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Comment by ubernostrum | Hacker News Reader

American "libertarianism" has gotten pretty, um, corrupted compared to the philosophic ideals it's allegedly based on:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/0...

It’s probably true that some of the overlap between libertarians and alt-righters can be explained by their companionship as members of the political fringe. But it’s not purely accidental, either. Historically, prominent libertarian thinkers have made the decision to cultivate ties with the nationalist far right, and have viewed racial demagoguery both as an efficacious political tool and an intellectually defensible position. The libertarian-to-fascist pipeline may have been forged partially by coincidence, but it was also crafted and maintained.

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Historically there was a far greater overlap between socialism and racism, so the historical argument doesn't hold much water. Libertarianism (no govt control over the economy) is the polar opposite of fascism (almost full govt control over the economy), so if people went from one to the other they either radically changed their position or were incorrectly calling themselves libertarian. The article insinuates that "America first" economic nationalism has something to do with libertarianism, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Libertarianism is staunchly opposed to tariffs and special treatment of chosen companies. The so-called "globalism" that the alt right rails against is textbook libertarianism: open borders for goods, services, and people.

I have no doubt that your personal libertarianism finds racism, nationalism and isolationism distasteful.

I also have no doubt that prominent people who identify and are accepted as libertarian, and sites which are cited as and claim to be libertarian, have cultivated alliances with racist/nationalist/isolationist groups. To those groups, many libertarian positions are appealing: sweeping away all government regulation, for example, would get rid of those pesky laws that make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race. Holding private contracts to be sacred and doing away with government interference in their performance means exploitative contracts -- close or even identical to actual slavery -- "entered" into on extremely coercive terms become perfectly acceptable. And so on and so forth.

> the alt-right, which is a small, far-right movement that seeks a whites-only state.

It amuses me to see every article about the "alt right" define it as something different.

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