Fourth Reich Archaeology
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Down by Law 1: Asylum for Mankind
🕑 Added 2025-12-05 10:05:08 +0000 UTCWe are excited to announce that we are launching a brand new series called “Down by Law.” In it, we are going to talk about how laws and legal systems that create and enforce them are put in place to serve the ruling class, while producing a spectacle of “justice” to distract and pacify the masses. We believe that, despite the law’s ultimate impotence to bring about the type of revolutionary change needed to ensure collective survival for humanity, it is important to understand how the law functions in society. This series is our attempt at political/legal education, jumping between various areas of law that purport to regulate behavior in “civilized nations.”
It is certainly true that the legal system - from statutory legislation to the vast regulatory state to the judiciary - does impose restrictions on actors at all levels of the socioeconomic pyramid. We are not implying that the wealthy and powerful are entirely unfettered by the law. That would be an overstatement and would not reflect reality.
But the law, too, operates as spectacle. And to a larger degree than most lawyers, government bureaucrats, and policy wonks would like to admit, the real function of the law is spectacular. It serves to inflate the illusion of justice. In reality, the legal system plays referee between factions of the ruling class, while ensuring that overall control of the systems of power remain in the hands of that same class.
We start our legal dig site with a dig into immigration and the modern legal regime for asylum. Even though you’d never guess it by the federal government’s utter lack of regard for human rights in the administration of the immigration system, the USA is a party to the 1967 protocol to the treaty on the rights of refugees. That means it is “the supreme law of the land” - with which even the federal government must comply as with the Constitution itself - to afford broad rights to asylum-seekers in danger of death or serious harm in their home countries.
We recorded this before the DC National Guard shooting put asylum into the headlines, but the issue is more salient than ever. As Trump essentially seeks to end asylum as we know it, we trace the bipartisan roots of the whittling-away of immigrant rights, spiking especially under the Obama administration. Put on your lawyer hats, it’s time to get down by law.
Comments
Don and Dick
Hell yeah, we’ve cited Greg many times (although his latest Chomsky defense piece in the Nation is a little pathetic…).
Don and Dick
Thanks so much for the sub and for the kind words!! I reckon you will pick up on our political tendencies as you continue to listen. And hope that some of the insights we share are of use in your organizing work. Feel free to reach out anytime!
Ravyn
I'm about a third of the way in, and I just wanted to tell ya'll that your podcast got introduced to me in the perfect time of my life. I can't say I know your particular political tendencies, but I highly suspect we're aligned. This past spring into summer I ended up studying for the LSAT and got a decent score. I'm a community organizer first and foremost, and have a career in something else entirely but we kept running up against "The Law" even in your average above ground work, it's always there. We can all agree this shit is fake, illegitimate, and it is, but it still exists as a spectacle to control us all. All that being said, I haven't decided to take any further steps towards law school yet, but I feel like I'm around similar minds when I listen to ya'lls podcast. Can't wait for more of this series. Just subscribed!
Shout Shout Let It All Out
Good shit. I’m expecting the MC Shan sample in future episodes 👍 https://youtu.be/MMvGaWHpvNQ?si=m65c_BZuCuDunQQA
Don and Dick
Yes! The work is called "Black History."
Michael
This is really great fellas! Keep digging! A great guest would be Greg Grandin. He’s an absolute assassin and his latest book really correlates to what you have always been taking about here. Cheers
Teresa Patrick
Was that Gil Scott Heron at 1:30?
Hamper
USCIS employees are also getting pulled to do ERO duties now. Also US Fish and Wildlife lol.
Shout Shout Let It All Out
My new favorite legal podcast-within-a-podcast 😄
Extrajudicial Pod
Only just hit play but coincidentally also listening to audio book of "the Code of Capital" by Pistor - all about capital using laws to reinforce itself and expropriate
Joedie Sawyer
You guys are on fire! (Just like the US seems to be) Very bad, incredibly disturbing and even mind numbing things are happening and you guys are digging in. Love your work.
Mirjam Dornauer
AI use for the applications will be the modern day equivalent of IBM and the Nazis
David W. McMillan
that's gil scott heron at ~1h30m
