Earlier this week, I was scrolling my Twitter timeline and came across some information posted by other individuals to cause concern involving the Rage Against the War Machine rally that the Libertarian Party, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus, and Libertarian Mises Caucus joined as sponsors. To get straight to the point, several speakers, sponsors, and organizers have direct ties or otherwise support Vladimir Putin or the invasion of Ukraine itself. Because of this, at best, this rally can be categorized as an anti-US involvement rally, but it certainly is not anti-war.
The two items that sent me on this journey are pictured below, and I will expand on both Jackson Hinkle and the Center for Political Innovation later on. I will state now that the “Z” featured in the poster is the designator used on vehicles for those transported to the Ukraine front, and Jackson Hinkle has been in full support of the invasion through his words and selling “Z” merchandise.
Fighting against war, and speaking up against the greatest failure of humanity, is what brought me into the philosophy of libertarianism because I faced war first-hand as a Marine Corps infantryman and couldn’t stand the things I saw and had to do in order to come home. I lost 23 friends in war and even more after we came home. For more than a decade, I have been an advocate for peace.
I was once a member of the Libertarian Party, but after seeing what was happening in other avenues, I decided it best to leave to continue activism elsewhere as the party no longer held many of the same ideals I hold under the new leadership. I’m not here to rehash the takeover, but I wanted to provide some background. The reason I am speaking up today because there are individuals I know still in the party who believe they can take it back, and this leadership needs to be exposed. Donors should also be aware of what their donations are funding.
To read more, view the full article at Liberty Torch Media.
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Back in 2014, when Russia first took Crimea, Rockwell was saying that the Crimeans welcomed the invasion because they were mostly ethnic Russians. In early January the “Libertarian” party of Massachusetts – Mises Division – echoed that sentiment, saying that eastern Russia was partially ethnic Russian and that we should disregard the CIA’s propaganda of the “holy inviolability of Ukraine’s 2013 borders” because the ethnic division meant that there could never be any Ukrainian national identity. It was …. something… to read an American claim that people of different ethnicities could not have a unified national identity, but that’s their perspective, I guess.”
This is “the Sudetenland and Danzig should be German”-level justification. Yes, the breakup of the Soviet Union was a cataclysmic event that has led to messy borders. But this is still a sovereign state invading another sovereign state. It’s one of the highlight cases of where war is justified according to our own party. This conflict is showing some people out to be Jane Fondas. There’s a difference between being anti-war and posing on top of a North Vietnamese tank.
I remember around the time of Ron Paul’s 2008 run reading an article about him from the Texas Tribune while waiting at the barber shop. The author made what I thought was a solid point while I backed his run at the time with $100 of Ron Paul’s was in practice little different from Noam Chomsky in that he’s so “no” on most things that it has led him over time to think he has to be automatically “no” on everything. You spend your life being “no” to everything the U.S. government does abroad, you find yourself in a room with Russian sympathizers because they see you as the weak link to exploit to improve their position.
Lew Rockwell puts out op-eds celebrating police brutality and bootlicking. How he became some libertarian hero, I’ll never know. Oh yeah, the RP cult I guess. Many of the Mises folks are authoritarians who go around calling everyone else socialists. Then they have the Tom Woods who courted his wife when she was a teenager, but everyone else is a “groomer.” The LP Mises people (who really should be called the LRC or HHH caucus IMHO) probably have The Ron Paul Survival Report in their bathrooms and get aroused at Rockwell and Rothbard talking about street justice and freeing police to act as juror and executioner. I’m sure Putin is one of their alpha male heroes.
This is very sad. We, the Libertarian Party of The United States, can be for a non-interventionist policy without using Russian talking points, saying Ukraine is Nazi like, the President of Ukraine is Hitler, some (a large percentage) Ukrainian’s of Russian ancestry welcome the invasion. These types of statements from the National Party, and some state parties (We’re talking about you, Massachusetts, Colorado, and Texas.) make us sound and look foolish.
The Libertarian Parties of Poland and Spain and Libertarians in Europe, primarily Libertarians in eastern Europe, have condemned the statements made by the National Party, and the state parties of Massachusetts, Colorado, and Texas, and comments made by libertarians from the United States.
On the positive side there is an organization of libertarians, The Atlas Network, who have and are raising money in support of the Ukrainian people. The Atlas Network is sending money to Ukrainians in there hour of peril and need. So far they have raised 3.5 million dollars.
If you’re wondering about their justification, in Lew Rockwell’s case, which is one person from whom the Mises Caucus takes direction, Rockwell said that “Putin is a rational statesman, with legitimate security concerns and the supposed hero Zelensky is a dubious character.” Rockwell then referred to Russian war crimes as “fake atrocity claims” designed to inflame people to support the Ukranian side in the war. But then, Rockwell says a paragraph or two later, the atrocities weren’t fake, but rather, they were committed by the Ukranians themselves against other Ukranians who collaborated with the Russians. The Ukranians who supposedly did this were Nazis, prisoners deliberately released by Zelensky so that they could fight the Russians, as well as Ukranians who simply began killing and torturing each other out of paranoia over who was a spy or saboteur. But also, Rockwell says, we don’t really know what is going on in Ukraine because the media is only reporting to us the lies given it by the CIA. Rockwell then concludes by saying “Putin’s campaign against this Nazi revival and his defense of the independent Russian areas in the beleaguered Donbas region deserve our admiration, not our condemnation.”
Back in 2014, when Russia first took Crimea, Rockwell was saying that the Crimeans welcomed the invasion because they were mostly ethnic Russians. In early January the “Libertarian” party of Massachusetts – Mises Division – echoed that sentiment, saying that eastern Russia was partially ethnic Russian and that we should disregard the CIA’s propaganda of the “holy inviolability of Ukraine’s 2013 borders” because the ethnic division meant that there could never be any Ukrainian national identity. It was …. something… to read an American claim that people of different ethnicities could not have a unified national identity, but that’s their perspective, I guess.
Ryan: Very well put. I agree with you on this. Thank you for posting.
I really don’t understand how it is logically consistent to be a Libertarian with an anti-war stance and be pro-Russia/anti-Ukraine. If you want to be against the heavy amounts of aid being sent to Ukraine, that’s one thing and that stance of yours better be pretty universalist, but on a purely philosopical principals basis, this is literally one of the party’s few bona fide justifications for war is when your country is attacked by an outside force. That’s what is going on here, Russia attacked Ukraine with the intention of taking over its territory, which it already did in 2014, this is just round 2 of that. Ukraine is carrying out a legitimate war according to Libertarian Party principles. Russia is not.
You can be anti-heavy government aid on a philosophical basis, and like me that things will enter into a stalemate in a few years so not be gung-ho media propaganda of Ukraine one day will vanquish Russia from its pre-2014 borders (I’ll be shocked if Ukraine ever get back control of Crimea, prior to this war the Russians had 7 years to dig in), you can have reservations on Zelensky as is acceptable to have reservations on all political leaders, but don’t sit and lie to me you’re a Libertarian and think Russia is in the right/Ukraine is in the wrong here. Where’s the Rage Against the War Machine Rally for Yemen, which has been going on since 2014 and the Saudis are using a bunch of U.S. equipment to conduct? Yemen has less assets in the U.S. than Russia to speak on their behalf probably.
Daniel McAdams’ DailyPutin fan page is on the internet archive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110101000000*/http://dailyputin.com/
It was active from November 10, 2010 to September 30, 2011. Not many posts, but there you can see him fawning over Putin – calling him “the most photogenic world leader”, promoting an event to name Putin’s dog (with a photo of Putin cuddling the puppy), and glamor shots of Putin shooting a crossbow from a raft.
The most interesting quote, in my opinion, is from September 24, 2011, where McAdams encourages Putin to have a more confrontational foreign policy. McAdams wrote: “Russian foreign policy has shown itself to be tepid and perhaps even self-destructive of late. Exhibit A would be its foolishly non-confrontational policy on Libya, which rather than appease US and NATO ambitions only whets its appetite for further regime changing in even more strategically precarious places (for Russia) like Syria.
I’m not sure where that puts his anti-war bona fides.
The pro-Russia/anti-Ukraine lean of the national party has been clear from its twitter feed for a long time. It’s sickening and embarrassing how they regurgitate Russian propaganda. I wish I was surprised that this “anti-war” event is going to lean the same way.