Why libertarians embraced fascism

July 9, 2021 1:43 PM

Adam Smith to Richard Spencer: Why Libertarians turn to the Alt-Right [SLMedium, 2018] To understand why libertarians are so susceptible to white supremacist ideas, we have to look at the history of it, specifically within the United States. The fact is that libertarianism has always been a refuge of racism and implicit support for authoritarianism, despite direct contradiction to their supposed ideology.
posted by heatherlogan (63 comments total)

Libertarians have the "in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind," side of things down perfectly.
posted by Horkus at 1:58 PM on July 9, 2021 [63 favorites]

"Quite frankly, the left is pretty terrible at explaining its ideas."

QFT. A good place to start redressing this is with kliuless' posts market socialism/inclusive prosperity and The Entrepreneurial State.
posted by No Robots at 2:10 PM on July 9, 2021 [14 favorites]

Man, if this was a different forum, I'd be reaching for the "they're the same picture" meme right about now.

Quite frankly, the left is pretty terrible at explaining its ideas. I’m a Marxist, but if I started talking to a libertarian and using words like Proletariat and Leninism, they would bolt back to their reactionary ideology straightaway.

Libertarianism has always been a thinly veiled version of "fuck you, I've got mine (and am going to keep it)" while pretending that (at the very least) that you're not benefiting from society and standing on the backs of others.

There's not much hope of using Marxism, no matter how well explained, to try to convince unempathetic haves to care about the have-nots. It's better to spend the time reaching far more moderate but still right leaning people and swinging society left that way. But even then you'll have a better chance of arguing using Keynesian economics to show how a robust support system for the working class will have good outcomes for the well off than arguing for the workers seizing the means of production.
posted by Candleman at 2:28 PM on July 9, 2021 [50 favorites]

Libertarianism has always been a thinly veiled version of "fuck you, I've got mine (and am going to keep it)"

I don’t think that’s completely fair. There’s a utopian ideology in there that sees discrimination and poverty as the result of a misguided (at best) state. You can certainly cross a line from libertarianism into leftist anarchism; they’re closer cousins than it seems at first.
posted by mr_roboto at 2:37 PM on July 9, 2021 [16 favorites]

Recent events have made me consider a paradox. Some people are considering a twitter ban to be abridging their freedom of speech. What they are suggesting is that the law should force Twitter to publish their bullshit. So their remedy for their perceived violation of 1A rights, is to violate Twitter's 1A rights.

You can see how this makes no fucking sense, yet they believe it so passionately, the logic eludes them.
posted by adept256 at 2:37 PM on July 9, 2021 [19 favorites]

Some people are considering a twitter ban to be abridging their freedom of speech.

I wonder if these are the same people who want the government to keep its hands off of their Medicare.
posted by heatherlogan at 2:40 PM on July 9, 2021 [8 favorites]

Per Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" The left isn't bad at explaining its ideas so much as libertarians have already put any mention of certain terms in their killfile.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:41 PM on July 9, 2021 [20 favorites]

When Robert Heilbroner predicted the rise of 'Iron Governments' as humanity plunged headlong into the pit of ecological catastrophe it has for generations been digging for itself, I wonder whether he realized those governments would almost universally deny that the problem existed in the the first place, making the problems worse even as The End rose up to meet them at quite literally breathtaking speed.

Evangelical Christianity is an Apocalyptic Cult.

But contemporary Libertarianism is a Post-apocalyptic Cult: once the dross of humanity is finally cleared away, the semi-divine Libertarians will emerge from their refuges and run the world the way it's supposed to be run -- Forever and Ever, Amen.
posted by jamjam at 2:42 PM on July 9, 2021 [30 favorites]

There's not much hope of using Marxism, no matter how well explained, to try to convince unempathetic haves to care about the have-nots

Out in the most rural parts of California where it's hard to find more extreme examples of have-nots short of people who are actually homeless, "libertarianism" is absolutely dominant. For many, many people in those areas their philosophy isn't "Fuck you, I got mine," it's more "I've been on food stamps and welfare. Anyone help me out? No."

And they swung harder for Trump in 2020 than they did even in 2016.
posted by tclark at 2:42 PM on July 9, 2021 [42 favorites]

That American capital-L Libertarianism is entirely consistent with fascism is only a potential mystery if one doesn't realize that American capital-L Libertarianism is the separate philosophy built off of the work of Ayn Rand, not 19th century lowercase-l European libertarianism-as-a-synonym for anarchism. Or what the pull quote and Candleman both said. Despite the confusing nomenclature, the two political philosophies are as different as national socialism and actual socialism.
posted by eviemath at 3:11 PM on July 9, 2021 [25 favorites]

Interesting article. I think you do see some people waking up, and realizing that they started off following a new atheist and ended up following a neo-nazi. I actually think the way this will be prevented, is through a cyber-security strategy by the government that counteracts the cyber-indoctrination strategy pursued by the authoritarian far-right, which is closely linked to the fossil fuel industry.

I hope I don't sound like a conspiracy theorist, the article is really good for pointing out the natural link between these two groups (libertarians and alt-right), and why certain arguments appeal to both. No conspiratorial thinking required here, there **is** a natural link between the ideologies, as we've been saying on the left for years. But not every libertarian accepted this link, and now that it's so nakedly obvious, if they can take the step out of their social group and look around they might wonder how it's reached this point.
posted by subdee at 3:11 PM on July 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

A lot of libertarians have also always been against govt mandating civil rights & protections. How anyone could hold that position given the history of the county is beyond me.
posted by asra at 3:26 PM on July 9, 2021 [4 favorites]

American "libertarianism" is an appropriation of actual libertarianism that serves only to shift the Overton window enough to make liberalism seem palatable.

Liberals love the causes but pretend to not like the symptoms.
Fascists are just liberals who admit liking both.
posted by Bangaioh at 3:26 PM on July 9, 2021 [4 favorites]

omg the alt-right pipeline cartoon (should link to just the image) included as an illustration in the essay..... the racist fear-mongering is so stupid that it seems like a parody of racist fear-mongering.
posted by spamandkimchi at 3:33 PM on July 9, 2021 [12 favorites]

I've always been of the opinion that (old-time, non-Randian) libertarianism and Marxism are at the idealistic tips of the ideological horseshoe, curving back to meet each other: they both make the mistake of assuming some innate human perfection that could shine through if only the obstacles placed in our way by incorrect ideologies were removed.

But today's Randian ideology is obviously the kind of thing that could only appeal to latent white supremacists, the sort of guys (they're mostly guys) who are convinced that in a true meritocracy, they'll come out on top, and it's only the unfairly levelling effects of the nanny state preventing them from rising über alles.
posted by adamrice at 3:38 PM on July 9, 2021 [15 favorites]

American capital-L Libertarianism is the separate philosophy built off of the work of Ayn Rand, not 19th century lowercase-l European libertarianism-as-a-synonym for anarchism.

This is a good point and seems to perfectly explain why American libertarianism has so little in common with, say, the Spanish Civil War libertarians.
posted by splitpeasoup at 4:02 PM on July 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

I mean you can look at it through a historical analysis of movements or philosophical traditions, but there’s also something to the school of thought that it’s about an aesthetic: these are just arseholes, just annoying, bad people, who are into pissing other people off for the sake of the act. Punk’s not dead, it just shaved its head
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:20 PM on July 9, 2021 [5 favorites]

omg the alt-right pipeline cartoon (should link to just the image) included as an illustration in the essay.....

And not a single woman in the entire comic. Huh.
posted by rmd1023 at 4:22 PM on July 9, 2021 [23 favorites]

>> > It is only when there are forced or
>> >controled or taxed or other taken king's markets set up by the
>> >king's men to live by looting off the backs of the productive
>> >real wealth producers that all the evils, including wars, of
>> >socialism follow.
>>
>> Rather simplistic, isn't it?

>Yes! it's fairly simple.

Sure, all the freedom you can buy, and not one drop more.
That's the Libertarian Party philosophy.

-- Doug Bashford, posted to sci.econ, January, 2001

(round & round we go!)
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 4:22 PM on July 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

I don’t think that’s completely fair. There’s a utopian ideology in there that sees discrimination and poverty as the result of a misguided (at best) state.

To clarify, I (and as far as I can tell, the original article) am referring to right-wing libertarianism, which at least as practiced the the US may pay some lip service to a few ideas like that, but remarkably always start with the idea that those who already own property will continue to own them and set whatever fees they desire which merely perpetuates "the rich stay rich." They're more or less Republicans who want legal weed and don't hate gays (as much) and might be OK with abortion. The term has become tainted to the point that I doubt many left-wing libertarians would use the word to describe themselves in the US - I have known a fair number of anarchists and other people who might fit under the umbrella of left-wing libertarianism, and none of them use the word for themselves.
posted by Candleman at 4:59 PM on July 9, 2021 [5 favorites]

“Not a single woman in the entire comic. Huh.”

I think libertarianism has a gender demographic problem. IIRC, some people’s way through the pipeline is writing off other types of people as too stupid to want the same kind of governance they do, including women who they believe want to replace patriarchal protection and support with the state.
posted by Selena777 at 5:07 PM on July 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

> Quite frankly, the left is pretty terrible at explaining its ideas.

The left: We would like to try and help you, and other people too.
The right: We're not going to help you, but we will hurt people who aren't like you.
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:11 PM on July 9, 2021 [44 favorites]

"Quite frankly, the left is pretty terrible at explaining its ideas."

Says the article that begins by quoting the the right wing shadow of "Property is Theft."
posted by eustatic at 5:32 PM on July 9, 2021 [4 favorites]

Not to mention the origin of 'libertarian'

It's not that the left needs to come up with new ideas, as much as the right prizes and rewards the echo chamber, and the repetition of slogans, while the left is searching for novelty a lot of the time.

The left just needs to repeat its ideas as often as the right does. Black Lives Matter.
posted by eustatic at 5:37 PM on July 9, 2021 [5 favorites]

It looks like his point about the Left being terrible about "explaining ideas" would really be better framed by the fact that Marxist ideas in particular are terribly technical and require a lot of reading and discourse.

Libertarianism, by contrast, is easy and dumb.

They're both based largely on hypotheticals, but one requires both hard literary work and a degree of sacrifice to praxis, while the other can be encapsulated in a bumper sticker.
posted by klanawa at 5:58 PM on July 9, 2021 [9 favorites]

I think the larger point is that many leftists and leftist spaces require a lot of reading and real commitment to understand (even Metafilter has a ton of documentation you're expected to read before you post) before you can even open your mouth and there's a LOT of "it's not OUR JOB to educate YOU" whereas the right is happy to shove an easy to read pamphlet in your hand and tell you why it's all the minorities' fault.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 6:03 PM on July 9, 2021 [32 favorites]

A lot of libertarians have also always been against govt mandating civil rights & protections. How anyone could hold that position given the history of the county is beyond me.

It's easier to understand when you realize that US libertarianism is just rebranded Confederate thinking, using Ayn Rand as a fig leaf because she has a good spin on white supremacist fascism.

They were always fascists.
posted by medusa at 6:03 PM on July 9, 2021 [29 favorites]

I think libertarianism has a gender demographic problem.

I think you could make a pretty good point that sexism is a big factor in why these white middle-class men get drawn to libertarianism and then into the right wing, and why US-style libertarianism has had such success infiltrating the Republican Party.

To wit, it's all these women who want a "mommy state", those girly softies who don't understand how the world "really works" and who want everyone taken care of and therefore are all in favor of - if not major drivers of - expansion of government. Thus, women are, more often than not, the enemy. (The article notes how similar the complaints about feminists are amongst libertarians and neo-fascists, but fails to draw the (rather obvious) connections and conclusions.)
posted by soundguy99 at 6:54 PM on July 9, 2021 [13 favorites]

@Selena777: They also have a demographic problem. There's a tragedy of the commons in having too many children per family for the land that can support it, but there's also a tragedy of the commons for individuals to chase after their own economic success without wondering who will service their retirement or form the next generation's military. Free market economies are not creating children and the lack of government regulation just means employers move in to abuse your time (like Japan and South Korea). A political belief has to survive for the next generations to carry it, and I don't see how libertarian ideals can eventually change the below replacement birth rates (which becomes global by ~2070) as they are fundamentally opposed to welfare programs.
posted by DetriusXii at 7:00 PM on July 9, 2021

“Not a single woman in the entire comic. Huh.”
I think libertarianism has a gender demographic problem.

The two Libertarians that I know of on MetaFilter are women.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 7:44 PM on July 9, 2021

(round & round we go!)

This has all been well known and debated on the web for decades, and usenet for decades before it:

That's "rights" according to Libertarianism. Whites-only lunch counters, "No Jews or dogs" hotels, "we don't serve your kind here", "No Irish need apply", "This is man's job", etc. All this is a "right of association" in Libertarian theology.

posted by pwnguin at 8:28 PM on July 9, 2021 [10 favorites]

my naive sense is that if you want to find anti-libertarian arguments on the internet, you'll have decades of material to search through, because libertarians were involved from the very beginning.

I think it is important to note that American libertarianism is its own different beast; for obvious reasons, it has a hard time spreading to countries where the concept of "the public good" has been more obviously successful.
posted by Merus at 10:01 PM on July 9, 2021

“Not a single woman in the entire comic. Huh.”
I think libertarianism has a gender demographic problem.

The two Libertarians that I know of on MetaFilter are women.

And your point is? "Gender demographic problem" does not mean "there are no women".

Sorry to be snippy with you, but I work in a field with very few senior women. And you simply wouldn't believe how many men point to the very few senior women's existence as proof that there is no gender problem in my field.
posted by tumbling at 10:20 PM on July 9, 2021 [37 favorites]

Reminder for my fellow American posters that there is a major difference between "Libertarian" and "libertarian". (Though "American style libertarianism" is sufficiently qualified as to be understandable to anyone, I imagine.)
posted by eviemath at 11:34 PM on July 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

I'm a libertarian of sorts-- I call myself a harm-reduction libertarian. I specialize in ways the government hurts people by ignoring libertarian principles. That might sound very narrow, but it means I oppose the war on drugs and laws against sex work. I favor open borders and am still trying to figure out wanting open borders in general while thinking that closing borders during a pandemic might be worth it. I also oppose the general sloppiness and cruelty of the American justice system.

Any way, I didn't just read the linked article, I read the comments. It's not entirely wrong about the facts (some libertarians join the alt-right) while possibly just inventing things about the motivations.

I have an additional chunk of evidence-- Reason.com and the comments it gets. Reason (the major libertarian website) isn't alt-right and it's an excellent source for information about the justice system abusing people. On the other hand, the comments tend to be dominated by the toxic right, and I have no idea what's going on there. It was the only place I'd see people (okay, at least one person) carefully arguing that the South had a legal right to secede).

It may be that all political movements have a pro-freedom wing and a pro-authoritarian wing.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 4:55 AM on July 10, 2021 [6 favorites]

On the other hand, the comments tend to be dominated by the toxic right, and I have no idea what's going on there.

I would suggest that the comments reflect a cancer metastasizing within the libertarian movement. The same cancer that has now consumed the GOP.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:42 AM on July 10, 2021 [8 favorites]

If the site’s comments are “dominated by the toxic right,” then I’m sorry to tell you that it is an alt-right website. You don’t get to welcome those sorts of folks into your house and then pretend they’re not your people.
posted by explosion at 5:43 AM on July 10, 2021 [27 favorites]

Thorzdad, I don't think it's gotten worse, though the typical level is quite bad enough. You might need an explanation for why Reason's editorial policy *isn't* alt-right.

The comments at the top link also say that the Cato Institute isn't alt-right, and it seems to be not alt-right to me, but I don't follow it as much and have less of an opinion about it.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:07 AM on July 10, 2021

Reason.com and the comments it gets. Reason (the major libertarian website) isn't alt-right and it's an excellent source for information about the justice system abusing people.

Reason Magazine also has a long and storied history of white supremacy and supporting horrible things like the Lost Cause myth and Holocaust denial (previously on the blue). Just a cursory look at their content from the last month alone has diatribes against critical race theory, claims that voter suppression is fake news, a ton of anti-"woke" nonsense, plenty of transphobia and valorization of transphobes, and at least one article muttering darkly about the specter of "anti-white racism."
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 6:37 AM on July 10, 2021 [32 favorites]

A few decades ago, you could see multiple competing trends in self-styled "Libertarians":

Post-60s ultra-freedom types, possibly former hippies: Legalize weed and prostitution.

Jacket-and-tie clean cut types, the sort of people who think they've discovered an ideology in junior high that solves everything, and they're going to follow that credo into the sunset--wherever it leads them.

But also:

US libertarianism is just rebranded Confederate thinking

Yes, this was definitely a part of it. People who didn't want "government overreach" and managed to be super-selective about what kinds of overreach they were protesting. This is the faction that would selectively call out civil rights legislation to oppose it, but somehow not get as worked up about the FDA making sure there aren't bugs in your peanut butter.

Nowadays I think you're seeing less of the first two and more of the latter.
posted by gimonca at 6:47 AM on July 10, 2021 [7 favorites]

Reason (the major libertarian website) isn't alt-right and it's an excellent source for information about the justice system abusing people. On the other hand, the comments tend to be dominated by the toxic right, and I have no idea what's going on there.

I was a teenage libertarian and subscribed to Reason back in the 90s. They were always dubious on race, generally subscribing to the “their culture is holding them back” mentality so it’s on-brand to continue criticizing attempts to increase awareness of structural racism, but they used to generally be more distinct from movement conservatism – especially when it came to things like tough on crime policies. During the Bush era they were a good voice against surveillance and torture, for example.

That changed after the Kochs bought editorial control. By the 2016 election, they were a lot closer to Fox & Friends and that shows no sign of halting. The primary function now seems to be providing a safe place to motivate voters who always vote for Republicans but don’t want to say they’re Republican— you can distance yourself from the party by saying you support legal pot, knowing that minorities are disproportionately impacted by the laws those politicians enact, while being totally on message opposing anything which goes against the major monied interests.
posted by adamsc at 7:25 AM on July 10, 2021 [20 favorites]

Reason is still doing this sort of article.

https://reason.com/2021/07/09/prosecutors-plea-bargaining-drugs-maricopa-county-allister-adel-aclu/
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:20 AM on July 10, 2021

You might need an explanation for why Reason's editorial policy *isn't* alt-right.

I think, though, Reason's editorial policy might be best seen as akin to a ship's captain standing up in the crow's nest bellowing "full steam ahead" while most of the rest of the ship has already sunk beneath the waves.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:31 AM on July 10, 2021 [1 favorite]

Reason is still doing this sort of article.

And Trump pardoned Alice Marie Johnson, but I'm pretty sure most liberals aren't going to start calling him a civil rights hero.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 8:46 AM on July 10, 2021 [5 favorites]

> ways the government hurts people by ignoring libertarian principles. [...] I oppose the war on drugs and laws against sex work. I favor open borders and am still trying to figure out wanting open borders in general while thinking that closing borders during a pandemic might be worth it

All these are part of actual libertarianism and surely many other strains of socialism, including Marxist derived ones.

All American capital-L "libertarianism" brings is convenient liberalwashing of anarchist principles by having a hardon for that most sacred of liberal concepts, property rights. That's what sets it apart from non-shitty ideologies who also value those other things you mention.

AFAIK there are not many anarchists against universal, free, government provided healthcare, and if they are, their aim is to replace it with by some alternative which maintains the universal and free aspects and replaces the state controlled parts.
posted by Bangaioh at 10:06 AM on July 10, 2021 [2 favorites]

A while ago, I came to the conclusion that the way that libertarianism was practiced--as opposed to some lofty ideal--was that libertarians weren't interested in less government per se so much as they were interested in precisely the degree and types of government that would benefit them personally, tailored as finely and precisely to their personal needs as possible. (This came after reading a blog entry from a libertarian blogger, who seems to be no longer active (at least under that name), in which they made what was essentially a personal shopping list, going int some detail, for what was acceptable.) And what benefits the white libertarian personally? White privilege.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:33 AM on July 10, 2021 [15 favorites]

Oh, I know some women who are libertarians, but not many. The libertarians I've encountered, particularly in groups, have a particular 'men are victims' undercurrent that I suspect comes down to the issues around uncompensated domestic labor, which disproportionately falls on women.
posted by rmd1023 at 1:57 PM on July 10, 2021 [3 favorites]

I've seen the libertarianism-to-fascism pipeline explained with, “it's a short leap from believing everyone should obey their boss to believing everyone should obey one boss”
posted by acb at 2:26 PM on July 10, 2021 [10 favorites]

Halloween Jack, that is precisely my conclusion as well. Most people who claim to be “Libertarian” just want to be able to fuck other people over and not be held accountable for it. An entertaining exercise is to thank ardent Libertarians for their rock-solid support of abortion rights, then watch them fall all over themselves justifying State intervention in the most intimate individual matters. Good times.
posted by Sublimity at 2:38 PM on July 10, 2021 [13 favorites]

Sublimity: similar for child support or alimony — it’s tyranny but also nobody should ever consider a prenup which male obligations, even if they otherwise say every aspect of life should be individually negotiated contracts.
posted by adamsc at 2:59 PM on July 10, 2021 [2 favorites]

As long as you think of Libertarianism, in the American sense, as having anything whatsoever to do with "liberty", it's going to look weird and contradictory. The secret key is that the adherents of American libertarianism do a mental edit to their dictionaries where they replace "liberty" with "see "property" and then keep on talking about liberty and expect everybody to keep up. Every "liberty" they endorse is simply an extension of property; the government can't ban drugs because that interferes with drug owners and sellers' property rights. The government can't pass laws about what you can do with your body because that interferes with your property rights over yourselves.

(does it seem odd to categorize yourself as a thing that can have a property right exerted over it? let me introduce you to the number of American-style libertarians, or more accurately named proprietarians, who think slavery is extremely cool as long as you can frame it as a contract voluntarily entered into on the part of the slaves)

Libertarians simply do not believe in liberty or rights in the same way most people use those words; there's some overlap in terms and outcomes, but ultimately they'll go to the mat for capital every time, because that's all they really believe in.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:57 PM on July 10, 2021 [9 favorites]

libertarianism is not a thing. we are all--including those who call themselves by that name--arguing about what government should do, not whether it should exist. if anyone really is arguing about its existence, then they are a child, or have the mental experience of a child. so, once we agree that government is a fact of life, then we can argue about how much power it should have over what aspect of our life. that gets us into all the normal modes of politics, which angry young men often find terribly boring. which is why they call themselves libertarian and find themselves susceptible to demagogues. that's all there is to it.
posted by wibari at 10:47 PM on July 10, 2021 [2 favorites]

acb: I've seen the libertarianism-to-fascism pipeline explained with, “it's a short leap from believing everyone should obey their boss to believing everyone should obey one boss”

This struck me. I decided to look into it. I found this tweet. I also found this extraordinary piece: "Let It Bleed: Libertarianism and the Workplace". I love this bit:

What makes the private sector, especially the workplace, such an attractive instrument of repression is precisely that it can administer punishments without being subject to the constraints of the Bill of Rights. It is an archipelago of private governments, in which employers are free to do precisely what the state is forbidden to do: punish without process. Far from providing a check against the state, the private sector can easily become an adjutant of the state. Not through some process of liberal corporatism but simply because employers often share the goals of state officials and are better positioned to act upon them.

From this article and comments in this thread, I'm guessing that libertarians regard labour as property, over which the owner has unlimited power. This is, of course, pure fantasy. That some workers buy into it is, however, a real problem.
posted by No Robots at 11:09 PM on July 10, 2021 [5 favorites]

>>>There’s a utopian ideology in there that sees discrimination and poverty as the result of a misguided (at best) state.

This is not accurate... Inasmuch as American libertarians argue that discrimination and poverty are the result of a misguided state, their argument is reactionary rather than based on the libertarian utopian ideology. They say this in counterargument to expanding welfare or instituting civil rights or government-mandated anti-discrimination laws. It's not part of the libertarian "first principles".

The first principles of libertarian utopian ideology are that poverty and discrimination as the result of natural market forces reacting to genuine deficiencies in people. Libertarian utopian ideology refuses to recognize as valid any entity other than the individual (and his nemesis, the government). There is no such thing as discrimination against an race or a gender or whatever except in the form of discrimination against individuals who merely happen to belong to a race or gender.

Their supreme article of blind faith is the invisible hand of the market. If there is a racist ice cream shop refusing to serve Black people, that creates an opportunity for a non-racist ice cream shop to open right next door catering to a larger potential market and outcompete the racist one. Presto, no more racist ice cream shop. Abracadabra, automatic end of racism.

In libertarian utopian ideology, if a racist ice cream shop can out-compete the non-racist one, that is hard proof that racism is factually correct. The only reason the racist shop can succeed is if all the individual Black people who patronized the non-racist shop next door caused genuine harm to the non-racist shop's ability to do business. Why? How? The libertarian shrugs.

This is where white supremacy steps in to supply the manner in which harm is caused. White supremacy says Black people were too poor to keep the non-racist business afloat - the racist shop had more upsells, the non-racist shop ended up selling mostly loss leaders. White supremacy says the Black male patrons were threatening towards the delicate white ladies. White supremacy says Black people are smelly or dirty or loud or uncouth, and thus they created an inferior ice cream experience compared to the racist shop.

A strict libertarian may not actually think of these explanations on their own, but their shrug leaves a vacuum that only white supremacy can rush into. More accurate explanations - such as the fact that racist customers would prefer to get ice cream at the racist shop leaving the non-racist shop catering *only* to Black people rather than the theorized larger market - rest on the premise that a person's race (not just their individual merit/worth) is one of the factors that determines how society deals with them. That is anathema to the libertarian who believes in the existence of individuals only, and describes racism as a mythical construct invented to evade personal responsibility. The only acceptable explanation to the libertarian is the white supremacist one.

>>>A lot of libertarians have also always been against govt mandating civil rights & protections. How anyone could hold that position given the history of the county is beyond me.

Ah but that is precisely the problem: ahistoricity - or rather, a meaninglessly macro vision of history - is another fundamental tenet of libertarian ethics. I recall from my teenage years that Ayn Rand explicitly says in several of her essays something to the effect of - all human beings who are born on this earth have an equal claim to the work of geniuses of the past. We all have access to Newton and Rachmaninoff and Darwin. We all get to stand on the shoulders of the same giants. What does it matter that some of us are born with a few dollars more or less, when this infinite inheritance belongs to us all? These "minor" circumstances are irrelevant. In every way that matters, we are all born equal, and what we make of life's race is therefore entirely on us. I am paraphrasing here, but that is the gist of it. To a libertarian, the daughter of a slave is equally as fortunate as the daughter of a king, because the differences in their circumstances are petty compared to the infinite riches that human history grants them both.
posted by MiraK at 9:46 AM on July 11, 2021 [16 favorites]

> Some people are considering a twitter ban to be abridging their freedom of speech.

When entities get very, very large they become essentially different things and have to be treated differently in essential ways.

It's the same reason you can't grant giant corporations the exact same free speech rights as you do individual citizens, and allow them to donate unbridled to political campaigns exactly as you do individual citizens, and so on.

An individual person--even a pretty wealthy one--is one thing.

A giant monolithic global corporation harnessing the work of many tens of thousands of people under unified leadership and consisting of 5% or 1% or even 0.1% or 0.01% of U.S. GDP, is something completely, essentially different. It just can't possibly be treated as the same kind of thing (or legal entity, for example) as an individual citizen.

Giant conglomerations of things are essentially different from their constituent parts and must be treated so.

To the particular issue of Twitter: It's reasonable and possible to allow any particular individual to say just about anything they want to say. Even there, limits exist--the go-to example is, you can't yell "fire" in a theater. But the limits are very loose.

But when you have a megaphone that can amplify that one person's speech by a billion times, that must be wielded, and subject to limits, that are very different from those that any given individual person is subject to.

It's the same issue we have with monopolies in the economy. At some size, they have to be either broken up or regulated rather intensely. Otherwise they gain grossly disproportionate power and, in the end, will subvert the entire economy to their own purposes.

If you want anything like a democracy (or even, a functioning civilization) there has to be a balance of power. And not only among the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. A balance has to exist among all centers of power in society and none can be allowed to grow too large and all-powerful.

Back to libertarianism: From my point of view, Libertarians seem to be obsessed with limiting the power of government and exalting the freedom of the individual.

But government and individuals are not the only two important elements in society.

And government is not the only source of centralized or overwhelming power in a society.

Several other power centers can grow to the point that they are even more insidious than government--which even at its worst, always has some level of accountability back to the populace.

Right now, giant multinational corporation type entities and monopoly communication type entities like twitter and facebook, are in many ways far more powerful and damaging than government, in the particular spheres they operate.

Personally, I'd like to see a libertarianism from the tyranny of those types of power.

//End rant. And thank you for your time. Yes, in fact, I do feel ever so much better now.
posted by flug at 12:42 PM on July 11, 2021 [2 favorites]

[Reason] used to generally be more distinct from movement conservatism .... That changed after the Kochs bought editorial control.

https://www.metafilter.com/192013/Why-libertarians-embraced-fascism#8123912

ding ding ding ding!
posted by subdee at 2:16 PM on July 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

Libertarians seem to be obsessed with limiting the power of government and exalting the freedom of the individual.

And somewhere along the way, the freedom of an individual subsuming those who are hierarchically beholden to them; somewhere between personal responsibility and corporate personhood. The outcome is that, in Libertarianism, only democratic (non-hierarchical) governments are illegitimate; hierarchical relations are how freedom expresses itself in nature.

Which also explains the overlap between libertarianism and the neoreactionary movement, such as Mencius Moldbug's claim that absolute monarchies are better for property rights than republics or democracies.
posted by acb at 3:07 PM on July 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

Yeah the endgame of American-style libertarianism is literally a form of monarchism and scum like Moldbug and Hoppe are just the ones who are honest about it.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:12 PM on July 11, 2021 [2 favorites]

I think the ultimate expression of right-libertarianism is flying the Gadson flag next to a thin blue line flag.

Who the fuck do you think is going to tread on you, dumbass?
posted by Glenn Grothman at 9:02 AM on July 12, 2021 [4 favorites]

Bear in mind libertarians who spend any serious time thinking through their ideological commitments generally hate democracy and see it as a means for the masses to tell property owners what to do with their property; they (correctly) understand the cops to be defenders of power and property and a weapon against the empowerment of the marginalized masses. This is a key component of the libertarian-to-fascist pipeline, and a big part of why a lot of fascists will describe themselves as having gone through a libertarian phase.

Occasionally you get libertarians like the journalist Radley Balko, who has done great work documenting and advocating against police brutality and overreach, but I tend to think he's not as invested in the deeper ideology.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:32 AM on July 12, 2021 [4 favorites]

When entities get very, very large they become essentially different things and have to be treated differently in essential ways.

Hmm. I see your point. Once Twitter represents a big enough chunk of the public communications space, the choices it makes around permitting or denying its users a voice become functionally equivalent to a state actor enforcing rules about same. Large enough corporate entities exhibit many of the same characteristics as governments, and should be bound by similar rules.

So let's quit hedging, and nationalize it as a public utility. We'll drive out to Jack Dorsey's front door and serve him with the eminent domain paperwork as soon as the ink is dry. Where's my posse of libertarian homeboys to come help deliver the news? Freeeeeeedom!
posted by Mayor West at 10:31 AM on July 12, 2021 [2 favorites]

So let's quit hedging, and nationalize it as a public utility

Well, arguably it's influence extends beyond any single nation's borders. It would probably be better turned into some kind of transnational NGO. "Messengers Without Borders", right?

But in that situation, I wonder if the American Right would dislike it even more since it would be similar to the UN and WHO.
posted by FJT at 11:01 AM on July 12, 2021

I mean, that ship sailed with the Tiktok divestment right?
posted by pwnguin at 11:10 AM on July 12, 2021 [1 favorite]