Libertarianism and the Alt-Right, Part 1

The Austrian School found its historic role, I suggest, in being an ideological centre of gravity to the right of the bourgeois mainstream.  This is the position that enabled it to both influence the rise of neoliberalism and then become a stern critic of actual neoliberal praxis.  It serves capitalism by being fanatically pro-capitalism while also lurking at the extreme rightward fringe of capitalist society’s intellectual, ideological, and political range of what is acceptably avowable.  Its position explains its role - similar to other iterations of extreme reactionary bourgeois thinking - as a rightward drag factor.  Capitalist society can allow such rightward drags to pull it their way at times of necessity, i.e. times of real or perceived crisis.  At such times, capitalist society ‘selects’ ideological positions (from that ‘reserve army of ideologies’ we previously talked about) which are available, based on their comparative material and ideological strength in the context.  If you like, it makes a subjective judgement of their marginal utility.  Sometimes - depending upon the demands of the moment - such positions then go on to become influential, even sometimes dominant.  The selection of marginalism as a new mainstream in bourgeois economics is itself an example of this.  Similarly, 20th century capitalism, wracked by various crises, selected first statist government (in various forms) followed by, after more crises, neoliberalism.  Neoliberalism, as the child of Hayek (not alone but above all others) was, in a very fundamental way, a product of the Austrian School.  The Austrian School thus played its role beautifully.  Neoliberalism evolved out of the Austrian School without replacing it – in the same way that humans evolved from apes without replacing them. Something similar happened with libertarianism - though modern libertarianism seems to have evolved convergently from several different directions before (partially but tormentedly) converging.

The Austrians’ continuing position at the far rightward end of the ideological spectrum puts them right in the liminal space between the outer edges of orthodoxy and of heterodoxy.  It put them into near contact with fascism – which, contrary to the myth of fascism as an aberrant alien ideology, is the furthest ideological extreme of bourgeois ideology - and another resource for capitalism in time of crisis.  This is why, in the age of neoliberalism, and particularly in the period just around the ‘fall of communism’ when Western capitalism felt freed from the shackles placed on it by having to oppose an ostensibly rival system, Austrian dogma metastasized into something extremely dangerous and reactionary which we’ve already touched on: paleolibertarianism. 

The Austrian School was always a product of, and a major animating factor in, libertarianism.  Paleolibertarianism was a consciously devised mutation of Austrian-influenced libertarianism, concocted by the late-20th century’s most prominent devotee of Austrian dogma, Murray Rothbard (and his fawning cohorts).  Paleolibertarianism aimed to promote the relatively unpopular extreme free-market dogmas of libertarianism by joining them tactically to America’s powerful trends of post-60s reaction.  It succeeded to a great extent.  It pandered to, and (as far as possible) absorbed, extreme American cultural conservatism, racism, sexism, etc.  It took a powerful place in the ecology of American reaction.  It fed on the discontents of neoliberalism, and US imperialism, to achieve a quasi-rebellious presence in the mainstream of US politics, most of all in the person of Ron Paul.  After Rothbard’s death, its supposed retirement, and the ascendancy on the US Right of neoconservatism, it went undercover and seethed online… where, in the aftermath of the crash of 07-08 and the subsequent long slump, it bred with its close neighbour, American fascism. 

We can thus trace a line directly backwards from Charlottesville to the Austrian School.  This is not to say that the two are the same, or that the alt-Right ‘is’ Austrian, or the ‘fault’ of the Austrians, or that the alt-Right wouldn’t exist in some form if Menger had never been born.  That’s the kind of crude, genetic fallacy reductionism one finds in Rothbard’s account of the history of economics, wherein he finds ‘precursors’ to the Austrian School all over the place, based on his assumption that the Austrian School is the summation of the history of economic ideas.  The chain of events I’ve outlined is not the whole or sole explanation for the existence of today’s alt-Right.  But it is undoubtedly an extremely important and neglected part of the story, from which we can draw some lessons.

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In an article at BleedingHeartLibertarians.com, Steve Horwitz, Austrian economist and professor at St. Lawrence University, writes:

The paleo-libertarian seed that Ron Paul, Murray Rothbard, and Lew Rockwell planted in the 1990s has come to bear some really ugly fruit in the last couple of years as elements of the alt-right have made appearances in various libertarian organizations and venues. Back in February, alt-right hero Richard Spencer stirred up a fuss at the International Students for Liberty Conference in DC after being invited to hang out by a group of students calling themselves the “Hoppe Caucus.” Hans-Hermann Hoppe, long associated with the Ludwig von Mises Institute as well as a panoply of racists and anti-Semites, is perhaps the most popular gateway drug for the alt-right incursion into libertarianism.

Horwitz is, amongst other things, an alumnus of George Mason University, an Affiliated Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center, affiliated with the Institute for Humane Studies, and a member of the Mont Pelerin Society.  He identifies as a ‘left- libertarian’, though being on the ‘left’ of modern American libertarianism clearly doesn’t preclude one from involvement with a far-Right lobbying machine soaked in Koch money.  Even so, mentioning his affiliations will help us avoid accusations of reductionism or of engaging in the genetic fallacy.  There are no necessary mechanical principles in how people interpret ideas. 

Horwitz is uncomfortable with the way some libertarians are actively courting the alt-Right, and recounts with distaste the example of Jeff Deist.  As it happens, it’s a very revealing example.

Deist is the current president of the Mises Institute.  Not long before the Unite the Right rally at Charlottesville, Deist delivered a speech to the 2017 Mises University (the Mises Institute’s annual conference) entitled ‘For a New Libertarian’.  The speech included an attack on left-libertarianism during which Deist said it was a “disastrous mistake” for libertarians to appear “hostile to family, to religion, to tradition, to culture, and to civic or social institution — in other words, hostile to civil society itself”.

In the speech he explicitly says that libertarians should champion such things because they are the things people will fight for, whereas they will be reluctant to fight for more abstract libertarian positions.  He even acknowledges that people are relatively unlikely to fight for “property”.  Most strikingly, Deist ends his speech with the following words:

In other words, blood and soil and God and nation still matter to people. Libertarians ignore this at the risk of irrelevance.

Blood and soil.  In the summer of 2017.

Horwitz is disapproving.  Most of the rest of us, I’d hope, feel our blood running cold.  

In a piece published at Mises.org just after Charlottesville, Deist strikes a glumly patronising tone.  His response to a series of events which resulted in an anti-fascist being murdered in the streets by a fascist is to bewail the state of modern US politics across the board, in what amounts to a pompous reiteration of Trump’s belligerent blithering about polygons.

But Deist used Nazi rhetoric just before Nazis marched and murdered on the streets of America.  He must’ve known what he was doing.  And if he didn’t know, he had no excuse for not knowing.  His speech amounts to the Mises Institute courting a nascent fascist movement.  A nascent fascist movement that, as it happened, was just about to explode out into a new form, to take its first serious and deadly steps off the internet.  A nascent fascist movement that is, at least in part, as Horwitz says, the fruit of libertarianism… and, more than that, the specific Austrian-tinged Rothbardian paleolibertarianism fostered by the Mises Institute and its network of friends and financiers.  A nascent fascist movement that Mises.org - having just encouraged it and then it seen commit murder - pointedly refused to repudiate. 

The anti-political platitudes Deist offered fell short of support for the fascists, and included criticisms of them – but, for reasons which I might be able to cast some light on below, no savvy fascist reading Deist’s words would imagine that any doors were being closed on them.

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Libertarianism, especially paleolibertarianism, may not be the primary route by which raw young men end up in, and creating, the alt-Right – I don’t believe there is any such ‘primary’ route – but it is certainly one route, and a disproportionately important one. 

This is not exactly an obscure connection.  Various people and outlets in the liberal mainstream have made it, from Salon.com to the Washington Post.

As Salon.com puts it:

Paleo-libertarianism was, in other words, a thoroughly reactionary ideology that combined the very worst aspects of both libertarianism and right-wing populism. This makes it distinct from the broader libertarian movement, which tends to be more socially liberal or at least socially tolerant. The "alt-right" was an outgrowth of this unholy alliance.

As it happens, we know of some very high-profile – and illustrative – outgrowths.

There’s Mike Enoch, for instance. 

Enoch spoke at the Charlottesville rally.  He has been praised by the Rothbard-admired ex-KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, who spoke after him at Charlottesville. Enoch is a friend and ally of Richard Spencer and Christopher Cantwell (the crying Nazi).  He founded The Right Stuff website (TRS), which plays host to many extreme Right podcasts, including the one Enoch himself hosts, the Daily Shoah.  (Yes, that’s what it’s called.)  To listen to him, there is no doubt what he is: a fascist, a white supremacist, an anti-semite, a nazi. 

The alt-Right is not ‘just’ neo-nazism rebranded, but that is certainly now a major part of what it is.  And people like Enoch are why.  His site – once a “post-libertarian” blog – cultivates the distinctive tone of the alt-Right: bilious, handmade, self-consciously wacky yet also brazenly vicious, and self-amusedly pseudo-meta.  The podcasts are the same.  They get downloaded by tens of thousands of listeners.  On them he opines about how the Jews are trying to destroy the white race by replacing or breeding us with “savages”.  Everything he doesn’t like is a Marxist conspiracy organised by the Jews.  No euphemisms or dogwhistles for him nowadays.  But there is something often forgotten about euphemisms and dogwhistles, namely that they effect people rather than just attracting their attention.  Enoch got where he is partly via euphemisms and dogwhistles.  A one-time Ron Paul supporter – like so many of them - he got where he is via libertarianism.

In the words of the Southern Policy Law Center:

Before founding TRS and fully committing to the Alt-Right, Peinovich [Enoch’s real surname… I’m not doxxing him, this is widely known] ran in libertarian circles. His radicalization followed a familiar trajectory among those affiliated with the Alt-Right. Peinovich progressed from the libertarian fringe to race realism and eventually extreme anti-Semitism, which he partially ascribes reading Kevin MacDonald’s Culture of Critique.

The SPLC also notes that, during his conversion to the alt-Right, Enoch “published an article titled ‘Burning Down the House’ under his byline in the Mises Daily, a publication of the Ludwig von Mises Institute”.

In an informative (if psychobabbly and overly sympathetic) profile of Enoch which appeared in the New Yorker, Andrew Marantz writes

He began reading books by Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, and Ludwig von Mises, the grandfather of libertarianism. For a few years, he was an enthusiastic and doctrinaire libertarian. He started a blog called the Emptiness, where he wrote posts such as “Socialism Is Selfish” and “Taxation Is Theft.”

…

Within a few years, he started to wonder whether libertarianism was too tepid. After all, its premises pointed toward a starker conclusion: if the state was nothing but a hindrance to freedom, why not abolish the state altogether, leaving only the unfettered market? From there, he went even further. What if you couldn’t account for people’s behavior without considering their cultural background, and even their genetic makeup? “Slapped in the face by the reality of human bio-diversity,” he later wrote, “I had to come to grips with the fact that libertarianism isn’t going to work for everyone, and the people that it isn’t going to work for are going to ruin it for everyone else.” Human biodiversity: the idea that people are different, that they differ in predictable ways, and that some people—not just individuals but groups of people—might be inherently superior to others.

He thought he had carefully examined each of his beliefs, reducing them to their most fundamental axioms. But here was an axiom so fundamental that he hadn’t even articulated it to himself, much less subjected it to logical scrutiny. Now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure why he should assume that all people were equal. Maybe they weren’t. If this was a textbook definition of racism, then so be it—maybe racism was true.”

Even more explicit is the journey taken by one Christopher Cantwell.  The Crying Nazi himself.