Fringe Far Right theories, to obscurity, and its metabolic rise into the digital age. "Paleolibertarians" to "Libertarian Fascists", the Far Right hijack of the counterculture Left 1960s and 1970s: Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell. (part 8)

The late Murray Rothbard, a self proclaimed "Anarcho-Capitalist" passed away in 1995, born of Russian, Polish descent in the Bronx in 1926, and of a Jewish background.  He has remained, from the grave, very much a potent element to the current Proto-Fascist rebranding in the early/mid 2000s, particularly the hijacking of anti-establishment or anti-Statism theory of the Left, and fusing their Far Right hierarchical, and authoritarian elements to American 'First' policy, while critiquing big government, conjoining socialist/globalist conspiracy theories, and wanting to abolish 'social and welfare programs',  mostly under Centralists governance such as the American Democrats push to appeal to the working class vote.  But, it is the beginning of Rothbard's obscure, and very much oxymoron Anarcho-Capitalist economic and social theory, that shows up, once again, on how some Far Right adherents, like Rothbard, begin to try and convince the Left of the past decades, their intention for a Far Right rebrand, and end up swinging harder to the Far Right in a matter of years, and mostly due to what could be deemed as a "mental snap" or an extreme backlash to the Left's steadfast egalitarian aspirations.  Rothbard was no exception to this rule, with some glaring indications, that he was indeed always a Fascist deep down. 

Libertarian isolationism, to which Rothbard decreed in the 1990s as "paleolibertarianism" to appeal to the Far right "paleoconservatives" ala Pat Buchanan, the first "Make America Great Again"(MAGA) Fascist, was the fringe of American Right Wing politics, festering as a frustrated spillover after three decades of counterculture  and 'social democracy' overriding any attempts at post World War Two American Fascism from taking hold, as discussed with other obscure and antiquated Far Right political theories, which laid dormant until the late 1990s and early 2000s.  They were reinvigorated by the Far Right book distribution companies and 'think tanks', promoted by what was once known as the "Alt Right", which later became the bulk of the current aging Trumpist MAGA base.

From "free market" absolutionist to stealing "Anarcho theory" from the Left to match his anti-State, pro-capitalism conjob.  Rothbard tries to ride the counterculture wave: late 1940s to the 1970s.  

In 1948, for the U.S. election of that year, while studying economics at Columbia University, a young Murray Rothbard at 22, in an odd, or possible mask slip, backs and sets up a University campaign for the racist and old 'Right' guard segregation advocate, South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond’s  "Dixiecrat" campaign.  Then, after graduation, goes into a self imposed decade of isolation, developing his Anarcho-Capitalist grift and treatise,"Man, Economy, and State" (published in 1962) , probably aware things were changing and students throughout the country, at the time, were beginning to reject their parents 1950s corporate and government development of the Middle Class, technocratic Utopia that never was.  And by the late 1950s, the "Old Right" was dead, Rothbard and fellow Far Right isolationists begin to back, albeit secretly, the Democrats, more specifically democratic Adlai Stevenson in his 1957 Presidential candidacy, to keep out the Republican and neoconservative, pro-war, anti-communist globalists (Rothbard was also fiercely anti-communist), which he saw as sponsored State expansion, and military complex domination within American society, which meant more taxes, and property theft, that he believed, in his rewoking of Anarcho theory, Right Wing neoconservatism actually mirrored Communism.

Rothbard's attempt at hijacking the "New Left" with his 'intellectually' masked Far Right based prejudices, began with his journal "Left and Right:  A Journal of Libertarian Thought"  in 1965, lasting to 1968 and failing to overlty convince the Left at the time, that his anti-Vietnam war/military complex, and anti State/Corporate could hold up with his pro-private property ownership, and dislike of socialist inspired egalitarianism.  And by 1969, Rothbard's Anarcho-Capitalism sell to the Left fell apart, due mainly to the falling out of between himself and his star pupil, and former Republican supporter, Karl Hess, who hooked up with the counterculture wave of the 1960s, and into the 1970s and stayed the course, which was Rothbard's entryism via Hess, in trying to convince, in its arrogant futility, that student street activism of communal living, social democracy and egalitarianism, could be swapped for embracing capitalism, free markets, and owning property.

Murray Rothbard "snaps" goes full Far Right, hits the Fascist full circle, failsafe button:  1970s to 1980s.

Despite the very public falling out with Karl Hess, and losing him to the Left 'Anarchists'  Murray Rothbard wishy washy, flip flopping, yet obviously his anti-Left vitriol went into overdrive, and on the May 1971 issue of the "Libertarian Forum" magazine, his article titled "Nihilism of the New Left" was another mask slip, utilising age old prejudices by the Far Right in degrading socialism, by labelling it a "nihilistic", chaotic philosophy or political structure, the paranoia soaked 'logic' which was born out of 1920s proto-Fascists of Europe and America, Rothbard's rebrand under his feigned economic theory, begins to show his frustration that merging Anarchy with Capitalism was essentially a con-job to woo 1960s counterculture students, with their newfound sexually liberated hedonism going into the 70s, as a counterculture continuum, Rothbard's 'mental snap' becomes more and more evident, as quoted from the 1971 article: "The New Left has now clearly reached the end of its rope; it has degenerated into a frenzied and wanton nihilism... They have no program, they have no alternative to offer, they have nothing but a blind hatred of everything that exists."

And yet, in 1973, with the 1960s over, and a renewed, as mentioned, counterculture began to evolve, namely around hedonism, drugs and sex, which was equally important in keeping the "Moral Majority", and Far Right at bay throughout the 70s, Murray Rothbard has another go in trying to convince his Right Wing Libertarian base that he could appeal to the 'disenfranchised' Left and Right camps simultaneously, with his failed "Anarcho-Capitalism" theory, creating the "Cato Institute" in 1977, which was a Libertarian think-tank, founded by Billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, as attempt at grounding his Libertarian hopes, shelving his "nihilistic" Left rhetoric of the late 1960s and early 70s, and 'other' proto-Fascist sentiments.  And in the mid to late 1970s, Rothbard goes for broke with the wooing the 'Left', writing articles and pamphlets decrying the CIA, FBI,  and State run militarism, and his opposition to remnants of the Vietnam War, even going as far as advocating the legalising of sex workers, and drug reform.  

In 1980, when the Libertarian Party presidential campaign of Ed Clark began, and the Cato institute was front in centre in this push for a Libertarian President hopeful, Charles Koch and others allied to his own vision of appealing the more conservative Libertarian base, watered down Murray Rothbard's 2nd attempt at trying to reach the Left, with his aligned 'Anarcho' grifts, essentially have Rothbard removed from the board, and by definition exasperating his mental "snap" aligning with his beloved Far Right populism, once and for all.  Connecting with Fascist "creep" Lew Rockwell , who was an advisor to libertarian politician Ron Paul, impressed with Rothbard's take on Libertarianism and aware that Rothbard had snapped back into his proto-Fascist form, both men create the "Mises Institute" in 1982 and shift it, in a full circle, and Far Right irony, ala 1948 "Dixiecrat"/Rothbard racism, to Alabama, in their final vain attempt at conjoining Libertarianism to the Far Right.

"Paleolibertarianism": Rothbard's and Rockwell's racist, anti-Left hysteria goes into overdrive.   Late 1980s, 1990s.

In the same year as the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, which one could argue was the beginning, in retrospect, of the end of three decades of counterculture, timed, inadvertently, with the collapse of Communism, Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell formed "Paleolibertarianism", as the last gasp, literally for Rothbard, in working a Far Right libertarian base with anti-State rhetoric, having failed in wooing the Left in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and with bitter resolve, Rothbard and Rockwell went to work.  And in the January 1990 issue of "Liberty" magazine, they co-penned their manifesto "The Case for Paleo-Libertarianism",  Libertarian/Fascist mishmash, yet perfectly aligned with Rothbard's surfaced racism and oddball hierarchical manifestation under a pillaged 'Left' Anarcho framework, it reads more like a Far Right conspiracy theory cult manifesto, than an intellectual calling card of his past writings.  From degrading race mixing, as State sponsored programs to end the Judeo-Christian family values, to bizarre rants on the modern/postmodern arts are destroying traditional culture, pro-Paganism, anti-Environmentalism, while advocating and enforcing in its Nazi-esque advocation; the Natural Order of things.  Rothbard dusts off his old the "nihilism" tag, that the Left attend to change that natural "Order" through their "egalitarianism" and  "nihilism".  Almost directly taking points from Rothbard's 1973 book "Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and other Essays", where Rothbard was desperately trying to convincing Libertarians, after his failed attempt at converting the New Left of his Far Right conjob, that environmentalism, equal rights, feminism, sexual choices and racial equality are State sponsored ploys to control private property and personal wealth, hinting at proto-Fascist rhetoric, that it goes against the order of the "free markets" 

Lew Rockwell went further, and during the late 1980s and 1990s, as a ghostwriter for Ron Paul's newsletters, with a plethora of extreme Racist, and Homophobic vitriol, later revealed in 2002 by investigative journalists it was in fact Rockwell penning his White Supremacist shit via a 'famed' Libertarian politician, indicates how much Murray Rothbard and Rockwell wanted the Libertarians to be part of the Far Right.  And in 1992, Rothbard wrote, "Right-Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement", for the "Rothbard-Rockwell Report" newsletters, prasing White Supremacist and Neo-Nazi David Duke for rallying the "white" working class, and that a future coalition or combination of card carrying Fascists and Paleolibertarians should be their next strategy:

"It is fascinating that there was nothing in Duke's current program or campaign that could not also be embraced by paleoconservatives or paleo-libertarians; lower taxes, dismantling the bureaucracy, slashing the welfare system, attacking affirmative action and racial set-asides, calling for equal rights for all Americans, including whites: what's wrong with any of that?"  Murray Rothbard (1992)

Murray Rothbard passed away in 1995, he was 68.  Before he died, he praised the discredited  Racist 'Science' of the racist book "The Bell Curve" by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray (1994).

And in 2022, before Jeff Deist who was vice-President of the Mises Institute in 2016, at the height of Trumpist 1.0, called for "Blood and Soil" or Blut und Boden Nazi-esque (again) romanticism for Libertarians, to maintain a Far Right rebrand, the "Mises Caucus" took over the Libertarian Party, and in steps comedian (ex?) David Smith, evoking the ghost of Rothbard, as the media face for the Mises Caucus, Smith, portraying identical rhetorical patterns of Rothbard and Rockwell's Racist 'Science' and other jumbled up Far Right rebranding, inspired by Anarcho-Capitalist "Libertarian Fascist" Hermann Hoppe, that immigration goes against the natural order, and they favorite catchphrase, the "free market", and they (migrants) will be forced onto "private" land owners, by the State. 

Other notable "Libertarian Fascists", picking at the corpse, and evoking the ghost of the late Murray Rothbard, are Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Greene, and of course, Joe Rogan.  All wrapped in their Far Right vs Neoconservative action redux, with a common enemy being the  "Left", and their common desire to remove any egalitarian base or social democratic safety net.

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(A.Glass 2026)