this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2024
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Anarchism

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Discuss anarchist praxis and philosophy. Don't take yourselves too seriously.


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I was originally planning to copy the whole post in a lemmy body, but mastodon makes it too painful to copy-paste as it truncates each link and images have to be copied manually. I also don't know if it fits in a post body. Anyway, If anyone wants to try their hand at copy pasting it in its entirety here, feel free.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

The divine right of kings was conceptualized in England by James I of the Stuart Dynasty in the 17th century, following the growing absolutism of the Tudors, and effectively ended just fifty years later when Cromwell executed Charles I.

Hardly two thousand years worth of it, even if you want to talk about how the idea wasn't simply an English conceit.

My point isn't that the fall of Rome didn't usher in a dark age of democracy, even by Roman standards, but rather that claiming divine right is actually a pretty small portion of history, the Roman Emperors for example spent a lot of time talking about how they actually had the consent of the governed, even the ones who would execute you for treason for denying that they were literally a god.

And, of course, never forget what the most compelling counterargument to it is.

We can call it "sharply withdrawing the consent of the governed"