View source for Jeet Heer critiques libertarians on race

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[[Category:Jeet Heer]]
[[Category:Jonathan Blanks]]
[[Category:Brian Beutler]]
[[Category:Racists]]
{{DES | des = [[Jonathan Blanks]] and [[Brian Beutler]] assembled a number of tweets from [[Jeet Heer]] on libertarian problems with race issues, starting with outright racist appeals from [[Ron Paul]] and general insensitivity among largely white libertarians. | show=}}
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[https://storify.com/BlanksSlate/heer-jeet-critiques-libertarians-on-race Original post] 15 Apr 2014:

1. Sobering thoughts from @joshtpm on Ron Paul & his white supremacist fan base:  http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/hard-to-handle ...

2. Stepping back a little, it's kind of amazing that Ron Paul hasn't gotten more flack for the newsletter & general racial politics

3. Evidence has been out there for a long time that Ron Paul's political base built on overt appeals to white racial resentment.

4. The stuff in the Ron Paul newsletter should have been challenged much more than it has been by libertarians & fellow travelers.

5. Lots of people who liked Ron Paul for other reasons (anti-war, drug legalization) gave him a pass on the racism/homophobia stuff

6. And of course, as @joshtpm notes, Ron Paul's warm grandfatherly persona gave him cover: "some sort of White Nationalist Mr Magoo"

7. More broadly there is the whole issue of libertarians and race, which is complicated in its own right.

8. Both in theory & historically, libertarians have a much better shot of appealing to non-whites than other American rightists.

9. Libertarian critique of state as captured by rent-seeking elites is something that resonates with ethnic minorities.

10. Historically some libertarians have been on specific issues very good on race: say A.J. Nock & Mencken on lynching.

11. Yet Nock & Mencken also show limits of libertarians on race: could challenge lynching as mob violence but not support collective action

12. Libertarian anti-racism tends to falter at the point where challenge to racial status quo requires collective social action

13. More broadly, since 1950s at least, libertarians often talk as if anti-racism were a bigger threat to liberty than racism.

14. Sociologically, of course, libertarianism is very white, even as ideologically it is often the most cosmopolitan wing of the right.

15. Coupled with antipathy towards collective social action is libertarians think of racism as individual malice not structural problem

16. I'd like to see some more introspection from libertarians on their movements checkered history with race.

17. Murray Rothbard would actually be a good entry point for an analysis of libertarian contradictions on race.

18. Rothbard was as more complicated figure than either his admirers or critics allow.

19. As historian, Rothbard was very innovative in linking progressive-era statism with Jim Crow racial control.

20. Rothbard's smart handling of historical racism and very sharp critique of Cold War policies was offset by his 1980s turn to paleo-cons

21. You can't understand the Ron Paul stuff without understanding the Rothbard/Rockwell embrace of white nationalism in 1980s

22. This Lew Rockwell piece supporting police beating of Rodney King is symptomatic of libertarianism's race problem: http://www.theagitator.com/2008/02/02/lew-rockwell-on-rodney-king-in-the-la-times/ ...


[https://storify.com/brianbeutler/jeet-heer-on-race-and-libertarianism Original post] 24 Apr 2014:

1. Let's talk a little about libertarianism & race.

2. Dude who calls himself a libertarian suggests blacks were better off under slavery: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/24/cliven-bundy-racist_n_5204821.html … Not an uncommon occurrence

3. I talk about some of the history in earlier twitter-essay:  https://storify.com/BlanksSlate/heer-jeet-critiques-libertarians-on-race …

4. You don't have to read very far in sites like http://LewRockwell.com  to find neo-confederate essays condemning Lincoln as a tyrant.

5. Sociologically, libertarianism is a very white political formation: [[2013 American Values Survey: In Search of Libertarians in America|in one survey 94% of self-professed libertarians were white]].

6. What's whiter than libertarianism? Maybe polo shirts? Lawrence Welk fan club? (To be fair, Welk was quite ethnic).

7. I'm emphasizing the sociological whiteness of libertarianism because that is in tension with supposedly colorblind philosophy.

8. @Progeny_Omega: "only those who grew up under the blanket of white privilege would be naive enough to think libertarianism works."

9. Step back & think historically: in Western civ, idea of freedom didn't emerge abstractly pure: exists in contradistinction to slavery

10. More specifically:  American freedom is the sibling of American slavery.

11. “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes? Samuel Johnson, "Taxation No Tyranny" (1775).

12. Johnson's Tory critique of the American Revolution hit a nerve that is still raw: liberty was conceived of as liberty for some, not all

13. The slave owner did not see himself as a feudal master, but as heir to Locke, Jefferson & Jackson: a free man.

14. The defense of slavery drew heavily on Lockean notions of property rights: to abolish slavery meant ending a kind of freedom.

15. Again, sociologically & not in the abstract, white Americans pre-1865 knew they were free because they weren't black slaves.

16. Notions of freedom weren't abstract but gender and racially specific: not the free person but the free (white) man.

17. Of course, there's been tremendous struggle to expand the idea of "the free (white) man" to become "the free person" but also lag.

18. Classical liberalism was blind on these gender & race problems, which modern liberalism & social democracy have sought to solve.

19. One problem with libertarianism is that they refuse to see how limited classical liberalism was and why it needed to be modified.

20. J.S. Mill, greatest of the classical liberals, came to realize limits of creed & made steps towards social democracy & feminism.

21. Libertarianism was born of people who didn't want to make the evolution Mill did. Hayek obsessed with Mill's evolution.

22. Hayek came up with crackpot explanation that Mill revised classical liberalism because he was henpecked by Harriet Taylor.

23. Typically, the libertarian sees himself (let's be frank: it is HIMself) as colorblind person & having no collective identity

24. Putative colorblindness & even genderblindness of libertarian is predicated on having privileged identity that needs no expression

25. Colbert is very good on this: I'm so colorblind I don't know I'm white. People tell me I am, so I believe them.

26. If you don't acknowledge racism & sexism faced by others, your colorblindness & gender blindness is defense of privilege.

27. So libertarianism's whiteness problem emerges out of 1) limits of classical liberalism & 2) disingenuous colorblindness.

28. Let me add: if it could grapple with it's race problem, libertarianism has much to offer for non-whites as well as whites.

29. Libertarian critique of criminal justice system, warfare state, nativist immigration policy: all of those are genuinely valuable.

30. Really, it shouldn't be me trying to tease out these libertarian/race issues. Should be the smart folks at Reason.

31 A post-script: any indepth discussion of libertarianism & race should ponder career of Murray Rothbard, to me a tragic figure.

32. Another post-script: Robert Heinlein's "Farnham's Freehold" (1964) is prime example of libertarian obtuseness on race.