 This is Mises Weekends with your host, Jeff Dice. Welcome back once again to Mises Weekends. I'm on the road this week rather than in the studio. But in the studio, I have my colleague, the Intrepid Thoe Bishop. Earlier this week, Richard Spencer, the alt-right provocateur, visited the Auburn campus after a federal judge insisted that Auburn University allow him to do so. And it turned out to be quite the event, not quite the battle at Berkeley. But nonetheless, it certainly made the news. And Mr. Spencer is raising some questions of nation and state that I think are very interesting. So Thoe went over and saw the talk that Mr. Spencer delivered. And so first and foremost, though, thanks for joining. Welcome. And what are your overall impressions of Richard Spencer and the whole event? Well, the greatest disappointment I had is, you know, watching the event, it came across that he wasn't really some dangerous thought criminal per se. He wasn't, you know, some real life red skull. For the most part, it was really kind of boring to start off with. I mean, you know, he took himself very seriously. And he had a very big audience there. I think a lot of people were just very interested to see what all of this controversy was about. And he started off trying to make this big thing about free speech. But of course, he doesn't really care about free speech when it comes down to it. He made that clear later on. So all in all, I mean, it was the hype was bigger than I think the event itself. There was a lot of protests going on, none of which were violent. The Auburn police did a very good job of unmasking some of the antifa activists that came from Atlanta. But for the most part, I thought the most interesting takeaway I took from Richard Spencer's talk was not that, you know, this is something that has a danger of changing American and Nazi Germany or something that you might hear from the New York Times or something like that, but mainly that the best thing that could happen to Richard Spencer is for him to be blocked from college campuses to censor his speech. Because I think when more people listen to his message, instead of hearing some dangerous new ideas, they're going to hear a lot of kind of just the same old things we've heard in the past. Well, it's interesting to me that he brings up free speech. Of course, shame on Auburn University for attempting to block him in the first place to the point where it required an order from a federal judge to let him speak. And it's also interesting to me that really very left wing professors who advocate all kinds of things are not only allowed to speak on public college campuses around the country, but are often members of the faculty itself at whatever university. But I do think it speaks well of the city of Auburn and just sort of the culture of the South that this was anything but the battle of Berkeley. This is a place where people tend to be more conservative in their lifestyle and in their outlook. And we didn't have any silliness, even with some interlopers from Atlanta. One thing that interested me, though, is he talks a lot about nationalism in the state. But what I don't understand is how he imagines whether you want a white nationalist state or any other kind of state, how he imagines one is going to take over the apparatus of some vast Western government like the United States and repurpose it. I mean, does he not understand that government is inherently progressive and that you can't use government to forward his purposes? I really don't know. I think he kind of really considers himself to be some great intellectual, but hearing him talk, he's clearly no Paul Godfrey or even like a Jared Taylor. He is, he's been kind of playing to, that's kind of one of the interesting developments in the last year or so. He went from being kind of a libertarianish sort of guy, quoting Hoppa and stuff like that to being more, he was out there praising Bernie, praising big government and talking about how he loves socialism. He's out in the past. He said, oh, we should just advocating for Trump just to go ahead and embrace. Universal healthcare. So he's gone full on with the state and I think he actually kind of believes this whole narrative that he's built or at least does a good job of selling it that, oh, well, this is some great revolution that we're gonna reform American society. Well, the tactics here just don't hold up. The idea that you're ever going to be able to get through the state, the development of some sort of white ethno state that he desires, the idea that he's ever going to win through democracy or anything like this. As you've talked about many times in the past, the Trump election was not some great revolution for white identity or some great turning point in American history. It's really a speed bump for the left. So that's whether Spencer gets it or not, how much, and that's kind of where I think Spencer needs, it's interesting to see him develop his role. I mean, is he supposed to be some sort of great leader for this alt-right that he's put together or is he more like a Milo? Is he a provocateur? Is he someone that, you know, his real great skill is getting protest to show up and try to censor him? You know, I don't know. He's talked a lot in the past about the need for the alt-right to go out and embrace, you know, get out in the real world, but it's difficult to do that when you're out there larking as a Nazi and making jokes about a Nazi in Germany at your events. So where Spencer actually wants to go with this outside of making a name for himself, you know, and the news is, you know, we'll see how that plays out. Well, it's clear that he equates nation with state in ways that certainly Mises and Rothbard would not. Of course, Mises, as we know, was an Austrian patriot, and Rothbard later in life came to really understand the concept of a nation, of a unit other than just the state or the individual for us to analyze as libertarians and understanding society, but I just wonder what Spencer might think in such a huge country, 320 million people with such a vast government, you'd think that he would be talking about a Benedict option of sorts for white nationalists. He would be talking about some sort of breakaway rather than trying to overtake and repurpose a vast government and military. You know, the only conclusion I can draw from this though is that he is an unserious person and that he's doing this for publicity. Absolutely, and I actually brought up the point with him. I asked the question at the event because he took a lot of pleasure in bad-mouthing college football, right, which is that dangerous territory when you come on Auburn's campus and start bad-mouthing college football, but I think it really kind of speaks to a larger point here in that he, when he talks about a white ethno-state, you know, it's this overly simplistic homogenization of white identity. I mean, you know, I was born in the South, you know, I consider myself a Southerner. You know, Spencer was born in Massachusetts. We have very different backgrounds, very different cultures in that regard. And so, you know, I think within kind of a necessity and framework of what a nation is. I mean, the idea of wanting to have your own culture preserved, you know, the idea of not being over, not being ruled by foreigners that don't, that just have so many things, whether it be language or other components that are completely foreign to you. You know, I don't think anyone wants that, but you can have that, you know, the South being ruled by a bunch of Yankees in New York or Texans being decided by the rest of the country or even Californians should not be governed by red states. You know, the only way that any of this sort of stuff makes sense is by embracing this sort of decentralization option, this breakup of these political monopolies. But he doesn't seem remotely interested in that. He, instead of trying to discuss realistic ideas on how, if he wants to carve out a little piece for himself in Montana and around Whitefish and get enough people to buy into that and buy their own property and, you know, they can do whatever they want in their own little community, but instead he would rather a bad mouth and mock libertarians and kiss up to Bernie Sanders supporters. So it's a very interesting strategy. Well, very bold, we'll see how that plays out. Well, and I think it's important for us to understand as so many libertarians don't seem to understand is that Richard Spencer and Trump are reactions to a viciously overreaching and hateful left in this country. I mean, we should, we need to understand that the real threat to liberty in this country overwhelmingly comes from the left, not the right. You know, Mike Huckabee is not going to install a theocratic federal government anytime soon. Richard Spencer is not going to take over Montana anytime soon, but there are very real progressive authoritarian all around us. They're at your kid's junior high school. They're making decisions on your city council meetings on Tuesday night. So I think Richard Spencer is something that the left-wing media actually loves because it allows them to create this idea that there's a rising national right represented by Trump and the all right, which is of course just false. I mean, if all right means someone who doesn't like the GOP establishment, but considers themselves not a liberal, well, that's a lot of people and they're painting with far too broad a brush. But let me get back to your point you made about football. Now I like that because I do think, especially college football tends to be a state-sponsored bread and circuses, but I'm told that what he said about football or the question he got about it might have actually been staged and that he was obviously Auburn is SEC football crazy and that he was actually trying to go to the audience with that. I think it was probably, again, I think he relishes being a Milo-like provocateur. I think he'd probably be insulted by that comparison. But to me, that's really kind of the core of what he's doing right now. And I think it's, again, perhaps for the betterment of everyone else. I mean, I think it's to his detriment because I do think, I mean, I've seen for myself the rise of at least, at the very least curiosity if not outright loyalty to the outright from people who used to be libertarians. I saw many students for Rand activists, for example, last year become interested in Richard Spencer. You had people invite Richard Spencer to come speak at ISFLC this past February. And it's directly a response to what you are seeing on college campuses. I mean, people are sick and tired of being told about their white privilege. People are sick and tired of being told that men are the problem with society. You had the Huffington Post article that they were forced to take down the fake thing about the need to take away the voting rights of white males in South Africa. Well, the reason why that was published in the first place, because it read like something that could be true in society today. And so he is definitely a response to this progressive climate that we see. And, but from his angle, instead of taking advantage of kind of this animosity that maybe your average 20-year-old Auburn white guy feels about how he's treated in this growing society, and he's antagonizing them and taking himself way too seriously where I had a bunch of people behind me who they were there just to see the spectacle of the whole thing. And it's kind of curious to see what he had to say. And by halfway through, they were laughing at him rather than with him. So the more I think he, he has to decide is he trying to win over people or is he just trying to poke and get headlines for himself. And this event seemed more, just to be more about getting Richard Spencer's name in the news and it was about winning Hearths and Mines, which it's probably a good thing in the long run. Well, it's interesting. I noted that Richard Spencer came out in favor of single payer healthcare. And I assume that what he means by that though is that there are deeper cultural and national questions that we ought to be obsessing over rather than healthcare exchanges. And so if we all have a common purpose in the kind of nation he envisions, single payer healthcare is no big problem if we were just like the Swedes or the Norwegians. Did he mention that during his talk? No, not really. He didn't go that far into it. He just said, you know, hey, libertarians are stupid. Socialism is great. I love big government. It was pretty much the depth of his conversation there. But I think that kind of reflects a larger issue that I've seen just from some of the alt-right that I've talked to. They're not interested in economics. They're not interested in any of these sort of questions. They're vehemently anti-free trade, for example, which as Ryan McMacon had an article on the wire a few weeks ago, if you're against immigration, then you really need free trade because that's what Mises talked about repeatedly. You know, I think that, you know, right so far, he hasn't really need to come up with solutions to how to implement this in practice because until late, you know, the alt-right has merely existed on 4chan and within meme culture. And only now are they trying to, you know, at least pretend to go out in real life and try to, you know, get political. And then, of course, their entire rise, I think, has as much to do with the desperation of Hillary Clinton and the media to tie Donald Trump into their movement more than anything that they've done themselves. But, you know, they haven't had to really address real questions on how, you know, their society would actually function. And I, again, based off of the tactics I've seen so far that they never really will. Well, we have to wrap it up, but I do think it's interesting that he brings up questions of culture and nation. I think libertarians ought not to be scared of these questions. I think we ought to look to people like Mises and Rothbard for guidance on some of these things, however thorny they might be. And I also think Richard Spencer ought to be allowed to speak. I think this is an absurd situation we've devolved into the United States where the left gets a pass and at least someone who's ostensibly on the right does not. So, thank you so much for your time today. Ladies and gentlemen, have a great weekend. Subscribe to Mises Weekends via iTunes U, Stitcher and SoundCloud, or listen on Mises.org and YouTube.