Decades Ago Murray Rothbard Spotted the Populist Movement That Has Put Donald Trump to Power

Murray Rothbard

Murray Rothbard wrote in 1994 in the Rothbard-Rockwell Report:

[I]n recent months, something brand new has happened. A grassroots, right-wing populist movement has been springing up all over the country, a movement that has no connection whatever to Official Conservative elites. Having no connection, the Beltway conservatives can have no control over this new right-wing uprising among the people.

Since it is a genuine grassroots movement, it is necessarily fragmented, unsystematic, and a bit chaotic. Also, since the dominant liberal media don’t want to hear about it, and the Official Conservative movement is frightened of it, we hear very little of its activities.

While at this early stage the movement may be confused and inchoate, it has one magnificent quality which gives it great intensity and abiding strength: a deep and bitter hatred of the despotism exerted over us in so many hundreds of ways by the central government: hatred of politicians, of bureaucrats, and of Washington, D.C.

Note that this intense hatred, this reaction, this “backlash” against the drive toward collectivism, is necessarily and totally out of sync with the Beltway strategy of Official Conservative and Big-Government Libertarian organizations. Among the growing ranks of these grassroots rebels, this entire strategy and way of life is anathema. These heartland rebels are close to the spirit, not of blow-dried Beltway think-tankers, but of the patriots of the American Revolution.

They, in contrast even to the Reaganauts, are genuine revolutionaries; they are ready and willing to tell Washington, in no uncertain terms, to buzz off. To these new American rebels, the ability to sip martinis with Bob Dole constitutes a heavy liability, not an asset. To these great people, having “access” to tyrants means that you are aiding and abetting tyrants.

The recent revolutionary activities have been manifold and widespread. Since we lack complete information, none of us knows their full extent. Probably the first task of right-wing populist intellectuals is to find out what is going on, to get an idea of the full extent of this glorious phenomenon.

In 1994!

But Rothbard also made a point in the same essay that dovetails with my claim during the 2018 presidential race that Hillary over Trump would have been better strategically for liberty. By way of explaining the expansion of the anti-state populist movement, Rothbard wrote:

Where does this marvelous and burgeoning new spirit come from? There was an obvious foreshadowing in the anti-politics and anti-Washington mood of 1992. An example is the flawed and incoherent Perot movement, the major virtue of which was not the erratic leader but the spirit of the rank-and-file militants, who were looking for some sort of anti-Washington Change. But that doesn’t go very far in explaining the new mass movement, which is far more right-wing, and far more intensely focused, than anything Perotvian two years ago.

No, it seems clear that the trigger for the emergence of this brand-new movement has been the total loathing welling up in America for President and Mrs. Clinton, their persons, their lives, their Cabinet, their entire rotten crew. In all my life, I have never seen such a widespread and intense hatred for any president, or indeed for any politician.

Unlike attacks on poor Joe McCarthy, this is not a hatred whipped up by the elites. Quite the contrary, the liberal elites are desperately trying to cover for Clinton, and are bewildered and appalled by the entire phenomenon. In a recent column, Thomas Sowell noted the perplexity of the media, and replied, in effect, that the reason the Clintons are widely “perceived” as power-hungry sleazes is because they are power-hungry sleazes.

But instead of getting the hated Hillary in 2018 which would have allowed us to focus the anti-left masses on liberty, we have the intellectually empty, Three Card Monte, combover president, who has snuffed the flame of liberty from the core of the right-wing masses.

They follow him down any statist hellhole. It is Mr. Magoo with a following. Which is resulting in the fire in the belly of the Leftists and the kids moving in that direction in the most extreme way.

 -RW