I was doing a bit of reading, trying to figure out if Libertarians ever had an intellectual, philosophical, or economic basis for their beliefs. I mean, surely at some point there had to be someone with a coherent idea.
Today's subject is Alfred Jay Nock, a noted early libertarian who eventually fell down the rabbit hole of antisemitism. Alfred Nock is regarded as having influenced conservatives and libertarians, especially Ayn Rand, down through today's anarchocapitalists. Nock's downfall may also give us some insights into how far back we can trace the racism that would later crop up in places like Ron Paul's newsletters.
His book "Our Enemy The State" (1935) is considered a key libertarian treatise, and certainly noteworthy for its title if nothing else. His work is featured by the The Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian nonprofit pushing the Austrian School of economics and the Georgist "single tax" theory.
According to Wikipedia Nock advocated the Georgist theory of eliminating all taxes except a land tax, a "single tax" based on the "economic rent" of land. The idea of economic rent determining the value of property ("location, location, location") is familiar, but using this as the basis of all taxes is a wild-eyed bit of social engineering that has never been attempted. Nock was also an editor of "The Freeman," a Georgist publication, in the 1920's, and reprints can be found on line.
However, Nock does seem to have been an early adopter of the Libertarian business model - hype a flat-tax substitute for the income tax, and get wealthy people as sponsors.
Although he started as a liberal reformer, Nock did the big swing to reactionary libertarian. He reminds me of John Stossel, who started as a consumer protection reporter before jumping on the wingnut welfare retirement plan pushing anarchocapitalist libertarianism at Fox.
Nock also hit on many familiar libertarian/Randian themes - the division of society into producers and parasites, the failure of statism, the illegitimacy of any government (including elected ones), an obsession with the gold standard, a hatred of public schools, a sense the society is is headed for inevitable collapse, longing for a barely conceived tribal utopia, nostalgia for the "stolen" past of cultural purity, and the rise of a natural elite class (whose qualities other people just can't appreciate).
Of course, a lot of people were banging that drum in the 1930's and libertarianism would have overlapped quite a bit with Fascism. And libertarians are not the sort of people that mellow over time - they just tend to get more reactionary and obsessed with conspiracies. Nock continued to advance his ideas through 1941, and devoted an increasing amount of time pondering the "Jewish problem." It's hard to walk that back when it's put into print, and Nock probably wanted to walk it back very badly after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 led us to declare war on Germany.
Nock's libertarian career lasted barely a decade. It came to a messy end when he published a two part article in the "The Atlantic" in 1941 titled "The Jewish Problem in America," in response to antisemitic unrest in Brooklyn. At great length, Nock laid out what's wrong with teh Jews. While Nock was careful to not entirely blame the Jews, he did not mention the strong Fascist movement in America before WW2, which included the German-American Bund's Nazi rally at Madison Square garden.
It makes me wonder if these are the roots the weird mixture of libertarianism and white supremacy seen at Stormfront and on Glenn Beck. Nock also gets mentioned on this site where we see rants about "statism," "parasites," and the "fascism" inflicted on us by Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and the Jews. In a more it's diluted form, we see this in Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism."
Modern libertarians, including Wikipedia editors, try to whitewash Nock's writing
Despite this obvious dread of anti-Semitism, the article was itself declared anti-Semitic and Nock was never asked to write another, effectively ending his career as a social critic.
Likewise, you can see libertarians declaring that Nock and Libertarians
love the Jews. Even though Nock has at least one fan over at
Stormfront. Oh and
this guy. And um
him. And
this dude. I'm not saying Nock is a white supremacist hero, but he definitely has white supremacist fans who look to him for intellectual justification.
Let's take a look at Nock's train professional wreck:
In "The Jewish Problem in America," Nock used many of the rhetorical tricks so overworked by modern conservatives, especially the "some people say" and the "I don't endorse it, but I certainly understand," and "some of my best friends....." rhetorical devices. In a previous article, he used quite a bit of the "some of my best friends" strategy, but here in part 2 he is ready to dish.
First Nock declares that Jews are racially distinct ("Oriental") from the "Occidental" Americans. Hey, at least he didn't say "Aaryan." Whatever Nock means by Occidental, it's clear that he does not consider Jews to be "white" people in any sense.
We had a full-sized Irish problem in those days, but it was Irish, .... an Occidental problem. Therefore when in course of time.....the Irish promptly became acceptable as Occidental people living among Occidentals, and they have remained so ever since.
Get it? Jews can't assimilate, because they are a completely alien race and culture.
Here Nock uses the straw man arguement of saying suppose Armenians were "infiltrating." The clear implaction is that Jews are infiltrating.
Suppose you saw a steady infiltration of Armenians into positions of the highest prominence in our public life.....
Nock again states clearly that Jews can't assimilate and probably aren't loyal Americans.
...Those who are hopeful that (assimilation ion may happen) a generation or two or twenty, or be transformed through some kind of spiritual osmosis, seem to be overconfident. 'I have been an American forty years,' a prominent rabbi is reported to have said lately, 'but I have been a Jew five thousand years.' ....He spoke of something which runs infinitely deeper than any merely political allegiance.... least of all by taking out naturalization papers.
An interesting charge to make when the German-American Bund was celebrating the German Nazi movement.
Nock mentions flirting with a Jewish girl, and uses this as an excuse to imagine the horrors of intermarriage.
What especially interested me was my complete certainty that with the best will in the world on both sides I should know her no better at the end of a hundred years of close companionship than I did at the end of those eight days.......... I have often thought, however, of what would happen if some rash and personable young Occidental fell in love with her—no one could help doing that—and married her. If he were sensitive, how distressed and dissatisfied he would be as he became aware of the vast areas of her consciousness from which he was perforce shut out forever; and on the other hand, if he were too insensitive to feel that he was shut out from them, how intolerable her life with him would be.
Then Nock says that antisemitism largely results from Jews crudeness, but that it is a mistake to think of this as Jewish trait, but merely the result of their rough existence. And he's careful to point out that it is wrong, and the perfectly understandable but regrettable instinct of the lower classes. Having clutched his pearls over antisemitism, he dishes up the antisemitic talking points. And he quotes antisemite H. L. Mencken!
Take for example the manifestations commonly lumped off under the prejudicial term 'Jewish manners': manners reflecting a fierce and insensitive arrogance, a flagrant vulgarity, a rude and pushing disregard of decent civility. These are not Jewish manners, and every intelligent Occidental knows it. They are frontiersman's manners, the manners of our own frontier..... As Mr. H. L. Mencken acutely observes..... "the harsh, impatient, cocksure, truculent and, alas, somewhat uncouth qualities which won the American West." For centuries the Jew was a herdsman in Southern Palestine, warlike and violent as all primitive herdsmen are, 'truly indomitable fellows,' as Mr. Mencken says......Their subsequent experiences throughout the Western world have been uniformly of the kind best calculated to confirm and perpetuate in them their primitive qualities, and among these the quality of manners. That is the whole story.
What Nock is saying here very explicitly is that, yes, Jews really are just like the worst antimsemitic stereotypes, but those qualities are not unique to Jews. He's not saying it's wrong, or an error in logic, he's just saying that antisemites are, at worst, making a minor error in semantics, and he uses that as an excuse to trot out the antisemitic stereotypes and say they are true. You could play that game with any ethnic group, and solemnly declare that all the negative stereotypes are true.
Now we get into some made up numbers, some people say, and dash of conspiracy theory about Jews taking over the federal government.
The Civil Service Commission reports 959,146 civil employees in the Federal executive departments. It is impossible to say how many of these are Jews. The highest Jewish estimate I have heard made is 40 per cent, the highest non-Jewish estimate is 63 per cent.
Really? The federal government has been taken over by Jews? Well that's what he "heard."
Then he goes back to the "smart white people know better" (paraphrase) but shifts to the viewpoint of the common man for a little pogrom fantasy
The Occidental mass-man sees the thing differently. He faces the thousand and one petty economic disarrangements and social annoyances resulting from this bad distribution, and meditates savagely on the chances that a merciful Providence may some day send him a couple of sotnias of Cossacks to help straighten things out.
He seems especially concerned about the US getting stuck with sneaky Jews fleeing Hitler.
The State Department (reports) that 4000 refugees a month are coming here, that 600,000 more have applied for visas, half of them, 'including many Jews,' in Germany and German-occupied countries. I also read that 'thousands of Viennese Jews are cabling relatives here to deposit the cost of their passage over.'
Then Nock says Jews would not have these problems if they were, well, whiter, and had less of a reputation for weaseling their way into America. Again we see the strategy of here-is-what-racists-say-and-I'm-just repeating-these-things-and-making excuses for them. Because, you know, "some people" say things like this. And repeating racist beliefs is merely "fair and balanced."
However the intelligent Occidental may regard this prospect (of Jewish refugees), the Occidental mass-man does not regard it as he would that of a similar irruption of Occidental refugees. ....Furthermore, he has collateral beliefs which operate as an aggravation. He believes that every Jew in the world who can find his way here will do so by hook or by crook; also that Jews have better organized facilities for getting here than other refugees have; also that in this direction, despite the letter of our immigration laws, our government is distinctly and specially and reprehensibly squeezable. Whether or not he is right in believing all this is not to the point. The point is that he believes it firmly, and that our architects must take due notice of his belief.
Notice the bit about "Whether or not he is right in believing all this is not to the point....," which we have to expect from the modern conservative condemning "moral relativism" while always taking refuge in the "some say" strategy.
So Nock acknowledged antisemitism, but with a wink and a nod
Whether or not he is right in believing all this is not to the point.
No, whether it's true or not it
really is the point.
Again, think of the historical context - Europe was awash in antisemitic Nazi propaganda being used to justify purging the Jews, and Nock is saying it doesn't matter if such things are true or not. He's only concerned with keeping out the pesky refugees, or at least being very sympathetic to the people who feel that way.
Finally, it just wouldn't be right to discuss a minority without claiming they are too "sensitive" and accusing minorities of playing the race card.
As my space is running out, I shall mention only one more complication which is seriously disabling; it arises from the peculiar and suspicious sensitiveness which the Jew has developed, whereby he is prone to see enmity where there is none, and even more regularly to attribute dislike or distrust to a cause which does not exist. As a Jewish writer says of his people, 'They tend to nurse the obsession that the only reason for the slightest rebuff from which they may suffer in business, social life, or any other activity, is a causeless anti-Jewish prejudice, quite unjustified by anything in their personal behavior as individuals.' Or as an acquaintance once put it to me in more colloquial terms, 'A Jew always thinks you dislike him because he is a Jew. It never seems to occur to him that you might possibly dislike him because he's offensive.'
Because nothing says "tolerance" like an ad hominem attack on the entire group.
And in closing we get a distinct whiff of Rush Limbaugh claiming that it's racism that he can't say "nigger."
In one of New York's clubs the other day I heard a man put this point very well. He said, ‘When we are playing Kelly pool downstairs, if A (an Irishman] wins a big pot on an awful fluke, I can say, "Isn't that a dirty Irish trick?" If B does it, I can say, "Isn't that just what you'd expect from a conniving, swindling Massachusetts Yankee?" But if C does it, I can't say, "That's a dirty Jewish trick," for it would hurt him -it really would - and everybody in the room would feel uncomfortable and a little bit shocked to hear me say it.'