 Welcome once again to Mises Weekends. I'm your host Jeff Deist and this weekend we are talking about the alt-right and the socialist left and what both of those emerging political forces might mean for libertarianism in 2016 and beyond. I actually gave a speech on this very topic about two weeks ago at our Mises Circle event in Houston and I got quite a bit of feedback on it as you might imagine. I got alt-right people telling me I don't understand the alt-right and I got some Bernie Sanders progressives telling me I don't understand the left. So I thought it would be good to extrapolate a bit on my talk and answer perhaps some of those criticisms or questions about it. Now sort of underlying all this is this notion that the libertarian moment has passed, right? Rand Paul didn't do as well as a lot of people hoped and there's been some events around the world, the rise of ISIS, terrorist attacks, the immigration and refugee crisis in Europe, the shootings at the nightclub in Paris. So the mainstream media is telling us that well you put all this together and people have just sort of gotten over this non-interventionist isolationist libertarianism and that it's peaked perhaps with Rand Paul in 2012 and that it's had its day. Of course I certainly don't agree that the libertarian moment is over and we'll get into that a little more here as we progress but I will say that I don't see libertarianism per se as a political movement and that I see political movements generally at least at the national level as not only a waste of time but actually counterproductive to what we're trying to do in terms of winning people's hearts and minds and hopefully separating and segregating us from this beast of a federal government. But what's so interesting about what's happening I think this year is that we're really starting to see that this great lie, this great myth that there's a democratic consensus that can be reached in America is being laid bare and social media does so much to make this apparent to us, right? People say things on social media, people say things in internet's comment section they would never say to each other face to face. So in many ways for the first time in human history we really understand what other Americans think of each other in a way that we never did before. You know in the past maybe if you got really angry about something you saw in a debate, a political debate you sent a letter to the editor of your newspaper, a physical letter and maybe that got printed or maybe it didn't but now we have this sort of instantaneous stream of consciousness commenting and I think it is very healthy in the sense that it's allowing us to move past this notion that we can all decide things on some mass democratic basis because we can't. And I think we're seeing this breakdown even in mainstream media you know just this past week we've had two articles one in the Washington Post and one by Mona Sher and everyone's favorite neocon just absolutely unhinged at the Trump phenomenon. You know the idea that Trump could win a majority of electoral votes to become either the nominee or even the general election winner in the fall has gotten neoconservative so bent out of shape that it's interesting to watch. I don't care what you think about Trump pro or con but elites like Mona are actually starting to exhibit in public what they really believe which is that they don't believe in democracy they never have right elites only believe in democracy when the right candidate wins and we see this time and time here we see this in domestic politics and we see this in foreign policy where lowlifes like John McCain will support a revolution and say well this is democracy in action when the Washington DC foreign policy establishments candidate wins the supposedly democratic election in country X or Y or Z. So again I think from the libertarian's perspective the idea that the myth of democratic consensus is being blown up is a healthy thing and I'm not just talking about a scenario where one side of the other loses and says well the other side engaged in electoral fraud like we saw in the Bush v Gore debate in 2000 and we're now talking about one side just saying well because of campaign finance rules you know special interest money can kind of buy elections and the real democratic will of the people is never really shown the ballot box because you know their message is suppressed or another message that is better funded prevails. That's not what we're talking about today we're talking about a situation where millions of people in this country ordinary people simply will not accept it if Donald Trump becomes a president of the United States and millions of conservatives in this country so simply will not accept it as valid or legitimate if Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton becomes the next president of the United States. People have actually gotten to the point where they understand that just because the other side is able to garner you know 51% of voters not of of the population but voters you know that doesn't make the resulting government legitimate right. Why should anyone be governed by someone they hate whose policies they disagree with and whose supporters they don't like right well it's a perfectly valid question the answer is nobody should be governed by such a person and there's no political or legal theory that has ever been forwarded that answers that question and I include in that so-called social contract theory right there really isn't a good answer to that question of why should I be governed by someone I hate simply because that candidate was able to get a tiny majority of voters and look as libertarians you know we understand the dangers in this breakdown of democracy right when the great questions of a society are no longer decided by politics well there's two ways that society can go one is that it can devolve into authoritarianism but there's another way it can evolve and that is to a more libertarian society society where the great economic and social questions of the day are no longer decided by the state or they're decided by the state less often or less frequently and to me that's my definition of a libertarian society where we don't decide things politically so in that sense I think we should applaud what's going on with this sort of division in America but I do think as libertarians we should celebrate the death of the democratic myth and I think as libertarians we should be fundamentally opposed to democracy because it in itself is fundamentally incompatible with human liberty so one last point on this democracy issue I'll leave you with a great quote from Hans Hermann Hoppe writing in his book democracy the God that failed of course Hoppe makes the point that democratic mechanisms are a disaster both economically and morally so quoting Hoppe here he says democracy promotes short-sightedness capital waste irresponsibility and moral relativism it leads to permanent compulsory income and wealth redistribution and legal uncertainty it is counterproductive it promotes demagoguery and egalitarianism it is aggressive and potentially totalitarian internally vis-a-vis its own population as well as externally in some it leads to a dramatic growth of state power democracy is doomed to collapse just as soviet communism was doomed to collapse end quote so I think that pretty much sums up everything I have to say or feel about democracy so that's the good news is that the death of the libertarian moment has been overstated and that the faltering state of American democracy is something to be celebrated but as I said much of my talk in houston was devoted to talking about these two forces that seem at odds with each other the progressive left I will say the socialist left versus this newly emerging alt-right phenomenon so it's fun and it's interesting and I think educational to talk about both of these forces and understand them a little bit so what is the new progressive left embodied by the bernie sanders phenomenon well you can find it in places like black lives matter you can find it in places like occupy wall street democratic underground salon dot com feminist ing dot com another website and I think to understand today's socialist liberal today's progressive is course how they turn themselves you really have to use the term social justice warrior because that's at the heart of today's progressive this is not your parents or your grandparents democratic left-wing politics from a few generations ago which was much more focused on money and economic issues and union power that sort of thing today's social justice warrior is almost completely focused on identity politics right identity politics and social justice is at the heart of the bernie revolution so every issue from the social justice warrior perspective has to be viewed through this filter of sexism and racism and homophobia and privilege and transgenderism etc and so America's past viewed through these filters is ever and always shameful and hence we have to progress past that old bourgeois America into a new greater society right so that's really at the heart and the mindset of socialist Americans today and of course the socialist left it believes in internationalism and global government they love the UN they love the IMF they love the world bank and ironically of course they call themselves democrats but they hate localism they hate secession they hate actual local control where things are most democratic and of course they hate the marketplace which is that the only truly democratic mechanism we have in the world on foreign policy your left progressives will tend to be a little less bellicose at least in rhetoric than neo-conservatives you might call it sort of a peace core foreign policy but they still believe in meddling they still believe it's the role of the United States to spread democracy maybe your typical Bernie voter would like to see this done more with foreign aid or with NGOs and that sort of thing but they're not really against guns and butter and and we've seen this in the disappearance of the code pink types who who were so busy when W was still president but who went strangely silent during the Obama administration because at the end of the day they're not so opposed to wars when democrats prosecute them on monetary policy Bernie likes to talk about the Fed so I'll give him credit there but he doesn't understand it and he's mistaken about the harms it does he has a dim awareness and I think social justice warriors have a dim awareness of how the Fed creates inequality but they don't understand that what we need to do is get rid of the political control of money altogether and return money to the marketplace and let money operate as a commodity so they certainly don't understand that and Bernie is actually shown that he is a bit of a greenbacker he's hired a professor who's behind the modern greenbacker movement as one of his economic advisors now on economics of course the progressive left is completely socialist they believe in outright if not de facto nationalization of whole industries education energy banking of course they believe in vastly increased amounts of welfare and entitlements to give us more of what they would see as a just european style safety net they believe in outright wage and price controls and they're open about it to their credit they believe in guaranteed minimum income which unfortunately some libertarians have adopted as well they also believe in income limits something they're very open about that no one should be allowed to make more than x dollars per year they are of course entirely animated by the notion of global warming and that government ought to have overarching policies to prevent this calamity that's coming from the earth overheating and to that end most progressive socialists actually believe in banning fossil fuels outright and of course free speech is not a cornerstone of the new left in america on the contrary a significant number of democratic voters in this country would vote and would advocate criminalizing certain types of hate speech and banning it and you know on the non-governmental quasi private level like media outlets facebook etc they certainly work very hard to suppress conservative and libertarian speech with which they disagree and we're seeing that you know unravel today in twitter for example which is using different algorithms to sort of dampen the voices of conservatives and the outright and libertarians so the final point i will make about progressives about today's socialist left in america it is very interesting because it's something they actually share with y'all right and that is that the left is not seeking consensus with you or anybody else okay they're not trying to win your vote they're not trying to engage you in some intellectual debate and win you over they're interested in federalizing or better yet globalizing all decision-making with or without popular support so the left is very comfortable with the idea of using executive orders of using the the judiciary to accomplish things through judicial activism which they cannot accomplish at the ballot box so for all our talk about democracy which we could think of as the popular will they don't really believe in it right they intend to enact their programs for america with or without your support or your blessing and they're also very frank and honest about how they want to use demographic shifts to accomplish this bring in millions of new voters who will vote left and through demographics older more conservative voters dying off and younger more conservative voters having fewer kids so they're not shy about about saying this that you know oprah said something to the effect that we have to wait for some of these older white people to die to to eliminate racism right so i think this is you know one of the interesting hallmarks of today's left is that they're not seeking consensus with you they intend to do this one way or another so with that said let's talk a little bit about the alt-right the alt-right is sort of a new term of art that has come into being in the last year or two its origins have been ascribed to a couple of different bloggers i'm not sure exactly who owns it but the thing to understand about the alt-right is that they're conservatives but they're not part of the republican party they're not part of the right wing establishment in this country there's certainly very anti-establishment they hate people like case itch they hate organs like national review and they hate neo-conservative organs like the weekly standard for example so really the alt-right is is very much defined by what it's against there's not a natural home in a certain publication for the alt-right per se you can find certainly alt-right thinking in a website like breitbart which is a very high traffic right wing website but really the alt-right finds its home primarily in social media especially on twitter there are some alt-right people who are very active on twitter and who have managed to advance a narrative using social media without any kind of mainstream publication behind them one interesting thing about the alt-right is that they skew much younger traditional conservatives really are dying out the left is right about that whereas alt-right people tend to skew younger more millennials and they're certainly more active on some of the newer platforms one hallmark of the alt-right is populism populism combined with nationalism right unlike the left the alt-right says that it's okay to have a uniquely american identity and that america's past is not necessarily an inherently shameful there's certainly things that are regrettable but by and large america is a good place in a great country and i think one of the great things about the populism we see in the alt-right is there's a suspicion of elites right which i think is always a healthy thing because most elites in this country became elite through nefarious state connected means so to the extent the alt-right is hostile to elites i think we should welcome that now where the alt-right parts with libertarianism rather abruptly is is that the alt-right tends to be non-ideological and they look at libertarianism with great suspicion because they don't like the idea of ideological movements they're more interested in identity politics like the left on the issue of borders the alt-right certainly disagrees with the left and with many libertarians they think that we should have limited or no immigration into america certainly not islamic immigration now on culture and christianity and religion you really start to see the split between the old right and the new emerging alt-right i would say the alt-right is culturally christian but they're not animated by christianity in the same way that the religious right or the pro-life right is they don't believe in this sort of weak simpering christianity that has taken root in america this turned the other cheek christianity this christianity that says we have to welcome immigrants from third world countries so while the alt-right is certainly not pro-abortion and while the alt-right is certainly sympathetic to christianity it's more of a cultural christianity rather than an evangelical or a zionist christianity now this distinction between what we might call cultural christianity and evangelical christianity shows itself reveals itself also in the alt-right's view towards foreign policy right the alt-right is much more in the papu cannon camp of an america first type foreign policy the alt-right is tired of endless and intractable wars in the middle east and i think most people on the alt-right feel like we shouldn't be expending american blood and treasure to save iraq or any other country syria in the middle east so in that sense there's some room for agreement between libertarians on foreign policy but there's less room for agreement certainly between the alt-right and libertarians on economic issues the alt-right is openly protectionist while suspicious of central banking not necessarily clamoring to end the fed and i think what's most importantly here is the alt-right is not made up of free market ideologues right they believe that there are other issues the health of the nation the identity of the nation that are more important than just dollars and cents or gdp so to that end they're openly protectionist they believe that we ought to have trade policies that benefit american workers at the expense of cheap imports and they're not afraid to criticize right-wingers and libertarians as sort of these you know derasinated economic actors who only care about the financial bottom line in our country one thing that's very interesting to me about the alt-right and and one thing that distinguishes them from more traditional or mainstream conservatives is they're not afraid of this identity politics game right the the left considers most right-wingers and certainly most alt-righters as racist or xenophobic or homophobic or whatever it might be and the alt-right actually pushes back on this and says look identity politics is a two-way street and the fact that whites or white males have been marginalized and demonized in society gives us a rallying cry to mobilize those white male voters and we're not going to be apologetic about it so in that sense it is more honest and open and refreshingly so than mainstream conservatives has been because mainstream conservatives have unfortunately fallen into this trap of accepting the premises of the left and trying to co-opt and talk about nonsensical status programs about diversity and inclusion etc so in that sense i think it's refreshing and finally you know one last point i'll make about the alt-right is something they share with the socialist left in this country which is that they are not really seeking consensus any longer right they're not trying to win people on the left they're very much unafraid of being marginalized or called names and i think a lot of this stems from the fact that alt-right people are younger and they've grown up in a political era where they don't feel like there's anything left to lose right mainstream conservatism has utterly failed to stop the incremental march of progressivism throughout the 20th century so for a lot of these younger people the dream of a nice affordable house and no student loan debt and getting married and having kids in a white pig offense has really been blown up it's blown up in their faces and so they blame conservatives for not conserving this element of america and so you know they're really ready to go to battle with the social justice warriors and they're not afraid of it they're not afraid to use coarser language or to be more strident and and just admit it so i think what's so interesting about the alt-right is that just like the far left they're not trying to obtain consensus for their views they're just trying to find an avenue for their views to prevail so that being said let me wrap up with just a few thoughts about what we can learn from all this now a lot of people in libertarian circles feel that populism and demagoguery are always bad things and maybe there's an element of truth to that but is there anything good that libertarians can take from these two emerging movements let me give you a quote from Murray Rothbard on demagogues this is from 1954 but it really reads perfectly today and i think it especially applies to the trump phenomenon quoting Murray he says is the fashion belief that an idea is wrong in proportion to its extremism to the professional middle of the rotor a species that has always found in abundance the demagogue invariably comes as a nasty shock for it is one of the most admirable qualities of the demagogue that he forces men to think some for the first time in their lives out of the muddle of current ideas both fashionable and unfashionable he extracts some and pushes them to their logical conclusions i.e. to extremes he thereby forces people either to reject their loosely held views as unsound or to find them sound and pursue them to their logical consequences far from being an irrational force then the silliest of demagogues is a great servant of reason even when he is mostly in the wrong so i think that's a fantastic quote and i think it tells us that there's something we can gain from the environment that's brewing today in America behind this 2016 election so just a few thoughts in conclusion if we understand that the socialist left opposes what it sees as an unjust economic elite and if we understand that the alt-right opposes what it sees as an unjust cultural elite and maybe we can make some headway with both sides in arguing that you know these elites are to a large extent created and funded by the state if you were to reduce the size and scope of the state in our lives i would argue that you would reduce the power of both cultural and economic elites over the rest of us so i think we ought to stand ready to make this point that we can ratchet down some of this lack of social cohesion in society by reducing the state and really i think that we need to make the point and we need to make it more frequently and we need to make it better that the future is really what works versus what doesn't americans are not necessarily ideological animals so what we know about liberty and markets is that they work what we know about the state and democracy is that they don't work so since the state can't work we ought to make the case to people that the solutions to our problems are actually non-state solutions right the state can't remake the middle east they can't win wars it can't pay entitlements and welfare much longer particularly with the actual real reality behind the medicare part d prescription drug benefit and most of all the state can't create social cohesion right in fact you can only make the social disruption worse so we don't necessarily need to convince people on either side who are hostile to liberty to become libertarians but we need to explain to them how the state makes things worse and more importantly for our own self-interest we need to focus on the process of unyoking ourselves from them right because at the end of the day i think that the alt-right and the progressive left represent far more of a cultural divide than they do a political divide so i think what we need to explain to people and do a better job of explaining is that radical decentralization of political power may be the only way to save america from some sort of unpleasant and authoritarian future so that being said ladies and gentlemen have a great weekend