From Mike Boda of the Pittsburgh Grassroots Examiner.

History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead.
-Voltaire

Perhaps it is the world-view that focuses on conspiracy, as opposed to history, or just a product of the same half-assed Disney versions of US history that we are taught in textbooks, but the big-name private-plane populists seem to enjoy  success when they pluck some random figure or group from the past, strip away any and all context, and “re-branded” for their purposes. Thus, both the first-strike nuclear weapon and the vigilantes who “defend” the imaginary line that separates the US from Mexico are Minutemen. Forget for a moment that many of the original Minutemen were immigrants themselves and contrary to their name, the Plymouth Minutemen were unable to muster in time to actually participate in the slaughter of the Pequot people who were the actual native born inhabitants of that part of what we call “New England.” The historical requirement that Minutemen be under the age of 30 would also disqualify the vast majority of xenophobic retirees, too white and cranky for golf courses, who currently claim the name.

Right-wing entertainers routinely quote life-long, democratic socialist George Orwell out of context, often confusing his criticism of totalitarian systems of governance as praise. The extreme-right fascism of the last century is considered a left-wing ideology by the people who allow pop culture icons to handle their critical thinking duties for them. Comedian and talk show host Glenn Beck considers himself to be an avatar of Thomas Paine, of all people. Never mind that Paine was a atheist deist (thanks to all the readers who pointed that out-MB) and honorary French citizen who favored estate taxes, public education, government work programs, progressive taxation to pay for a welfare state, liberation for women, animal rights, and was a vocal opponent of capital punishment and torture. All of which are issues which the Mormon, Beck has made a fortune opposing. Other than those minor details, Beck and Paine are pretty much the same person. If Beck and his producers do not consider the consumers of his half-baked nonsense to be really stupid and gullible, they certainly have a funny way of showing it. Lacking excuses, right-wing academics are even worse.

Had Massachusetts Colony Governor Thomas Hutchinson and the other Loyalists to the British Crown, who composed 15-20% of the white-skinned colonists, managed to convince rank-and-file colonists to help the East India Company offload the contentious tea from their ships while babbling “Support the Redcoats,” then the choice of “Tea Party” to describe the efforts by right-wing political operatives and entertainers to create the impression of a “grassroots political movement” would have been much more appropriate. The folks who are willing to pose with firearms for the benefit of corporate lobbyists and reactionary politicians have at least as much in common with the tarred-and-feathered Tories who favored the status quo, as any rebellious advocate of revolution. The religious right who continue to call for a return to the days of Puritans and Pilgrims would not be required to make any changes whatsoever.

If anything, the use of disguises and the destruction of private property that marked the original Boston Tea Party are more in line with the tactics of the masked anarchists who smashed windows at the 1999 World Trade Organization protests or the recent G-20 actions. This connection was not lost on the anarchists opposed to the 2004 invasion of Boston by the Democratic National Committee who dubbed themselves the Bl(A)ck Tea Society, the color black having long been associated with anarchists, and identifying with the disguised property destroyers of yore. Unless of course, you discount the notion that right-wing political operatives are always on the lookout for new dirty tricks to oppose the election of  Democratic party candidates, one has to wonder if the GOP political action committees and corporate lobbyists took a cue from this coalition?

The appropriation of Boston Tea Party imagery after it was borrowed by anarchists, pales in comparison to the outright theft and subsequent decades spent capitalizing and desecrating the word “libertarian.” Given the right-wing aversion to the historical, it should come as little surprise that the capital “L” libertarians, those Trekkies of US electoral politics, the “‘anarchists’ who want police protection from their slaves,” continue to labor under the impression that they invented that word. Imagine Joseph Goebbels, fuming with shrill indignation at the ancient Brahmans who had the nerve to use the swastika symbol for thousands of years, and that should give you a pretty good idea of the kinds of rebuking that the Ron Paul cult engages in when reminded that everywhere but the US, and even here until the early 1970s, “libertarian” (Wikipedia revisonism aside) meant “anarchist.“

Take so-called Dallas Libertarian Examiner Garry Reed’s amusing piece of historical fiction Calling all Stalinist-Jeffersonian-Bozoian Libertarians:

Apparently it’s becoming ever more popular to create crossbred mutant coercive philosophies and then attempt to smuggle them into unsuspecting minds by incorporating the “libertarian” label.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon who was the first person to identify as an anarchist on paper, famously declared that “property is theft” and anarchist-communist, Joseph Dejauque, could probably not agree more, as these French anarchists had both used the word “libertarian” as a synonym for “anarchist,” in 1858. Oxymoron pipe-dreams of ‘anarcho-’ capitalism were still more than a century away.

Monday came the announcement that earlier in the month a Danish group founded Libertære Socialister, translating literally to “Libertarian Socialists” and describes itself as oriented towards “syndicalist, anarcho-communist and collectivist anarchist currents.”

A passing familiarity with 19th century history would have made this “development” much less surprising. Anarchist ideas and thinkers are and were present in the social-democratic Scandinavian countries, who were frequent hosts of exiled revolutionaries. The most prolific of the late 19th century Danish libertarian writers was Jean-Jaques Ipsen, who collaborated with the Norwegian anarchist, Hans Jaeger, the founder of Copenhagen’s first anarchist social center.

The Freetown of Christiania, an autonomous community in Denmark is approximately the same age as the US ‘Libertarian’ party. Folkets Hus (The House of the People) built in 1897 as a non-sectarian resource for the labor movement, and was later renamed Ungdomshuset (The Youth House) functioned as an anarchist social center from 1982 until it was violently closed and demolished by the Danish state in 2007.

At its simplest, libertarianism means maximizing freedom for all and minimizing government intrusions into the affairs of free and sovereign individuals. The anarchist form of that means total freedom and zero government. To all libertarians it means uncoerced, voluntary interactions amongst people. It means free trade, free travel, free thought. It means capitalism in its individual, non-government corporatist form.

Actually, that is what ‘libertarianism’ means to a handful of stoned US conservatives, who are too high or edgy or something to do the honest thing and call themselves Goldwater Republicans, otherwise it remains a synonym for “anarchism.” Capitalism remains a form of coercion, backed by the violence of the State, a violence that is administered by bureaucrats known as  “police” and “military,” which are coincidentally the only parts of the State considered to be worth preserving by the US Libertarian party. Corporatism? As in that which freedom-loving Benito Mussolini may or may not have said, “fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” Apparently Mr. Reed thinks that the US needs more of this?

So why can’t these people be content with just calling themselves Socialists or Communists or Syndicalists and quit pretending to be libertarians?

Because anarchists came up with the word in the 1850s and some Republicans took it in the 1970s and decided that it should mean something else?

The answer, apparently, is that more and more people are seeing the spreading popularity of libertarian ideals and want to twist the concept to further their own ends, which inevitably includes hoodwinking the unwary.

That is correct, anarchist or libertarian ideas have become more popular as State and Capital and twisted combinations of the two speed towards their illogical conclusions. Theocratic showbiz types such as Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity have further twisted the concept to hoodwink the unwary in a effort to create plausible deniability of their roles as orthodox, partisan hand puppets.

While libertarians will always tolerate voluntary collectivists, those same collectivists will never tolerate libertarians.

So c’mon people, if your philosophy is so great why don’t you just call it what it is and stop trying to smuggle it into people’s minds by pretending that it’s something else?

And that goes for American progressives, too. When will you admit that your beliefs can’t possibly work unless they’re forced onto everyone by the power of the government’s gun?

No person can ever legitimately claim the name “libertarian” without first curing oneself of the obsessive-compulsive disease of power lust, commonly known as “initiation of force.”

The conservatives who attempt to pretend they are anarchists should “just call it what it is and stop trying to smuggle it into people’s minds by pretending that it’s something else.” They should not be surprised that anarchists or libertarians would be intolerant of their desire to steal the fruits of the labor of others and call it “profit.” Accumulation of capital is impossible without an “initiation of force” and therefore capitalists and the would-be capitalists in the amen corner can never legitimately claim the name “libertarian.”

Not even when they capitalize the “L.”

Dan Clore’s excellent response to Garry Reed’s recent columns about the “l” word: A Real “Libertarian” Bozo

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