The truth is that the modern financial system which underwrites empire was born of 13th century Italian city-state banking benefiting from trade routes opened up by The Crusades’ particularly militant brand of Christianity.

This use of religion as a tool for the objectification and subsequent enslavement of mankind continued unchecked through the following century of exploration into the “new world.” By the late-1800’s hierarchical organizations dominated the earth, claiming the right to access anything they termed “profitable” with the nation-state as their preferred means of enforcement.

Religion and nationality were now the “cultural glue” to enforce a clearly predatory world order through selective interpretations of human history and natural science which justified current power structures. But as Peter Kropotkin’s life work attests, cracks were starting to appear in the argument for “western civilization” as society cannibalized its commons.