Astroturf libertarians a threat to internet democracy

[yathrib]

Ironically, the kind of "freedom" libertarians want requires a fascist police state to exist. Examples: Chile and Argentine during the mid 70s through the mid 80s.

[23]

I don't think that this libertarian would agree with your assessment, yathrib.



My apologies for repeating this vid from a prior submission elsewhere. Noam, nonetheless, does a credible job of disassociating classical libertarianism from any fascist implications.

[yathrib]

The so called "free market economics" of Friedman and others inevitably leads to great suffering among people who are not billionaires, and requires the firm hand of the police or military to back it up. Reality, not theory. Theory isn't actually a good word to use in connection with libertarianism, because a theory actually is (in scientific terms) a hypothesis that succeeds in accounting for reality. Libertarianism is pure fantasy, when it's not dissimulation. That's "lying," in plain English. Here's how to tell when it's one or the other: When you're hearing it from a 19 year old who's read too much Rand or Heinlein, it's fantasy. If it comes from a billionaire, it's deception.

[wintler2]

I am entirely sympathetic to the ideals of libertarianism, but the fantasy & deception that yathrib points to is exactly what bothers me - nearly always the 19y.o is unthinkingly fighting the billionaires fight by recycling cliches taught to them by billionaire owned media. Any comment thread on climate change will demonstrate this. As with my analogy on christians, there is a whole lot of educating the choir that needs to happen before many libertarians stop being the useful idiots of the planetfuckers.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Yet they're funding the semi-libertarian-branded tea party .. out of the goodness of their hearts, or cos the libertarian rhetoric suits their bankrolls? (the latter of course). And before you say (as i would in your position) that its not the libertarians fault that the Kochs jump on their bandwagon, a) who paid for the bandwagon? & b) why don't 'real' libertarians scream about the billionaire fakes? I hold all christians responsible for the evil christians cos they don't challenge their own, same goes for libertarians.

The word libertarian doesn't have jack shit to do with the tea party.

Its a Republican political movement. Republicans whether they choof or not are not libertarians.

All people have libertarian or authoritarian political tendencies. It is not a definition of the tea party, or really any political movement, tho the first one I ever came across was simply called the guns and drugs party.

If the tea party are calling themselves libertarian its for similar reasons to the way they plagarise MLKs speeches then add little racist violent dog whistles.

Its why they have Glen Beck's 9/12 Project - We the People demand Answers...

If theTea Party are using the word libertarian its a clear sign they are not libertarian but want to slur the concept while attempting to appropriate any poltical and social capital the term once had.

That is their mo.

There is a point where scum fuck capitalism and libertarianism meet, and Ron Paul's personal finances, and holdings in mining companies are an example of that.

Libertarianism as I understand it is more likely to be found in the writings of Randolph Bourne than Murray Rothbard tho. So I might see things differently.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Its just standard rhetorical camoflage.

No its more than that.

Its changing the concept. I've been having a closer look at all that Fox shit lately and some of it is quite disturbing. But quite clever. As much as I hate to admit it.

Libertarianism is associated with less govt intrusion in peoples lives, based on the idea that its none of anyone's business what you do so long as you don't hurt anyone.

After that it goes in all sorts of directions ... its right wing bullshit for a start, and to me that should be enough of a description.

I do get where you are coming from tho, perhaps we need to provide specific examples so libertarians can point out why that isn't libertarianism.

Which can then be taken back to the people making the claims about it.

[yathrib]

I don't think that this libertarian would agree with your assessment, yathrib.



My apologies for repeating this vid from a prior submission elsewhere. Noam, nonetheless, does a credible job of disassociating classical libertarianism from any fascist implications.

Libertarian socialism--left wing anarchism, really--bears no relation whatsoever to the randroids, gold bugs, greedy psychopaths, and singularity groupies of the libertarian right. None. They just happen to have stumbled across the same word to describe aspects of their ideologies. It is highly disingenuous of you to confuse the discourse in this way. And I'd like you to explain Chile and Argentina. I'm waiting.

[23]

It appears that you may not have listened to Chomsky as closely as you could have.

Liberatarian socialism is anti-statist. There are other forms of socialism that are statist (does the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" ring a bell?). It's the old Marx versus Bakunin discussion.

Chile and Argentina (and currently Venezuela) are statist responses, not libertarian socialist ones.

Have another go at listening to Noam a little more carefully. What you perceive as confusion may give way to clarity.

Monbiot got is right in the title of his article, though. The libertarians, here, are an "astroturf" version. But you won't be able to discern that, unless you have a clue as to what real grass libertarianism smells and feels like.

P.S. The Libertarian party, here, was founded in 1971. The true libertarian ideology, on the other hand, existed light years ahead of the currently bastardized, domestic version. Pop quiz: which version would you think the elite would want you to believe is libertarianism?

[JackRiddler]

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This thread teaches once again that the one thing people will fight to the death for on the Internet (death by arteriosclerosis or lack of sleep) is semantics.

If the headline to Monbiot’s piece had only said, “corporatists” or “PR flacks,” this thread would have received a few assenting responses and then fallen off into the archives.

Yes! As vanlose kid makes clear on his new thread about the libertarian left, here --

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=30919
(which makes for solid reading if you’re not familiar with anarchism)

-- the word libertarian was originally coined as a positive term by and for anarchists who, among other things, were... socialist!

In the century since, it’s gone through at least as many transformations and abuses as “liberal” before it, and libertarianism is now generically understood as the direct antonym of socialism. I doubt the term is worth contesting. Unlike liberal (or "conspiracy theorist"), libertarian is not very often applied to people who would not willingly describe themselves as libertarians.

Most of those who call themselves libertarian today, by far, are against the state and illegitimate power only when it appears in a democratic (“socialist”) or public-sector (“big government”) guise. They support capital, so much so that though most of them are fervently “capitalist” they are blind to the fact that this word means capital rules; that capital is the state.

Most self-designated libertarians appear to champion the absolute tyranny of “private property” over the majority of individuals who do not own any (beyond perhaps a single home). They care for their own liberty and the liberty of others like them, but not for that of foreign peasants or workers crushed in the global “free” market. Most of them are blind to class in the way that only the petit-bourgeois can manage. Most let simplistic principles borrowed from Rand or the Austrians substitute for and distort the empirical reality around them (which is how Obama became a socialist). They fall easily for the false dichotomy between government and private that blinds them to how much of the governance around them is in private hands, and no less authoritative or monopolistic for being private.

Very few of the real-existing modern-day self-described libertarians give more than lip service to such fundamental issues of individual sovereignty as the right to determine the contents of one’s own bloodstream or the right not to participate in the murder of far-away brown people. I’m happy to be called a libertarian myself, if we’re talking about the drug war or the empire or our rights to walk down the street and assemble without being molested by cops. But for most, these are secondary issues. Most libertarians are not hippies or peace punks.

When it’s time to invest their political energies, they are for the rule of business against “regulation,” for the rich against “taxation,” for the corporations and privatized government against the public sector. Those are the issues that exercise their passions. They are the foot-soldiers fighting for “Citizens United.” They are the ones pushing the myth that wealth comes only from individual achievers of the “private sector” (a misnomer for a realm mainly under the feudal and totalitarian rules of for-profit corporations) and that the “public sector” is solely a parasitic entity on private wealth that creates no good on its own. They are the ones who follow the anti-humanist mythologies of the Austrians, Friedman and Ayn Rand.

That includes vanlose’s quote buddy, Tyler Durden, who has many interesting thoughts worth quoting but who is most emphatically not a libertarian in the sense of the old anarchists (or in that of the movie Tyler Durden from "Fight Club") but who is far closer to the Austrians and their modern-day acolytes with their failure to understand that their hated centralization of state power comes about mainly because of the predictable operation of their beloved free market. Such libertarians were also the ones ignoring the bloody coups in Chile and other nations but cheering the privatizations and bankster plunders that followed in the name of the free market.

In short, right now libertarian is used mainly to denote commandos of business-ueber-alles ideology, and such people themselves are the majority of those using the word as a self-description. I don’t see a point in fighting for the restoration of this word to its older meaning. I’d rather contest that such “libertarians” should be allowed also to describe themselves as “centrist,” “moderate,” “apolitical,” “non-partisan,” “neutral,” or “civil” in discourse, as pragmatists, economic wise men, or the makers of "jobs." Those are the real battlefield phrases, those that presume an automatic legitimacy or moral superiority for those who can capture them.

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[23]

"Most of those who call themselves libertarian today, by far, are against the state and illegitimate power only when it appears in a democratic (“socialist”) or public-sector (“big government”) guise. They support capital as the state, so much so that though most of them are fervently “capitalist” they are blind to the fact that this word means capital rules; capital is the state. They champion the absolute tyranny of “private property” over the majority of individuals who do not own any (beyond perhaps a single home). They care for their own liberty and the liberty of other people like them, but not for that of some peasants or workers crushed in the global “free” market. Most of them are blind to class in the way that only the petit-bourgeois can accomplish. Most of them let simplistic principles borrowed from Rand or the Austrians substitute for and distort the empirical reality around them. They fall easily for the false dichotomy between government and private that blinds them to how much of the governance around them is in private hands."

I appreciate the fact that you took the time and effort to use the descriptive phrase in bold. Instead of simply and generically referring to them as libertarians, as many are inclined to do.

Calling yourself X, does not necessarily make it so. Thanks for pointing out that distinction.

[yathrib]

No true Scotsman is an intentional logical fallacy, an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion. When faced with a counterexample to a universal claim, rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original universal claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it.

Calling yourself X, does not necessarily make it so. Thanks for pointing out that distinction.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Sons of Semiotics, I am William Wallace.

Yes, I've heard. That word Kills men by the hundreds, and if Yes were here he'd consume the English with fireballs from his eyes and bolts of lightning from his arse. I AM William Wallace. And I see a whole army of my countrymen here in defiance of the tyranny of language. You have come to fight as free men, and free men you are. What would you do without grammer? Will you fight?

Aye, fight and you may die. Run and you'll live -- at least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one phrase, just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take our pendants!!!

Wallace and Soldiers: Alba gu bra! (Some prison in Iran or something!)

[norton ash]

I am a loyalist to language, as is every true scotsman.

The Cool Web
by Robert Graves
(1895-1985)

------------------------------------

Children are dumb to say how hot the day is,
How hot the scent is of the summer rose,
How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky,
How dreadful the tall soliers drulling by,

But we have speech, to chill the angry day,
And speech, to dull the roses's cruel scent,
We spell away the overhanging night,
We spell away the soldiers and the fright.

There's a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:
We grow sea-green at last and coldly die
In brininess and volubility.

But if we let our tongues lose self-possession,
Throwing off language and its watery clasp
Before our death, instead of when death comes,
Facing the wide glare of the children's day,
Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums,
We shall go mad, no doubt, and die that way.

[vanlose kid]

just a minor quibble Jack, no offense meant, but, first, thanks for pointing this out:

.

This thread teaches once again that the one thing people will fight to the death for on the Internet (death by arteriosclerosis or lack of sleep) is semantics.

If the headline to Monbiot’s piece had only said, “corporatists” or “PR flacks,” this thread would have received a few assenting responses and then fallen off into the archives.

Yes! As vanlose kid makes clear on his new thread about the libertarian left, here --

http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... =8&t=30919
(which makes for solid reading if you’re not familiar with anarchism)

-- the word libertarian was originally coined as a positive term by and for anarchists who, among other things, were... socialist!

...

i'm not sure i'd fight to the death re a point of grammar/semantics, and yet, i still think the use of words and a concern for definitions and distinctions is of some value. so i try to point things out and reference the historical record of usage or whatever when i can. many of us do. here's a bit of semantics.

"Anarcho"-capitalists claim to be anarchists because they say that they oppose government. As noted in the last section, they use a dictionary definition of anarchism. However, this fails to appreciate that anarchism is a political theory. As dictionaries are rarely politically sophisticated things, this means that they fail to recognise that anarchism is more than just opposition to government, it is also marked a opposition to capitalism (i.e. exploitation and private property). Thus, opposition to government is a necessary but not sufficient condition for being an anarchist -- you also need to be opposed to exploitation and capitalist private property. As "anarcho"-capitalists do not consider interest, rent and profits (i.e. capitalism) to be exploitative nor oppose capitalist property rights, they are not anarchists.

viewtopic.php?p=378273#p378273

some may think it a waste of time but hey, some don't.

while it's true that a lot of what we "fight" over in our respective societies can be reduced in debate to "questions of semantics", it still is the case, in my view, that more is involved than merely that. our definitions of words for instance, do not hang in a void. words have meanings in language: the meaning of a word is not some ethereal component built into it, i.e. you cannot say the word as sound or script is separable from the meaning. there's an entire framework or context or better "language game" and "form of life" that goes with it.

e.g. if i were to ask "what do you mean by 'libertarian'"? when you for instance say "astroturf libertarians are …" it would be a valid questions and an actual attempt to understand what it in fact is you are trying to say. were you then to tell me, "oh, you know, these tea party people" i'd have a better grasp of what exactly it is you were trying to do with the first proposition. that makes a difference in life, i.e. in the real world.

i've kind of "come out" in the thread you reference and Wombat's one (and even there some of the posters tried to box me into something that is very far from me personally), where i jumped in with my anti-statist views of how a society ought to be organized, but believe me, part of what held me back for so long was, guess what? – words. and no, i've no interest in preaching. as far as i'm concerned these views are mine. but i do mind not being able to communicate them due to the framing of words by some and the acceptance of that framing by others.

and yet again, in the end it doesn't really matter that much, you're right. i just don't see why i should give up a good word and the tradition that goes with it because the money says it now belongs to them. and then i remember Chomsky saying "you know, anybody can have the word if they like" and think, yeah, whatever. – it still bugs me though, being a nerd for precision and good usage. and also, it has practical consequences, in that were anyone to ask me what my views were i'm not "allowed" the use of these taboo words because the general consensus enforced by the money has everyone agreeing that the money's definition of the word is the only valid one 'cause it's the loudest.

but then giving up the land there means throwing a great deal of history and tradition out too. i think. to me it's like conceding the ground or commons to the "private property capitalists" and that irks me.

that coupled with attempts by other posters to box me in with the very same capitalists brings me to this. you say:

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...

That includes vanlose’s quote buddy, Tyler Durden...

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i kind of object to that phrasing. if you've read and understood the above you'd know why.

if not, here's a minor rebuttal of that claim: i am not buddies with TD. first, if you can find me a better blog that rounds up econ news and commentary with facts and numbers i'd like the link. second, i post lots of stuff, even from the graudniad and bloomberg and i follow econ news, this neither entails that i agree with everything i post nor that i make money on the stock market. i'm actually in favor of abolishing the stock market, banks, all that goes with it, i.e. capitalism. but as with any news, they post the numbers/facts and "explain" or "comment" on it. i figure people here are grown ups and know how to read. i just pass on the info.

take your Wall St. thread as a case in point. i contribute to that because i think that the information, especially, when juxtaposed as it is on the thread, even with the commentary, gives a very good picture of how the system works if one is of a mind to just dig in and read it. i sometimes agree with TD when he for instance says the system is rigged and shows how some little part of it works. sometimes i don't. mainly because he is (i think) one of the people who believes the system can be fixed: and guess what, the majority all across the political spectrum do, they only disagree re how to do it. – and there i disagree with all of them. it can't be fixed. it functions exactly as it is meant to. the only fix i see is complete eradication.

so, for the record and the peanut gallery, i am not vigilant nor am i "tyler durden".

peace.

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[vanlose kid]

let me add something to the above post.

you know the list of people that think the system can be fixed? Assange is on it.

and i post a lot on him. weird huh?

ps: Chomsky doesn't.

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