How We Got to Be So Self-Absorbed: The Long Story

The Daily Beast had an excellent article on this in August, 2017:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-insidious-libertarian-to-al...

Also The New Yorker, "Are Bosses Dictators? | The New Yorker":

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/are-bosses-dicta...

And though a blog, this also cites Jane Meyer's Dark Money and the Kochs:

https://bennorton.com/the-libertarian-fascist-alliance/

Mark Ames has covered Reason Magazine's Holocaust denial:

https://pando.com/2014/07/24/as-reasons-editor-defends-its-r...

National Review:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/08/libertarians-sometime...

The case of William Regnery II, owner of Regnery Press, a libertarian and conservative publisher dating to the 1950s:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/aramroston/hes-spent-almost-20-year...

I suspect this gets a bit off track for the thread, but you asked an I answer.

The way I look at it, we're social creatures, meant to live in tribes in close contact with our people. But capitalism and technology keep us isolated and in competition with each other. We live in houses with yards and fences and don't talk to each other. Social communication is now mostly done in isolation through a screen. Even music, which should bring a community together, is mostly now a solitary act done in private to drown out the rest of the world.

What do you guys think of this line of thought?

Paragraph 1: Alt-right figure A identifies as libertarian. Alt-right figure B identifies as a former libertarian.

Paragraph 2: Alt-right figures C and D identify as libertarian. Alt-right figure E kicked out of libertarian conference. This last example seems to contradict the article's thesis.

Paragraph 3: There are many more conservatives than libertarians, thus a disproportionate number of today’s prominent alt-righters began as libertarians. Plain non-sequitur.

But suppose the conclusion were true. The fact that many X began as Y does not mean many Y will end up as X. Thus we have another fallacy. P(future alt-right | past libertarian) ≠ P(past libertarian | future alt-right).

Paragraph 5: Both libertarians and paleoconservatives are anti-interventionist. Ok? A shared belief does not make a shared ideology.

"And yet, it seems observably true that libertarianism is disproportionately a gateway drug to the alt-right. Again, the question is… why?"

The article has provided zero evidence for this claim, yet simply asserts it as "observably true". This is begging the question.

Paragraphs 8 and 9: Finally we get something interesting. A historical link between a subset (paleolibertarianism) of A (libertarianism) and B (the alt-right movement). None of this, however, supports the article's premise that there is an "insidious pipeline" from A to B, or that the former is "disproportionately a gateway drug" for the latter. This is a bait-and-switch.

Paragraph 10: Libertarianism is an unpopular/provocative view. Some people are drawn to unpopular/provocative views. Some of those people end up "merely passing through a libertarian phase" on their way to alt-right views. Therefore...?

Paragraph 11: Libertarianism takes a principled stance on freedom of speech, not just when it suits them (unlike the alt-right). Ok.

Paragraph 12: "Ultimately libertarianism is about peaceful cooperation―markets, civil society, global trade, peace." So libertarianism and fascism/alt-right are antithetical, which undermines the consistency of the phrase "libertarian fascism".

Paragraphs 13-15: Alt-right figure F describes his conversion from libertarianism to alt-right ideas.

Paragraph 16 points out the obvious: Cantwell was simply using libertarianism “as a shield for expressing a lot of disturbing viewpoints.”

The last few paragraphs boil down to the idea that some alt-rightists passed through a self-described "libertarian" phase. True. But this has nothing to do with the idea that there is an "insidious pipeline" from libertariansm to fascism, or that the former is "disproportionately a gateway drug" for the latter.

I agree with the conclusion that libertarians should distance themselves from alt-right and fascist ideas. After all, they're antithetical to libertarianism.

Let's take a step back from the article and return to the original comment. The GP used the phrase "libertarian fascism", yet nothing in the linked article supports the existence of such a thing. The article describes how alt-rightists abandoned libertarian ideas. It also describes a few public figures who claim they're both libertarian and alt-right, while being repudiated by other libertarians for the inconsistency of such a position. This is far from showing that libertarianism and fascism are ideologically compatible, as the phrase "libertarian fascism" seems to imply.

"Libertarian fascism" is a literal contradiction.

Yes, ironically, putting more people together creates more isolation. People live in extremely dense apartment housing in cities - and still don't know their neighbors, or want to know them.

We think of the world as moving in the direction of coming together; of connecting. Yet "belonging" and "apartness" are duals of each other. Without a sense of separate and exclusive group identities, we are all equally alone.

Consider that starvation was not a major cause of human death before the development of cities. In the hunter-gatherer days, a band would perish or survive together. Only when settlement and agriculture became the norm would we sit and watch our neighbors die of starvation.

When I hear Zuckerberg say he believes in connecting people, it makes me cringe. We're already over-connected. When you're connected to everyone, you're connected to no one. Isolation and ultimately self-absorption come from a loss of the clearly defined ingroup vs outgroup rivalry we thrive on.

We strive for universal human brotherhood; yet "kindness for all means coldness to your neighbor." There may be a way forward past both tribalism and contemporary nihilism, but we won't get there on the thin gruel of rational morality.