Understanding Libertarianism in the Current Moment
Photo by metrogogo, CC BY-SA 2.0
Today on Twitter – I refused to call it anything other than that; I lived through Prince’s shenanigans – a popular Libertarian decided to question the veracity of a picture of a child’s blood-soaked room in Israel. Many of her reply guys cheered her on, while rational human beings were appropriately disgusted. I’m not going to share the tweet because, firstly, the picture is disgusting and while I agree that there is a value to people confronting the reality of man-made horror, I’m also not interested in deciding that for others. Secondly, there is, unfortunately, a clickbait-on-speed aspect to Twitter at the moment that monetizes engagement, even if it’s people piling on like an old-time cartoon fumble to tell you how awful you are. There is literal value to be gained out of this sort of behavior.
To those thinking that my linking of a person with antisemitic views and libertarianism is a case of mere coincidence, let me explain. I do not believe that libertarianism qua libertarianism is somehow inherently linked, the rumors about Murray Rothbard aside. What I am saying is that ways of thinking lead many – but not all! – people to libertarianism contain the seeds that often, watered and fed sufficiently, bear strange, antisemitic fruit.
To begin with, an anecdote. Fifteen or so years ago, a friend at work had her first child, a son. I knew that she and her husband were Free Staters, libertarians who moved to New Hampshire in order to build enough of a community to get ballot access. They were – and I don’t think they’d challenge this description – hard core libertarians. Well, after her son was born she began a personal anti-circumcision campaign on Facebook. The material – the memes, the links – were unvarnished antisemitism, all hook-nosed rabbis in Chick Tract-style caricature. It was unmistakable. If you’ve never seen it, don’t look it up. Trust me: That way lies madness.
A second anecdote: Have you seen the sort of material put out by the purportedly official Twitter account for the New Hampshire Libertarian Party?
Calm down, Bryan! you may say. These are individuals, you can’t tar an entire movement with their misdeeds!
Know what? You’re right; I don’t. In fact, there are big chunks of the libertarian view of government that I can sympathize with. There are even libertarian thinkers whose work I support. That said, if I was ever a libertarian, I am not now.
I use the above three anecdotes to highlight what I said before: There are ways of viewing the world which can simultaneously predispose one to libertarianism and antisemitism.
Allow me to provide a scenario: An individual considers himself to be the victim of powers beyond his control. After considering his options, he decides that government is the problem and that the less of it the better. He has become a libertarian. That first sentence is critically important, however. It opens the door to conspiracism. What if the oppressor isn’t merely an overactive administrative state, but also shadowy powers, puppet masters, globalists, rootless cosmopolitans and the like.
This person can become skeptical to the point of assuming that everything is orchestrated. In an effort to never get fooled, they volunteer to play the fool. They just ask questions. In assuming that global politics is merely a puppet show, they make themselves fertile ground for the seeds of stereotype and prejudice.
Again, this is not every libertarian. This is not meant as a polemic against libertarianism. However, the basic tenets of libertarianism draw some people with poor social impulses and instincts.
The dinner party game of “Who goes Trumpist” is always interesting.
One of the things to note is that different people can arrive at a similar political position via very different routes and have very different ideas camouflaged under common rhetoric.
This is why the “horseshoe” theory exists, that extreme leftists and extreme rightists are indistinguishable.
In my experience, people who are insecure and angry and unsettled often flee to extremes- extreme religious practices, or extreme political practices which offer a simplified “Everything You Think Is Right” type of stuff.
In other words, underneath seemingly reasonable positions like “We should reduce government involvement in our lives” or “We should increase government assistance” can lurk dark personal motives.Report
You’re not wrong to want a nut-free dessert, but neither is it especially profound to note that whenever you look for nuts you find them.Report
What are two of the main conspiracy theories about Jews?
1. We are rootless cosmopolitans that control the world by controlling banking, finance, and the media; and
2. We are rootless cosmopolitans that seek to destroy traditions and religion through our support of International Communism and control of the media.
Something for everyone basically.Report
Sounds good. Where do I sign up? And will I get a share of the proceeds?Report
Libertarianism always had an interesting relationship with Israel. Many Libertarians found a lot to love about Israel but others just hated it with all their hearts and would speak about Israel in language that you could think would come from the Far Left. On the other blog, people who would decry Sandy Hook trutherism are engaging in Kfar Aza trutherism or are basically trying to argue that the proper Israel response is to come out and do nothing.
The literal day after the Simchat Torah massacre, there were Pro-Palestinian protests blaming the entire thing on Israel even before Israel did anything in response. Very few people were able to update their priors on Israel. On the other blog, only one poster who was previously harsh on Israel is reevaluating his positions. Others are sticking to their guns.Report
However, the basic tenets of Trumpism draw some people with poor social impulses and instincts.
However, the basic tenets of ANTIFA draw some people with poor social impulses and instincts.
However, the basic tenets of Trivia Night Tuesdays draw some people with poor social impulses and instincts.
Etc
Etc
Etc
Show me the group and I’ll find you some assholes.Report
This article made me ponder for a good little bit. Not because I was particularly conflicted- I’m not, I think you’re at least partially wrong, but I had to mull over how/where I think you’re wrong.
What I settled on, finally, was that I think we need to separate the blanket term into two pieces. Libertarian thinkers/elite and the libertarian entertainers, rank and file so to speak. This is necessary because I think your analysis is applicable to one group of libertarians but not the overall movement.
I am not a libertarian myself but I consider my self passingly familiar with libertarian thought. Anyone who argues on behalf on liberals on the internet pretty much needs to be because in our modern history pretty much every non-libertarian right wing though process has atrophied into feeble incoherent glop and it has had to be left to libertarians to hold the line. So most internet liberals and our lefty brethren have often found ourselves tangling with libertarians online because, frankly, everyone else is either easily routed or trolls themselves out of the conversation.
Libertarian thinkers who subscribe to and, to a degree, shape the ideological tenants of libertarianism are, in my opinion, mostly resistant to the phenomena you’re describing. Ideologically absolutely nothing in libertarianism is congenial to the fostering of antisemitism. Ideological libertarians think government is inept and inefficient- not necessarily malevolent except incidentally in its ineptitude and inefficiency. That’s not a mindset that is geared to conspiracy thinking. The idea that government is running a profound and wide spanning conspiracy against the masses is ludicrous to pure libertarian ideologues; the government can’t even efficiently operate the most rudimentary functions in their view. The idea that the state could run, and keep secret, a vast conspiracy is laughable. To think the state is capable of such a thing would, almost necessarily, disqualify one as a libertarian thinker. I would bet good money that any antisemite libertarian would be utterly dismantled in a debate by an actual, serious ideological libertarian.
Libertarian rank and file, and especially libertarians who’re not so much thinkers as, well, entertainers who’re in it for the money. Now this bunch is the kind of libertarians who’d be entirely susceptible to what you’re talking about in this article. Some are in it to trigger the leftists, some to have fun, some because they vaguely approve of libertarian nostrums, etc… and the libertarian entertainers who’re looking for money over all (a laudable goal from a libertarian point of view) likely find it lamentably easy to make some ducats from the passionate and highly engaged ranks of antisemites.
Now this may come as me giving libertarians an easy out but I don’t think I am. Libertarianism is constitutionally uneasy about policing discourse and regulating, well, anything. When you combine this dislike of regulation with several other truisms about modern organizing what it amounts to is that the prospects of libertarianism ever becoming a mass movement strikes me as vanishingly remote. Someone, somewhere, once wittily stated that if your forum moderators have excessive tolerance for nazi’s in a forum then you will shortly find themselves with a forum full of nazi’s and no one else. I’ve been unable to find the original author- just know it’s not my idea. It’s highly applicable to Libertarians as a political movement. First because it’s a very small movement in terms of actual voter support (miniscule in fact) so it’s incredibly easy to hijack. You just need to have a charismatic voice and some deep pocketed supporters and you’re off to the races. We’ve seen this repeatedly over my own adult lifetime as libertarians ended up hijacked over and over. In the early aughts they got hijacked by social cons and neocons after 9/11. For my entire adult life it’s been unambiguous that the wealthy “cut taxes, nothing else matters” crowd has had a strong hand on the libertarian tiller and now, in these weary modern days, it seems the anti-feminists, anti-liberals and antisemites are having a turn at the wheel. I am dubious that this is a curable defect in libertarianism and it’s why I do not think libertarianism will ever graduate from much more than they are now.
For me libertarianism will always be a useful mental razor or null hypothesis to measure my own liberalism against and I’ve known and profoundly respected many libertarians and libertarian thinkers but I honestly don’t believe there’s much “more” for libertarianism in the future and that’s a little sad really.Report
It’s absolutely hilariously that you wasted that many words on something that could have been summed up in a single sentence.Report
I mean, most of the more reasonable libertarians, have either completely become conservatives as even right-leaning states OK marijuana use (ie. most libertarians) or moderate Democrat’s (your Jared Polises of the world), so the only people left to claim libertarianism outside of whatever billionaire is currently funding Reason to keep Nick Gillepsie in his permanent midlife crisis of buying leather jackets is online weirdos who think you should be able to give heroin to the 9 year old you’re dating, as you don’t wear a seat belt unlicensed.Report
A million years ago, when I realized I couldn’t be a libertarian anymore, it was because I got out into the world and saw, up close, what an actual alien culture looked like. I mean, sure. I had been to England and Italy and Germany and Scotland but those cultures are cousins, if you will, to the one that I have (indeed, I visited cousins in Scotland).
Libertarianism only works if it has a very particular foundation.
Without that foundation, it’s little more than a null hypothesis at best. At its worst… well… see above.Report
I always regretted not commenting on that article. I wasn’t sure what to say but I really felt I should have commented. I still don’t know what to say.Report
It was a small grief at the time.
Now it’s like “man, did I get out when the getting was good!”
(The fact that it’s recently been publicized that the Hamas leadership lives high on the hog in Qatar has made me want to repost my series… but… eh. Whatever.)Report
It’s weird, I feel like Hamas leadership hiding in luxury in Qatar was always well known. *shrugs*Report
It’s been well known among people who hate Hamas but not necessarily among those that see them as plunky freedom fighters or doesn’t really pay attention to Middle East politics.Report