It’s interesting to take a look at what people are saying about libertarian populism, but I think it is more interesting to just look at how the Republican Party is behaving in the post-2010 Tea Party environment. It used to be that the national U.S. Chamber of Commerce had decisive influence with the GOP, so if they wanted a stimulus bill or they were for a grand bargain and against a debt ceiling default, or they were in favor of immigration reform, then that was going to be what the Republican Party produced. But the Republicans aren’t listening to the Chamber of Commerce anymore. They aren’t really listening to Wall Street, either. They aren’t listening to their consultants and they aren’t listening to their leadership.
So, we have to begin wondering if the GOP is still the party of big and small businesses. If they are, they aren’t any good at it. At some point during the Bush Era, something broke. It was stunning to see how few precautions the Republicans took in 2005 and 2006 to protect themselves from a political backlash. They needed to create some distance between themselves and a failing administration, and they just refused to do it. Since 2010, they have needed to stop alienating huge blocks of voters, but they can’t stop. They don’t seem to have the most fundamental of political instincts, which is self-preservation. It can be annoying when Democrats look at an opinion poll and get all wobbly, but a political party has to be cognizant of public opinion.
There is a bit of libertarian backlash right now on both sides of the aisle, but it has relatively little to do with economic populism. With fast-food workers on strike and asking for a doubling of their wage, an economic populist would be at the barricades taking their side. That’s about the last thing I can imagine a Rand Paul-Republican doing. So, if these libertarians are pissing off the military, Wall Street, the Chamber of Commerce, and the poor working class, who are they pleasing?
Maybe there is a segment of the oligarchy that figures it all causes chaos and discredits government which will benefit them in the long run, but most people in the market are making money and don’t want to see a bunch of ideologues shut down the government and kill our credit rating. As far as I can see, the only people who are actually happy with the libertarian trend in the GOP are the nativists and xenophobes and anti-government religious fanatics. And that’s why we are seeing more and more traditional Republicans start to rebel against the idea of shutting down the government. It’s not good for business.
When I think of this sort of populism I see white nativists yelling about brown people taking jobs. Tom Tancredo springs to mind.
I don’t think it’s real. What used to be called libertarianism actually had a socially liberal eleenet which this (except for a few random flares from Rand Paul) lacks. The continuing and deepening extremism of the Right jumps from one post hoc justification to another, and this is the most convenient one for letting corporate wolves loose.
Yeah, most corporations would rather just make money. But the rise of right wing media and soulless B-School apparatchiks, corporate culture is now right-wing culture. And politics is a part of that. The Kochs and Popes are now seen as leaders, not as crackpots as Adolph Coors was.
Thanks to the openly corrupt GOP and their apologists in the media, even the formerly decent corporations are getting the message that bigger profits come from manipulating the government rather than from building a better mousetrap. That’s kind of the opposite of libertarianism, but the media can call it that with a straight face because– well, because it’s the media.
You are absolutely correct.
A friend/coworker of mine (who I often discuss/debate politics with) is a neo-con – turned tea partyist – turned libertarian, who calls himself an anarchist because he is against anything the gov’t does people he disagrees with (however it’s no surprise that he loves the government when he benefits from it).
Naturally, 8 years ago he said that I wasn’t a Patriot because I didn’t support the Iraq War.
When I was against Bush/Cheney’s wire tapping of civilians, he said that if I had nothing to hide that I shouldn’t worry about it.
Now the tables have turned and he is anti-Obama in every way shape or form (yes he’s a total, unabashed racist), hates the NSA, hates Obama’s foreign policies, etc… believes 100% in austerity measures “so that we don’t wind up like Greece”.
Libertarianism is just a new brand of Republicanism, but with less pretense that they’re not actually Fascists.
Populism without attacks on the money interests — big banks, finance, real estate — isn’t any kind of populism I’ve ever heard about.
Turn-of-the-last-century populism was anti-big-cities, anti-East coast, anti-interventionist.
But it was also anti-bank, anti-railroad, anti-trust, anti-gold, and shot through with all kinds of collectivist threads — public ownership of railroads and grain elevators, for example.
Apparently the “populism” in this faux label now refers to attacks on gub’mint interests, not plutocrat interests—with the (rightwing white) “people” rising up against their (elected) tyrannical gub’mint and its (low) taxes. But it certainly seems a new version of the term and very much centered on “their” kind of people.
So it’s hard to see very much economic in this new label. Perhaps the reality is that this “populism” is simply the permanent hatred of immigrant groups and non-whites which has been the bread and butter of American “conservatism” for generations, as Marie2 observes. Perhaps “Libertarian racism” is a better term, ha-ha.
Sure — been around for a long time. It’s how racism, misogyny, income inequality, and authoritarianism lives on. It’s the KKK, John Birchers, Ayn Rand devotees. Feeds well into the American psyche of rugged individualism that would lead to great wealth and happiness if not for “them” — with “them” including any governmental entity that deigns not to favor white christians. Young men (mostly white but that might be an artifact of our race and class based society and economy) are particularly vulnerable to the siren calls of libertarianism. That’s what makes it so dangerous and scary.
IMO, as American white males feel they are losing their time-honored privilege and status (both economic and in positions of authority), they are increasingly angry and enraged, and have opted (or been instructed by the coaches of Team Conservative) to blame the gub’mint for illegitimately “forcing” the changes which are reducing their (once exclusive) status and power. They are no longer the only demographic group that wields authority and power in the nation, which galls them no end.
That seems the siren call of today’s rising “libertarianism” to me. And what seems to be driving it. It’s a white (mostly male) affair.
Just the latest iteration. Young men are the natural troops because their energy is high (along with tolerance for and attraction to violence) and aspirations (or sense of self power) always exceed their natural abilities. The Islamists aren’t white, and it’s just as easy to instill resentment in them as the white guys in the west.
What perpetuates racism, misogyny, income equality, and authoritarianism are institutions devoted to making sure no one deviates from that line of thought. Think of the monumental expenditures the wealthy bigots went to in funding Rush Limbaugh and the rural 24/7 talkshow networks that become the common sense of rural communities just through repetition. Or the efforts of rich businessmen to ensure that churches never talk about the verses of the Bible that mention the rich and the poor.
As long as those institutions are in being, there will be new generations of bigots.
The specific and powerful institutions vary over time, but each of them use the same bag of tricks to achieve and then maintain their power. To take from the many for the benefit of the few.
They’re pleasing themselves. Duh. And they’re pleasing, more or less accidentally, everyone else who’s all about pleasing themselves.
Randian libertarianism is basically the deification of selfishness. It’s not even the “greed is good” Wall Street ethos, that looking out for oneself first is also what’s best for society. It’s that looking out for oneself is the only thing that’s important, fuck society and everyone else in it. It’s literally the mentality of a three-year-old.
You’re seeing a split with most of the Wall Street types because the ones who actually worked for their money are aware that you have to have a functioning infrastructure of some sort, public or private, to get or expand your wealth. They are the anti-John Donnes: “Every man is an island.” (And no mention of women, which, in their mostly male world, is as it should be.)
They’re three-year-olds. Irritable, poorly disciplined three-year-olds, threatening to destroy our country with their tantrums.
The folks who financed a Tea Party rebellion that is both out of their control and in their pockets (depending on which self-labeled Tea Party representative you are talking about) is looking for a new wrapper for 2014. It is interesting that they have seized on “libertarian populism”, but it’s just “Silent Majority” in a different outfit. Essentially empty of content and waiting for adherents to attach whatever they will to it. No doubt the intent is the freedom to discriminate, freedom from any government regulation, entrepreneurship, and a whole lot of other mindless right-wing tropes.
But….if you are asking who is standing with the fast food workers who have walked out for higher wages and calling that libertarian populism, you are fundamentally looking at the folks who turned out for various Occupy movements. Folks who also are filling out DREAMers protests, protests against closure of clinics and schools, protests against the captive bureaucracies approving polluting energy projects, and so on. They are broadly libertarian (some to the point of philosophical anarchism) and seek populist solutions to communal problems.
But that’s not who the media means by libertarian populist at all.
So what is the August offensive for the rank-and-file Democrats? Because that’s what this “libertarian populism” framing is all about–stripping FDR from the Democrats. Remember that ending prohibition was libertarian, along with other FDR policies, and he built essentially populist institutions with local roots to administer many of the New Deal programs. It is no wonder the various farmer-labor alliances were behind his policies.
The grifters need a new label and new talking points so the billionaires will finance another campaign.
As far as actual policies, libertarian populism appears to come down to (strangely enough) tax cuts and deregulation. So it is at least one thing–the same old right-wing economic agenda by another name.
Beyond that it seems to amount to a belief in magic. The best way to help the white working class is to rebuild the economy on a scale that’s going to require some massive investments from somewhere. But if you’re genuinely committed to destroying both big government and big business, then the only remaining recourse is foreign investors. Whom you also want nothing to do with. So that leaves magic.
It is very much like the Birch Society gone wild. I think we have always had Republicans who cynically use race, bash unions, warn about the evils of big government but now we seem to have true believers. And I do think that dominionist theology and extreme fundamentalist Christianity is part of the mix with this.
Reagan said a lot of batshit crazy things but even he didn’t want to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States.
The difference, I think, is that with unlimited donor money, successful gerrymandering, and voter suppression, the Republicans think they no longer have to “play the game” of trying to appeal to masses.
Instead they just play to their base, and hope they can keep the other side from voting, in order to push through legislation that makes their financiers happy.
I won’t say that Democrats don’t ultimately do the same thing…they just have a better why of hiding it.
I would characterize the Congress as completely ineffectual (and words that I will not write on a public forum!) but I see tea partiers pleased that the House Republicans are “stopping the Obama agenda”. Success for them is stopping progress, rolling back voting rights, women’s rights, etc.
It doesn’t matter how crazy they get. With enough money you can saturate every commercial break with three copies of the same ad (I’ve seen it) and brainwash most of the population, who weren’t all that keen on thinking anyway, into voting against their interests.
Republicans have the fundamental political instinct for self preservation, it is just that most of them are extremely parochial. They are perfectly happy with their power and status in their own fiefdoms. They don’t know or care much about the rest of the country and the rest of the world. They do and say what will raise money for themselves and get themselves elected and re-elected in their own districts. It’s not an accident that their greatest strength is in the House and in state legislatures. It is not an accident that they are strongest in the south, which has made a virtue of parochialism since before the Civil War. (And yes, I know about Populism in the south. I know it has always had a wide and deep ugly streak of demonizing everyone who wasn’t white enough, Christian enough, Protestant enough, dry enough, and generally deferential enough to the peculiar traditions and mores of the region.)