Today (August 12th, 2017), the Unite the Right rally is scheduled to proceed in Charlottesville, VA. The Right being united there isnt just any Right, but one that welcomes white supremacists and self-described fascists. Multiple speakers will say this themselves, and the chants at a chaotic pre-event march the night before included Neo-Nazi slogans.
The purpose of this letter is to clarify the role for libertarianism in this rally which is no role at all.
That clarification is necessary because it might appear otherwise. Three of the listed speakers have at one time or another identified as libertarians: Mike Enoch, Augustus Invictus, and Christopher Cantwell. Mike Enoch previously called himself a libertarian, but now mocks the philosophy as autistic. Augustus Invictus previously attempted to run for Senate through the Libertarian Party. Recently, though, he publicly changed his registration to Republican in disgust. Christopher Cantwell now seems ambivalent about his relationship with libertarianism and anarchism, but his primary identification is with fascism.
Regardless of how any speakers or attendees have identified in the past or present, we want to make clear that this event is not in any way a place for libertarianism. Among libertarians, some identify as right-wing, some as left-wing, and some as radical centrists. Virtually the entire outside political spectrum is mirrored within libertarianism, and this makes for no shortage of infighting. One area where the undersigned have consensus, however, is in a rejection of any attempt to connect white supremacy and fascism to libertarianism. Libertarians, including those who see themselves as on the Right, have no interest in uniting with the horrifically authoritarian Right often called the Alt-Right rallying in Charlottesville.
All this should be exceedingly obvious from even a cursory glance at the two movements.
On a historical note, modern-day libertarianism largely took root in the English-speaking world through Jewish intellectuals, some of whom fled the Nazis. Our movement grew as a revolt against fascism, Communism, and early twentieth-century progressivism. As Thomas Leonard has shown in his Illiberal Reformers, that third enemys intellectual history is closely interwoven with eugenics.
On the level of philosophy, libertarianism stresses the freedom of individuals even when that freedom goes against some supposed collective will. The entire point behind a politics of white supremacy is to replace free association with endless central planning and regulation on collectivist racial grounds. Unite the Right speaker Richard Spencer actively seeks to turn the United States into a 100% white ethno-state. It is impossible to conceive of this happening without a return of the total state and its horrors.
Despite the obvious incompatibility of that totalitarianism and libertarianism (of any kind), an attempted association between the two is unsurprising. Attempts at rebooting authoritarian movements often operate through a tactic called entryism. Entryism is where a smaller political movement attempts to capture a larger one and seize its resources. In cases like fascism and Communism, the tendency towards entryism is probably a joint product of amoral opportunism and an inability to rationally defend their views.
It is necessary, then, for libertarians to restate the exceedingly obvious and insist on the stark differences between our views and those of anyone with any affinity for National Socialist Germany.
We, the undersigned, affirm such a gulf between liberty and its opposite.
To sign this letter, please send your name and any other information youd like to include (such as an institutional affiliation) to libertyagainstfascism at gmail dot com.
SIGNATORIES (updated09/11/2017 if you have signed but dont see your name, feel free to send a follow-up email:
Rhett R. Grassette (Libertarian Party of Louisiana)
Jill Pyeatt
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PublishedAugust 12, 2017September 12, 2017
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Restating the Obvious: An Open Letter from the Libertarian ...