Libertarians Must Cut All Ties with the Alt-Right Movement

By Jordan LaPorta

Politics is a game of perception and coalition building, and let’s be honest: libertarians struggle with both of these concepts. For decades, the libertarian movement has allowed others to drive their narrative and often failed to make meaningful coalitions with individuals who could help pass significant policy reforms. In the interest of ideological purity, libertarians have rejected working with Republicans or Democrats – and chided those who have – out of the fear of compromise that the political process necessitates. That is all fine and good.

Recently, however, many within libertarian circles, including anarcho-capitalists, have become sympathetic to another movement: the alt-right. For whatever reason, the rules that normally apply to political alliances have been thrown out the window, and “lovers of liberty” flock by the dozens to figures such as Milo Yiannopoulus, a person whose message is un-libertarian at its core.

The alt-right is difficult to pin down. It is an amorphous group that breeds in online chat-rooms, where they stoke the flames of political discontent with their witty and often mean-spirited memes. Political correctness is their enemy, and the movement will stop at nothing to annihilate the the social constructs imposed upon them by the left. In terms of policy, alt-rightists are often populist in tone, opposing all illegal immigration and most forms of legal migration.

Minorities and women are the prime targets of their trolling, and the movement has only gotten stronger since Donald J. Trump became the Republican presidential nominee. Trump’s policies echo their neo-reactionary worldview, while outlets such as Breitbart News feed them a steady diet of confirmation bias.

Enter the libertarian sympathizers. Many individuals, myself included, will defend Yiannopoulus and others in terms of their political rights. Libertarians rightly assert that members of the alt-right should not be censored or prosecuted by governments as long as their speech does not imply a real, immediate threat. However, others have taken their defense a step further. Rather than defend the base right of such provocateurs, big-time libertarian personalities have started to defend the content.

Perhaps the most egregious example of the new alt-right kiss-up is radio host Alex Jones, but his transformation has been so monstrous that he cannot even properly be labeled a libertarian anymore.  More than Libertarians for Trump, or the countless other personal examples true libertarians experience on their Facebook news feeds daily, the alt-right sympathy from Thomas Woods is perhaps the most disappointing.

Woods does a lot of good for the movement. While I do not agree with him on everything, his podcast, website, and books have done more to grow the movement than most others could ever hope to achieve. He is an effective advocate for the cause, and for that he should be applauded.

However, his show has taken a recent liking to rationalizing the actions of Yiannopoulus and his band of internet trolls. In Episode 703, titled “Social Justice Warriors: Who They Are, and How to Deal With Them,” Woods interviewed Vox Day, a religious fundamentalist whom Milo has called an “alt-right figurehead.” Woods and Day both slammed libertarians who engage in “respectability politics” and lean on the line “I don’t agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend your right to say it.”

Woods’ position would be all well and good if he did not constantly slam other libertarians for “harming the brand.” At the 2016 Libertarian National Convention, the talk show host gave a rousing and well thought-out speech on how to market libertarianism; a speech that also served as a veiled shot at nominee Gary Johnson.

For Woods to attack Johnson as harmful to libertarianism, yet rush to the defense of Yiannopoulos and Day is hypocrisy writ large. Objectively speaking, while Johnson is no purist, he is certainly more libertarian than an anti-immigration extremist or self-proclaimed Christian nationalist.

Association with these people harms the libertarian brand in immeasurable ways. The voters in this country up for grabs are not going to be swayed by appeals to white nationalism and the use of nasty rhetoric.

Members of the alt-right should be able to speak without censorship from the state. But libertarians should avoid any association with the hateful group at all cost. Not only does the alt-right differ from libertarianism starkly on philosophy, but collaboration with those with hateful hearts is bad for the movement’s optics.