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Question to Rightwing Libertarians
Why does the US libertarian party court RT (Russia Television) network.
As I subscribe to the network and visit there frequently for alt news i notice Ron or Rand Paul frequently are interviewed by RT or choose to make statements on their network I also notice a large amount of radical Individualist libertarians comment there.
Just wanted to get some idea why US libertarians are courting Russian media in such big way at this time especially since they seem to give all their votes and support towards GOP a party they officially claim to oppose in most official US media.
Last edited by 74joff; 21st May 2014 at 11:34.
From RT:
Actually thats not my question answered. I was ideally looking for an American to answer it not a european because its mainly american libertarians that are jumping on this bandwagon.
I think they simply provide a prospective that is not the default media message you hear out there, so it's pretty logical that they would interview people who you wouldn't ordinarily expect to see on tv. And libertarians watch it, because of the interviews they show. That seems like the simplest explanation.
edit: i am american, tho not a libertarian
US libertarians often take an anti-US imperialism, isolationist stance. many of them also have links to conspiracy theory etc and they deeply distrust the US media. since RT bills itself as the 'alternative' to US propaganda it's appealing to them. i think it's more that RT is courting US right libertarians and not the other way around. right libertarians have an embarrassingly rudimentary idea of anti-imperialism and so long as Putin and NATO etc are at odds they're going to side with Putin's imperialism. some of them also put NATO and the UN into the category of "foreshadowing of the new world order/ one world government" since again there's a good deal of overlap between right libertarians and conspiracy theorists.
i don't know of many right libertarians who would align themselves with the GOP, as most of them are anti-statists; i think you may be conflating two subsets of the right libertarians- people like Rand Paul who preach the philosophy but are part of the mainstream political machine, and the everyday US right libertarian who is anti-government, anti-mainstream media, isolationist, and who may also be part of a militia movement or believe in conspiracy theories. one of the most interesting representatives of this group is the radio host james corbett, who has a large US libertarian listener-ship and ascribes to a kind of volantarist anarcho-capitalism which is where the right-libertarian philosophy tends to lead if it is consistently anti-statist. a great deal of his material is reporting on US imperialism abroad, the types of reports one would seek from outlets like RT.
long winded way to not-really-answer your question; the growth of this movement in the US, esp in rural areas is very interesting to me and US left radicals should learn more about it and be able to identify its rhetoric.
Last edited by slum; 18th May 2014 at 23:29.
RT tries to provide news in a contrary perspective to mainstream Western outlets. Because libertarians are one of the more popular and well known opponents of US government policies, they get included often.
Marx - Lenin - Alinsky - Ayers - Obama
Cheers thanks for that response and time taken to answer much appreciated!
On another note do left wing americans think conspiracy theories belong to the right wing only. What do you think of someone like Lyndon Larouche whom is somewhat left of centre but very much a traditional conspiracy theorist long before many libertarians started using them to get support via cynicism & paranioa
Last edited by 74joff; 21st May 2014 at 11:32.
Well it appears the left wing link to russia must be truly severed given what i have seen and what I am being told. I guess russians are now in the firing line to be called fascists by those on this forum right or not? Ironic the way history works!
Right-wingers tend to dominate "alternative politics" which is why they're most closely associated to conspiracy theories. In the US, even our social democrats are hella weird conspiracy nerds.
Well, Russian neo-nazi gangs pretty much roam the streets with impunity and a lot of cossack leaders are literal Nazis, so I don't think "fascist" is unfair, here.
I'm on some sickle-hammer shit
Collective Bruce Banner shit
FKA: #FF0000, AKA Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath
What is a right winger? Anyhow, it is because the mainstream media doesn't want people to be introduced to ideas that would put wallstreet crooks and bankers at the end of an unemployment line while promoting individual liberty. So most liberterians have to reach out to independent or non-mainstream media outlets.
It is funny how most people here think that big bad CEOs would want small government, yet they do everything that they can to shut down those views while funding whoever will grow the government the biggest.
no, the conspiracy thing isn't just a right-wing phenomenon. but i think it's easy to see how individualist reactionaries who misidentify the state as their primary oppressor find these kinds of totalizing theories particularly appealing. this thread here might be of interest to you, some posts that articulate this phenomenon better than i can: http://www.revleft.com/vb/conspiracy....html?t=187951Cheers thanks for that response and time taken to answer much appreciated!
On another note do left wing americans think conspiracy theories belong to the right wing only. What do you think of someone like Lyndon Larouche whom is somewhat left of centre but very much a traditional conspiracy theorist long before many libertarians started using them to get support via cynicism & paranioa
i can't speak on larouche as i don't know anything about him. looking at his wiki page i would think it's safe to file him under "crackpot".
depending on who you consider left, there's actually quite a bit of it. a lot of left-liberal types that were active in the peace movement in the early 2000s are 9-11 truthers. most on the left know that there are and have been 'conspiracies' by the state to crush left movements, COINTELPRO etc. cops pull shit all the time. a healthy paranoia can be a good thing, and it isn't unreasonable. i'm probably a little more credulous than some others here when it comes to stuff like CIA black ops and US geopolitical scheming. even if you are a leftist and find these theories credible though, you have to recognize that they are only symptoms of the larger problem and have very little relevance for class struggle.
i won't lie and say i've never met a radical leftist who was deep into some of the more bizarre conspiracies. mostly older and kind of burnt out folks, though. (except immortal technique, idk what's up with his illuminati thing)
if we're talking about stuff like one-world-government, hollywood sending secret messages in sumerian, chemicals in the water supply, global jewish banking cabals, etc., i think it's safe to say it's mostly right wingers. 'softer' conspiracy stuff like 9-11 truth (without armies of lizard men or controlled demolition, i mean) or the JFK assassination does show up among non-radical left liberal types in the US. but there is a sense of "conspiracy theory" (it has a pretty negative connotation in the US) being mostly a "right-wing loony" phenomenon so some liberals don't entertain them at all.
the govt did kill MLK tho, just so we're clear.
True Spartacist tales time!
LaDouche used to be a member of the Revolutionary Tendency in the SWP, back when he was still called Lynn Marcus. He was even a member of the Spartacist League for a few months, before he left for greener pastures of Wohlforth's Workers' League. Eventually he founded his own organisation, and the rest, as they say, is history, or at least history as it is written by drug-smuggling British royal interdimensional lizards.
Supposedly the inability to position himself as a leader played a major role in his departure from both the SL and the WL. Robertson and White were also uneasy about his more crackpot ideas. I don't know how Wohlforth responded to them - obviously their ideas about women, gay people and so on were in perfect accord. I always thought that if Wohlforth had cracked under pressure, he would have ended up likeLaRouche.
If Marcus ever had any grasp of Marxism - I think there was one article in the Spartacist penned by him, but it was slightly weird and had to be signed - LaRouche is hiding it extremely well. His ideas are, to put it charitably, crazy. Not crazy in the sense in which people call Sparts crazy - I mean crazy in the sense that he considers the construction of a particular rail network one of the major tasks of the modern civilisation, and has carried out a political struggle against a particular tuning. I almost feel bad making fun of what might be a seriously disturbed person (but is more likely a cynical cult leader), but then I remember what a racist, homophobic, transphobic and misogynist piece of work we're dealing with.
LaRouche is about as "left of centre" as his former buddy Wohlforth who now spends his days ranting about how the US government needs to bomb this or that country on the Internet.
A right winger is someone who supports social hierarchy, or at the very least sees it as inevitable, whether it be through social differences or competition in market economies.
Well, the Koch brothers did play a big role in the emergence of the Libertarian Party. In fact, David Koch ran for Vice President as a member of the Libertarian party.
"We should not say that one man's hour is worth another man's hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time's carcass." Karl Marx
Does this extend to the economic sphere?
I'm not American, but this has always been one of the big contradictions that I've seen from right libertarians in America. On the one hand, they veraciously oppose any form of government intervention in the economy and trade, opposing regulation, high levels of taxation and anything perceived to hinder the absolute freedom of business.
...yet on the other hand, they also tend to be a massive proponent of protectionist policies and petition the government to maintain protectionist policies to protect American businesses from outside competition. Only in one direction though of course - American businesses should be free to spread across the world, in the eyes of a right libertarian.
I'm obviously no fan of capitalism and the free market, but the hypocrisy has always irked me and I've never met a right libertarian who has been able to explain this hypocrisy without resorting to nationalist rhetoric about protecting 'American businesses'. So much for their faith in the market, eh?
vincent west always has the best obscure and horrifying trot lore
short answer: libertarians are infuriating and if people actually got cognitive dissonance from holding incompatible views liberals would be walking along with headaches all the time
long answer: it honestly depends on what kind of libertarian you're talking to. there's the twenty-something suit-wearing white college guy who keeps a copy of milton friedman under his pillow and whose most pressing political demand is weed legalization. he's probably going to go the 'free market' route. he also uses the term free market and knows all the right truisms. sometimes if you get him in a corner he'll give an argument like 'well corporate cronyism is the problem, the market isn't working correctly' etc etc. or even 'the free market can't work while the state exists'. these guys are actually the devil and you will never get them to admit to anything.
then there's your average joe who keeps a bug-out bag in his stairwell and is awaiting the day the state kicks in his door and drags him off to the soviet reeducation camps. his main political concern is gun control. he sees the state as trying to infiltrate every aspect of his life- what he can and can't say, what he can and can't buy, etc. he can't articulate his class anger in a way that aligns him with the rest of the working class, who may be poorer or non-white, because his hatred (and lbr, his feelings of emasculation) has been redirected away from capital and onto them- and he associates them with the state and his feelings of political oppression, this guy really believes that affirmative action is a government plot to screw white people and shit about "welfare queens". this is the guy who drives an american car and complains about shit made in china. he's the protectionist because of his nationalism, but he'll pick up the 'free market' argument that's sold to him just like he's picked up the racist arguments that are sold to him. it's not a problem to him that they contradict one another on a theoretical level.
he's much more common in the states than the suit-wearing rand-toting bro, even tho the latter type is polished and might show up on television occasionally. i think it's primarily a class thing- the prepper libertarian and his apocalypticism is a critique of the current situation based on real class anger and helplessness about how to regain some illusion of control- thus the totalizing conspiracy theory, which you can at least know the truth about. white supremacy is his main internal barrier to acting in his own class interest, his libertarianism is a cobbled together mass of ideologies that appeal to his racism, fear, and emasculation. it doesn't have to be rational. milton friedman wonk types like the theory, the system- if it doesn't work in reality, so what? that just means reality is wrong. they may or may not be using the ideology for cover to help along the neoliberal agenda and enrich themselves. so what's it to them, anyway? life is cushy either way.
Can we stop calling these right-wing stooges "libertarian"?
"I have declared war on the rich who prosper on our poverty, the politicians who lie to us with smiling faces, and all the mindless, heartless robots who protect them and their property." - Assata Shakur
True.
No disagreement here.
I would like to branch this out to not only include the libertarian fringe of the GOP but moreso the (overwhelmingly) white voters who vote right wing despite their own class interests.
While I agree with much of what you have written, this also represents the utter and complete failure of the american left with the American working class, the whites of whom (men especially) overwhelmingly vote Republican. While your college kid may actually vote for Gary Johnson/Libertarian wacko, this voter you've described is going to pull the GOP lever every single time. This is where the tea party support comes from and is where Fox News gets its viewership.
But you have to keep in mind that this anger directed at the government is very populist in nature and does swell from legitimate issues with the establishment, and whether you agree or not the Democrats are what constitutes The Left in the minds of the US electorate. And it is completely unfair to not blame the anti-worker economic ideology that controls both parties (at least since Bill Clinton) to at least some degree.
Now, don't get me wrong I believe it is incorrect and as some have stated many whites cut off their nose to spite their face. They feel middle class jobs for them have disappeared (because they have) and blame NAFTA. Is that not fair to at least some extent? To be frank many factors have been killing their way of making a living and their way of life is being lowered to that of...everyone else, historically. The only way one can say minorities have been lifted into economic equality is by saying "Now we're all lower class together!"
Meanwhile they feel the Left is made up of people who celebrate the death of religion in this country* and who honestly care more about the plight of polar bears than they do about the american worker. When they buy an American automobile because it's American (never mind the very real possibility of it being made in Mexico in a factory built after NAFTA) they aren't doing so because of xenophobia in my mind but because it represents, to them, the very things that the Left should be about: Good employment opportunities for workers from all backgrounds who got ahead if they worked hard. If you don't believe me, ask an older tea partier how they feel about Medicare or Social Security and 9 times out of 10 and they will say things that makes them sound like socialists/welfare queens (to use the rights language).
The duty of the left and the unions in this country for our generation should be to separate it from the liberals who have already sold us out anyways. To show that economic factors should be the only thing that matters at the end of the day, without falling into the traps of race hatred or sexism that have traditionally dogged the leftists in the country and not trying to win some dumbass meaningless battle like getting crosses out of public.
If we're going to lose that guy that's waiting for the black helicopters to show up and blaming the Fed for all his woes then fuck 'em. And that goes for the people bombing abortion clinics also.
*Someone is delusional if they think this is because of atheism or science really being understood by wide swaths of the population and taken to heart...No it's because most middle/working class communities (African-American and other minorities included) have completely disintegrated coupled with revelations about sexual abuse. If you really want to celebrate that, go right ahead.
Well I'm lookin real hard and I'm trying to find a job but it just keeps gettin tougher every day
Wall street crooks and Bankers are definitely on the right wing in any reputable summation of the political spectrum. How you could associate these with with any left wing ideology i have no idea? I guess this is part of the illogical way libertarians of your ilk think however it is very retarded because it makes no sense.
In Australia for example no right winger of any kind would ever be against the financial class at the stock exchange. I guess this makes this an indigenous US thing! Something i dont presently understand though about libertarians in the US.
Anything that an American libertarian disagrees with is left wing, you didn't know?
"We should not say that one man's hour is worth another man's hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time's carcass." Karl Marx
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Crackpots or Geniuses fine by me. One mans crackpot is anothers genius in post modern world no one ever sees two things or two people the same.
In that case the Pauls (Ron & Rand) are the latest Crackpots except i would perfer morons because they talk about small government yet want to run for the white house which inevitably if they did actually win (not likely though who knows) would make either one of them President of the biggest Corporatist Big Government Establishment in the world the US Government thus claiming to be small government would be beyond retarded.I suggest their presidency would resemble another GOP presidency possibly something like Reaganomics or worse.
If amercians want inhuman Austerity let them have it however they shouldnt dictate that inhuman ideology to the rest of the world like they are already doing with neo liberals. With libertarians in the white house it would be ten times worse for the poor and working classes not just in the US but the whole first world as every nation has to tow that line due to international free trade agreements etc.. TPP for example.
