Unmasking MAGA, Part 6: The Libertarians

From the Gospel of Free Markets to the Ashes of a Failed State

↑ Previous Chapter

Unmasking MAGA, Intermission: The Illusion of Change

---

In Act I, we saw the monster for what it is: a power struggle between four founding factions, each fighting for control.
In Act II, we confront something deeper: not who’s steering the monster— but what it’s made of, how it survives, and who still has the power to stop it.

Where we began the first act of this series with the fascists—because they’re now holding the reins—we begin the second with the Libertarians.
Because long before the fascists would seize the wheel, the Libertarians would cut the brakes.

Though their ideas have been fundamental for the monster we now call MAGA, but for a moment after the 2008 crash, they were never a real force within the coalition.

Libertarianism wasn’t a power grab. It was something more seductive—and more dangerous.
A philosophy that didn’t want to rule the system, just to unbuild it.
An ideology that promised freedom—by subtracting responsibility.
But in the end, it gave us not liberty, but exposure. Vulnerability. Collapse.

Because when you convince a nation that government itself is the enemy,
you don’t get freedom.
You get a government too weak to fight corruption—
and too captured to care.

So why start here?

Because before the monster could speak with one voice,
it had to silence the ones that were meant to stop it.
It had to hollow out the state.
Cut the wires.
Kill the brakes.

And it was Libertarianism that made that possible—
not by seizing power, but by convincing us we didn’t need any.

Why They Matter

The Libertarians were never the most powerful faction.
They never controlled the movement.
They didn’t need to.

What made them essential wasn’t political dominance—it was ideological utility.

Libertarianism offered the coalition something no other faction could:
a coherent justification for dismantling the state.

Where other factions wanted to capture government, Libertarians wanted to minimize it.
And that goal—however idealistic in theory—created the perfect conditions for authoritarianism in practice.

By delegitimizing the role of government itself, Libertarianism would clear the way for unregulated markets, concentrated wealth, and institutional decay.
It would provide the language of “small government” that allowed Corporatists to gut regulation, defund enforcement, and shift public resources into private hands.

It would give the Fascists a weakened state—one too hollowed out to resist, but still strong enough to enforce their will selectively.

It would give the Fake Christians a policy framework for dismantling public education, public health, and civil rights—while insulating churches and private actors from accountability.

It would give the Conspiracists a population primed to distrust institutions by default.

Libertarianism didn’t build the MAGA coalition.
But it made it governable—by ensuring that governance itself was viewed as the problem.

That’s why it matters.

It wouldn’t go on to light the fire.
But it would be the one to remove the fire alarm.

Origin Story: The Path to Powerlessness

Modern American Libertarianism emerged in the shadow of World War II and the New Deal—a reaction against both global authoritarianism and expansive government intervention. It wasn’t born in power, but in protest.

In the 1940s and '50s, thinkers like Friedrich Hayek and Ayn Rand warned that central planning—even with good intentions—would inevitably lead to tyranny. By the 1970s, as trust in government cratered after Vietnam, Watergate and Stagflation, their ideas found fertile ground. What had once been a niche philosophy of radical individualism began to resonate with a disillusioned public.

The rise of figures like Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard, and eventually Ron Paul brought the ideology into broader circulation—not as a blueprint for governance, but as a moral critique of government itself. Libertarians opposed the military-industrial complex, the welfare state, the drug war, and corporate subsidies. They advocated for deregulation, decentralization, and the primacy of market forces over public institutions.

But what began as a principled argument for limiting state power became something else entirely as it moved into the mainstream. By the 1980s, Libertarian rhetoric was no longer a fringe critique. It was being adopted—selectively and opportunistically—by the rising Corporatist class.

Milton Friedman’s ideas were simplified and weaponized: regulation was always bad, markets were always right, and profit was always the only objective. Barry Goldwater’s fringe became Reagan’s platform.

That’s when things began to break.
Not all at once—but gradually, visibly, and often fatally.

And by the 1990s, Libertarian vocabulary had become political common sense: cut taxes, shrink government, trust the market.
But government didn’t disappear. It just stopped protecting people.

When DuPont knowingly poisoned communities with toxic “forever chemicals” like C8, there were no guardrails left strong enough to stop them.
When lead-tainted water poured from the pipes in Flint, Michigan, local and federal institutions deflected, delayed, and denied.
When mass shootings became weekly news, the solution wasn’t fewer guns—it was arming teachers.

What had once been a coherent ideology about individual liberty had mutated into something darker: a reflexive opposition to public power in any form, even when lives were at stake.

Chief Justice Warren Burger, a Nixon appointee, once called the modern gun lobby’s interpretation of the Second Amendment “one of the greatest pieces of fraud—I repeat the word, fraud—on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” That fraud succeeded.

And it didn’t stop at guns.

We stopped taxing the wealthy to fund public works.
Instead, we borrowed money from them—and paid them interest.
We didn’t just shrink government.
We flipped it upside down.

Instead of serving the public, it began serving private wealth—with taxpayer money.

This is the legacy of the Libertarian revolution. Not a freer country. Not a more just economy. Not a decentralized utopia of sovereign individuals.

What we got was a paralyzed state, a hollowed-out public sphere, and a marketplace where freedom is just another word for who can afford to opt out.

It didn’t happen all at once.
And it didn’t happen by accident.

It happened because a philosophy meant to restrain power forgot that something always holds power.

Libertarians set out to stop tyranny.
What they delivered was tyranny by abandonment.

The Dream That Became a Nightmare

At its core, Libertarianism is a moral project. It imagines a world in which individuals, left uncoerced, will self-regulate through reason, competition, and mutual consent.

It sees power not as something to be organized and governed, but as something to be minimized—ideally, eliminated.
It is built on a conviction that markets are more efficient than governments, that voluntary exchange is more ethical than taxation, and that the state—by its nature—is a threat to liberty.

In theory, this sounds like restraint.
In practice, it functions as unrestraint.

Unrestraint for the powerful to consolidate power.
Unrestraint for the wealthy to rewrite the rules.
Unrestraint for private actors to govern without consent, oversight, or consequence.

Because that vision depends on an impossible premise: that people are inherently good—devoid of greed, ambition, or rage.

Libertarianism only works in a world where no one seeks domination, no one exploits weakness, and no one hoards power.
That world has never existed, and likely never will.

Which means the project was always a delusion.
Not because its ideals are evil— but because they are indifferent to reality.

Government exists—or at least in a free society ought to—for a reason.
Not to oppress—but to manage power.
Any society whose government is not as robust as the power within it— whether that power is wealth, violence, religion, or information— will be devoured by it.

Libertarianism didn’t lead to the shrinkage of power.
It simply led to the stoppage of its maintenance.
And left the rest to whoever was willing—and wealthy—enough to fill the void.

Which is why Libertarianism, for all its rhetoric about freedom, was always destined for failure but also what made it so useful.

Because when Corporatists wanted to gut labor protections, they didn’t say it was for profit. They said it was for freedom.
When extractive industries wanted to block environmental regulation, they didn’t say it was to pollute. They said it was to keep the government out of business.
And when billionaires wanted to hoard wealth while public infrastructure crumbled, they didn’t call it theft. They called it liberty.

The rhetoric of Libertarianism became a license—first for capital, then for cruelty.

It didn’t take long for the ideology to collapse under its own logic.
If taxation is theft, then public investment is tyranny.
If regulation is oppression, then fraud is innovation.
If government can do nothing right, then no one should try.

And when crisis inevitably struck—
a market failure, a poisoned water supply, a mass shooting—
the answer was never to rethink the system.
It was to double down.
Shrink the government further. Deregulate harder. Arm more people. Cut more taxes.

What began as a dream of individual freedom devolved into a systemic rejection of collective responsibility.

And in that vacuum, something rushed in—
not liberty, but corporate extraction.

With the government too weak to regulate, enforce, or invest,
private capital filled the void.
Not to build, but to bill.

They privatized utilities, gutted oversight, and sold public assets for short-term gain.
They monetized healthcare, education, transportation, and even war.
And when those systems began to fail, the blame never went to the profiteers—
it went to the institution that had been deliberately dismantled: government itself.

And so the cycle deepened.
Each crisis was proof the state didn’t work.
Each failure was fuel for more cuts, more deregulation, more chaos.

Until the systems stopped functioning.
Until the water turned toxic.
Until the bridges collapsed.
Until children died in classrooms while lawmakers offered “thoughts and prayers”—and suggested arming the teachers.

And still, we were told the answer was less government.
More guns.
More freedom.

Until, finally, freedom felt indistinguishable from disorder.

And in that disorder, force began to feel like clarity.
Authority began to feel like safety.
And fascism—once the enemy we died to defeat—
began to feel like an answer worth dying for.

That is the end state of the Libertarian dream.

Not liberty.
Not sovereignty.
Just a failed state, an enraged population,
and a clear runway for anyone ruthless enough to offer control.

Key Figures

They didn’t build institutions. They built reasons not to have them.
Libertarianism didn’t rise through conquest—it spread like an idea too elegant to resist and too hollow to hold.
They spoke of freedom. Of decentralization. Of sovereignty.
And one by one, their ideas were stripped for parts, repackaged, and sold back to the public as justification for collapse.

A Note on the Strains of Libertarianism

Libertarianism isn’t a single doctrine. It’s a family of ideologies that agree on limiting the state—but diverge on why and how.

• Right-libertarians (e.g., Milton Friedman, Cato Institute) focus on markets and property rights. They see capitalism as the purest form of freedom.

• Anarcho-capitalists (e.g., Murray Rothbard) take it further, wanting all government functions privatized—including courts and police.

• Civil libertarians emphasize personal autonomy, opposing both economic and social coercion. They overlap with parts of the left.

• Techno-libertarians (e.g., early Elon Musk, crypto evangelists) merge deregulation with Silicon Valley disruption—often cloaking monopoly in the language of freedom.

• Paleoconservatives (e.g., Pat Buchanan) share libertarian distrust of globalism and federal power—but center white identity, tradition, and cultural protectionism over pure market freedom. Paleoconservatives, unlike neocons or Reagan-era Republicans, fuse economic minimalism with an aggressive defense of white, Christian cultural hegemony.

Despite their differences, they aligned on a single, exploitable truth:

“A government weak enough to leave them alone would be too weak to stop anyone else.”

Here are the people and entities that carried the torch—and handed it off to the ones who burned everything down.

The Philosophers and Purists

The original theorists of Libertarianism: anti-authoritarian, idealistic, and deeply flawed.

• Friedrich Hayek – Warned that central planning would lead to tyranny. The Road to Serfdom became a foundational text for limited-government ideology—though often invoked more than read.

• Ayn Rand – Preached the moral virtue of selfishness and individualism. Her novels shaped a generation of anti-statists, CEOs, and Silicon Valley boys who saw themselves as misfit geniuses above the herd.

• Murray Rothbard – Pushed libertarianism to its logical extreme: no taxes, no public sector, no government—just private contracts and property enforcement. Father of the anarcho-capitalist strain that would later inspire crypto maximalists and NRx thinkers.

The Economists Who Mainstreamed It

They gave the ideology a suit and a spreadsheet—and helped it reshape global economic policy.

• Milton Friedman – The smooth-talking evangelist of deregulation, privatization, and anti-tax dogma. Sold libertarianism to conservatives under the banner of economic “freedom.”

• Thomas Sowell – Once a critic of systemic racism, Sowell reinvented himself as a libertarian-adjacent pundit who replaced structural analysis with “personal responsibility.” Still frequently cited by conservatives looking to neutralize race-based critiques of capitalism.

• Gary Becker – Helped build the intellectual case for applying market logic to everything—crime, education, family. His influence helped justify treating all social problems as private decisions, not public obligations.

The Political Messengers

→They didn’t win elections. They changed the vocabulary.←

• Ron Paul – Brought libertarian ideas into mainstream conservative discourse through his presidential runs in 2008 and 2012. Criticized the Federal Reserve, foreign wars, and civil liberties violations—but attracted a base that often drifted into conspiracy and white grievance politics.

• Rand Paul – His son and legacy candidate. More opportunistic than principled, Rand bridges libertarian aesthetics with MAGA loyalty—offering the illusion of ideological consistency while backing fascist power grabs when convenient.

· Pat Buchanan – The political forerunner of MAGA.
Buchanan fused libertarian skepticism of globalism and bureaucracy with nativist identity politics—weaponizing “America First” rhetoric long before Trump descended the escalator. He railed against NAFTA, multiculturalism, and the "liberal elite," all while claiming to champion small government and traditional values.
He didn’t build the libertarian framework—but he taught the coalition how to use it as a shield for xenophobia, isolationism, and white grievance.
Buchanan wasn’t the end of an era. He was the prototype.

· Gary Johnson – The Libertarian Party’s most visible modern candidate. Offered a moderate, marijuana-friendly face for the ideology—without ever grappling with its deeper contradictions or its vulnerability to cooptation.

The Institutions That Spread the Gospel

These are the think tanks and advocacy groups that refined the rhetoric, published the white papers, and trained the politicians—before many drifted toward corporatist apologism.

• The Cato Institute – Founded by Charles Koch and Ed Crane, Cato has long served as the public-relations arm of elite libertarianism. Marketed economic deregulation as personal freedom and academic rigor. In recent years, it has tried to distance itself from Trumpism while still defending the system that made it inevitable.

• Reason Foundation / Reason Magazine – A libertarian media outlet that often reads like a parody of market fundamentalism. Provided ideological cover for privatization efforts and frequently defends corporate dominance as “choice.”

• The Mises Institute – The more radical wing of libertarian economics. An incubator for anarcho-capitalists, gold bugs, and the crypto-curious. Its proximity to the alt-right and neo-reactionary thought has become harder to deny.

The Billionaires Who Funded the Hollowing Out

They didn’t believe in liberty. They believed in fewer rules.

• Charles and David Koch – Multi-billionaire oil magnates who poured hundreds of millions into libertarian-flavored institutions—not to shrink power, but to shift it. Their empire includes ALEC, Cato, and Americans for Prosperity.

• Peter Thiel (Overlap) – While better known as a techno-monarchist today, Thiel’s early support for Ron Paul and market absolutism puts him squarely on the libertarian-to-authoritarian pipeline. Believes freedom and democracy are incompatible—and only one of them should survive.

The Techno-Libertarian Pipeline

Libertarianism didn’t just survive online—it mutated there.

• Crypto Finfluencers – From Balaji Srinivasan to Anthony Pompliano, the new wave of libertarians see blockchain as salvation and government as decay. They preach sovereignty, but build systems that consolidate wealth and power into even fewer hands.

• Silicon Valley Founders – Many of the Valley’s titans—especially in the early 2010s—adopted libertarian ideals as branding. Anti-tax, anti-union, anti-accountability. But when power was at stake, they all defaulted to empire.

The Podcast Pipeline: Libertarianism as Content, Not Conviction

By the late 2010s, libertarian thought had drifted out of the think tanks and into the podcast feed. It no longer needed manifestos or economic models—it just needed personalities. Voices that could frame skepticism of government as common sense, turn deregulation into virtue, and dress collapse up as individual empowerment.

The podcast ecosystem became the perfect vehicle—not to promote pure libertarianism, but to offer its residue in different emotional flavors.

• Joe Rogan became the everyman gateway: suspicious of institutions, deferential to Elon Musk and Peter Schiff, platforming libertarian and conspiracist guests under the guise of “just asking questions.” He didn’t preach ideology—he made distrust feel like independence.

• Dave Smith picked up the purist mantle. An open Rothbardian and Mises evangelist, Smith blurred lines between anti-war libertarianism and reactionary grievance politics. His audience overlaps heavily with Red Pillers, crypto diehards, and paleoconservatives who see the state as illegitimate—and power as something to be hoarded, not shared.

• Tim Pool offers the collapse-pilled variant: a feed of constant alarmism framed as pragmatic centrism. His solution is always the same: trust nothing, disengage from institutions, and prepare for chaos. Libertarianism here isn’t a philosophy. It’s a justification for paralysis.

• Michael Malice, Lex Fridman, and a rotating cast of crypto promoters and YouTube contrarians all serve a similar purpose: giving voice to ideological drift without ever naming it. One week it’s anti-tax theory. The next, it’s monarchy, censorship panic, or the glorification of “sovereign individual” tech lords.

They don’t agree on everything. They don’t have to.
What unites them is the feeling they sell:
that government can’t help you, no one’s coming to save you, and the only freedom left is escape.

This is the final stage of coopted libertarianism: not a movement, but an ecosystem.
One where every form of social disintegration—economic, cultural, environmental—is reinterpreted not as a failure of deregulation, but as more proof that the system was never worth saving.

What’s Left Today

What began as a radical call for liberty now survives mostly as aesthetic.
Podcast contrarians. Meme accounts. Crypto evangelists.
Self-help libertarians who preach hustle culture in one breath and fantasize about offshore bunkers in the next.

The ideology that once imagined a society beyond government now functions as background noise for corporate rule, conspiracy culture, and right-wing chaos.
Its purity has been replaced by performance.
Its skepticism by cynicism.
Its freedom by abandonment.

It’s not just hollow. It’s inverted.
What was once a critique of concentrated power now excuses it.
What was once wary of state violence now cheers for it—so long as it’s aimed at the poor, the foreign, or the left.

And worst of all, most of its adherents don’t even know it.
Like Lee Atwater once described about the Southern Strategy—where overt racism gave way to dog whistles like “states’ rights” and “tax cuts”—Libertarianism has become untethered from its origins.
Its rhetoric lives on, but the meaning is gone.

Ask the average American who rants about big government and they’ll tell you they’re standing up for freedom.
What they don’t see is that the ideology they defend is the very reason their water’s undrinkable, their wages are stagnant, their schools are crumbling, and their corporate overlords are untouchable.

That’s the final tragedy of Libertarianism:
It didn’t just fail.
It created the crisis—
then taught its victims to worship the cause as the cure.

How They Were Coopted

Libertarianism didn’t collapse because it was defeated.
It collapsed because it was absorbed.
Not by fellow idealists, but by opportunists—
the Corporatists, the Fake Christians, and the Fascists—
each of whom saw in Libertarian rhetoric a tool for their own agenda.

The Fascists Came First.

Not with salutes or jackboots—but with slogans, codewords and smiles.
They used Libertarianism as camouflage.

That was the Southern Strategy.
A fascist blueprint—wrapped in the language of “local control,”
“states’ rights,” and “small government.”

It made white supremacy sound like federalism.
Authoritarianism sound like liberty.
And segregation sound like sovereignty.

Libertarianism became the perfect smokescreen—
a way to put overt fascism into hibernation without ever letting it die.
A way to make backlash look like principle.

The Fake Christians Followed.

They followed close behind—under banners reading Moral Majority.
In the 1970s, figures like Jerry Falwell built a political movement out of evangelical grievance—
opposing desegregation, fighting the removal of school prayer, and demanding the state impose their theology on public life.
But they didn’t lead with faith.
They led with Libertarian language.

They framed public schooling as government overreach.
They framed civil rights enforcement as federal tyranny.
They said they weren’t defending segregation—they were defending freedom of association.
It was the same strategy the fascists had just used in the Southern Strategy—
but baptized and moralized for mass appeal.

And Libertarianism gave them the shield.
Not because it shared their values—but because it shared their enemy: government.

The rallying cry was “limited government”—
but it always meant the same thing:
limit the government’s ability to protect the vulnerable,
never its power to enforce hierarchy.

Libertarians could have drawn the line.
They could have called out the contradiction.
They didn’t.

You’d think a movement built on personal autonomy would defend bodily autonomy.
You’d think a philosophy that sees taxation as violence would at least blink when the state starts policing wombs.
But instead, many aligned themselves with a coalition that turned liberty into lawfare—
using the state to impose their morality while calling it freedom.

Because for all their talk of principle, the alliance mattered more.
And once again, liberty proved negotiable—so long as it wasn’t theirs being taken.

Then Came the Corporatists.

They didn’t speak in scripture or slurs.
They spoke in spreadsheets.

They embraced the language of “small government” not because they believed in liberty,
but because it gave them a mandate—
to dismantle regulations, cut taxes, and eliminate oversight.

They called it freedom.
But it was just consolidation—
transferring public power into private hands.

First came the tax revolts—sold as populism.
Then came the deregulation—sold as efficiency.
And with them, the rise of an entire economic theology: trickle-down.

It promised that if the rich were set free, their prosperity would lift the rest of us.
But they didn’t lift.
They hoarded.
They lobbied.
They broke unions, bought lawmakers, and wrote the rules in their own favor.

And when media stood in the way—
they gutted that too.
The Fairness Doctrine was scrapped. News became noise.
Disinformation became a business model.
And regulation became a punchline.

Libertarians thought they were shrinking government.
But what they were really doing was handing it over.

Take Palantir—the surveillance firm co-founded by Peter Thiel.
Libertarians once warned of government overreach and mass data collection.
Now one of their own runs a private intelligence company—
partnered with ICE, empowered by government contracts, and shielded from public scrutiny.

This wasn’t the shrinking of the surveillance state.
It was its privatization.

They didn’t end power.
They just auctioned it off.

And Then Came the Fascists—Again.

Not hiding this time.
Marching.

They didn’t co-opt Libertarianism because they believed in markets.
They co-opted it because they knew what happens when the state is too weak to resist.

Libertarianism had hollowed out the public sphere—
dismantled trust, defunded accountability, weakened resistance.
And into that void stepped the very forces it once claimed to fear.

Fascists don’t want to compete in a free society.
They want to dominate a broken one.
And thanks to Libertarianism, they found one.

Libertarians told us they needed guns—to protect America from tyranny.
But when white supremacists marched with torches in Charlottesville, Libertarians stayed in their coalition.
When the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers stormed the Capitol, with caches of weapons staged around D.C. to install a tyrant who lost an election, Libertarians looked away or cheered.

And even now—
When masked plainclothes federal agents in unmarked vehicles abduct immigrants off the streets for protected speech or immigration violations—
When they take them to cruel, inhumane detention centers run by unaccountable private contractors—
When they render some to slave-labor prisons like CECOT— an extrajudicial hellhole where there is no sentence, only indefinite imprisonment, suffering, and silence—
The “defenders of liberty” say nothing.

And many still stand with the tyrants.
Not with the people abducted for speech.
Not with the immigrants brutalized in cages.
Not with the citizens whose rights are still being crushed—always in the name of “order.”
But with those who do the trampling—
Backed by government contracts, surveillance firms like Palantir, and a DHS willing to ship people to torture centers without due process, without oversight, without end.

They claim the Second Amendment is a check against tyranny.
But when tyranny wears a badge, they look the other way.

Because when fascism comes dressed in stars and stripes,
Libertarians don’t resist.
They rationalize.
They disappear.
Or they join in.

One might also expect Libertarians to oppose authoritarian border crackdowns.
After all, if they believe in free markets, wouldn’t that include the free movement of labor?
Wouldn’t a truly free society welcome those fleeing crime, pain, and tyranny?
And yet, Libertarians stand shoulder to shoulder with those militarizing the border—
Not just blocking undocumented migrants, but choking legal immigration.
Especially the kind that threatens to uplift the poor or diversify the electorate.

The Rot Behind the Mask

Instead of opposing state overreach, they applaud it—
So long as it’s aimed at the desperate, the brown, the powerless.
So long as it serves their fantasy of a “real” America.

All these contradictions would be laughable—if they weren’t soaked in pain and blood.
Because in the so-called land of the free, asylum seekers are caged, deported, and demonized—

Women die—not by fate, but because their bodily autonomy is stripped by the state—
In the richest nation on Earth, men, women, and children are buried—
Not for lack of care,
But in the name of Friedman’s gospel:
That the highest moral good is maximizing shareholder profits.

All the while the self-proclaimed defenders of liberty say nothing.
Or worse, cheer.

And yet, many who still call themselves Libertarians haven’t realized any of it.
They remain true believers—preaching the same gospel, repeating the same slogans, demanding the same dismantling.

And as the wreckage spreads across the country, what began as an ideology has become an epidemic.

They live in the rubble of their own creed—
blaming the smoke on someone else,
insisting the fire means we need less water.

Libertarianism Is but a Siren’s Song

It lures a nation with the music of freedom—
And leads it straight into the rocks.

There is no such thing as a true Libertarian.
Not in practice. Not in history. Not in crisis.

Because when every test came—
they failed.
When faced with fascism, they flinched.
When faced with cruelty, they compromised.
And when faced with power, they handed it the keys.

They say they stand for liberty.
But liberty never follows from them.
Not in the segregated South, where “states’ rights” meant white rule.
Not in the Reagan era, where deregulation meant corporate capture.
Not in the War on Terror, where private firms profited from surveillance and detention.
Not at the border, where migrants are caged by contractors.
Not in post-Roe America, where the state seeks to own your womb.

Every time, they claim principle.
Every time, they serve power.

Libertarianism was never a bulwark against tyranny.
It was the invitation.
A permission slip for the strong to prey on the weak—
so long as the contract is private and the paperwork clean.

In the end, it doesn’t protect freedom.
It makes freedom unaffordable.
And then sells it back—at a markup.

It promises a world without coercion.
It delivers one without protection.

And now, as the movement it enables slides deeper into authoritarianism,
Libertarianism offers no resistance—because it never knew how.

What began as a dream now tolls liberty’s death knell.
A hollow creed for hollow men.

There are no real Libertarians.
Only marketing for those who would rather rule without rules.

What’s Their Role in the Coalition?

Libertarians were never the drivers of the MAGA machine.
But their ideology was the vehicle that got it moving.

Not a command center—
but a delivery system.

A philosophy that carried the others where they couldn’t go alone.
A set of principles that sounded like freedom—but functioned like clearance codes.

When Corporatists wanted to dismantle protections, Libertarianism said: “Let the market decide.”
When Fake Christians wanted to impose theology, Libertarianism said: “Religious liberty.”
When Fascists wanted to crush dissent, Libertarianism said: “The state is the problem.”
When Conspiracists wanted to delegitimize the system, Libertarianism said: “It was never legitimate to begin with.”

Libertarianism is what made all their ambitions palatable.
It didn’t just excuse the destruction of the state—it sanctified it.

It gave cruelty a conscience.
It gave profit a halo.
It gave domination a disguise.

This is the Libertarian role in the coalition:
Not to steer it.
But to make sure nothing stands in its way.

Not to lead.
But to erode every barrier that might’ve slowed the others down.

Not to govern.
But to gut governance itself—until what’s left is a hollow shell that can be filled with whatever power steps in next.

They didn’t capture the system.
They were the key that opened the door—
and let the worst walk through.

If You Believe in This Fight, Help Keep It Alive

There’s still more below, I just need a moment of your time.

The American Manifesto isn’t backed by corporations. There are no ads, no paywalls, no billionaires funding it.

It’s just one person, fighting like hell to expose the truth and give you the weapons to push back.

If you value this work—if you want this movement to keep growing, keep calling out fascism without fear, and keep fighting for the future we deserve—then I need your support.

Join the fight. Become a supporter. Every contribution keeps this mission alive.

Because silence is surrender. We do not surrender. We are #TheRelentless.

What Is Their Relationship With Other Subgroups?

They’re not power brokers. They’re not organizers. They’re not even particularly loyal.
But the Libertarians were the ones who left the door open.

They didn’t seize control of the movement.
They just hollowed out the state—until it could be captured by those who would.

Their relationships inside the coalition aren’t built on mutual goals.
They’re built on mutual exploitation.
Each faction found something useful in the Libertarian gospel:
A reason to deregulate, to defund, to abandon.
And when the consequences came?
The Libertarians had already moved on—or doubled down.

Here’s how the relationships break down:

✅ Alignment

• Conspiracists
  A natural alliance. Libertarians offered an intellectual scaffolding for paranoia.
  They didn’t need to believe every conspiracy—they just had to believe that government lies.
  And once that premise took hold, everything else became plausible.
  It was the perfect marriage of instinct and excuse.

• Blue-Collar Workers
  An alliance that began in hope—and ended in betrayal.
  Libertarian anti-government rhetoric resonated with working-class frustration.
  Until those same policies left workers without unions, without benefits, without recourse.
  Some still cling to the dream. Most are just angry—and looking for someone else to blame.

❌ Divergence

• Warhawks
  Irreconcilable differences.
  Where Warhawks see projection of strength, Libertarians see imperial overreach.
  The War on Terror, foreign aid, defense spending—it’s everything Libertarians hate.
  And everything Warhawks refuse to give up.

• Fake Christians
  They wanted government out of welfare—but deep inside your bedroom.
  Libertarians should’ve been natural opponents.
  But many made peace with the contradiction—so long as the alliance held.
  The result: a philosophy of autonomy that couldn’t defend autonomy when it mattered most.

• Corporatists
  An uneasy alliance built on selective freedom.
  Corporatists weaponized Libertarian rhetoric to crush regulation and hoard wealth—then discarded every other principle.
  Libertarians thought they were shrinking government.
  But they were just handing it over.

⚪ Neutral

• Fascists
  No love. No loyalty. No real opposition.
  Libertarians weakened the institutions.
  Fascists took them.
  They’re not allies.
  Just two points on a timeline.

• Red Pillers
  Too new, too scattered, too self-absorbed.
  Red Pillers don’t share Libertarian ideals—but they live in the wreckage Libertarianism left behind.
  They don’t demand less government.
  They just want one that punishes different people.

Exploiting Wedge Issues

In many ways, Libertarianism was both the glue that held the coalition together—and the acid that corroded our institutions.
And now, with their contradictions laid bare and their utility spent, the cracks are starting to show.

They may not hold power—but they hold pressure points.
And if we push the right ones, the fractures in the coalition can become permanent breaks.

Here’s where the leverage lives:

Warhawks

Call out the hypocrisy.
The same Libertarians who claim to oppose forever wars stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those who built the War on Terror.
Force them to explain why their “non-interventionist” allies cheered on Iraq, funded ICE raids, and still vote for candidates who dream of bombing Mexico.

Wedge Message:
“If you really believe in peace, why are you siding with the architects of endless war?”

Fake Christians

Press the contradiction.
Libertarians claim to defend personal freedom—yet they align with theocrats who want to criminalize abortion, censor classrooms, and enforce religious law.
The moment you ask them where liberty ends and Christian nationalism begins, the alliance wobbles.

Wedge Message:
“If the government doesn’t belong in your wallet, why do you want it in someone’s womb?”

Corporatists

Expose the betrayal.
Corporatists didn’t shrink government—they privatized it.
They used Libertarian language to deregulate and defund, then cashed the checks while surveillance expanded and monopolies metastasized.
Libertarians got the slogans. Corporatists got the profits.

Wedge Message:
“You didn’t get freedom. You got fleeced.”

Fascists

Draw the line.
Libertarians talk about opposing tyranny—until the tyrant wears a flag pin.
They look the other way on surveillance, detention, and violence, so long as it’s used against the right enemies.
But fascism doesn’t make room for freedom. It uses it—until it’s no longer useful.

Wedge Message:
“You armed yourself for tyranny—and now you’re backing the tyrants.”

Red Pillers

Confront the fantasy.
Red Pillers glorify domination. Libertarians claim to oppose coercion.
But the moment you praise authoritarian masculinity and call it “freedom,” you’ve already surrendered the principle.
Liberty isn’t about ruling others—it’s about not being ruled.

Wedge Message:
“You didn’t walk away from control. You just want to be the one in charge.”

Creating a Sense of Betrayal

They said they believed in liberty, autonomy, and limited power.
But when the test came, they failed it.
They handed their values to those who used them as weapons—and called it principle.

The Libertarians weren’t supposed to be enablers.
They said they were watchdogs. Rebels. The last line of defense against tyranny.
But what they defended wasn’t freedom.
It was a fantasy—one others used to tear down the real thing.

If you ever believed in liberty—you have every reason to feel betrayed.

Value: Freedom Means Bodily Autonomy

“You believe the government doesn’t belong in your body, your bedroom, or your beliefs. So do I. But look at who they allied with.”
They said taxation was tyranny—
Then stood with those who want the state to control pregnancies.
They said the government shouldn’t decide for you—
Then backed lawmakers who want to dictate your most personal choices.
They didn’t fight for freedom.
They sold it—so long as it wasn’t theirs being taken.
“If liberty means anything, it must include the right to control your own body. And they gave that up without a fight.”

Value: The State Should Be Small—For Everyone

“You believe government power should be limited. So do I. But they only meant it for the powerful.”
They opposed safety nets for the poor—but never blinked at subsidies for billionaires.
They decried overreach—unless it was aimed at immigrants.
They raged at the IRS—but applauded ICE raids and indefinite detention.
They didn’t shrink the state.
They just aimed it downward.
“If you’re still calling that liberty, ask yourself who’s actually freer—and who’s being crushed.”

Value: Markets Should Be Free and Open

“You believe in competition. So do I. But they let Corporatists hijack the rhetoric—and build monopolies in your name.”
They warned against regulation—while billionaires rewrote the rules.
They mocked government inefficiency—while privatized services became nightmares.
They fought oversight—until there was nothing left to check the abuse.
“If you believe in free markets, why are you defending cartels with better branding?”

Value: The Second Amendment Exists to Defend Against Tyranny

“You believe an armed population keeps the government in check. So do I. But where were they when the tyrants came?”
They stockpiled weapons to resist oppression—
Then looked away when federal agents dragged protesters into unmarked vans.
They warned about tyranny—
Then cheered when authoritarians used force to silence dissent.
They said the Second Amendment was a last resort against abuse—
But forgot to check the badge.
“If your guns only matter when someone else is abused—maybe you’re not defending freedom. Maybe you’re defending power.”

Value: Liberty Requires Integrity

“You believe in standing by your principles—even when it’s hard. So do I. But they chose the coalition over the creed.”
They knew the Fake Christians were authoritarians.
They knew the Fascists were dangerous.
They knew the Corporatists were exploiters.
But they stood with them anyway.
Not because it was right.
But because it was easier than standing alone.
“If your liberty depends on alliance with people who hate it—maybe it was never liberty at all.”

They told you liberty was sacred.
That it was worth defending.
That no one—not government, not corporations, not churches—should have the power to decide for you.

But when the test came, they didn’t defend it.
They sold it, bartered it, rationalized it.

If you believed in real liberty—you weren’t wrong.
You were just used.
And the people who used you still call themselves your allies.

They’re not.

The Freedom That Failed

Libertarianism didn’t just weaken the guardrails.
It helped dismantle the very idea that guardrails should exist.

What begins as a principled skepticism of power becomes a reflexive rejection of responsibility.
What begins as a dream of liberty becomes a shield for cruelty, deregulation, and decay.
And what begins as a warning against tyranny becomes a silent partner to its rise.

They tell us freedom is the absence of force.
But they forget: when government retreats, power doesn’t disappear.
It shifts—to whoever’s ruthless enough to claim it.

That’s the final betrayal of Libertarianism:
It doesn’t protect liberty.
It abandons it.
And calls that abandonment freedom.

Now we live in the ruins.
A state too hollow to protect us.
A public too poisoned to organize.
A movement too captured to see the cage.

But Libertarianism doesn’t just leave a void.
It leaves behind a vacuum—and a generation raised inside it.

A generation with no trust in institutions.
No belief in common purpose.
No map. No anchor. No real alternatives.

And into that vacuum steps something new.

Not a philosophy. Not a party. Not even a policy agenda.

But a content engine.
A culture of rage.
A machine built to convert anger into ideology—and clicks into power.

Next: The Red Pillers.
From rebellion to obedience—one algorithm at a time.

---

---

← Back to the Beginning of the Series

Unmasking MAGA