There’s No Liberty Under Fascism and No Alternative In Trump

On Saturday, May 25th, to jeers and boos, Donald Trump addressed the Libertarian Party conference, a testament to the far-Right turn that the third largest political party in the United States has made following the takeover by the Alt-Right aligned Mises Caucus.

Ironically, Trump spoke under a huge banner featuring a faux circled anarchist (A) and Libertarian black and gold colors reading, “Become Ungovernable,” a slogan that become popular during protests against Trump’s policies during his presidency.

Trump is far from a Libertarian – he openly proclaims that he will be a dictator on “day one,” runs ads online that refer to a “United Reich,” and has dinner with leading neo-Nazis. While Libertarians cheer tax cuts for the rich, the removal of environmental and worker protections, and calls made by Trump associates such as the fascistic Steve Bannon to attack the “administrative state,” meaning dismantling popular safety net programs such as food stamps, Medicaid, and Social Security – which Trump has endorsed – Trump also increased the national debt and government spending; funneling billions into the Pentagon and the war economy. Trump courts the support of fascist groups, weaponized Homeland Security against his political enemies, worked to accelerate the failed “War on Drugs,” attacked reproductive freedom, targets and attacks LGBTQ+ people, wants to carry out a militarized mass roundup of tens of millions of working-class people, has voted to increase government surveillance, and has built alliances with dictators and authoritarians across the globe. Trump also played a key role in a coup attempt on January 6th that attempted to install him as an unelected leader.

As even the Libertarian aligned Cato Institute, an uber-capitalist think-tank wrote:

…[T]he list of Trump policies and postures that libertarians oppose is long and dangerous…In truth, Trump’s appearance this week says as much about the Libertarian Party as it does about him.

…[T]oday’s [Libertarian] party leadership has been taken over by a faction that places it well outside the bounds of libertarianism altogether and appears comfortable with right-wing authoritarianism. Some tweets issued from state libertarian parties and other libertarian operators can only be described as shockingly racist or antisemitic — the Libertarian Party of Michigan, for instance, posted a cartoon portraying Jews as puppet masters of the Democratic and Republican parties — and would be more welcome on the alt-right than among true libertarians.

In Trump, the Alt-Right trolls at the head of the Mises Caucus, which controls the Libertarian Party, find a kindred spirit. To them, the goal is not to chip away at authoritarianism, but instead to use the State to attack advances made by popular working-class movements from below. Far from pushing back against government control over our lives, they instead want to increase its targeting of those it deems to be its enemies.

The organized Right is a mass movement for inequality and thus needs to brand itself as an alternative to the system it exists to uphold and defend. Its fitting then that Libertarians have literally stolen the word “libertarian” from anarchists, who for decades used it to advocate a cooperative, anti-capitalist, and egalitarian society organized from the bottom up. Starting in the 1950s however, far-Right capitalists began using the term to advocate for a society where the State had been completely privatized – with all aspects of social life being controlled by private businesses – from courts, to cops, prisons, roads, and schools.

As Murray Rothbard, one of the leading architects of both so-called “anarcho”-capitalism and the Libertarian Party stated, “One gratifying aspect of our rise to some prominence is that, for the first time in my memory, we, ‘our side,’ had captured a crucial word from the enemy. ‘Libertarians’ had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists…But now we had taken it over.”

But Rothbard was clear that this vision of privatized warlordism had nothing to do with actual anarchism. He later wrote, “We must therefore conclude that we are not anarchists, and that those who call us anarchists are not on firm etymological ground, and are being completely unhistorical.”

Like the modern-day Mises Caucus, Rothbard went on to call for alliances with neo-Nazis like David Duke and for the State to attack protesters, the poor, and social movements. He famously called to the State to direct its violence against the broader population, stating:

[U]nleash the cops to clear the streets of bums and vagrants. Where will they go? Who cares? Hopefully, they will disappear, that is, move from the ranks of the petted and cosseted bum class to the ranks of the productive members of society.

Such rhetoric echos that of Trump today. Rothbard would go on to help build the modern Libertarian Party and worked to push Ron Paul into the spotlight, whose presidential campaign in 2012 helped give birth to the modern day far-Right. For those Libertarians angry that Trump addressed their convention, enjoy your chickens coming home to roost.

Both Trump and the Libertarian Party try and brand themselves as an alternative to the status-quo, in the hopes of attracting dissatisfied voters angry at the growing cost of living, the current war, and the immiseration of everyday life for working-class people.

In reality, both Trump and the Libertarian Party want to make things better for the ruling class and corporations – not those who toil under them. Moreover, like Rothbard, they want to remove any pretense of government oversight and accountability – instead unleashing the State’s full potential for violence against anything that challenges the capitalist system.

In wake of the pandemic, corporations are making record profits – by price gouging working-class people as rent has skyrocketed and wages have remained stagnant. But Trump and the Libertarian Party simply wants to accelerate this reality – not attack it. But unlike Biden who cheerleaders how “well” the economy is doing, the far-Right instead offers a laundry list of manufactured enemies who they attempt to blame for our collective misery: immigrants, drag queens, “woke,” ANTIFA – anything but the system of exploitation itself.

Trump and the Libertarian Party have no solutions to offer, only a worse version of the current system. The real alternative to the present crisis lies in our ability to actually build power outside of the State and the capitalist economy.