What Is Libertarianism?

What is libertarianism?  Can we even speak of a doctrine of liberty, a ‘liberty-ism’?

Is liberty a universal value? Can it be? Can it ever be?

As argued by Hoppe, is libertarianism just a euphemism for liberalism, adopted at a time when the liberal moniker has been corrupted by the Left? Or is libertarianism in fact something distinct, a radical reactionary outgrowth from the wayward and corrupted liberal trajectory?

To my mind, libertarianism – rather like conservatism – is a disposition, a habit, an attitude, a state of mind, not a fixed market-based dogma. I also think libertarianism is particularist, in that it has its home in England, which is not to say that non-English traditions lack a comparative understanding of liberty, but is to say that libertarianism is derived from an insular ontology that is socially and politically reactionary; prioritises individual freedom; minimises morally-privileged authority; puts the state (such as it is) at the service of the individual; and, holds to private institutions like the family as the basis of community and society.

I reject the idea of a universal human ethical, social and civic sensibility. In my view, liberty and freedom cannot be universal, and also cannot be considered meaningful unless examined ontically and socially. In other words, there is no free-floating, cultureless concept of liberty that could realistically work in practice on a global basis. All notions of freedom are ontological in the ultimate sense, however, I do not refer here to a mundane ‘ontology of need’, but rather to a more sophisticated ‘social and communal ontology’: to factors that are human-imposed, that transcend naive individual choice and are formed at the social and tribal level, and are ontological in nature and thus inhibit absolute agency and freedom of action in ‘human’ terms.

Certain implications follow that are uncomfortable for purist liberals who would have it that libertarianism is, in effect, a credo of a human specieal ontology or similar and somehow reflects universal human values, based either in some kind of a priori human grammar or which can be imposed as such.

Another, related, difficulty with genuine self-governing philosophies is that not everybody is suited to live ‘wild’.  It is unclear whether this is simply due to human nature and therefore axiomatic (and inevitable) or a result of the imposition of civilisation (intensified by industrialisation and urbanisation). I’m conscious that herding people into cities and factories is going to introduce an evolutionary dynamic and that political and social movements such as feminism and statist social democracy may be a manifestation of novel human evolutionary influences. At the same time, one would have to ask how the relevant structural changes could have occurred in the first place unless a section of the population is always susceptible to them. I do regard ideologies to be a result of natural selection and different human ‘types’ can be assorted into different ideological types: for example, communism would tend to favour those with a highly collectivist mindset.

The Limitations of Jordan Peterson

Not that I necessarily agree with the whole thesis of psychopathy, which seems to me rather unscientific, but Peterson here fails to take account of socially-sanctioned psychopathy. Or rather, he is too ready to dismiss the possibility a priori.

A psychopath can be behaviourally normative and still act in a thoroughly psychopathic manner. If this short clip is anything to go by, Peterson also seems to be equating psychopathy with anti-social behaviour, but the two are not synonyms. The possibility of social framing seems to elude Peterson: i.e. either that a psychopath can actually behave according to normative standards because the system itself is psychopathic or the psychopath is working within an institutionally psychopathic organisation. Examples abound and I need not labour the point.  I assume the reader has eyes to see and ears to hear.

Maybe this is harsh of me, but Peterson comes across as somebody with quite a naive understanding of the world, you might even call his worldview ‘quaint’. That observation is not particular to Peterson however: increasingly, as I age, learn and read more, I become less impressed by these ‘expert’ talking heads; indeed, experts of all kinds look less impressive to me, and not just in the social sciences.

We Need More Bigots, Not Free Speech

The more I think about it, the less enamoured I am of “free speech”, which it seems to me is yet another liberal chimera that ignores or smooths over the ontological nature of freedom.

“Free speech” in the practical sense is not offensive speech – which is pure free speech – but instead is defined in a more formal sense as wherever the line of acceptable speech can be drawn within a given culture. Multi-racialism and imposed diversity help us define the line of “free speech” in this multi-culture: it’s whatever does not offend, and the exact position of the ‘offence’ needle on the barometer of acceptability is never constant, always changing. That is, unless you are part of a protected group, in which case you can offend.

Anything that transgresses the threshold of acceptable speech is deemed illegal and potentially prosecutable, per “Count Dankula”.  Looking at the matter with detachment, none of this can be considered a surprise. It is difficult to imagine even a libertarian society that could tolerate liberal freedom of the chimerical sort. Can examples be brought forth? It seems to me that any society in which individuals aspire to be free must reckon with a paradox: intolerance of outsiders as a condition of internal tolerance.

The uncomfortable truth, then, is that unintellectual bigotry is a prerequisite of freedom. The working class blue collar racist, the roughneck who believes in Zionist conspiracy theories, the boorish lower middle-class businessman who wants to stop immigration and keep women in the home, the Tory Magistrate who wants to bring back the birch and close the borders, etc., are freedom’s cutting edge, not because – as the conservative might argue – the maintenance of freedom depends on the advancement and successful sustaining of a chimeric Liberal Order, but rather because the Order itself cannot exist without the people who maintain the relevant values that define it. We are freedom and freedom is us. Freedom means nothing unless we are able to survive and reproduce ourselves. If outsiders are tolerated and welcomed, freedom within that society will be gradually eroded.

That is why non-reactionary liberal societies collapse. They refuse to be bigoted and thereby sow the seeds of their decline and eventual destruction. It’s also why calling for “free speech” abstractly is completely futile. If you want “free speech” in anything other than the pretentious liberal chimeric sense, then the first steps are to close the borders, deport all non-Europeans and return society to communal principles.

Rights versus Liberties

Strictly speaking, I am not in favour of ‘rights’. The word ‘right’ began as a synonym for ‘law’ and denoted what nascent states could or could not do to interfere in the liberties of their subjects. Only liberties exist in the natural sense and the only debate is the extent to which our liberties (to speak freely, to perambulate around, to own and use guns, or whatever) should be restricted by ‘rights’.

Thus rights and liberties are opposites. When you speak of ‘gun rights’ or the ‘right to bear arms’, what you should really be talking about is the abolition of the state’s right (or moral privilege) to interfere with a liberty that we have always had.

Ground Zero Revolution 002

The Revolution 'will be televised' because most people in society are spectators conditioned into social conformity, non-violence and non-confrontation within the bubble of civilisation.  In mass societies of millions of conformists, the revolutionary initiative will come from a tiny few, perhaps even a handful of men who will learn how to cause metapolitical change, disruption and instability on a scale far beyond their meagre resources.

Online/electronic activism appeals because provides this leverage, it is technically simple and it suits introverted men - the personality profile of the majority of militants.  The danger is that the online world becomes a virtual world unto itself with its own interior goals and aims that are detached from the needs of ordinary people.  Virtual aims can include income and profits for online publishers and content creators, leading to the industrialisation of the political Right and alienation from the real world.

The online world should be a tool for running and organising activism in the real world.  Facebook and Twitter can advertise and encourage participation in meetings, demos, electoral campaigns, petitions and so on, they should not be meeting places in their own right.

Aims:

(i). Try to build our own online platforms and tools that are for real world organising and that interact with Big Social Platforms and Big Media but at the same time work can independently of them, if need be.

(ii). Build real-world communities, using community organising tactics and low-intensity civil resistance to build up a barricade mentality.

(iii). Withdraw from state services.

(iv). Campaign to discredit and where possible, de-legitimise and dismantle, state services.

Brave New World #Windrush

In Manchester, a 93-year old lady is beaten up by two black men in an attempted mugging.  Why?

The far-[true] Right: It's biological.

Social conservatives: Lack of crime control (need more police, tougher punishments, get back to foot patrols, etc.).

The Left: It's environmental.

Radical Left: It's due to white racism.

Neo-Marxists: It's class warfare.

Briefly, my thoughts and explanation:

In a country such as this, in which there is an ample social safety net, people do not generally commit crime out of need.  These men did not have a choice of robbing somebody or starving.  Crime itself is a conscious or unconscious rebellion against society.  In short, crime is war waged by the individual against the society around him.  It's the symptom of a dysfunctional society in which some people have not found a place in the hierarchy, or are unable to pursue their own path outside the hierarchy - maybe because a hierarchy no longer exists or no longer functions in any normal sense.  Unfulfilled, individuals seek to destroy society.

Solution - the restoration of society as an extended family.  This can only happen in a shared culture, which can only be the result of a folk.  

A fundamental problem is black identity.  Some blacks want to become culturally white.  Some blacks want to impose blackness or diversity on whites. Everybody needs an identity.  It is not enough just to be an individual.  Your individuality is defined within a wider frame of reference that is recognisable to you and others around you.  Without a sense of 'peoplehood', disaffection and alienation arises and crime becomes possible.

The Ground Zero Revolution

The political strategy can be summed up as: 'Ground Zero Revolution', i.e. the complete dismantlement of the state.

Towards a British meta-politics 002

The ‘Johnsonian Alt Right’, is an electronic version and extension of the Old Right.  It treats the web as a world unto itself rather than a tool for actual activism.  Real world activism by the American Alt Right looks cartoonish from afar, like an off-line version of much of what is online.  Yet the American experience is different. Britain is a society without First Amendment protections.  A little bit of sophistication is needed in Britain: we British need to craft a credo, literally a succinct form of words that is politic but not vacillating and that, to be blunt, says what needs to be said but without getting embroiled in unnecessary legal problems.  It’s a balancing act, between stealth guerrilla warfare and overt political action. 

Culture and politics are interactionist and co-dependent.  Culture without political initiative is little more than a hobby; politics without cultural struggle leads to success built on flimsy foundations.  But of the two, it is politics that predominates: culture is changed from the seat of power.  That does not justify vacillation and word-policing, which can only lead to Pyrrhic victories.  We need an army of maybe 1,000 Fascist Men in Britain – but it needs to be a thinking and doing army that offers the British people something tangible and concrete, not more aimless pseudo-political activity and navel-gazing.                

Five-Fold War

Nationalists will become nations unto themselves.

1. The authorities.

2. Moslems.

3. Politicised non-whites (Jews and blacks, etc.) and leftist whites.

4. Normative people, including both whites and non-whites, the mix depending on the geographic area.

5. Various kinds of nationalists.

Militants Holding Ballot Papers

We don't need the white British people to like us or become nationalists themselves, we just need them to vote for us.  At the same time, a vacillating tone with the public is not required.  We can make our case without compromising, or being seen to compromise, our beliefs and principles.

Sinn Fein/IRA provide one possible model.  The Irish Republicans succeeded through brutal realism: they pursued their community for votes, but they also inflicted disciplinary violence on their own community, not just IRA members but ordinary Irish Catholics.  The reality of the Armalite and the ballot box was a neo-Maoist interior war within Irish Catholic strongholds, in which the IRA took control of communal bodies and institutions through a mixture of politicking and terror, often the two methods merging and interacting.  As a result, the IRA was able to get away with community anarchism and violence for many years. They had, variously, the backing, silence and acquiescence of ordinary people, winning the support of some through votes, terrorising others.  Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland were, arguably, the biggest victims of IRA violence.

We do not propose to victimise our own community.  Instead of the 'Armalite in one hand and the ballot paper in the other', we call for a more subtle form of militancy.  To identify what that should be, we need to isolate what the IRA's campaign provided to its own community.  We think it was leadership.  People need direction in their lives, something to work and aim for, and some overarching social order.  

Joe Owens provides a large part of the answer and it is recommended that all British Nationalists should watch his videos.  However, we take a slightly different tack.  It's a difference in style and emphasis.  Owens wants to be liked by the public and believes in appealing to the ‘civic and community soft underbelly’, even to LGBT people and non-whites, if that will achieve the aim of power.  We don't care if the public like us or not, and we don't intend to simply say nice things in the hope of not offending anybody.  Vacillation does not earn respect, and even when it results in victories, these tend to be Pyrrhic because the game has been won by compromising and lowering your platform to the lowest common denominator.  Rather, we think the public will vote for us if we offer them something: leadership, direction and competency.  This in turn requires a small core of militants who believe in an Idea, a Cause, expressed in a unifying thesis or credo, and propagated through an appeal to emotion, intellect or a combination thereof.    

Towards a British meta-politics

In a British context, the Johnsonian Alt Right are wrong, for three main reasons –

(i). political change and cultural change are an interaction, it’s not one or the other but both;

(ii). predominantly political power comes before cultural change, not after; and,

(iii). cultural and intellectual struggle are not meta-politics.

Nationalism needs a soft underbelly of civic and community support.  Without that, you’ve got no link to the community and you end up marooned in echo chambers and on the internet.  You’ve also got no way of changing society’s culture because you have no seat of power from which to activate cultural change.  The obnoxious changes we see in our communities are funded by public grant money and local authority enabling.

By rejecting politics in favour of cultural pursuits, the Alt Right may have been pursuing an appropriate strategy for American society (I don’t myself know, it’s down to them), but in Britain it has neutered us.

A True-Born Englishman

Wild, straggly dark Celtic hair, a maniacal green-eyed stare, a red beard, the smirk, and a look of arrogance, defiance, wisdom and self-assurance.

Two of these - self-assurance and wisdom - do not apply and are being worked on.