The Committee on Un-Libertarian Activities
Is the fear of succumbing to the left driving libertarians and conservatives to forfeit the culture war, by adopting the culture of tyranny in opposition to hostile ideologies?
McCarthy Was Wrong
At least the headline reads right, but the substance of the tweet sent out by the Libertarian Party on August 6th sparked confusion, outrage, anger, and resentment towards the communications team of the new Libertarian National Committee. A tweet centered around James Lindsay, who was recently banned from Twitter, and his commentary on the communist subversion of the American public education system.
The controversial nature of James Lindsay isn’t in question or the center of the issues presented in the tweet, but rather the context of his two quotes included in the tweet and its accompanying graphic. Invoking the era of McCarthyism, Lindsay says that the Communist threat in America was underestimated by Senator Joseph McCarthy and that it’s “Time to deal with the American communists for real.”
The debate and outrage didn’t hinge on the question of whether or not there is a communist threat, or if the American education system has been corrupted beyond salvation (Hint: it has). Rather, the anger and commentary revolved around Lindsay’s call to action to finally deal with communists in America, which was received as an endorsement of Joseph McCarthy’s tactics as not having gone far enough. As a US Senator, Joseph McCarthy used his position of influence with those serving on the House Committee on Un-American Activities to launch a public crusade against suspected communist infiltrators and sympathizers. Government employees, prominent business people, politicians, and private citizens were all subjected to harassing witch hunts and crusades based on mere accusations of ideological wrong think.
The House Un-American Activities Committee was first formed in 1934 as the McCormack-Dickstein Committee by a congressional resolution proposed and sponsored by Democratic New York Congressman Samuel Dickstein, who himself was later posthumously confirmed to be a Soviet spy. The official charge of the committee being to investigate how foreign subversive propaganda entered The United States, they quickly narrowed their scope to pursue suspected fascist and communist infiltrators.
In fact, the first investigation of the committee was the circumstances of the Wall Street Putsch, better known as the “Business Plot,” a 1933 attempt by wealthy businessmen to use fascist veterans organizations to stage a coup against the US Government and replace President Roosevelt with Retired Marine Corps General Smedley Butler as a dictator. Although General Butler testified directly, and willingly provided information on the co-conspirators to the committee, including notable individuals such as Prescott Bush, Thomas Lamont, Grayson Murphy, Robert Sterling Clark, and a half dozen Admirals and Generals in service to the US Armed Forces. Despite these revelations, and the committee’s report confirming the allegations through its investigation, no arrests were ever made.
Despite the early toothless nature of the committee, it evolved over time. By the time Dickstein, while still on the payroll of soviet intelligence services, left congress upon ascending to the NY Supreme Court, the committee had become a permanent standing committee of congress, with a charge to root out communist infiltration in government.
And while the committee may have uncovered soviet agents and infiltrators, more often than not it persecuted ordinary Americans, loyal and patriotic in their own ways, but whose values and morals led them to be held as the ideological enemy of those in charge. Not limited merely to socialist agitators, accusations of communist sympathy were used to disrupt civil rights activists, labor unions, political organizers, and any others who Joseph McCarthy and his cohorts deemed a threat to their ideology and way of life. It wasn’t simply soviet spies such as Alger Hiss that the committee blacklisted and interrogated, but hundreds of actors, writers, and Hollywood producers who were driven from the country after being prohibited from working.
President Harry Truman remarked that the committee itself was “the most Un-American thing in the country.” By its very nature an attack on free thought, free speech, and political dissidence, the actions and tactics of the committee and its supporters such as Senator McCarthy, were an insult to the notions of liberty and libertarian ideals. While some see value in opposing ideologies as invasive and harmful as communism, many overlook the dangers of embracing the tactics of our enemy to do so.
"The cause of anti-communism, which united millions of Americans and which gained the support of Democrats, Republicans and independents, was undermined by Sen. Joe McCarthy ... McCarthy addressed a real problem: disloyal elements within the U.S. government. But his approach to this real problem was to cause untold grief to the country he claimed to love ... Worst of all, McCarthy besmirched the honorable cause of anti-communism. He discredited legitimate efforts to counter Soviet subversion of American institutions."
-William Bennett, America: The Last Best Hope (2007)
Libertarians and liberty-loving conservatives are among the fringes of political and cultural ideology. We are a minority, and one at constant risk of oppression at the democratic whims of the masses. For nearly 50 years, the Libertarian Party has attempted to pursue a strategy of recruitment and education, hoping to bring more people to our side through the logical power of our views. What those embracing this strategy have failed to understand, is that what makes libertarians a minority is that our political philosophy is based on a moral and ethical framework that the majority of people simply do not share. Those capable of embracing a philosophy of consent and respect for property rights inherent in individual self-ownership will naturally align against the tyranny of the collective majority, and will also inevitably become its target.
There’s an old piece of wisdom, to never take any power for yourself that you would fear your worst enemy uses against you. In opposing ideologies that threaten us, we must be wary of supporting the growth of institutions and practices that will inevitably be turned against us, the minority seeking freedom in liberty, and ownership of self.
10 Planks, A Dictatorship of The Proletariat
While there lies a danger in adopting the methods of tyrants in an attempt to preserve our liberty, that does not make the threat of communism and its cultural machinations any less real. In fact, McCarthy was in fact right in his assertion that a communist subversion of American culture was underway, even while being wrong in his push to become a tyrant to oppose it. What he underestimated though, was not the long-term threat of communism, but rather its existing success in subverting the legislative process and systems governing the United States.
In Karl Marx’s 1847 Communist Manifesto, he outlined a ten-step process to subvert a nation’s culture and government in order to implement communism, whether by violent revolution, or native adoption. What takes many by surprise, is the extent to which most western nations, including The United States, have already adopted these 10 key planks in their models of governance. The reality is, that we aren’t being threatened by communism, we’re living under it already.
The 10 Planks of the Communist Manifesto and Their Modern Applications
The Case for Ideological Migration
In all but open admission, the United States is as much a communist state as The Soviet Union could have claimed to be at its height. The only difference is the number of political parties cooperating to subjugate the people. In the Soviet Union, there was only one official political party, and the communist party implemented its goals and programs with no resistance. However, in the United States, there are two major parties (with at least nominal differences) that cooperate to implement the tenets of socialism covertly under the guise of bipartisanship.
There are other Political parties, for sure, Libertarians are the oldest and largest of the minor parties. But in the 50+ years, the Libertarian Party has been attempting to gain a foothold of political legitimacy, their impact has been muted. Never having won a federal legislative seat in an open election, and seeing the small handful of elected state legislators and defectors be left powerless and ineffective at their prescribed tasks, The Libertarian party’s perpetual fight is maintaining their right to even appear on the ballot every two years, a task that’s only gotten harder as they’ve grown.
So how can a movement based on a fringe ideology such as libertarianism flourish in the United States and defend itself against the institutional and cultural encroachment of communism? It must refrain from any hint of adopting tactics similar to McCarthy-era fascism, or any appearance that it’s willing to embrace the communist’s cultural willingness to subjugate our enemies with the force of the state. In a two-fold approach, we must realize that the tendencies of fascists and communists are more alike with each other than with us, and then free ourselves from the possibility of majority oppression by escaping our stature as minorities.
Economist F.A. Hayek, who spent about half his life in his native Austria during the rise of European fascism, and the remainder in The UK and US, wrote in The Road to Serfdom how he feared that many of the elements that had led to Germany’s demise were already underway in the United States and that the differences between Fascism and Communism were dwarfed by their similarities. He described Fascism as “The stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.”
“It is true, of course, that in Germany before 1933, and in Italy before 1922, communists and Nazis or Fascists clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties. They competed for the support of the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. But their practice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common and whom they could not hope to convince, is the liberal of the old type. While to the Nazi the communist, and to the communist the Nazi, and to both the socialist, are potential recruits who are made of the right timber, although they have listened to false prophets, they both know that there can be no compromise between them and those who really believe in individual freedom.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944)
As a moral and ethical minority, Libertarians and classical liberals who live in cultures dominated by collectivist tendencies and democracy will always be oppressed at the hands of their ideological enemies. So the answer is to cast off the chains of the predominant culture, and to seek peace through a community with others of like minds, and shared values.
The Free State Project, an intentional migration of 20,000 libertarians to the free state of New Hampshire, has had a tremendous impact on the relative level of freedom, culture, and politics of the small state where their adherents have been relocating. With a focus on building community, and impacting politics at the most local level, libertarians have had a significant impact on the culture of government in New Hampshire, to the point where the majority coalition of legislators in the state’s house of representatives can be reasonably claimed to be libertarians or at least cultural allies.
I know of no other place in the country, or even the world, where libertarians have been so effective at creating cultural and political change that leftists actively protest against their influence. Organizations such as Granite State progress, and Free State Watch, have sprung up funded by establishment dark money for the sole purpose of opposing the growing influence of Free Staters and libertarians in New Hampshire. Nowhere else in the country are libertarians effective enough to be given the time of day by establishment opposition.
The only effective defense against your own oppression is to live with those who share your values and clearly communicate in a manner that does not subvert your own intent. Learn more about The Free State Project, Plan a visit to Liberty Forum or Porcfest, and join your tribe in living free, instead of fighting for the scraps of liberty the establishment will let you have.
Subversive #80: “The Committee on Un-Libertarian Activities”
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Summary
Is the fear of succumbing to the left driving libertarians and conservatives to forfeit the culture war, by adopting the culture of tyranny in opposition to hostile ideologies? Is communism a looming threat, or is it fully in force dictating our lives?
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I do not understand how it is that people who explicitly call for the extermination of Free Staters such as https://twitter.com/LeslieD38009274 do not get banned. What should liberty lovers in NH do to prepare for interactions with these people IRL?