Rise of the 'Unholy Alliance' of Libertarians and Leftists

Rise of the 'Unholy Alliance' of Libertarians and Leftists

(starting quote at the fifth paragraph of the article)

Eight months after Nader’s "Freedom Watch" pronouncement, Ron Paul supporters along with socialists, anti-market anarchists, and other lefties of various stripes were the first to set up camp in Zuccotti Park and launch the Occupy Wall Street movement. There were arguments over whether advocates of free markets belonged in the movement, whether the economic crisis was caused by deregulation or by government encouragement of high-risk financial speculation, and whether the solution to the crisis was greater or less government control of business, but the libertarians stayed. As Occupy spread to other cities, libertarians were almost always a visible—though minority—presence at the encampments. "One would more reliably come across vocal Ron Paul supporters at Occupy events than vocal Obama supporters," reported Michael Tracey in the American Conservative. "It was not lost on the Zuccotti Park crowd, for instance, that Ron Paul personally expressed a measure of support for the movement earlier than most any other national U.S. politician–aside from Sen. Bernie Sanders or Rep. Dennis Kucinich."

(snip)

In the summer of 2013 the "unholy alliance" wreaked havoc on the national-security and foreign-policy establishments. Edward Snowden, a Ron Paul supporter, received passionate support from both libertarians and a broad array of leftists for revealing, at the risk of imprisonment, the NSA’s dragnet surveillance of American citizens. Snowden’s disclosures were publicized by the journalist Glenn Greenwald, who is a regular speaker at the International Socialist Organization’s annual Socialism Conference, a recipient of the Nation Institute’s I.F. Stone Award, and according to Rachel Maddow "the American left’s most fearless political commentator." But Greenwald is also, like Scahill, an eager collaborator with libertarians. He authored a study for the Cato Institute on Portugal’s decriminalization of drugs and frequently praised Ron Paul for being "far and away the most anti-war, anti-Surveillance-State, anti-crony-capitalism, and anti-drug-war presidential candidate in either party."

(snip)

One might think all this would be cause for celebration among those who share Nader's objectives, but many find it more a cause for grave concern. Since last summer, liberal media outlets have streamed out warnings to their readers to "Beware of Libertarians Bearing Gifts," as the Center for American Progress put it. Any alliance with libertarians, even for a cause as worthy as reining in the NSA, "could kill the New Deal." Salon has frequently trafficked in hysteria over the libertarian "threat" to progressivism. "Don’t Ally With Libertarians," admonished one of many headlines about the "fatally compromised" coalition that produced "The Day We Fight Back." At The New Republic, Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz explained to the "liberal establishment" that had fallen in with Snowden, Greenwald, and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange that these purveyors of "paranoid libertarianism" were outside the bounds of respectable politics. They occupy "a peculiar corner of the political forest, where the far left meets the far right, often but not always under the rubric of libertarianism." Where unwitting liberals have "portrayed the leakers as truth-telling comrades intent on protecting the state and the Constitution from authoritarian malefactors, that’s hardly their goal," Wilentz warned. "In fact, the leakers despise the modern liberal state, and they want to wound it."

Some left-wing observers have offered more constructive evaluations of the alliance. Ralph Nader continues to lead the way, with a new book on the "Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State" and a lengthy interview promoting it on Reason TV. Perhaps the most notable among the left-wing sympathizers to Nader’s cause is Peter Frase, an editor at the socialist Jacobin, who questioned "this obsession with people like Greenwald and Snowden as vectors for noxious libertarianism rather than people who are doing courageous and useful work even if their politics aren’t socialist." Frase identified "an instinct among some on the Left to suppose that defending the possibility of government requires rejecting any alliance with libertarians who might criticize particularly noxious aspects of the existing state." For those on the left who share Nader’s optimism about libertarians, Frase’s conclusion should serve as a manifesto:

One should not have any illusions that critics of the national security state all share socialist politics. But we should judge these critics by what they say and do and what their political impact is. An endless inquisition into hidden beliefs and motives, and the attempt to unmask a devious libertarian hidden agenda, makes for a satisfying purity politics for those who want to justify their own inaction. But it does nothing to contest the predatory fusion of state and capital that confronts us today, which must be confronted in the government, the workplace, and many other places besides.

Hear, hear. So let us say to leftists and libertarians: Unite! You have nothing to lose but your ideological chains.