The culture of the Libertarian Party is and has been broken.
From its inception, it has made exceptions in its moral framework and its praxiological approach and allowed itself to be co-opted by statists. SEKIII was right to call it a counterattack against the real libertarian movement because it so often served as a vessel for the opposite.
And here’s the problem. Given what the LP is and the people inherently drawn to it on the alleged stated principles, they are inherently going to be more of the outsider sort. You’re going to get more of the nerds, the freaks, the punks, the rebels, the people who can’t sit at the “cool kids table” because they ain’t “in”. The people who see the two-party system as it stands and the establishment that goes along with it as a fundamental threat to them because they know how normal people have treated them.
They’ll do a lot to force you in line.
And this also means that in some of those cases those sorts of people have yearned for a seat at the table so long and some of the acceptance that might come along with that that they’re willing to give up certain aspects of their libertarianism in order to get it.
This has allowed for a gradual takeover by people in this party, and by extension the movement, that serve more normal interests. And the cultures of bullying have seeped up from the floorboards like the rot they are. The authoritarian kinds of mentalities that say people have to get in line with cultural norms or they have to get out. My recent piece on the Paleo movement says quite a bit about that. Just look at the kinds of conformity they tried to enforce for a seat at the Republican table in the 90s.
And they failed.
But the more modern LNC tried it again, and in this case, they thought they won – especially since Ross is now free with a full pardon. They played that off as a win when really this entire administration has been throwing them under the bus. They used it as an excuse to handwave fascism from affiliates like NH and CO, and caucuses like Mises.
The true believers were hard at work, excusing every compromise, rallying and fundraising for opposition, illegally opposing their nominee, crushing anyone who tried to ensure his place, and helping those who slandered, libeled, slurred, and cancelled him, sometimes with ten year old posts. And they were assisted by the people who wanted sabotage to start with, because they hate libertarians, or the people who had no idea what the platform said, and balked when it was read to them, like a Christian read the Bible when they sin.
Libertarians allowed many of those people to infiltrate many of their circles, and many of the people who claim to be “alternative” to those who supported Trump, are bullies themselves, and allow that in their circles. They employ the same tactics, but for their side, and try to silence and intimidate critics where they can. They’ll avoid rocking the new boat, employ similar or same bullying tactics, but for their side, and they’ll dismiss, silence, and avoid people deemed by their groups to be The Other™, even when more unity would help them achieve their goals.
Instead of opposing the mentalities that create the state to begin with, both main groups have allowed their libertarian movement to become statist. And this comes with running cover for some truly terrible people, actions, and cultures, in their own ranks, and an enabling of clique mentality that demands a cancerous homogeneity, destroying all cells eventually. And a political party is just one of the easiest ways to make that happen. Politics is a dirty game. And when you’re trying to vie for a seat at political tables, don’t be surprised if you come apart from that covered in the filth.
When people see an incident of police brutality or misconduct, they often wonder whether that person was either bullied or the bully in school because they automatically understand the implication:
Hurt people hurt people.
I’m not going to make any assumptions about which of the two happened to Adrian or the people like him. Though his Mises Caucus account spread a baseless rumor that their nominee raped children, and whether or not that was him, he condoned it. Take that info as you will. But what I am going to say is that he certainly became a bully if he wasn’t one when he was a kid. And his bullying mentality translated into his actions as a part of the Libertarian Party. And he was welcomed because there are a lot of other people in the Libertarian Party who didn’t grow up to realize that you can’t repeat the same patterns of bullying and ostracization that fucked you up and expect to have better.
The LP has a toxicity problem. It has a bullying problem. It has a scapegoating problem. It has a culture problem. And the politics that are downstream from this culture will never be better until the culture is improved. You can replace people like Adrian a hundred times over, and if you don’t recognize the actual cultural problems with what he did, you’ll just get another Adrian. You can keep pointing the finger outward, and reject any honest assessment from fingers pointed back. You can refuse self reflection and resort to whatever dirty tricks you can in order to preserve your new ingroups til they eventually crumble to the corruption you allowed to fester for lack of courage and consistency.
If you do, as John McAfee one said, “shame on you”.
Learn from history, or fail until your organization collapses, and you become the laughingstock of the world, and destroy the image of libertarians in the minds of anyone left who gives a fuck.
Form a culture that accepts the immigrant, the LGBT, the racially different, the psychologically different, the religiously different. Reject homogeneity, embrace heterogeneity. Understand that people don’t have to conform to your fucking structures, or lose just like you always do, because if libertarians are supposed to be alternatives to the conformist structure, you’re failing, and that’s why you’re losing. Because if somebody wants powermad bullies who play games of opportunity and target people who are different, they have choices already, and they ain’t you.
Why would they go with the third party which has no power and numbers if they want the same shit that the other two are already doing? It’s absurd to think you have a chance at defeating these people at their own game, and if you won’t be better, then shut the fuck up about liberty, because you do not represent it and you do not desire it.
This applies to basically every circle. None of you are perfect. And many coming up to “solve” these problems are just as guilty. So learn the patterns to which the others fell, and live with truth, honesty, integrity, transparency, humility, solidarity, and for fuck’s sake empathy…
Or you’re rotten to the core, and the fruit you will produce will yield the tree that hangs you. And you’ll deserve it.
Ball is in your court.
–
Jeremiah Harding
Mentally Ill Furry