Kremlintarians: Russia’s war on Ukraine exposes great libertarian divide

Russia’s war on Ukraine has exposed a deep divide within the world of libertarians, who typically champion personal rights and freedoms while opposing the excessive powers of government.

For libertarians in countries near Russia, like Poland and Estonia, the Kremlin’s action in Ukraine is government tyranny writ large. The Russian state has invaded Ukraine, unleashing a wave of violence that deprives Ukrainians of their right to live peacefully.

However, for many American libertarians, Russia’s actions are no reason to back the United States’ support for Ukraine. In fact, sometimes, they’re a reason to troll Ukraine’s leader.

American libertarians – highly sceptical, even cynical, of the role of government – are ambivalent about US wars. In 2003, libertarian-leaning Ron Paul, then a congressman, famously bucked his fellow Republicans in their rush to war against Iraq, attracting a surge of support.

For libertarians in or near Ukraine, the convergence of views from American libertarians and the Kremlin is a source of irritation, if not alarm.

When President Joe Biden spoke in the days after Russia invaded Ukraine, the Libertarian Party, which has a small but vocal membership of more than 600,000, called on Americans to hold the White House accountable “for demonstrating a commitment to peace”.

Russia has divided the libertarian world between East and West.Credit:The Age

Before acknowledging that the Ukrainian people are “willing to sacrifice everything for sovereignty, for independence — for liberty”, it calls first for Americans to have solidarity with the Russian people.

“The Libertarian Party stands in solidarity with the Russian people who widely reject the actions of their tyrannical president, and who do not want war with their Ukrainian neighbours.”

Before Russia’s invasion, the Libertarian Party even urged “the United States to leave NATO in light of escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine” – an anti-NATO position not unlike the Kremlin’s.

This philosophical convergence hasn’t gone unnoticed by libertarians in Eastern Europe, some of whom have taken to calling their American peers “Kremlitarians”.

In April, Liberty International, a libertarian group with members worldwide, held an online meeting on the issue. Poland-based president Jacek Spendel said that as libertarians who loved freedom, of course they would side with the Ukrainians who were being invaded by Russia. But “apparently big libertarian [media] outlets, especially in the US, have a different opinion on this,” Spendel said. These outlets and institutions sought to place blame for the invasion outside the Kremlin.

Ukrainian-American Roman Skaskiw first discovered the intra-party contradiction in 2014 when Russia staged its initial invasion of eastern Ukraine. Skaskiw spoke up about the Kremlin’s actions to fellow libertarians, only to find, in dismay, that many American libertarians actually defended Russia and Vladimir Putin.

Skaskiw dubbed them “Putin’s libertarians”.

He wrote: “I have been horrified by the libertarian coverage of events in Ukraine. Much of it has been such an uncritical parroting of Kremlin propaganda…that I can’t decide whether the authors suffer a bias toward contrarian narratives or are on the Kremlin payroll.”

Libertarians on the Ukraine war.Credit:Reddit

Christopher Devine, a political science professor at the University of Dayton in Ohio, says it does “seem at times that the US Libertarian Party’s position on matters of war and peace would be music to an aggressor’s ears – in this case, Vladimir Putin’s”.

However, “we have to be careful not to confuse this with support for the aggressor, or a defence of their actions, in the same way that we wouldn’t want to have confused opposition to the Iraq War with support for Saddam Hussein.”

Devine says it’s true “that some Libertarians seem sympathetic to Putin or at least hypercritical of the Ukrainian government” – the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire Twitter account quite infamously tweeted a picture of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with a Hitler moustache.

Devine says not all libertarians in the US are so accommodating. For example, the US party’s former chairman has been vocal in his support for Ukraine.

American Libertarians embrace and celebrate the language and imagery of “freedom”, including images like the liberty torch and, sometimes, the Gadsden Flag showing a snake with the words “Don’t Tread on Me”.

Yet hostility to Western governments often sees US libertarians make the same political arguments as the Kremlin, even if the motives of Americans (isolationism, distrust of government) are different from the Kremlin (competition with the West).

In a recent example, tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has been described as “libertarian”, shared posts on Ukraine criticised as carrying the Kremlin’s talking points.

“We troll Zelensky because he is a darling of the media and US war machine,” said the owner of the New Hampshire Libertarian Party account, which described the Ukrainian PM as “as much an instigator of conflict as the Russians are”.

“We’re not fans of Putin any more than we were fans of Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein,” the account holder said. “Only a fool ignores the reasoning of his adversaries.”

Portland State University geographer lecturer and author Alexander Reid Ross said libertarians often lump “together all media in the West into one ideological position [“the Western media”], thus creating the opportunity to create something that would rival it.”

Elon Musk: a few ideas about peace in Ukraine, which echo the Kremlin’s view.Credit:AP

“It’s a dishonest staging, in my view,” said Ross.

“I think the Ukraine War shows their efforts at irony as foolish and wrong-footed.”

Oklahoma-based Libertarian Party Treasurer Todd Hagopian rejected the notion that American libertarians were accommodating to the Kremlin.

“Libertarians are not soft on Putin. We would be just as, if not more, vehemently against sending tens of billions of dollars of aid to Russia if the roles were reversed.”

Meanwhile, some libertarians suspect the Kremlin has effectively co-opted their American political brethren.

Skaskiw says the co-optation of the ideology is not unique to Western libertarianism. Russia builds ties with Western communists, traditionalists, nationalists, ethno-nationalists and activists of many stripes. Russia accepts any ideology, religion, or belief as long as it can be “subservient” to a powerful tsar.

“That is their real ideology, and why it appears to Westerners that they have many contradictory beliefs – they’re just costumes.”

One Polish libertarian, who spoke to The Age and Sydney Morning Herald on the condition of anonymity said he personally suspects that the Russians hope to direct the American libertarians to push for isolationism

“Basically speaking they want to use libertarians as waiters in a restaurant that would bring them the world on a silver plate as a main course.”

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