Sentences I didn’t expect to read when I woke up this morning.
Here's a pretty old post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 13 years ago, in 2011, on the World Wide Web.
They include:
My alleged defects are an interest in the work of Kevin Carson and the other mutualist libertarians, and accusations that I am a national socialist.
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Well, any right-thinking (double entendre intended) libertarian should be a fan of Carson.
The whole article reads like one of those old Objectivist schisms that crop up from time to time.
So did you believe Gabb’s version of events RadGeek? It seems these kind of petty politics always seem to crop up, but I don’t know if it’s human nature or just something about the current world that promotes power-hungry fanatics.
I was slightly put off by his explanation that other people are “envious” of his achievements and just out to get him. Aside from the implication that unmarried people are worthless, are his numerous books and journal articles really so amazing that people are trying to attack him over it?
Gabriel,
I found that section pretty odd, and somewhat off-putting, too. I guess maybe it was partly motivated by the extent to which people have been attacking him as, in various respects, incapable? But I doubt that that’s the best way to reply to such attacks, and in any case I hadn’t read the attacks before I came to Gabb’s response, so it just seemed very odd from where I was sitting.
As for whether he’s right or whether his critics are, I don’t really know — although I will say that if someone is simultaneously being blasted (1) for giving too much credence to Kevin Carson and other mutualist writers; and also (2) for being a supporter of the BNP, then either (a) that person really is an odd duck (much odder than most ducks I know); or else (b) his critics probably have failed, somewhere along the line, to exercise enough care and charity in their reading of what he has had to say. On that narrowly limited issue, I am pretty sure that Gabb is probably being unfairly attacked by his critics. About the broader issues of organizational politics, financial malfeasance, the last wishes of Chris R. Tame, etc., I just don’t know.
The broad question of organizational politics has some bearing on the libertarian view which I find pretty disturbing. After all, what’s the good of having a society free of force if nothing gets done because of petty politics and squabbling? Or for that matter, think of PDA’s that engage in generational feuds along racial or territorial boundaries that never get resolved peacefully.
Speaking for myself, I don’t seem to get along well with these types of people. But I don’t know if it’s just me, or that the kind of person who would lie, rage, and throw tantrums over a 49% stock share doesn’t like people in general.
So Sean Gabb is one of those “Commie-Nazis” McBain battled against?
Keith Preston?
I do think Keith Preston merits the title if anyone does.
That said, unlike with Gabb, you don’t generally see those two criticisms coming from the same group of people in Preston’s case. The people who bag on his NA-sympathies don’t generally also complain about his sympathies for Carsonian economic views, at least as far as I know.