Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s speech on libertarianism and the alternative right was highly anticipated. Because Hoppe is so misunderstood and an acquired taste, I wanted to dumb it down for the common man to understand. The following is a breakdown of each talking point:
Hoppe specifically says he wants to talk about libertarianism and the alt-right. The subtitle “In Search of a Libertarian Strategy For Social Change.”
He begins by mentioning how the term “liberal” and “liberalism” has now been tied to so many different positions that it is now an empty label. Now “libertarianism”, which was inveted to regain what was lost with the term “liberal”, is also threatened.
The modern libertarian movement is young. It started with Murray Rothbard and its first expression was in For A New Liberty, published in 1973. The libertarian movement had about 10 people that fit in Rothbard’s living room. Because it is young, Hoppe has not given up hope for the term, but acknowledges that people are muddying it up.
Libertarian doctrine is simple: If there were no scarcity, physical clashes would be impossible. Interpersonal conflicts all deal with scarce resources. Because we are able to communicate, we argue with the purpose to avoid conflict (norms). If we didn’t want to avoid conflict, there is no point to having the norms, and we’d just fight. Conflicts regarding scarce resources can only be avoided if all scarce resources are assigned to individuals or groups of individuals (private property). This is the only way that I can act independently with my own things, from you with your things, without physical clash.
Each person owns his physical body (self-ownership)
Non-bodily private property is assigned to the person who appropriated the scarce resource first, or those that obtained it through voluntary, conflict-free exchange from the previous owner. Only the first appropriator can possibly gain control of it without conflict; peaceful. If exclusive control was instead assigned to latecomers, conflict is unavoidable and permanent.
If you want to live in peace with others and avoid clashes or seek to resolve them peacefully, you must be an anarchist. You must be a private property anarchist or anarcho-capitalist.
Fake libertarians and non-libertarians advocate the following:
1. The necessity of the state, public work, state property, or taxes in order to live in peace.
2. Affirms the existence of human or civil rights other than private property rights. This is includes women rights, minority rights, right to free trespassing, right to minimum wage, right healthcare and etc.
The proponents of the above can call themselves whatever they want; we may even end up cooperating with them to get to our ultimate goal, but they aren’t libertarians. There are only property rights and they apply to all individuals.
Rothbard and Hoppe have been vilified as if they are evil by fake libertarians, non-libertarians, and even smart (but dimwitted) libertarians.
Rothbard has been labeled (by anti-fascists) as a racist, sexist, xenophobic, fascist self-hating Jewish Nazi. Hoppe says he inherited all of this, plus a few more (except for the Jewish stuff).
The alt-right has gained national notoriety, and some claim that it led to a Trump presidency. Alt-righters broke with Trump after they found out he was just another presidential warmonger.
The alt-right movement is a successor of the paleo-conservative movement of Pat Buchanan. It died and has returned more rigorous than ever. Hoppe mentions many of the names now associated with the alt-right like Gutfied and Richard Spencer.
Hoppe acknowledges that he has been lumped with alt-right and his work has been linked with the neo-reactionary movement. This has earned him acknowledgement by the Southern Poverty Law Center. He mentions how Tom DiLorenzo likes calling it the “Soviet Poverty Lie Center”.
Hoppe admits that libertarian doctrine says nothing about how to retain a libertarian social order, or how to get to a libertarian social order from a non-libertarian social order.
He says that libertarianism can be described as theory and theorists without psychology and sociology… and the alt-right can be described as the opposite; psychology with no theory.
The alt-righters are not united by a commonly-held theory and there’s no text really defining its meaning.
The alt-right is far more united by what it is against, than what it is for.
The alt-right hates academia, the media, and the state. All promote social degeneracy.
The alt-right hates cultural Marxism and they don’t even try to defend themselves against allegations of being racists or xenophobes.
Students For Liberty are “the Stupids For Liberty”.
The alt-right insists that life is about hate, struggle and conflict among individuals and groups.
Hoppe explains Millennial Woes’ summary of the alt-right.
Hoppe recognizes there are alt-righters that have libertarian leanings (the ones in the building, for example) who he has invited to Property and Freedom Society events.
Hoppe recognizes, also, that there are many alt-righters that have views that are incompatible with libertarianism. He highlights Pat Buchanan and Trump wanting to restrict immigration, but also want to restrict trade (tariffs, protectionism), and that isn’t libertarian.
He says that at one point, Richard Spencer had libertarian leanings before he was noticed, but he’s nothing close to being a libertarian now. Spencer now denounces all libertarians and puts up with socialism, as long as it is white socialism. Hoppe is disappointed at this.
The beef between alt-righters and this split has given us insights that are important. The alt-right didn’t create these and weren’t the first to highlight, but they can be credited to bringing them back to light.
Many libertarians believe all that is needed for a libertarian social order, is a strict enforcement of the non-aggression principle. This is sufficient between communities far away, but this does not hold up when it comes to people living close to each other in a community.
Peaceful co-habitation on a territory requires a commonality of culture. There can be peaceful co-habitation on distant physical territories but multiculturalism cannot exist in the same place without tension and the destruction of anything like a libertarian social order.
A libertarian order must be guarded against communism, socialism or anything that is a violation of private property rights. A libertarian society is an order that has been established on the idea of private property. Communists and socialists are an open threat. If they are in the libertarian society, they must be physically removed. If this is not done, it will end up being communism, socialism, etc. [Reminder: an advocate is someone that supports and urges others to adopt something. That means that they themselves would be actively violating private property rights and urging others to do the same.]
Hoppe uses the concept of someone having a bad neighbor as an example for the previous point. If someone does not use aggression, and slaughters animals on his property for you to see and you want him to stop, you must socially ostracize him. In order to remain libertarian, you cannot use aggression on him. Your ostracism may not be enough and you would need the communal help of others to do the same in hopes that he would either stop slaughtering animals on his property or sell the property and leave. This highlights how communities will always have a sense of culture.
Some libertarians have assumed that this “bad neighbor” problem simply won’t exist, which is why they don’t address it. This is naïve. They advise to basically be nice to everyone and the libertarian arguments will win. He uses Jeffrey Tucker’s “do’s and don’ts” as an example.
Tucker doesn’t follow his own advice as he calls the alt-right liberty-hating fascists. His advice is good for clean-slated people that appeared from nowhere with no trace of history. This is naïve when it comes to achieving libertarian ends. Hoppe has met people that are ignorant on liberty, have unlibertarian goals and hate liberty as understood by libertarians. Why should he not see these people as his enemies?
Libertarians must be realistic and they must recognize the inequalities among individuals and cultures. There are enemies of liberty.
The ideas of liberty are suppressed nearly everywhere. Rarely in any place outside of Western Europe and the countries in which these people have settled, can these ideas still be openly challenged.
If libertarians confine their strategy only to the West, we can then identify that these are the most prominent enemies: The ruling deep state (military, secret services, central banks, and supreme courts), the intellectuals (most are funded by the state), and the journalist of the mainstream media. The alt-right has correctly identified this.
The victims are the taxpayers, but this is only part of the answer. There is a culture war. There is a destruction of social bonds. This is creating a populace in which their only bond is dependency of the state. The alt-right has identified this.
The first step to state dependency was the introduction of public welfare and social security. This turned the elderly and the underclass into state dependents; family and community has been diminished.
Another step: victimology. Women, blacks, browns, LGBT have been awarded victim status. They have legal privileges. This happens with also legal and illegal immigrants.T
The result of these steps has been that the “bad neighbor” problem hasn’t been solved; it has been promoted systematically.
Freedom of association and voluntary segregation and separation have been replaced with forced integration.
All victim groups are now pitted against each other and all of them have been pitted against white, heterosexual, married males.
The institution of the family that has formed the basis of Western civilization has been vilified as the source of all social ills.
A promising libertarian strategy should first tailor their message towards white, married, Christian couples with children. Anything resembling this is going to be the most receptive to libertarian ideals considering today’s reality. The least receptive groups will be the ones that are protected by the state. This is understanding demographics and libertarian marketing. The alt-right has also identified this for their movement (as far as who is the most receptive).
A libertarian social change should be prefaced with the expectation that the intellectuals and mainstream media are funded by the state, so they should not be expected to be a part of the solution. The Hayekian strategy of starting with leading philosophers in hopes that their vision trickles down to everyone else, is unrealistic. A working libertarian strategy is a populist one; they must address the masses directly.
Though the main addressees of libertarianism will be the disenfranchised whites, it is a strategic error to make whiteness an exclusive criterion. Some strands of the alt-right have wrongfully adopted this strategy. After all, it is white men that make up the majority of the ruling class that have caused this problem. This outcome was not possible without the help of white men.
Stop mass immigration. This has resulted in “bad neighbors” and welfare statism. Nobody is against immigration or immigrants, but it needs to be by invitation. If invited parties enter a bond with the community, they’ll be more likely to be productive members of society and barred from welfare payments. Every immigrant-inviting party or employer should pay for travel, salary, and pay the community for their usage of current “public” property; this voids all costs occurred with settlement. If all immigrants are screened for productivity and cultural affinity, the result will be mostly, but not exclusively, white candidates.
Continuing on the libertarian strategy and solving the immigration problem, Hoppe believes all known communists and socialists of any color, denomination or nation must be barred from permanent settlement; unless the community sanctions looting of residents’ property by new arrivals. This is not likely to happen.
In a fully privatized territory (libertarian social order) there is no such thing as open borders/right to free immigration. Private property implies borders and owners have the right to exclude. Public property is the property of domestic taxpayers.
The state is a criminal organization and entrusting it with border control will result in injustices to both residents and foreigners. The state also does something when it does nothing about border control; as in they claim the monopoly and prevent privatization. Under the current circumstances (state and all), if it does nothing it is hurting the domestic residents.
Stop attacking, killing, and bombing people in other countries. The main (if not the only) reason hordes of immigrants go to other countries en masse is due to the US (and their allies’) wars in other countries.
The terrorist attacks in the West are largely a blowback of the wars.
There should be no hesitation by libertarians to call the people responsible for these wars what they really are: murderers or accessories to mass murder. Libertarians should call for a foreign policy of strict non-interventionalism. Withdraw from all international and super-national organizations like NATO.
Stop all government aid and prohibit weapon sales to foreign states. Trade and no interference with domestic affiars.
Defund the ruling elite. Expose the salaries and bribes of the politicians, party leaders, crony capitalists, government officials and higher-ups in society.
Libertarians need to drive home the point that all of the elites’ money is extorted from the taxpayer. Push for eliminating all taxes, from sales to income taxes.
End the Federal Reserve. It is the second source of funding for the elites. Central banks facilitate wars. They need to be eliminated and replaced by competing banks and commodity money.
Abolish all affirmative action and non-discrimination laws. People have to be free to associate or disassociate, integrate or segregate, join or separate, and secede.
Demand that all affirmative action beneficiaries, diversity and human resource officers from universities to grade school be thrown out on the street and learn a useful trade.
Crush the current anti-fascist mob. They are funded by the ruling elites. These SJWs have directed terror at anything deemed racist, fascist or right-wing. People are being physically attacked.
Police should be unleashed on mobs, but they’ve been told to stand down. They should be unleashed because these are legitimate property rights violations. And if the police won’t do it, then the targets of the attacks should take it in their own hands. This idea would happen in a free society.
Crush the criminals and gangs. This should be colorblind but it doesn’t matter if most of the criminals are of a particular demographic.
All prohibition of guns should be abolished.
Get rid of welfare parasites and bums. The real intention of social policies are to ensure and grow the underclass. Abolish all welfare programs. He who will not work, cannot eat. He who cannot work should be taken care of by family, community, and voluntary charity.
Get the out state of education. Public education is the root cause of most issues. Private education is far more efficient. People are now spending most of the prime of their lives in state-funded institutions. State education is designed to build soldiers and good public servants. The indoctrination has worked because people are spending most of their lives exposed to what the state wants them to learn. This should be ultimately privatized
Don’t put trust in politics and political parties. It is the ultimate goal of libertarianism to put an end to politics. If you have to participate in politics to avoid the allure of power, focus on the local level. Push for radical decentralization, nullification and peaceful separation and secession.
Be brave, but do not give into evil, as Mises said. Oppose the ruling elites because if you are not bold, matters will get worse.
Eric July
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