Monthly Archives: August 2017

Last December as the smoke was clearing from the electoral explosion and many of us were still shell-shocked and wandering around blindly searching for emotional shelter, Salons Matthew Sheffieldwrote a series of articlesabout the rise of the alt-right. The movement had been discussed during the campaign, of course. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton even gave a big speech about it. Trumps campaign strategist and chiefconsigliere, Steve Bannon the once and future executive editor of Breitbart News had even bragged that his operation was the platform of the alt-right just a few months earlier. But after the election there was more interest than ever in this emerging political movement.

Its an interesting story about a group of non-interventionist right-wingers, who came together in the middle of the last decade in search of solidarity in their antipathy toward the Bush administrations wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a motley group of conservatives, white nationalists and Libertarians that broke apart almost as soon as they came together. The more clever among them saw the potential for this new brand and began to market themselves as the alt-right, and it eventually morphed into what it is today. The series is a good read and explains that the alt-right really was a discrete new movement within the far right wing and not simply a clever renaming of racist and Nazi groups.

This week, conservative writer Matt Lewis of The Daily Beast, a Trump critic,wrote a pieceabout the Libertarian influence on the alt-right and suggested that Libertarians work harder to distance themselves from this now-infamous movement. He points out that former Rep. Ron Pauls presidential campaigns were a nexus of what became alt-right activism. Sheffield had written about that too:

Pretty much all of the top personalities at the Right Stuff, a neo-Nazi troll mecca, started off as conventional libertarians and Paul supporters, according to the sites creator, an anonymous man who goes by the name Mike Enoch.

We were all libertarians back in the day. I mean, everybody knows this,he said on an alt-right podcast last month. [Note: This podcast seems to have been deleted.]

It wasnt just obscure neo-Nazi trolls. Virtually all the prominent figures in or around the alt-right movement, excepting sympathizers and fellow travelers like Bannon and Donald Trump himself, were Paul supporters:Richard Spencer,Paul Gottfried, Jared Taylor,Milo Yiannopoulosand Alex Jones. (The latter two deny being part of the alt-right, but have unquestionably contributed to its rise in prominence.) Pauls online support formed the basis for what would become the online alt-right, the beating heart of the new movement.

In fact, Ron Paul then a Texas congressman and the father of Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was the original alt-right candidate, long before Donald Trump came along. Paul was also, by far, the most popular Libertarian in America.

Those of us observing the Paul phenomenon and Libertarianism from the left always found it curious in this regard. Pauls racism was simply undeniable.It was documented for decades. He hid behind the states rights argument, as pro-Confederate racists have always done, but it was never very convincing. If you are a principled Libertarian who believes in small government and inalienable individual rights, what difference does it make whether a federal or state government is the instrument of oppression?

Most of us thought a lot of Pauls appeal, especially to young white males, came down to a loathing for the uptight religious conservatism of the GOP, along with Pauls endorsement of drug legalization. That made some sense. Why would all these young dudes care about the capital gains tax?

And lets face facts, it wasnt just Libertarians who could be dazzled by Pauls iconoclasm.There were plenty of progressives drawn to his isolationist stance as well.But as it turns out, among that group of Atlas Shrugged fans and stoners were a whole lot of white supremacists, all of whom abandoned Ron Pauls son Rand in 2016 when Donald Trump came along and spoke directly to their hearts and minds.

Is there something about Libertarianism that attracts white supremacists? It seems unlikely, except to the extent that it was a handy way to argue against federal civil rights laws, something that both Paulpreandfilsendorsed during their careers, legitimizing that point of view as a Libertarian principle. (In fairness, Rand Paul has tried to pursue more progressive racial policies in recent years which may also have helped drive away his dads supporters.) Other than that, though, it seems to me that Libertarianism has simply been a way station for young and angry white males as they awaited theirGod Emperor, as they call Trump on the wildly popular alt-right site, r/The_Donald.

Still, Libertarians do have something to answer for. While principled Libertarianslike Cathy Youngcertainly condemned the racism in their ranks at the time, but others who supported Ron Paul failed to properly condemn the rank bigotry undergirding the Paul philosophy.

Lewiss Daily Beast piece certainly provoked some reaction among Libertarians. Nick Gillespie at Reasonobjectedto the characterization of Libertarianism as a pipeline to the alt-right, writing that the alt-right and Trumpism, too, to the extent that it has any coherence is an explicit rejection of foundational libertarian beliefs in free trade and free migration along with experiments in living that make a mess of rigid categories that appeal to racists, sexists, protectionists, and other reactionaries. So he rejects calls to purge Libertarianism of alt-righters, since he believes they were never really Libertarians in the first place.

Gillespie does, however, agree that Libertarian true believers should call out such people wherever we find them espousing their anti-modern, tribalistic, anti-individualistic, and anti-freedom agenda. (It would have been easy to include racist in that list but, being generous, perhaps he meant it to fall under the term tribalistic.)

Meanwhile, over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Jonathan Adler addresses some Libertariansmisplaced affinity for the Confederacy,a phenomenon I must admit I didnt know existed. Evidently,there really are Libertarianswho take the side of the secessionists, supposedly on the basis of tariffs and Abraham Lincolns allegedly monstrous record on civil liberties. Adler patiently explains why this is all nonsense and wrote, Libertarianism may not be responsible for the alt-right, but its fair to ask whether enough libertarians have done enough to fight it within their own ranks.

Good for these prominent Libertarians for being willing to confront the currents of racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia that at the very least have contaminated their movement. We await the same honest self-appraisal from the conservative movement and Republican leaders as a whole.

Continued here:
Now the Libertarians have known sin: Reckoning with the rise of the alt-right - Salon

If you speak to any political activist operating outside of the two-party mainstream, a common point mentioned is how party politics compromises principles. Republicans often sacrifice conservative principles to advance the party elite. Although individuals such as House Speaker Paul Ryan or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are considered leaders in the Republican Party, conservative activists generally do not consider them standard bearers of their cause. Case in point is the failure to legitimately repeal Obamacare.

The same is said for many liberals and progressives in terms of the Democratic Party. Instead of nominating someone more devout to their cause such as Senator Bernie Sanders, the party elite opted for Hillary Clinton, a mistake possibly responsible for Trumps unexpected presidency. The Democratic Party seems more concerned with the party elite than advancing their principles.

So why would the Libertarian Party be any different?

Libertarian National Committee chairman Nicholas Sarwark has an active presence online, targeting individuals who stand at odds with his party. This is not unusual, as across the country, Republicans figuratively snipe at Democrats and vice versa. Even on that rare occasion there is common ground among both sides, partisanship always reigns supreme. It is a fact of life in todays political climate.

But with the last election, the Libertarian Party sought to brand itself as the sane alternate to the madness of the two-party duopoly. The problem is that the partys own chairman contradicts this own line of logic.

Sarwark has criticized libertarian icon, former Texas Congressman Ron Paul as well as his libertarian-leaning son Senator Rand Paul. More recently, he has taken aim at historian Tom Woods. The recurring theme is Sarwarks love for hurling insults at non-Libertarians, even the ones that are simply unenrolled libertarians.

Is this healthy for the cause of liberty?

The liberty movement had a very brief moment of unity in 2012 when Ron Paul ran for President, but after that, the movement splintered almost immediately. Libertarians want success for the Libertarian Party, but many Paul-aligned activists remain within the Republican Party. In a number of ways, libertarianism has fallen victim to a tug-o-war between political parties.

So where does this leave Sarwark?

The question ultimately lies where his loyalties are and to a degree, what the aim of the Libertarian Party is.

Is the Libertarian Party in existence to advance its own brand, or does it exist to advance libertarian principles? More importantly, do these goals align?

If the answer to the latter question is yes, then the Libertarian Party would support causes that advance libertarian principles. Nobody is arguing that the Ron, Rand, or Woods are perfect. With that being said, it is undeniable that these individuals have made a significant contribution to liberty. Given Sarwarks attacks, its then easy to assume that advancing the Libertarian Party and the cause of liberty are not parallel causes.

So where does that leave the Libertarian Party?

Ultimately, the Libertarian Party is a lot like the Republican Party. Candidates, activists and scattered leaders may genuinely identify with the principled cause, but the party structure works contrary to it. Political parties work contrary to principles, whether it be Republicans with conservatism or Libertarians with libertarianism.

When Sarwark attacks prominent libertarian figures simply because they dont identify with individuals such as Gary Johnson or Bill Weld, he is setting back the cause of liberty in favor of pushing his brand. This may be his job as a party chairman, but lets not operate under the assumption that he is working towards the goal of advancing liberty.

See the original post here:
How The Libertarian Party's Partisan Politics Hurts Libertarianism - The Liberty Conservative

Libertarians wrestle with the alt-right

Christopher Cantwell, the self-described anti-Semite and alt-right activist who starred in a viral Vice News documentary about the deadly protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, is now facing three charges based on his conduct.

Unlike some of the other marchers, Cantwell was no stranger to confrontations with authority. In New Hampshire, his sudden fame startled libertarians who had known Cantwell as a busy, talkative but increasingly extreme anti-government activist. In 2012, he arrived in the state as a vocal support of Ron Paul's 2012 presidential campaign, and as a critic of the police - a hot issue in Keene, a college town in western New Hampshire with a robust libertarian population. At some point in the Obama years, he had changed.

"Until the last year or two of his life, he'd been a libertarian activist with no known racist streak," wrote Ian Freeman, a radio host and commentator in the "Free Keene" movement, in a post last week. "A couple of years ago, he began down this road to his current skinhead-racist form and once that happened, we had to dump him as a co-host of my radio show, Free Talk Live. As libertarians, we believe in the individual and don't see people as groups based on color, gender, or religion. Chris now only sees the group rather than the individual. He's one of the few people who has turned away from the libertarian message after having embraced it."

But in Cantwell's own words, he had come to racism and anti-Semitism through libertarianism - not by abandoning it. Cantwell's story is one of several that have made libertarians ask fresh questions about the turns that their movement took in the Obama years, as Paul's two Republican bids for president consolidated everyone from anti-government "voluntaryists" to racist conspiracy theorists into one roiling campaign.

"I've been concerned about some libertarians trending alt-right, because these hard alt-right proto-fascists and neo-Nazis have been trolling libertarians for years," said the libertarian writer Jeffrey Tucker, who has written extensively about the racist threat to the movement. "They're doing to libertarianism what they did to Pepe the frog, or Taylor Swift - to co-opt it. They know that no normal American is going to rally around the Nazi flag, so they're taking ours."

But as Cantwell himself pointed out, a debate about racism - and racism's political utility - had been taking place among libertarians for decades. Ron Paul first ran for president in 1988, drawing media attention but bringing his Libertarian Party less than 1 percent of the vote. In the wake of that defeat, the libertarian thinker Murray Rothbard argued that the movement needed to take a page from the campaigns of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Libertarians, stuck in a losing effort to win "yuppies," needed to realize the potency of an appeal to white working-class voters, one that explained how shrinking the state would mean fewer benefits devolved to people not like them.

"The proper strategy of libertarians and paleos is a strategy of 'right-wing populism,' that is: to expose and denounce this unholy alliance, and to call for getting this preppie underclass-liberal media alliance off the backs of the rest of us: the middle and working classes," Rothbard wrote.

In an essay published at his personal website last week, Cantwell cited Rothbard as one of the thinkers who had moved him from generic anti-state activism, toward racism.

"What I realized in the course of my inquiries, is that the people everyone called racists weren't claiming that race was a reliable way of judging individuals. They were only observing demographic trends, and hate was not the focus of their efforts. They were trying to reduce the amount of conflict and violence in their society, and they figured out that discrimination based on ethnic categories was an efficient method of accomplishing this goal.

"That seemed to coincide well with my libertarianism. Libertarians also want to reduce conflict over scarce resources. In libertarian philosophy, nobody ought to be compelled to associate with anyone else. People should be free to exercise complete control over their own person and property. If blacks are committing crimes, or Jews are spreading communism, discriminating against them is the right of any property owner."

Mainstream libertarians were worried about the spread of ideas like that. Paul's campaigns, which some cosmopolitan libertarians viewed skeptically, took their philosophy to new heights of political support. It also, indisputably, won the support of some white supremacists. In 2007, as Paul was rising in polls for what had been a quixotic presidential bid, he appeared as a guest speaker for the Robert Taft Club, led by Richard Spencer - the same Richard Spencer who, after the 2008 election, coined the term "alt-right."

This year, when Spencer was invited to talk to some attendees of the International Students for Liberty conference, Jeffrey Tucker confronted him in an exchange filmed from several angles and shared by alt-right activists who thought that Spencer got the better of it. "I used to read your articles," Spencer said, mockingly, while Tucker accused him of trying to troll the conference.

The confrontation had been a long time coming. In 2014, Tucker had written an essay against what he called "libertarian brutalism," defining it as an anti-liberal tendency that grew out of a perversion of libertarian principles.

"The brutalists are technically correct that liberty also protects the right to be a complete jerk and the right to hate, but such impulses do not flow from the long history of the liberal idea," he wrote. "As regards race and sex, for example, the liberation of women and minority populations from arbitrary rule has been a great achievement of this tradition. To continue to assert the right to turn back the clock in your private and commercial life gives an impression of the ideology that is uprooted from this history, as if these victories for human dignity have nothing whatever to do with the ideological needs of today."

One of Tucker's critics, at the time, was Christopher Cantwell. "What we 'brutalists' are saying is, egalitarianism is not the means or end of libertarianism, and saying otherwise in hopes of attracting Democrats into our ranks is illusory," he wrote. "When you repeat statist race propaganda, do you grow our ranks? No. You simply distract from the point that race is irrelevant."

Three years later, having substantially changed his views on race, Cantwell would turn himself in to police after bragging about his actions at a rally organized by racists.

One person was killed and 19 were injured amid protests of a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 12. Here's how the city became the scene of violence. (Video: Elyse Samuels, Zoeann Murphy/Photo: Evelyn Hockstein/The Washington Post)

Washington Post News Service (DC)

8/24/2017 6:35:21 PM Central Daylight Time

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