There’s No Reason to Worry About the Supposed “Libertarian to Alt-Right Pipeline”

by | Sep 8, 2017

There’s No Reason to Worry About the Supposed “Libertarian to Alt-Right Pipeline”

by | Sep 8, 2017

Much ink has been spilled in the aftermath of Charlottesville about the supposed direct connection between libertarians and the alt-right. “Many prominent leaders of the alt-right have, at some point, identified as libertarian,” Matt Lewis notes in his seminal piece on the subject for the The Daily Beast, pointing to figures like Christopher Cantwell, Stefan Molyneux and Augustus Invictus. “It seems observably true that libertarianism is disproportionately a gateway drug to the alt-right,” he concludes.

Lewis’ article incited a firestorm of responses for and against his thesis, from The Washington Post to Reason to Rare. While it can’t be denied that a number of fellow travelers of liberty have fallen off the wagon, I don’t think there’s anything inherently about libertarianism to blame. Rather, the shifting context of American politics can explain what attracted such unfortunate characters to the freedom crowd in the first place.

The philosophy of freedom, for most of its history, has been seen as an outlier ideology in the United States. Indeed, the term “libertarian” as a political label did not come into its own until the mid-twentieth century, propelled by figures like Murray Rothbard. Our European cousins, by contrast, seem to have long understood the historical connection between modern-day libertarianism and classical liberalism, with mainstream “liberal” parties scattered across the continent.

Read more at Rare.

Our Books

Shop books published by the Libertarian Institute.

libetarian institute longsleeve shirt

Our Books

cb0cb1ef 3fcb 417d 80d8 4eef7bbd8290

Recent Articles

Recent

Democracy Cannot Lead to Self-Governance

Democracy Cannot Lead to Self-Governance

Democracies end up anti-democratic because only a tiny minority of radicals (politicians, interest groups, major corporations, etc.) achieve power centralized in the capital. They work the levers of government, place their servants in power, and advertise via...

read more
TGIF: The US Empire’s 72-Year War on Iran

TGIF: The US Empire’s 72-Year War on Iran

The likely temporary Israel-Iran ceasefire notwithstanding, if you need proof of how despicable Donald Trump is, consider this: When asked last week if he would ask Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop bombing Iran, which had already said it would stop retaliating...

read more

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This