Libertarian Apologists for Putin

In this episode of New Ideal Live, Onkar Ghate and Nikos Sotirakopoulos discuss the libertarian support for Putin and other authoritarian regimes. They explore the libertarian movement's decades-long sympathy for evil regimes, its anti-state, anti-American foreign policy, and how the movement's rejection of morality has led to sanctioning tyrants.

Among the topics covered:
• Recent libertarian defenses of authoritarian regimes;
• How these libertarians are primarily anti-state, not pro-liberty;
• Murray Rothbard as the spokesman of the libertarian movement's anti-state, anti-American foreign policy;
• Rothbard's positive view of dictatorships as flowing from his rejection of morality;
• Altruism — not imperialism — as the cause of the US engaging in self-sacrificial wars;
• How the "big tent" approach to liberty explains the prevalence of the worst ideas within libertarianism;
• How Objectivism can appeal to the best people within libertarianism.

The podcast was recorded on April 28, 2023.

0:00:00 Defenses of authoritarianisms
0:05:22 Anti-state, not pro-liberty
0:10:22 Anti-Americanism of Rothbard
0:20:00 Rothbard and morality
0:35:00 Altruism as the cause of wars
0:45:25 Problems with the “big tent” approach to liberty
0:52:41 Objectivism appealing to best among libertarians

[legendre]

The Rothbardians' apologetics for Putin go back at least as far as 2004 with the Orange Revolution. Justin Raimondo, who has a lot of clout in the Ron Paul/Mises Institute orbit, denounced the Orange Revolution and publicly gloated about Yushchenko being poisoned and disfigured from it.

[tnndll]

Neo-libertarian is a better word for the Libertarian Party. It's just right-wing anti-Americanism.

[emazur]

Daniel McAdams was being sarcastic in his tweets (but yes, it comes off poorly even to people who knew that).
It is also correct that there are some in the libertarian movement who primarily are "against the empire" (or anti-state as said here) and may or may not be driven by a desire to be pro-freedom. So if you want to say there are some problems in the libertarian movement - go ahead. But let's no pretend there aren't problems with the Objectivist movement either. Here is the Ayn Rand Center foreign policy playbook:
0. Establish that the U.S. government is extremely poorly run and on route to fiscal disaster through overspending
1. Point out a foreign threat
2. Advocate that the extremely poorly run U.S. government will somehow suddenly become an extremely efficient government in resolving this foreign threat and not at all likely to drag out a conflict for years or decades in an extremely expensive manner that never comes to a resolution
3. Acknowledge failure and blame the failure on the bad guys who were in charge - if only the right guys were in charge none if this would have happened.

The passage from Atlas Shrugged where someone was spit in the face for suggesting the worker takeover of the 20th Century Motor Company could have worked if only it was done properly comes to mind. You knew the people in charge of Afghanistan and Iraq were incapable were completely incompetent and yet you backed them anyway to do a accomplish a task - and everyone paid a very heavy price. If Jim Taggart himself was president you'd still make the same mistake again.

[UkieCanuckPatriot]

Least we forget Rothbard was a supporter of David Duke an open supporter of Hitler, Putin, and Stalin 😮.

[samuelgodfreyhendrix]

The framing of this is incorrect. All of the “apologists” I’ve seen in libertarian circles do not support Russia’s invasion. Instead they point out it is a predictable outcome of aggressive NATO foreign policy and as such the correct answer is for NATO to cease such operations in the region. This is functionally no different than the Cuban Missile Crisis, just with the roles reversed.

[Weirdomanification]

If I believe that it is not in our interest to get involved in a war, how is that in any way me being an apologist to one side? If one cause is better to any degree, am I duty bound to sacrifice my own interests to support it? I fail to see how the US gov spending trillions of dollars on foreign conflicts in the last twenty years has been a net positive to my life. Especially in the context of the dollar's diminishing purchasing power.

I am disappointed, because I am beginning to think that this org just wants me to submit to dogma.

[stevenkreisman]

Thank you, Onkar and Nikos, for another excellent, enlightening discussion.

[tomburroughes]

I sometimes still call myself a libertarian but for various reasons I am reluctant to do so unless people understand the term precisely. So I prefer "radical classical liberal".

He may have had some good insights around economics, but overall, Rothbard was a fool on issues such as foreign affairs, and his influence is one that I see as largely malevolent.

[Tukeen]

Objectivists should advocate for releasing Ukrainian men from their own and the Russian goverment. Only free men can fight for freedom.

[drstrangelove]

Very good! I learned a lot! Thank you!

[elguaro]

Objectivists lose me at "it's necessary to kill innocent civilians and if they are truly innocent even they would understand that'

[daveBit]

Americans live relatively free IN SPITE, not because their federal government.

[SpacePatrollerLaser]

I regret my absence when this was posted but I was changing computers. Here is what I would have shared with you. What we are seeing is not new and it reprewents the influence of one Murray Rothbard, who, how he called himself a libertarian I do not know. I the 1979-80 timeframe, he penned two guest editorials in REASON magazine. One wis in support of the Communist Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua and the other in support of the Islamic theocratic revolution in Iran. His lame excuse for supporting KNOWN totalitarian takeovers was that the brought about "the death of a state". As to addressing the fact that they were worse than their prececessors was "libertarians cannot be held responsible for what replaces these states". Didn't Peter Scheartz point out in "Libertarianism: a Perversion of Liberty" that they Libertarian Party supported the Soviet-created "nuclear freeze"?, well, just take it out a few decades and evolution will run its course; or is that "coarse"?

Apparently there was some kind of kerfuffle involving Leonard Peikoff's integrity for condemning the Libertarians some 7 years after giving a lecture at some Libertarian-spoonsored function in '82. IIRC he said that he was looking to see if there were any self-styled libertarians who could be won away from that movement (I don't know if he succeeded)

When I see what has become of the Libertairians (I distinguish between "libertairans" and "Libertarians", the second is the organized movement, the former is having a bent toward freedom. Post-Rothbard, I don't see how any libertarians could possible be Libertarians), I get frightened of what could have become of me. In late 1967, I became atheist, so where would that leave me with the Conservatives (although I was liked by some conservatives of the better sort). In 1968 I abanded the "liberal" movement because, in the form of the Great Society, it was beginning to resemble the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. What would have happened had I no gotten my hands on THE FOUNTAINHEAD? I don't want to think about it

If it is of any concern to anyone as to whether we have an existential interest in the Ukraine war, shrtly after we started arming Ukraine in '22, Putin said "World War III has begun". Should we take him at his word?

[thomashenderson]

Ukraine "deserves" neither spiritual or material support. This statement in no way implies support for Putin.

[DexterGraphic]

I think that the essential difference between libertarianism and objectivism is that one limits itself to achieving political and economic freedom for all individuals whereas the other tries to instill in people a complete philosophy of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetics. That's why libertarianism is able to function as a big-tent movement that embraces a wide range of differing belief systems and unique individuals. They are not trying to police thought or morals, just set political and economic boundaries on state power.

[patsycards]

Rothbard "doesn't care about the millions of deaths in Soviet Russia" - Huh?

[ansugar]

Excellent video/discussion. So enlightening. Thank you.

[laserdolphin]

So glad this video was made. Had to be done.

[marklar]

And if you are on Russia side, you will be remebered as someone who supported Hitler.

[turboplazz]

Niko if one has a threat in front of them and they assess the eventuality will be direct conflict, the intelligent combatant does not wait for the opponent to strike the first blow. It is common knowledge today that the Minsk accord was nothing more than a pause of conflict in the Ukraine so that Ukraine can rearm and attack. Under that reality Russia acted in advance of being attacked.