A little while ago, I came across this disgusting and reprehensible tweet:
The Free State Project is a movement that encourages people to move to New Hampshire to form a community based on respect for individual rights and liberty. The Free State Project is a good thing, because individual rights and liberty are good.
Criticizing the Free State Project would be bad and wrong in itself. Yet this person (and I use that term loosely) not only chose to dedicate his entire Twitter account to opposing the Free State movement, but also chose to insult this movement in cruel and profane terms and to wish death upon its members because they hold different political beliefs than he does. For obvious reasons, this is unacceptable and horrifying.
Additionally, it makes no sense that this person criticizes the Free State Project for being reactionary. According to Dictionary.com, “reactionary” means “of, pertaining to, marked by, or favoring reaction, especially extreme conservatism or rightism in politics; opposing political or social change.” To be reactionary is a neutral, not negative, attribute. There is nothing about liberalism that makes it superior to conservatism, there is nothing about leftism that makes it superior to rightism, and there is nothing about supporting political or social change that makes this superior to opposing political or social change (change is inherently neither positive nor negative; whether it is good or bad depends on what is being changed and how).
What makes even less sense is this person’s claim that “libertarianism is a Trojan horse for fascism.” Libertarianism is a political ideology that favors individual rights and liberty, while fascism is a political ideology that favors the maximum amount of state control. These two political ideologies are polar opposites, so it is ludicrous to claim that one could be a Trojan horse for the other.
Furthermore, by claiming that “every non-troglodyte hates you,” this person is calling every person who does not hate the Free State Project a troglodyte. This is both false and highly insulting.
Finally, this person calls members of the Free State movement “trashy rich people,” which is highly insulting, and writes that members of the movement “come here to defund the public sector,” as if that is somehow inherently a bad thing, which it is not.
In conclusion, the fact that someone would choose to write a post such as this is appalling. Words and attitudes like these are unacceptable and must be condemned at every opportunity.