still bank."
Quite amazing to see
You know, something's definitely going on,
this is interesting.
There's a lot of things
changing right now.
Something I think can be
missed at this conference is,
the money isn't the wealth,
the wealth is many different forms,
you know?
Capital can take all different forms,
not just economic capital.
If we lose sight of our principles,
if we lose sight of what got us here,
we're gonna end up being worse
than the people we are trying to replace.
"No infighting or no criticizing
other anarchists" thing.
But like, criticism
is how we got here, you know?
I just want to mention Nathan Freeman,
done an amazing job.
I just can't believe
what a great job he's done.
Thank you, guys.
I was very pregnant.
That only propelled me even further
in the peaceful parenting and unschooling.
- Hi.
bullying, spanking, manipulation,
especially around Santa Claus,
you know, the behavioral modification,
you know, "You won't get presents,
Santa won't come
unless you're good,"
all another level of control.
We could create a world
that starts to pull apart
this normalcy of violence
and programming
And they lived happily ever after.
One of the things that I told Nathan
when we first met was,
I want to be the mom
I never received.
What the hell are you looking at?
In the past, I had a lot of trauma around
the parental-child relationship.
My mom was not
She was a narcissist.
She was very toxic,
she had her own issues,
health issues, mental health issues.
And, you know, I was very bitter.
I believed, deep in my heart,
that I deserved to be loved by my mom.
The baby, she was supposed to come
right during the conference.
But she showed up,
like, three weeks later.
Freedom in learning,
and respect in parenting
is very, very important.
Dayna was our doula.
We bought a pool and 21 bottles
of the Pur water.
My contractions
started fast, fast, fast, fast.
And within two hours,
I was holding Irebel.
No doctor, no nurse, no blood,
no medicine, no nothing.
Just my husband, my kids,
and my best friend and doula.
And now a baby.
Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition
of Anarchast Over Anarchy on the internet.
You can't see her, but she's right inside
that little thing. It's Irebel,
which, if you say it
kind of fast, "I rebel,"
she was born last night
at about 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning.
I did not realize
how much we've been
lied to in the hospital.
They make it scary,
they make it scary
and they make it an emergency
they say in the US
and buy their medical business.
And my experience here,
I'm gonna try not to cry.
But it was extremely empowering
to know that I do have the freedom
to have my child the way I want to.
It is a funny thought,
that, like, the first thing
they do with a baby
in a hospital is measure it,
type it, you know,
they have to encode it in every way.
It was just not a priority
Do you plan to get some sort
There may be some advantages
to her having a Mexico birth certificate,
but, right now, we have
no specific plans to do it.
We're certainly not gonna get her any kind
- of US papers.
- No?
- Hell no!
- Wow.
She'll be free and clear.
When you are born
and you get a birth certificate,
you become owned by that government.
You're given the legal entitlement
to be a human.
Irebel is not documented,
she's not been to a doctor,
she's never been measured,
she's never been compared.
She's free!
So, Paul's kinda given me a good idea
to maybe start a series
where I just follow him around
and just watch him freak out
- most of the day.
- I want my hat back!
He's really interesting, as you can see.
Give me my sweaty hat.
Ew, it's so gross, man.
All right, let's talk for a little bit.
I forgot your fuckin' name already.
Right after the conference,
Paul showed up at the Anarcastle.
It's just like a four-bedroom
house with five bathrooms,
two living rooms, private pool,
like two blocks from the beach.
And it cost 1,000 dollars a month.
That was like kinda home base
for a lot of people.
Go to the Anarcastle
and then there's like an actual room
or a bed
or something that you can crash on
for a week
or two until you find your own place.
And it was full of anarchists.
and he parked in front of the Anarcastle,
and he just kind of stayed there.
"This guy still there?
Like this guy's still parked
in front of our house? Okay."
So we started to talk to Paul
and he would talk
about how he had some PTSD
and had some action time in Afghanistan,
"And I'm here to help you guys
survive the Apocalypse, right?"
Paul, right?
We kinda, like, agreed
to let him sort of utilize
the Anarcastle, right,
the kitchen, bathroom, stuff for a while.
Paul was doing physical training
trying to teach people
how to hand-to-hand combat.
"An angry hippie dojo,"
I think that's the way he put it.
This is the oath of a battle hippie
and should be for all to take heart.
I will be without fear
in the face of my enemies.
I will defend liberty, even if imprisoned.
I will defend those
who cannot defend themselves.
I remember very clearly, he said to me,
"The apocalypse is coming.
When shit hits the fan,
it's gonna get really bad."
Were you taking it seriously?
Paul was not a general,
he was a foot soldier.
Getting back to training.
I hold back the tears
and swallow the pain.
I let hurt start to rage.
I know rage.
Rage is more useful than pain.
I let it take hold.
I will use it to harden my heart
and my fists.
the training I will use to fix
the shitty attitude
of certain individuals.
When Paul put the ATM here in Acapulco,
it was not fully operational.
They were expecting
some software update, something like that.
People kept going there
like, "Hey, how do we turn this thing on?"
I'm like, "We don't know, we've
never set up a Bitcoin ATM,
like, we don't know how to make it work."
And they kept asking us about it.
Like people keep coming in
and asking to use it,
and it's not even on.
And I finally turned it on,
and within a week, Interpol showed up.
The police arrive,
"Hey, this ATM is stolen."
And I'm like, "It's not stolen.
They say,
"We turned it on. And it said,
'Here I am, come get me.'"
You know, 'cause that's how they work.
The Federales surrounded the restaurant
and took the ATM back.
And I was like,
"Are you kidding me?"
Why is there a stolen ATM
at Anarchapulco?
Like that sounds cool,
but we're trying to do things,
You know? So that
was a whole clusterfuck.
After some investigation,
I discovered that the Bitcoin ATM
had originally been
at a strip club in San Diego,
where a disgruntled employee
at the ATM company
took possession of it
and gave it to Paul.
After the conference,
me and my wife,
we went back to the States.
And we were there,
maybe like three days
before she decided that she was gonna
ask for a divorce.
Actually not ask, yell at me
for three days,
and then tell me she wants
a divorce.
I decided after she left me,
I was gonna go back to Acapulco.
And before I go down there, I found out
she's moving down there,
and I thought, that's weird,
she hates Acapulco.
And then she said she was moving
into Modprobe's house.
The force is with you,
young Skywalker,
but you are not a Jedi yet.
And then, like, two weeks after that,
Modprobe finally admitted,
"Yes, she is coming to me."
In my previous video,
I described our open source,
end-to-end, verifiable
online voting software.
And apparently, like that whole time
at his house, he was constantly saying,
"I'll be your boyfriend"
yeah, she just decided
that she found somebody better.
"You deliberately
disobeyed me, Simba."
And then a few weeks later,
Henza was, like, at the bottom
of our driveway,
sleeping in his van with his dog.
"What? I'm gonna break his legs! Ah!"
He would like wake up,
get himself real angry
in the morning, and then he'd go
take a walk with the dog.
He had a fuckin' unicycle,
instead of walking.
It was a little sad.
And then a certain time
would roll around
and he'd start drinking.
And then it would just be like,
Henza laying in the hammock crying.
It was a while of this,
you know, just him mourning
the death of the life
he thought
that he was gonna live till he died.
This is my home.
it's blue, and it's my favorite color.
That's what really matters.
Henza had been dependent
on his wife's income
for most of their relationship.
Now, he had to find a place
to live within his new budget.
So this is my kitchen.
Seventy-five dollars a month.
I've got all my supplies here.
I sorta got a view.
My ego did take a bit of a hit
thinking about, you know,
my ex-wife moving
into a mansion and dating someone
who had like a million dollars
or something.
This is my storage area
that isn't covered.
But after that,
there were less things to control me.
It's really nice up here, I love it.
Henza wasn't the only one having trouble
with his love life.
At the Anarcastle,
a young woman who declined
to participate in this project,
was drawing the romantic interests
especially Paul.
They were both perfect for each other
'cause they were unstable
and they liked to abuse drugs
and alcohol.
He fell for her pretty hard.
He really, really liked her.
But, as happens in romance sometimes,
you know,
like, there was some conflict
that started there.
We didn't really know what happened,
but Paul started to become
very belligerent,
he started to, like, escalate conflicts
throughout the Anarcastle.
Eventually we kicked him out.
- Are we all good?
- Good.
We good to go.
And it was Christmas Eve,
I remember 'cause we sat
in fucking traffic
for three hours
to go pick him and his shit up
and then bring him to my house.
Can somebody bring me a paper towel?
Paul, are there paper towels in there?
Which I knew was a bad idea.
Five, four,
three, two, one, ignition,
liftoff.
By the end of 2017,
community would reach
- an all-new high.
- Yes! Yes!
Boom shakalaka! Man!
What an exciting day.
Bitcoin breaking major milestone.
Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin,
Bitcoin, Bitcoin.
Give me the Bitcoin, where is it?
After a slow and steady climb
through most of the year,
Bitcoin surged to over 19,000 dollars.
So much money coming in.
- An incredible run.
- Sick gains!
I'm sure by the time you see this video,
it'll be even more.
If you are one of those
who was lucky enough
to speculate on Bitcoin's rise
and you cashed out,
bravo to you. That's a win.
How did the 2017 crypto boom
affect your household?
Ironic, I mean, we did well financially.
The crypto boom drew
a clear line in the sand
between community members.
On one side, the overnight millionaires.
And on the other side,
those who missed the bus.
We collect nine Bitcoins.
I asked him like,
"Where is the nine Bitcoin?"
And he said, "I sold them."
And I was like "No!"
We had amassed, at our height,
130 Bitcoin.
All of that Bitcoin had been
spent trying to live off-grid.
There was nothing left.
Very excited about Bitcoin,
I'm wearing my tie.
So many people are jumping
into this virtual currency.
It's created so much attention.
It's just gonna be very interesting to see
just how much this catches on.
It just sounds so silly,
but maybe it's not.
And what about Jeff's music video?
I've never watched it, because I can't.
Straight to the moon
Bitcoin all the way
Dollar vigilante
All up in your hearsay
Dropping crypto knowledge
Making the ladies go cray-cray
Baby I'm old-school
And you the new jack
I've been walking on Bitcoin
Since a hell long way back
Track six years ago
What friends of mine
Told me to say
Some Bitcoin rhyme
So I bought some Bitcoin
Around three bucks that day
Now it's 2K
On its way to 10K
Fuck you Ben Bernanke
I've never heard the song
because I can't.
John was listening to it,
and I straight up ran outside
and hung out with my chickens
until it was over. I couldn't handle it.
As I got into puberty, I was so shy.
Like, I could literally not go
to a store and ask for something.
I always try to do
the most extreme thing possible
to get myself out of something
I wanna change.
So I was just like, I'll become a rapper.
So then I started the Jeff Steel Crew.
Right when I was about 14,
and I show up at school the next day
with a ghetto blaster
pumping Run DMC.
And like, every kid in school
was like, "What the hell,
that's that kid we always
which cost ten dollars,
but it looked like a gold chain.
We actually became a little bit
popular in Western Canada.
I actually almost opened for MC Hammer
'cause I knew the bartender at a bar
who was also a promoter of concerts.
I was supposed to do it,
but then MC Hammer canceled.
The growth that I saw, it was remarkable.
Initially, we came together on beliefs,
but now, we were not economic peers.
We moved,
we had a lovely new home.
We need a bigger place,
because Irebel obviously
is getting bigger,
and so are the kids.
We were really doing well,
we had lots of stuff happening.
Nathan and I saw a lot of ways
in which it could
make really good money.
Like I wanted to build, like businesses
around the conference, just to make sure
that the community
could feel our presence.
The way we saw it,
the Freemans were the gatekeepers.
The only people that came
to Anarchapulco
were the ones that they wanted
to come to Anarchapulco,
and that was it.
Why are we having
our anarchist conference
all around the world
be essentially top-run organizations
where the executive makes the decision
on who's important
and how money is spent.
To us, it seems obvious
that an anarchist conference
shouldn't be centralized
like a pyramid scheme.
If we're gonna really
put anarchy into action
and bring anarchy into the world,
the conferences that are spreading it
should kind of be at least
experimental reflections of that.
Fuck this!
I did not sign up for this.
So we were like,
"Let's Fork Anarchapulco."
John and Lily decided
to fork Anarchapulco
into a new version, just like
in cryptocurrency development.
When we don't like
the way a cryptocurrency functions,
and we want to see something different,
we duplicate it and then run it off
in their own paths.
So they're one,
and then they start to fork off.
How do we make an event,
but make it so we're not in control of it?
Like, let people figure
that out themselves.
The Fork was decentralization.
What they wanted to do was
have people just sign up
on the calendar
and start their own workshop
and advertise for their own workshop,
and the only thing they offered
was a space to do it in.
Everything else is on you,
and if you sell tickets
to your event,
you get half the price of the tickets.
It was really cool.
We were trying to do
Anarchaforko to say,
"Hey, we don't like to just complain
about what we don't like.
You know, we like to just build
what we'd rather see."
I'm way up in the hills
of dangerous Acapulco, Mexico,
with a couple of defectors
from the US empire, the USSA,
John and Lily.
You guys were even discussing,
and you just posted on Steemit recently,
that you're thinking about having, like,
what you call it is Forking Anarchapulco.
Why don't you talk about
a little bit of what you have in mind?
Well, the whole structure
in general will be less formal
We wanted Jeff involved.
We wanted it to be
this big, you know, thing.
He, like, mentions
the Fork in one of his videos.
It makes sense to fork that,
Forking Anarchapulco.
- Fork away.
- Okay.
- All right.
- This is the crypto era.
I'm obviously not going
to use the government
to patent laws to say
"Hey! This is Anarchapulco,
you can't fork Anarchapulco."
And then after that,
we asked him like,
"Hey, do you wanna come?
Do you wanna speak? Like,
do you wanna be involved?"
And he said, "I want nothing
to do with your stupid event."
And we were like,
"Ah, so the Freemans
have been talking to him."
Anarchaforko. Yeah,
it sounds very like, "Go fuck yourself."
I don't know why.
I'm sorry. Anarch-go-fork-you.
It was weird, it was just weird.
They came here
and they wanted to attack me,
or my thing, or my Anarchapulco.
"We're gonna do another one.
We're gonna fuck your shit up."
Everything that he was hearing
came from the Freemans,
and the Freemans were like,
"They're trying to replace our conference.
They're trying to take
this away from you."
What do you think their motivation was?
you're gonna get this on camera,
but to be spiteful.
The Freemans had this rule
and they had told everybody
but us this, like,
"If we're having public events,
don't invite John and Lily,
they're not welcome.
We don't want them
anywhere near us or our family."
Yes, but I don't want to talk
about it on camera, no.
"Okay, there's this weird cold war
that I didn't even start myself,
but I am responsible for."
You know this isn't my good side.
Oh, dammit
you have a good side?
Yeah.
I thought that it was just gonna be
fuckin' weird forever with them.
And then eventually one of us
would leave Acapulco
'cause we would get tired
of the weirdness.
Which is what happened,
technically speaking, but it had
to get really weird I guess,
for that to happen.
How weird?
Murder weird.