Libertarianism 2. Jewish Origins

The two intellectuals who can be said to have revived classical liberalism in the second half of the twentieth century were Ayn Rand and Ludwig Von Mises. The new name for this political renaisance was libertarianism - as liberalism by the mid-twentieth century had been corrupted beyond meaning. Although there were many points of difference in how Ayn Rand and Ludwig Von Mises arrived at their political conclusions they shared a similar background. Both were European Jews who fled to America to escape totalitarian regimes in their respective countries. Ayn Rand was born in St Petersburg in 1905 witnessed the Russian revolution as a teenager and lived under the Soviet Regime until 1925. Ludwig Von Mises was born in 1881 in Austria, and after spending several years in Switzerland he sought refuge in America in 1940 fearing that the Nazi’s had designs on Switzerland.

From a nationalist perspective the fact that the two founders of the modern libertarian movement were Jewish can partly explain why the Libertarian movement has paid little attention to contemporary questions of race and identity and referred to sentiments of group loyalty as collectivism. In a political movement which prised individualism and defended individual rights to be labelled as a collectivist was tantamount to being labelled as a heretic.

The NLF does not indulge in grand anti-Semitic conspiracy theories but neither is it blind to the fact that Jews have played a disproportionate role in radical intellectual movements that have undermined racial and ethnic identity. As a diaspora community the Jewish community has suffered persecution from the dominant ethnic group in the nation. By advancing political ideologies that would have a tendency to undermine racial identities and loyalties Jews could feel more secure from persecution. Libertarianism whilst a welcome departure from the emerging consensus in favour of state activism contributed to this weaking of identity by advancing the notion that America, and by extension the West were propositional nations. For such libertarians it does not matter whether whites are replaced by non-whites, just so long as libertarian values endure. (The NLF on the other hand argues that not only does it matter that whites should endure for their own sake, but that if whites were replaced by non-whites such a nation would be one where libertarian values have no chance of being respected.)

As a further note the NLF would also point out at the initial ideological foundation work of libertarianism took place after the second world war and before the beginning of mass non-white immigration, when the Whites were not threatened with becoming minorities in their own countries and when states generally enforced segregation between races. The dominant issue for the Right before the 1960s was not race, but communism. In such a context it is also not surprising that the libertarian movemement never paid much attention to race, and when it did it largely repeated the emerging egalitarian consensus on race.