Libertarian Identity Politics
The conservative movement has all been leading up to this moment
After the terrorism of Charlottesville last weekend, I think we all felt barraged by many a hot take by pretty much every side and station of the political commentary spectrum. After every catastrophe there are political actors looking to make the case for their perspective in the face of the horror that is tragedy. The events of Charlottesville, when put into the context of political culture and history have highlighted the deeper tribal structures that have been guiding our politics for generations.
The neo-nationalist freaks who marched with store bought tiki torches yelling “you will not replace us” are the natural outgrowth of generations of subliminal and systemic racialization of systems of power. The history of white supremacy is a well documented and inescapable reality when looking at American history. This should appear as obvious on its face considering that the “Unite the Right” rally was based around the transformation of a park from Robert E Lee Park to Emancipation Park.
To those surprised by the recent organizational accomplishments of the Alt-Right, a helpful historical document is the most recent book by Nancy Maclean, “Democracy in Chains.” In the book, Maclean examines the history of the Republican party from the era of Eisenhower’s “Modern Republicanism” to a radicalized party of the libertarian anti-democrats who put the importance of property rights above all. Maclean primarily examines this transformation from the perspective of a James Buchanan, economist, academic, and, most importantly, aggrieved son of the south. The ideas of Buchanan have become the core beliefs of what we can call modern conservatism: property rights over individual rights, anemically low taxation, and a selective distrust of federal power.
One of Buchanan’s most striking beliefs was a strong distrust of democracy, which makes sense because when people are polled individually on these issues, they poll terribly. As shown by Eric Levitz in NYMag, ideas like a wealth cap with 100% taxation on income over 1 million dollars, about as communist one can get in the context of the American political economy, had more political support than the standard boilerplate Republican tax plan. Yet far right politics has been in ascendance and ever present in American political life since at least 1976. What can bind a party together when it’s driving principles are anti democratic and unpopular? White identity, of course.
From the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign in the town where two civil rights activists were murdered for registering African Americans to vote to our current Republican president calling Mexicans rapists and murderers, the post Watergate Republican party has flirted with and used white agreement as the cornerstone of their political project. The normalization of an ethno nationalist right, leading directly to the events in Charlottesville, is nothing more than the logical conclusion of decades of dog whistles of welfare queens, states rights, and birth certificates.
Libertarian philosophy and white identity politics are natural allies. Neither believe in democracy, equality, or anything other than reinforced hierarchy. While they may claim to believe in liberal values such as freedom of speech and expression, these are smokescreens and rhetorical tactics used to avoid the dark truths of modern conservatism. What we are in now is the future brought about by Buchanan and his ideological compatriots, and the eventual end of Trump will only forced them to regroup, rebrand, and begin again.
