There has been a lot of talk during this long and dreary summer, here and elsewhere, about the connections (or lack thereof) between libertarianism and the alt-right. There have also been plenty of distancing exercises as well, most notably around these parts Zach Weissmueller's "What the Alt-Right Gets Wrong." The broader discussion is becoming its own literary micro-genre at this point, generating not only epic Twitter feuds (Tom Woods vs. Nicholas Sarwark!) and eloquent examinations of fringe movements, but arguably at least part of this summer's greatest academic/literary controversy.
I wish by no means to adjudicate the many ongoing disputes here, whether normie vs. libertarian, or paleo vs. cosmo (or even "Bionic Mosquito" vs. "Libertarian Neocons for McCain"!). But I do think it's worthwhile to point out an unhelpful argumentative tic running through a lot of the discussion, and that is this: In a debate ultimately centered around whether and how much libertarianism has midwifed a movement that nurtures generalized antipathies toward collective swaths of people, essayists are using negative generalizations toward collective swaths of libertarians.
One example this week comes from John Ganz, who wrote a widely shared Washington Post piece titled "Libertarians have more in common with the alt-right than they want you to think." Ganz mostly takes a tour through the grotesque (IMO) "Paleo" strategy of Murray Rothbard and Llewelyn Rockwell, Jr., of the late 1980s and early 1990s, drawing links to modern-day successors. Ganz knows enough about his subject to include the disclaimer, "Perhaps it's not fair to lay blame for Rothbard the heretic at the feet of the mainline libertarian church, which attempted to purge him," but ultimately he does not let such potential unfairness get in the way of a good generalization. Which is this:
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