We all had a good laugh at Jeffrey Tucker’s expense the other day, when he got the usual Bumbling Bees treatment: I found a goofy picture of him, artlessly slapped a DC Funk Parade foam finger on it, and then made fun of a stupid thing he’d done. I was prepared to leave it there; I’m a merciful guy, after all, and I’m sure that, now that he’s been shamed in Last Week in Weird, Tucker will renounce his madcap ways and return to being an actual principled libertarian with a functioning sense of irony.
Then Robby Soave had to open his big mouth.
You remember 80s pop icon slash libertarish blogger Robby Soave. It’s been almost months since I last gave him the ol’ what-for, so I figure he was due. I’m going to run this Objection! a bit differently from the usual, though; let’s kick things off with this:
On Saturday, alt-right leader Richard Spencer crashed the 10th annual International Students for Liberty Conference at a hotel in Washington, D.C…
Spencer, a self-declared white nationalist who believes the U.S. is losing its white identity, had no business attending a gathering of libertarian students…
One of those events, a panel discussion about sex trafficking featuring Reason Associate Editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown and Director of Criminal Justice Reform Lauren Krisai, unfolded at roughly the same time as Spencer’s unsolicited visit…
But it’s clear from video footage that Spencer set himself up in the bar of the hotel—the Marriott Wardman in Woodley Park—and attempted to host an unscheduled and unwanted conversation about his despicable views. To be absolutely clear: Spencer was not welcome at the hotel and had not been invited to participate in ISFLC.
To my eye, that’s five times that Soave, in a post that runs only 567 words including both of the times Soave inelegantly brags about his Students For Liberty "cred" in the guise of "full disclosure," claims that Spencer was not invited to the conference.
Imagine how embarrassing it would be to write something like that and then find out that Spencer actually had been invited after all, in this case by a Students For Liberty subgroup calling itself the Hoppe Caucus. Also, it must be pretty embarrassing to be expected to deal with inconvenient truths such as the fact that the bar Spencer "set himself up in" was not part of the reserved area for the conference, but was, rather, just a bar that absolutely anybody could have gone into at any time. Given the confluence of these two facts, it’s tough to support a narrative of Spencer "crashing" one single thing. Not that that can stop the Robby! It can’t even persuade him to add a lame-o half-retraction to his smear piece.
Eventually, Jeffrey Tucker — an influential libertarian thinker — confronted Spencer and made clear to the alt-right provocateur that he "did not belong" at ISFLC. Some shouting ensued, and hotel staff intervened. Shortly thereafter, Spencer left.
I love everything about this part. It’s painfully obvious from Soave’s inept employment of the passive voice that he knows full well he’s being more than a bit dishonest here; "some shouting ensued," Soave tells us, in a game attempt to avoid admitting that it was Tucker who did the shouting. Honestly, if you didn’t already know anything about this situation — say you just stumbled upon Robby Soave’s article and then, for some bizarre reason, didn’t immediately close your browser and clear your history — you could very easily reach the conclusion that Spencer was angry and belligerent. This is the conclusion Soave clearly wants you to reach, yet it is the exact opposite of the truth. Here’s a portion of the exchange between the two men (thanks to The Zeroth Position for transcribing this):
Tucker: You stand for fascism, and you don’t belong here. Students For Liberty opposes everything that you stand for, buddy.
Spencer: You tweeted that you support the deep state over Trump. I think you might be a little fascist there, little Jeffrey.
Tucker: You are a troll. You can’t organize your own conference, so you come to our conference.
Spencer: That’s not an argument.
Tucker: You know the last time you tried, you had a bunch of losers in a room making Nazi salutes. That’s what happened at yours.
Spencer: That’s not an argument.
Tucker: So you come to our conference and troll us. If you were on Twitter right now, we’d all block you.
Spencer: I was invited by people here to come speak to them, Jeffrey.
Tucker: You are a liar! You are a liar! Fascists are liars! (exits)
… So you can see why Robby Soave doesn’t want you to know what actually happened. That’s not so flattering to St. Jeff Tucker, a libertarian thinker whose most "influential" work was his utterly silly essay Against Libertarian Brutalism, in which he quite literally explains that libertarians who don’t share his own aesthetic preferences are bad architects from the 1950s. I’m serious: that’s what he says. This article, needless to say, mostly influenced people to make fun of Jeffrey Tucker.
In any case, the incident should make abundantly clear that the alt-right’s racism is incompatible with the principles of a free society. Libertarianism is an individualist philosophy that considers all people deserving of equal rights. In contrast, Spencer is a tribalist and collectivist whose personal commitment to identity politics vastly exceeds the left’s.
Robby. Robby! Does it not ever cross your mind that, when you write an attack piece devoted to attaching scary labels like "tribalist and collectivist" to somebody you don’t like, you’re probably engaging in identity politics? For God’s sake, man, if you’re not going to pay any attention to the world around you, at the very least pay attention to what you’re putting in print.
At this point it’s almost not even worth my time to point out once again that libertarianism positively is not "an individualist philosophy that considers all people deserving of equal rights." That is feel-good bafflegab. Libertarianism is a political philosophy. It is a theory of violence. Libertarianism tells us that it is never appropriate to employ aggressive violence. It is utterly and unremittingly silent on literally all other issues. There is positively no means from getting from pure libertarian theory to the idea that forming race-gated authoritarian mini-societies is somehow wrong, so long as those societies aren’t aggressive. It cannot be done. Maybe you don’t like that idea, but, hey, you don’t have to live in one of them. That is a libertarian statement.
Spencer is entitled to broadcast his vile opinions, and to make equal use of public resources. He should not be attacked on the street, or anywhere else. But no private actor is required to give him a platform — otherwise, property rights would cease to matter.
And now it’s time for Robby to invent some straw men to tilt at, complete with a charmingly communist remark about "equal use of public resources." Good, Robby. Good libertarianing.
ISFLC, an organization that works tirelessly to support the cause of liberty all over the world — not just for white American college students — handled the matter correctly, in my view.
Little typo there. I think you meant to say "the cause of liberty all over the world except for Richard Spencer, because he’s vile." Since, lest we forget, the "correct" way they "handled the matter" of an invited guest they didn’t like disagreeing with them at a bar near where they were holding their conference was to gang up on him and create a huge disturbance until security came and broke up the whole ordeal. Yeah, great job, ISFLC. With such a robust commitment to mature libertarian principles, I can see why you named Robby Soave your 2016 alumnus of the year.