Harry's Place

“…and that’s where you’ll put the giant portrait of Chairman Mao, er, Comandante Chavez.”

Fans of the People’s Republic and the Bolivarian Republic may consider this excellent news (I’m expecting a celebratory post about it any moment at Socialist Unity); but for more genuine advocates of democracy and human rights, it’s hardly a promising sign.

Noticias 24 reports:

Venezuela and China today agreed to extend their political alliance with the training of Venezuelan ruling party leaders by the Chinese Communist Party.

The agreement was reached during a meeting between the president of the [National Assembly] Diosdado Cabello, and Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao, who started Monday a four-day visit to Venezuela to strengthen bilateral cooperation.

“We have decided for the comrades of Venezuela’s United Socialist Party (PSUV) to receive instruction from the Chinese Communist Party in political and social formation” Cabello said in a brief statement to reporters.
…..
“China’s socialism has its own characteristics, and Venezuela has our Bolivarian socialism” [Preisdent Nicolas] Maduro said, and said the agreement seeks to “continue the legacy” of late President Hugo Chavez.

Of course one advantage the Chinese Communist Party has over the PSUV is that it is the only legal party in the country, and therefore doesn’t have to put up with annoying challenges from other parties. In Venezuela, despite silencing of the opposition in the National Assembly, government opponents continue to speak out.

Por ahora, as the late Comandante might have said.

Update: To clarify, the Chinese Communist Party is officially part of a “united front” with eight smaller parties. The smaller parties cannot and do not act independently.

Joseph Massad’s recent piece on Zionism has been greeted with justified indignation.  It opens with a perverse attempt to equate Zionism with antisemitism.

Jewish opponents of Zionism understood the movement since its early age as one that shared the precepts of anti-Semitism in its diagnosis of what gentile Europeans called the “Jewish Question”. What galled anti-Zionist Jews the most, however, was that Zionism also shared the “solution” to the Jewish Question that anti-Semites had always advocated, namely the expulsion of Jews from Europe.

It’s difficult to know quite where to start here, except to make the very obvious point that antisemitism did not stop at such a solution, and that Zionism does not advocate the expulsion of Jews from Europe.  Later Massad misuses the same word in order to whitewash Soviet antisemitism:

That Israel would jump on the bandwagon by accusing the Soviets of anti-Semitism for their refusal to allow Soviet Jewish citizens to self-expel and leave to Israel was part of the propaganda.

There is no hint here that preventing people from leaving the Soviet Union might in any way have been a problematic policy. Massad goes on to imply that the link between ‘modern Jews’ and ‘ancient Hebrews’ is an entirely contrived one, and then frames the history of Zionism as nothing more than an attempt, on the one hand, to promote agents of ‘European Imperialism’ and, on the other, as an ideology locked in an unholy alliance with genocidal antisemitism.  This paragraph reflects the twisted nature of Massad’s logic:

While the majority of Jews continued to resist the anti-Semitic basis of Zionism and its alliances with anti-Semites, the Nazi genocide not only killed 90 percent of European Jews, but in the process also killed the majority of Jewish enemies of Zionism who died precisely because they refused to heed the Zionist call of abandoning their countries and homes.

His account of the position taken by post-war Germany is similarly warped:

Since the establishment of the country after WWII, every West German government (and every German government since unification in1990) has continued the pro-Zionist Nazi policies unabated. There was never a break with Nazi pro-Zionism. The only break was with the genocidal and racial hatred of Jews that Nazism consecrated, but not with the desire to see Jews set up in a country in Asia, away from Europe.

At no point are the many Jews who emigrated to Israel from Middle Eastern countries acknowledged by Massad.

In a limited sense there may be something in his suggestion that ‘the Nazi genocide … killed the majority of Jewish enemies of Zionism’  – because the Holocaust might certainly affect anyone’s stance towards Zionism, and thus account for the implied shift in Jewish views towards Israel.  And it is ironic that some of those who currently seem most unwilling to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist are helping to reinforce that case.

This is a cross post by Sam Westrop

A charity ball organized by the University of St. Andrew’s Jewish Society, guarded by plain-clothes police officers, was held in secret last week after threats were made against staff at the original venue. The increasing security and secrecy surrounding this annual student event is an illustration of the sentiments aimed at Jewish students in Scotland.

The ball was originally supposed to be held at the Golf Hotel in St. Andrews, a small University town on the east coast of Scotland. After a campaign organized by the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, a number of threats were directed at the hotel’s staff, and a number of violent comments were posted on social media, with one protester writing: “Friday we send them into hell.”

The Golf Hotel cancelled the event over “safety concerns.” One member of the Jewish student society said that the decision to cancel the event was “pathetic…. They [the Golf Hotel] had no right to violate their part of the contract. The Golf Hotel is scared of them. A victory does not come from bullying people into submission, it comes from engaging people and opening their minds.”

Although activists from the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign [SPSC] were able to pressure the hotel into cancelling the charity ball, it was held secretly at another location, and raised over three times the amount of money for its nominated charities.

The SPSC offers a free book to all new members: Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People — a book the central argument of which is that the Jewish people, as a single collectivity, do not exist. Last year, the group also protested in support of a student at St. Andrews, Paul Donnachie, who was charged and found guilty ofracially abusing a Jewish student.

In 2006, the SPSC commemorated Holocaust Memorial Day by performing a reading of “Perdition,” a play that claims the Holocaust was a joint venture between Zionists and Nazis. In 2009, the group commemorated Holocaust Memorial Day by running an event with Azzam Tamimi, a spokesperson for the terror group Hamas. And in 2010, the group reproduced the winning entry from Iran’s offensive Holocaust cartoon competition of 2006.

Senior SPSC member John Wight has previously promoted a website called the “Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust.” Wight has said: “As soon as the scales fall from the eyes of international Jewry with regard to the racist and fascist ideology that is Zionism, the world will begin to emerge from the iron heel of war and brutality in the Middle East.”

Similarly, Edinburgh PSC chair Mike Napier has referenced a number of neo-Nazi websites in an article thatvindicated the murder of eight Jewish students at a religious school in Jerusalem, on the grounds that the school is “the main educational and training centre of the fanatical Israeli settler movement,” and that the students are taught to regard Gentiles as cattle and to use Arabs for “medical experiments” and to send “Arabs to the gas chambers.”

The “We are all Hana Shalabi Network” also supported the protest against the St. Andrews Jewish Society. This group campaigns in support of Hana Shalabi, a member of the Palestinian terror group Islamic Jihad. In 2012, Shalabi visited Tehran as part of a delegation from the Islamic Jihad movement. In front of the Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei, Shalabi spoke of her commitment to “jihad and resistance” and praised the Iranian revolution in 1979 as the “beginning of a new era.”

Across Scotland, Jewish students regard the line between anti-Israel activism and anti-Jewish incitement as wearing dangerously thin. Several months ago, a number of Jewish students the University of Edinburghabandoned their courses because of the “toxic atmosphere” on campus.

Moreover, the University of Glasgow is a participant in a European Union-funded program, “Lifelong Learning in Palestine,” in which the Islamic University of Gaza is one of the main beneficiaries. The Islamic University of Gaza is the “the brain trust and engine room of Hamas,” the Palestinian terror group that rules Gaza. In 2008, Hamas was using the University to build explosives and rockets for use against Israeli civilians.

In 2011, security guards had to step in to protect Arab-Israeli diplomat Ishmael Khaldi at the University of Edinburgh, after a student mob surrounded him while screaming “Viva, Viva Palestina.”

Increasingly, Jewish students’ choice over which university to attend is influenced by the potency of anti-Israel sentiment. The Scottish Council of Jewish Communities has reported a rise in the number of inquiries from parents and potential students in the US and Europe about the safety of Jewish students.

In 2011, the British ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, claimed that the image of Universities being “hotbeds of anti-Israel sentiment” was false. University authorities also downplay the extent of the campus extremism. Last month, Baroness Warsi, the Minister of State for Faith and Communities, and Nicola Dandridge, the head of Universities UK, both claimed that the problem of university extremism is greatly exaggerated. The facts, as we have seen, tell a rather different story.

The greatest obstacle to tackling anti-Jewish incitement is the denial that there is any such problem.

Back in 2006, I joined a demonstration in front of the Iranian Interests Section in Washington to call for justice for striking bus workers in Tehran and the release of imprisoned union leaders.

Those union leaders included Mansour Osanloo, head of the Tehran bus workers’ union, whose cause has garnered support from trade unionists and human rights activists worldwide.

Osanloo, who has been in and out of prison a number of times, spoke to a 2007 meeting in London of the International Transport Workers Union Federation (a text of his speech is here). Osanloo was rearrested shortly after his return to Iran and imprisoned again until 2011.

His brother Afshin Osanloo, an activist in the same union, has been imprisoned since 2009.

Now Golnaz Esfandiari at Persian Letters reports that death threats from Iranian government security circles have driven Mansour Osanloo out of the country.

Osanlu, who is described by some as “Iran’s Lech Walesa” after the labor leader who helped bring free trade unions and, ultimately, democracy to Poland, was speaking by phone from Turkey in one of his first media interviews since arriving there months ago.

He warned that the atmosphere in the Islamic republic is becoming more repressive “day by day.”

The president of the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburb Bus Company told RFE/RL that he had upset authorities recently because he had increased his organizing activities.

“We were trying to bring unity among various workers groups in order to reach a solidarity society or a workers federation, I had become very active in this since last year and It didn’t remain secret from [authorities] who would send me all kinds of messages and threats,” Osanlu said. “They had told my two bailsmen who had secured my release from prison in 2011 that I should present myself at the prosecutor’s office or at the prison. All of these events in addition to the information I received that there were discussions to kill me, hit me with a car, or do some similar to the chain killings [of intellectuals] — I was also told by friends that it wasn’t right for me to stay in Iran — made me reach the conclusion [that I had to leave].”
…..
Forcing activists into exile appears to be a strategic tactic by Tehran. In recent years, and especially since the bitterly disputed 2009 election and the ensuing crackdown, the regime has intensified pressure on many of those pushing for change.

Osanlu said he’s not discouraged.

“Being inside or outside the country is not a determining factor, I think,” Osanlu said. “What is important is what conditions you’re facing and what possibilities you have and what price you’re ready to pay.”

May Osanloo one day return to a free and democratic Iran, of which he would rightfully be one of the leaders.

This is a guest post from Howie’s corner

At the weekend millions of ordinary Pakistani men and women defied the threats of the Taliban and went to the polls to cast their vote. A small number paid for that right with their lives.  They are not alone:

• In Bangladesh thousands of supporters of Hefazat-e-Islam rampaged through the streets of Dakhar demanding death to the atheist bloggers whilst at the same time pretending to be part of a movement for democracy.

• In Tunisia Salafist thugs fire-bombed and burned down three offices of the main Tunisian trade union last year. The attacks continue.

• In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood continue with their attempts to suppress all opposition and introduce an Islamic state.

• Saudi Arabia continues to fund groups (like Al Nursa in Syria) that use extreme violence to promote the domination of the fundamentalist Wahhabi version of Islam that was previously alien to many Islamic nations.

The growth of these intolerant, misogynist and violent movements across the Middle east is disturbing and they should be opposed by all Trade Unionists across the world.

According to The Times yesterday there has been a growth of such people in our Universities, with Islamic Societies being hijacked by extremists who bully and intimidate. They breach the human rights of women by trying to enforce gender separation in meetings and violence is never far away.

Neither is the intolerance as threats of death are made towards homosexuals and non-Muslims, which go beyond the right of free speech to the realm of inciting hate and must be cracked down on by the authorities.

And yet there is some cowardice in facing up to these problems. No one should be afraid of speaking out against such extremism. In the Universities the NUS and UCU should be at the forefront of fighting back against these people who are nothing more than an Islamic equivalent of the BNP.

And no one would hesitate to picket and fight back against the BNP.

Yet when it comes to Islamists some people get all “politically correct” or worse. These people wreck our institutions of learning because they despise secular education, and education for women in particular.

Yet some of these people continue to find friends. The SWP seemingly backs the Hezefat-e-Islam movement in Bangladesh as does George Galloway it would seem.

In a speech to a meeting in East London he made the following, rather chilling remarks:

On Saturday he called  for “a peaceful revolution that will remove this gangster government. The media is now under the almost total control of the Hasina government”. He claims there “has been an almost total media blackout about the massacre.”

Galloway added this threat,“I’m against hanging anyone but it’s a fundamental truth in politics that those who live by the sword will die by the sword. There has to be an end of the politics of revenge.”

Perhaps he’d like to remind some of his audience that that should apply to “atheist bloggers” but I doubt that would suit his agenda (whatever that really is these days).

Galloway works for Press TV, which is the mouthpiece of the Iranian Government, the same one that hijacked the election for President in case anyone has forgotten. Oh and still tortures and rapes its prisoners by the way.

His increasingly bizarre world views included a sterling defence of .. North Korea, the world’s largest prison camp.

And yet he still manages to retain his admirers on the so called left.

The clerical fascists or Islamists, what ever you would like to call them are a threat and the people that really suffer from their actions are ordinary Muslims, men and women who simply want to get on with their lives.

There can be no appeasement with these thugs and terrorists, they have to be resisted wherever they raise their ugly heads.

Democracy can and must prevail.

This is a guest post by Jacobinism

“Then the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone,/ All centuries but this, and every country but his own…”

– W. S. Gilbert adds to his shitlist

For a commentator who gets as exercised about the killing of innocent Muslims as Glenn Greenwald does, he has had precious little to say about the ongoing catastrophe in Syria. That is, until Monday 6 May.

After more than two years of an increasingly vicious civil war that has so far claimed the lives of an estimated 80,000 Syrians, events took particularly ugly turn last week. On Saturday 4, news began to filter out of sectarian massacres committed by regime loyalists over the previous two days in the coastal city of Banias and the neighbouring village of al-Bayda. Graphic pictures depicting the piled corpses of men, women and small children were greeted with a wave of revulsion amid unconfirmed estimates that between 60 and 100 people had been murdered at both sites. Meanwhile, reports and allegations that the regime had begun using sarin and other unspecified chemical agents against rebel forces and civilians continued to emerge, intensifying the debate about whether or not Obama’s “red line” had been crossed and what on earth to do about it if it had.

Then on Sunday March 5, Israel apparently rocketed government positions inside Syria, seemingly with impunity and from Lebanese airspace. Although Israel has not taken public responsibility for the attack, it was widely reported that the targeted strikes were aimed at the destruction of shipments of Fateh-110 rockets being held in and around Damascus, en route from Iran to Lebanese Shi’ite terror group Hezbollah. Dozens of soldiers loyal to Assad’s brutal Ba’athist dictatorship were killed in the process.

After more than two years of silence on the subject Greenwald evidently decided that a red line of his own had been crossed and that enough was enough. So he drew himself up, approached his podium atThe Guardian and declared:

Few things are more ludicrous than the attempt by advocates of US and Israeli militarism to pretend that they’re applying anything remotely resembling “principles”. Their only cognizable “principle” is rank tribalism: My Side is superior, and therefore we are entitled to do things that Our Enemies are not.

Greenwald, it transpired to the surprise of no-one, was not particularly interested in the horrors of the Syrian civil war – neither the butchery unleashed by Assad’s regime in Banias and al-Bayda nor the appalling human rights crisis afflicting much of the country warranted so much as a murmur.

What irks him is that those seeking to defend or justify Israel’s very brief and limited involvement in the conflict should presume to offer a moral justification for her behaviour when, so far as Greenwald can tell, their reasoning is nothing more honourable than a naked and single-minded chauvinism rooted in an unjustifiable Western exceptionalism.

In support of this contention, Greenwald defies those he calls “Israeli defenders” to defend equivalent (theoretical) actions taken by Iran or Syria on the same grounds of self-interest, or to condemn Israel’s nuclear arsenal with the same vehemence reserved for Iran’s ambitions. Stretching the already elastic logic of this argument to its limit, he even implies that those who defend Israel while denouncing Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan (the victims of whom Greenwald describes as “incidental”) are guilty of double-standards.

The use of this kind of shabby relativist equivalence to denigrate Western democracies and excuse the actions of terrorists and dictators is par for the course on certain sections of the self-proclaimed anti-Imperialist Left. But, oddly, Greenwald is indignant that anyone should presume to characterise his views in this way. “The ultimate irony,” he complains…

…is that those [like Greenwald] who advocate for the universal application of principles to all nations are usually tarred with the trite accusatory slogan of “moral relativism”. But the real moral relativists are those who believe that the morality of an act is determined not by its content but by the identity of those who commit them: namely, whether it’s themselves or someone else doing it….[thus] Israel and the US (and its dictatorial allies in Riyadh and Doha) have the absolute right to bomb other countries or arm rebels in those countries if they perceive doing so is necessary to stop a threat but Iran and Syria (and other countries disobedient to US dictates) do not. This whole debate would be much more tolerable if it were at least honestly acknowledged that what is driving the discussion are tribalistic notions of entitlement and nothing more noble.

Hmm. It seems to me that the only reason Greenwald is perplexed by accusations of relativism is that he doesn’t understand what the term means. Moral relativism holds that there is no objective means of deciding right and wrong, so there can be no moral hierarchy across differing cultures. Therefore, since countries and the cultures cannot be judged by any meaningfully objective standard, they must simply be understood as different, rather than comparatively better or worse.

You can read the rest here, and you can follow Jacobinism on Twitter here.

A couple of days ago a Shia man suffered nasty injuries after a confrontation involving Anjem Choudary and his supporters.  Choudary is a thoroughly unrepresentative, as well as a thoroughly unpleasant, figure.  He has been given far too much publicity by newspapers and broadcasters keen to attract prurient punters.  Here Mehdi Hasan explains why his views are not representative.

The Muslim Council of Britain has issued a press release condemning this recent attack. The MCB has rather more claim to be representative than Anjem Choudary, and distances itself firmly from his ‘hate filled message’.  However there is an inconsistency in the signals sent out by the press release.  It has a strong title ‘Muslims stand united, resist divisive sectarian rhetoric’, and this is nicely supported by an epigraph from the Qur’an: ‘And hold fast, all of you together, to the rope of Allah, and do not separate.’

But then we get this:

The Muslim Council of Britain today affirms the unity of Muslims, particularly in the UK. We are a community with plural traditions and viewpoints, but united in our faith in Allah and his last Prophet. This is a view held by the vast majority of British Muslims.

It seems a shame that, in a post explicitly reminding people of the need to avoid sectarian strife, the writer felt they had to have a little dig at the Ahmadi, for whom Mohammad was not the last Prophet.  Anti-Ahmadi bigotry isn’t the same problem here as it is in Pakistan of course, where they are effectively disenfranchised and subjected to attacks, but it is still an issue, as acknowledged by Tell MAMA, who explicitly include sectarian attacks on Ahmadis as an area of concern on their website.

According to this report, a humanist felt he had been unfairly blocked from a committee discussing how faith was taught in schools:

A council spokesman said: “Sacre is a committee to advise the county council on religious education and collective worship.

“In line with most Sacres across the country there is no Humanist representative on Sacre.

Yet these guidelines (pdf p.21) imply that to include a humanist would be good practice. About a quarter of Britons claim to have no religion (which, admittedly, might not precisely equate to atheism).  It seems right that our views should be taken into account when designing how a mandatory subject is taught in schools, particularly when atheists suffer discrimination and persecution across the world. Some atheists are interested in interfaith work, and even work as atheist chaplains. It tends to be theists who describe atheism as just another belief system (rather than a simple absence of belief) so, particularly as there are quite a lot of us, perhaps our views should be given the same consideration as any other faith group.

Hat tip: CEMB Forum

This is a guest post by Garden Mole

It’s interesting to ask what is the craziest position taken by libertarians. Perhaps it’s their opposition to all government aid to the poor. Perhaps it’s their call for legalising fatal neglect by parents. Or maybe it’s the proposal for a free market in nuclear bombs. But to my mind it’s their line on the sexual abuse of children.

One of the major intellectual heroes of modern libertarians is Lysander Spooner, the 19th century anarchist. Spooner is the author of a famous essay entitled Vices Are Not Crimes in which, inter alia, he specifically condemns the use of coercion to protect children from vice. He elaborates:

To have carnal knowledge of a woman, against her will, is the highest crime, next to murder, that can be committed against her. But to have carnal knowledge of her, with her consent, is no crime; but at most, a vice. And it is usually holden that a female child, of no more than ten years of age, has such reasonable discretion, that her consent, even though procured by rewards, or promises of reward, is sufficient to convert the act, which would otherwise be a high crime, into a simple act of vice.

Yes, Spooner really is saying that children aged ten should be “free” to engage in sexual relations, and he really is proposing to give legal protection to adults who lure them into doing so. And Spooner’s views are moderate in comparison with those of his libertarian admirers.

Take Murray Rothbard, anarcho-capitalist ideologue, doyen of the Austrian school of economics, co-founder of the Cato Institute and the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and guru to a generation of libertarians. In 1972 Rothbard gave his own analysis of the status of children under libertarianism. According to Rothbard, “the child can own and regulate himself” upon leaving the parents’ household, which means that “the child must always have, regardless of age, the absolute freedom to run away” – and at that point the child “becomes a self-owner.” (Kid Lib, in Egalitarianism As a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2000, p. 147)

For Rothbard, children who leave home at any age automatically become “self-owners” with the same legal status as adults. The children have the “right” to become alcoholics or drug addicts, to work in sweatshops or coal mines, or to sell themselves into pornography and prostitution. Adults who abuse them for such purposes have complete legal immunity and can’t be charged with any crime in Rothbardland, which would in practice be nothing but a giant replica of the streets of Bangkok.

But this is just one man’s foolishness, you say? Perhaps Rothbard – “Mr. Libertarian,” “the greatest libertarian theorist of the 20th century” – doesn’t speak for all libertarians on this issue?

Well, there is also Richard Slomon, described as a leading libertarian anarchist and the head of the Abolitionist Caucus of the US Libertarian Party. Slomon asks:

why should the dependent young, or, in colloquial terms – children, not have the right to determine their own sexual choices? And why, objectively, shouldn’t those choices include interaction with members of their own families. In rational terms, there is no reason why young humans as soon as they are disposed to making a choice should not enjoy all the fruits of life available from voluntary transactions. There is also no rational reason for anyone to feel offended by the sexuality of young humans or of incestuous relationships. (Children’s Rights and Incest Decriminalization, Versus State, No. 4, January 1978, p. 15)

Slomon does not shrink from the real-world consequences of his advocacy. He glories in the growth of child prostitution:

In spite of the enormous machinery of youth repression, a growing and quite successful sexual rebellion has flourished in the US over the last few decades. Prevented from effectively competing in the labor market, hundreds of thousands of young boys have turned to homosexual prostitution for economic and sexual liberation. A growing documentation of this trend shows that most boy prostitutes enter the trade with considerable sophistication and aggressiveness. The traditional taboos and masculinity-loss stigmatization no longer prevent an estimated 300,000-600,000 boy prostitutes from eagerly plying their trade. (Ibid., p. 39n15)

Then there is Jim Peron, the former president of Laissez-Faire Books, who was barred from New Zealand after his contribution to a magazine for pederasts became public knowledge. Peron’s article criticised gay activists for their “politically correct” reaction to child abuse:

Throughout the gay community, pompous, politically-correct fools, some elected, spout off about “abusing” children. They disassociate themselves from boylovers. They repudiate them. They say, “there is no place in the human rights movement for these people.” Gay politicians throw boylovers to the lions every chance they get. All, they say, to prevent children from being abused. Enough is enough. (“Abused: One Boy’s Story,” Unbound, Vol. 1, No. 4, 1987, p. 25, quoted in Jim Peron’s Associations with the “Adult and Child Sex” Movement, Locke Foundation, New Zealand, 2005, p. 28)

Peron, who has also attacked feminists for portraying children as “sexless beings victimized by evil men,” is currently head of the libertarian Moorfield Storey Institute and a columnist for the Huffington Post.

But this is just a small number of extremists, you say? Surely no-one else in the libertarian movement has such vicious ideas?

Actually, the same sentiments have been expressed on our side of the Atlantic. For the UK’s Libertarian Alliance, Brian Micklethwait writes:

Libertarians believe that children should be allowed to go to work, earn money by the work they do, and spend that money the way they like… In a word, they should be free. Free to drag coal along a mineshaft, free to sweep soot out of a chimney or act in a pornographic film, if that is what they judge to be in their interests. (Freedom For Children, Free Life, Vol. 2, No. 1, Winter 1981)

The Libertarian Alliance peddles even more obscene arguments by one Max O’Connor:

Does it really matter whether the child has any understanding of sex? Sex is just another source of pleasure, a potentially potent source perhaps, but basically little different to any other. If there is nothing objectionable about an adult giving a child sweets or toys, why is giving sexual pleasure wrong? It is ludicrous to reply that the adult is “abusing” the child for his or her own pleasure. Such an attitude implies a hatred of all pleasure gained through voluntary exchange to mutual benefit… And why is it abuse? Below the age of twelve or so, a child may not be particularly interested in seeking sexual relations but that doesn’t mean he or she will not voluntarily accept and enjoy them. (Sex, Coercion and the Age of Consent, Libertarian Alliance, 1981, p. 1)

O’Connor (now known as Max More) has since offered a retraction of these remarks. The Libertarian Alliance has never apologised for publishing them.

But these are just isolated examples, right? They don’t represent the opinions of the official libertarian movement, do they?

In fact they do. The Libertarian Party has espoused this position in its past platforms. Until public outcry forced the removal of the relevant planks, it openly advocated (emphases mine) “the repeal of all laws regulating or prohibiting the possession, use, sale, production, or distribution of sexually explicit material,” “the repeal of all laws that restrict anyone, including children, from engaging in voluntary exchanges of goods, services, or information regarding human sexuality,” “the repeal of all laws establishing any category of crimes applicable to children for which adults would not be similarly vulnerable,” and the repeal of child labour laws, which “infringe on [children’s] freedom to work or learn as they choose.” Not for nothing have fellow libertarians described the LP as the Molestitarian Party.

Consider also the case of Mary Ruwart, a well-known libertarian author and activist who ran for the LP’s presidential nomination. During her campaign, statements in one of her books came to light:

Children who willingly participate in sexual acts have the right to make that decision as well, even if it’s distasteful to us personally. Some children will make poor choices, just as some adults do in smoking and drinking to excess; this is part of life.

When we outlaw child pornography, the prices paid for child performers rise, increasing the incentives for parents to use children against their will. (Short Answers to the Tough Questions, SunStar Press, 1998, p. 43)

What happened next reveals the state of mind prevailing in the libertarian movement:

The party’s executive director, Shane Cory… rushed out a press release titled, “Libertarians call for increased communication to combat child pornography.” Cory was attacked by hardliners who saw the release as an endorsement of increased federal prosecuting power. The party refused to vote on a resolution asking states to strongly enforce existing child porn laws. Cory resigned in protest… (Can the Libertarians Go Mainstream?, Time Magazine, May 21, 2008)

Even libertarians who balk at legalising child pornography or child prostitution are prepared to justify child rape in certain circumstances. Walter Block, prolific economist and stalwart of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, contemplates the following scenario (which would not be uncommon in a libertarian society, as libertarians want to eliminate the entire government safety net for the poor):

Suppose that there is a starvation situation, and the parent of the four year old child (who is not an adult) does not have enough money to keep him alive. A wealthy NAMBLA man offers this parent enough money to keep him and his family alive – if he will consent to his having sex with the child. We assume, further, that this is the only way to preserve the life of this four year old boy. Would it be criminal child abuse for the parent to accept this offer?

Not on libertarian grounds. For surely it is better for the child to be a live victim of sexual abuse rather than unsullied and dead. (Libertarianism vs Objectivism, Reason Papers, Vol. 26, Summer 2000, p. 58)

Block’s justifications of rape are not limited to cases of the abuse of starving children. His anarcho-capitalist utopia would also enforce contracts for the sexual enslavement of the mothers of starving children:

there can be no such thing as “involuntary intercourse” for the female slave whose owner is a pimp. In her slave contract, she has already agreed to alienate her body for such sexual services. Yes, it is indeed, and only, rape if her owner does not consent to this sexual intercourse. And, if the woman in question objects, which she has no right to do, ask her if she really wishes she had not made the contract in the first place, and instead allowed her child to die. (Illiberal Libertarians, Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 22, 2011, p. 551)

The depravity of the libertarian movement is no secret in free-market circles. Thus Peter Schwartz of the Ayn Rand Institute, citing actual quotations from libertarians, imagines the horror of a typical day in a libertarian world:

Your seven-year-old daughter describes to you an episode of her being sexually molested; the police say she was merely exercising her “right to noninvasively reject our culture’s morality.” … On the street a pimp offers her candy and toys and gets her to come live with him and to perform for some of his special clients; a judge tells you that pimps are “more honorable than many other brokers” and that children “have a right to seek other guardians.” (Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty, Ayn Rand Institute, n.d., p. 63)

In light of the above, one can only agree with another critic of libertarian ideology who cautions:

If you leave your child with a Libertarian you’d better think twice.