The Libertarian/Alt-Right Litmus Test

 For a while now, members of the alt-right pose as libertarians. But the alt-right’s goals aren’t compatible with libertarianism. They care way more about their ideals of race and culture than our ideals of liberty. The alt-right uses our label as a cover to promote their own agenda. Two notorious examples of this are Christopher “Crying Nazi” Cantwell and Jared “Lumberjack Jesus” Howe. Alt-right guys are sneaky. They avoid saying racist crap right away. They will be polite and funny at first to get you to like them. They will talk about how much they hate socialism, just like libertarians do.

So let’s say that you have a guy sitting in the room with you who says he is a libertarian. How can you tell if he is alt-right? I created the Libertarian/Alt-Right litmus test. Just ask the person “What do you think of Section 230?”

If he doesn’t know what it is, it’s fine that he doesn’t have an opinion on it. If he has an opinion on it without knowing what it is, he got his opinion from somebody else and doesn’t think for himself. But this is something that people need to brush up on.

If he thinks Section 230 is a good law, it is reasonable to assume that he is a libertarian. Not everyone who supports Section 230 is a libertarian (bear in mind this law was passed by Congress in the 90’s) but a libertarian understands that social media companies have a right to moderate content on websites that they own. These websites typically ban things like spam, nudity, and hate speech. They might have a different definition of hate speech than you do, but it’s still the company’s decision. Often their moderation policies are applied unfairly or arbitrarily, but Section 230 still gives them the legal right to moderate content as they see fit. Social media companies have a service that they provide to their users, and there are things that many people really don’t want to come across when they are scrolling.

If he thinks that Section 230 is a bad thing, he is probably alt-right. He might say things like conservatives are being unfairly singled out for censorship. He might talk about globalists or cultural Marxism. What he really wants is the right talk about “race realism” and post made-up crime statistics without getting banhammered. Or he might be miffed that his favorite political allies keep getting banned too. He might say “if you moderate content, you’re a publisher, not a platform!” When he says that, he is trying to imply that since newspapers can be sued for libel if they print defamatory articles, a social media site should bear the same liability if they try to restrict content. But because there is SO much user generated content on a social media site, it’s just not practical for a company to screen out posts where the user is trying to defame someone. So Section 230 does protect social media companies from being sued over user content.

Yes, there are people on the left who also oppose Section 230 for their own reasons, but they rarely pose as libertarians.

Any grown adult knows that without content moderation, social media will just get way worse than it already is. There are always someone who wants to ruin everyone else’s fun by posting gross pictures. And sometimes a perfectly good post might get banned by mistake. These things happen, and Section 230 literally keeps people from making a federal case about it. The alt-right might feel like they are being singled out. They are correct about this, because nobody likes the alt-right. Fuck those racist authoritarian shits with both barrels.