Moritz' affiliation with The Free State Project via Brett Veinotte & School Sucks Podcast

#alt-right #intelligence-gathering #threat-analysis #fascism #holochain

In November 2016 Moritz appears on a podcast called the School Sucks Show (recording) (transcript):

I'm on my favorite podcast – how awesome is that! 🎉 #fame #fortune #friends #education
Thanks to Brett of @SchoolSucksShow for having us!
https://twitter.com/bierlingm/status/798622022167240704

[POD460] Time To Grow Up, Abandon “Anti-Attitudes” and Embrace the Infinite Game http://schoolsucksproject.com/podcast-460/ w/ @skinnerlayne and @bierlingm
https://twitter.com/SchoolSucksShow/status/798580370505605120

Five days prior to the timestamp of its broadcast, Moritz pre-prepared a recruitment message to right-leaning blockchain enthusiasts.

I get it that you are highly intelligent and willing to fight for your beliefs. Many of you have given up a great deal for this movement and the values it champions: your careers, your friends, a comfortable life. Some of you even sit in jail for victimless “crimes” where your only wrongdoing was to make governmental agencies feel threatened.

Skinner Lane & Exosphere

This podcast sets the stage:

Skinner is the founder of Exosphere Academy and Moritz is the Director of Research.

These two help to exemplify what I hope more and more of what School Sucks Project will be about in the coming years - discussions about how to actually build institutions and movements in education that become un-ignorable, desirable and perhaps even increasingly irresistible alternatives to the failing systems.

Moritz talks about the 'cancellation' of Alex Jones as an example of what's wrong in the world-

A friend of mine, Nathan, whose opinions I really value, I saw him post on Facebook, Alex was also banned, or the Alex Jones Info Wars Empire was also banned from Mailchimp, which is an email marketing service, and one other backend service as well. My friend Nathan described this as 'peak 1984'.

It is unclear as yet which Nathan Moritz refers to, but there are some suspects on the list of names in our network analysis document.

Skinner Lane founded a project called "Exosphere Academy":

a learning and problem solving community features 2-day traveling workshops and an 8-week residential program to learn new skills, build exciting projects with other dynamic people, and jumpstart your new life & career.

The website appears to be broken currently and have only ever had placeholder content present in the past https://web.archive.org/web/20230529231742/https://exosphe.re/

https://www.crunchbase.com/person/skinner-layne

Skinner is the Founder and Chairman of Exosphere with a decade of entrepreneurial experience working at the intersection of technology and business in the US and Latin America.

He has a broad background as a strategist and advisor, having founded software startups, consulted for NASDAQ-traded companies on technology strategy, raised capital for startups and other projects, and structured cross-border investments for US and European investors in Latin America.

Moritz Bierling, School Sucks Project & Un-Iversity

The established relationship with Brett Veinotte is the more concerning one.

School Sucks is one of the longest running liberty-minded podcasts on the web.

Moritz and Skinner appear on Brett's podcast again in July 2018 with "Embracing the Infinite Game" (recording) (transcript):

Skinner Layne and Moritz Bierling return to the show to further explore the infinite game mentality.

Skinner is the founder of Exosphere Academy and Moritz, formerly the Director of Research, now serves as an advisor.

In our previous discussion we talked about how to build institutions and movements in education that become un-ignorable, desirable and perhaps even increasingly irresistible alternatives to the failing systems. Today we'll expand beyond education to creating real markets for information, as an alternative to the "technological communism" we have today.

• Developing the mindset for playing the infinite game
• Why people prefer to play finite games, and why they're also sometimes attracted to fascism
• Why we need to play finite games too
• Why we can't live in a world where everyone plays the infinite game
• Establishing the boundaries between leisure and work
• The Vaxios Project - a vision for the future of social media and information
• Jaron Lanier and understanding the dangers of the current social media design
• Marketing has corrupted many people's ability to use language effectively
• Idolatry and visual programming

They confirm in conversation that Skinner and Moritz are working on Vaxios together:

In the second show, we are going to be doing a deeper dive on what one very exciting project they are both working on, called the Vaxios

Skinner discusses Vaxios as a tool to end digital slavery by creating a real market for information and the means to catalyze a true information-based economy, which is in many ways the opposite of what we have today.

He is back 6 days later for "The Deep Roots of the Current Information* Crisis" (recording) (transcript):

In our previous discussion we talked about an infinite game approach to the current digital crisis. In our upcoming discussion we'll finally dig into what Vaxios is and how it will approach a solution to these problems.

• Information overload, or "input overload" - can we adapt?
• revisiting Skinner's "three children of The Enlightenment" - fascism, communism and consumerism, and how consumerism will end - how the illusion of democracy contributes to input overload
• news poisoning?
• a brief history of democracy as a tool of mass manipulation
• politics has corrupted most digital spaces
• is everything you consume on the internet an advertisement?
• the pursuit of illusory ideals- a debate on tribalism - is there a way to embrace tribe membership or do we need to work to abandon it entirely?

Contrary to the promise of the previous episode they don't really get into the "nuts and bolts of Vaxios" at all. But he does outline a theory of change that echoes of his current employer CoaSys':

at the root of why we're building Vaxios is that I believe that once people actually have to put prices on things um then they they treat them differently they value uh things differently when it when they when they are actually encountering cost but also when they're encountering when they when they're thinking about what what kind of activity they want to do themselves if they know that they can do something that creates value and get and actually improve their material circumstances they're going to optimize more for that and we we live in a world where we can only really optimize for that in the physical world and because of automation and the the greater than Pareto distributions that have uh that have been created by software there are very few areas in which one can engage in productive activity in the physical world and so if we do not work aggressively to replicate market structures in the informational world um we will continue to suffer from this tragedy of the commons

For more on CoaSys see the Flux / Ad4m Holochain ecosystem session. (backup) (transcript)

He is hosted again 1 month later with "Being Active Online vs. Being Conscious Online" (recording) (transcript):

Moritz and I discuss his current work on Holochain, and its role in resolving the digital malaise we’ve been discussing in this series. This malaise includes "fake news," information (or input) overload, social media fatigue, banning, loss of privacy, no data ownership, etc…

• Authors of the first amendment obviously never envisioned this world
• the web is a weapon for the US military
• The importance of looking at the current news, purges and bans not through the lens of left and right, but instead with an examination of the internet’s operative paradigm and original design
• The evolution of Blockchain tech
• What is third generation distributed ledger technology
• A coming "Cambrian explosion" of decentralization and the removal of central points of control/failure
• Current state of adoption for Holochain; who is using it and for what?
• Interesting new ways of connecting people who have something with people who need something
• Being active on social media vs. being conscious on social media

The conversation begins with the fairly typical 'Art Brock inspired' description of the limitations of blockchain and Holochain as a solution. He goes on to summarise his work with Holochain:

Like this is the governance stuff that we talked which are briefly touched on, and there are multiplicities of possibilities of how to manage social groups. And that's actually one of the hopes for this and predictions for this technology becoming more and more used by developers and then by businesses and communities and activists actually. That's actually one of our strategic focuses at the moment, as I'm working with Holochain, at the activist communities of whatever political inclination they may be, to have a Cambrian explosion of social forms, if you will, of social DNA, of how groups constitute themselves, manage themselves, and enter into arrangements with other groups. And that's really where a large part of my interest in this comes from, less that we are suddenly able to speculate more effectively on the rise of some token, but to actually steer ourselves better and require less the central point of failure, like the central authority, to make decisions for us where we are actually much more able to do that by ourselves.

this actually is an idea that the European Union was based on, but that it has gone against, unfortunately, in many respects, which is this idea of subsidiarity, the subsidiarity principle, where decisions should be made at the smallest possible unit or level, and only if they are unable to solve it, be passed up in the ranks. That's sort of the design inspiration where Holochain comes from.

He speculates on leftist reasons for being involved with Holochain and how those are compatible with the needs of the shows audience:

the reception we've gotten so far, primarily from the sort of co-op community, if you will, sort of left anarchist style communities, has been very good, particularly because we don't so much care about the financial speculation part, but more about sort of governance part. And that's what those folks care about a lot.

one of the things that we are strategically focusing on in approaching the distribution of this technology is actually taking very great care not to see the pattern of financial speculation, but instead to focus our efforts and our conversations on communities themselves that are interested in solving some particular need in their community.

Part of the remainder of the conversation is essentially a discussion of mutual aid (although he doesn't call it that) and microeconomics. He gestures at a number of Holochain-adjacent projects I'm aware of in the arena of "universal basic currencies", for incentivising things like waste collection and care of the elderly. He mentions his open letter to the blockchain community again. They also talk about first coming across blockchain via a "libertarian community in New Hampshire".

He also talks about online segregation and the importance of building bridges from alt-right communities like Gab into the general populace:

I think a lot of this debate that we, that we see over, for example, also the exchange ban now from all these places is an unwillingness on the, on the level of the populace in general to accept this idea again of voluntary separation of self-segregating into groups that have different interests and that use their own infrastructure and that are not sharing sort of public utilities with people that they absolutely despise. And by then having been able to self-segregate, they are not anymore in this constant place of anguish where because they are around people they don't like, they have to amplify their supposed ideological adherence to a particular ideology that they share with other people, at least on the surface, and sort of be very vicious about and instead retreat, sort of go into their own places.

you have a platform like GAB, where a bunch of people who are more new right are going to talk to each other. But there's a major downside here, if that platform just becomes a kind of echo chamber, like I think that social media, the ideal is that different ideas come together in clash and to be super, super naive in a kind of healthy and constructive way. So there's obviously going to be a cost when it comes to the important conversations that need to be had and the bridges that need to be built and the achievement of understanding across divergent groups that we would like to see in many places, or maybe in some places.

He is hosted a fifth time in 2019 on the topic of "Achieving Full Agency Inside All Arenas" (recording) (transcript):

Moritz Bierling returns for another marathon conversation about how individuals can be navigators of increasingly complex and dysfunctional communications arenas.

The primary focus is what Moritz refers to as the Agent/Arena Relationship. Arenas - be they social, political, cultural, or economic - are breaking down all around us, and many people struggle to figure out how to adapt and thrive (or maybe just survive) in this flux. We talk about how to achieve stability through adaptability in these situations.

Moritz Bierling is also a presenter in the first Un-Iversity Virtual Summit: Ideas Into Action. We discuss how to manage input overload and the concept of building a second brain.

Un-Iversity is another of School Sucks Project's initiatives which supercedes the SSP University (or perhaps, rebrands it).

Note there are also crypto addresses for SSP on many of these pages:

DASH; XcZfPP6GZGVo9VKViNBVJZja5JVxZDB229 
ETHEREUM; 0x3c5504CE3401C028832173506fa30BD4db4b7D35 
LITECOIN; LKNp24f5wwvZ2QzeDbvxXgBxyVwi1yXnu2 
BITCOIN; 1KhwY836cfSGCK5aaGFv8Q7PHMgghFJn1U 
BITCOIN CASH 1AmqLVxjw3Lp9KT5ckfvsqfN2Hn3B1hCWS
ZCASH; t1by1ZGJ63LoLSjXy27ooJtipf4wMr7qbu4

There are possible links between the main MetaCurrency / CommonsEngine (unsure which) funding wallet 0x2dfbb79b61e0ffa06953f157939098d3f0e77c83 (through which pospi received a grant from Arthur Brock facilitated by Ferananda Ibarra in ~2019) and these addresses. (If this account is CommonsEngine's then MetaCurrency or other HOLO master wallets are likely its main funders.)

It is also of note that the broadcast of these podcasts coincide directly with Moritz' official employment with HOLO:

(summary text:)

Holo.Host
1 year 6 months

Chief Catalyst
Oct 2018 - Dec 2019 (1 year 3 months)

Consultant: Partner Development, Solutions Design, & Communications
Jul 2018 - Sep 2018 (3 months)

Holochain's co-founder Art Brock has been directly aware of Moritz' intentions to market Holochain to alt-right libertarian audiences since at least Dec 22, 2017:

(comment text:)

Moritz Bierling @bierlingm-
.joerogan podcast with @artbrock when?

A post by Moritz on Pluribus is confirmed by company insiders to refer to his continued financial support from Art Brock and the MetaCurrency project.

There has been no denial from contacts within HOLO at the suggestion that Art's championing and funding of Moritz is intentional.

Brett Veinotte, Free Talk Live & The Free State Project

Brett talks about his story and reasons for starting the podcast in conversation with Joel Bein, who is also a long-time fan of the podcast (recording) (transcript). Joel appears to be an Internal Family Systems therapist who has created his own intensive repatterning therapy process:

The 1-1 HL experience is most certaintly one of safety, warmth, and compassion. But it is not therapy. With a largely “left-brained” process, we target core root problems and remove those problems, allowing for permanent healing and freedom.

We do integrate the framework that one’s mind and psyche is a system of parts, borrowed from Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS).

You’ll meet with Joel 1-hour a week for 12 weeks. Each week your life will change forever.

Expect to invest up $5K-$10k. Because we believe the ROI will be incalculable, you can also expect your future self will overflow with gratitude.

Brett also has a livestream online called "Understanding Conspiracy" (live at porcfest) (audio) (transcript):

Brett Veinotte joined the Renegade Variety Hour live at porcfest to discuss conspiracy, public school, and a number of different topics.

In an interview with him and Andy Wile, the intro says:

He also worked as writing consultant to a London School of Economics graduate student, advising on foreign policy issues and Austrian School Economics.

There are no pages for Andy Wile that I could find, but he is cached in DuckDuckGo SEO metadata as:

Mr. Anthony Wile is the Founder of Free-Market News Network. He is the Co-Founder and also served as the Director & Chief Executive Officer at PharmaCielo.

There is a trademark filing in the state of Florida which describes FMNN as "a community of independent thinkers" offering "online services featuring providing monthly research reports, special interest news bulletins and books".

On the Patreon page for School Sucks there is an endorsement in the screenshotted testimonials linking Brett to the 'Free Talk Live' Podcast.

Cool show man I already knew about you through FTL (freetalklive.com) so was pleasantly surprised to see you at the top of the list of the educational podcasts keep it up

Free Talk Live calls itself

Talk Radio's # 1 Pro-Liberty Show

The podcast's host Ian Freeman goes by 'Free Keene' online (possible alias of Ian Back). He is a regular attendee of Porcfest, the same festival that Brett is recorded speaking at.

I had the pleasure of speaking from the main stage at Porcfest 2022, the biggest, sold-out Porcfest ever. My speech was about the history of Free Talk Live and the FBI's obsession with the Free State Project, specifically agent Phil Christiana. Thank you to Dennis Pratt and the rest of the Porcfest crew for having me back!

On this page there are also some hints at internal conflict within the Free State Project:

Freeman got booted from the FSP for stating that their should be no age of consent as enforced by the fedguv.

False. I was kicked out of their events for one year because of my libertarian opinions on age of consent. I resigned from the FSP as a result. However, I don't hold a grudge and practice forgiveness. So, all is now well.

Ian has many relationships within The Free State Project network:

Last week I was honored to return as a guest on “Liberty Conspiracy” with Gardner Goldsmith, which also featured Carla Gericke from The Free State Project. Here’s the video archive.

He has been sentenced to 8 years in prison for Bitcoin scams.

Last month, one of the victims described herself as a lonely widow who got scammed by a man she met on a dating site. At his instruction, she sent $300,000 to Freeman, wiping out her life’s savings.

Sheriff David Hathaway of Santa Cruz County, Arizona, described Freeman as an “advocate for freedom and the American dream” and “promoting free trade capitalism and individual liberty.”

See The Crypto Six for Ian's portrayal of events:

In the early morning hours of Tuesday, Mar. 16, 2021, federal agents, local law enforcement, and half a dozen other 3-letter agencies kicked in the doors at Free Talk Live’s studio, the Bitcoin Embassy, and the Shire Free Church, among other places arresting 6 individuals and confiscating several Bitcoin vending machines, computers, and other personal items over the bastardly crime of selling crypto without a government permission slip.

According to Wikipedia, Porcfest (or "The Porcupine Freedom Festival") is:

an event held annually every June since 2004 in the U.S. state of New Hampshire. The festival is the main event held by the Free State Project, a libertarian organization that advocates for the relocation of libertarians to New Hampshire in order to make the state a stronghold for their movement. The festival has been described as "the libertarian version of Burning Man" and "the largest gathering of libertarians in the world". The festival on average hosts approximately 1,500 attendees.

The Shire Free Church is attached to a whole vision for a new Shire Society, with its own declaration of rights:

Shire Society Declaration

WE, THE UNDERSIGNED witnesses to the lesson of history — that no form of political governance may be relied upon to secure the individual rights of life, liberty, or property — now therefore establish and provide certain fundamental precepts measuring our conduct toward one another, and toward others:

FIRST, each individual is the exclusive proprietor of his or her own existence and all products thereof, holding no obligations except those created by consent;

SECOND, no individual or association of individuals, however constituted, has the right to initiate force against any other individual;

THIRD, each individual has the inalienable right of self-defense against the initiation of force;

FOURTH, explicit voluntary association is the only means by which binding obligations may be created, and claims based on association or relationships to which any party did not consent are empty and invalid;

FIFTH, rights are neither collective nor additive in character, and no group can possess rights in excess of those belonging to its individual members;

We hereby declare our commitment to peace, individual sovereignty, and independence, and join the Shire Society.

The immigration page contains an explicit articulation of New Hampshire as the libertarian dream destination, specifically Keene and Manchester.

While you can be in the Shire as a state of mind, it makes sense to live close to others who believe as you do. You are encouraged to immiGREAT to the Shire.

This all ties together their intentions into a pretty cohesive and well-organised political vision. From Wikipedia:

The Free State Project originated from a 2001 essay by then-Yale University student (and later lecturer at Dartmouth College) Jason Sorens. The idea behind the project is to get 20,000 libertarians to move to New Hampshire, a state with a low population where a group of that size could yield significant political influence. By 2014, about 1,500 libertarians had already moved to the state, and several "Free Staters" have been elected to the state government, including Andrew Prout of the New Hampshire House of Representatives.