....loonytarians:
....It’s incredible how many of the same white nationalists and
conspiracy theorists to whom Ron Paul once catered are now ardent Trump
supporters. It’s because Trump and Paul speak the same language.
Mainstream libertarians have been agonizing over this legacy among
themselves for some time, hoping that either the elder or younger Paul
would definitively denounce the movement’s racialist past, but no such
speech has ever come. Instead, the paleolibertarian strategy concocted
decades ago as a way to push for minimal government threatens to replace
right-wing libertarianism with white nationalism.
The figure whose ideas unify Pauline libertarians and today’s Trumpists
is the late Murray Rothbard, an economist who co-founded the Cato
Institute and is widely regarded as the creator of libertarianism.
Nowadays, many libertarians like to portray their ideology as one that
somehow transcends the left-right divide, but to Rothbard, this was
nonsense. Libertarianism, he argued, was nothing more than a restatement
of the beliefs of the “Old Right,� which resolutely opposed the New Deal
and any sort of foreign intervention in the early 20th century. Many of
its adherents, such as essayist H.L. Mencken, espoused racist
viewpoints, as well.
As moderate Republicans such as Dwight Eisenhower and “New Right�
Christian conservatives such as William F. Buckley became more
influential within the Republican Party in the 1950s and ’60s, the
future creators of libertarianism gravitated instead toward the work of
secular anti-communist thinkers such as economist Ludwig von Mises and
novelist Ayn Rand.
There had always been some sympathy for racism and anti-Semitism among
libertarians — the movement’s house magazine, Reason, dedicated an
entire issue in 1976 to “historical revisionism,� including Holocaust
revisionism. It also repeatedly ran articles in defense of South
Africa’s then-segregationist government (though by 2016, the magazine
was running articles like “Donald Trump Enables Racism�). But it was
Rothbard’s founding of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in 1982 that
enabled the fledgling political movement to establish affinity with the
neo-Confederate Lost Cause movement.
Almost immediately after its creation, the Mises Institute
(headquartered in Auburn, Ala.) began publishing criticism of
“compulsory integration,� attacks on Abraham Lincoln and apologia for
Confederate leaders. Institute scholars have also spoken to racist
groups such as the League of the South. Rothbard even published a
chapter in his book “The Ethics of Liberty� in which he said that “the
purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children,�
although he didn’t specify the races of the children who might be sold.
These and many other controversial views advocated by Mises writers make
sense from a fanatical libertarian viewpoint. But they also originate in
a political calculation Rothbard revealed in a 1992 essay lamenting the
defeat of Republican white nationalist and former Ku Klux Klan leader
David Duke in the 1991 Louisiana governor’s race by a bipartisan coalition.
Expanding on themes raised two years earlier by his longtime partner and
friend Llewellyn “Lew� Rockwell, an editor and fundraiser for
libertarian causes, Rothbard argued that Duke’s candidacy was vitally
important because it made clear that the “old America� had been
overthrown by “an updated, twentieth-century coalition of Throne and
Altar� and its “State Church� of government officials, journalists and
social scientists.
Besides commending Duke as an exemplar of the kind of candidate he was
looking to support, Rothbard also invoked the “exciting� former senator
Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin — not because of his economic views but
because he was a brash populist prone to doing erratic things.
Rothbard’s description of McCarthy seems eerily similar to the campaign
that Trump has been running:
“The fascinating, the exciting, thing about Joe McCarthy was precisely
his ‘means’ — his right-wing populism: his willingness and ability to
reach out, to short-circuit the power elite: liberals, centrists, the
media, the intellectuals, the Pentagon, Rockefeller Republicans, and
reach out and whip up the masses directly. . . . With Joe McCarthy there
was a sense of dynamism, of fearlessness, and of open-endedness, as if,
whom would he subpoena next?�
To solve the problem that few Americans are interested in small
government, Rothbard argued that libertarians needed to align themselves
with people they might not like much in order to expand their numbers.
“Outreach to the Rednecks� was needed to make common cause with
far-right Christian conservatives who hated the federal government,
disliked drugs and wanted to crack down on crime.
All of these paleolibertarian positions were offered in Duke’s 1990
Senate campaign and 1991 gubernatorial campaign. But they were also
offered by another politician Rothbard admired: Ron Paul, the
Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate in 1988.
Rothbard and Paul had known and worked with each other in the 1970s,
when they came to know Rockwell. Rockwell would work closely with both
men, serving as Paul’s congressional chief of staff until he left to
found the Mises Institute with Rothbard.
Rockwell also was the editor of a series of printed newsletters for both
men in the ensuing decades. Paul’s publications became famous during his
Republican presidential campaigns. Their controversial nature is no
surprise, given that Paul had coyly endorsed the paleolibertarian
strategyshortly after it was devised.
Sold under various titles, the highly lucrative newsletters frequently
stoked racial fears, similar to what Trump has been doing this year,
though they went further — one even gave advice on using an unregistered
gun to shoot “urban youth.� Another issue mocked black Americans by
proposing alternative names for New York City such as “Zooville� and
“Rapetown,� while urging black political demonstrators to hold their
protests “at a food stamp bureau or a crack house.�
The publications also repeatedly promoted the work of Jared Taylor, a
white nationalist writer and editor who is today one of Trump’s most
prominent alt-right backers. Articles also featured anti-Semitic
conspiracy theories and frequent rants against gay men.
Paul later said he didn’t write the newsletters. But regardless of their
authorship, the image they created made him attractive to white
nationalists. Those supporters weren’t numerous enough to get Paul the
GOP presidential nomination, however, and paleolibertarianism began
fizzling out.
In the past few years, however, it’s been reborn as the alt-right, as a
new generation of libertarians discovered their hidden heritage and
began embracing racism and conspiracy theories. Many alt-right writers
trace their roots to Rothbard. As one of them, Gregory Hood, put it,
paleolibertarian theories about race and democracy “helped lead to the
emergence [of the] Alternative Right.� Rothbard’s call for “sovereign
nations based on race and ethnicity� is very similar to beliefs Trump’s
alt-right supporters express today.
In 2016, many, if not most, of the extremists who formerly supported
Paul have rallied to Trump’s side. In 2007, Paul won an endorsement and
a $500 campaign contribution from Don Black, the owner of Stormfront, a
self-described “white pride� Web forum. Despite a torrent of criticism,
Paul refused to return the money. This March, Black encouraged his radio
listeners to vote for Trump, even if he wasn’t perfect.
Memphis-based white nationalist radio host James Edwards supported Paul
and likewise backs Trump. His reputation didn’t dissuade either
candidate from associating with him. In July, Edwards attended the
Republican National Convention on a press pass even after the Trump
operation was subjected to embarrasing media coverage for allowing
Edwards to interview Donald Trump Jr. For his part, Paul agreed to
appear on Edwards’s program in 2006 but canceled at the last minute.
Duke, who is again running for Senate, has also repeatedly expressed his
admiration of both men. While Trump has mostly disavowed Duke, Paul said
in one of his newsletters that Duke’s political views were “just plain
good sense,� despite the “baggage� of his former Klan involvement.
After Rand Paul came to the Senate in 2011, and as he eventually began
planning his own presidential campaign, there was some speculation that
conservatives might be entering a “libertarian moment.� Things didn’t
turn out that way. Instead, the American right seems to have entered a
paleolibertarian moment.
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