Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Augusto Pinochet, and the Alt-Right Trolls
The meme warriors from 4chan have revolutionized the art of meme warfare, and in the process of doing so; prominent libertarian scholars have appeared frequently together with fascist leaning military dictators, in what I would call the “alt-right meme circus”.
Memeing Gone Rampant
The helicopter is warmed up, photoshoped into the image are the faces of Augusto Pinochet (the former Chilean dictator) and Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Austrian economist and libertarian theorist) replacing the original caricature faces. Loaded onto the helicopter are a few communists or antifa social justice activists. Pepe the frog furthermore drags the commies onto the helicopter, and the helicopter carries the flag of Kekistan (an invented kingdom).
The text on the meme reads, “Hoppe’s physical removal service”, or “The Hoppean helicopter ride”, or “Free Kekistan!” Does this scenario sound familiar to you?
If you identify yourself as an anarcho-capitalist libertarian then you have certainly been exposed to the literature of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and you might laugh in amusement at this type of weaponized autism put forward by the alt-right internet trolls.
While the perversion of Hoppe’s argumentation ethics is entertaining in a warped sort of way, it is understandable that some people could be deceived by this distortion of Hoppe’s arguments, and as a consequence obtain a twisted interpretation of one of the greatest heroes for the cause of liberty.
Physical Removal
In order to clear up the confusion regarding the controversy around Hoppe, we need to look closer at his argumentation ethics, and frame the issue given the presumed conditions from which Hoppe derives his reasoning. In his masterpiece, Democracy – The God That Failed, Hoppe famously claims that:
“in a covenant…among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists”
because some people might promote ideas that would disturb the naturally established covenant and destabilize the covenant’s asserted protection of private property, concepts such as “democracy and communism”.
Hoppe furthermore goes on to argue that “there can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order” and the conclusion is that the alleged enemies of private property preservation “will have to be physically separated and removed from society”, so to speak.
The idea of “physical removal” is coming from the aforementioned statements. These statements, when taken out of context can be widely misunderstood. Continue reading “Physical Removal – Separating the Facts from the Perversions”