Why You Need to Read Target Liberty to Understand the Developing Socialist Movement

By Robert Wenzel

The current issue of New York Magazine asks the above question and answers it this way (more than two years after President Trump was elected)

DSA’s growth — from 6,000 to 56,000 in a little more than two years — didn’t happen during the financial crash, or Occupy Wall Street, or even Sanders’s campaign. It happened after Donald Trump was elected.

As I point out in the post below and have done so at other times, immediately after the election on November 10, 2016, I wrote:

Heading into the election, I felt that for strategic reasons Hillary Clinton was the best alternative for libertarians. Not because she is good on many issues, she is not, but because she would come with a ready-made opposition that would listen to libertarian arguments against her.

It would have been a great opportunity to reach out to Trump supporters and spread the libertarian message. That opportunity is now gone with the Trump victory. Trump supporters are rabid, they will likely follow him down almost any hell hole.

These people are not going to listen to our arguments for smaller government. Their man is in power.

There will be opposition to Trump but it will be coming from the Left, not the Trump right.

The Left is all about expanding the state. Thus, it will be very difficult to reach out to these people and present state shrinking anti-Trump ideas. They are a perfect target for the socialists...

 The socialists are going to experience a boom in followers under Trump.

Then there is this inside New York as a lead to the full inside story:

Do I have to remind you that I warned about AOC before she was elected and before MSM knew who she was?

Weeks before she won the Democratic nomination, I wrote:

There is a very dangerous political race in the Bronx.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appears to be a very, very skilled demagogue, making promise after promise to voters and no analysis of how the promises are going to be paid for. And for good measure, she promotes a broad-based hate of the rich....She may not win this time, but she will be trouble in the future. She is attacking the crony Democratic Party from the extreme left.

This was weeks before Brian Stelter, the senior media correspondent for CNN and host of the CNN program "Reliable Sources," even knew who she was:

The first time I heard of @Ocasio2018 was 8 days ago... when Crowley sent a SURROGATE to debate her instead of showing up in person.

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 27, 2018

But now we have a bigger problem. The buffon Trump is coming out against socialism (at the same time he says he will provide a government healthcare plan).

The last guy libertarians should want attacking socialism is Trump.

As I write below, if Trump could be controlled, I would consider him to be Deep State controlled opposition to liberty. Since he can't be controlled, he is uncontrolled opposition to liberty who is sucking up and destroying true opposition to the state.

And since the kids see him for the buffon he is, they are looking for an alternative and most conservatives and libertarians are silent about this clown. Thus, the kids turn to the only radical opposition they see, the extreme left.

It is a horrific. Trump should be viciously attacked on an intellectual level by libertarians at every opportunity so that some kids become aware there is a radical opposition to Trump that is not statist.

It is very, very bad out there.

Society is very complex so you can't know for certain how things will develop but from what can be seen now, it does not look good.

Here's my latest report on the size of AOC's Twitter following: It is now at 3.4 million. She appears to be gaining about 100,000 followers per week.

Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of EconomicPolicyJournal.com and Target Liberty. He also writes EPJ Daily Alert and is author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank and most recently Foundations of Private Property Society Theory: Anarchism for the Civilized Person Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics and on LinkedIn. His youtube series is here: Robert Wenzel Talks Economics. More about Wenzel here.