Bob Podolsky was a total badass.
An eccentric intellectual. A therapist. A fierce voluntaryist.
And the man I credit the most with inspiring the idea for Freedom Cells.
Bob dedicated his life to the idea of creating an ethical society without government.
He wrote a book called Flourish: an alternative to government and other hierarchies.
This is, in my opinion, a hugely underrated book in the libertarian/anarchist/voluntaryist world.
In it, he describes the modern problems with our government and how there’s no chance of reforming them. We’ve got to build a new alternative.
Part of that new alternative involved what he called an “Octalogue”.
A dialogue is a conversation between two people. An octalogue is a dynamic conversation between 8 people.
Bob did quite a bit of work with a man named John David Garcia, the author of Creative Transformation, which determined that groups of 8 people is the ideal number for maximum creative output.
Unleashing human creativity, they determined, was one of the most important ways we could work together to engineer a freer, more ethical world together.
Their research deeply resonated with me and I continued exploring it.
I had the privilege of meeting Bob at Libertopia in 2013.
You can listen to the speech he gave that year on “organized anarchy” here.
I’ve also hosted Podolsky at Brave New Books, the underground conspiracy bookstore I operated years ago in Austin, Texas.
And I’ve mixed it up with him while spending time at Anarchapulco.
Bob recently passed away.
Which has me reflecting on my time with him and how his ideas shaped my activist and entrepreneurial trajectory.
Bob was intensely devoted to asking the question, “How do we transition into a free society from where we are now?”
I’ve adopted that same attitude in all of my work.
In the early days of the Ron Paul Revolution, I saw the biggest growth of people who believe in freedom ever.
I saw the evolution of the liberty movement from politics to voluntaryism.
So many of us, after discovering Ron Paul and hearing him talk about Murray Rothbard, started reading Rothbard’s works.
Most of us started with wanting a return to limited government, like how America was founded.
Others moved to wanting more of a “night watchman” state, one that simply upheld contracts and property rights and provided for police and the military. The absolute minimum functions of government.
But a huge portion of us after discovering Rothbard became voluntaryists, desiring a totally stateless society.
During this time, I started to look around at the freedom movement and wonder…
“Why is it that there are so many who believe in freedom but they’re not living in freedom? What’s missing here?”
So I set out to answer that question.
What’s the missing element we need to experience true freedom? Not just talk about it. Or philosophize about it. Or try to get politicians to create it for us.
But what can we do right now to make real freedom happen?
I realized it all comes down to strength in numbers.
I’d been doing political activism and was very comfortable in organizing groups of people and started hearing more and more about small group organizing.
I had known Nick Ludwig, an activist in Minnesota who wrote a manifesto about forming small groups.
I was also friends with Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers movement, who encouraged people to organize on the county level rather than one big national group. Unfortunately, Stewart was just sentenced to 18 years in prison because of his involvement with the January 6th protest.
But then I learned about Bob Podolsky and his theories.
Plus, I found the work of Samuel Edward Konkin III, who wrote about counter-economics and agorism. His philosophy changed everything for me. His whole thesis is about applying voluntaryist principles right now. Living free now. Creating trade lines where people can interact and build wealth outside of regulations.
This paired perfectly with what Bob Podolsky was theorizing about in terms of creating trusted small groups of people to get things done. You can’t engage in agorism without small groups (cadres) of ideologically aligned people working together.
All of this formed the fertile creative ground for the concept of Freedom Cells - small local clusters of 8 person groups (or close to 8) that would be linked with other 8 person groups in their region and beyond, working together to be more resilient, self-sufficient, prosperous, and free.
Thanks to the help of Derrick Broze, Ramiro Romani, and others, Freedom Cells went from just an idea, with a few disparate groups here and there, to a GLOBAL network of free people working together to create a free society right now.
It’s our hope to achieve an ethical society similar to that which Bob spoke and wrote so passionately about.
I hope you’ll join us in that mission.
Both to honor Bob’s memory and to engage in real-world work to create more liberty in our lifetimes than you ever thought possible.
If you haven't yet, join the Freedom Cell Network here:
https://freedomcells.org/
Also, join the Freedom Cell Telegram Community here:
https://t.me/+S-774hqFPqeqnnt9
And look for local cells in your area here:
https://t.me/FreedomCellDirectory
And if you’re already a member, then get back involved. Create a new group. Reengage with your current group. Meet and trade and strengthen the bonds with other like-minded, freedom-loving folks.
There is strength in numbers, strength in unity, and strength in truth.
We have all three on our side.
Together we can create liberty in our lifetime!
John Bush
P.S. - Be on the lookout for an email soon with info on how to connect to our next Freedom Cells Conference Call. It's going down October 3rd at 11AM Central.
We will give you the latest updates from around the Network and we also have some BIG announcements to share with you about the upcoming Greater Reset V event.
Use this link to add the call to your calendar - https://livefree.academy/event/freedom-cell-network-12th-international-conference-call/
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