How the Woke Wars Could Derail Libertarianism Again | Lib Lib Report

People are rightly concerned about history repeating itself

Welcome to the Lib Lib Report, i.e. the Liberal Libertarian Report, where we talk about news and current affairs from a liberal libertarian point of view. We aim for a practical pro-liberty politics encouraging things like free speech and free thought in the here and now, while aiming to make the social contract of Western society more libertarian moving towards the future.

Today, I want to talk about a crisis that is unfolding within libertarianism. Let's start with the controversy over the recent takeover of the US Libertarian Party by the Mises Caucus, although that's not what I really want to discuss. As I've said before, I'm not a big fan of the libertarian immediatism that the Libertarian Party insists on having as its platform, and given that I'm not a supporter of that party, I have generally not been interested in its internal politics. However, the current controversy seems more significant, because it goes to the heart of what libertarianism is, and hence implicitly what liberty is too. I mean, some libertarians, including both members and non-members of the party alike, are worried that this could ruin the commonly accepted view of what libertarianism is, and I'm sorry to say that I share their concerns too.

Let's start with the controversy itself. The Mises Caucus is a right-leaning faction within the Libertarian Party. Officially, they have a conventional right-libertarian platform, and there is quite a bit of diversity among their membership in terms of social views. However, it is the broader strategy of some members of the caucus that have gotten people concerned. To put it simply, prominent members of the Mises Caucus have been enthusiastically embracing the anti-woke side of the 'woke' culture wars, and other associated culture wars in the American political landscape. They are also not shy about their intention to attract new members and supporters that are really into these culture wars. The problem with this is that authoritarian conservatives and other right-wing authoritarians are also often participants in the anti-woke movement, and their ideas could dilute or even confuse libertarian positions. Indeed, non-Mises members of the Libertarian Party have accused the Mises Caucus of watering down traditional libertarian positions to make the party a more comfortable place for the authoritarian right, should they want to join. They cite the caucus's removal of the pro-choice plank in the party platform as evidence of this, for example.

Having experienced the horror show that was the 'paleo' strategy of the 1990s, many libertarians fear that this could be similar, or even worse. Even those who aren't totally opposed to the Mises Caucus fear that their methods will leave the party and the movement vulnerable to a further takeover by elements of the authoritarian right. I think this possibility, rather than the Mises Caucus itself, is what many people are actually worried about. In other words, I think the controversy over the Mises Caucus takeover is situated in a larger crisis, rooted in the fear of a more general authoritarian right takeover. The fallout is a symptom of the larger problem, one that people must be able to talk about openly.

Basically, I have two thoughts about this. Firstly, the libertarian movement is small and weak, and is able to be easily taken over by outside forces with their own agenda. The current fear simply reflects this reality, unfortunately. This is of course not new, as niche groups have often tried to insert their niche issues into various minor party platforms around the world, including libertarian parties. (Nor is it limited to the libertarian movement. The trans community has experienced a similar phenomenon in the past decade, for example.) This is also an important reason why I'm not a libertarian immediatist. For me, the important thing right now is to build a movement that will support and promote individual liberty, because a movement that is dedicated to this idea, rather than cutting government per se, would be much more resilient. By emphasizing practical liberty and rejecting libertarian immediatism, the liberty movement can also attract much more mainstream support, thereby making it much harder to take over.

Of course, what we are worried about right now is not just a niche group trying to insert itself into libertarianism, but a total takeover of libertarianism by bigger forces that could be described as authoritarian right-adjacent at least, if not in the authoritarian right itself. Given the situation we are potentially facing, I would even say that building a broad-based practical liberty movement is likely to be the only way to save the reputation of libertarianism going forward. And this is important, because in the Western political landscape, libertarians are the only players who consistently and credibly advance an anti-war agenda. The fall of libertarianism could lead to the total victory of the interventionists that brought us Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Secondly, the 'woke wars' in general, and the anti-woke movement in particular, have spiraled out of control in some ways. As I have recently said, the word 'woke' has lost its original meaning and much of the 'woke wars' are now basically empty tribal culture wars. And because the anti-woke alliance was an alliance of convenience in the first place, and an alliance that stood against rather than for something, its meaning and future are now up for grabs by whoever has the best organization, numbers and money. This could allow the anti-woke movement to be dominated by the authoritarian right rather than old-school liberals or libertarians, because the authoritarian right are simply better at organizing and fundraising. This is why I fear that woke vs anti-woke dynamics could work against liberals in both directions going forward, and the only way to take a stand for liberty is to find a way to transcend the tribalist 'woke wars' now.

That's why, going forward, I believe we should be 'post woke'. We should look at all issues objectively, on their own merits, rather than see them in a 'woke wars' state of mind. We should still be opposing postmodernism and critical theory, but we should do so on well reasoned grounds. And I will definitely call out people who use the 'woke' word as an empty insult, as a tribalist culture war thing. Because this certainly won't help to advance individual liberty.

Why It's Time We Moved to a Post-Woke Culture and Politics | TER Post Woke

On the limitations of Woke vs Anti-Woke, and why we need to change course now.

Welcome to TaraElla Report Post Woke, a new series where we consciously aim to move beyond the woke vs anti-woke culture wars, and towards a post-woke model of culture and politics.

In recent years, much has been said about there being a 'woke vs anti-woke' divide in Western culture and politics. It all started about a decade ago, when, due to a combination of factors, ideas from postmodernism and critical theory began to increasingly influence parts of the progressive side of politics. Over the course of just a few years, practices that challenged traditional liberal values, like deplatforming speakers, cancel culture, oppressor vs oppressed models of identity politics, thinking of people as pieces in a system rather than equal individuals, and skepticism towards science and objectivity, began to influence progressive movements like feminism, environmentalism, and LGBT equality. These ideas also found their way into progressive-adjacent cultures like atheism and veganism. They have been received controversially in all of these areas, dividing people in these communities into being for them or against them, which later came to be known as woke and anti-woke respectively.

I guess there was a time when having an 'anti-woke coalition', as it was originally understood, actually made sense. Back when postmodernism and critical theory were poorly understood by most, it was probably the most effective way to push back against this rise of illiberalism on the Left that seemed to have come out of nowhere. If anything, having a strong coalition aligned against these ideas was an effective method of raising awareness, and we needed to do so quickly, because of the rapid rise of this new illiberal faction in the Left. Besides, in those days, it was mainly progressive, liberal and moderate people involved in the coalition, which meant the reactionary faction wasn't dominant.

However, we are now in a different place. There is now plenty of awareness and resistance towards postmodernism, critical theory, and their associated ideas and methods. I mean, critical race theory has gone from obscurity to a widely discussed topic in just two years, and I think it is great that we are discussing these ideas and their faults so openly and so frequently. However, we also need to realize that the so-called 'woke' ideas aren't entirely going away anytime soon. For those hoping for a complete victory, I need to burst your bubble. These ideas have been established in parts of academia and activism for so long that they would be here in some form for the foreseeable future, and we will just have to live with it while not letting it take over, until perhaps one or two more generations down the line, when the intellectual landscape of the West would have had enough time to organically evolve away from these ideas. Therefore, I believe we need to think in terms of the long term, as to what we should do next.

The problem I see with the 'woke vs anti-woke' model right now is that it is evolving rapidly into an 'us vs them' game, and likely a successor to the old-school left vs right culture wars. As many of us already know, the left vs right culture wars were pretty unhealthy, because it divided people into opposing camps in an unsound way, thus encouraging tribalism. If we are to seriously sort people out by their political views, we would need at least three axes, namely economic, capitalist vs socialist; social, progressive vs conservative; and governmental, libertarian vs authoritarian. Given the issues of particular importance in contemporary Western politics, we might also need pro-globalization vs nationalist, pro-peace vs hawkish, and pro-establishment vs anti-establishment, since the three basic axes don't capture these views very well. In other words, any simplistic dichotomous model would just be encouraging tribalism while not being actually useful. This applies equally to the old-school left vs right and the new woke vs anti-woke.

And we are already seeing the unhealthy and counterproductive results of the 'woke vs anti-woke' model's evolution into a tribalist politics. People are already using the word 'woke' to describe things they don't like which have nothing to do with postmodernism or critical theory. As I previously said, 'woke' now effectively means whatever you don't like. Hence the old-school liberals can call the criticalists 'woke', but the hardline conservatives can also call the old-school liberals 'woke'. The problem with this is that 'woke' effectively becomes a lazy insult, and this is not good for independent thinking and pursuit of the objective truth. Moreover, if 'woke' means nothing solid, its meaning becomes vulnerable to constant change, essentially defined by the prevailing political fashions and alliances of the moment. This, in turn, can cause anti-woke culture to become a backdoor for authoritarian elements to take over pro-liberty movements, as some members and supporters of the US Libertarian party have recently begun to worry about.

To sum up, the 'anti-woke coalition' of the 2010s have already achieved their purpose, and that was to shine a spotlight on the faulty ideas of postmodernism and critical theory, and put this issue into the mainstream of Western political discourse. However, the 'woke vs anti-woke' model of politics has also inevitably become tribal and is rapidly losing its original meaning, and could even be vulnerable to takeover by authoritarian forces, which means that we must question its utility going forward. This is an important question because postmodernism and critical theory are not going to disappear any time soon, and we will need to live with these ideas while continuing to argue against them for the foreseeable future. The question then becomes, firstly, is the 'woke vs anti-woke' model a good model for the long term, and if not, what model should we choose instead. Given that effective arguments against postmodernism and critical theory must be philosophically sound and rooted in a commitment to the objective reality to be successful, a tribalist model like 'woke vs anti-woke' is probably not the best choice for making those arguments, especially in the longer term.

Therefore, I think it's time we start actively moving to a 'post woke' mode, where we remain very conscious of the faulty ideas of postmodernism and critical theory, and their adverse influence on contemporary Western culture and politics, but instead of just being negative about these ideas, we should start being more constructive, and more thoughtful about building alternatives that actually fulfill the yearning for progress and inclusion, and still reinforce the heritage of the liberalism rooted in the Western Enlightenment. The awareness that the anti-woke moment brought has been essential to getting us to where we are, and will be essential to ensure that whatever we come up with in the future isn't contaminated by postmodernism and critical theory. However, I believe we need to change course now, and go more positive rather than negative, to actually stand for something rather than just against something.

The other thing that differentiates post-woke from anti-woke is that, having learned from how postmodernism and critical theory misdirect the desire for social justice, the post-woke mind is much more alert to other movements that could try to misdirect our inherent impulse towards good things like individualism, fairness, compassion and so on. The post-woke continues to oppose wokeism, as originally defined, but they also turn the same critical analysis on other political factions and movements, including those which claim to be anti-woke, because they are aware that bad ideas, the lure of authoritarianism, and politics with an intent to manipulate people emotionally, don't just come in one flavor.