You Know Why UKIP ARE Libertarians? Because They Oppose Gay Marriage and Mass Immigration
Yesterday I wrote on how the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) is not libertarian. Today, The Guardian is running an article on its Comment is Free section by a politics lecturer that makes the case that UKIP are true libertarians because of their stances on restricting immigration and opposing gay marriage.
Some highlights:
As paradoxical as it may seem, rightwing libertarianism has always been a deeply authoritarian political philosophy. It claims to value liberty in some general and all-encompassing sense above all other principles, but the particular types of freedom libertarianism seeks to defend and extend are always, tacitly and implicitly, forms of liberty for the few at the expense of the many. Thus libertarianism stands for the unfreedom of the majority.
Take "race" for example. Libertarian thought has been marked by a distinctly racist dimension from its very beginnings. Spencer, for instance, propounded social Darwinism and favoured a legal ban on interracial marriage. Notoriously, Locke referred to native Americans as "savage beasts" and, indeed his Second Treatise can be read as an elaborate defence of the colonial expropriation of native Americans. It is entirely in keeping with libertarian tradition, then, that Ukip is radically hostile to immigration and to "multiculturalism" (a familiar dog-whistle term for the racist right).
Libertarianism often presents itself as the polar opposite of fascism. In fact libertarianism and fascism have long been bedfellows. Mises supported Mussolini's squadrismo and regarded fascism as a welcome "emergency makeshift" that would save "European civilisation". Hayek was an admirer of Pinochet's Chile.
Have at it Reasonoids, it's a gem.
