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aristarchus [soylentnews.org] writes:

According to an article in The Duke Chronicle [dukechronicle.com], which I can only assume is a school newspaper, one of the few types of publications to survive the "social media apocalypse", the point is made that the Austrian School is not responsible for the Alt-right Anschluss. They just acquiesced.

The Austrian School did not create the alt-right
By Tyler Bonin | 09/26/2018

The points which Eladio Bobadilla makes in his recent Chronicle guest column on accepting Koch Foundation money is troubling in that it assigns cause for the rise of violent nationalism in this country to a school of thought that is, based on its underpinning tenets, fundamentally at odds with the alt-right movement. It furthermore paints a caricature of Nobel Prize winner Friedrich Hayek that is inconsistent with his most famous writings. I expect more from the history department at Duke.

Oewh! Major hit by Tyler, whom I assume is an undergrad, against the entire History Department, at what I take to be his own University? This is not a Milo-type, free-speech thing, is it? More:

This is why Hayek, and many modern day libertarians and proponents of the Austrian school of economics, promote the notion that freedom can only exist in the absence of coercion.

Ya got The Mighty Buzzard, the proprietor of this blog, in your pocket! Do carry on!

Populist movements which seek to make swift change by building up and utilizing the most extreme of coercive governmental powers leads to a violent expansion of government that curtails individual liberty and the free market principles that Hayek posited. The violence associated with the alt-right is thus incompatible with the points put forward by Hayek and other economists from the Austrian School.

Kind of a disappointment in the finish. I mean, who did not already realize this? Or could it be that some anarchist-right libertarians are actually more alt-right than liberal, and thus susceptible to being painted with a broad brush, as I have oft attempted to do, because it is true? Nice to see that even a Duke undergrad gets it.

(Correction: seems according to the Fine Article itself, that Tyler is in fact an Alumnus, in spite of the bad connotations of that after the Kavanaugh Georgetown (Catholic, Jesuit) Prep Yearbook revelations, of Ol' Duke, and a Master, at that. Submitter apologies for the error.)

Other interesting stuff:
Kock Money at Duke! [dukechronicle.com]
Original Eladio article referenced by Tyler, Duke is getting Koch money: That should worry you [dukechronicle.com]
Washington Post on The Daily 202: Koch network warns of ‘McCarthyism 2.0’ in conservative efforts to harass professors [washingtonpost.com]

Original Submission