Why Libertarians Go Alt-Right

In the Daily Beast, Matt Lewis asks an important and topical question: What is the connection between libertarianism and the alt-right? On paper, the two movements are diametrically opposed. Libertarians advocate (a version of) maximum personal freedom, while alt-rightists advocate authoritarianism and group-based discrimination. And yet, many prominent figures on the alt-right are associated with libertarianism in one way or another:

Milo Yiannopoulos has billed himself (and has been billed by others) as libertarian. About a year ago, he came clean about that. According to Business Insider, the alt-right troll Tim Gionet (aka “Baked Alaska”) formerly “identified as a carefree, easygoing libertarian” who “supported Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s bid for the White House, firmly opposed the war on drugs, and championed the cause of Black Lives Matter…”

Gavin McInnes bills himself as a libertarian, but he founded the Proud Boys―a men’s rights group that is considered part of the alt-right. Augustus Invictus, a Florida attorney who literally drank goat’s blood as part of an animal sacrifice, ran for senate in the 2016 Libertarian Party primary and spoke at Liberty Fest. Recently popular among college libertarians, Stefan Molyneux evolved into a pro-Trump alt-righter. And Richard Spencer was thrown out of the International Students for Liberty conference this year after crashing the event.

Lewis points to a number of plausible explanations—perhaps people drawn to one fringe movement are more easily seduced by another; perhaps closet alt-rightists took advantage of libertarian free speech absolutism “as a shield for expressing a lot of disturbing viewpoints”; perhaps the convergence “has as much to do with attitude as it has to do with ideology.”

Here’s another explanation, which in no way excludes Lewis’: Dogmatic right-wing politics has always been oriented around the idea of decline—the sense that everything good is slipping away, and that the slide must be arrested before it’s too late.

Both the libertarian right and the alt-right offer particularly vivid images of what this decline might look like. The libertarian version of decline—dominant on the Right after the recession, including among party elders like Paul Ryan—centered around the idea of dependency. America would soon become a nation of takers. Once a critical mass of Americans were on the dole, or not paying income taxes, the nation’s work ethic would be sapped. We were nearing a tipping point; the expansion of the welfare state needed to be stopped before we went over the edge.

The alt-right offered a different version of decline once the recession abated and the debt crisis worries faded. This version of decline centered around diversity. Once America became majority nonwhite, the Republican Party, if not the country, would be finished for good. Once again, we were nearing a tipping point; unless drastic action was taken, including halting immigration and oppressing minorities in the United States, the great American experiment would be lost.

Of course, this is a crude incomplete accounting of both libertarian and alt-right arguments over the last 10 years. But it does get at certain grievances that were influential in each camp.

There are many principled libertarians who would never think of going to the racist right, and, indeed, who have been among its strongest critics. But it’s worth considering the possibility that both movements attracted people—perhaps socially isolated and disconnected from mediating institutions—who were utterly convinced that the country was going to hell, and that the window of time to save it was closing. Libertarianism provided one vocabulary for this concern; today, the alt-right provides another.

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