Misunderstood: Why simple descriptions fail libertarianism!

 

Names matter, don’t they?

 

Getting someone’s name right is a precondition to establishing reasonable contact with them. It’s said that there is nothing more English than not quite catching a new neighbour’s name, and then avoiding eye-contact with them for the next 30 years to avoid any embarrassment!

 

Addressing things by the right description is important in so many arenas of life. If we fail to tell it as it is, then we risk being misunderstood, misunderstanding others, and crucially, allowing people with extremist views to go unchallenged.

 

As regular readers of this column will know, I am a big believer in free speech. By which I mean that people should be allowed to say whatever they want, even if it offends others, as long as it is not deliberately intended to incite violence, and more generally, have as much freedom to order their order lives as they see fit.

 

Ideally, the state should be absent from as many aspects of our lives as possible, with the exception of protecting citizens from external threats – whether they be military, economic or environmental.

 

Libertarianism has been around for centuries and, in the West at least, is a well-established philosophy being a cornerstone for many of the liberties that we all too readily nowadays take for granted.

 

So why do so many mainstream news outlets seemingly struggle to identify what is, and is not, a libertarian perspective? I’m coming around to the conclusion that the establishment do this deliberately, so concerned are they that ordinary citizens might develop their own ideas!

 

Over the last couple of weeks, there’s been quite a few examples of such centre-left double-speak, aimed at misrepresenting what libertarians really believe.

 

Exhibit one relates to the election of a new president of Argentina. Javier Milei was voted in by a landslide – in the main, due to the chronic handling of the economy by the ruling leftist party.

 

What I found most fascinating was how leftist organisations from the Guardian to the BBC (and also, strangely, the Telegraph) opted to describe him as a ‘far right libertarian.’

 

Now to be fair, there are a few aspects of Milei’s policy platform that I would applaud and would accept are good old-fashioned libertarian stances. These mainly relate to cutting the scale of the public sector, including the bloated and biased state-run media (perhaps we should copy this in the UK?).

 

Otherwise, his rather bizarre personal behaviour aside, his beliefs tend to the authoritarian, not least his opposition to abortion, women’s equality, identity rights, and the fetishisation of the military (watch out Falkland Islanders).

 

Ah, I get it. It’s easy to dismiss him as far right because he’d also like to reduce immigration from its current levels.

 

But as I’ve suggested earlier, protecting citizens is one of the few legitimate roles of the state. It is commonsense. And that includes regulating immigration. This is not about culture wars or appeals to nativism. Unregulated immigration distorts societies and the economy.

 

Forget Argentina. The situation in this country is spiralling out of control. Net migration in the year to December 2022 was 745,000 (revised up!). In other words, 745,000 MORE people lived here than choose to leave the UK and live elsewhere.

 

The left in this country decried Suella Braverman as an authoritarian, both because of her efforts to destroy the people smugglers’ business model, and because she, rightly in my opinion, queried whether certain groups shouting hate slogans were being treated more softly than others.

 

Although I do think in some of her language, she acted naively – the vicious attacks on her for sympathising with our Jewish communities facing vile antisemitic hate speech and attacks, singled her out for sustained opprobrium and misrepresentation from the left and their media allies.

 

But we do need to get a grip on these before there is a massive reaction from the authoritarian elements in our society. More and more European countries are starting to experience this.

 

Italy has a prime minister who says nice things about Mussolini. Hungary has a leader with a long-term admiring relationship with Putin, that authoritarian of authoritarians.

 

The recent Dutch General election saw Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom capture the most seats.

 

Mercifully, no-one has been naïve enough to call Wilders a libertarian. Because he’s demonstrably not. Many of his social policies are leftist, such as those on healthcare and housing, and he talks of Islam as a ‘retarded culture’ and of expelling Dutch Muslim citizens legally resident in the country. That is despicable authoritarianism and must be opposed.

 

Interestingly, there is a Dutch Libertarian Party which one political website accurately describes as ‘mixed left and right’ in its political orientation. They at least won’t be boxed in by simpleminded descriptions.

 

That is why it is important to not misname or misidentify libertarianism. We oppose the bullying overreach of fascist groups as much as we do the leftist-loving establishment.

 

We stand foursquare with that famous quote by Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." 

 

Know our name. We are libertarians.

 

First published in www.suffolkfreepress.co.uk on Thursday 30th November.