See, earlier, Lew Rockwell And The Strange Death (Or At Least Suspended Animation) Of Paleolibertarianism
Ron Paul’s heroic but failed presidential runs in 2008 and 2012 were something of a Libertarian moment [#StandwithRand: The Libertarian moment has arrived – thanks to Rand Paul, by Justin Raimondo, AntiWar.com, March 8, 2013]. But that moment ended when Paul lost, and by 2016, with the Rise of Trump, no longer defined political debate. The Great Replacement via a mass invasion of legal immigrants and illegal aliens, the Middle Eastern refugee crisis, and the Great Awokening showed many on the Right, including right-leaning Libertarians, the importance of maintaining public order, not least at the border, as opposed to pursuing “liberty” at all costs. Which invites a question: Is the recent takeover of the Libertarian Party by the “Mises Caucus” a sign of a reemerging Paleolibertarian Right?
The question is important, particularly in light of what, in 2008, VDARE.com called the “the strange death of Paleolibertarianism.” In the late 1980s, we reported, Libertarian leaders Lew Rockwell, the founder of the Mises Institute, and Murray Rothbard, the famous anarcho-Libertarian economist, “broke with the Establishment of the Libertarian movement represented by the Cato Institute and Libertarian Party.” After that break, the Rothbard-Rockwell Report newsletter espoused politically incorrect positions on everything from race and IQ to policing and VDARE.com’s signature issue, immigration [Why the Koch Brothers Went After Murray Rothbard, by David Gordon, LewRockwell.com, March 10, 2011].
Rothbard further distanced himself from acceptable Libertarianism during the 1990s by embracing paleoconservatives such as Pat Buchanan and Sam Francis [Buchanan an Anti-Semite? It’s a Smear: His enemies labored hard, and brought forth a pitiful mouse, by Murray N. Rothbard, Los Angeles Times, January 6, 1992].
But after Rothbard died prematurely at the age of 68 in 1995, communist thugs attacked Ron Paul for advancing race and immigration realism in his newsletter—most likely Rockwell’s work, which Paul disavowed—and the Mises Institute founder shifted gears again. His website turned left-Libertarian, complained about “racial oppression,” backed anti-white crackpot Jeremiah Wright, and even applauded the coming dispossession of the Historic American Nation [Sunset on the Anglos, by Ryan W. McMaken, April 20, 2006].
But now things have changed again.
For context, senior Libertarian leadership had criticized Jeff Deist in 2017 for a speech he gave urging "blood and soil" libertarianism, and criticized Rothbard and Rockwell for their early-'90s "paleolibertarian" strategy. https://t.co/iMinbej4Ql
— Matt Welch (@MattWelch) June 3, 2022
Officially, of course, the Miseians reject identitarianism or anything “alt-right” as “weaponized tribal collectivism that is antithetical to individualism.” And they still peddle the eccentric notion that border control must be “privatized” [Libertarians on Immigration: The Left, The Right, and Solutions, June 8, 2018]. Consider me skeptical of such a proposal. An existential matter such as non-white mass migration will ultimately require strong state action to stop it.
But developments through the past few years within Miseian circles, then the coup on May 29 at the Libertarian Party convention in Reno, Nevada are worth discussing.
Recall that the Libertarian Party trotted out lackluster presidential tickets in 2016 (Gary Johnson & Bill Weld) and 2020 (Jo Jorgensen & Spike Cohen), which showed that the party had nothing meaningful to say about the National Question and no viable plan to stop the rise of anti-white hatred in American politics.
Yet even before that pair of jokers was laughed off the national stage, and before Trump was elected in 2016, Mises Institute Libertarians were pushing for decentralization, nullification, and even full-fledged secession [Put Your Hope in Radical Decentralization, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Mises Institute, July 17, 2016]. Several forms of separation and secession actually align not only with these developing ideas in Miseian circles but also, of course, with the interests of white Americans terrified of living in a post-white country.
Mises Institute President Jeff Deist provided an early example of a Libertarian going off-script when he lambasted the globalist spirit that animates many Libertarians and, in discussing secession movements, used the words “blood” and “soil” and “God” and “nation”:
[L]ibertarians are busy promoting universalism and centralization even as the world moves in the other direction. Trump and Brexit rocked the globalist narrative. Nationalism is on the rise throughout Europe, forcing the EU to defend itself, secession and breakaway movements exist in Scotland, in Catalonia, in Belgium, in Andalusia, even in California. Federalism and states’ rights are suddenly popular with progressives in the US. The world desperately wants to turn its back on Washington and Brussels and the UN and the IMF and all of the globalist institutions. Average people smell a rat.
We should seize on this.
Mecca is not Paris, an Irishman is not an Aboriginal, a Buddhist is not a Rastafarian, a soccer mom is not a Russian. Is it our goal to convince them all to become thorough Rothbardians? Should Libertarians care about gay marriage in Saudi Arabia, or insist on the same border arrangements for Brownsville, Texas and Monaco? Should we agitate for Texas-style open carry laws in France, to prevent the next Bataclan?
Or would our time be better spent making the case for political decentralization, secession, and subsidiarity? In other words, should we let Malta be Maltese.
[For a New Libertarian by Jeff Deist, Mises Institute, July 28, 2017]
That was bad enough, but then Deist recounted a conversation with a blogger, Bionic Mosquito, in which Deist asked what he’d be willing to fight for:
By this I mean what would you physically fight for, where doing so could mean serious injury or death. Or arrest and imprisonment, or the loss of your home, your money, and your possessions. …
How about an abstraction, like fighting for “your country” or freedom or your religion? This is where things get more tenuous. Many people have and will fight for such abstractions. But if you ask soldiers, they’ll tell you that in the heat of battle they’re really fighting for their mates, to protect the men in their units—and to fulfill a personal sense of duty.
In other words, blood and soil and God and nation still matter to people. Libertarians ignore this at the risk of irrelevance.
Naturally, Left-Libertarians lost their minds [The Rhetoric of Libertarians and the Unfortunate Appeal to the Alt-Right, by Steve Horwitz, Bleeding Heart Libertarians, August 4, 2017]. The reaction illustrated that even among a movement that boasts of being “neither Left nor Right,” that division isn’t so easily shaken [Leftist Attacks, by Paul Gottfried, LewRockwell.com, August 7, 2017].
Can't load tweet https://twitter.com/ARossP/status/1556629440016265216: Sorry, that page does not exist
Another Libertarian who wandered off the reservation: Mises Institute Senior Fellow Tom Woods, who has argued against Open Borders partly on the grounds of ethnicity and culture, favorably citing VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow’s 1995 book Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster [Liberty and Immigration, The Foundation For Economic Education]. Anti-Woods Libertarians tried to Cancel Woods as a speaker at the convention because of his ties to the League of the South [Remove Neo-Confederate Tom Woods from Speaking at the 2022 Libertarian Convention, Change,org].
With that as background, one understands why the Mises Caucus’ takeover of the Libertarian Party excited unhinged CultMarx enforcers such as Jeet Heer, National Affairs Correspondent at The Nation.
Noting that “the Libertarian Party now seems to have entered a topsy-turvy world where it has started mimicking the Republicans,” Heer offered this evaluation of the Mises Caucus victory:
The phrase “blood and soil” already had an unmistakable fascist overtone—but it took on an even more gruesome connotation two weeks after the post during the infamous Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally of 2017, where an anti-racist protester was killed. The white supremacists who tried to dominate the streets of Charlottesville chanted “blood and soil.” Several of the organizers of the Charlottesville rally identified as Libertarians. In the wake of that event, Nicholas Sarwark, chair of the Libertarian Party, signed an open letter warning of the dangers of fascism. Arvin Vohra, vice chair of the Libertarian Party, wrote a post arguing that the “Mises Institute has been turned into a sales funnel for the White Nationalist branch of the Alt Right.”
[The Libertarian Party Goes Alt-Right, June 6, 2022]
In July 2017, Jeff Deist argued that “blood and soil and God and nation still matter to people. Libertarians ignore this at the risk of irrelevance.” This was just two weeks before white supremacists chanted "blood and soil" at Charlottesville.https://t.co/BKnWCVnVae
— The Nation (@thenation) June 6, 2022
Heer cited politically incorrect tweets from prominent Libertarians such Mises Caucus’ Jeremy Kauffman and Angela McArdle, since deleted, and quoted the $PLC, which posted a pre-convention warning that “high-profile MC [Mises Caucus] members espouse hateful rhetoric and collaborate with white nationalists and individuals linked to former President Donald Trump.” The SPLC enforcer continued:
Should they win control of the LP, they will take over a party that averages over 1% of the vote in national elections, peaking at 3.3% in 2016. Commentators argue Libertarian candidates cost Trump at least three crucial swing states in the 2020 election—Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin—all of which President Joe Biden won by less than 1%.
Collaboration between the LP and hard-right wing of the Republican party would stop this from happening again, LP members told Hatewatch.
[Mises Caucus: Could It Sway the Libertarian Party to the Hard Right?, by Creede Newton, May 25, 2022]
Another sign that Paleolibertarianism is on the rise: Defectors from the Caucus who claim it has a bigotry problem to explain why they bailed out:
All this is the long way of saying that some immigration patriots and others concerned about the Historic American Nation, who reject the universalist Libertarianism that Deist described, are part of the Mises Caucus.
Which doesn’t mean the Caucus has changed its basic Libertarian positions. Again, it isn’t remotely identitarian, and most of its official positions are standard if less shrill Libertarianism. It is anti-war, pro-decentralization, and favors the mass privatization of public services.
On immigration, it aligns with Hans-Hermann Hoppe, who has documented that the current wave of mass migration is one predicated on forced integration and welfare magnets.
Immigration, of course, goes beyond the simple economic parameters that Libertarians focus on. Skilled immigrants who are not on the dole still harm us in myriad ways. Some come from hostile countries who wish to undermine the United States by embedding Fifth Column agents within our borders and allowing their country of origin to extract geopolitical advantages. As well, high-IQ overclass immigrants also threaten the Historic American Nation. What’s more, overclass subversives have joined the highest levels of the chattering classes, where they indulge in anti-white hate.
But in the Mises Caucus’ defense, at least it isn’t the Cato Institute, the Libertarian chapter of the Treason Lobby.
More evidence of a Paleolibertarian revival: Pete Quinones, who recently interviewed VDARE’s Peter Brimelow. Title: Immigration and The Great Replacement. Quinones courageously discussed the issue, and bravely brought up the “the arch-Zionists out there” who are “all for the borders of America being, you know, breached, but when it comes to Israel of course not.”
Such a move by a Libertarian content creator would have been previously unheard of. But, like a select few Libertarians, Quinones clearly sees the data—i.e., what’s coming if the immigration doesn’t stop—and has turned to the Dissident Right.
I expect this trend to continue as Libertarians become more disillusioned with the stagnation and hollowness of their ideology. There are many former Libertarians in this space, so Libertarians will be embraced with open arms.
All told, it’s good to see a less Politically Correct form of Libertarianism emerge. Frankly, there are too many Politically Correct ideologies out here that do nothing to address the existential problems of our epoch.
My own message to Libertarians is simple: start paying attention to racial demographics.
The Libertarian society that these individuals clamor for could only function under the aegis of a white, high-IQ populace. Try building Libertopia in a multicultural Thunderdome inhabited by the dregs of the Third World.
Libertarians are smart individuals who are willing to be contrarian on political matters. There are factions within Libertarianism that hold reasonable views on immigration and are willing to limit it in certain circumstances.
The fight to preserve our civilization will require coalition building on our part. That means making common cause with people who may not agree with every aspect of our ideology.
Pedro de Alvarado [Email him] is a Hispanic dissident who is well aware of the realities of race from his experience living throughout Latin America and in the States.
As a native of lands conquered by brave Spaniards but later subverted by centuries of multiracial trickery and despotic governance, Pedro offers clear warnings to Americans about the perils of multiracialism.
