We have never been short of people taking aim at Hans-Hermann Hoppe, especially those who are hitting from the left. Recently, however, the frequency of the attacks has increased within so called “left libertarian” circles.
Tom Palmer, a fellow at the Cato Institute, just the other day went after the great Austro-Libertarian for his alleged fascist sympathies, and labeled him a “racial collectivist” and a “racist” among other things. Palmer also went on using a collectivist blanket statement, to label the supporters of Hans Hoppe as a “Stalinist movement”.
One might think that such an attack on a scholar par excellence like Prof. Hoppe is a rare occurrence given the level of ridiculousness embedded in Palmer’s accusations. One might also think that Palmer is merely a sour grape and a sore loser, as well as an exception. But, Tom Palmer has company within the Hoppe hating cult.
When Prof. Hans-Hermann Hoppe in mid September 2017, took the stage at the Hotel Karia Princess, in Bodrum, Turkey, it was for the twelfth annual meeting of the Property and Freedom Society (PFS). Prof. Hoppe’s demeanor is calm, but yet determined as he addresses the room of PFS members. The topic for the day: Libertarianism and the Alt Right. Hoppe has throughout the years made it pretty clear that he has no patience for political correctness, just like his former mentor and associate, Prof. Murray N. Rothbard. Even though Rothbard passed away over 22 years ago as of today, his spirit was alive and well in the room, and channeled through Hoppe’s uncensored rhetoric. Prof. Hoppe’s academic aura could be interpreted as harsh, and his language as blunt when compared to the more amicable and outgoing style of Murray Rothbard. Nonetheless, there is nobody as Rothbardian as Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and he is the rightful heir of the Austro-libertarian torch holder position.
Murray N. Rothbard
A populist program
In January of 1992, Rothbard wrote a brief, yet notorious un-PC essay, on what he believed would be the best approach to advance libertarianism in a very non-libertarian friendly society. He was trying to come up with the best possible plan involving the segments of people who would be more likely to embrace the libertarian message, strictly concerning property rights. Rothbard, who had rolled up his sleeves, and sought to create coalitions across the ideological spectrum, even with the new left during the 1960, due to their initial credibility to be the new anti war movement, had now switched his attention to involve a right-wing populist approach. In Rothbard’s short essay, titled Right-Wing Populism, Rothbard explains to the readers what right-wing populism is in order to understand the movement better, and hence facilitate the initiation of a dialogue with individuals who identify as right-wing populists. Rothbard finally goes through the points, one by one, of what a right-wing populist program looks like, and why it should be possible for libertarians to create coalitions with groups of individuals who endorse such a program.
Bringing back Rothbard’s ideas to the table
In Turkey, Hans-Hermann Hoppe brought back Rothbard’s strategic advice into the libertarian limelight in front of a crowd who was receptive, but not as enthusiastic as the audience at the Corax Conference in Malta just a few months earlier, where he delivered the exact same speech. Hoppe points out in his speech how the “Hayekian strategy for social change”, a model of influencing the elites in the political class, in academia, and in the mainstream media, and then await the trickle down effect, “must be considered fundamentally unrealistic” for spreading the correct libertarian message. Rothbard states the exact same thing in his essay when suggests that “the ruling elite benefits from the current system” of the status quo, and therefore no significant change is to be expected from the top among the elites down to the masses. Thus, both Rothbard and Hoppe recognize that libertarian ideas are not welcome in the realm of academia or media. On the contrary, they are met with a greater and greater degree of hostility, every day. Furthermore, we have witnessed what happens to libertarian leaning candidates in politics once they assume a position in office. They either, sell out and become part of the problem, or they get ostracized, marginalized, and most of the time ignored, if they choose to hold on to their principles.
Focusing on the disenfranchised
Hoppe recognizes this as an undisputable historical fact when he claims that the libertarian strategic approach needs to be a populist one. In other words, Hoppe says, the “libertarians must short-circuit the dominant intellectual elites, and address the masses directly” in order to arouse the contempt for the ruling elites within the most disenfranchised group of people in society, and awaken their disdain for the class of ruling elites. Rothbard was also very clear when mentioning that, “ripping the mask off elites is ‘negative campaigning’ at its finest and most fundamental”, and to make this happen, Rothbard further suggests, libertarians ought to focus their attention on the “groups who are the most oppressed and who also have the most social leverage”. Given the limited amount of resources for outreach, and knowing what it takes to convert people to the libertarian message, I think it is safe to say that we need to focus primarily on specific subdivisions of demographics in society. Hoppe and Rothbard have both proposed a strategy for targeting the most victimized groups; that is, those who do not have any protective status label accorded by the state, and those who are most likely to be taxpayers as opposed to tax consumers. From a libertarian perspective then, considering property rights to be the only existing legitimate rights, then anyone who has protective status in form of affirmative action, and other non discrimination laws implemented by the state, is the person who on average will be the least likely to support our cause.
Identifying likely supporters
In his speech, Hoppe specifies which group he believes will be the most likely supporter of the libertarian creed: Bourgeoisie, married, heterosexual, Christian couples, with children, who also happen to be taxpayers. First and foremost, if you are Caucasian of European ancestry, then you are not part of any protected class of people as determined by the state. It follows then, according to the egalitarian leftist narrative, that if you are not part of any protected group, then you must be part of the oppressing group. Why? Because if other groups need to have a protected label on them then there must be a group of predators, or else no protection status would be needed and granted by the state’s ruling elites. This means that Christian, white, heterosexual males, have been unjustly labeled as the oppressing class, and are therefore bound to be the most exploited group of individuals in society. However, as Hoppe correctly identifies, “it would be a serious strategic error to make whiteness the exclusive criteria on which to base one’s strategic decisions”, which some factions of the alt right have done, reprehensibly. Libertarians must recognize that white men are the people who make up the ruling elites within the state apparatus, and who have awarded all the legal privileges to different groups of the population via coercive affirmative action legislation. Hoppe accurately indicates this group of white men in control of governments, as perhaps the biggest problem that libertarians face. Nevertheless, if it so happens that the majority of taxpaying, married, heterosexual, Christian couples, with children, happen to be white, then so be it. It is not the ethnicity, but rather the cultural life style that matters in this case, according to Hoppe. This must remain a strategy of colorblindness, as Hoppe wisely recommends, although we can, and should expect backing primarily from the afore-mentioned demographic.
Strategy matters
We finally arrive at the libertarian strategy that Hoppe laid out, which bares striking resemblance with Rothbard’s right-wing populist program from 1992. Hoppe’s strategy is a ten-point strategy: Continue reading “A Little Matter of Strategy”
Ladies and gentlemen. It’s here! HHH’s speech at the PFS recently in Turkey.
Hans Hermann Hoppe; the greatest libertarian thinker of our time delivers a greatly anticipated and striking speech on the Alt Right, Libertarianism, and society’s issues as a whole and offering a strategic social solution, also while identifying many issues even amongst libertarians themselves.
We’ve posted a few articles on the site recently to help clarify some of the confusion on his thought. Well, let’s just say Hoppe is perfectly capable of defending himself, so to speak.
The page listing those articles can be found here:
In 2004 during a lecture on money and banking, at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Prof. Hans-Hermann Hoppe provided an example of how the concept of time-preference plays a major role in the economy, local as well as global. The illustration given by Prof. Hoppe became a national controversy, and was used by the left-wing opinion molders in an attempt to hound the Austro-anarcho-capitalist academic out of polite society, and to consequently destroy his career. The case presented by Hoppe, and that caused the outcry, was hardly controversial at all. We will get to the actual case soon, but let us first clarify what the definition of time-preference is, and why it is such an important component as part of economic analysis.
Time-preference and the Austrian school
The level of time-preference an individual has, is measured by the degree to which that individual is willing to postpone present consumption in favor of the future, delayed gratification of greater benefits than what consumption right away would provide. A trivial, yet classic example of degree of time-preference, can be seen in the experiment of giving a child the following option: Either receiving one cookie right now, or waiting 30 minutes and receiving two cookies. The child’s present desire to consume usually trumps the willingness to await delayed gratification, and hence we conclude through praxeological deduction that children on average have a higher degree of time-preference than more mentally mature persons. The price paid by giving up present consumption in exchange for future value of a good or service must mean that the expected future psychic revenue is greater than the present psychic revenue generated by consuming instantaneously. Nobody would prefer to consume later should the act of consuming generate the same satisfaction today as it would a year from now. Continue reading “Understanding Time-Preference vs Being Homophobic”
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.
