Demonology of a Right-Wing "Special Boy" (Reissue)

Atlas Shrugged, but I cringed (eventually). This is the first of several pieces about how I found myself seduced by Right-Libertarianism in my formative years and why you should care.

Based on a several-times-edited post originally from December 11th, 2021.

2023 UPDATE A quick aside: I originally published this one at an extremely busy time in my life. I always meant to come back to this series. After getting some positive feedback, I wanted to breathe some life back into it. This first entry should be mostly unchanged, but I’ll be making a plan to see where I want to go with the tone and what points I wanted to hit.

Entry 1: Breaking the ice, and who am I to talk about Right-Libertarianism?

This story is going to be incomplete, mostly because time has made a lot of my memories difficult to substantiate (and I also don’t want to be sued for libel if anyone connects some of these dots). The thrust of these entries is going to mostly be about how, despite the apparent fact that millennial and zoomer buy-in to left or left-adjacent ideas is probably higher than ever (Opens in a new window), conservative and right-wing ideologies still manage to recruit young people in no small numbers.

Who am I to talk about this? For at least a decade, I can confidently say that I was one such recruit, and I want to share that journey with you with as much self-incrimination as I can manage.

Fair warning, this is going to be very US-focused in its context, but I still feel it’s broadly applicable in spirit. My goal for this is to help any readers to understand in some capacity things like: Who does “the intellectual dark web” appeal to? How did grifters and faux-intellectuals like Tim Pool and Ben Shapiro gain traction? Where do more Conservatives even come from in a generation that broadly supports same-sex marriage (Opens in a new window)? How do right-wing ideologies cross-pollinate? Why does any of this matter? How could it be dangerous?

Taken with zero permission from GALLUP. This statistic is widely considered proof that Americans are broadly becoming more socially libertarian.

At eighteen years old, I would never have thought of myself as a Conservative, or even right-wing at the time. Yet I found myself at astroturf rallies with Republicans, devouring publications sponsored by Koch Brother™ oil money, and supporting a number of policies with the same talking points as Rush Limbaugh. No, I was far too cool to be a Conservative. I was a teenage edgelord Libertarian, and I was ready to debate you.

There is more than one inroad to these ideologies. As my own story goes, I first identified as a Libertarian in my mid-teens. As was probably more the case in the early 2000’s, I was primarily “radicalized” offline. I was a huge evangelizer of the merits of Ayn Rand the genius of South Park, proud subscriber to Reason Magazine, and I was a card-carrying member of Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty. A bizarre set of decisions and circumstances allowed me face time with several Libertarian and Republican candidates for office, partaking in several of the infamous Tea Party events, shooting in the woods with second-amendment fanatics, and naively communicating in a number of social media circles with crypto-fascists hiding their power levels.

There is a history of debate and a diversity of opinions within Libertarianism, but there are several generally agreed on principles that I’ll cover in Entry Two. Most importantly distinguishing Right-Libertarianism, though, are the emphasis on individual property rights, unrestricted ownership of weapons, and the importance of maintaining a Free Market. As one might imagine, these have a special salience in an American context, and they are used to justify a number of different policies that may seem radically opposed, counterintuitive political alliances, and a possibly dubious insight into the “marketplace of ideas” many people of this ilk celebrate. It’s this room-for-interpretation that political actors who may not be quite so freedom-loving and sovereignty-protecting (Opens in a new window) use to recruit or persuade Libertarians. After all, Libertarians aren’t the only ones who support some of these concepts.

“The Marketplace of Ideas” according to most apolitical gamer boys

Neoliberals, who also claim to want a Free Market, have several traditions that insist a Strong State is needed to secure a marketplace. Granted, how do monopolies impact the freedom of the market? Civil wars and political instability in resource-rich regions certainly would impact this as well. Would not an intervention be called for in the name of Market freedom?

When engaging with civil liberties, one would think on the surface that there is a great deal of bread-breaking with the Left. The course of current events seem to be making this less so. Libertarians, who historically supported abortion rights (Opens in a new window), now are broadly silent in the face of some of the most egregious attacks (Opens in a new window) on the right to choose in US history.

How does contaminating your local watershed fit into the framework of freedom to exploit your property? Who enforces the property laws and contracts? These are arguments that opponents of Libertarianism, and even some Libertarians themselves cite, and will seem all-too familiar. I’m not going to bore you by going over these in this post.

With the following entries in this series, I’ll use my own story and network in order to demonstrate that the current Right-Libertarian movement is at this point almost completely astroturfed or infiltrated. Astroturfed (Opens in a new window) in that it, by design, inspires young people (mostly white males) to either disengage from politics in a meaningful way, or lead them to other, more established positions that benefit the corporate establishment. Infiltrated in that some radical elements have attempted to persuade the more vocally armed movements in Libertarianism to violent extremes (Opens in a new window). I’ll explore why I think this movement has picked up the traction that it has over the past two decades and the way I was brought into it.

2023 UPDATE A final topic that I want to examine: in the time since the Russo-Ukrainian War became a full-scale invasion, the US Libertarian party has had some… intriguing takes, as well.

In fact, the party’s whole social media presence has been full of interesting choices that are probably worth loudly challenging.