More on the Absurd Idea that Murray Rothbard was a Racist

By Robert Wenzel

I have already commented on the failed attempt by Ian Millhiser to identify Murray Rothbard as a proponent of Social Darwinism. And I continue to warn that there are likely to be more attacks on Rothbard as Rand Paul continues his presidential run.

No doubt, expect more charges to be leveled that Rothbard was a racist. These charges are an urban myth that emerge from Rothbard-haters within the belly of the Beltway, where only statist propaganda is allowed.

It is no surprise that such vicious attacks against Rothbard come from those who kneel before the state. Rothbard once wrote:

There runs through For a New Liberty (and most of the rest of my work as well) a deep and pervasive hatred of the State and all of its works, based on the conviction that the State is the enemy of mankind.

The statists and their agents will pull any trick to discourage people from reading the man who correctly reports that they are evil on earth.

The antidote to this propaganda is, as I have written before, to read Rothbard, himself. Read this man on economics, philosophy and liberty.

As you read and learn from Rothbard, you will also recognize that he was no racist. In fact, the idea is absurd.

When Norman Mailer ran for mayor of New York City in 1969. Rothbard wrote in his publication, The Libertarian Forum, a cover story endorsing the Mailer candidacy. In the endorsement, he hailed Mailer's call to free from jail Huey Newton, the co-founder of the Black Panthers (emphasis in original)

Mailer's other positions flow from his basic libertarian insight. He is opposed to compulsory fluoridation of the water supply and  he favors the freeing of Huey Newton--both libertarian positions in the freeing of of the individual and the community from the boot of the state. (p.17)

In another piece from The Libertarian Forum, in a  comment titled, Notes On Repression: Judicial Fascism,  he called out Judge Julius Hoffman for his treatment of Bobby Seale, the other co-founder of the Blank Panthers, during the trial of the Chicago 8:

What kind of a "free country" is this when a man is forced to accept an unwanted lawyer? Then, when Bobby Seale proceeded to defend his case anyway, Judge Hoffman had Seale gagged and shackled in court, to form a sight strongly reminiscent of Nazi or Soviet "justice". Finally, when Seale tried to escape his bondage and protest his treatment, Judge Hoffman quickly sentenced the prisoner to an unprecedented four years in jail for "contempt of court." (p.73)

Rothbard was always about the individual against the state. In this way, he could write in support of these men and their oppression by the state, but still object to the panther organization itself for "its increasingly thuggish and Stalinoid tendencies." (p.19)

Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher at EconomicPolicyJournal.com and at Target Liberty. He is also author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics