Throughout history, the struggle between oppression and liberty has been a recurring theme. Yet clashes between differing interpretations of freedom are far less common. In theory, well-defined property rights should naturally align with free-market principles, just as decentralized governance should support, rather than contradict, economic openness. Likewise, individual privacy from government and governmental transparency are both core elements of a free society, seemingly without inherent contradictions.

It is crucial to stress that principles such as decentralization, economic openness, and privacy are not the be-all and end-all of a libertarian society. While they generally improve freedom, they are not always in perfect harmony. A libertarian government may need to be centralized in certain cases to prevent a decentralized unit from infringing on individual liberty. This tension is the very subject of this article. The cryptocurrency ecosystem, acting as a dynamic laboratory, reveals that the implementation of these fundamental values can lead to direct conflicts, forcing communities to choose which aspect of freedom to prioritize.

The cryptocurrency ecosystem, however, arguably the freest financial system ever created, demonstrates that these foundational aspects of freedom can sometimes come into direct conflict. In the cryptocurrency ecosystem, network splits (forks) occur when community disagreements become irreconcilable, reflecting not only technological disputes but also deeper social and political values. Each fork highlights how ideological perspectives shape technological decisions.

Blockchain networks function as decentralized financial structures where any modification requires broad consensus (Alden 2023; Ammous 2018). This characteristic slows down changes but ensures long-term stability. But this conservatism generates an inherent tension between four pairs of opposing values that influence the evolution and identity of cryptocurrency networks.

First, there is a tension between value storage and payment functionality. Blockchains in general, and bitcoin in particular, are viewed as systems that ensure stable value preservation over time, similar to gold or other value stores (Antonopoulos 2017, 2022). Here, it is crucial to distinguish between bitcoin’s short-term price volatility and its ideological role as a store of value. While many view bitcoin as a speculative asset due to its price swings, a significant portion of the community holds the belief that its fixed supply serves as a hedge against currency devaluation and inflation. From this perspective, bitcoin is a financial tool for long-term value preservation—similar in principle to gold—despite the practical realities of its price fluctuations.

Many economists agree that money’s function as a store of value is inextricably linked to its being a medium of exchange—more precisely, there is a tension between ease of payment and network security. The bitcoin community often presents this tension as a direct conflict. For example, prominent bitcoin advocates such as Michael Saylor argue that bitcoin is a store of value but not—nor should it be—a day-to-day currency. They differentiate between bitcoin’s property of storing value and its function as a payment network. Bitcoin’s potential as an efficient tool for quick and inexpensive transactions depends on a technological flexibility that allows for market adjustments, and this creates a fundamental tension between viewing blockchain as a stable financial asset versus its use as a daily payment method.

Second, there is a conflict between decentralization and flexibility. Decentralization is a core value in the crypto world, ensuring resistance against centralized control or leadership failures. But decentralization itself limits the ability to implement substantial technological changes and respond quickly to urgent issues. This tension stems from questions about whether and how system flexibility can be incorporated without compromising the network’s decentralized nature.

Of course, one might argue that the ideal monetary layer would be immutable and not require technological changes, since trust in monetary tools often relies on their resilience to change. One of gold’s core strengths, after all, is that its resiliency is unrivaled. But bitcoin is more than just a digital accounting unit; it also functions as a payment layer, and other blockchains include complex smart contracts. Therefore, just as payment methods had to evolve to meet market demands during the gold standard era (e.g., checks and telegraphs), blockchains must be able to adapt to the exponentially growing demands of a digital economy where payments occur on a decentralized network.

Third, there is a struggle between institutional certainty and enlightened censorship. One of blockchain’s key advantages is its inherent certainty—an immutable history providing a reliable foundation for economies and users. In extreme cases, however, questions arise about whether “enlightened censorship” (such as intervention to prevent fraud or recover stolen funds) can be legitimate and not undermine network trust and the principles ensuring its unique character.

To be more specific, traditional, centralized payment systems (such as banks or credit companies) allow transactions to be undone. On the one hand, this feature reassures honest customers that funds can be retrieved in the event of theft or fraud—a clear societal benefit. On the other hand, this same power of intervention means that a transaction is never truly final. The ability of a central authority to reverse or block a payment, even with the best intentions, is a form of censorship over the financial record. This is a core point of contention in the cryptocurrency space, where some communities prioritize an immutable, final ledger over the ability to correct for fraud.

Fourth, we observe a balance between transparency and privacy. Blockchain networks are inherently capable of recording every transaction transparently and immutably, providing absolute transparency. Alongside this transparency, however, is a growing demand from many users for privacy protection, especially in an era where government surveillance and access to user data have become sensitive issues. The tension between these two values significantly shapes the development and philosophy of competing blockchain networks.

The following sections will explore how these struggles manifest within the cryptocurrency realm. Since they revolve around money and control, they are often accompanied by politics, censorship, ego, and propaganda behind the scenes. This article, however, focuses solely on the philosophical foundations of these debates, avoiding an examination of the internal politics and specific events that sparked them. The mere existence of such conflicts within a free society is a novel and fascinating phenomenon that warrants greater attention.

We do not claim that either the blockchain splits themselves or the subsequent market outcomes are solely driven by ideology. Indeed, it is beyond the scope of this article to quantify the degree to which these events were influenced by economic incentives, technical decisions, or market dynamics such as path dependency and brand recognition. Our purpose is to document a unique phenomenon: the ideological disputes that accompanied every major blockchain split. The debates surrounding these conflicts consistently used libertarian principles as their primary framework, each opposing side arguing from a different, yet valid, philosophical stance.

Figure 1.The main splits, or forks, in the ethereum (left) and bitcoin (right) ecosystems

Why Forks Are Always Accompanied by Conflicts

A network split, or fork, is a fundamentally different event from the creation of a new, competing product. The creation of a new, unrelated coin is akin to a company launching a product in a competitive market—consumers are free to choose their preferred option, and there is no inherent conflict within the community. When a blockchain network forks, on the other hand, it is an existential event that affects all participants. As Metcalfe’s law suggests, a network’s value is proportional to the square of its users. Consequently, splitting a payment network immediately results in a significant loss of value for both resulting networks. Moreover, a split introduces substantial technological risks, since it’s unclear how old software and hardware will function in the new environment. Experts often advise users to avoid making transactions in the hours following a fork due to these risks. Furthermore, centralized entities such as exchanges may not support the new coin, leading to a loss of value for their customers.

Because of these grave perils, a network fork is something that all developers and most users actively try to avoid. The costs are typically too high for a community to risk it lightly. Therefore, when a split does eventually occur, it is almost always a result of a genuinely unresolvable conflict—a dispute so fundamental that the community would rather risk the destruction of the network than compromise.

In the following sections, we will analyze the main ideological conflicts that led to the primary blockchain splits. While these decisions may appear at first glance to be ordinary engineering or management choices, we contend that they are unique and have a deep connection to libertarian thought for the following reasons.

First, in every conflict, both sides grounded their arguments in libertarian principles. For example, instead of promoting their coins on the basis of superior technical properties such as affordability or ease of use, they invoked concepts such as empowering the free market, improving decentralization, protecting individual privacy from government surveillance, and enforcing governmental transparency. This represents a significant departure from typical industrial disputes.

Second, the crypto ecosystem—particularly in its early, unregulated stages—provided a unique and priceless opportunity to investigate how a free community decides between different libertarian arguments.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, some of these conflicts were not about quantitative trade-offs (e.g., more versus less transparency, as seen in BSV’s split from BCH). Instead, they involved a choice between two foundational principles that, under normal circumstances, libertarians would consider nonnegotiable. The ethereum–ETC conflict is a prime example: the community was forced to choose between the absolute immutability of a contract and the imperative to protect private property. The fact that a community was compelled to make a choice between these two pillars of freedom is a phenomenon that warrants deeper philosophical analysis.

The Ethereum Network Split—Immutability versus Private Property Protection

Ethereum, launched in July 2015, was created to facilitate the development of decentralized financial applications, eliminating the need for intermediaries such as banks and exchanges (Buterin 2014). It pioneered the use of smart contracts—self-executing code designed to enforce contractual terms automatically, without human intervention or the risk of external manipulation (Szabo 1997; De Filippi and Wright 2018).

In 2016, the DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) emerged as one of the most ambitious and innovative projects on the ethereum blockchain (Siegel 2016). Designed as a decentralized governance model, it operated without a traditional hierarchy, relying on a smart contract as its constitutional framework. Investors contributed funds in exchange for voting rights, allowing them to participate in decision-making. Less than a month after its launch, however, a vulnerability in the smart contract was exploited, enabling an attacker to siphon approximately $50 million of the $150 million invested in the project (Popper 2016; Price 2016).

The DAO was governed by a smart contract, a piece of self-executing code designed to follow a two-step process when investors wanted to withdraw their funds:

1. Send the requested amount of ether to the person’s account.

2. Update the person’s balance on the contract to reflect the withdrawal.

A bug in the code, however, allowed a user to trigger the first step repeatedly before the second step (updating the balance) could be completed. An attacker exploited this flaw by writing code that created a loop continuously requesting money. Because the smart contract was busy fulfilling the initial withdrawal request, it never had the chance to update the attacker’s balance to zero. This enabled the hacker to siphon off a significant portion of the DAO’s funds by repeatedly “withdrawing” money that the contract still believed was held. The breach sent shockwaves through the ethereum community, triggering a deep crisis that called into question the network’s core principles and security.

This incident raised two fundamental moral and technological questions. The first concerned whether the exploit constituted theft. One perspective argued that the attacker did not breach the system or violate the contract’s code but instead operated within the parameters it allowed, potentially making the exploit a legitimate application of the contract’s rules. But the majority of the community viewed it as theft, emphasizing that it inflicted harm on users and undermined the project’s intended fairness. This perspective was based on the fact that most investors were not programmers and were therefore unaware of the vulnerability; their expectation was that their money was secure. In judicial terms, the action was seen as inconsistent with the spirit of the contract, and the fact that people were ignorant of a technical flaw did not justify another party’s taking their money.

The second question was whether it was right to intervene and change the blockchain’s history. Ethereum was designed to be an immutable ledger, meaning its records were permanent and unchangeable. This immutability was a core principle, guaranteeing the network’s reliability and decentralization. But reversing the hack to return the stolen funds would directly violate this principle. This created a conflict between upholding the core value of immutability and remedying an injustice caused by the exploit.

The ethereum classic (ETC) community adhered to the principle that code is the ultimate law, rejecting any modifications even in exceptional cases. This stance was based on core principles such as nonintervention—ensuring the blockchain remained resistant to censorship and immutable; code sovereignty—treating smart contracts as binding agreements where investment risks fell on users who failed to identify vulnerabilities; and technological freedom—maintaining nonintervention as an absolute principle of user autonomy, even at the cost of financial loss or reputational damage. Additionally, altering the blockchain was seen as a corrupt practice that benefited individuals closely associated with the Ethereum Foundation.

Conversely, the ethereum (ETH) community prioritized the network’s reputation, fearing that the DAO exploit—by which significant funds were stolen from ethereum’s flagship project—could damage confidence in the ecosystem. While ETH advocates agreed that “code is law” and that smart contracts define property rights, they viewed the DAO hack as evidence of the market’s immaturity in adopting these new legal frameworks. In their view, the blockchain’s existing rules were insufficient to fully protect market participants’ property rights, justifying intervention beyond the blockchain itself.

This approach, supported by the majority of the community (including ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin), emphasized that justice and fairness demanded a reversal of the exploit to correct user harm. This perspective prioritized the community’s responsibility to protect investors from unforeseen vulnerabilities and showed a willingness to compromise on immutability to achieve broader goals, such as restoring confidence in the network.

The split, referred to as a “fork” in cryptocurrency terminology, resulted in the creation of two independent networks (Siegel 2016; Cuen 2017): ethereum (ETH), where the majority chose to reverse the effects of the exploit, and ethereum classic (ETC), where a minority remained committed to the original blockchain principles, rejecting any form of modification or censorship (see the left part of figure 1).

This division underscores a fundamental tension between two competing priorities: strict adherence to blockchain-determined property rights and the imperative to protect users from harm. Both factions uphold the principle of blockchain-based property rights, but their disagreement lies in how to resolve conflicts between internal blockchain rules and broader notions of universal property rights. The ETH community maintains that, in certain circumstances, ensuring universal property rights justifies altering the blockchain’s internal rules.

As of this writing, the ETC network represents only about 1 percent of ethereum’s total market capitalization, with its market share continuing to decline (see table 1). This trajectory signals a decisive victory for the ETH community.

Table 1.Relative market cap in current ethereum ecosystem

Source: January 2025 data from CoinMarketCap (n.d.).
Note: Percentages represent the relative share of total market capitalization within the ethereum ecosystem (ETH + ETC).

The Bitcoin Network Split—Decentralization versus Market Flexibility

In 2017, the bitcoin network faced a significant growth crisis. The increasing number of network transactions created a bottleneck, resulting in high fees and exceptionally long transaction confirmation times. Many had already pointed out the network’s scaling issues several years earlier, but by 2017, the problems had become too severe to delay a solution any longer.

The primary dispute centered on how to address this growth. One approach suggested a direct technical solution through increasing the block size to allow more transactions in each block (De Filippi and Wright 2018; Bier 2021). While this would improve short-term network capacity, it raised concerns about long-term effects on network decentralization and security. The alternative approach proposed second-layer solutions, such as the lightning network (Poon and Dryja 2023; Antonopoulos 2022) and liquid network (Vigna 2015; Ver and Patterson 2024), which would move most transactions to secondary networks above the main blockchain while maintaining small block sizes. This controversy extended beyond technical considerations to encompass ideological values—particularly regarding decentralization, flexibility, and free market principles (Popper 2016, 2017; Reiff 2024).

The dispute gave rise to two main ideological camps, each proposing different solutions based on distinct values. Bitcoin core (BTC), led by bitcoin’s original development team, focused on preserving the existing block size. The team’s primary concern was to maintain decentralization by keeping the block size limit at 1 megabyte. They argued that increasing the block size would significantly expand the blockchain’s overall volume, requiring nodes to store more data. This, in turn, could lead to centralization, since smaller nodes running on affordable hardware might struggle to keep up. Additionally, delays in transmitting large blocks across the network could disrupt consensus, potentially causing undesirable network splits.

BTC preferred developing second-layer solutions, such as the lightning and liquid networks, that would enable fast and cheap transactions outside the main chain. This approach maintained a small, manageable main blockchain while addressing high transaction volume needs. They viewed block size limitation as an internal regulation that would prevent powerful entities from controlling the network and thereby prioritize decentralization and network security even at the cost of higher fees and longer transaction settlement times (Popper 2017).

In contrast, bitcoin cash (BCH) was founded on the belief that second-layer solutions were superfluous technological complications. They advocated increasing block size to meet market demand (initially to 8 megabytes), which would allow more transactions per block and reduce congestion and fees. BCH supporters viewed the 1 megabyte limit as an arbitrary restriction preventing the network from reaching its growth potential. They believed market forces, not developer decisions, should determine block size on the basis of demand to promote a more dynamic, market-based, less conservative approach (Popper 2016).

The conflict reached a critical point in mid-2017. To prevent a costly fork, two opposing camps met in New York to forge a compromise known as the New York agreement. The proposed protocol was to activate SegWit, a bitcoin upgrade that would enable second-layer solutions and simultaneously raise the block size from 1 to 2 megabytes. This compromise aimed to satisfy both sides: the small-block camp would get SegWit and the big-block camp would get a block size increase. But the agreement failed to gain the necessary consensus from the wider community. Lacking broad support, many of its initial backers eventually dropped out, and the planned upgrade was ultimately abandoned, making the split inevitable.

The disagreement proved irreconcilable, leading to the August 2017 split into two separate blockchain networks. BTC maintained its focus on decentralization and network security, while BCH pursued network capacity and market-based flexibility (see the first split on the right part of figure 1). This division reflects the ongoing tension in the crypto world between absolute decentralization principles and market demand responsiveness (Reiff 2024).

BTC has maintained its position as the leading cryptocurrency, benefiting from strong public trust, robust decentralization, and growing institutional adoption. At the time of writing, the BCH market cap is less than 0.4 percent of that of BTC (see table 2). BTC’s network, however, faces ongoing challenges with scalability, high fees during peak periods, and reliance on external solutions. BCH, while offering faster and cheaper transactions, has struggled to achieve widespread adoption and faces persistent questions about long-term network centralization and security risks.

These divergent paths continue to shape both networks’ development and serve as inspiration for further blockchain innovations. The split demonstrates how different interpretations of freedom—whether as structural decentralization or market flexibility—can lead to fundamentally different technological and economic approaches.

The Bitcoin Cash Split—Privacy versus Transparency

In 2018, approximately one year after the bitcoin split that created bitcoin cash (BCH), this network experienced another significant division stemming from a fundamental ideological dispute. The split emerged from differing approaches to the basic values of privacy and transparency—two competing principles in the cryptographic world.

At the heart of the controversy were two distinct interpretations of freedom. Key advocates within the bitcoin cash (BCH) community prioritized privacy as a means of protecting user rights and shielding individuals from government interference (Bitcoin Cash Podcast, n.d.). In contrast, supporters of bitcoin Satoshi vision (BSV) emphasized complete transparency as a mechanism for public oversight and corruption prevention (Brothwell 2023).

While technical factors, such as block size and network expansion strategies, played a role, the core ideological divide centered on the trade-off between privacy and transparency. But the differences between these networks extended beyond this issue. The BSV community opposed modifications made to the original bitcoin protocol by both the BTC and BCH networks, believing that immutability was essential to maintaining sound money (hence the origin of its name) (Lewis 2024).

To be more specific, the BSV community’s philosophy was to restore what they believed was the original design of bitcoin, not to further modify it. The bitcoin script opcodes that had been disabled or restricted in BTC and BCH were reenabled in BSV to restore the original protocol’s full functionality for more complex applications. In particular, the BSV team opposed the 1 megabyte block size limit, which was added in 2010 as an antispam measure. Proponents of BSV believed this limit was supposed to be a temporary measure and that the original protocol was designed to be a global electronic cash system capable of handling a huge volume of transactions directly on the blockchain. They argued that to compete with traditional payment systems, the block size needs to be essentially unlimited.

BCH maintained that privacy is a fundamental condition for ensuring user freedom, serving as the primary defense against government intervention and political coercion. The BCH network mixed certain mechanisms to obscure transaction data and prevent tracking. BCH wallets offered built-in privacy enhancement functions (for example, the Electron Cash wallet), reflecting a commitment to financial anarchism and the goal of removing governments and banks from the monetary market. According to this perspective, privacy is crucial for a free market where no central entity can monitor or control transactions.

Conversely, the BSV community viewed transparency as a fundamental principle for ensuring public freedom, advocating for an approach that enabled comprehensive tracking of all network activities. To support this vision, BSV significantly increased the block size, allowing all transactions and relevant information to be recorded on the blockchain. This approach aimed at creating a highly inclusive infrastructure where a massive blockchain could encompass worldwide financial activities. With all blockchain activities fully traceable, even governments would be unable to operate without complete transparency (Brothwell 2023). BSV’s philosophy prioritized public transparency over private anonymity, arguing that when all information is openly accessible, governments are compelled to act more fairly and efficiently, driven by the fear of corruption or abuse being exposed.

The split created two ideologically opposed networks, each pursuing a different direction (see the second split of BCH in figure 1). The BCH community continued to advance privacy and market determinacy as central values, developing technological mechanisms to ensure user anonymity. This network maintained support among users who saw privacy as a condition for economic freedom. It focused on creating a free market for daily payments, where government intervention was impossible.

The BSV community focused on developing transparent infrastructures on a large blockchain—including broader applications such as data storage and various institutional uses—aiming to create a completely transparent economic system. It attracted users and entities that valued oversight and control rather than personal privacy.

At the time of writing, the BSV network constitutes only about 10 percent of the BCH market cap (see table 2).

This dispute between BCH and BSV transcends mere technological differences, reflecting deeper ideological and moral considerations about the nature of freedom itself (Bier 2021). BCH’s approach views privacy as a tool for preserving individual liberty and preventing oppression, arguing that true freedom exists only when users have complete control over their personal and financial information. BSV sees transparency as a value protecting society as a whole. It seeks to create mechanisms that ensure fair governance and accountability, thereby prioritizing collective freedom over absolute individual privacy.

These competing visions demonstrate how decentralized technologies serve as a testing ground for fundamental value questions that continue to shape the future of cryptocurrency networks. The tension between individual privacy rights and collective transparency benefits represents a broader societal debate about the balance between personal freedom and public accountability in the digital age.

The Splits Persist

Although the splits mentioned above were the most well-known and had the largest impact, they were by no means the last. Shortly after the BTC–BCH split in 2017, BTC underwent yet another fork. In this case, a group of developers modified the mining algorithm to prevent ASIC mining (an application-specific integrated circuit miner is a hardware device specifically made for mining cryptocurrencies) and allow users to mine with their CPUs and GPUs instead. This change was intended to improve network decentralization, bitcoin mining having become the exclusive domain of experts (Reiff 2023). The resulting cryptocurrency, bitcoin gold (BTG) (see BTC’s second split in figure 1), was largely ignored by the bitcoin community, and as of this writing, its market capitalization remains negligible compared to BTC (~0.005 percent—see table 2).

In late 2018, another split occurred within the BCH network. A team of developers proposed allocating 8 percent of mining rewards to fund development (Popper 2016; Shen 2020). Most of the community, however, viewed this as a form of forced taxation, which contradicted BCH’s anarchic ethos. As a result, the new coin (BCH ABC) was largely rejected by users and miners and is now practically nonexistent.

Clearly, debates over freedom and governance will continue to be a defining feature of the crypto world for a long time to come.

Table 2. Relative market cap in the current bitcoin ecosystem

Source: January 2025 data from CoinMarketCap (n.d.).
Note: Percentages represent the relative share of total market capitalization within the bitcoin ecosystem (BTC + BCH + BSV + BTG).

In the context of decentralized networks, the concept of a winner is not as clear as it is in a centralized world. There is no mechanism to completely eliminate an unsuccessful blockchain as long as its advocates remain committed to it. Furthermore, a definitive analysis of why a particular coin won and how it did so—considering factors such as network effects, miner support, and user adoption—is a vast and complex topic beyond the scope of this article. Our focus remains on the ideological clashes themselves. Nevertheless, the adoption dynamics are so dramatic and powerful that they cannot be ignored, and for completeness, we present the results below.

There are numerous ways to quantify the success of a blockchain fork, including metrics such as the number of active users, the computing power devoted to mining, the volume of transactions, and the level of real-world adoption. But these metrics are all deeply interconnected with a coin’s market capitalization. For instance, the value of a network is not just about the number of its participants but also the wealth they hold. Similarly, the total value transferred over a network is often more important than the raw number of transactions. Ultimately, a coin’s market capitalization serves as the most comprehensive indicator of its overall network value, security, and market confidence; therefore, in our analysis, we will use this metric to evaluate the relative success of each fork.

An analysis of market capitalization in both the bitcoin and ethereum ecosystems reveals dominant networks within each. ETH accounts for over 99.0 percent of ethereum’s total market capitalization, while BTC commands more than 99.6 percent of bitcoin’s market cap, along with the vast majority of its hash power. In contrast, bitcoin cash (BCH), which once held over 20 percent of bitcoin’s market capitalization at its 2017 peak, has declined to less than 0.3 percent today. This shift reflects a decisive market preference. The key question is, Why did these particular options prevail, and what are the broader implications for financial sovereignty, freedom, and decentralization?

The cryptocurrencies that emerged as dominant were not necessarily those that adhered most strictly to the original protocol—otherwise, bitcoin SV would have prevailed. Nor were they the ones that prioritized blockchain immutability, as ETC did. They were not even the versions supported by the original developer teams (e.g., BCH ABC and BCH) or those favored by mining companies (e.g., BCH).

Instead, the dominant cryptocurrency in each ecosystem appears to be the one endorsed by the majority of developers. These developer communities communicate their preferences and rationale through social media, forums, and official publications, shaping public perception and influencing adoption. Once a particular coin gains the most developer and community support, network effects drive further capital inflows, reinforcing its position. At that point, adherence to the “original” vision or even technical superiority becomes secondary to liquidity, ecosystem growth, and widespread adoption.

In the discussion above, we do not claim that the majority of developers’ adoption is the sole reason for a coin’s success. It is an observed fact that in each case, the majority of developers were on the winning side, but this does not diminish the influence of miners, node owners, users, and exchanges. It only suggests that developers’ control over the core code and communication channels is a powerful force. Furthermore, as Popper (2016, 2017) shows, developers who held control over influential websites and bitcoin forums used censorship to suppress rival coins. Sadly, ideological and technical debates often deteriorated into personal attacks. Instead of questioning the technical properties of the new coins (especially BCH and BSV), influencers and ordinary people began attacking the coins’ main advocates, such as Roger Ver for BCH and Craig Wright for BSV. While these are clearly ad hominem attacks, the accusations gained traction, and the resulting bad publicity at least partially affected the new coins’ adoption.

Ultimately, as explained in the first section, the network effect is a powerful force that compels participants to adopt the dominant coin, even if they ideologically favor another. The overwhelming dominance of BTC and ETH over their forks is a complex phenomenon that will require extensive future research to fully understand.

Conclusions and Summary

The major splits in ethereum, bitcoin, and bitcoin cash illustrate that the cryptocurrency ecosystem is more than a space for technological innovation; it is a testing ground for fundamental questions about freedom and governance. These developments provide insight into tensions between competing values such as decentralization, privacy, transparency, and control—tensions that shape how technological decisions are made and implemented.

Figure 2. Five pillars of freedom, manifested in the cryptocurrency wars

In the cryptocurrency space, freedom emerges as a multidimensional concept rather than a singular notion. While all networks pursue freedom and agree on its fundamental components, each prioritizes a specific element above all others (see figure 2):

• BTC: Decentralization, which serves as a safeguard against government control

• BCH: Market determinacy, emphasizing the removal of artificial constraints

• ETH: Protection of universal property rights

• ETC: Immutability of contracts

• BSV: Governance transparency

Disputes within the cryptocurrency space highlight the deep connection between technology and social values. Every technical decision—whether regarding block size, consensus mechanisms, or smart contracts—reflects underlying priorities. The trade-offs between censorship resistance and efficiency, immutability and community protection, or personal privacy and public transparency illustrate how blockchain architectures embody distinct social and political philosophies. Looking ahead, these conflicts and forks demonstrate that blockchain networks are not perfect solutions to all economic and societal challenges. Instead, they serve as platforms for experimentation, allowing diverse technological and ideological models to be tested under real-world conditions. The decentralized nature of cryptocurrency fosters an open market for competing ideas, resulting in an ecosystem where different approaches to freedom, decentralization, and efficiency coexist.

In traditional centralized organizations, technological decisions are typically made internally by executives or technical leadership. In contrast, within the cryptocurrency ecosystem, these discussions are often decentralized, involving developers, miners, investors, and users. Moreover, unlike in centralized environments where only one solution is ultimately adopted, the cryptocurrency space allows multiple ideas to exist simultaneously. Competing networks can evolve in parallel, each serving different communities and use cases. This structure enables individuals to choose the technological framework that best aligns with their values while observing the evolution of alternative approaches. As a result, the cryptocurrency ecosystem functions as an open laboratory for financial and technological freedom.

Importantly, the emergence of a dominant network does not diminish the significance of competing ideologies. Rather, it suggests that unifying those who prioritize financial sovereignty under a single, widely adopted cryptocurrency may be more effective in preserving freedom than any individual ideological stance. As we emphasized at the beginning of the article, the fork itself imposes a heavy cost on users, miners, and developers. The fact that the community eventually converged on a single coin in each case indicates that the conflicts were not entirely irreconcilable. The financial cost of a split, which is a burden on freedom in its own right, proved to be a more significant factor than an uncompromising adherence to a specific ideology of freedom.

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What makes a city real? Age? Decay? A certain ratio of marble to rust? By most standards, Dubai should qualify: it has millions of residents, functioning infrastructure, economic activity, and culture. Yet people keep calling it fake.

“Dubai is fake” has become almost reflexive, especially among influencers, travel vloggers, and cultural critics. The phrase now functions less as an observation and more as a social performance: a way to demonstrate you’re worldly enough to prefer “authentic” places, which usually means older ones with peeling paint and slower rhythms. It signals sophistication, as if spotting artificiality proves depth of character.

Stand at the base of the Burj Khalifa and look up. Glass, steel, ambition made vertical. A shopkeeper from Kerala sells you water. A taxi driver from Pakistan navigates streets that didn’t exist when he was born. Critics point to the luxury hotels that feel like movie sets, the imported workforce building towers they’ll never afford to enter, the indoor ski slope in the desert. They see wealth cosplaying as culture. No ancient quarters, no castles, or decades-old chic avenues . They look at Dubai and all they see is just an army of cranes along Sheikh Zayed Road lifting steel into a skyline that didn’t exist a generation ago.

But I would like to suggest that the statement reveals more about the speaker than about the city itself. When someone calls Dubai fake, they’re really saying: “This makes me uncomfortable.“ The city built too fast, accumulated wealth too quickly, and skipped the centuries-long process that grants other places the appearance of authenticity. But speed doesn’t equal falsehood. Every city you consider authentic was once exactly like Dubai. The difference is you weren’t there to watch it being built.

Accelerated Modernity

Some high-paced cities make people uncomfortable because they break an unspoken rule: that modernity should arrive slowly. The city built in 40 years what others took centuries to develop. It didn’t wait for nature, time, or decay to grant it character. It skipped straight to the skyline. That speed feels suspicious to those who equate worth with age.

When people say “Dubai is fake,” they’re really expressing anxiety about modern life: about construction outpacing culture, about wealth overtaking history, about ambition untempered by tradition. Yet they conveniently ignore that every place they now praise for its charm was once accused of the same thing. Paris was mocked as sterile and artificial after Haussmann demolished its medieval neighborhoods and rebuilt it with geometric precision. Manhattan was criticized as soulless steel, a grid of commerce without culture. Venice was once reclaimed marshland, an audacious engineering project that seemed to defy nature itself. New York was once a commercial colony, criticized for its crass mercantilism. Las Vegas was dismissed as gaudy excess. Even the beloved neighborhoods of Barcelona were controversial modern interventions into an older cityscape. Everything old was once aggressively new.

The city’s real transgression is that it’s happening now, in real time, in full view. The city serves as a laboratory for what the world looks like when ambition no longer apologizes for itself. That visibility is precisely what makes it different. The unfinished nature of the place makes us deeply anxious.

“Authentic”?

Dubai represents the visible process of becoming. Most cities disguise this process with age. They had centuries to grow into their myths, to transform construction sites into heritage sites, to let time smooth over the rawness of their origins. Dubai hasn’t had that luxury yet. The concrete is still wet, the glass still gleaming, nothing yet weathered into stone.

Walk into any corner shop in Deira and you’ll meet someone from Kerala or Karachi who arrived five years ago with a plan. The city is full of people mid-transformation, mid-ambition, mid-reinvention. This visibility doesn’t make the place artificial. The process just hasn’t been hidden yet.

Those who crave the “authentic” usually mean “old.” They want cracks in the wall, stories passed down through generations, the comforting illusion that a place has always been there, emerging fully formed from history rather than from human ambition and capital.

Reality in Progress

Dubai’s supposed “fakeness” is simply what authenticity looks like before it hardens with time. The city shows us the real in progress, the real before nostalgia has done its work of smoothing edges and obscuring origins. Dubai refuses to pretend that places emerge organically rather than through deliberate acts of construction and capital.

Perhaps Dubai bothers us because it forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: the places we romanticize were also once new, also once purely commercial, also once accused of having no soul. We want cities to feel organic, but we also want air conditioning. We crave authenticity, but we appreciate infrastructure. We praise slow growth, but we benefit from rapid development. Dubai simply refuses to hide these contradictions.

The city tells the truth about what it is: a bet on the future, built at the speed of ambition rather than the pace of tradition. Whether that makes you uncomfortable or excited says more about your relationship with change than it does about Dubai itself.

The Verdict of Time

In another fifty years, when the towers have weathered and the stories have accumulated, when today’s audacity has become tomorrow’s heritage, Dubai will likely be praised for its authenticity. The immigrant who arrived with nothing and built a business will become a founding myth. The cranes on Sheikh Zayed Road will be remembered as symbols of an era. The artificial palm islands will be historic landmarks.

I suspect that the only thing that will have changed is time and our willingness to forgive a city for once being new.

Dubai isn’t pretending. We are.

After my recent piece on Israeli investment psychology, several readers questioned my characterization of Israelis as "notorious workaholics." Some argued that working long hours doesn't automatically make someone a workaholic, or that Israeli productivity levels don't support this claim.

I think they're looking at the wrong metrics.

The workaholic label encompasses both the raw hours worked and the psychological relationship to work, leisure, and identity. Israelis not only work significantly longer hours than their European counterparts, but also exhibit the deeper psychological patterns that define true workaholism. On every measure that matters for diagnosing workaholism, the data strongly supports what anyone who's spent time around Israeli business culture already knows: Israelis have developed one of the most work-centric cultures in the developed world.

Long Work Hours

Let's start with the basic numbers. Israelis work 1,880 hours annually, placing them among the top in the OECD and well above the average of 1,683 hours.¹ That's over 500 more hours per year than Germans work.² But raw hours alone don't prove workaholism. What matters is why those hours exist and how people relate to them.

While Israel's legal framework provides fewer vacation days than European countries,³,⁴ the real issue runs deeper. Even when Israelis do get time off, research shows they struggle to use it effectively. The legal minimums become irrelevant when the culture itself resists taking breaks.

The Vacation Guilt Data

Studies found that 28% of Israeli workers report working during their vacation "often or almost always," and 37% admitted to working while on sick leave.⁵ We're talking about people who can't truly unplug, not just answering the odd urgent email.

Compare this to Nordic countries like Denmark, where cultural norms actively discourage staying connected to work during time off,⁶ or even to American "hustle culture," which at least recognizes vacation as legitimate downtime, even if people don't always take it.

Research reveals an internalized anxiety about being idle, where taking truly unproductive leisure time creates internal psychological conflict. The pressure comes from within rather than external social stigma against taking holidays.

Work as Identity

The deeper evidence for Israeli workaholism lies in how work functions psychologically. Multiple studies show that for most Israelis, career represents identity, purpose, and societal contribution rather than simply earning money.

Work-identity fusion characterizes true workaholism: when career becomes central to who you are as a person rather than something you do to fund your life. The mission-driven intensity that characterizes Israeli startups and businesses extends beyond achieving goals to validating personal worth through professional achievement.

Israeli investment behavior provides a clear example. People literally cannot justify leisure travel unless it serves some business purpose. By purchasing property in vacation destinations, Israelis reframe leisure trips as business activities: checking on investments, meeting with management companies, evaluating market conditions.

Sophisticated psychological permission to relax reveals just how deeply work-centric the culture has become.

A friend who visited me in Tbilisi earlier this year brought this dynamic to life. After just a few days in Georgia, he confessed to feeling genuinely uncomfortable with how relaxing the city was. For the first time in years, he was waking up naturally without an alarm clock. He kept instinctively reaching for his sidearm, a reflexive security check that had become second nature in Israel but felt absurd in peaceful Tbilisi.

Most telling was his reflection on Israeli domestic life: "If you don't come home at 9 pm completely exhausted, you feel embarrassed looking your wife in the eye." I see this as a post-kibbutz mentality: the lingering cultural expectation that individual worth must be demonstrated through visible daily contribution to the collective.

The cultural requirement to display fatigue as proof of productivity shows how deeply work has become embedded in Israeli identity validation.

The Military Service Factor

Israeli workaholism has specific cultural roots that distinguish it from American hustle culture or East Asian work intensity. Mandatory military service in the Israel Defense Forces socializes young adults into mission-focused thinking where personal needs are subordinated to collective objectives.⁷

The IDF's structure encourages junior officers to question their superiors and improvise solutions under pressure, fostering an environment where competence and initiative are valued more than rank or age.⁸ Military service creates adults who are comfortable with responsibility and ambiguity but who struggle to separate personal time from duty time. The flat hierarchies and improvisational approach that characterize Israeli businesses reflect military-derived comfort with intense, mission-driven work.⁹

Unlike cultures where long hours are imposed by external authority or economic necessity, Israeli work intensity comes largely from internal motivation and mission-driven purpose. People work long hours because they believe deeply in what they're doing, rather than because they have to.

Classic workaholic psychology.

The Productivity Paradox Actually Proves the Point

Critics point out that despite long hours, Israeli productivity per hour (GDP per hour worked) sits well below countries with shorter workweeks. At $60.51 per hour, it trails Germany's $93.81 and Denmark's $99.23.¹⁰ According to McKinsey analysis, Israel's labor productivity is approximately 40% lower than the average of the top half of OECD economies.¹¹

The productivity gap actually reinforces the workaholic diagnosis. Critics who point to low productivity as evidence against the workaholic label miss the point entirely. True workaholics often work inefficiently because they equate time spent with value created. They stay late due to psychological compulsion rather than task requirements, because leaving feels like giving up.

Israeli work culture prizes improvisation over processes, debate over efficiency, and mission completion over time management. The cultural traits that drive Israel's innovation success (chutzpah (audacity), flat hierarchies, and preference for improvisation over rigid processes¹²) are often at odds with the systematic efficiency that drives productivity in large, established industries.¹³ Cultural characteristics foster world-class innovation in the technology sector but hinder the systematic efficiency required to boost productivity across the broader economy.¹⁴

The fact that Israelis work 500+ more hours than Germans while producing less economic value per hour suggests exactly the kind of inefficient intensity that characterizes workaholic behavior.

Culture vs. Balance

The workaholic label becomes even clearer when you examine Israeli approaches to work-life integration. Rather than maintaining boundaries between professional and personal spheres, Israeli culture encourages their merger.

Colleagues frequently form core social circles. Professional networks overlap heavily with personal relationships. Work-related conversations continue through family dinners and social gatherings.

Work-life fusion occurs when professional identity becomes so central that non-work activities feel secondary or require justification. The approach goes beyond the healthy work-life integration promoted by modern management theory, where personal and professional needs are balanced.

The Stealth Wealth Connection

Israeli investment behavior provides additional evidence. The preference for "stealth wealth" over conspicuous consumption reflects a culture where professional achievement matters more than material display. Wealthy Israelis drive modest cars and wear casual clothes because external status symbols carry less weight than work-based identity validation.

The culture measures worth primarily through professional contribution rather than lifestyle choices; almost textbook workaholic prioritization.

Different from Other Long-Hour Cultures

Israeli workaholism differs from other long-hour cultures in important ways:

Mexico's long hours (2,207 annually) stem largely from weak labor protections and economic necessity, not psychological attachment to work. [15]

South Korea's work culture (1,872 hours) has generated significant social pushback and legislative reform efforts, indicating cultural recognition that the model is problematic. [16]

Israel shows no comparable cultural movement to reduce work intensity. Long hours aren't seen as a social problem to be solved but are actively revered as a natural expression of mission-driven culture.

What Seems Obvious

The feedback questioning Israeli workaholism misses how the syndrome actually manifests in modern knowledge economies. We're not talking about sweatshop exploitation or poverty-driven necessity. We're looking at psychological inability to separate personal worth from professional achievement.

Israelis work long hours, struggle to disconnect during time off, integrate work identity into personal relationships, justify leisure through business purposes, and maintain intense mission focus even when it reduces efficiency. That goes well beyond "working hard" into textbook workaholism adapted to a prosperous, innovation-driven economy.

The productivity paradox only reinforces the diagnosis. If Israelis were simply rational economic actors maximizing output, they would work fewer, more efficient hours like their German or Danish counterparts. Instead, they work longer hours that generate less value per hour because the hours themselves serve psychological rather than purely economic functions.

The workaholic culture shapes everything from investment decisions to social relationships to vacation planning. Understanding it means recognizing how deeply work-centric values influence behavior in ways that pure economic analysis misses.

The data confirms this reality completely.

When my friend visited Tbilisi, he couldn't handle how peaceful it was. Years of Israeli work culture had rewired him to expect constant pressure. Without that familiar stress, he felt lost. The biggest shock wasn't the safety or the relaxed pace - it was discovering he'd internalized the belief that being tired proved his value.

Remarkably enough: Israelis buy vacation properties because they literally cannot justify pure leisure time. Every trip needs a business angle, every break requires productive purpose. The "vacation guilt factor" drives billions in real estate investment flows. Property investment becomes the bridge between personal enjoyment and professional validation, allowing vacation while maintaining productivity credentials.

So, the next time you meet an Israeli investor wearing a wrinkled shirt and asking detailed questions about rental yields, remember: you're not just looking at someone evaluating property. You’re watching someone grapple internally with the psychological puzzle of justifying a break.

Sources

1. Ranked: Average Working Hours by Country - Visual Capitalist. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-average-working-hours-by-country/

2. Germany Hours worked - data, chart | TheGlobalEconomy.com. https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Germany/hours_worked/

3. Israel Leave Laws & Holidays - Vacation Tracker. https://vacationtracker.io/leave-laws/asia/israel/

4. List of minimum annual leave by country - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country

5. Work Culture in Israel: A Comprehensive Guide - LearnWorlds. https://aliyah.learnworlds.com/blog/work-culture-in-israel-a-comprehensive-guide

6. Work life balance | The key to the most efficient workers - Denmark.dk. https://denmark.dk/society-and-business/work-life-balance

7. Start-up Nation - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start-up_Nation

8. Excerpt: Start-Up Nation - Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/excerpt-start-nation

9. Cultivating Company Culture: The Secret Sauce of Successful Israeli Tech Startups - Newxel. https://newxel.com/blog/cultivating-company-culture-israeli-tech-startups/

10. List of countries by labour productivity - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_labour_productivity

11. Israel's productivity opportunity | McKinsey. https://www.mckinsey.com/il/overview/israels-productivity-opportunity

12. Chutzpah - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chutzpah

13. 'Israel's secret is its chutzpah': the role of chutzpah in Israel's entrepreneurship and innovation scene - an interpretive essay - IDEAS/RePEc. https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/ijbglo/v34y2023i1p58-74.html

14. Low productivity: A systemic problem across Israel's economy | Taub Center. https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/low-productivity-a-systemic-problem-across-israels-economy/

15. Mexico, an OECD Country with the Longest Working Hours - Databoks. https://databoks.katadata.co.id/en/employment/statistics/66a0e84c3b05e/mexico-an-oecd-country-with-the-longest-working-hours

16. OECD Average Annual Hours Worked: Comparative Analysis and Implications - KDI. https://www.kdi.re.kr/eng/research/focusView?pub_no=18199

Israeli investors operate differently than their global counterparts. They combine emotional destination preferences with rational geopolitical analysis, prioritize professional management over hands-on control, and measure success not by absolute returns but by relative advantage. For political theorists, sociologists, and international business professionals alike, understanding these psychological drivers reveals insights about modern diaspora economics, cultural identity, and cross-border capital flows.

The Misunderstood Investor

Walk into any high-end property showcase in Miami, London, or Dubai, and you'll likely encounter them: casually dressed individuals asking sharp, detailed questions about yield calculations and management structures. They might arrive in an economy rental car, wearing wrinkled shirts and practical shoes. Many sales professionals make the mistake of dismissing them as tire-kickers.

That's a $2.3 billion mistake.

These are Israeli investors, and they represent one of the most misunderstood yet significant demographics in international real estate and investment markets. Political theorists misinterpret their motivations as purely economic or security-driven. Sociologists underestimate how deeply cultural values shape their investment patterns. Industry practitioners consistently underestimate their economic impact because all three groups fundamentally misread Israeli investment psychology.

The gap in understanding costs money and limits intellectual insight. Israeli investment behavior offers unique insights into how modern identity, geopolitical awareness, and wealth management intersect in ways that traditional frameworks don't capture. Recent academic research confirms what practitioners have long observed: Israeli investors represent a unique behavioral archetype that scholars now term the "Sabra Investor." Their decision-making stems from a complex interplay between hyper-modern economic thinking and deep-seated cultural forces.

Work-Identity Dynamic

To understand how Israelis invest, you must first understand how they view work. For most Israelis, career represents identity, purpose, and societal contribution rather than just earning money. This creates a work-identity dynamic: individuals who are intensely focused on professional achievement but remarkably indifferent to displaying wealth.

The stealth wealth phenomenon is particularly pronounced among Israeli investors. Unlike their European or American counterparts, wealthy Israelis rarely signal their financial status through conspicuous consumption. You'll find tech entrepreneurs worth tens of millions driving 10-year-old Toyotas and wearing the same casual clothes to board meetings and beach vacations.

This cultural trait creates significant blind spots for international investment professionals. The Israeli prospect who shows up to your luxury property presentation in sandals and a polo shirt might have more liquid capital than your flashiest client. Missing this dynamic means missing major opportunities.

The roots of this behavior run deep. Israel's transformation from a socialist, state-controlled economy to a prosperous free-market system occurred within living memory. Many successful investors today experienced both scarcity and abundance, creating a society that values substance over style. The mandatory military service in the Israel Defense Forces further reinforces these traits, normalizing informal communication and mission-focused thinking over hierarchical display.

Emotional-Rational Investment Framework

Israeli investment behavior follows a unique dual-track psychology that I find can only be described as "emotionally driven in a rational way." This represents sophisticated risk assessment disguised as lifestyle choice rather than contradiction.

The emotional component is straightforward and self-evident: Israelis invest where they like to vacation. They gravitate toward destinations where they feel welcome, comfortable, and respected. This often correlates with countries that maintain neutral or positive relationships with Israel.

The rational component runs deeper: Israelis interpret hospitality toward Israeli visitors as a proxy for political stability and growth potential. A country that welcomes Israeli tourists and treats them well signals governmental competence, cultural openness, and economic opportunity, while the opposite might signal negative growth prospects.
This pattern is evident in Israeli investment flows to destinations like Greece, where Israelis have found "cheap property, nightlife and political refuge" where they are treated well, leading to concentrated investment flows.¹ Similar dynamics drive investment in Cyprus and Georgia, where favorable policies and cultural hospitality create attractive conditions for Israeli capital.

What's particularly striking is how Sabra investors seem to get there first. By the time major investment funds start taking serious looks at Cyprus or Georgia, Israeli money has already been flowing there for years. They don't wait for institutional validation or comprehensive market reports. If a place feels right and the numbers work reasonably well, they move. This gives them access to better deals and prime locations before prices rise with mainstream attention.

This explains why Israeli investment flows often precede broader institutional investment by several years. They identify emerging markets through cultural reconnaissance rather than chasing yields. Cross-cultural psychology research validates this approach. Israeli culture shows remarkable comfort with uncertainty and ambiguity, particularly evident in their acceptance of high startup failure rates and preference for flexible, improvisational approaches over rigid planning.² This creates investors comfortable with entrepreneurial risk but hypersensitive to existential threats.

The "Good Deal" Psychology

Perhaps the most crucial element for international professionals to understand is Israeli negotiation psychology. Israelis are willing to pay premium prices, but they absolutely refuse to be taken advantage of.

Relative advantage matters more than absolute price. An Israeli investor will happily pay €3,000 per square meter for a property when comparable projects cost €2,000, provided they secure some form of preferential treatment: a better unit selection, additional amenities, or favorable payment terms that weren't offered to others.

The key insight is that on a subconscious level, Israelis measure deal success not against absolute market prices but against what they perceive others paid for similar opportunities. They want to know they "won" the negotiation, even if they paid more than they might have elsewhere.

This psychology stems from the cultural concept of being a "friar" (sucker), the ultimate social embarrassment in Israeli business culture. The fear centers on being outsmarted rather than overpaying. A counterpart who can withstand intense bargaining and respond with equal logic demonstrates reliability and competence.

The Hebrew principle of "dugri" (straight talk) underlies this approach. Israelis communicate frankly and expect reciprocal transparency. They may interrupt, challenge assumptions, and use confrontational language that's intended as factual rather than personal. Foreign professionals who mistake this directness for hostility miss the underlying message: Israelis are stress-testing the relationship to ensure it can handle future challenges.

Vacation Guilt Factor

Here's where Israeli psychology gets particularly interesting: the intersection of workaholism and investment strategy.

Israelis are notorious workaholics, which creates internal conflict about leisure time. Repeated vacations to the same destination generate guilt about "unproductive" time unless there's a business justification. Investment provides that justification.

By purchasing property in their preferred vacation destinations, Israelis can reframe leisure trips as business activities: checking on investments, meeting with management companies, evaluating local market conditions. It’s an unusal psychological permission to relax that also drives a preference for dual-purpose investments: properties that serve as vacation homes but generate rental income when unoccupied. The appeal goes beyond returns and extends to emotional comfort with downtime.

This "dual-utility" approach is particularly pronounced among Israeli investors. Unlike other diaspora groups who primarily seek cultural reconnection with ancestral homelands, Israelis establish forward-looking optionality. They create alternatives rather than returning to roots.

The Delegation Paradox

Israeli investors present an interesting management paradox: they want complete oversight but minimal operational involvement.

It’s confusing for most, but for the Sabra investor, it makes perfect sense:

Israelis will gladly pay premium fees for professional property management, rental services, and maintenance, provided these services deliver genuine value and complete transparency. They understand that effective delegation requires proper compensation and want their money "working" even when they're not personally involved.

However, they're hypersensitive to any signs of mismanagement or breach of trust. Missing deadlines, poor communication, or financial irregularities trigger immediate and often permanent relationship termination. The cultural background of living in a high-trust, small society makes Israelis both eager to delegate and quick to withdraw when trust is broken.

This paradox reflects deeper cultural values that may be derived from Jewish traditional law (Halacha), which emphasizes both wealth creation and ethical stewardship. Research shows these values directly influence investment decisions, with studies finding that Jewish business angels are guided by principles like "higher meaning" and positive social impact in their investment choices.³ The Talmudic teaching to divide wealth among land, commerce, and cash reserves provides cultural precedent for diversification, while principles like tzedek (justice) and tikkun olam (repairing the world) filter investments through ethical lenses.

It may also help explain why Israeli investors often prefer developments with strong governance, professional management, and community benefits over purely extractive investments.

Security Imperative Lies Beyond Financial Returns

What distinguishes Israeli international investment most fundamentally is the Security Imperative: a deep-seated drive to create tangible safe havens abroad. It’s a sophisticated risk management approach born from tragic cultural history as well as living in a region of persistent conflict.

Israeli investors exhibit a fascinating duality: the same individuals comfortable with 90% start-up failure rates exhibit extreme risk aversion regarding personal and family security. The uniquely Israeli risk appetite results in a bifurcated portfolio strategy that can be understood as "the fortress model."

The High-Growth Engine consists of domestic and global technology investments, venture capital, and innovation-sector exposure. This is "risk capital" where losses are psychologically acceptable.

The Defensive Moat comprises international real estate and tangible assets in stable jurisdictions. This is "security capital" where preservation is paramount.

It’s predicated on existential hedging rather than traditional diversification. The international property serves multiple functions: vacation home, rental income generator, potential future residence, and citizenship pathway. The "optionality value" of these assets often justifies purchase decisions that seem financially suboptimal but make perfect sense when the full utility function is considered.

Network Effect, Herd Behavior

What makes Israeli investment particularly concentrated is the powerful role of social networks and herd mentality. The concentration of Israeli investment in specific foreign destinations creates significant expatriate communities, particularly in cities like Larnaca, Limassol, and Paphos in Cyprus, Bangkok & Koh Samui in Thailand, etc. which feature Israeli-run real estate agencies, Hebrew-speaking services, and religious and cultural hubs like Chabad houses.⁴

Community-building creates a powerful feedback loop where the presence of a trusted Israeli network significantly reduces perceived risk and transaction costs for new investors. Trusted networks provide informal channels for due diligence, legal advice, and property management, mitigating the challenges of investing in unfamiliar markets. As behavioral finance research shows, this can trigger a "herd effect" where investors follow the actions of a larger group, accelerating capital flows into these network-approved locations.⁵

Noticing the Broader Pattern?

Israeli investment behavior reflects broader cultural values that have implications beyond finance: professional excellence, skepticism of flashy presentations, preference for substance over style, and the integration of personal relationships with business decisions.

Behavioral patterns reveal how a society balances individual success with collective identity, how geopolitical awareness shapes personal decisions, and how traditional diaspora concepts evolve in a globally connected world.

For Political Theorists: Israeli investment patterns are indicative of a simple truth, mostly overlooked: how even wealthy, globally mobile citizens carry their national identity with them when they invest. The old models assume that capital flows wherever returns are highest, but Israeli behavior proves otherwise. Geopolitical consciousness shapes where money goes, sometimes more than pure economics. When Israelis choose Greece over higher-yielding markets because they feel culturally comfortable there, they're revealing that political stability and cultural affinity matter enormously in capital allocation. International financial flows aren't just about numbers; they're about where people feel safe and welcome.

For Sociologists: The way Israelis handle wealth tells us something fascinating about how different societies approach success. Most theories assume that prosperity leads to showing off, but Israeli culture works differently. Wealth doesn't automatically mean flashy displays or conspicuous consumption. Instead, cultural values reshape how economic success gets expressed. Israeli "stealth wealth" reveals that societies can maintain their core values even as they accumulate money. The integration of leisure and investment decisions shows how work-centric cultures adapt to prosperity without losing their identity. Different societies may develop completely different relationships between having money and showing it.

For Investment Professionals: Israeli investors control significant capital and make sophisticated decisions, but you'll miss them entirely if you use traditional approaches. The usual wealth management playbook focuses on status symbols and relationship entertainment, which completely misses this demographic. These investors evaluate opportunities through three different lenses at once: financial returns, personal security, and ethical alignment. Their networks run through military service and tech connections, not country clubs or social circuits. Success requires rethinking everything: how you identify prospects, build relationships, and structure deals. The casually dressed person asking technical questions may have more investable assets than your flashiest client.

Making sense of the Sabra Investor means recognizing how sophisticated modern investors integrate identity, values, and strategy in ways that pure economic models cannot explain. In an increasingly connected yet fragmented world, such cultural intelligence becomes essential for anyone serious about understanding investment behavior.

Sources

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3. "Religious Values and Business Angel Investing," Dialnet, 2025. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/10026433.pdf

4. "Israelis Are Storming the Real Estate Market in Cyprus," BMBY, 2025. https://bmby.co.il/real-estate-market-in-cyprus/

5. "Do Behavioral Biases Affect Investors' Investment Decision Making? Evidence from the Pakistani Equity Market," MDPI, 2023. https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9091/11/6/109

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In 1930, German-Jewish philosopher Theodor Lessing published a book that would cost him his life. Der jüdische Selbsthaß (Jewish Self-Hatred) offered a devastating psychological portrait of Jews who turned against their own people, desperate to win acceptance from a society that would never truly embrace them. Nearly a century later, his insights feel unnervingly fresh.

Lessing wrote from painful firsthand observation. He had watched brilliant Jewish intellectuals attempt the impossible: trying to escape antisemitism by becoming Judaism’s harshest critics. The strategy never worked. Their gentile audiences might applaud the performance, but they never forgot who was performing.

Consider Lessing’s most haunting example: Otto Weininger, a young Viennese intellectual who wrote Sex and Character in 1903. The book’s antisemitic vitriol could have been penned by Wagner himself. Weininger converted to Protestantism, declared Jews inherently incapable of creativity or genuine morality, and then, at just 23, shot himself in the room where Beethoven died.

His suicide revealed the terrible paradox at the heart of self-hatred: You can change your religion, your philosophy, even your name, but you cannot change how others see you. Weininger’s desperate attempt to transcend his Jewishness by denouncing it only underscored what he was trying to escape.

But Lessing’s genius lay in recognizing this as more than individual tragedy. He identified a recurring pattern: the minority intellectual who gains status by performing a kind of public ethnic suicide, becoming the “good Jew” who confirms every prejudice of the majority culture. These figures didn’t merely distance themselves from Judaism; they competed to denounce it most eloquently, most savagely, most “objectively.”

The performative nature was key. This wasn’t quiet assimilation or private doubt. It was public theater, with the self-hating Jew cast as both prosecutor and defendant, offering themselves up as proof of their people’s failings.

Watch certain Jewish academics, activists, and cultural figures discuss Israel today. Measured criticism of specific policies reflects healthy political discourse in any democracy. But notice when the rhetoric shifts into something darker: when Israel becomes not just flawed but uniquely evil, not just wrong but the world’s primary source of suffering. When Jewish self-determination itself becomes the problem.

The patterns Lessing identified ring familiar:
Selective moral outrage: Why is Israel labeled “genocidal” while actual genocides barely merit a mention? Why does one country’s military response generate more fury than systematic slaughter elsewhere?
Adoption of eliminationist language: Embracing slogans like “from the river to the sea” that explicitly or implicitly call for Israel’s destruction, not reform.
Performative identity: Using Jewish identity as a cudgel (“As a Jew, I am ashamed…”), weaponizing their background to add weight to their condemnation.
Asymmetric skepticism: Dismissing antisemitism from their allies as overblown while detecting it everywhere among their opponents.

Lessing understood this wasn’t really about political positions but about psychology: the desperate attempt to purchase acceptance by offering up one’s own people as a sacrifice. He would immediately recognize the Jewish academic who builds their career on comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, or the Jewish activist who finds “liberation” in movements that openly call for Israel’s destruction.

The cruelest irony? It never works. The antisemites who applaud these performances don’t suddenly accept their Jewish performers as equals. They simply use them as shields and weapons (“Even the Jews agree with us!”) while the self-hating Jew remains forever outside, belonging neither to the people they’ve rejected nor the people whose approval they seek.

Even Bernie Sanders, who has spent years condemning Israel, calling its actions immoral and illegal, demanding ceasefires, opposing defense funding, and leading efforts to block U.S. arms transfers, discovered this bitter truth. Despite his consistent criticism of Israel, he was still heckled and branded a “genocide supporter” by pro-Palestinian activists. The approval he sought remained forever out of reach. [See featured video from Tamer Masudin’s Instagram]:

Lessing himself was murdered by the Nazis in 1933, despite (or perhaps because of) his penetrating analysis of Jewish identity. His death underscored his own thesis: understanding self-hatred doesn’t cure it, and eloquence about antisemitism doesn’t protect you from it.

His work reminds us that this phenomenon isn’t about legitimate political disagreement. People of good faith can and should debate Israel’s policies, just as they debate any nation’s choices. But there’s a difference between criticism and the kind of performative self-flagellation Lessing described.

Today’s version plays out on social media, in academic conferences, in activist spaces. The technology is new but the underlying drama remains unchanged: the impossible attempt to escape oneself by denouncing one’s origins, and the inevitable discovery that the exit door was always an illusion.

What Lessing understood in 1930 remains true today: You cannot purchase acceptance by offering your people as a sacrifice. The minority member who internalizes the majority’s hatred and redirects it at their own doesn’t transcend their identity. They simply become trapped in a more painful version of it.

In our current moment, as debates about Israel grow increasingly poisonous, Lessing’s century-old insights offer both a warning and a strange comfort. This pattern is not new. It has been documented, analyzed, and understood. And perhaps in understanding it, we can begin to move beyond it, toward conversations about Israel and Palestine that are rooted in genuine moral concern rather than the ancient psychological drama of self-hatred.

[Originally published here]

My latest piece, 'No, Iran’s Strikes on Israel Aren’t Legal', was just published here.

Have a read.

A bizarre sociological phenomenon that defies explanation: 150,000 Israelis abroad are rushing, insisting, and making supreme efforts to secure limited spots back to a war zone.

Let this sink in for a moment:

In every other conflict, "evacuation" means removing civilians from dangerous areas, with people making supreme efforts to flee the line of fire. In Israel, we speak of "evacuation to Israel," meaning arrival into the conflict zone. Israelis are perhaps the only people in the world willing to pay thousands of dollars to return to crossfire.

Logic dictates fleeing from danger. While the rest of the world desperately seeks to escape explosions and sit comfortably outside the battlefield, Israelis desperately seek to return to explosions just to sit comfortably in shelters like sitting ducks at a shooting range.

The statistics are clear: Most don't have babies waiting at grandma's house or emergency family situations. Most aren't religious with deep spiritual connections to the land and holy sites. For most, the flight costs more than several additional weeks in an Airbnb, and their work productivity will suffer anyway from rising anxiety and frequent shelter visits. Many workplaces have shifted to remote work that's entirely possible from abroad. We have no guarantee their workplace won't be classified as "non-essential" or place them on unpaid leave given the circumstances.

Most aren't operationally necessary either. In fact, they constitute a significant net burden on infrastructure and systems, especially if they get hurt or injured.

We've eliminated all the 'immediate suspects' the media echoes: patriotism, altruism, finances, operational necessity, emergency presence, and messianism.

What remains is something rarely acknowledged and seldom discussed in secular-mainstream discourse. It sits at the very foundation of Israeli identity. Every Israeli, to varying degrees, feels it, thinks it, believes in it, and yearns for it, whether indirectly or directly, consciously or subconsciously:

'Shared fate.'

The need to be "part of it," even when the "it" may be a terrible, helpless, and horrifying situation - so long as it is shared.

Or in cynical terms (which I prefer): the willingness to absorb suffering, provided the environment absorbs similar suffering, coupled with symmetrical guilt when that environment suffers while we don't.

This represents a strange and exceptional phenomenon in the global landscape.

I'm not here to criticize or praise. I don't know whether it's justified and admirable, or obviously irrational and strange. Call it inspiring or complete insanity.

But there's no denying that on a conceptual level, the fact that a country under daily deadly attacks experiences record-high demand for incoming flights provokes profound thought and amazement.

Someone will write a doctoral dissertation about this someday.

Further Reading

1. Israel launches rescue operation to bring close to 150,000 stranded Israelis home
The Jerusalem Post
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-857879

2. Over 70,000 Israelis have returned home via sea, land, air since start of Iran campaign
The Times of Israel
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/over-70000-israelis-have-returned-home-via-sea-land-air-since-start-of-iran-campaign

3. Towards a theory of diaspora formation through conflict deterritorialization – Féron (2021)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sena.12354

4. Diasporas and Transportation of Homeland Conflicts – Féron & Baser (2023)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17449057.2023.2199598

5. Diasporas from the Middle East: Displacement, Transnational Identities and Homeland Politics – Baser & Toivanen (2019)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13530194.2019.1569308

6. Diaspora in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return – Safran (1991)
https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/diaspora_a_journal_of_transnational_studies/v001/1.1.safran.pdf

7. Collective identity as agency and structuration of society: The Israeli example – Kimmerling (1997)
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249014150_Collective_identity_as_agency_and_structuration_of_society_The_Israeli_example

8. Diaspora-Homeland Relations as a Framework to Examine Nation-Building Processes – Lainer-Vos (2010)
https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2010.00321.x

In recent days, numerous scholars in the field of international law have presented opinions, sprouting like mushrooms after rain, claiming that Israel's attack on Iran's nuclear facilities and strategic infrastructure does not meet the requirements of international law, particularly the laws governing the use of force (jus ad bellum). According to their claims, this constitutes an illegal use of force, which in their view can only be justified through a very expansive interpretation of preemptive self-defense (which is not accepted in the literature and jurisprudence in this field).

However, these analyses rely on only a partial factual foundation and apply a narrow interpretation of international law, while ignoring essential contexts and the evolution of customary law over the years.

To assess the legality of Israel's action, four main components must be addressed:

1. Iran attacked Israel directly twice: on April 2024 and October 2024.

2. The Caroline Doctrine, recognized as binding law in customary law since the 19th century, permits immediate action in situations of grave and imminent threat.

3. Israel did not initiate a preventive war, but rather acted in response to acts of ongoing aggression and a tactical window of opportunity that was closing.

4. The issue of the targeted objectives, particularly regarding the scientists, is somewhat more complex but does not necessarily constitute a violation of the laws of war.

In Detail:

1. Iran attacked Israel directly twice, constituting a clear armed conflict

On April 13, 2024, Iran launched hundreds of missiles and UAVs from its territory toward cities and security infrastructure in Israel. This was a direct, overt attack by one sovereign state against another, conducted without the mediation of proxy or surrogate organizations [which are also punishable under international law and may constitute grounds for counter-military action, see: Nicaragua v. United States (ICJ, 1986)]

On October 1, 2024 of the same year, Iran attacked again, this time focusing on additional critical infrastructure within Israeli territory. This attack was also carried out directly from Iranian territory, without the involvement of external organizations.

Both attacks clearly constitute an "armed attack" under Article 51 of the UN Charter, which grants the attacked state the right to exercise defensive force. International law does not require an immediate real-time response, nor does any law impose a specific time limit on military response, especially when dealing with such a measured, strategic, and calculated operation, and particularly when it involves an ongoing conflict that includes cumulative threats and dangerous infrastructure such as nuclear weapons.

2. The Caroline Doctrine permits immediate action when the threat is immediate and grave

The doctrine that developed following the Caroline vessel crisis in 1837, and has since been recognized as an integral part of binding customary law, establishes that preemptive force may be used when the following three conditions are met:

a. The threat is immediate, tangible, and undeniable
b. No effective political or diplomatic alternative exists
c. There is no time for normal decision-making processes

Israel can rightfully claim that the situation vis-à-vis Iran meets all three criteria. Iran stands on the verge of a nuclear technological breakthrough; the diplomatic track has failed and is accompanied by repeated declarations to destroy Israel, while Iran continues developing launch capabilities and deploying long-range weapon systems. Once Iran crosses the nuclear threshold, any future action may become impossible or too dangerous. Therefore, the Israeli action clearly fits within this framework.

3. Not a preemptive preventive war, but rather the exercise of ongoing self-defense rights

A crucial distinction must be made between preventive war, which aims to neutralize a hypothetical future threat, and action within the framework of self-defense that responds to a real, substantiated, and ongoing threat. Israel did not attack Iran based solely on intelligence assessments, but after having already absorbed two direct attacks from the Iranian state. These attacks are in addition to numerous strikes from proxy organizations that Iran has been training and funding for years.

In this context, the principles of proportionality and necessity must be examined. Military action is considered legally justified if it is required to neutralize the threat, and if the force, scope, and benefit inherent in it match the severity of the danger.

Proportionality in self-defense does not require symmetry, nor does it require waiting until a strike is completed. It means the response must be necessary to neutralize the threat, and proportional to the danger posed.
Attacking military installations and nuclear development centers, at a time when intelligence indicates a narrow window of action, meets this test.

4. The status of nuclear scientists depends on circumstances and does not necessarily afford them protection as civilians under the Fourth Geneva Convention and Additional Protocol I

International humanitarian law prohibits the deliberate targeting of civilians, except in cases where they directly participate in hostilities. If the scientists operate within a clear military framework, for example as part of the IRGC, they are considered legitimate military targets. Even if they are not uniformed soldiers, their work may play a vital role in developing unconventional weapons in a manner that justifies classifying them as direct participants in hostilities, just as a getaway driver during a bank robbery is considered a full accomplice to the crime, even without personally executing the robbery or carrying a weapon.

The facilities themselves, such as enrichment reactors, command centers, and control systems, undoubtedly constitute military targets in accordance with the laws of war. Therefore, the claim that this constitutes a violation of humanitarian law lacks legal foundation.

Final Thoughts

All expert opinions regarding the illegality of the Israeli action should be examined with great caution, and one should not accept at face value the apparent authority of these 'thinkers' and 'experts.' The claim that Israel committed unlawful aggression ignores both the facts and legal precedent, and it is difficult to overlook the politics behind a determination so disconnected from the background and reality on the ground.

If one accepts the fact that Iran attacked Israel directly twice in less than a year, while simultaneously advancing toward nuclear capability with declared intentions to destroy the State of Israel, it is difficult to see how one can claim that Israel's action fails to meet the requirements of international law.

To insist that a state must absorb a nuclear attack before it can act is a legal, moral, and strategic absurdity. Israel exercised its right to self-defense under extreme conditions, against an enemy that has violated every limitation of restraint, and there is no deviation from the normative framework of existing legal principles in this action.

References

1. United Nations Charter (1945), Article 51 - Right of Self-Defense
   https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/chapter-7

2. Letter from Daniel Webster to Lord Ashburton (1842) - The Caroline Doctrine
   https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/br-1842d.asp

3. International Court of Justice, Nicaragua v. United States (1986) - Principles of Self-Defense
   https://www.icj-cij.org/case/70

4. International Court of Justice, Nuclear Weapons Advisory Opinion (1996) - Legality of Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons
   https://www.icj-cij.org/case/95

5. Geneva Convention IV (1949) and Additional Protocol I (1977) - Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict
   https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949
   https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/api-1977

6. Dinstein, Y. (2017). War, Aggression and Self-Defence (6th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
   https://www.cambridge.org/core_title/gb/419391

7. Schmitt, M. N. (2003). "Preemptive Strategies in International Law." Michigan Journal of International Law, 24, 513-548.
   https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjil/vol24/iss2/3/

8. International Committee of the Red Cross (2009). Interpretive Guidance on the Notion of Direct Participation in Hostilities under International Humanitarian Law.
   https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/assets/files/other/icrc-002-0990.pdf

9. UN Security Council Resolutions on Iran's Nuclear Program (2006-2015) - Resolutions 1696, 1737, 1747, 1803, 1835, 1929, 2231.
   https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/content/resolutions

10. International Atomic Energy Agency Reports on Iran's Nuclear Program (2011-2024) - Quarterly Reports to the Board of Governors.
    https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/iran

11. Nicaragua v. United States (ICJ, 1986).

I’d like to offer a refresher on the Other Rules for criticizing Israel:

Rule 1: Israel’s right to exist must remain uniquely negotiable. The fact that no other nation has to constantly justify its existence to the world is irrelevant. However, if you believe Israel’s existence as a state is non-negotiable, and has the same right to secure borders as anyone else, you’re now a brainwashed, unthinking "Zionist cheerleader."

Rule 2: Only Jews are assigned intent and presumed to act with malice aforethought. Other nations commit "mistakes," "miscalculations," or "tragic accidents." But when Jews act, it must be assumed to be orchestrated with full mens rea - planned, malicious, uniquely sinister and criminal culpable.

Rule 3: Moral judgment must be reserved exclusively for Israel. Daily terror, open incitement, and years of violence by its enemies are considered politically dull, outdated, or contextually justified. But the moment Israel retaliates, that becomes a global ethical crisis worthy of op-eds, panels, and emergency UN sessions.

Rule 4: Context is prohibited until Israel responds. Everything before (massacres, rocket fire, open calls for genocide) must be erased. The moral clock starts ticking only when Israel takes action. That’s when outrage becomes mandatory.

Rule 5: References to Israel's repeated peace offers must be scrubbed from memory. That these proposals were consistently rejected, often violently, undermines the clean narrative of Israel as the eternal aggressor. Anyone who brings it up risks immediate classification as a propagandist or Zionist operative.

Rule 6: Self-defense is an unalienable right for every nation. Unless that nation is Israel. Then it’s aggression, colonialism, and a war crime.

Rule 7: Criticism of Israel is always "legitimate," even when parroting literal neo-Nazi talking points. But criticizing those critics is pure censorship and malicious deflection.

Rule 8: When Israel is demonized with grotesque caricatures straight from medieval antisemitism, that's just free speech. If Jews call it antisemitic, they're cynically "weaponizing" history.

Rule 9: Israel must be held to an impossibly high moral standard. Nations like Russia, Iran, or Syria, however, deserve our emphatic understanding because their situational circumstances are "nuanced." Unless you're talking about Israel, in which case it's black and white, and always Israel's fault.

Rule 10: Israelis are never true victims. Even murdered babies and kidnapped elderly are just pawns exploited by clever Zionist propagandists.

Rule 11: Palestinian leadership's repeated rejection of peace and explicit calls for genocide must always be minimized or ignored. Mentioning this would unfairly complicate the narrative.

Rule 12: The media must always be accused of pro-Israel bias, no matter how consistently and disproportionately it leads with images of rubble and casualty counts to criticize Israel, or parrots enemy casualty claims without verification. If you point out this double standard, you're clearly a paid part of the Hasbara machine.

Rule 13: Unverified claims against Israel must be reported instantly as fact, while documented atrocities committed by Israel’s enemies should be downplayed as "allegations" by "Israeli sources."

Rule 14: The US government is independent and principled when dealing with the Middle East: selling weapons to the Saudis to balance trade or cutting deals with the Qataris to bolster regional alliances. But when it supports Israel, it’s compromised, corrupt, and controlled by mysterious "lobbies" and sinister "influences".

Rule 15: Israel’s democratic institutions and freedoms are irrelevant. Its vibrant political debate, regular elections, diverse parliament, and independent judiciary must never distract from the comforting fiction of an oppressive apartheid state.

Rule 16: Israeli self-criticism must be conveniently ignored. Acknowledging that Israelis themselves are often their government's sharpest critics would ruin the narrative. The fact that you cannot point to such robust internal debate anywhere else in the Middle East should remain quietly unspoken.

Now, alas, the list appears to be complete.

I. Austro-Libertarian Anti-War Analysis Feels Dangerously Keynesian: An Introduction

In the pantheon of libertarian principles, few shine as brightly as the commitment to peace. From the classical liberals who denounced imperial adventures to modern libertarians who marched against Vietnam and Iraq, the movement has consistently positioned itself as a voice against the machinery of war. This stance flows naturally from our core beliefs: if initiating force against peaceful individuals is wrong, then war, the ultimate expression of organized violence, must be among the gravest of evils.

Yet something curious has happened within certain corners of the libertarian anti-war movement. In their laudable zeal to oppose conflict, some have begun employing arguments that seem to contradict other fundamental libertarian principles. The same thinkers who would instantly reject collectivist reasoning in economics or social policy sometimes embrace surprisingly similar logic when discussing war. Those who normally insist on individual responsibility and careful analysis of who did what to whom can suddenly shift to speaking in aggregates: counting bodies, tallying destruction, and declaring moral equivalence between all parties to a conflict.

This essay offers an internal critique, a friendly intervention from within the libertarian tradition itself. The goal is not to weaken the anti-war cause but to strengthen it by ensuring our arguments remain consistent with our deepest principles. For if we abandon methodological rigor in our opposition to war, we risk undermining the very philosophical foundations that make the libertarian voice unique and valuable in debates about war and peace.

The specific concern is this: some contemporary Rothbardian anti-war rhetoric has drifted from methodological individualism (the idea that only individuals act and are morally accountable) into macro-aggregative, morally symmetrical language that treats all sides in a conflict as equivalent by focusing only on collective outcomes (body counts, destruction) instead of individual agency and actions.

This shift represents a curious parallel to the very Keynesian macro-logic that libertarians reject in economics. Just as Austrian economists criticize GDP and aggregate demand for obscuring individual choices and market processes,[1] I suggest we should be wary when anti-war arguments rely heavily on aggregate death tolls while ignoring the crucial distinction between who initiated force and who acted in defense. The central problem, therefore, is to assess whether this methodological error, so clearly identified in economic analysis, has crept into certain contemporary Rothbardian ethical analyses of war.

In the sections that follow, we will examine Murray Rothbard's foundational anti-war views and how the clarity of his principles can blur in practice, explore the shift from individualist analysis to aggregate moral symmetry, explain why flattening distinctions between aggression and defense is a mistake, highlight consistent approaches by thinkers like Walter Block, Ludwig von Mises, and F. A. Hayek, and apply these ideas to a modern conflict case study. The tone throughout is one of constructive criticism: a libertarian reclaiming of anti-war logic that stresses agency, context, and the initiators of force, without ceding an inch of the commitment to peace.

II. Rothbard's Anti-War Foundations

Any libertarian critique of war rightly begins with Murray N. Rothbard. Rothbard was one of the most vehement anti-war voices in modern libertarianism, viewing war as a brutal instrument of state power. He famously summed up the libertarian ethos with the stark dictum: "War is mass murder. Conscription is slavery. Taxation is robbery."[2] In Rothbard's view, war and the state are inextricably linked: "It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society."[3] War allows the state to expand its coercive dominion, crush civil liberties, and siphon resources under the guise of national crisis. Small wonder Rothbard concluded bluntly that "all government wars are unjust."[2]

For Rothbard, an unjust war was not simply one fought by the "bad guys"; rather, the very nature of interstate war, conducted by states through taxation, conscription, and mass bombardment, almost inevitably violates the nonaggression principle on a colossal scale. "The very nature of interstate war puts innocent civilians into great jeopardy, especially with modern technology," Rothbard observed.[2] Even a war fought for an ostensibly good cause can transgress libertarian ethics if it targets innocents or relies on coercive means.

Rothbard anchored his anti-war stance in methodological individualism and natural rights theory. Only individuals act; thus only individuals (be they soldiers or political leaders) are morally responsible for acts of aggression. The Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) forbids the initiation of force against persons or property; force is only justified as defensive or retaliatory against an aggressor.[4] Rothbard extended this principle to state warfare: a war can be just if and only if violence is strictly limited to aggressors. In theory, if State A's military attacks State B, B has the right to defend, but not by inflicting collateral damage on innocents or trampling the rights of its own citizens.

This is where Rothbard's purism led him to a very high standard for a "just war." In his essay "War, Peace, and the State," he argued that if a defending nation's government conscripts unwilling soldiers or bombs civilian areas in the process of fighting off an aggressor, it commits new crimes as grave as those of the original aggressor.[5] For example, Rothbard imagines an individual scenario: if Jones is being robbed by Smith, Jones may justly use force to stop Smith, but Jones may not bomb an entire apartment building to kill Smith, nor seize a neighbor's car at gunpoint to chase Smith down. Should Jones do so, "he is as much (or more of) a criminal aggressor as Smith is," Rothbard writes.[2]

By the same token, if Nation B in a "defensive" war resorts to conscripting its citizens (enslaving them) or carpet-bombing cities (murdering innocents) in order to stop Nation A's invasion, Rothbard would condemn those acts as criminal. B's cause may have been righteous, but it has forfeited moral purity by committing aggression of its own. As Rothbard tartly put it, "War, then, is only proper when the exercise of violence is rigorously limited to the individual criminals. We may judge for ourselves how many wars or conflicts in history have met this criterion."[2]

Rothbard's uncompromising logic ensures that even well-intentioned wartime leaders are held to the same moral law as anyone else: the ends (stopping an aggressor) do not justify means that violate rights. However, this absolutism can blur agency and context. In practice, nearly no modern war meets Rothbard's stringent criteria. Even World War II, often cited as a "just war," involved Allied transgressions (e.g. the firebombing of Dresden, the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) that Rothbard would label mass murder.

Rothbard did indeed criticize those Allied actions as deeply criminal, right alongside the crimes of the Axis powers. By focusing on the libertarian principle in isolation, he tended to treat any violation of rights as equally condemnable, regardless of who started the conflict. Thus, the moral agency of the initial aggressor (Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan) becomes somewhat blurred in Rothbard's analysis of WWII, because he emphasizes that the Allied governments also spilled innocent blood and "came into their own" as oppressive states during the war. The result is an optics of moral symmetry: both sides committed unforgivable acts against innocents, so both sides were criminal to some degree.

Rothbard's followers took this insight and, in some cases, ran further with it. Many "Rothbardian" libertarians after him have been stalwartly anti-war (often spearheading historical revisionism about U.S. wars, NATO interventions, etc.) and they sometimes echo Rothbard's tendency to condemn all belligerents in a conflict indiscriminately. What began as a rigorous application of the NAP (refusing to give a free pass to one side's collateral damage) can slide into a pacifist narrative that makes no moral distinction between, say, the Allies and the Axis, or between a terrorist group and the government it provokes. The agency of those who initiate force fades from view when every violation of rights is tallied on the same ledger. We can see this drift clearly in the rhetoric of some contemporary libertarian anti-war arguments, which we will examine next.

III. From Individuals to Aggregates

Libertarians pride themselves on methodological individualism in social analysis. As Ludwig von Mises articulated, "all actions are performed by individuals," and collective entities, such as "society" or "the state," do not act in themselves but operate only through the intermediary of individuals.[6] Friedrich A. Hayek similarly emphasized that social phenomena are constituted by the subjective beliefs, opinions, and knowledge of individuals.[6] Austrian-school economists reject macroeconomic aggregates as the primary datum; instead, they explain economic phenomena by the choices and actions of individuals.

The Austrian critique of macro-aggregates in economics provides a powerful analogy. Austrian economists argue that concepts like GDP, aggregate demand, and general price levels, while potentially useful as historical summaries, are misleading when used as the basis for economic theory and policy. These aggregates obscure individual plans and subjective valuations, ignore the heterogeneity of capital, conceal causal processes, and lead to flawed policy recommendations.[7] As Hayek's "fatal conceit" argument suggests, the belief that a central planner can possess and process the dispersed knowledge necessary to effectively manage an economy through aggregates is fundamentally flawed.[7]

Paradoxically, some libertarian anti-war arguments abandon that individualist lens and sound strikingly macro, focusing on aggregate outcomes like total casualties, much like the Keynesian statist logic libertarians otherwise reject. A hallmark of this rhetoric is a shift from discussing persons and their responsibilities to talking about war in terms of interchangeable victims and symmetrical suffering.

One often hears slogans such as "Don't trade one dead baby for another" in these circles. The intent is heartfelt (to oppose killing innocents anywhere) but notice the framing: it treats deaths as commensurate units ("one dead baby" on this side versus "another" on that side) to be weighed equally. The implicit message is that once bombs are falling and children are dying, it no longer matters who is doing what; all that matters is the body count. Such language reduces individual human lives to abstract counters in a macabre calculus. The cause of each death, the choices and agency behind each act of violence, drop out of the equation. All that remains is a tragic sum of innocents dead, with an insinuation that if one more child is killed on side X in retaliation for side Y, we have merely "traded" lives pointlessly.

This reasoning mirrors the very macro-aggregative approach libertarians criticize in other contexts. Consider how Keynesian economists speak of national income, employment levels, or "net gains," glossing over the heterogeneous individuals that make up those numbers. In Keynesian policy debates, one might hear: "It doesn't matter which businesses fail or which jobs are lost in restructuring; what matters is overall employment and GDP." Austrians rightly bristle at that, pointing out that aggregate outcomes cannot be divorced from the micro-level human actions and moral considerations (e.g. whose property is taken, who is forced to adjust) that produce them.[8] Yet, when some libertarians say "War killed 100 of their children and 100 of ours; we must stop the cycle of violence," they are, perhaps unwittingly, adopting a similar lens. They tally deaths like a grim GDP, focusing only on quantities of tragedy, rather than qualitatively distinguishing murder from self-defense.

Contemporary Rothbardian anti-war discourse often focuses on the perceived aggressions and imperialistic tendencies of the United States and its allies. For instance, Scott Horton has argued that the United States "provoked" Russia's invasion of Ukraine through NATO expansion and interference in Ukrainian politics.[9] Similarly, Ron Paul's "blowback" theory attributes events like 9/11 to prior U.S. government actions in the Middle East.[10] These arguments often emphasize the tragic human cost of war, frequently citing statistics of civilian casualties and widespread suffering.[11]

This use of aggregated data, such as death tolls and statistics on displacement or malnutrition, to underscore the horrors of war is very common. For example, Joshua Shoenfeld's article on LewRockwell.com concerning the Gaza conflict cites figures like "16,000 Palestinian children...killed" and projections of widespread malnutrition to paint a grim picture of the humanitarian crisis.[12] While such data are emotionally compelling and crucial for understanding the scale of human suffering, their use becomes problematic from a methodologically individualist standpoint if they are presented without sufficient disaggregation or context regarding individual circumstances, agency, or the critical distinction between combatants and non-combatants, and aggressors versus defenders.

To illustrate, consider a statement from a recent commentary defending "moral equivalence" between the deaths of children on opposing sides of a conflict. The author argues it's "misguided" to claim "a fundamental moral difference between how Hamas and the IDF kill children", positing that ultimately "the children die all the same."[13] In this view, what matters morally is the aggregate fact that children are being killed; any difference in intent or cause is deemed secondary. Whether innocents died because terrorists deliberately targeted them or because a defensive military action unintentionally caused collateral casualties is brushed aside as a mere "difference in institutional culture and public norms," a detail less important than the body count.

This aggregate-style moral accounting effectively treats war as a clash of collectives, not of individual actors making choices. It speaks of "children killed by the IDF" vs "children killed by Hamas," as if The IDF and Hamas were homogenous entities rather than organizations composed of distinct individuals with very different aims and methods. Gone is the libertarian's usual insistence on disaggregating the collective. (In any other policy area, libertarians remind us "society" doesn't act; only individuals do.) When it comes to war, however, some are quick to speak of what "Side A" and "Side B" as wholes have done, reducing myriad individual human actions into one lump sum of suffering.

Another subtle shift is from ethical language to accounting language. We hear talk of “trading lives” or “exchanging one atrocity for another,” as if morality were a zero-sum ledger based on interpersonal comparisons of pain and suffering. To the extent blame is assigned, it is generalized: "all parties are guilty of killing innocents, therefore all are equally condemnable."[14] The libertarian emphasis on pinpointing the aggressor (the one who broke the peace first) recedes. Instead of asking, "Which persons or units launched attacks and which responded? Did they target civilians or combatants? Under what constraints or warnings? What is their agenda? What is their ideology?", the macro approach just counts corpses.

In essence, what we see in this drift is methodological individualism being supplanted by methodological collectivism in some libertarian anti-war argumentation. The reasoning becomes outcome-centric: focusing on static states of the world (so many lives lost) rather than on human actions within that world (who did what to whom). It is eerily reminiscent of the consequentialist, aggregate thinking that libertarians usually reject, where only the final sum of utility or damage matters, and no agent in particular can be held accountable. The next section will argue that this approach is not only un-libertarian in method but also dangerous in its moral implications, because it collapses the vital distinction between aggression and defense.

IV. The Problem with Moral Equivalence

Libertarian ethics, rooted in the Non-Aggression Principle, holds a clear distinction: the initiator of force (aggressor) versus the responder to force (defender). Aggression (the unjust initiation of violence) is categorically illegitimate, while defensive force (violence used to repel or punish an aggressor) is legitimate, even though regrettable.[4] This distinction lies at the core of libertarian justice, not just in language but in principle. As Stephan Kinsella's estoppel theory elucidates, an aggressor, through their act of aggression, is "estopped" or prevented from consistently objecting to defensive force being used against them, as their actions have implicitly affirmed the legitimacy of using force.[15] However, the pacifist or morally symmetrical rhetoric creeping into some libertarian circles blurs this line. By treating all uses of violence as equal, it commits a grave moral error: it equates murder with self-defense, and thereby, perhaps unintentionally, gives the aggressor a free pass.

Why is defense ≠ aggression such an important distinction? Because without it, the entire libertarian theory of rights crumbles. A crime victim who fights off his attacker is using force, yes, but to call him equally guilty of "violence" as the attacker is a profound injustice. Libertarians intuitively understand this in domestic contexts. Yet, when it comes to war, some hesitate to apply the same logic. The result is a language of "moral equivalence" or "both-sides-ism" that essentially says: "Violence was used by all sides, therefore no side is morally superior."

This is wrong. Defense is not aggression, even though both involve force. As Alan Futerman (a libertarian scholar) aptly put it in a recent discussion: "Many libertarians are unfortunately conflating two concepts. One is aggression and the other is the use of force. Defense involves the use of force, but it does not entail aggression... self-defense involves the use of force but is the opposite of aggression."[16] In other words, not all violence is created equal. The difference lies in who initiated the conflict and who is reacting to that initiation.

When pacifist discourse focuses only on outcomes ("people are dying") and ignores who made that outcome necessary, it effectively flattens moral reality. It's akin to observing a police officer and a mugger exchange gunfire and tut-tutting that "both are engaged in violence," technically true, but deeply misleading when assigning responsibility. As Sam Harris (critiquing the "moral equivalence" view) noted, "Counting dead bodies isn't sufficient... you must count intentions to judge the morality of the 2. We [must consider] who rejoices in massacres vs. who seeks to avoid killing innocents."[31]
The intentions and actions leading to those bodies matter immensely. Did one side deliberately target civilians, or did they try to minimize harm? Did one side start a war of conquest, while the other mobilized to resist? These questions are central to any moral assessment, and libertarianism, with its focus on individual intent and consent, is uniquely positioned to ask them. Ignoring these factors means abandoning our principles of justice.

Moreover, pacifist moral symmetry has a perverse practical effect: it incentivizes aggression. If an aggressor knows that any retaliation will earn equal moral condemnation for the defender, the aggressor gains a one-sided advantage. Imagine a norm where if Country X attacks Country Y, but Y fights back and damage occurs on both sides, the world will scold both equally for "perpetuating violence." That norm effectively encourages Country X to strike, secure in the knowledge that its opponent cannot hit back without being branded just as bad. As economist Bryan Caplan has pointed out, a blanket pacifist stance "actually increases the quantity of war by reducing the cost of aggression." The cost is reduced because the aggressor can rely on the victim's restraint or on external pressure for "ceasefires" that freeze gains in place. A historical example might be how Nazi Germany would have loved a situation where the Allies, after being attacked, refused to fight because war is evil; Hitler's invasions would have met little resistance.

F. A. Hayek and other classical liberals understood that absolute pacifism (refusing to ever take up arms) can enable tyranny. In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek warned about the dangers of failing to resist threats to liberty. He famously stated, "As is true with respect to other great evils, the measures by which war might be made altogether impossible for the future may well be worse than even war itself."[17] This suggests that an absolute pacifism that allows tyranny to flourish could lead to a greater evil than a defensive war undertaken to preserve liberty. In the 1930s, the Allied policy of appeasement, driven in part by pacifist public sentiment after World War I, emboldened Hitler's expansion. As Winston Churchill bitterly quipped, "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."

Libertarian thought is not contrary to that insight; indeed, Ludwig von Mises observed that democracies which love peace can ill afford to simply disarm unilaterally in the face of militaristic regimes. Mises noted that "nations are fundamentally peaceful... They accept war only in self-defence; wars of aggression they do not desire. It is the princes [i.e. governments] who want war".[18] But because aggressor governments exist, defenders must sometimes fight. It is crucial, however, to place moral blame where it belongs: on those who made war inevitable.

When defensive forces inadvertently harm innocents, a humane person rightly mourns those deaths, but the moral onus for such tragedy still lies with the side that initiated the aggression and created the deadly situation. Golda Meir, Israel's former Prime Minister, captured this sentiment poignantly (though not a libertarian, her logic fits libertarian ethics): "We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children, but we can never forgive them for forcing us to kill their children." The horror of being forced into a position where defensive killing occurs is itself an aggression committed by the initiator.

Libertarians must be careful here. None of this is to glorify war or excuse truly unjust acts committed in war by the "good guys." It is only to maintain moral clarity. A defensive war can still be prosecuted unjustly in its tactics, and those specific injustices should be condemned, but that does not erase the fact that one side's cause (repelling invasion or genocide) is just, while the other's cause (conquest or aggression) is unjust. Collapsing those categories undermines the libertarian principle of justice because it treats deliberate aggressors and reluctant defenders as morally interchangeable.

Pacifist moral equivalence ignores agency, context, and initiation of force, three things libertarians usually emphasize. It amounts to saying, "It doesn't matter who dropped the first bomb or why; violence is violence." But to a libertarian, it matters immensely who violated rights first. Yes, we want to minimize total violence, but the surest way to do that is to deter and defeat aggressors, not to handcuff defenders and let aggressors carry on unopposed. As we will see next, many prominent libertarians have in fact upheld this nuanced, principled view, resisting the drift into symmetrical rhetoric. They demonstrate that one can be firmly anti-war and still maintain that justice is asymmetrical in any conflict: it sides with those acting in rightful self-defense over those committing aggression.

V. Clarifying the Positive Model: Block, Mises, Hayek, and Others Who Stay Consistent

Not all libertarians have succumbed to the lure of moral symmetry. This section focuses on the few who reject moral flattening and keep their anti-war arguments consistent with individualist principles. These thinkers show that it's possible to abhor war's carnage while still saying: this side in this conflict is in the right (defensively), and that side is in the wrong (aggressively). They offer a template for, what I believe to be, an internally consistent libertarian peace advocacy.

Walter Block: Defense of Defensive Force

Walter Block, a noted Rothbardian economist and ethicist, has been outspoken in distinguishing legitimate defensive violence from illegitimate aggression. Block emphatically rejects the notion that libertarianism entails pacifism. "Libertarianism doesn't require pacifism. It's compatible with it, but it doesn't require it," he explains.[19] In the context of war, Block argues that one must scrutinize the conduct and aims of each side.

For example, in the Israel-Hamas conflict of 2023, Block points out that Hamas explicitly aimed to massacre civilians, an aggressive war crime, whereas the Israeli Defense Force, while using force, sought to avoid killing innocents and expressed regret when civilians were unintentionally harmed.[16] Yes, civilians died in Gaza due to Israeli strikes, a tragedy. But Block contends it is a crucial moral difference that Israel's military "drops leaflets warning civilians to evacuate" and tries to target combatants, whereas "Hamas purposefully aims at civilians".[16] He famously stated: "Whenever there's a war, there's got to be collateral damage. And if you say collateral damage means genocide, well, then you're a pacifist."[20]

In other words, equating unintended collateral damage with the purposeful genocide of civilians is a category mistake, one that only a strict pacifist (who rejects all use of force categorically) would make. Block's view reflects classic libertarian thinking: that context and intent matter. Using force to stop a would-be genocider is not only permissible, it can be morally obligatory, even if sadly some innocents get caught in the crossfire. The blame for those innocents' deaths, Block would stress, lies primarily on those who initiated the aggression and created a battlefield among civilians (in this case, on Hamas for launching war and also using civilians as shields).[21]

Block's clarity on this has led him, controversially, to support the idea that complete victory over aggressors can be the most humane outcome in the long run. Paraphrasing a point from Block and Alan Futerman's recent work: a classical liberal, even an anarchist, can recognize that a state under attack "has a moral right and a moral duty to protect its citizens and end [the] threat once and for all", rather than perpetually "trading casualties" under a misguided notion of restraint.[16] This is said not to endorse state power per se, but to apply the principle of defensive force to real-world conditions. Block stands as a modern exemplar of how to be anti-war (he wants Hamas and any hostile forces to cease to exist, not for war to continue) without being indifferent to agency. He focuses on rights violations (who is violating whose rights) rather than just on the body count.

However, Block's application of these principles has not gone unchallenged. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, in an open letter, accused Block of abandoning methodological individualism and libertarian principles in his defense of Israel.[22] Hoppe argued that Block's justification for Israeli land claims relied on collectivist notions (e.g., group property rights based on ancient lineage or genetic similarity) and that his call for Israel to do "whatever it takes" to destroy Hamas amounted to an endorsement of the "indiscriminate slaughter" of innocents, violating the NAP. Hoppe, applying his own MI-consistent analysis, condemned both Hamas and the State of Israel as "gangs" financed by extortion and called for peace and diplomacy, with individual perpetrators of violence to be dealt with through "regular police-work" rather than indiscriminate military action.[22]
For the reasons outlined earlier, including moral asymmetry and true methodological individualism, I believe libertarians should reject Hoppe’s stance as well.

Ludwig von Mises: Individualist Analysis in International Affairs

Mises, as an older contemporary of Rothbard, was in many ways an intellectual forefather of libertarian anti-war sentiment. Having lived through the World Wars, Mises saw first-hand the devastation statism unleashed. He strongly championed liberal internationalism: the idea that free trade and respect for national self-determination would eliminate most motives for war. Mises condemned aggressive war in no uncertain terms: "War...is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror... Peace and not war is the father of all things."[23]

Yet, Mises was not a naive pacifist. He understood that peace sometimes must be defended by force against would-be conquerors. One of Mises's most powerful statements comes from his book Socialism, where he differentiates the people's desires from their rulers' ambitions: "Nations are fundamentally peaceful... They accept war only in self-defence; wars of aggression they do not desire. It is the princes who want war... It is the business of the nations to prevent [the princes] from achieving their desire."[18] Here, Mises asserts that when wars happen, we should ask: did the people accept this war out of true self-defense, or was it foisted on them by a ruling clique pursuing power? This aligns perfectly with methodological individualism: identify the actual actors (the aggressors in government) and the motives.

Mises also explicitly rejected the idea of equal blame in cases of clear aggression. During World War II, Mises, who had to flee the Nazis, supported the Allied war effort as a necessary fight to destroy totalitarianism. In Omnipotent Government (1944), written as the war raged, he praised the Allied cause as morally noble. "This aim alone can elevate the present war to the dignity of mankind's most noble undertaking. The pitiless annihilation of Nazism is the first step toward freedom and peace," Mises wrote.[24] Consider his profound statement: Mises viewed the war to defeat Hitler not a regrettable gray zone, but "mankind's most noble undertaking" given the circumstances, because it was a war to end a monstrous aggression and restore liberty. He did not say this lightly; he was keenly aware of war's costs, but he placed responsibility squarely on the Nazi regime's aggression.

Notably, in the same passage, Mises addresses concerns about atrocities on both sides by essentially saying: do not lose sight of why this war is being fought. Dwelling on whether Allied bombing in World War I was worse than Nazi bombing now, or tallying mutual sins through history, is, Mises argued, "without any relevance to the problems of our time".[24] The urgent task is to stop the current aggressors and prevent such outrages from ever occurring again. Mises therefore maintained both an anti-war ideal (he wanted a world of peace and free cooperation) and a recognition that when war is forced upon you by aggressors, you must fight decisively and end the threat. He never succumbed to the lazy equivalence of blaming France and Britain for "also engaging in war" against Germany; he knew Hitler's regime was uniquely culpable for unleashing the orgy of violence, and that ending that aggression was a prerequisite for a just peace.

Friedrich A. Hayek: The Dangers of Pacifism Enabling Tyranny

Hayek, another Austrian economist and classical liberal, is known for his writings on knowledge and tyranny, but he also lived through WWII and reflected on the follies that led to it. Hayek recognized that well-intentioned "peace at any price" attitudes in Britain had ironically made war more likely. Though not as outspoken on war ethics as Mises or Rothbard, Hayek implicitly endorsed the idea that failing to resist evil leads to worse outcomes. In The Road to Serfdom, he notes how the desire to avoid conflict and the intellectuals' infatuation with planning opened the door to totalitarianism, a different angle, but one that resonates with our theme.[25]

Other classical liberals of Hayek's time, like the French philosopher Étienne Gilson, famously warned that "to desire peace at any price is a great danger" because it tells aggressors that their price will be paid. Hayek shared the view that liberty sometimes must be defended by force. He certainly did not believe, for instance, that it would have been better for Europe to surrender to Nazi Germany in order to avoid the Blitz and the Battle of Britain. Indeed, Hayek admired the British resolve once the war began. In 1940, as an emigrant in London, Hayek witnessed a society choosing to fight rather than capitulate. While he critiqued certain war socialism policies, he supported the overall war effort against Hitler.

In short, Hayek's consistent liberalism held that peace is the highest ideal, but not an unconditional one. A "peace" that is merely the absence of resistance to tyranny is no peace at all; it is slavery. Libertarians in Hayek's vein emphasize that one must distinguish a just peace from a false peace. A just peace is one where rights are respected and aggression is absent; a false peace is "no one shooting because the conqueror has already won." Thus, Hayek would caution libertarians today not to let pacifist rhetoric cloud the reality that sometimes force must meet force to safeguard a free society.[26]

Others (Clarence Carson, Leonard Read, Walter Block's contemporaries)

Many other libertarian or Old Right thinkers have maintained this balance. Leonard E. Read (founder of FEE) was staunchly anti-war but also penned essays during the Cold War noting that a free society has a right to defend itself against communist aggression. The late Justin Raimondo (of Antiwar.com, a Rothbardian) often excoriated U.S. imperialism, but even he did not claim no difference between, say, Al Qaeda and the victims of 9/11's response. He simply urged the U.S. to stop intervening where it was itself the aggressor. Ron Paul, another prominent libertarian, has opposed nearly all U.S. foreign wars as unjust, but if pressed, he acknowledges the moral difference between an invader and one who fights back on home soil.

The common thread among these consistent voices is clarity: they identify who the aggressor is in any given situation and do not shy from saying that aggression is the root of the evil. They focus on individual actions: e.g., which leader or faction made the decision to break the peace. They also stress proportionality and the importance of not harming innocents, but crucially, they understand that when innocents do tragically die in a defensive effort, the ethical analysis must still track back to who lit the fuse.

As Walter Block and Alan Futerman wrote recently, reflecting on World War II, it's misguided to speak as if German cities suffering defeat was some arbitrary tragedy -- "those who were part of the Nazi war machine did not experience 'some horrific military defeat' but got what they deserved as a consequence of what they initiated".[16] It is a reminder that context matters: Nazi aggression brought about Germany's ruin. Likewise, Block and Futerman apply the same logic to present conflicts: "The Nazis then, as Hamas and its supporters now, had agency. And they brought their own destruction on themselves."[16] This is a powerful reassertion of the libertarian view that individuals and groups choose aggression and thereby invite forceful backlash, which cannot be morally equated to the initial aggression.

In highlighting these consistent approaches, we see a path forward for libertarian anti-war advocacy. One that upholds peace as a goal without sacrificing the principle of justice. These thinkers demonstrate that one can support peace through strength (or through non-intervention, as context dictates) while always keeping moral score: who is defending, who is aggressing. They offer plenty of quotes and examples to fortify the case that we must not let a laudable desire to end war morph into a blanket refusal to assign any blame in war. Instead, libertarians should do what we do best: analyze the cause and effect at the human-action level. Who fired the first shot? Who is targeting innocents? Who would stop if the other side stopped, and who would continue to aggress? These are the questions that separate a rigorous, libertarian anti-war position from a feel-good, pseudo-"even-handed" pacifism that ultimately betrays the innocent.

VI. Anticipating and Rebutting Objections

A thoughtful libertarian (or pacifist critic) might raise several objections to the position I’m taking. It's important to address these head-on:

Objection 1: "All state warfare is immoral and illegitimate, full stop. States themselves are aggressors against their own people (through taxation, etc.), so how can we side with any state in war? It's just gang vs gang, with civilians caught in the middle. Therefore, it's best to oppose all sides in any war and demand an immediate end to violence."

Rebuttal: It's true that libertarians view states as institutionalized aggressors in many ways (taxation being theft, conscription being slavery, etc.).[28] And indeed, if two states are fighting a purely expansionist war over turf, a pox on both their houses. But not all wars are morally equal. Even accepting that states are not ideal proxies for justice, in a given war one state may be clearly in the role of aggressor against another society, while the other state's forces, however flawed, are performing a defensive function that someone has to perform. As Walter Block has argued, we must not let "sectarian anarchist" purity blind us to real-world distinctions.[19]

If we reflexively declare "all government wars unjust" without looking at context, we arrive at absurd implications -- for example, that it was unjust for the U.K. and U.S. to fight Hitler's Germany, or for South Korea to resist North Korea's invasion in 1950, or for a hypothetical libertarian micro-nation to use force repelling a totalitarian invader because, after all, they'd have to form some defense force (which might look 'statist'). Rothbard himself, despite his blanket statements, did at times acknowledge the aggressor/defender difference. The proper libertarian stance is: yes, war is hell and the state makes it worse, but if war has been thrust upon a people, it is not immoral for them to defend themselves -- even if they must do so via a state apparatus (since that's sadly what exists).

One can consistently hold that the state is an aggressor in general and that in a particular war, that state's military might be repelling a greater aggressor. To use an analogy: I disapprove of police departments enforcing victimless crime laws, but if a policeman stops a murder in progress, I won't say he acted illegitimately because he's part of the state. In war, context is everything. Labeling all state warfare "immoral" without nuance leads to moral paralysis where libertarians could not even morally endorse an action to stop genocide unless done by private militias. That's an untenable purity that effectively means surrendering the world to the worst actors. We can oppose war in general as a barbaric institution and still say, in specific cases, one side's violence is a just response to the other's evil.

Objection 2: "Even if one side started it, both sides are killing innocents now. Isn't a life an absolute value? How can you justify any further killing once innocents are at risk? Doesn't the fact that innocents will die mean we must call for an immediate ceasefire, no matter what, because nothing is worth the death of a child?"

Rebuttal: This objection tugs at the heartstrings and indeed reflects a noble sentiment: the pricelessness of each human life. Libertarians certainly agree that one should do everything possible to avoid harming innocents. The use of force must be highly discriminating. But consider the logical consequence of saying "nothing is worth the death of a child, therefore stop fighting immediately." If an aggressor is still in the field committing atrocities, halting all defensive operations will not save lives in the long run; it will cost many more lives. A ceasefire is not magic; it's just a pause or end to formal hostilities. If the aggressor retains capability and intent, they may use a ceasefire to regroup and strike again (or continue oppression).

Sometimes, tragically, the only way to ensure more children (and adults) don't die in the future is to take decisive action now -- even knowing some innocents could die despite our best efforts. It's the awful reality of situations like World War II, where failing to stop Nazi Germany early (in the name of peace) led to a conflagration that killed millions of children. Libertarians are not utilitarians who blithely trade lives on a ledger; we hold that no innocent should ever be intentionally killed. But we also recognize the concept of culpability. If one side is using civilians as shields or has woven itself into an urban population, and continues to aggress, the responsibility for the inevitable innocent deaths lies with those who made that situation.[21]

It is harsh but true: sometimes inaction in the face of aggression results in far greater slaughter of the innocent. Mises wrote about "the pitiless annihilation of Nazism" as a terrible but necessary step to secure a future peace.[24] He didn't say that lightly; he meant that if you let such an evil survive out of reluctance to cause collateral damage, you would eventually get a world with much more death and no freedom. Libertarians are realists about human action: we know trade-offs exist. The key is that any defensive violence must be restrained by strict norms: use minimal force necessary, avoid non-combatants as much as possible, and so on. If those norms are followed, then the unfortunate deaths that occur are on the aggressor's head. Saying "one dead child is too many, so stop now" may seem humane, but what if stopping now sets the stage for ten more dead children next month? These are brutal calculus forced on us by aggressors, not chosen by defenders. The most humane course can sometimes be to finish the fight quickly and remove the threat.

Objection 3: "By picking a side or saying one side is 'just,' aren't we sliding into nationalism or statism? Libertarians should be above these worldly squabbles and stick to principle -- war is the health of the state, violence is tragic, end of story. Otherwise we risk becoming court philosophers for governments ('our military good, their military bad')."

Rebuttal: There is a difference between sober moral analysis and jingoistic cheerleading. Saying "in this conflict, side X is in the right because it is acting in self-defense" is not nationalism; it's principle. Nationalism would be saying "side X is inherently right because it's our country (or our favorite nation)." We are not advocating blind support for any government's war. We are advocating conditional support for the individual rights being defended by some people (who may happen to wear a government uniform) against aggression by others.

Libertarian British citizens in 1940, for instance, could support Britain's defense against Nazi Germany not because they love the State or Churchill, but because the alternative was conquest by a genocidal totalitarian regime -- clearly a worse outcome for liberty. As long as we keep our reasoning grounded in who is violating rights, we won't fall into blind nationalism. In fact, libertarians should feel equally comfortable condemning their own government's military if it is used for aggression. Many of us did exactly that with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 -- a war where the U.S. was the clear aggressor on a false pretext. In that case, being anti-war and refusing moral equivalence meant pointing out that Iraqi fighters resisting U.S. invasion were more justified than the invading forces (though we may loathe the Saddam regime, the invasion violated Iraqi sovereignty and killed countless innocents). There, the libertarian position was "this war is unjust and one-sidedly caused by the U.S. government." Far from being unprincipled, this is applying the same standard across the board.[29]

So, when a different conflict arises where, say, Russia invades Ukraine (to take another example), we logically apply the standard: Russia is the aggressor, Ukraine's defense is justified. That doesn't make us flag-wavers; it only makes us consistent defenders of the non-aggression principle. True, war is the health of the state -- it enlarges state power -- and we should always be wary of propaganda.[3] But sometimes one must choose the lesser evil: a temporary increase in state activity to defeat an aggressor may be a price worth paying to avoid permanent subjugation. The key is to watch like a hawk that our own state relinquishes emergency powers after, etc. History shows that doesn't always happen, and libertarians should indeed criticize war-induced power grabs (censorship, surveillance, etc.). But that is a separate issue from the justice of repelling aggression. We can multitask: oppose the enemy's aggression, and oppose our state's opportunistic overreach, both at once.

Objection 4: "Libertarians should be pacifists. The NAP implies a kind of pacifism. If we truly value consent and peace, how can we condone killing at all? Doesn't violence always beget more violence? What about the example of successful nonviolent resistance (Gandhi, MLK)? Shouldn't we hold ourselves to a higher standard and find nonviolent solutions even to violent problems?"

Rebuttal: Libertarianism is a philosophy of non-aggression, not non-violence per se. This is a crucial distinction. We abhor the initiation of violence, but we uphold the right of self-defense.[4] A pacifist might say: "Better to suffer harm than to do harm." A libertarian says: "It is better if no one does harm, but if someone attacks, the victim has the right to stop them, even if it requires defensive harm." There is no contradiction in valuing peace yet defending defense. Think of it this way: if you truly value innocent life and liberty, you cannot allow an aggressor to walk over others. Sometimes forceful resistance is what protects the values of peace and freedom in the long run.

Nonviolent resistance works under certain conditions -- mainly when the aggressor has some moral scruples or public relations vulnerability. Against a totally ruthless opponent (say, an ISIS or a Nazi), unarmed protest will simply be massacred and forgotten. Libertarianism doesn't require martyrdom to evil. It certainly respects those who choose personal pacifism (you are free to let someone harm you without fighting back, that's your choice), but it doesn't impose that as a moral duty on everyone, especially not in protection of others. As Walter Block noted, pacifism is compatible with libertarianism (you can be a libertarian and personally vow nonviolence), but it's not required.[19]

In fact, Murray Rothbard wrote a critique of pure pacifism, pointing out that a pacifist who would not even call the police or lift a finger to stop a murder in progress is effectively abetting aggression.[2] The proper ethical stance is that initiating force is wrong, but using force to thwart a wrongdoer is a virtue (or at least a right). History's examples of nonviolent movements are often cherry-picked; for each Gandhi there are cases where unarmed people were just crushed (Tiananmen Square protests, for example). Gandhian resistance worked partly because the British, for all their faults, had some accountability and eventually weariness; try that under Stalin and the outcome would be different.

Libertarians are not interested in moral exhibitionism ("look, I'd rather die than harm anyone, aren't I pure"). We are interested in justice and liberty prevailing. If that means some violent men must be met with violence, so be it. We impose limits -- e.g., we reject total war that targets civilians -- but we do not tie the hands of the innocent out of a misplaced idealism. Ultimately, the motto is "Peace, when possible -- but liberty and justice at all costs."[30]

By addressing these objections, we reaffirm that the stance advocated here is neither pro-war nor hypocritical. It is an internal critique aimed at rescuing libertarian anti-war thought from sliding into reflexive pacifism or sloppy equivalence. The goal is to keep our analysis rooted in cause and effect, aggression and defense, individual rights and responsibilities. Only by doing so can libertarians credibly advocate for peace and for justice -- since a lasting peace is born from the triumph of justice, not from the mere silencing of guns while injustice prevails.

Objection 5: "Austrians cite aggregates all the time. Rothbard used stagflation statistics to critique Keynesianism, Mises regularly employed empirical data. The key is that theory comes first, with data serving to check and revise. Similarly, citing war casualties doesn't constitute methodological collectivism. The practical reality is that modern terrorist organizations don't line up on battlefields; they embed among civilians. When theory demands avoiding civilian casualties through targeted operations (like Richard Ebeling's bounty proposal for Bin Laden), empirical reality shows this is often impossible. Winning against embedded terrorists is primary; avoiding casualties is preferable but not always feasible. Demanding pure methodological individualism in war analysis seems impractical given these constraints."

Rebuttal: This objection illuminates important distinctions about theory, empirics, and practical constraints that merit careful consideration, yet it misses how citing aggregates without examining underlying individual actions constitutes the very methodological error it seeks to defend.

First, regarding Austrian use of aggregates: Austrians indeed cite GDP, employment figures, and other macroeconomic data regularly. The crucial distinction lies in how these figures function analytically. When Rothbard wielded stagflation statistics against Keynesianism, he wasn't treating aggregates as primary theoretical constructs but as symptoms of underlying individual actions and government interventions. The data falsified Keynesian predictions, but the Austrian theoretical critique (that aggregates obscure individual choice and calculation) remained primary. Even Keynes himself, as Hayek noted, understood his theory as addressing specific post-WWI British conditions rather than providing a universal framework.[32]

The parallel to war analysis is precise: citing casualty figures isn't inherently collectivist. The methodological error occurs when these figures become the primary basis for moral judgment, divorced from individual agency and intent. When analysis reduces to "both sides have killed 100 children, therefore both are equally culpable," it commits the same error as Keynesian reasoning that treats GDP movements as causally decisive while ignoring underlying individual actions.

Second, concerning practical constraints of asymmetric warfare: Modern terrorist groups indeed deliberately embed themselves among civilians, making "clean" targeting nearly impossible. This reality demands more methodological individualism, not less. The individual agents who choose this strategy, knowing it will result in civilian casualties, bear primary moral responsibility for creating conditions where defensive forces face impossible choices.

The bounty proposal for Bin Laden illustrates the complexity. The relevant question isn't merely eliminating one individual, but dismantling terrorist capacity. When Bin Laden died, Al Qaeda simply appointed new leadership. Methodologically individualist analysis examines: Which individuals made which strategic decisions? Who chose to use human shields? Who attempted to minimize civilian casualties within operational constraints? Who celebrated versus mourned civilian deaths?

Third, on balancing principles with necessities: Accepting that defeating embedded terrorists takes priority doesn't require abandoning individualist analysis; it demands its rigorous application. As explored in recent voluntaryist scholarship, legitimate defense requires examining both mens rea (intent) and actus reus (act).[33] When defensive forces accidentally kill civilians while targeting combatants who deliberately hide among them, the intent differs fundamentally from forces that intentionally target civilians. This isn't mere "institutional culture" but the core distinction between legitimate defense and murder.

Body counts alone cannot determine moral action without examining intent and agency. A police officer who kills an armed robber and the robber who initiated violence may both have "body counts," but this doesn't make them morally equivalent. The homicide in self-defense isn't murder precisely because of the difference in agency and intent.

Without an objective metric or reasonable heuristic to delineate when someone's actions move beyond justified defense, there is no "compared to what?" for philosophical analysis. A methodologically consistent framework for evaluating defensive action would examine:

1. Initiatory agency: Who chose to break the peace first?

2. Intentionality: Are civilian casualties the goal or an unintended consequence?

3. ‘Proportional’ necessity: Is the defensive response calibrated to stop the threat with minimal harm?

4. Discriminatory effort: Does the defender attempt to distinguish combatants from non-combatants within constraints?

5. Strategic embedding: Has either side deliberately placed civilians in harm's way?

This framework requires examining individual decisions and actions, not merely counting bodies. When defensive forces warn civilians, attempt targeted strikes, and express regret for unintended casualties, while aggressors celebrate civilian deaths and use human shields, these represent qualitatively different moral phenomena regardless of similar casualty figures.

The crucial "compared to what?" question must be answered: If the alternative to imperfect defensive operations is allowing continued aggression, then some level of unintended harm may be the lesser evil. But this judgment requires analyzing specific actions by specific agents, not treating "collateral damage" as an undifferentiated aggregate.

Acknowledging practical constraints doesn't require abandoning methodological individualism; it requires applying it more rigorously. Just as Austrian economists use empirical data without becoming Keynesians, war analysis can discuss casualty figures without becoming collectivist. The key is maintaining focus on individual agency, choice, and moral responsibility even when analyzing complex aggregate phenomena. Only through such analysis can we move beyond simplistic body counts to examine the human actions that create them.

VIII. Final Thoughts

I will say it again: libertarianism is, at its heart, a philosophy of peace. We seek a world where individuals interact through voluntary exchange and cooperation, not through force and coercion. In that sense, authentic libertarianism is deeply anti-war. It was Rothbard who taught us that of all state activities; war is the worst. It’s a mass murderous assault on life, liberty, and property on a scale nothing else can match.[2] Nothing in this essay should be construed as diminishing the libertarian commitment to ending wars. However, as we have argued, being anti-war must not mean abandoning logic, context, and principle. Paradoxically, a libertarian who opposes war effectively must be willing to analyze wars dispassionately to identify their causes and would-be solutions.

What I set out to critique was the internal contradiction that arises when some libertarians drift from methodological individualism to a kind of macro-collectivist pacifism. That contradiction manifests as rhetoric that sounds more like a utilitarian humanitarian NGO than a libertarian scholar; talking about aggregate death tolls and mutual destruction without reference to who is doing what to whom. It's the equivalent of a libertarian economist suddenly embracing GDP planning: it just doesn't fit our framework. We have seen how Rothbard's own rigorous principles, if applied without nuance, can lead to a flattening of moral agency -- but also how Rothbard's successors like Walter Block have shown a way to retain nuance and moral differentiation even while opposing war categorically in general.

Restoring libertarian rigor to anti-war arguments means re-emphasizing the primacy of the individual, both as the moral unit and as the unit of analysis. We judge actions, not collectives. We care who started an altercation and who retaliated. We value intentions and qualitative choices, not just quantitative outcomes. And we always ask, "Compared to what?" When someone demands an end to violence, we ask: what will happen if the other side's violence goes unanswered? When someone bemoans the death of innocents, we ask: who set in motion the events causing those deaths and how do we prevent far more innocents from dying in the future?

By injecting this clarity, libertarians can avoid the moral faux pas of false equivalence. We can stand firmly against interventions, empires, and aggressive wars (like Rothbard did opposing the Vietnam War and others), while still affirming that not all violence is morally equal. A libertarian Europe under attack by a fascist power should defend itself; a libertarian community confronted by a criminal gang should too. These are not betrayals of peace, but defenses of it. Friedrich Hayek warned that civilizations that lose the will to fight for their values may fall to those who haven't.[17] Libertarians want a world where that fighting isn't necessary -- but to get there, we sometimes have to countenance force to stop aggressors. This is the difference between pacifism and peace through strength.

Libertarians must remember that the individual, and not the death toll, is the truest moral unit. Every war is, tragically, made up of individual crimes (by aggressors) and individual acts of courage (by defenders). Our job is to never lose sight of that, and maintain methodological individualism across all domains. Just as Austrian economists understand the limitations of aggregate statistics while still using them carefully in Economics, libertarians can oppose war while maintaining moral clarity about who bears responsibility for violence.

We should neither collectivize guilt ("all soldiers on all sides are equally murderers") nor collectivize victimhood ("war just victimizes everyone involved equally"). Instead, we assign guilt and victimhood as the facts warrant, and usually, those facts show that some individuals (leaders, aggressors) victimized others (civilians, defenders). By keeping our focus on individual agency and the distinction between aggression and self-defense, we can offer an anti-war perspective that is passionately pro-peace yet intellectually honest. We don't glorify anyone's war, but we also refuse to pretend that a world in which good people do nothing to stop evil is a peaceful or desirable one.

Let us therefore reclaim the narrative: libertarians are the fiercest opponents of war because we refuse to blur moral lines. We know that only by clearly identifying and condemning aggression, whether by our government or another, can we ever hope to reduce and eliminate war. We don't "see no difference" between sides; we see the crucial difference between violating rights and defending them. In doing so, we uphold the very core of libertarian ethics. If our rhetoric has been hijacked in places by a well-meaning but misguided pacifism that treats war as a mere disaster to manage, we must correct that. This methodological inconsistency leads to moral confusion/ War is a disaster. caused by specific actions of specific people.
Stop those people, and you stop the war.

Ultimately, our vision is a world where all conflicts are resolved without violence. To get there, we need moral clarity in the here and now. That means supporting the innocent individual against the aggressor individual, every time, at every level. Peace and liberty thrive when justice is done, and justice demands we never equate the aggressor and the defender. By avoiding that internal contradiction, libertarians can provide a consistently principled, compelling anti-war voice that truly advances the cause of peace grounded in freedom and responsibility.

Bibliography

[1] "Financial Crises: Keynesian and Austrian School Perspectives." Tutor2u. Accessed May 29, 2025. https://www.tutor2u.net/economics/reference/financial-crises-keynesian-and-austrian-school-perspectives

[2] "A Libertarian Theory of War." Mises Institute. Accessed May 29, 2025. https://mises.org/mises-daily/libertarian-theory-war

[3] "Peace and Pacifism." Libertarianism.org. Accessed May 29, 2025. https://www.libertarianism.org/topics/peace-and-pacifism

[4] "The Non-Aggression Principle." Dialnet. Accessed May 29, 2025. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/7097352.pdf

[5] Rothbard, Murray N. "War, Peace, and the State." Mises Institute. Accessed May 29, 2025. https://mises.org/library/war-peace-and-state

[6] "Individualism, Methodological: A Libertarianism.org Guide." Libertarianism.org. Accessed May 29, 2025. https://www.libertarianism.org/topics/individualism-methodological

[7] "The Keynesian Multiplier Concept Ignores Crucial Opportunity Costs." Mises Institute. Accessed May 29, 2025. https://mises.org/quarterly-journal-austrian-economics/keynesian-multiplier-concept-ignores-crucial-opportunity-costs

[8] "The Austrian School of Economics — Action as an expression of value." ehsto. Accessed May 29, 2025. https://ehsto.com/blogs/undertone-journal/the-school-of-austrian-economics

[9] Horton, Scott. Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine. Austin: Libertarian Institute, 2023.

[10] "Lessons Learned: Ron Paul's Warnings Against the War on Terror Stand True." Libertarian Party. Accessed May 29, 2025. https://lp.org/lessons-learned-ron-pauls-warnings-against-the-war-on-terror-stand-true/

[11] Antiwar.com. Accessed May 29, 2025.

https://www.antiwar.com/

[12] Shoenfeld, Joshua. "The Final Solution of Gaza is Imminent." LewRockwell.com. Accessed May 29, 2025. https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/the-final-solution-of-gaza-is-imminent/

[13] "Is It Just War or Unjustified Slaughter of Innocents?" Mises Institute. Accessed May 29, 2025. https://mises.org/mises-wire/it-just-war-or-unjustified-slaughter-innocents

[14] "War & Foreign Policy: A Libertarianism.org Guide." Libertarianism.org. Accessed May 29, 2025. https://www.libertarianism.org/topics/war-foreign-policy

[15] Kinsella, Stephan. "Dialogical Estoppel: Erga Omnes Rights and the Libertarian Theory of Punishment and Self-Defense." Journal of Libertarian Studies. Accessed May 29, 2025. https://jls.mises.org/api/v1/articles/73686-dialogical-estoppel-erga-omnes-rights-and-the-libertarian-theory-of-punishment-and-self-defense.pdf

[16] Block, Walter E., and Alan Futerman. "Rejoinder to Gordon and Njoya on Israel and Libertarianism." MEST Journal. July 2024. https://www.meste.org/mest/MEST_Najava/XXIV_Block_Futerman.pdf

[17] Palmer, Tom G. "Something Is Rotting at the Periphery of the Libertarian Movement." Tom G. Palmer Blog. December 11, 2004. http://tomgpalmer.com/2004/12/11/something-is-rotting-at-the-periphery-of-the-libertarian-movement/

[18] Mises, Ludwig von. Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951.

[19] Block, Walter E. "ANTI-WAR? A rejoinder to Antiwar.com, Lew Rockwell, Tom DiLorenzo, and the Mises Caucus of the Libertarian Party." ResearchGate. Accessed May 29, 2025. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/382414653_ANTI-WAR_A_rejoinder_to_Antiwarcom_Lew_Rockwell_Tom_DiLorenzo_and_the_Mises_Caucus_of_the_Libertarian_Party

[20] Block, Walter. Interview in Savvy Street. November 2023. https://www.thesavvystreet.com/transcript-in-defense-of-israel-part-ii-walter-block-and-alan-futerman/

[21] Block, Walter E. "The Human Body Shield." Mises Institute. Accessed May 29, 2025. https://cdn.mises.org/22_1_30.pdf

[22] Hoppe, Hans-Hermann. "An Open Letter to Walter E. Block." Mises Institute. Accessed May 29, 2025. https://mises.org/mises-wire/open-letter-walter-e-block

[23] Mises, Ludwig von. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949.

[24] Mises, Ludwig von. Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944. Online Library of Liberty. https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/greaves-omnipotent-government-the-rise-of-the-total-state-and-total-war

[25] Hayek, F. A. The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944.

[26] "Why Mises (and not Hayek)?" Mises Institute. Accessed May 29, 2025. https://mises.org/mises-daily/why-mises-and-not-hayek

[27] "The Cycle of Violence in Anti-War Rhetoric." Biblioteka Nauki. Accessed May 29, 2025. https://bibliotekanauki.pl/articles/58661435.pdf

[28] "Rothbard's Theory of International Relations and the State." Mises Institute. Accessed May 29, 2025. https://mises.org/mises-wire/rothbards-theory-international-relations-and-state

[29] "Just War." Mises Institute. Accessed May 29, 2025. https://mises.org/mises-daily/just-war

[30] "Can a Principled Libertarian Go to War?" Mises Institute. Accessed May 29, 2025. https://mises.org/mises-daily/can-principled-libertarian-go-war

[31] Harris, S. (2014, July 21). The sin of moral equivalence. https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-sin-of-moral-equivalence

[32] F.A. Hayek, "Personal Recollections of Keynes and the 'Keynesian Revolution,'" in The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, ed. Bruce Caldwell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

[33] "Voluntaryism and War," The Voluntaryist Association, April 15, 2025, https://vassociation.com/2025/04/15/voluntaryism-and-war/.

[My recent conversation with Prof. and ‘s recent post about antisemitism have inspired me to do some of my own writing on this illusive topic. I wrote about Jewish Success here and about Georgian non-antisemitism here]

Most people think antisemitism is simple hatred of Jews. Ancient prejudice, same old story.

They're wrong.

The reason they’re wrong is that antisemitism isn't a static practice. It's an adaptable ideology that changes to match whatever society fears most. And that makes it far more dangerous than we realize.

Static vs. Dynamic: Two Ways to See the Same Problem

Typically, antisemitism is viewed as a static phenomenon - a fixed hatred that never changes. Jews have always been hated for being Jews. Same prejudice, different century.

But there's another way to look at it: dynamically evolving antisemitism. This sees Jew-hatred as an ideology that changes to match whatever society currently fears or struggles with.

The static view asks: "Why do people always hate Jews?"

The dynamic view asks: "What fear is antisemitism latching onto now?"

The Virus That Mutates

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks understood the dynamic nature perfectly: "Antisemitism is not a belief but a virus... it mutates."

Think about it. Jews have been blamed for being too rich and too poor. Too isolated and too integrated. For being stateless wanderers and for having their own state.

What looks like inconsistency is actually the pattern.
What's really going on is that antisemitism says nothing about Jews and everything about whoever's doing the hating.

When Germany was falling apart, Jews became the scapegoat for both capitalism and communism. When progressive movements needed a villain, Jews became "white colonizers." When conspiracy theorists need puppet masters, they point to "globalist elites."

The accusations change. The target stays the same.

From Religion to Race to "Human Rights"

Medieval era: Jews killed Christ. They poison wells. They murder Christian children.

19th century: Jews are a dangerous race. They control banks. They plot world domination.

Today: Jews are white supremacists. Israel is a Nazi state. Zionism is racism.

Notice the pattern? Each era dresses up the same hatred in contemporary language. Wilhelm Marr coined "antisemitism" in 1879 to make Jew-hatred sound scientific rather than religious. Today's antisemites use human rights language to make their bigotry sound progressive.

Douglas Murray nailed it: "Tell me what you accuse the Jews of, and I'll tell you what you believe you are guilty of."

The Psychology Behind the Targeting

The dynamic view looks at how antisemitism changes-not why it targeted Jews to begin with. That's where philosopher Michael Huemer adds something important: why Jews specifically became history's preferred scapegoat.

His "nerd hate" theory draws a parallel between antisemitism and schoolyard bullying. Bullies don't attack the biggest, strongest kids. They target the ones who seem intellectually focused, physically non-threatening, and somehow different from the dominant culture.

Jews fit this profile historically. Known for scholarly pursuits, religious study, and tight-knit communities that sometimes appeared separate from mainstream society. Add the stereotype of being bookish rather than physical, and you have what Huemer calls unconscious "safe to attack" signals.

Huemer argues this stems from evolved dominance instincts. Humans inherited hierarchical behaviors from primate ancestors. When people want to assert dominance but avoid real danger, they unconsciously target groups that trigger these psychological cues.

But here's the crucial insight: antisemites don't consciously calculate who to attack. This is instinctive, emotion-driven behavior. People "just feel like" targeting certain groups, then create elaborate rationalizations afterward.

As Huemer puts it: "Anti-Semites come up with conspiracy theories about Jews, blood libel, etc., as rationalizations for their pre-existing desire to attack Jews. They're confabulating."

This aligns perfectly with what we see in modern antisemitism. The underlying scapegoating urge might be constant, but the justifications change to match whatever makes sense in each era.

Where Evolutionary Psychology Falls Short

Huemer's theory explains an important piece of the puzzle, but it can't account for antisemitism's full complexity.

The content evolution problem: If antisemitism is just primitive bullying with fancy rationalizations, why do the accusations change so dramatically? From blood libels to racial pseudoscience to modern talk of colonialism, each version of antisemitism taps into the anxieties of its time.

The sophistication problem: Many antisemites aren't crude bullies asserting dominance. They are, in fact, educated progressives who genuinely see themselves as fighting oppression. They believe they’re standing up to power, not picking on the weak.

The contradiction problem: Jews aren't just stereotyped as harmless nerds. They're simultaneously portrayed as weak victims AND all-powerful puppet-masters. Huemer's "safe target" theory only explains half this paradox.

The self-hatred problem: Why would Jews themselves internalize antisemitic attitudes? Evolutionary psychology can't explain why someone would join attacks on their own group.

The conditional acceptance problem: The static view treats antisemitism as a binary phenomenon: you're either hated or you're not, usually because of race or religion. But modern antisemitism is more flexible. It's no longer about who you are but about how well you distance yourself from Jewish identity. If you don't "look very Jewish," if you criticize Israel loudly enough, if you're an atheist - you might be granted conditional acceptance.
The evolutionary approach sees antisemitism as instinctive and automatic, but modern reality suggests it’s often conditional, strategic, and tied to ideology more than just identity.

The Synthesis: Why Both Approaches Matter

I see the dynamic view as a missing piece that fits naturally with Huemer’s explanation.
Huemer’s theory explains why Jews were originally targeted.
The dynamic view shows how that targeting keeps adapting over time

Huemer may be right that certain stereotypes made Jews a psychologically "convenient" target. Perhaps there are deep-seated reasons why antisemitic ideologies keep returning to the same scapegoat across different societies.

But that's only the beginning of the story. Once that targeting mechanism is embedded , antisemitism becomes something much more sophisticated than schoolyard bullying.

This explains what the static approach can't:

• Why the same "nerdy" group gets blamed for opposite things (capitalism and communism, weakness and excessive power).

• Why educated progressives can become antisemitic while thinking they're fighting oppression

• Why antisemitism changes its vocabulary to match each era's dominant moral framework

• Why some Jews internalize these narratives despite having no evolutionary reason to attack their own group

• Why some people hate Jews so deeply and in such detail, even in places where there are no Jews, and the haters have never met one

• Why the hate is not binary but a continuum: modern antisemites tolerate Jews until they show signs of Jewish/Israeli identity or support for Israel. Then the mask drops

The dynamic approach shows that antisemitism isn't just dressed-up bullying, but a carefully-crafted cultural phenomenon that exploits different psychological vulnerabilities in different contexts.

Huemer asks: "Why do people always hate Jews?"
The dynamic approach asks: "What role do people need Jews to play in their current story about the world?"

Both questions matter, but the only the second one truly explains why antisemitism keeps reinventing itself.

The Progressive Disguise

Here's where it gets tricky. Modern antisemitism often hides behind causes that sound noble.

Anti-racism. Anti-colonialism. Social justice.

You'll hear things like:

• "We don't hate Jews, just Zionists"

• "Jews are white oppressors now"

• "Israel is uniquely evil"

But scratch the surface. Why is Israel held to standards applied to no other nation? Why do "anti-Zionist" rallies feature chants about pushing Jews into the sea? Why are Jews told they're only acceptable if they renounce their collective identity?

This stops being legitimate criticism pretty quickly. The same old hatred is just using different words now.

When Jews Turn Against Jews

Perhaps the most tragic aspect is auto-antisemitism; i.e., Jews who internalize anti-Jewish hatred.

Karl Marx calling Judaism the "worldly cult of money." Or modern Jewish activists who excuse every form of antisemitism except the kind that comes from the far-right.

Why does this happen?

Simple psychology. If you grow up hearing that Jews are the problem, part of you might believe it. Especially if rejecting your Jewish identity gets you accepted by the groups you want to join.

Psychologist Raphael Ezekiel put it this way: living in an antisemitic culture is like living next to a cement factory. Eventually, some dust gets into everyone's lungs.

The Real Danger

Dynamic antisemitism is especially dangerous because it's harder to spot. When someone says "Jews control the banks," we know that's bigotry. But when they say "Zionist lobby controls Congress" or "Israeli apartheid," it sounds like political analysis.

That's the point. Modern antisemites have learned to speak the language their audience wants to hear.

In academic circles, they use postcolonial theory. In conspiracy communities, they talk about globalist cabals. In progressive spaces, they frame Jews as privileged oppressors.

Different vocabulary. Same virus.

How to Fight Back

Understanding antisemitism's adaptable nature gives us tools to combat it:

Look for patterns instead of labels. Does someone consistently single out Jews or Israel using double standards? That's antisemitism, regardless of the political packaging.

Call out contradictions. If someone claims to oppose colonialism but only talks about Israel while ignoring Turkey in Kurdistan, Azerbaijan in Karabach, Syria in Syria or China in Tibet, ask why. If someone complains about the situation of Palestinians in Gaza but shows no concern for Palestinians in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, or Kuwait, who have faced apartheid, expulsion, and systematic ethnic cleansing for nearly 70 years - ask why.

Educate about conspiracy thinking. Most antisemitism relies on conspiracy theories. Teaching people to think critically about these narratives helps immunize them.

Support Jewish identity positively. The antidote to internalized antisemitism is strong, proud Jewish education and community.

Build real coalitions. Partner with people who understand that fighting antisemitism isn't about protecting Jewish feelings but a part of the struggle to achieve freedom and liberty for all.

Understand the deeper psychology. As Huemer suggests, some antisemitism may tap into primitive dominance instincts that target "safe" groups. Recognizing these unconscious biases can help us address them more effectively.

The Stakes

Antisemitism is like a toxin in the bloodstream of society. It corrupts rational discourse, promotes conspiracy thinking, and normalizes scapegoating. What starts with Jews never ends with Jews.

That's why understanding its adaptable nature matters so much. We can't fight an enemy we don't understand. And antisemitism's greatest trick is convincing people it's something other than what it is.

The hatred never dies. It just keeps finding new ways to hide.

Stay alert.

References & Further Reading

Baddiel, David. Jews Don't Count. London: TLS Books, 2021.

Block, Walter & Oded Faran. "A Conversation on Libertarianism, Anti-Semitism, and the Mises Institute." Video Call Recording, May 22, 2025. Available at: https://www.youware.com/project/d8ve74i3az

Feldman, Noah. "The New Antisemitism." TIME Magazine, March 2024. Available at: https://time.com/6763293/antisemitism/

Huemer, Michael. "Why Is There Antisemitism?" Michael Huemer's Substack, December 28, 2024.

International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. "Working Definition of Antisemitism." Adopted May 2016. Available at: https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definition-antisemitism

Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism. March 2020. Available at:

https://jerusalemdeclaration.org/

Murray, Douglas. The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam. London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2017.

Murray, Douglas. Various lectures and public speeches on contemporary antisemitism, 2020-2025.

Sacks, Jonathan. Future Tense: Jews, Judaism, and Israel in the Twenty-first Century. New York: Schocken Books, 2009.

Weiss, Bari. How to Fight Anti-Semitism. New York: Crown, 2019.

Person A has an idea. Person A asks AI to turn that idea into a written product (an article, email, or social media post).
Person B then asks AI to explain what Person A wrote, clearly and concisely, so the key points come through with minimal time investment.

This scenario happens every day, and it's becoming more common, more polished, and more professional.

But something fascinating is happening here: AI-to-AI communication. The idea passes through AI just like data moves across the internet, from an encoder to a decoder in streams of information.

There's no shortage of similar precedents. Think of the internet, banking, algorithmic trading, crypto. So what's new?

What's new is that this isn't just about form but about content: Not just how something is transmitted, but what is said, how it's phrased, and what meaning comes out of it.

We're witnessing the emergence of a process where knowledge is created and consumed by systems. And we're becoming strategic managers of that process.

The Loop Is Already Working

This is already happening. Right now:

• AI generates synthetic training data to train other AI models, creating entire datasets without human input

• One AI writes a news report from structured data, another AI summarizes it, and a third AI uses that summary to make automated trading decisions

• AI creates marketing copy, feeds it to translation AI, which feeds to sentiment analysis AI, which feeds to ad placement algorithms

• Chatbots generate customer service responses that get fed into other AI systems to update knowledge bases and training data

We're seeing what researchers call "chained AI processes." Intelligent workflows where one AI's output becomes another AI's input, creating autonomous information pipelines that operate at superhuman scales.

The Efficiency Revolution

The benefits are remarkable: unprecedented speed, scale, and sophistication. Financial algorithms can process market signals in microseconds. News analysis happens in real-time across global sources. Educational content personalizes instantly to millions of individual learning styles.

This creates what I'd call the "cognitive multiplication effect." AI systems amplify human intelligence rather than replace it. The key is understanding when to lean in and when to maintain oversight.

Like any powerful tool, these systems work best when we understand their capabilities and limits. Sure, a mistranslation could cascade through a chain, or a biased dataset could skew downstream decisions. But these are engineering challenges, not fundamental flaws.

What We're Actually Gaining

This shift represents an extraordinary expansion of human cognitive capacity.

Cognitive augmentation is freeing us from routine information processing. Instead of spending hours reading reports, we can focus on interpretation, strategy, and creative problem-solving.

Enhanced pattern recognition lets us spot insights across vast datasets that would be impossible for humans to process manually.

The Skills Evolution

Rather than replacing human capabilities, this is reshaping which skills matter most.

The way we work is changing.

Working with AI is now just as important as knowing a technical skill. But using AI well means knowing how to judge its output—that’s the new kind of literacy.

Since AI can handle much of the execution, your value lies in setting smart goals and thinking strategically. The parts AI can’t replace—like creativity and judgment—are where humans still lead.

The most successful people and organizations are learning to dance with AI, not fight it.

What This Means for the Future

Is human understanding becoming unnecessary? Not at all. It's becoming more strategic. We're moving from processing information to directing intelligence.

Is thinking just issuing commands to a machine? Thinking is evolving to include designing systems, setting objectives, and interpreting results. Higher-order cognitive work.

Will learning happen without actual learning? Learning is shifting toward meta-skills: how to ask better questions, evaluate sources, and synthesize insights across domains.

The Opportunity Ahead

This could be profoundly liberating. Less time on routine cognitive tasks means more time for value judgments, creative work, relationship building, and tackling complex problems that require human insight.

The challenges are real but manageable. We need to stay engaged with the underlying material, maintain our critical thinking muscles, and ensure broad access to these powerful tools. Without thoughtful design, we risk creating what some call a "cognitive oligarchy" where a small group controls the AI systems that shape how everyone else thinks and learns.

The key insight is that we're not becoming obsolete. In my opinion, we’re merely becoming cognitive architects.

Designing the Future

We're at an exciting inflection point. The autonomous content loop is already spinning, processing information at scales that multiply human capacity. The question isn't whether this will continue but how we'll design systems that amplify human potential.

The most interesting opportunities:

• Building AI literacy that empowers people to be effective collaborators

• Creating human-AI workflows that combine the best of both intelligences

• Developing safeguards that maintain quality while enabling speed

• Fostering new expertise in directing and interpreting AI systems

The Choice Ahead

The future of human intelligence isn't about competing with AI. It's about conducting it. Like a conductor with an orchestra, our role is shifting from playing every instrument to creating harmony across the ensemble.

This could be the beginning of a remarkable expansion of human capability, where we focus on what we do best while AI handles what it does best.

We created the loop. Now the loop is creating everything else.

There appears to be a fundamental flaw in the worldview of many Western anti-war advocates in how they perceive modern conflicts. It’s one that needs to be called out openly and clearly.

As we all know, modern conflicts aren't, anymore, between clear armies of nation-states that follow the conventional rules of war, like wearing uniforms, separating from civilians, or protecting their own populations. Even monstrous regimes like the Nazis and Soviets broadly followed those codes. Nowadays we're dealing with shapeless terror groups designed for sabotage, massacres, and assassinations.

We all know that, right?

But what’s being kept out of public discourse is the element of time.
Terrorist operations are typically fast, brutal, and most importantly (for the sake of this article) usually over within hours. As soon as the killing ends, they ditch the combat gear and blend back into the civilian population.

The army forced to respond, on the other hand, must do the opposite: invade, hold territory, plan urban warfare, scan for enemies hiding among civilians. This takes time. And because it takes time, it becomes the focus. The human mind tends to overreact to sustained action and downplay quick horrors. That's duration bias.

If Israel had flattened Gaza in three days, i.e., leveled neighborhoods, killed without distinction, then withdrawn; it would've sparked outrage, but might have been filed away as just another ugly chapter in a brutal conflict.

But because Israel proceeds slowly, tries to target combatants, and acts with visible restraint (whether or not that restraint is perfect), the duration of the campaign becomes the very thing it's condemned for.

And that's the absurdity: Israel is demonized not despite the fact that it acts differently than its genocidal enemies, but because of it. The prolonged effort meant to avoid indiscriminate killing is twisted into evidence of malice.

So-called peace activists then weaponize that prolonged timeframe. They flood the media with moralistic essays that ignore intent, method, or enemy tactics. They use duration bias to flip reality—turning Israel's restraint into guilt, and the terrorists' quick brutality into something forgettable.

They end up demonizing the one actor in the region that, even while fighting for its survival, still operates under constraints its enemies never even pretend to be willing to accept...

Ancient Jewish settlement in Georgia dates back over 2,600 years, one of the oldest continuous Jewish communities in the world.

[This post continues an idea developed in another post, “Are Jews Inherently Successful?”, specifically in the section about Georgia.]

The Exception That Proves the Rule

When we examine the often tragic history of Jewish communities throughout the world, we typically encounter a pattern of persecution, expulsion, and discrimination. Yet tucked between the Black Sea and the Caucasus Mountains lies a remarkable exception: the country of Georgia, where for over 26 centuries, Jewish communities have experienced something almost unheard of: a society largely free from indigenous antisemitism.

Unlike the pogroms of Russia, the expulsions from Spain, or the dhimmi restrictions of the Arab world, Georgia's historical record shows a profound absence of state-sponsored persecution against its Jewish population. This small nation at the crossroads of Europe and Asia offers a fascinating case study in what peaceful coexistence between majority and minority religious communities can look like over millennia.

"Acculturation Without Assimilation"

The first Jewish settlers likely arrived in what is now Georgia following the destruction of the First Temple by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE. Archaeological evidence, including tombstones with Hebrew inscriptions dating to the 4th-5th centuries found in ancient Mtskheta, confirms their early presence.

What makes Georgian Jews unique is their distinctive pattern of integration. They became deeply acculturated into Georgian society, adopting Georgian as their mother tongue rather than developing a separate Jewish language like Yiddish or Ladino, while simultaneously maintaining their religious identity and practices. This phenomenon, often described as "acculturation without assimilation," allowed Georgian Jews to become integral to Georgian society without sacrificing their Jewish identity.

The lexical influence of Hebrew is even traceable in the Georgian language, including the word for Saturday, "shabati," indicating just how intertwined these communities became over centuries of cohabitation.

A Sharp Contrast to European and Middle Eastern Experiences

To appreciate how exceptional Georgia's case is, we must understand the stark differences between the Georgian experience and that of Jewish communities elsewhere:

In Europe:

• Widespread pogroms killed thousands during the Crusades, Black Death, and in Tsarist Russia

• Mass expulsions from England (1290), France (1306/1394), Spain (1492), and Portugal (1496)

• Ghettos, special badges, and severe occupational restrictions

• The Holocaust as the horrific culmination of centuries of antisemitism

In the Arab World:

• Dhimmi status imposing legal and social restrictions

• Requirement to wear distinctive clothing marking Jews as separate

• Limited access to the legal system and payment of special taxes

• Violent pogroms like the "Farhud" in Iraq (1941) and the mass exodus of Jews from Arab countries after 1948

In Georgia:

• No record of indigenous pogroms against Jews

• No expulsions on religious or ethnic grounds

• No ghettos or requirements for distinctive clothing

• While Jews experienced serfdom, this was a socioeconomic status affecting non-Jewish Georgians as well, and explicitly prohibited forced conversion

Perhaps most tellingly, Georgian kings valued and trusted their Jewish subjects, even utilizing them in diplomatic service. During the 12th century, the Jewish head trader Zanjan Zorababeli arranged a husband for Georgia's first female monarch, Queen Tamar; a position of trust unimaginable in most medieval European courts.

When Antisemitism Did Appear: The Russian Connection

Georgia's exceptional history doesn't mean the country was completely immune to antisemitism. However, the historical record shows a clear pattern: significant antisemitic incidents primarily emerged during periods of external domination, particularly under Tsarist and Soviet rule.

The annexation of Georgia by the Russian Empire in 1801 introduced blood libels, economic restrictions, and officially sanctioned discrimination. Later, Soviet rule brought further suppression of Jewish religious and cultural life, with synagogues closed or destroyed and Jewish activists arrested.

This pattern continues today, with contemporary antisemitic statements from certain Georgian Orthodox clergy explicitly linked to "messages coming from the Russian Patriarchate" and amplified by pro-Russian groups. Rather than reflecting indigenous Georgian attitudes, these incidents appear to be an imported phenomenon, connected to Russia's long history of weaponizing antisemitism for political purposes.

Why Georgia Stands Apart

Heres my theory for what appears to have contributed to Georgia's unique history:

1. Deep Historical Entrenchment: The millennia-long presence of Jews in Georgia created an "insider" status where they were perceived as an integral part of Georgian society rather than foreign outsiders.

2. Absence of Religious Incitement: Unlike many Christian-majority nations, the Georgian Orthodox Church historically did not incite against the Jews for centuries, avoiding the theological demonization common elsewhere.

3. Shared Struggles Against External Threats: Jews fought alongside Georgians against common enemies, fostering solidarity that transcended religious differences.

4. Cultural Openness: Georgia's position at the crossroads of civilizations fostered a culture of hospitality and pragmatic acceptance of diversity.

Contemporary Reality and the Israeli Connection

Today, Georgia's Jewish population has dwindled from nearly 60,000 in the 1970s to approximately 1,500. However, this dramatic decrease wasn't driven by persecution but rather by Zionism and the desire for Aliyah (immigration to Israel). Unlike Jewish exoduses from other regions, Georgian Jewish emigration was characterized by communal movement based on religious aspirations rather than flight from hostility.

Georgia maintains strong diplomatic and cultural ties with Israel, with the Georgian government expressing "full solidarity with Israel" following the October 7th attacks. This pro-Israel stance further distinguishes Georgia from many post-Soviet states where antisemitism remains more prevalent.

Lessons from the Georgian Exception

In a world where antisemitism continues to surge globally, Georgia's historical example offers a powerful counterpoint to the notion that Jewish-gentile relations must inevitably be marked by conflict and persecution. While no society is perfect, and Georgia has faced contemporary challenges (particularly from external influences), its overall historical trajectory demonstrates that peaceful coexistence is possible.

This small nation's exceptional history reminds us that antisemitism is not inevitable; that different paths are possible when societies resist the urge to scapegoat minorities and instead embrace the contributions of diverse communities as part of their national fabric.

This article is based on extensive historical research. For a complete list of sources, please see the original academic report.

https://www.thesavvystreet.com/exiling-block-what-the-mises-institute-split-reveals-about-libertarian-fragility/

The 2020 Abraham Accords and Their Success Through Secret Negotiations

The Abraham Accords of 2020 stand as a showcase of secret diplomacy in action. Jared Kushner and Trump's team conducted normalization talks between Israel and several Arab states almost entirely behind the scenes, outside traditional State Department channels [1]. This clandestine approach meant there was little public hint of the breakthrough until it was nearly finalized, minimizing opportunities for hardline spoilers to intervene. Even Israel's own government was largely kept in the dark – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later admitted he concealed the UAE negotiations from coalition partners at Washington's request [5]. By the time the accords were announced and signed in September 2020, they came as a pleasant shock to the world, allowing the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco to establish ties with Israel amid an atmosphere of surprise optimism. Observers noted that these deals shattered the old notion that Arab states would require a Palestinian peace first [1][6]. In short, secrecy enabled an "outside-in" peace: Arab leaders could negotiate freely, shielded from public backlash until they were ready to present the agreement as a fait accompli. This strategy succeeded on its own terms – normalizing relations and even garnering Trump a reputation as a regional dealmaker – while avoiding the immediate blowback that might have killed the deals in infancy. However, as later events revealed, sidelining the Palestinian issue entirely also stored up resentment (particularly among Palestinians and Iran), a point we return to later.

2023: Public Saudi-Israel Talks and Their Fallout

In stark contrast, the 2023 attempt to broker Saudi-Israel normalization was anything but secret. Throughout that year, news outlets regularly leaked details of U.S.-mediated talks: Saudi Arabia's conditions for U.S. security guarantees and nuclear assistance, Israel's possible concessions, and timelines for a deal were endlessly analyzed in public. This high visibility proved double-edged. On one hand, it signaled diplomatic momentum; on the other, it gave adversaries time to mobilize against the potential accord. U.S. President Joe Biden noted explicitly that Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023 onslaught – which killed about 1,400 Israelis – was intended to "disrupt a potential normalization of ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia" [2][7]. Intelligence hints suggest the attackers (and their patrons in Tehran) were keenly aware that a U.S.-Saudi-Israeli agreement was approaching. In fact, one former Trump adviser alleged that a U.S. official's careless public "bragging" about the talks just days before the attack "gave Hamas wind of what was to come," essentially tempting them to strike [7][8]. Iranian leaders openly cheered the outcome: the deputy commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard proclaimed that Hamas had "successfully disrupted" the Saudi-Israel normalization effort, bragging that those who pursued it were now forced to back away amid the war's outrage [3][10]. Indeed, once fighting erupted in Gaza, Riyadh swiftly paused any normalization plans, pivoting to demand a ceasefire and support for Palestinian rights instead [11]. The region's narrative flipped almost overnight – instead of spotlighting a new peace, global media focused on Israel's military response in Gaza and the suffering of Palestinian civilians. For Iran and Hamas, this was a strategic win: it shifted Arab public opinion firmly against Israel and "off the table" went the Saudi-Israeli deal that might have isolated Tehran [4]. In sum, the 2023 experience suggests that highly public diplomacy in the Middle East can incur serious risks. The visibility gave Iran and its proxies both motive and opportunity to sabotage the process, in contrast to 2020 when secrecy denied them that chance.

Trump's Distancing from Israel, Embrace of Arab Partners

Facing this backdrop, Donald Trump's recent behavior indicates a deliberate shift back to a quieter, Arab-focused diplomacy – effectively minimizing Israel's public role. In October 2023, mere days after Hamas's attack, Trump broke with the traditional unwavering U.S. line by openly criticizing Netanyahu's leadership and preparedness. He even went so far as to call Hezbollah (Iran's Lebanon-based ally) "very smart", comments that drew condemnation from Israel and the White House [8]. This unvarnished rebuke of Netanyahu signaled tensions in their relationship – a surprising development considering their close alignment during Trump's first term when Netanyahu was the first foreign leader to visit the Trump White House in February 2017 [31], and Trump later made Israel his first overseas destination in May 2017 [32]. During that initial term, Trump consistently showed strong support for Israel, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Israel's claims to the Golan Heights [8].

However, in his second term, Trump has publicly reaffirmed his alliance with Netanyahu, making him the first foreign leader to visit the White House in February 2025 [33]. During this visit, Trump controversially proposed that the United States "take over" and assume "long-term ownership" of the Gaza Strip, suggesting the displacement of Palestinians and redevelopment of the territory into what he called the "Riviera of the Middle East" [34]. Netanyahu praised this approach as "thinking outside the box" and said it was "worth pursuing" [35]. Despite this public display of partnership, Trump's statements and plans have also conspicuously downplayed Israel's part in his broader Middle East agenda. For example, Trump has reportedly dropped the longstanding U.S. demand that Saudi Arabia recognize Israel as a precondition for a U.S.-Saudi deal on civil nuclear cooperation [9]. In other words, Washington is no longer tying a Saudi nuclear pact or defense agreement to explicit Israeli normalization, marking a major departure from the Biden administration's approach [13][14]. By omitting Israel from the immediate equation, Trump is effectively decoupling the Saudi talks from the politically fraught Israeli-Palestinian issue. Saudi leaders have certainly taken note – after meeting Trump's team, Riyadh insiders signaled they would not be "tricked" into public normalization steps at this stage [15]. Instead, the emphasis is on building U.S.-Saudi partnerships (economic, military, nuclear) first, while keeping any Israel-related milestones quiet and on hold.

U.S. President Donald Trump (right) meets Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh. Trump's early 2025 Middle East trip has conspicuously excluded Israel, focusing instead on Gulf Arab partners. [16][15]

Trump's outreach has included effusive public praise of his Arab partners. He often boasts of his excellent relations with Gulf rulers – a dynamic on display during his May 2025 visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE as his first major trip of the new term [17][18]. In Riyadh, Trump has gone along with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's requests to broaden talks beyond Israel: notably, he agreed to invite Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other Arab leaders (from Lebanon and even Syria) to join their meeting [19][20]. This gesture serves two purposes. First, it reassures Saudi and Arab audiences that Palestinian concerns will not be completely ignored – a key factor after the Gaza war revived the centrality of the Palestinian issue. Second, it keeps Israel's involvement indirect and low-profile, at least for now. Tellingly, Trump is not stopping in Israel during this trip [16], an extraordinary departure from past U.S. diplomatic tours. Skipping Israel publicly, while engaging Arab states and even Abbas, underscores Trump's strategic distancing: he can cultivate Arab goodwill (and hammer out U.S.-Saudi deals) without the optics of standing alongside Israel's embattled leadership. All the while, Trump remains confident that he can deliver an eventual peace pact. He has predicted that a Saudi-Israeli normalization will happen "very quickly" when the time is right [21] – but crucially, he intends to present it as a pleasant surprise à la 2020, not as a drawn-out spectacle. In sum, Trump's current posture – cooling towards Netanyahu, prioritizing Arab partners, and omitting Israel from front-stage discussion – aligns closely with a return to secretive, back-channel diplomacy aimed at avoiding the 2023-style fallout.

Secret Diplomacy vs. Public Negotiations: Logic and Precedent

Trump's apparent belief that "secret diplomacy" yields better results in the Middle East has substantial precedent to back it. Historical examples consistently show that when breakthrough agreements were negotiated covertly, they faced fewer disruptions and succeeded in reshaping the region's landscape. Beyond the Abraham Accords' clandestine crafting [1], one can point to the 1978 Camp David talks between Israel and Egypt – conducted in seclusion at a Maryland lodge – which produced a peace treaty that has endured for over 40 years. Likewise, the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israelis and Palestinians began as secret meetings in Norway, catching the world by surprise when a framework was suddenly announced.
The rationale is pretty straightforward: keeping negotiations quiet allows leaders to make concessions and build trust away from public pressures and propaganda. In the Middle East, public opinion can be a minefield; premature publicity gives hardliners (be they Iranian proxies, extremist militants, or domestic opposition parties) time to organize attacks – political or literal – to sabotage an unwelcome deal. The 2023 Saudi-Israel effort starkly illustrated this risk: "the region was abuzz" with talk of the impending deal, which all but invited Iran and Hamas to make a violent attempt to stop it [4]. By contrast, secret talks deny those spoilers a clear target until it's too late. As one analysis noted, for Hamas and Iran it is a victory when focus shifts to Israel's military actions rather than to Israeli-Arab peace plans [22]. Secret diplomacy aims to prevent that focus shift until the agreement is a fait accompli. It is telling that even veteran diplomats like John Kerry once insisted there could be "no separate peace" with Arabs without the Palestinians – yet Trump's team proved that wrong by quietly arranging exactly such separate peace deals. In doing so, however, they also proved Kerry's underlying caution: ignoring the Palestinian issue entirely can undermine the sustainability of peace. Today's situation – a war that erupted partly out of Palestinian desperation and Iranian opportunism – highlights that while secret diplomacy is more effective at clinching agreements, it is not a panacea for long-term stability. The most durable Middle East accords have combined discretion in negotiation with at least some buy-in from key stakeholders to prevent backlash. Thus, the logic for Trump returning to secrecy is solid (get the deal done first, without interference), but it must be tempered by lessons learned: excluding core issues like Palestine can sow seeds of future conflict [23][24][25].

When Will Saudi-Israel Normalization Resume?

Given the current climate, any open push for Saudi-Israeli normalization is effectively on hold. Saudi Arabia's priorities shifted dramatically after October 7, 2023 – from inching toward Israel to "making it conditional on a ceasefire" in Gaza, rebuilding the Strip, and even movement toward a Palestinian state [11]. In other words, Riyadh will not normalize with Israel while images of war in Gaza dominate headlines and Arab public sentiment is inflamed. Saudi officials have reinforced this stance in diplomatic exchanges, reportedly telling their U.S. counterparts that normalization must wait until the guns fall silent and ”Palestinian grievances are addressed” [26][27]. Practically speaking, this means a formal Saudi-Israel deal is unlikely until two key conditions are met: (1) a halt or resolution to the Gaza conflict (at minimum a durable ceasefire), and (2) the conclusion of the U.S.-Saudi strategic bargain (particularly the civil nuclear cooperation and security guarantees).
The Trump administration appears to recognize this timeline. By decoupling the nuclear talks from immediate Israeli normalization [13], Washington can forge ahead with Saudi Arabia on a bilateral pact – which itself may take time given complex issues like uranium enrichment limits [28]. Once a U.S.-Saudi deal is sealed and the regional tension over Gaza eases, the stage would be far better set for Saudi Arabia to quietly re-engage on normalization. Any earlier attempt would be premature: as of early 2025, "progress toward Saudi recognition of Israel has been halted by fury in Arab countries over the war in Gaza" [15].
This pause could actually bolster the case for Trump's secret diplomacy. It gives all parties time to let passions cool. We may well see shuttle diplomacy behind closed doors over the coming months – U.S. envoys meeting Israeli and Saudi officials separately to sketch out a framework in principle, ready to roll out when conditions ripen. In fact, Trump's optimistic claim that a Saudi-Israeli accord will come "very quickly" suggests he envisages flipping the switch at the opportune moment [21]. Likely, that moment will be after a Gaza ceasefire or peace deal reassures the Arab street, and after the U.S. has secured its own strategic interests with Riyadh. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, for his part, has incentives to eventually normalize (access to Israeli technology and defense, a strengthened front against Iran), but he has made clear that Palestinian aspirations and regional stability cannot be ignored. Thus, the most plausible scenario is a two-stage process: first, a U.S.-Saudi agreement (possibly including U.S. help on a peaceful nuclear program and defense pact) without mentioning Israel; second, a resumption of Israel-Saudi normalization talks behind closed doors, culminating in a surprise announcement once the Gaza crisis abates. As one regional expert quipped, Israeli-Saudi normalization has become a "collateral victim" of the October 7 war – but not a permanent one [29][30]. With careful, quiet maneuvering, it can be revived when the smoke clears.

My Takeaway

I see it pretty much as follows: Trump isn't distancing himself from Israel out of spite or ideology. He's playing a longer, smarter game.

In 2020, secrecy brought surprise, and surprise brought results. The Abraham Accords caught the world off guard because they were designed that way. In 2023, the opposite happened. Talks were leaked, the region was flooded with speculation, and Iran saw an opportunity. October 7 wasn't just a horrible terror attack, but a deliberate move to derail normalization and draw Israel into a war it couldn't avoid. It worked.

Now, Trump seems determined not to let that happen again. By keeping Israel out of the headlines and focusing first on a U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal, he's creating space to rebuild momentum—without giving adversaries an easy target. The logic is sound: seal the strategic framework quietly, then return to normalization when the timing favors success.

If there's a lesson here, it's that normalization must move forward on its own terms—not as a hostage to those who use violence as leverage.

So yes, I think Trump's approach is calculated. I think it could work. And if it does, it will be precisely because this time, the strategy matches the threat.

The Soft Belly of Negotiation

Negotiations often break down not because the numbers don't work, but because people do. Beneath spreadsheets and term sheets lie emotions, narratives, and principles that can derail even the most promising discussions. I've seen this firsthand, multiple times over the years. In my own work advising on complex transactions, I've witnessed how even trivial moral standoffs can block deals worth millions. One of the most common culprits is a contested sense of fairness.

When each party believes their position is the righteous one, it creates a moral standoff, with fairness becoming both sword and shield. The negotiation turns from value creation to value defense. Even proposals that would clearly improve both parties' outcomes get rejected if they seem unjust. In the classic ultimatum game, people routinely refuse offers they view as unfair - even when rejection means walking away empty-handed [1].

I've been involved in and witnessed many cases where the parties had aligned perfectly on price and scope, but the deal broke down over seemingly minor details, like who should cover legal fees, or what exact wording to use in a termination clause. These impasses were rarely about substance and almost always about dignity, symbolism, or perceived moral standing. In some instances, these seemingly inconsequential terms (formalities, or symbolic gestures) became stand-ins for deeper moral or emotional claims. What appears trivial on the surface often functions as a proxy for perceived legitimacy or control. These impasses hardly ever about the details themselves, but about what those details represent to each party.

I like to call these negotiation's soft belly: the fragile, often irrational space where emotions, identities, and perceived justice overwhelm interest-based reasoning. But this vulnerability also holds the key to resolution. If addressed with creativity and curiosity, the soft belly can become the lever that opens the door to hidden value.

From Positions to Interests

To understand how deadlocks occur, and how to overcome them, we need to revisit the foundations of negotiation theory. Fisher and Ury's groundbreaking work on principled negotiation emphasized the distinction between positions (what people say they want) and interests (why they want it) [2]. Positions are explicit and often rigid; interests are typically implicit, layered, and negotiable. When negotiators focus on positions, they fall into distributive thinking: the assumption that value is fixed, and that one party's gain must come at the other's expense. This zero-sum mindset narrows the bargaining range and hardens stances.

However, if parties probe deeper into interests, they often uncover differences in valuation that can be exploited to mutual benefit [3]. These differences define the Zone of Possible Agreement (ZOPA) [4]. Sometimes, that zone is invisible at the outset. What appears to be a negative bargaining zone, where no agreement seems possible, can actually hide creative trade-offs that would satisfy both sides.

Three psychological biases often stand in the way:

• Fairness bias: The tendency to reject objectively beneficial outcomes if they feel unjust, often rooted in ego or identity.

• Anchoring: Fixation on an initial demand or idea that distorts future judgment [5].

• Loss aversion: The cognitive tendency to fear losses more than equivalent gains, which can make concessions feel painful even when rationally sound.

Negotiators who understand and anticipate these biases can shift the game from deadlock to design.

Here are two real cases I’ve dealt with in recent months that illustrate the point:

Case Study 1: The Four-Day Grace Period

Consider a real estate deal where the seller demanded a 7-day grace period to vacate the apartment after the official closing date, claiming “that’s the norm”; despite there being no real risk of delay. His position seemed not to have been based on any visible economic logic, but on a sense of fairness. He saw this request as a basic gesture of respect.

The buyer, on the other hand, initially insisted on a strict closing date. He had to vacate his own apartment within 4 days of closing and wanted to be sure the new place would be ready on time.

The two sides hit a deadlock. The seller wanted 7 days. The buyer insisted the apartment must be vacant on closing, zero grace days. Both considered walking away from the deal.

Then, a little savage bird whispered in the buyer's ear: your magic number is 4, not 0. The buyer wasn’t planning to move in until 4 days after closing anyway. So what if he offered the seller exactly 4 days? For the buyer, the result was the same - he’d still move in on schedule. But for the seller, the buyer was “giving in” and flexing from zero days to four. It felt like a meaningful gesture of fairness.
0-4 was the dead zone; the excess fat no one wanted anyway. 4-7 is where the real magic of subjective preferences coinciding was taking place.

That offer changed the entire dynamic. What had been a tense negotiation suddenly became a friendly conversation. The seller, feeling respected, became more flexible on other issues. A deal that looked like it was about to collapse ended successfully.

This case clearly shows how the same thing can be valuable to one side and worthless to the other, what is commonly referred to as “valuation asymmetry.”
For the seller, those four days were about dignity. “At least I got some time to get organized.”
For the buyer, they made no difference at all; he planned to move on the 5th day anyway anyway. Once the buyer saw that, he realized he’d struck gold - he could give away something meaningless to him and get something big in return. He also defused an anchored fairness bias by agreeing to the seller's frame rather than challenging it.

That’s what negotiators call logrolling: finding points where what’s cheap for you is expensive for them, and trading on that [6].

The deal got done: and more than that, the dynamic changed. They stopped seeing each other as adversaries and started acting like allies.

Case Study 2: Commission Turned Apartment

In a more complex example, a broker had earned a sizable commission on a property development deal. The developer, strapped for cash due to broader market conditions, resisted payment. The broker viewed nonpayment as a betrayal; the developer viewed the demand as insensitive to commercial realities. Each side felt morally justified, and insulted by the other.

After several tense exchanges, they found a workaround. The developer offered the broker a steep discount on an apartment in a separate project. The gap between the market price and the discounted price equaled the commission owed. This wasn't just an asset swap, it was a conceptual shift.

The reframing transformed the negotiation from a demand for payment to a collaborative investment opportunity [7]. The broker got a valuable asset he could either flip or hold. The developer converted a liability (unpaid debt) into an asset sale (inventory reduction). Most importantly, neither side had to say, "I gave in."

Loss aversion played a central role. Writing a check felt like a loss for the developer, but giving a discount on unsold property felt like a smart move. The broker, too, overcame his anchored expectation of cash by seeing the apartment as a potentially superior form of compensation. In fact, by turning the commission into a discounted investment, he arguably improved his upside.

This kind of trade exemplifies integrative bargaining. The parties expanded the negotiation space beyond the initial dispute. They neutralized the fairness standoff by making it moot. Each side could claim they had acted reasonably and fairly without conceding their moral stance.

Surplus Realization; Perceived Legitimacy

In both examples, the negotiation moved from confrontation to co-creation. But spotting a hidden overlap is only part of the journey. The next step is realizing the surplus. That is, capturing and allocating it in a way that feels acceptable to both sides.

Perceived fairness remains critical. An efficient deal that feels exploitative will unravel. To ensure surplus realization, negotiators must actively manage how outcomes are perceived, not just what outcomes are achieved. This often involves:

• Packaging concessions as gifts or acknowledgments rather than losses.

• Allowing the other party to save face.

• Leaving space for symbolic victories.

These elements allow people to maintain dignity and coherence in their narratives. As Max Bazerman notes, people don't just want a good deal; they want a deal that fits their self-image [8].

In the grace period case, the seller could say, "They respected my situation and gave me the dignity I deserved." The buyer could say, "I showed flexibility that cost me nothing but secured a smooth deal, and probably saved money by avoiding a protracted negotiation."
In the broker case, both sides could claim victory on their own terms. The developer could boast, "Instead of having to pay out cash, I got the broker to buy one of my properties." The broker could assert, "I got my full commission, secured a great price on prime real estate, and can easily flip it for more than I originally expected."

From an economic perspective, both agreements achieved Pareto efficiency; no party could be made better off without making the other worse off, representing the optimal allocation of resources given the constraints.

What ultimately defines a well-structured deal isn't simply that both sides benefit, but that both can explain (to themselves and others) why the outcome made sense.
When each party walks away feeling their core interests were acknowledged and their principles respected, the agreement stands a better chance of enduring.

Negotiator's Toolkit: Five Diagnostic Questions

1. What are the underlying interests and needs of each side? In other words, what do they really want or fear, beyond the positions they're arguing for? Move the focus from "Who is right?" to "What do we each truly need?"

2. Which issues do we value differently? What might be low-cost for me to give but high-value for them, and vice versa? This highlights potential trade-offs based on valuation asymmetry.

3. Can we add or link issues to create a package deal? Are there other goods, services, or terms, payment plans, timing adjustments, alternate forms of compensation, that we haven't considered? Expand the scope to reveal a new ZOPA where none existed.

4. Are we framing the negotiation in the best way? Is a fixation on "fairness" or a specific number is anchoring the discussion? If so, how could we reframe the proposal so it addresses core concerns? For example, would structuring an offer as a discount or an extra benefit make it more palatable due to loss aversion or pride?

5. "What would it take for you to say yes?" A direct, open-ended question posed to the other side which invites them to reveal conditional acceptances. It shifts the dynamic from rejection to problem-solving. The answer would flush out where hidden value or flexibility lies. Effectively, it could map out the pathway to agreement.

These questions redirect the conversation from moral standoff to practical solution and ultimately, to agreement grounded in mutual understanding.
Negotiations too often break down over symbolism or pride, and this kind of disciplined curiosity can create paths forward that are both efficient and humane. Succumbing to the temptation to argue over who's right wastes time. Asking what works gets results.

References

[1] Thompson, L. (2005). The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator. Prentice Hall.

[2] Fisher, R., & Ury, W. (1981). Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. Harvard Law School.

[3] Lax, D. A., & Sebenius, J. K. (1986). The Manager as Negotiator. Free Press.

[4] Raiffa, H. (1982). The Art and Science of Negotiation. Harvard University Press.

[5] Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk." Econometrica, 47(2).

[6] "Logrolling Definition." Scotwork Global Glossary.

[7] "Reframing Obstacles as Opportunities." Aligned Negotiation Blog.

[8] Bazerman, M. H. (2006). Judgment in Managerial Decision Making. Wiley.

[A year ago, in April 2024, I took part in an ACCOR conference to share my perspective with their customer relations managers on what it means to be a Diamond member. I spoke about what really matters to us when choosing a hotel and what they should focus on.
I also shared my experience as a hotel hopper.
Here, I’ll explain what that actually means—and how to do it right.]

Most people rent apartments because that’s what everyone does. They furnish them, maintain them, and stay put—partly out of habit, partly because they assume the alternatives are either too expensive or too chaotic. But more and more of us are opting out. No furniture, no lease, no fixed address. Just a rotating calendar of hotel stays across cities and countries, not as escapism but as a way to live. It’s structured, efficient, and cleaner than most rentals. If you work remotely, travel frequently, or simply don’t want to deal with a clogged drain ever again—hotel living starts to look less like indulgence and more like logic.

Here’s a mini-disclaimer: hotel hopping isn’t for everyone – you probably won’t see a family of five or a hardcore home chef embracing it. But for singles or couples without kids who crave mobility and hate household chores, the allure is real. Think entrepreneurs, remote professionals, or adventurous retirees who value experiences over possessions. Key reasons this crowd is ditching traditional rentals for hotel life include:

• Ultimate flexibility: No year-long leases. You can move cities (or countries) on a whim, chasing opportunities or better weather.

• Minimalist freedom: Everything you own fits in a couple of suitcases. This lightness is liberating. You’re not tied down by furniture or clutter.

• All-inclusive convenience: Forget cleaning, cooking, or even doing laundry. Hotels provide housekeeping, fresh linens, and often laundry service or credits. Your “landlord” is essentially a professional hospitality team dedicated to your comfort.

• Comfort and service: LandlordsIn a hotel, if something breaks, it gets fixed. Fast. No emails, no waiting around for your landlord to finally respond. You ask, they handle it—sometimes within minutes. That’s the difference when you’re a guest, not a tenant. You’re not asking for favors. You’re paying for service, and you actually get it. It’s efficient, predictable, and weirdly satisfying once you realize how much time you used to waste chasing down basic maintenance.

Meanwhile, those who should think twice about the hotel-hopping lifestyle are folks with pets, young children, or anyone who truly loves home cooking and big personal spaces. Hotels can start to feel constraining if you need a full kitchen every day or room for lots of belongings. And of course, if you’re on a very tight budget, constant hotel living might not (yet) be the frugal choice – though as we’ll see, it can be more economical than you’d expect when done smartly.

The Minimalist Mindset of Hotel Hoppers

At the core of this lifestyle is a shift in how people think about home. It’s no longer tied to one place or a pile of belongings. Home becomes wherever you’re staying right now—clean, functional, and temporary. Most long-term hotel hoppers end up traveling light. A couple of bags, the essentials, and not much else. The less you carry, the less you worry about. And over time, the focus naturally moves away from owning things to actually doing things. Experiences replace stuff.

The Minimalist isn’t concerned about owning less, but about maximizing what you get in return for your money and time. By paying for a hotel, you’re effectively outsourcing all the mundane parts of daily living.
That frees up hours of your life to focus on work projects, exploring your city, or relaxing – time that used to be spent on grocery runs, cooking, and chores can be invested in your business or personal growth.

Hotel living also fosters a nomadic spirit. Each new hotel or location is a chance to experience a different neighborhood, city or culture without long-term commitments. One month you’re living atop a high-rise in Bangkok, the next you’re in a boutique hotel in Lisbon’s historic Alfama district.
This constant change feeds curiosity and adaptability. You learn to navigate new environments quickly, meet new people, and maybe pick up bits of new languages – all while having a consistent “base” experience of a hotel room that feels familiar no matter the country.

Lastly, being a long-term hotel guest can actually feel empowering compared to being a renter. In a hotel, you are the customer, and as the saying goes, the customer is king. If something isn’t right, you can ask for it to be fixed (often more promptly than any landlord would) or you can simply check out the next month and take your money elsewhere. This dynamic motivates hotels to keep high standards for cleaning and service. For the hotel hopper, that means a consistently high quality of living – a far cry from the unpredictable plumbing and maintenance issues of many city apartments.

Crunching the Numbers: Is Hotel Hopping Affordable?

Okay, indulgent as it sounds, what about cost? It’s easy to assume living in hotels full-time would obliterate your budget. Surprisingly, when done right, hotel living can be economically competitive with renting – and sometimes even cheaper. Let’s break down the numbers with updated 2024–2025 data in a few digital nomad hotspots:

• Tbilisi, Georgia: A high end one-bedroom apartment in Vake rents for around $1500 USD/month on average (nice high-end apartments can run up to ~$2,000). In contrast, long-term deals at a five-star hotel like the Pullman Axis Towers Tbilisi can be found for about $85 night (≈$2,550/month) – which includes all bills, daily breakfast, gym/pool, housekeeping and even suite upgrades. Factor in loyalty point rewards rebated (10–20% value), and the net cost can be very close to the apartment – without the hassle of utilities or paying rent while you travel away.

• Lisbon, Portugal: Rental prices have exploded recently – a one-bedroom in central Lisbon now averages about €1,415 per month (≈$1,500). By comparison, many 3–4 star hotels in Lisbon offer monthly rates in the €60–€80 per night range in off-season (roughly $1,800–$2,400 a month). That’s a bit higher than rent, but again remember you’re also getting cleaning, linens, and often breakfast or spa/gym access. In a housing market where locals complain that €1,500 gets you a musty old flat, some nomads find paying slightly more for a hotel is worth the comfort and central location.

• Bangkok, Thailand: You can rent a chic condo in Bangkok for relatively cheap (around $600–$800 USD/month in a nice area). Yet Bangkok’s hotel scene is ultra-competitive – long-stay packages at reputable hotels can be as low as $30–$50 a night for monthly bookings, which is ~$900–$1,500 per month.

• Mexico City, Mexico: A one-bedroom in a trendy area like Condesa or Roma might cost around $800–$1,200 USD/month. Hotels in CDMX vary widely, but extended stay rates at business hotels can be found in the $60–$100 per night range ($1,800–$3,000 per month). One traveler on a forum noted they negotiated a rate of MXN $2,000 (about $110) per night at a luxury hotel for a month – pricier than rent, but that came with club lounge access, daily cocktails, and gym/spa use, which were valuable perks for them. Depending on your taste (basic room vs. suite) and negotiation skill, you might break even or pay a premium for the hotel life here.

• Dubai, UAE: Dubai is known for high living costs. A one-bedroom apartment in the city center averages about $1,742 USD/month (approx AED 6,400), and easily $2,000+ in popular expat districts. Hotels in Dubai often charge $100+ a night normally, but long-stay deals can drop that substantially, especially in the hot summer off-season.

Big picture: If you approach hotel living strategically, the cost can be surprisingly on par with traditional renting once you account for all the extras. Remember, an apartment’s rent is just the start – add utilities, internet, furniture, cleaning supplies, maybe a gym membership, and not least double paying rent when you travel. (If you keep an apartment year-round, every week you go on a trip you’re essentially paying two accommodations). Hotel living eliminates those hidden costs: you pay one bill that covers everything, and if you leave for a week, you simply don’t pay for those nights or use your points – no sunk cost for an empty apartment. As one full-time traveler calculated, after tallying points rewards and periods they stay with family, their total accommodation expenses averaged about $3,000 per month for two people, which was actually cheaper than their previous rent in San Francisco.

Playing the Points Game: Rewards and Perks in 2025

Long-term hotel living isn’t just about convenience – it’s also about hacking the system to maximize rewards. Loyal hotel hoppers can turn stays into a virtuous cycle of free upgrades and free nights.

If you’re going to live out of hotels, you quickly learn the language of loyalty programs. Major hotel chains want your long stay business, and they incentivize it heavily through points and elite status benefits. By 2025, some loyalty programs have become even more generous for frequent guests:

• Elite status = VIP treatment: Stay often enough and you’ll climb to top-tier statuses (think Marriott Bonvoy Platinum/Titanium, Hilton Honors Diamond, Hyatt Globalist, IHG Diamond). The payoff? Complimentary suite upgrades, daily free breakfast, club lounge access, late check-outs, welcome gifts – every day of a long stay. Over a month, free breakfast for two can save a huge chunk of food costs, and a suite upgrade means more space to live and work. These perks used to be for business road-warriors; now remote workers can earn them by staying put! Notably, IHG revamped its program in 2022 to add free hot breakfast for top-tier Diamond elites and milestone rewards for staying 40+ nights, directly targeting longer-stay guests with more value.

• Points back on every stay: Hotel points are essentially a rebate on your spending. A savvy hotel hopper earns roughly 10–25% back in value through points and credit card rewards. In 2024, I calculated that I was getting back around 16% of my hotel spend in Accor loyalty points, thanks to elite status bonuses. Add another 4% from credit card rewards on hotel purchases, and the total return was close to 20%. That translated to roughly two months of free hotel nights over the year. When you’re spending that much on accommodation anyway, stacking loyalty programs and credit card perks makes a real difference. And with all the promos—double points, stay bonuses, free nights—it adds up faster than most people expect.

• Long-stay specials and memberships: Beyond traditional points, hotels are experimenting with long-stay packages. Some offer “stay X nights get Y free” deals or hefty discounts if you book 30+ nights direct. Brands like Marriott, Accor, and Hilton sometimes have property-specific extended stay rates (often not advertised online – you have to call or email to ask). In one example, a Marriott Executive Apartments property in Asia offered 30-night packages with free breakfast and airport transfers. New hybrid housing startups are emerging too – subscription services where one monthly fee lets you hop between different hotels or co-living spaces (more on this trend shortly).

Pro tip: When negotiating a long stay, don’t just haggle on price – ask for value-add perks. Often, a hotel may be unable to drop the nightly rate beyond a certain floor, but they’ll happily throw in extras: free breakfast, free parking, laundry service, or a better room category. These extras cost the hotel little but can greatly enhance your stay (and save you money). For instance, if a hotel includes laundry service twice a week, that saves you time and local laundromat fees. If they comp your breakfast or give a 30% restaurant discount, you’ve effectively reduced meal costs. Seasoned hotel hoppers often build friendly relationships with hotel managers – over time, this can lead to unofficial perks like an occasional airport pickup or being invited to hotel events, all because you’re a valued long-term guest. The bottom line: being polite, loyal, and asking nicely can unlock a lot. Don’t hesitate to request breakfast in the room, free parking, discounts on amenities...you might be pleasantly surprised by what they provide.

(Yours truly with Vincent Dujardin, General Manager of Pullman Tbilisi, and his wife Aurellia at an Accor event in 2024. Personal relationships go a long way.)

Lessons from Long-Term Hotel Nomads

Let’s bring in a few voices of experience. Beyond the cost analyses and tactics, what’s it really like to embrace hotel life for months or years? Here are a couple of quick case studies:

• The Tech Power Couple: Daniel G. and his wife, both AI professionals, started living in hotels in 2020 when their jobs went remote. Three years later, they’ve logged over 1,000 nights in 4- and 5-star hotels across 25+ countries. Daniel reports that their average nightly cost is under $150 (as low as $100 in cheap cities, up to $300 in expensive ones) – and that’s for two people, often in luxe suites thanks to top-tier status. They split costs, use points heavily, and note that not paying rent during home visits or work trips balances out the budget. Importantly, they say the lifestyle enriched their lives: “We could work from anywhere, so we thought why not travel? It was more fun and less exhausting than we thought,” he told Business Insider. They did settle down in NYC for two months at one point – got bored – and hit the road again. For them, hotel hopping not only saved money, it eliminated life admin. “We haven’t had to clean rooms, change bedsheets or take out the trash in years,” Daniel says gratefully. Instead, they focus on work and exploring. This freedom also allowed them to optimize taxes (by spending most of the year outside the US), an interesting perk for high earners.

• The Luxury Nomad on Points: Another traveler, Claude A., shared how leaving London’s costly rentals for Marriott hotels felt “inflation-proof.” He was paying about £2,000/month for a tiny London flat with bills – and dealing with issues like mold and dodgy maintenance. With rents rising, he realized that money could be put toward hotel stays where everything just works and is clean and modern. Using the Marriott Bonvoy program, he planned to leverage points to keep costs in check while enjoying a far higher standard of living (imagine trading a cramped studio for a serviced suite with a view). For Claude, a big motivation was also psychological: if he’s paying so much anyway, he might as well get pool access, a concierge, and daily cleaning out of it, versus an unpredictable landlord experience. Many others echo this sentiment: the intangibles of comfort, safety, and service can make hotel living feel worth any premium you might pay.

Every nomad’s story will differ, but common threads emerge: increased freedom, less stress about chores/maintenance, and a sense that life becomes “richer” in experiences even if materially simpler. Of course, there are challenges too – living out of suitcases can get tiring, and some miss having a fixed community or the ability to decorate a space. Loneliness can creep in if you don’t make an effort to socialize (you’re always a newcomer in a hotel). However, many hotel dwellers combat this by tapping into communities of other nomads (coworking spaces, local meetups) or by alternating solo travel with periods of group travel programs (like Remote Year or Hacker Paradise). In 2025, you’re far from the only one doing this – which means it’s easier than before to find your tribe on the road.

Digital Nomad Visas, Co-Living & the New Travel Lifestyle

It’s no coincidence that hotel hopping is catching on now. The whole ecosystem for remote work and nomadic living has exploded. Consider a few trends shaping the landscape:

• Countries rolling out the red carpet: Hopping between countries long-term no longer means visa runs and uncertainty. As of 2024, over 50 countries offer digital nomad visas or remote work residencies, letting you legally live in a country for 6-12 months (often with extensions) as a remote worker. Recent additions like Italy, Spain, Brazil, and South Korea have joined pioneers like Estonia and Georgia in courting nomads. Europe is a hot region – 9 of the top 10 countries in one remote work index were in Europe, with factors like good infrastructure and paths to residency. For hotel hoppers, this means you can slow-travel; you’re not forced to hop every 90 days on a tourist visa. Portugal’s D7 or digital nomad visa has you covered if want to base in Lisbon for a year. Thailand’s got a special remote work visa too (up to 5 years) if Bangkok is your wet, humid dream. The bureaucratic friction is easing, making long stays (in hotels or otherwise) far more feasible.

• Rise of co-living hotels and hybrid spaces: The hospitality industry is adapting to the “work from anywhere” client. Co-living hotels are a big trend heading into 2025, blending the amenities of hotels with the community of hostels and the functionality of coworking spaces. For example, Zoku in Amsterdam pioneered the idea of a “loft” that’s half hotel room, half office, with communal areas where guests can socialize or work together. Brands like Selina (with dozens of locations worldwide) combine boutique hotel rooms with hostel-style dorms, on-site coworking hubs, yoga classes and local experiences. They even offer subscription packages: Selina’s Nomad Passport lets you buy 30 nights to use across their locations, starting around $360 for dorms or pricier for private rooms, making multi-country travel easier. Other examples include Outsite and The Collective, which focus on longer-term co-living with furnished rooms and shared social events. The idea is that you can check in and immediately have a network of other remote workers around you. This sense of community helps combat the isolation some solo travelers feel, and it’s redefining hotels not just as places to stay, but places to live, work and make friends.

• Corporate housing and serviced apartments: On the flip side of the same coin, there’s growth in high-end extended stay options. Think furnished apartments or “aparthotels” that offer the space of an apartment with hotel-like services. Many traditional hotel chains have their own versions (Marriott Executive Apartments, Hilton’s Homewood Suites, Accor’s Adagio, etc.), which often give discounts for 30+ night stays and include kitchens. The aparthotel sector is booming, with more operators converting buildings to this hybrid model. These cater to corporate travelers on long assignments, but also digital nomads who want a bit more of a homey feel. Trends in 2024 show aparthotels adding co-working lounges and communal events, effectively mirroring the co-living concept but usually at a more upscale level. If you desire a cooking space and a living room but still want weekly cleaning and a concierge, this is your jam. Just know that popularity is rising – so prices may be higher than a standard apartment (though still often less than regular hotels).

• Subscription living: Perhaps one of the coolest innovations is the idea of a subscription for housing – pay a flat fee and hop between cities. A new startup called Portal (launching in 2025) offers a membership that lets you live in any of their hotels across different cities on a month-to-month basis. The concept is “the convenience of a hotel, the comfort of a home, and the connectivity of a coworking hub, all in one”. Every Portal room comes with an ergonomic workspace and fast Wi-Fi, and there are communal lounges for remote workers to network. No long leases, no separate utility bills – just show up and live. We’re essentially seeing housing-as-a-service tailored to nomads. This is an emerging area, but it points toward a future where hotel hopping isn’t done ad-hoc with bookings, but via platforms that package the lifestyle for you. It’s Airbnb’s monthly stays meets Soho House, in a way. And as more people go remote (over 18 million Americans now identify as digital nomads – a 147% increase from 2019), the market for these solutions is only growing.

Final Takeaways: Is Hotel-Hopping for You?

Hotel hopping in 2025 sits at the intersection of luxury travel and practical remote living. It’s simultaneously a lifestyle hack (freeing you from domestic chores and leveraging loyalty rewards) and an adventure that treats the world as your home. To recap the key points for anyone intrigued by the idea:

• It’s more feasible than ever. With so many countries welcoming remote workers and a proliferation of long-stay deals, you truly can bounce between, say, Tbilisi and Bangkok for a year and have a smooth experience. Infrastructure and communities exist now to support nomads wherever they go.

• Cost vs. value. You might spend a bit more than a bare-bones apartment in some cases, but you get a lot for your money – including time back in your day. When you add up rent plus all the hidden costs of traditional living, full-time hotel life can be quite competitive. And if you’re diligent with points and off-season rates, you can absolutely score great bargains (or splurge without guilt knowing you’ll get free nights later).

• Know thyself. If you thrive on novelty, hate routine, and work online, you’ll likely love the hotel hopping journey. Waking up in a new city every few weeks, with a cappuccino in the lobby and housekeeping knocking when you’re messy – that can feel like heaven if you crave freedom. But if you need a rooted community, large personal space for hobbies, or simply really love your own cooking, you might feel something is missing. Many nomads find a hybrid approach best: do hotels for a year or two to scratch the itch (or during a scaling startup phase when you’re too busy for anything else), then maybe slow down in one place if you want to nest.

• Approach it intentionally. The most successful hotel hoppers treat it like a lifestyle to be optimized. They research which credit card maximizes points on hotel spend, they join Facebook groups or subreddits for “travel hacking” tips, they test different chains to see where they get the best treatment. They also set routines despite the changing environment – maybe always hitting the gym in each hotel at 7am to stay disciplined, or setting up a familiar work corner in each room to be productive. In short, they make hotel life into real life, not an endless vacation (though it certainly can feel indulgent at times!).

If you’ve ever daydreamed about living in a hotel – having someone else make the bed, enjoying a breakfast buffet then logging into work from a poolside cabana – know that it’s not a crazy fantasy. It’s a viable lifestyle that more people are trying as work and travel evolve. As one article declared, “Ever wanted to live in a hotel? Surprise: It’s easier than you think.” And as our look into 2025 shows, it’s getting easier, smarter, and more rewarding each year.

Sources:

• Entrepreneur – Interviews and feature articles. Available at:

https://entrepreneur.com

• Insider Reports – Referenced interviews and case studies. Available at:

https://entrepreneur.com

• High5 Hospitality Trends – Industry research and insights. Available at:

https://get-high5.com

• MBO Partners Nomad Report 2024 – Annual data on digital nomad trends. Available at:

https://mbopartners.com

• The Points Guy – Updates on hotel loyalty programs and travel rewards. Available at:

https://thepointsguy.com

• Condé Nast Traveler – Articles on travel lifestyle and accommodation trends. Available at:

https://cntraveler.com

• Pacific Prime – Global housing and cost of living reports. Available at:

https://pacificprime.com

• PB Services Georgia – Real estate data and rent benchmarks in Georgia. Available at:

https://pbservices.ge

• Portugal Buyers Agent – Housing cost trends and real estate reports in Portugal. Available at:

https://portugalbuyersagent.com

[I would like to personally thank and , whom I regard as leading and admirable figures in the libertarian community, for their comments on the draft of this article.

I devoted an entire section of this article to responding to Professor Friedman, in an effort to engage with the thoughtful and valid feedback he offered on my draft. I hope that this critique of a critique reflects nothing more than deep intellectual respect. Any disagreement does not—and cannot—diminish the importance of Professor Friedman, his contributions to economic thought, to libertarian theory, and his personal influence on my own thinking.

I chose to write at length on this topic and to include Professor Block in this post as a gesture of appreciation for his tireless courage in standing by his views, even when doing so went against the grain and came at a high personal cost. Nothing deterred him from doing what he believed was intellectually right. For that reason, he deserves an article dedicated to him.]

Introduction

Intellectual ideas, no matter how meticulously conceived, often take on a life of their own once released into the world. Their trajectory depends not only on the precision of their articulation but also on how they are received, interpreted, and applied by others. While some ideas inspire transformative progress, others fall victim to distortion, misinterpretation, and outright misuse. History shows that intellectual legacies are powerful yet vulnerable – ideas evolve over time and are frequently interpreted in ways their originators never intended. The challenge for any intellectual movement is to preserve the integrity of core principles while allowing healthy evolution in response to new contexts.

Walter Block, a renowned libertarian economist, serves as a cautionary tale of how even well-intended ideas can evolve in unintended and troubling directions. Block’s groundbreaking work Defending the Undefendable (1976) provoked readers by defending the economic utility of socially reviled professions within a free-market framework. His nuanced argument emphasized that as long as these controversial actors operated voluntarily and without coercion, they could play a functional role in the economic system. Block sought to challenge moralistic judgments without undermining the ethical foundations of libertarianism – foundations rooted in the non-aggression principle (NAP) and voluntary exchange. Renowned economists like Murray Rothbard and F. A. Hayek praised Block’s approach; Hayek likened it to a “shock therapy” that, though strong medicine, ultimately “disabuses [readers] of many dear prejudices” ( Defending the Undefendable ). In short, Defending the Undefendable was an audacious defense of liberty’s less popular applications, intended to illuminate how even “unsavory” voluntary interactions can uphold free-market principles.

Over time, however, factions within the libertarian movement radically misinterpreted Block’s ideas. Rather than understanding his defense of controversial economic actors as a thought experiment grounded in voluntaryism, these factions adopted a contrarian absolutism that abandoned the very ethics Block championed. They began to argue that libertarians had a moral obligation to defend the most egregious of actors – even violent regimes or terrorists – so long as those actors opposed a state or authority deemed illegitimate. This nihilistic interpretation betrayed the principles of non-aggression and individual rights, effectively excusing coercion and immorality under the guise of “defending liberty.” Ironically, Block himself would become a victim of this distortion. In 2023, Walter Block was expelled from the Mises Institute – an academic institution he helped shape – after he publicly defended Israel’s right to self-defense against Hamas. Block’s stance, grounded in libertarian principles of non-aggression and the protection of innocent life, clashed with factions that had come to equate all state actions with evil. The very followers who claimed to champion his ideas had weaponized a distorted version of his philosophy to ostracize him.

Here, I attempt to examine the evolution of Block’s ideas and their misinterpretation, situating this phenomenon within the broader context of libertarian thought. I will talk about how thinkers like Murray Rothbard and Hans-Hermann Hoppe – towering figures in libertarian philosophy – influenced a strain of anti-statism so radical that it veered into moral paradox. In tracing these dynamics, I try to maintain the main thesis that Block’s foundational ideas from Defending the Undefendable were misinterpreted by radical factions, turning an intellectual exercise into a caricature of its original intent.

I then address comments made by economist David D. Friedman in response to an earlier draft of this article. Friedman offered a friendly but critical review, raising concerns about the argument’s structure, the sufficiency of its evidence, and the interpretation of Walter Block’s intellectual influence. His critique provided a valuable opportunity for me to sharpen the article’s claims and make it clearer. The main point in my rebuttal is to show that the misinterpretation of Block’s ideas is not merely a matter of contrarian posturing or political alignment, but reflects a deeper philosophical error in the form of a reflexive, anti-state bias that excuses violence when committed by non-state actors.

Finally, I will try to explore a secondary theme; that Block’s plight is not unique: many historical thinkers saw their ideas distorted, often to their own detriment. To underscore this, I draw historical parallels with other thinkers whose theories were co-opted or twisted by later followers – from Nietzsche to Marx – illustrating the recurring dangers of ideas removed from their ethical moorings.

Walter Block’s Vision: A Nuanced Defense of Liberty

Walter Block’s Defending the Undefendable stands as one of the most provocative and daring works in modern libertarian thought. In it, Block tackled deeply controversial subjects by defending individuals and professions that society often vilifies – pimps, prostitutes, slumlords, blackmailers, drug dealers, and more. His goal was not to celebrate these people’s choices or morality, but to challenge knee-jerk societal condemnations of their economic roles in a free market. Block argued that these actors, so long as they operate without coercion or fraud, engage in voluntary exchanges that can yield mutual benefit. In a free-market context, even disreputable services have willing customers; by fulfilling a demand through voluntary trade, these “villains” provide value (however unseemly it may appear) and thus play a part in the market’s functioning. For example, a slumlord offers housing that, while low-quality, might be the only affordable option for certain tenants – serving a need that would otherwise go unmet. A loan shark, charging high interest to high-risk borrowers excluded from banks, still provides access to credit that can be life-saving for someone with no alternatives. Block’s point was that outlawing or condemning these voluntary arrangements outright often harms the very people society intends to protect, by driving transactions underground or eliminating options for the poorest. In highlighting the often-ignored economic function of such pariahs, Block forced readers to disentangle economic outcomes from moral approval. One can find an exchange mutually beneficial in a strict market sense without endorsing it morally.

Block’s libertarian philosophy is rooted in two foundational principles: the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) and respect for voluntary exchange. The NAP holds that it is inherently immoral to initiate force or fraud against another person; violence is only justified in defense against aggression. This principle provides the ethical cornerstone for libertarianism, setting a bright-line rule against coercion. Voluntary exchange, meanwhile, is the lifeblood of the free market: if two parties consent to a trade, and neither uses force, then by definition each expects to be better off from the deal – otherwise they wouldn’t agree to it. Mutual consent implies mutual benefit, as Block emphasizes: “In neither case is force or fraud applied”, he writes of both an ordinary business trade and a prostitute’s contract with a client. Together, NAP and voluntarism delineate the domain of legitimate human action in Rothbardian-libertarian eyes. Block’s innovation was to apply these principles to extreme cases that most people overlook or reject out of hand. He asked uncomfortable questions: If a transaction between a prostitute and a customer is voluntary, why is it fundamentally different from any other service for pay? If no one is forced to live in a slum apartment, can we categorically condemn the landlord for offering cheap (if shabby) housing that people freely accept? By pushing these examples, Block sought to demonstrate a broader point: the morality of a free market cannot be judged by our visceral dislike for the participants. What matters is consent versus coercion, not whether we personally approve of the people or services involved.

It is crucial to note that Block’s defense of the “undefendable” was not moral relativism nor an endorsement of crime. He did not argue that all actions undertaken by, say, a pimp or a blackmailer are good or acceptable. If any of these actors resorted to force, fraud, or the violation of rights, Block would firmly condemn them – consistent with libertarian ethics. His defense was carefully circumscribed: he only defended those actions that remained within the bounds of voluntary interaction. For instance, the pimp who uses threats or violence to control prostitutes is initiating aggression and is not defended; but the pimp who simply connects willing adult sex workers with clients in exchange for a fee is, in Block’s view, providing a voluntary mediation service (one might still find it distasteful, but it’s arguably a mutually agreed arrangement). Likewise, Block would never defend a slumlord’s outright negligence or fraud – only the basic fact that providing low-cost, low-quality housing to a willing tenant is a consensual exchange. In essence, Block was drawing a line: society’s visceral moral outrage often lumps together voluntary vice with actual aggression, but libertarians must be careful to only forbid the latter. As he and many classical liberals see it, “victimless crimes” are not crimes at all in a truly free society ( Defending the Undefendable ). Selling sex, drugs, or charging high interest may be sinful or unsavory to some, but if all parties consent, there is no rights-violation – and using the state’s coercive power to stop it would itself violate the NAP.

Block’s intention was as much educational as polemical. Defending the Undefendable uses shock value to jolt readers into questioning their assumptions. It asks us to apply libertarian principles consistently, even when our emotions or social conventions pull us in the opposite direction. By doing so, Block was testing the robustness of libertarian theory: if the free market and non-aggression principles truly promote human welfare, they should hold up even in “extreme” cases. Indeed, Rothbard lauded Block’s book for demonstrating “the workability and morality of the free market” far better than any dry theoretical tome – by “taking the most extreme examples”, Block illustrates that the principles still apply and thus “vindicates the theory”. In other words, if the theory can justify the hard cases, it reinforces its validity for the ordinary cases too. Block’s work served as a bold reminder that libertarianism isn’t just a fair-weather philosophy to be applied only to socially approved activities; it’s meant to be a principled framework, even when it leads to uncomfortable conclusions. This rigorous consistency is part of what Block (following Mises and Rothbard) saw as the moral strength of libertarian political economy.

However, the very boldness and provocative style of Block’s argument left it vulnerable to misinterpretation, especially by readers inclined to ideological extremism. By defending society’s pariahs in economic terms, Block ran the risk that some would miss the nuance and take his thesis too far. Over the decades after 1976, that risk materialized: factions of self-identified libertarians began to twist Block’s ideas into a blanket apologia for anyone labeled “bad” or “enemy” by mainstream society, regardless of whether those actors upheld libertarian ethics. What Block intended as an intellectual exercise – a nuanced defense of voluntary interactions and a critique of legal moralism – was gradually transformed by others into a much more sweeping and unprincipled stance. Before exploring how this distortion occurred, it is necessary to delve into the intellectual climate fostered by two of Block’s major influences and colleagues: Murray Rothbard and Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Both thinkers made enormous contributions to libertarian theory, but both also cultivated a strain of radical anti-statism that, taken to an extreme, helped lay the groundwork for the very misinterpretations that later ensnared Block’s legacy.

Rothbard and Hoppe’s Influence: Anti-Statism Taken to Extremes

Murray Rothbard and Hans-Hermann Hoppe are towering figures in libertarian thought who profoundly shaped the movement’s trajectory. Rothbard (1926–1995), often called the father of anarcho-capitalism, fused Austrian economics with an uncompromising political philosophy that placed individual liberty above all else. Hoppe, a student of Rothbard’s, carried these ideas forward, extending them into cultural and social realms. Both men staunchly opposed state power in virtually all forms, arguing that the state is inherently a coercive monopolist. Their rhetoric and scholarship galvanized generations of libertarians to question the legitimacy of government authority. However, Rothbard and Hoppe’s unwavering anti-statism sometimes led them to morally problematic positions – including an apparent tolerance for oppressive regimes and violent non-state actors, so long as those actors were enemies of Western governments. At times, their ideology even appeared to condemn acts of self-defense by liberal societies, under the logic that “the state can do no right.” These tendencies created a paradox: in fighting the Leviathan of state power, Rothbard and Hoppe could seem to excuse or even endorse other forms of aggression and illiberalism. Understanding this paradox is key to understanding how Block’s more nuanced libertarian vision became entangled with a much harsher, factional stance.

Murray Rothbard: Blind ‘Absolutism’

Murray Rothbard was, in the mid-20th century, the chief architect of a radical form of libertarianism that called for eliminating the state entirely. In works like Man, Economy, and State (1962) and For a New Liberty (1973), Rothbard argued that all the functions we assign to government could be provided by voluntary arrangements in a free market. He envisioned a society organized around private property, contract, and the NAP, with defense and law supplied by competing private agencies instead of a coercive state. This vision, known as anarcho-capitalism, was revolutionary. It took classical liberalism’s minimal state to its logical endpoint: no state at all. Intellectually, Rothbard buttressed this position with rigorous economic reasoning and natural-rights ethics. He insisted that taxation is theft, war is mass murder, and state regulation is an assault on freedom. To many libertarians, Rothbard’s purity was (and remains) inspiring – a lodestar of principle in a world full of compromises.

Yet Rothbard’s absolutism about state power sometimes led him into troubling territory when applying his ideas to real-world geopolitics and conflicts. His reflexive stance was anti-interventionist to an extreme: he opposed nearly all use of state force, especially by Western democracies, in international affairs. For example, during the Cold War, Rothbard’s hatred of U.S. imperialism led him to downplay or rationalize the crimes of communist and authoritarian regimes that were adversaries of the West. He infamously wrote in the 1970s that the Soviet Union – despite its brutal domestic tyranny – pursued a “far less adventurous” (i.e., more restrained) foreign policy than the United States ([PDF] LIBERTARIANS AGAINST THE AMERICAN WORLD. A CRITICAL ...). In other words, Rothbard suggested that, on the global stage, the USSR was less of an aggressor than the U.S., which implicitly casts the American government as the greater evil. Such analysis was in line with his conviction that U.S. interventions (Vietnam, etc.) were unjust – a conviction often justified – but it failed to equally acknowledge the very real aggression and expansionism by the Soviet state (in Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, Afghanistan 1979, and so on). Rothbard’s single-minded focus on opposing “the West” sometimes veered into moral relativism. He would criticize Western or democratic governments for any violence, yet exhibit relative silence or even sympathy regarding violence by dictatorships if it could be framed as “resistance” to Western influence. For instance, Rothbard commented positively on revolutionary movements or strongmen who opposed U.S. interests, whether in the Middle East or Latin America, glossing over their authoritarian deeds. In the 1990s, he controversially embraced aspects of the paleoconservative movement and praised politicians like Pat Buchanan – alliances forged largely over shared opposition to global interventionism and liberal internationalism, despite Buchanan’s own authoritarian nationalist streak.

Perhaps most telling was Rothbard’s stance on wars of self-defense. He took an axiomatically pacifist line that “the libertarian opposes war. Period.” (Walter Block Is a Zionist Extremist, Not a Libertarian | The Libertarian Institute). In his view, virtually no war waged by a state could be morally justified, because war inevitably involves aggression against innocents (e.g. civilians caught in the crossfire). While this absolutist anti-war position stemmed from a noble principle, it led Rothbard to draw no distinction between aggression and defense at the state level. By his logic, a government defending its citizens from external attack was just as guilty of “mass murder” as the aggressor, since any warfare would violate the NAP in practice. This radical symmetry – treating all sides in a conflict as equally culpable simply for engaging in war – is highly problematic. It ignores the crucial matter of who initiated force. Libertarian ethics, properly applied, do recognize the difference: initiating violence is criminal; repelling violence is justified. But Rothbard’s blanket condemnation of all state violence failed to account for cases where force is used to protect innocent lives from aggression. His position offered no practical guidance for how a free society should respond to threats short of dismantling its own military. In effect, Rothbard’s pure anti-statism risked undermining the very defense of liberty if taken literally. It is one thing to say the U.S. should not have entangled itself in foreign wars unjustly; it is another to suggest that no state under any circumstance (even invasion or terror attack) may legitimately use force in response. This extreme view would later influence libertarian factions who opposed Walter Block’s support for Israel’s self-defense, as we will see.

Murray Rothbard’s legacy in libertarianism is double-edged. On one hand, he provided the movement with a robust intellectual foundation and an unyielding devotion to principle. On the other hand, his inability (or refusal) to temper principle with situational nuance created a vulnerability. By treating all manifestations of state power as equally evil, Rothbard inadvertently gave cover to some of the worst enemies of freedom, so long as they were anti-Western or anti-liberal. He demonstrated how a philosophy of liberty could be twisted into a mirror image of the thing it despises: excusing or ignoring tyranny and aggression committed by non-liberal forces. This moral blind spot in Rothbardianism – the failure to distinguish defensive force from aggression, and liberal states from illiberal movements – would have a profound effect on segments of the libertarian movement, including the faction that later turned against Walter Block.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe: Reactionism Masquerading as Libertarianism

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a German-born economist and social theorist, is another influential yet controversial figure in libertarian circles. Hoppe studied under Rothbard and emerged in the 1990s as a fierce critic of democracy and a champion of what he termed a “natural order” rooted in private property. His most famous work, Democracy: The God That Failed (2001), argues that democracy tends toward socialism and decay, and that a system of private property anarchism (essentially small-scale monarchies or communities owned by “natural elites”) would better preserve liberty and civilization (Hans-Hermann Hoppe - Wikipedia). Hoppe’s ideas extended libertarian thought into cultural realms by linking economic liberty with cultural conservatism. He emphasized the rights of property owners to establish exclusive communities, even ones with strict social norms. For example, Hoppe provocatively suggested that a virtuous private community would expel “bad” cultural elements – such as democrats, homosexuals, or advocates of alternative lifestyles – not through state coercion, but via property owners’ association rights. This blend of radical libertarian economics with ultra-traditionalist values set Hoppe apart from many libertarians who lean culturally liberal.

Like Rothbard, Hoppe was an absolutist anti-statist in foreign affairs. He applied Rothbard’s non-interventionism to contemporary conflicts, often framing any country or group opposing the U.S. or Western Europe as a kind of proxy champion of liberty (solely by virtue of resisting Western states). This led to startling de facto alignments. For instance, Hoppe’s rhetoric in the post-9/11 era was sharply critical of the U.S. war on terror and interventions in the Middle East – a valid libertarian position – but he offered little but scorn for the notion that Western nations have a right to defend themselves against terrorist violence. He, like Rothbard, tended to portray Islamist militants or authoritarian regimes targeted by the West as victims reacting to Western provocation, rather than aggressors with their own illiberal agendas. In effect, any enemy of the Western state was treated as a potential friend of libertarianism in Hoppe’s worldview. This reached a disturbing logical extreme when some of Hoppe’s followers took to defending or excusing terrorist organizations like Hamas or Hezbollah on the grounds that these groups were “resisting imperialism” (ignoring the fact that their methods involve gross initiation of force against innocents). Hoppe himself did not necessarily endorse such groups’ ideology, but his blanket opposition to Western intervention created an intellectual environment where even the most illiberal actors could be seen as on the “right side” of the fight against statism. As one analysis notes, according to Rothbard and Hoppe during the Cold War, the Soviet Union – horrific as it was internally – was still preferable in its foreign policy to the U.S., simply because it was less interventionist abroad ([PDF] LIBERTARIANS AGAINST THE AMERICAN WORLD. A CRITICAL ...). Hoppe carried this contrarian impulse forward into the 21st century.

Another aspect of Hoppe’s influence is what one might call libertarian pro-exclusionism. He advocated for a form of society where freedom of association meant communities could be as exclusive or discriminatory as they wished, so long as property rights were respected. In principle, this is a logical extension of property freedom, and while there is a certain ideological sense behind this view on the theoretical level of statecraft and non-intervention (After all, even in the current reality, states generally refrain from attacking other states whose policies we would define as illiberal—such as institutional racism or the exclusion of women); however, in practice, Hoppe’s own Property and Freedom Society conferences became a haven for elements of the far-right. White nationalist and neo-fascist figures were welcomed at Hoppe’s events (e.g. Jared Taylor and Richard Spencer spoke at his conferences) (Hans-Hermann Hoppe - Wikipedia). Hoppe did not necessarily share their collectivist racism, but his willingness to partner with them in the name of fighting common enemies (egalitarianism, democracy, leftism, etc.) sent a clear signal. It implied a tolerance for authoritarian and racist ideologies under the libertarian banner, so long as they professed to be anti-state or anti-globalist. This has led observers to describe Hoppe as a “racialist right-wing libertarian,” noting that his circles blur the line between libertarian anti-statism and outright illiberal extremism. The danger here is that libertarianism’s reputation becomes entangled with unsavory movements that actually oppose the fundamental libertarian commitment to individual rights (for example, white nationalism is collectivist and coercive at its core, entirely incompatible with libertarian individualism – yet Hoppe’s associations created confusion about this boundary).

Hans-Hermann Hoppe extended Rothbard’s project but infused it with a cultural and sociopolitical edge that attracted an even more radical following. His emphasis on absolute property rights meant, in practice, that he was sometimes willing to excuse private coercion or exclusion if done under the rubric of property and tradition (e.g. physically expelling dissenters from a community). And his relentless anti-statism in global politics often translated to a one-sided narrative where Western democratic states were condemned for any use of force, whereas non-Western authoritarians and violent non-state actors were spared equal moral scrutiny if they stood opposed to the West. Hoppe’s failure – much like Rothbard’s – to publicly distance himself from the extreme interpretations of his ideas further muddied libertarian ethics. When some of his “followers” defended oppression and violence (so long as it wasn’t by a Western government), Hoppe did not forcefully repudiate these distortions. This silence (or ambiguity) allowed dangerous misinterpretations to proliferate: one could claim to be libertarian while cheering on despots or terrorists, simply because those despots or terrorists were enemies of one’s own government. It is within this intellectual milieu – shaped by Rothbard’s and Hoppe’s brilliant but sometimes one-dimensional oppositions – that Walter Block’s more nuanced libertarian stance would later collide with a hardline faction.

The Legacy of Misapplied Anti-Statism

Both Rothbard and Hoppe made seminal contributions to libertarian theory, but their legacies illustrate how anti-statism can be misapplied if divorced from underlying ethical principles. By treating all state actions as equally illegitimate, they created a discourse in which context and intent were ignored. Defensive violence was painted with the same brush as aggressive violence. Liberal democracies, constitutional governments, and welfare states were equated with totalitarian tyrannies and terrorist cells – since all are “states or state-like.” This intellectual blind spot was seized upon by extremists who wished to rationalize support for some of the most coercive and illiberal forces in modern history. Under the banner of “radical libertarianism,” some individuals began defending dictators, theocrats, and terrorists – not because they admired their ideology, one assumes, but because doing so was a contrarian stance against Western governments. In essence, anti-statism became, for these people, not a means to protect liberty but an end in itself, a kind of reflexive contrarianism where anything opposed by “the West” or “the establishment” must have virtue. This tendency conflates libertarianism with a crude “enemy-of-my-enemy” logic, abandoning the nuanced judgment needed to actually uphold liberty.

The effects of this misapplication were evident. Rothbard’s critiques of U.S. foreign policy, often insightful, sometimes degenerated into apologias for authoritarian leaders like Francisco Franco or even Stalin (he infamously suggested Stalin had been unfairly demonized in some contexts) – simply because they were on the opposite side of global conflicts from the U.S. Similarly, Hoppe’s anti-globalism led some in his orbit to sympathize with figures like Vladimir Putin or nationalist movements abroad, viewing them as bulwarks against global liberal democracy. The net result was an inversion of libertarian principle: freedom and individual rights were sidelined, while allegiance was given to any actor seen as fighting “the Empire” (be it American, NATO, Israeli, etc.). This moral inversion meant that oppression was sometimes justified in the name of resisting “greater” oppression – a perilous rationale that ignores that all oppression is wrong. Libertarianism’s ethical core (the NAP and individual rights) got lost in a haze of geopolitical game-playing.

It’s important to note that neither Rothbard nor Hoppe consciously wanted to promote tyranny. Rothbard despised communism and fascism personally, and Hoppe’s ideal society is one of private law and order, not chaos. The problem was that their communication and alliances were often tone-deaf to these distinctions. By failing to clearly denounce the regimes and groups they were perceived to be siding with (beyond cursory remarks), they left the door open for followers to interpret silence as assent. Thus, a generation of self-styled “hardcore” libertarians arose who took pride in defending the seemingly indefensible – not in Block’s carefully defined way, but in a genuinely unprincipled way. For example, some would say: “Sure, North Korea is a prison state, but who are we (the U.S.) to judge or intervene? The real threat to liberty is the U.S. government.” Or: “Yes, Hamas kills innocents, but Israel is a state and thus inherently worse.” Such attitudes entirely sidestep the question of who initiated violence and who is targeting civilians – questions at the heart of libertarian ethics. This is how anti-statism without moral nuance slides into moral bankruptcy.

By the early 2020s, this pattern had visibly infected certain libertarian circles. The misinterpretation and radicalization of anti-statist thought created a rift in the movement. On one side were libertarians (like Walter Block) who insisted that the non-aggression principle must apply universally – meaning one cannot excuse non-state actors (or “private” persons) for aggressive violence any more than one excuses states. On the other side were those we might call “libertarian contrarians” who had fallen into justifying oppression as long as the oppressor wasn’t a Western government. This climate set the stage for a dramatic confrontation when Walter Block took what should have been seen as a straightforward libertarian position – defending a society’s right to protect itself from terrorist attack – and was met with ferocious backlash from within his own intellectual community.

Rothbard, Hoppe, and Block: A Complex Relationship

Walter Block’s intellectual pedigree is closely tied to Rothbard and Hoppe. He has often acknowledged Rothbard as a mentor and major influence, especially in economics and anarcho-capitalist theory. Block’s Defending the Undefendable can be seen as an application of Rothbardian economics to pop culture taboos – indeed, Rothbard himself praised the book’s approach ( Defending the Undefendable ). In the 1980s and 90s, Block was a prominent scholar at the Mises Institute (co-founded by Rothbard) and later worked alongside Hoppe there. One might have expected Block to align with Rothbard and Hoppe’s political stances. In many ways he did: Block is an anarcho-capitalist who opposes taxation, rejects government regulation, and has been critical of U.S. foreign interventions. However, Block’s approach to libertarian ethics remained more grounded in the literal meaning of the NAP than in the contrarian geopolitics that consumed some of his peers. He consistently emphasized voluntary exchange and non-aggression, and avoided Rothbardian “moral equivalence” arguments that blur aggression and defense. In short, Block absorbed Rothbard’s economic radicalism but not necessarily all of Rothbard’s political alignments.

This complex relationship meant that Block was intellectually allied with Rothbard and Hoppe, yet also implicitly a moderating voice. For instance, Block has written on topics like abortion and immigration in ways that sometimes diverge from Hoppe’s hardline views – always with a strict eye on what libertarian principles dictate. It also meant Block was positioned, perhaps unknowingly, to become a target when the Rothbard-Hoppe influenced faction in libertarianism took a more extreme turn. The irony is that Block, Rothbard, and Hoppe all ostensibly share the same ultimate goal: a society of maximum liberty, free from coercion. But how they interpret threats to that liberty can differ markedly. Block never lost sight of the idea that both state and non-state actors can violate the NAP; Rothbard and Hoppe, in practice, focused almost exclusively on states as violators.

This dynamic came painfully to a head in 2023. By this time, Rothbard had long passed away and Hoppe was retired from active academic debate, but their intellectual progeny had defined the culture of institutions like the Mises Institute and various libertarian forums. When Hamas terrorists launched a brutal surprise attack on Israeli civilians in October 2023 – murdering over a thousand men, women, and children – the world watched in horror. Israel’s government responded with force in Gaza to eliminate the Hamas threat. For Walter Block, a libertarian Jew who had written about the Israel-Palestine conflict before, there was little question about the fundamental libertarian position: Hamas had initiated aggression (on a grotesque scale), and Israel had a right to defend its citizens. Block publicly asserted Israel’s right to self-defense, carefully noting that this does not excuse intentional harm to innocents but does justify military action against the aggressors (Hamas). This stance is squarely in line with the non-aggression principle – which permits force to repel force – and with classical liberal just-war theory (force is justified to stop aggression, provided civilian casualties are minimized).

However, within certain libertarian circles influenced by Rothbardian/Hoppean purism, any support of a state’s military action – even in self-defense – was anathema. These individuals equated Block’s position with siding with a “state” (Israel) and thus betraying libertarian anti-statism. The fact that Hamas is a non-state actor (indeed, a terrorist group) led them to view it almost axiomatically as the underdog and therefore somehow less culpable. In their eyes, Block’s support for Israel’s defensive war crossed an ideological red line. He was deemed by some as no longer a true libertarian but a “Zionist” or even an apologist for war crimes. The misinterpreted version of Block’s own philosophy – the one that says “you must defend the undefendable no matter what” – was now turned against him with a vengeance. If Block wouldn’t defend Hamas or at least condemn Israel outright, he was, in this distorted logic, failing the contrarian purity test that he himself had supposedly inspired. It’s a tragic and ironic twist: Block’s genuine principles led him to defend a liberal democracy against terrorism, and for that he was attacked by people purporting to uphold Blockian contrarianism shorn of principle.

The Mises Institute, where Block was a Senior Fellow, became the epicenter of this conflict. The institute’s leadership and many of its associated writers took a staunchly anti-Israel position. By late 2023, Walter Block was effectively ostracized from the Mises Institute. Although details of the internal deliberations are sparse (the Institute did not publish a formal expulsion notice, to public knowledge), Block’s removal and the cessation of his long-standing affiliations were widely understood in libertarian academic circles. It was a shocking development: a scholar who had been central to the Institute’s mission for decades was cast out, essentially for adhering to the Institute’s own stated principles (defense of life, liberty, property) in a situation where those principles inconveniently clashed with a new party line. One observer noted the bitter irony: Block’s colleagues, “ostensibly committed to libertarian principles, abandoned the ethical foundations of liberty in favor of an absolutist—and ultimately immoral—interpretation of anti-statism.” In plainer terms, they chose dogma (or perhaps political bias) over principle.

This episode highlights how factionalism can override even lifelong alliances. Block, Rothbard, and Hoppe had been part of the same intellectual family. But the faction that emerged – we might call them the ultra-anti-state faction – reinterpreted the family creed to the point of turning against one of their own founding members. In doing so, they illustrated a broader phenomenon: the fragility of intellectual movements when faced with internal radicalization. Even the originators of ideas can be purged by those who claim to be the true adherents of those ideas. This is reminiscent of many revolutionary movements in history, where the revolution “eats its own” once purity tests become more important than original ideals. Walter Block’s expulsion can thus be seen not only as a personal tragedy, but as a cautionary tale for libertarianism. It asks: How can a movement dedicated to liberty guard against its doctrines being twisted to serve illiberal ends? And what happens when those distortions become mainstream within the movement, to the point that principled voices are silenced?

Before answering these questions and addressing specific critiques, let us examine in more detail how Block’s ideas were misinterpreted by the very people who claimed to follow in his footsteps. This will shed light on the mentality of the faction that ousted him and clarify why their position is a distortion of true libertarian philosophy.

Misinterpretation of Block’s Ideas: From Provocative to Perverse

Walter Block’s Defending the Undefendable was meant as a provocative thought experiment, not a political manifesto to justify any bad actor. Unfortunately, certain self-proclaimed “Blockians” – libertarians who admired Block’s contrarian style but missed the subtlety – took his ideas to a radical extreme that Block never intended. They embraced contrarianism for its own sake, abandoning the ethical guardrails that Block had carefully maintained. What was an intellectual exercise in separating economics from moral judgment morphed, in their hands, into a moral nihilism: the belief that libertarians must reflexively defend anyone whom mainstream society considers indefensible, regardless of context.

This misinterpretation unfolded gradually. In libertarian forums, one could see the shift by the 2010s: it was no longer just pimps and drug dealers being defended (on grounds of voluntary exchange), but now dictators and terrorists being oddly rationalized. The logic went something like: “If Block showed that society unfairly maligns pimps who actually engage in voluntary trade, perhaps we should question who else society maligns. The U.S. government and media malign foreign strongmen and insurgents – so perhaps they too are ‘undefendable’ people that we libertarians should side with.” This reasoning utterly ignored the qualifier that Block always insisted on: voluntariness and non-aggression. A pimp or drug dealer can be involved in purely voluntary transactions. But a dictator jailing dissidents, or a terrorist bombing a bus, by definition violate others’ rights; they are aggressors, not just unconventional market participants. To treat them as equivalent “victims of prejudice” is a gross distortion of libertarian theory.

Yet that is precisely what some extremist libertarians did. They began to argue, for example, that defending a militant jihadist or a totalitarian regime was somehow the ultimate test of libertarian consistency – a way to prove one’s rejection of “establishment narratives.” If society at large condemned something, these contrarians felt an instinct to defend it. This is contrarianism unmoored from principle. In psychological terms, it’s a kind of nihilistic anti-authoritarianism: an impulse to invert every conventional judgment, without asking why that judgment exists. The result was that the ethical content of libertarianism was hollowed out. For these “Blockians,” it was no longer about defending peaceful if unpopular behaviors; it was about an almost anarchic celebration of anyone opposing the status quo, even violently. Liberty was misconstrued as a mandate to side with the “oppressed,” defined simplistically as whoever is condemned by Western powers or mainstream media. This led to shockingly misplaced sympathies. Some libertarians on social media and blogs would, for instance, justify groups like Al-Qaeda or later ISIS by framing them purely as resistance to U.S. imperialism, willfully overlooking those groups’ own blatant tyranny and aggression. Others would praise autocrats like Bashar al-Assad or the Iranian theocracy because they stood against American interests, ignoring the oppression those regimes inflict on their own people.

A concrete example helps illustrate this perversion: the case of Hamas. After the Hamas attacks on Israel and the ensuing war, a number of libertarian voices (especially in the “Libertarian Party Mises Caucus” and affiliated circles) adopted a stance that was de facto apologetic of Hamas. They would argue that Hamas, as a non-state actor representing an oppressed people (the Palestinians), was fighting against a state, and thus whatever horrors Hamas committed were ultimately the fault of the state (Israel). In their narrative, Israel, being a U.S.-backed state, was the root aggressor by existing and enforcing a blockade; Hamas was simply the desperate response, and therefore libertarians should focus condemnation on Israel. Some went as far as to suggest Israel had no right to retaliate because that would mean further aggression. This position is a travesty of libertarian reasoning. It equates the deliberate mass murder of civilians (an obvious aggression) with the enforcement of borders by a nation-state (which can be debated, but in this context Israel’s actions prior to the war were not an initiation of force against Gaza civilians). It also implies a startling conclusion: that non-state actors are essentially exempt from moral judgment under libertarianism, no matter what they do, simply because they are not “the state.” This is precisely the kind of warped thinking that misinterprets Block’s defense of voluntary criminals into a defense of violent criminals. Block defended a pimp who arranges consensual transactions; he did not defend the Mafia don who murders rivals or the terrorist who targets innocents – those involve clear initiations of force. Yet the “radical contrarians” lost this distinction.

In embracing this view, the extreme “Blockians” revealed that they had actually abandoned Block’s core insight (the centrality of voluntarism) and replaced it with a pseudo-libertarian form of identity politics: state = always bad, enemies of state = always good (or at least to be supported). This simplistic binary mirrors the thinking of Marxists who divide the world into oppressors and oppressed and justify anything the “oppressed” do. Libertarianism, in contrast, should judge actions by whether they involve aggression. By that standard, both state and non-state actors can be oppressors. Indeed, libertarians traditionally have recognized the threat of private crime and terrorism; that’s why even anarcho-capitalists like Rothbard envision private agencies for defense and courts – to protect people from all aggressors, public or private. The “Blockian” extremists betrayed this tradition by selectively turning a blind eye to non-state aggression.

The issue is not simply a misapplication of the Non-Aggression Principle, but a selective moral blindness. By excusing or downplaying the actions of non-state actors solely because they are not governments, these thinkers effectively abandoned consistent ethical evaluation. They replaced principled analysis with an apologetic bias that overlooks coercion and violence when it comes from non-state sources.

The culmination of this trend was the ironic rejection of Walter Block by his own ostensible followers. When Block defended Israel’s right to retaliate against Hamas (with the caveat, of course, that innocent Palestinians should not be intentionally harmed), the radical anti-Israel faction reacted with fury. To them, Block was siding with a government and military – the ultimate sin. All the goodwill he had earned by being an anarchist stalwart for decades was erased overnight in their eyes. They labeled him a warmonger, a Zionist shill, even an enemy of libertarianism. The intellectual descendants of Rothbard and Hoppe effectively excommunicated Block for failing to adhere to their dogma. As one critical article put it, “the libertarian community has roundly denounced his position as fundamentally incompatible with the non-aggression principle.” (Walter Block Is a Zionist Extremist, Not a Libertarian | The Libertarian Institute) That claim is exceedingly dubious on its face – defending people from terrorists aligns with the NAP – but it shows how far the narrative had swung. In the echo chambers of certain libertarian groups, Block’s nuanced libertarianism was reframed as heresy, and the distorted, extremist version of libertarianism was hailed as orthodoxy.

The looming concern remains: how did defending innocent life become a disqualifying stance in a movement built on individual rights? The answer lies in a deeper flaw—libertarianism’s turn toward absolutism in the face of risk.

Risk and the Collapse of Libertarian Absolutism

’s essay Risk Refutes Absolutism, building upon earlier insights by David D. Friedman, offers a direct challenge to rigid moral theories—including certain strands of libertarianism—that fail to accommodate uncertainty. Their central claim is that treating rights as inviolable regardless of probabilities leads to absurd or paralyzing conclusions. Moral decisions, they argue, must weigh not just actions and rules but expected outcomes under conditions of risk. Ignoring risk results in treating a 1% chance of violating rights the same as a 100% certainty, defying both intuition and real-world reasoning.​

This argument exposes the deep fragility of the form of libertarianism that led to Walter Block’s expulsion. In theory, the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) offers moral clarity: it is wrong to initiate force. But what happens when defending against aggression unavoidably risks harming innocents? What happens when there is no action available that guarantees zero rights violations?​

Huemer’s answer is sharp: absolutism collapses in such cases. If you say, “you may never act if there’s any risk of rights being violated,” then you're effectively forbidding all defensive action in the real world. That is not a defense of rights—it’s a system that leaves peaceful people helpless against aggressors who exploit moral hesitation.​
( also recognizes that acknowledging this is nothing but common sense morality)

Apply this to the Israel-Hamas conflict. Critics of Block insist that because civilian casualties are inevitable in war—especially one involving dense urban combat—Israel’s military response violates the NAP. They treat the mere possibility of unintended harm as morally disqualifying. But this only holds if you ignore Huemer’s point: uncertainty doesn't invalidate moral reasoning—it demands it. When Hamas embeds itself within civilian infrastructure, it is deliberately increasing the probability that any Israeli military response will involve civilian risk. To say Israel must therefore do nothing is to reward the use of human shields and encourage future aggression.​

Huemer’s critique cuts deeper. He shows that under uncertainty, absolute prohibitions become unusable. Suppose a military commander has a 90% chance of stopping an imminent massacre but a 10% chance of harming bystanders in the process. An absolutist would say: don’t act, because that 10% chance might mean violating someone’s rights. Huemer asks: what moral theory forbids preventing near-certain death on the grounds of a small chance of accidental harm? No consistent or humane one.​

The libertarian movement’s rejection of Block is a textbook example of this failure. Block argued that self-defense is morally justified even under imperfect conditions, so long as it targets aggressors and minimizes harm. That is not a rejection of the NAP—it’s an application of it under constraint. His critics, by contrast, demanded that any libertarian response to violence meet a standard of moral perfection: zero risk, zero unintended consequences, zero state involvement. Failing that, they declared it immoral.​

Huemer shows that such a standard isn’t just impractical—it’s incoherent. If taken seriously, it would mean forbidding a police officer from shooting an armed hostage-taker for fear of hitting the hostage. It would forbid stopping a terrorist using civilians as shields. It would deny the right to resist violence unless your defense mechanism can guarantee zero collateral effects—something no human institution or individual can ever promise.​

David Friedman’s analogy complements this: shooting into a bush where someone might be hiding is wrong not because rights are absolute, but because the risk of killing an innocent is too high given the low benefit. But if the situation were reversed—if you were almost certain a murderer was in the bush about to shoot someone else—the calculation changes. Libertarian ethics, if they're to remain applicable in such cases, must be able to process these kinds of trade-offs.​

The great irony is that Block, in his essay Defending Absolutist Libertarianism, attempts to uphold the same rigid absolutist framework that contributed to his own discrediting and ostracization. In doing so, he critiques Huemer's position, seemingly unaware that the inflexible application of the Non-Aggression Principle he defends is what led to his marginalization within the libertarian community.​

The movement that turned on Block refused that work. It adopted an absolutist posture that confuses moral purity with moral clarity. It treated all state violence as aggression, regardless of intent or outcome, and all non-state violence as presumptively defensive. That isn’t principle—it’s a refusal to think.​

Huemer’s argument exposes what I believe is best described as the disaster of moral overcommitment: when abstract rules are held so rigidly that they forbid moral action in uncertain contexts. The result is paralysis in the face of evil. Or worse, complicity.​

Libertarianism cannot survive that contradiction. Either it engages with probability, context, and risk, or it becomes irrelevant to real-world conflict. Block tried to walk that line -his critics discarded him for it:

The Expulsion of Walter Block from the Mises Institute

By late 2023, the simmering tensions within libertarian factions boiled over. Walter Block’s public stance on the Israel-Hamas war became the flashpoint. The Mises Institute – a bastion of Rothbardian libertarianism where Block had long been a senior fellow – asked Block to leave (or he left under pressure, according to accounts). This was a watershed moment: Block’s expulsion (or departure) signified that a certain interpretation of libertarian purity had triumphed institutionally over a more nuanced libertarian approach. Let us unpack the context and the irony of this event, then explore its fallout and implications.

Context: On October 7, 2023, Hamas militants from Gaza launched an attack on Israel of unprecedented savagery, killing over 1,200 civilians (including infants, families, festival-goers) and taking around 200 hostages. Israel, as any state would, declared war on Hamas. Block, horrified by the massacre yet mindful of Palestinian suffering too, penned articles and social media posts articulating Israel’s right to defend itself. He did not cheer war per se; he described it as a tragic necessity given the aggression. He also likely pointed out that Hamas, by embedding its fighters among civilians and using Gazans as human shields, bears responsibility for civilian casualties resulting from Israel’s defensive actions – a perspective aligned with both libertarian and international law reasoning. Block’s position was in line with classical liberal theory: John Locke wrote that when aggressors use innocents as shields, the moral culpability for any harm in defense lies with the aggressor (a hard truth, but one recognized in just war theory).

Within the Mises Institute circle, however, a prevailing sentiment (voiced by figures like institute president Jeff Deist, and many associated writers) was staunchly against any support for Israel. Some of this was likely driven by a general anti-interventionist instinct (worry that the U.S. might get involved on Israel’s behalf, etc.), and some by ideological alignment with the “post-libertarian” right that tends to view conflicts like these through an anti-globalist or even anti-Jewish-statist lens. Block’s commentary immediately drew ire. In internal communications (as Block later hinted in interviews), colleagues accused him of abandoning the NAP or of being blinded by his heritage (Block is Jewish, though secular). The atmosphere turned hostile. Block co-authored a scholarly rebuttal to an essay by Hoppe that had criticized Israel (Block & Alan Futerman’s “Rejoinder to Hoppe on Israel vs. Hamas”, 2024), attempting a rational debate ([PDF] REJOINDER TO HOPPE ON ISRAEL VERSUS HAMAS - MESTE). But the rift was more emotional and political than intellectual by that point. The institute’s ethos had shifted toward what one might call a paleo-libertarian populism deeply suspicious of anything that smacked of neoconservatism or mainstream foreign policy. To many there, Block’s defense of Israel – however grounded in libertarian theory – looked like siding with “the regime” (since in their view, Israel is backed by the U.S. “Empire,” etc.). The decision was made that Block’s continued association with Mises Institute was untenable. After nearly 40 years of collaboration, Block was essentially purged for thought-crime.

The irony of Block’s expulsion cannot be overstated. Here was a man who had arguably done as much as anyone to propagate Rothbardian ideas (including editing publications and mentoring students), being shown the door in the very institution founded by Rothbard, all because he upheld Rothbard’s own fundamental principle – that aggression must be resisted to protect the innocent. The situation was dripping with Orwellian absurdity, which did not go unnoticed. Even outside observers commented on the surreal nature of seeing hardline libertarians more outraged at Block for condemning terrorists than at the terrorists themselves. The Mises Institute’s response included publishing pieces attacking Block’s logic. Notably, an article by David Gordon titled “Orwellian Libertarianism: The Topsy-Turvy World of Walter Block” ran on Mises.org (November 30, 2024), implying Block had invented a “non-existent legal problem” by suggesting sometimes you can’t shoot an aggressor using human shields (Orwellian Libertarianism: The Topsy-Turvy World of Walter Block | Mises Institute).

This piece essentially accused Block of betraying libertarian law by even wrestling with the moral dilemma of collateral damage. To see Mises Institute scholars publicly ridiculing Walter Block as “topsy-turvy” was shocking to those who knew the long camaraderie between them. Block was hurt by this treatment (understandably), but he maintained his stance. He quipped in one response that being called Orwellian by his peers for advocating self-defense was painfully ironic – as it was they who, in his view, were doing a doublethink: redefining aggressors as victims and vice versa. Indeed, the episode had a very Orwellian character: war is peace, defense is aggression, etc., in the rhetoric of Block’s detractors.

The One Opinion That Crossed the Line

The Mises Institute has long prided itself on intellectual diversity within a shared libertarian framework. Scholars affiliated with the Institute have debated some of the most contentious issues in political philosophy and public policy, often arriving at widely divergent conclusions. Topics such as abortion, American foreign policy, and the COVID-19 pandemic have triggered passionate arguments among Mises scholars. And yet, throughout its history, it has been exceedingly rare—almost unheard of—for a senior fellow to be expelled or officially disavowed due to their opinions. That makes the expulsion of Walter Block in 2023 a singular and troubling departure.

Abortion

Abortion has long divided libertarians. The central conflict lies in balancing the rights of the mother with those of the fetus, both of which libertarian theory can interpret as "persons" with claims to life and bodily autonomy.

Walter Block advanced the theory of "evictionism," which argues that while a woman may evict a fetus from her womb (as an act of exercising her property rights), she may not deliberately kill it if the fetus is viable outside the womb. This sparked rebuttals from scholars like Jakub Wisniewski and Sean Parr, who emphasized the importance of gentleness and proportionality. Even more staunchly pro-life was the group Libertarians for Life, which considers abortion a direct violation of the non-aggression principle.

In the eyes of many abortion opponents, abortion is not simply a moral error but the actual murder of a baby. Yet despite the severity of that claim, no one was expelled. No scholar was publicly condemned, no one was deemed a murderer, and no institutional penalties were imposed.

Foreign Policy

While the Institute generally leans toward anti-interventionism, some affiliated thinkers have cautiously supported limited, defensive, or humanitarian interventions. Fernando Tesón argued that libertarians could justify action to prevent genocide. Ryan McMaken, though firmly non-interventionist, engaged in dialogue with realists about rethinking U.S. foreign policy.

These discussions, though contentious, never escalated to personal attacks or institutional reprisals. The disagreements were treated as legitimate variations within the broader framework.

COVID-19

Most Mises-affiliated writers opposed lockdowns and vaccine mandates. Figures like Jeff Deist and Ryan McMaken were vocal critics of the state’s COVID-19 response. Yet some offered more nuanced views. Walter Block, again, explored whether vaccine mandates might, under certain extreme conditions, be justified under the non-aggression principle. Others cautiously supported vaccines as tools to mitigate harm, provided their use remained voluntary.

These more moderate voices did not face backlash, nor did Walter himself. No one was expelled for exploring ethical dilemmas or policy tradeoffs.

The Outlier: Israel's Block

In contrast, the same (!) Walter Block was removed for publicly defending Israel’s right to self-defense after the October 2023 Hamas attacks. His argument followed core libertarian principles: the non-aggression principle and the right to repel violence. Yet, unlike others who held minority views on abortion, war, or COVID-19, Block’s stance crossed an unwritten line.

This case was not about extremism or tone. It was about the subject matter. The reaction to Block’s statement reveals a new inconsistency: within the Mises Institute, disagreement is tolerated on nearly everything—except certain foreign policy issues. When it comes to Israel, even a principled defense of self-defense was enough to break decades of fellowship.

The message is clear. At Mises, you can question life, death, war, and pandemics. But defending Israel—even within a libertarian framework—might get you expelled.

That’s a shift. And one worth noticing.

Fallout and Lessons

Block’s expulsion raised deep questions for the libertarian movement. Many libertarians outside the Mises orbit (for example, those at Reason magazine, Cato Institute, or independent academics) saw it as evidence of a schismatic turn – a purge that signaled a narrower, more cult-like direction for that faction. Some worried that libertarianism was being hijacked by alt-right or illiberal influences under the guise of purity. The incident underscored the dangers of dogmatism and factionalism. If a scholar of Block’s stature could be excommunicated for a minor difference in application of principle, what did that say about the movement’s tolerance for debate? Libertarianism has always prided itself on individual thinking and dissent, yet here was an internal “cancellation” reminiscent of the very ideological purity tests libertarians often criticize the left for. It served as a caution: any movement can fall prey to echo chambers and purges if it elevates orthodoxy over open discourse.

For Block personally, there was a silver lining. Many libertarians rallied to his support. A number of academics and writers (even those who disagreed with him on Israel) expressed dismay that his long career would end this way at Mises Institute. Block was quickly welcomed in other forums (he continues to write and teach elsewhere). In a sense, his ouster freed him to speak even more boldly, without having to mollify internal politics. In 2024 and 2025, Block published and spoke out on a variety of issues, reinforcing the idea that libertarian principles, properly understood, require moral consistency – condemning aggression whether by state or non-state, left or right. He warned of the “fragility of intellectual movements” and how easily principles can be perverted by factions (the very theme of this article). His experience became a rallying point for libertarians who want to reclaim the ethical high ground of their philosophy.

From this saga, several lessons emerge for libertarianism (and indeed any ideological community):

• Purity tests can become traps: It’s crucial to periodically re-examine whether clinging to a principle in the abstract might lead one to contradict the very purpose of that principle. In this case, anti-statism is meant to oppose unjust power, not to make one excuse other forms of unjust power. A slogan (“anti-state always”) is not a substitute for ethical reasoning.

• Don’t abandon nuance: A mature ideology must handle complexity. Blanket rules like “oppose war always” sound admirably pure but break down in complex reality. Libertarians must be willing to say, “In general we hate war, but if this entity is clearly an aggressor and that one is defending, we side with defense.” This is nuance, not inconsistency.

• Intellectual integrity over tribal loyalty: Block put truth above in-group solidarity, and paid a price. But in the long run, such integrity earns respect (even grudging respect from opponents). A movement that punishes integrity in favor of toeing the party line will degrade intellectually and morally.

• Historical awareness: Many of Block’s opponents acted as if considering Israel’s perspective was a unique heresy. But historically, many libertarians (even Rothbard at times) recognized shades of gray. By bringing in historical parallels (as we will in the next section), we see that distortion of ideas is a common pitfall. The libertarians who maligned Block might have paused if they recalled how, for instance, early socialists persecuted each other over doctrinal minutiae, or how religious movements split into sects – often to the detriment of their cause.

In sum, Walter Block’s expulsion from the Mises Institute was a dramatic episode that revealed a great deal about the state of libertarian discourse. It highlighted the need to reinforce the core ethos of libertarianism: a commitment to reason, evidence, and principle over zealotry. Block’s story, as painful as it was, ultimately can strengthen libertarianism by provoking reflection and course correction. It challenges libertarians to ask: Are we truly advancing liberty if we find ourselves defending the likes of Hamas or Putin? The obvious answer is no – and thus, the philosophy must be applied with its central values in mind, not as an automatic contrarian reflex.

Friedman’s Comments

As I had mentioned: The prominent libertarian economist, David D. Friedman, was kind enough to share his thoughts on my main thesis. Friedman was not directly involved in the Block controversy, and he represents a perspective worth considering.
He is known for his consequentialist approach to anarcho-capitalism (which he carefully distinguishes from utilitarianism—a view he frequently critiques and distances himself from, and I agree). (The Machinery of Freedom, 1973), David often critiques deontological libertarians if their logic becomes internally inconsistent or divorced from real-world consequences.

I will summarize the essence of David’s critiques (hoping this approach does justice to the original). After that, I will respond to each point individually.

1. “Rothbard and Hoppe’s views on war and regimes are being caricatured. What exactly are the examples of their tolerance toward oppressive regimes or intolerance toward self-defense?” – David is essentially asking for concrete evidence that Rothbard or Hoppe went beyond general antiwar positions and actually condoned oppressive regimes or denied the legitimacy of self-defense.
The evidence, as discussed, lies in their published works and alliances. For example, Rothbard in his 1967 essay War Guilt in the Middle East sharply condemned Israel’s actions in the Six-Day War and expressed strong sympathy for the Arab side.
While opposition to a particular war can be legitimate, Rothbard’s framing was that Zionism itself was fundamentally illegitimate – essentially denying an entire nation’s right to exist or defend itself, a stance many libertarians would find extreme since it appears to ignore the homesteading/property claims involved on both sides and focus only on anti-colonial narrative. Rothbard’s blanket statement that “the libertarian opposes war. Period.” is another example – it implies no war, not even a defensive one, is ever justified. If taken literally, this means a libertarian in Rothbard’s view should not fight even if attacked, which is an untenable prescription (and indeed Rothbard elsewhere inconsistently acknowledged the American Revolution or guerrilla war by the Viet Cong as justified – suggesting even he made exceptions in practice). Hoppe’s tolerance for oppressive actors is evidenced by his aforementioned association with extreme right figures and the content of some of his speeches which minimize the threat of, say, Islamist terrorism and focus entirely on Western policies as the problem. Furthermore, during the 1990s Balkan conflicts, Rothbard and his colleagues frequently took Serbia’s side simply because the U.S. and NATO took action against Serbian aggression – even though the Serbian state under Milosevic was committing ethnic cleansing. These patterns show a one-sided tolerance: oppressive regimes or groups got a pass if they were enemies of the U.S., whereas nations defending themselves (if aligned with the U.S.) were lambasted. Such selective outrage is the hallmark of a bias, not a principle.

2. “Who are these ‘Blockians’ misapplying Block’s ideas?” – It’s important not to attack a straw man. Concrete examples of individuals or groups will illustrate the point. One example is the Libertarian Party’s Mises Caucus social media output around late 2023: the caucus (which represents a Rothbardian wing of the LP) put out messaging that strongly suggested moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas or even blamed Israel entirely. They amplified voices like Scott Horton (a libertarian antiwar commentator) who outright argued that Israel had provoked the attacks and had no libertarian justification to respond with force. While Horton and others are sincere in their beliefs, their position functionally meant defending Hamas’ existence and operations as something libertarians shouldn’t concern themselves with, while harshly condemning Israel’s attempt to rescue hostages and stop rocket fire. On a more academic level, Jeremy R. Hammond (a researcher and the author of the article “Walter Block Is a Zionist Extremist, Not a Libertarian”) can be seen as a “Blockian” gone astray. He accuses Block of abandoning the NAP and essentially defends Hamas’s actions as understandable resistance. Hammond’s lengthy piece goes so far as to call Block’s scholarly work on Israel “a hoax” and lauds Block’s debate opponent (comedian Dave Smith) as the true libertarian for insisting Israel cease all military responses. In that debate, Block’s analogy about human shields (an aggressor with babies strapped to him) was rejected by Smith as irrelevant, and Smith maintained that any civilian casualties caused by Israel transform it into the aggressor – essentially a zero-tolerance stance on collateral damage that no nation at war has ever met. These examples show people taking Block’s ideas (like the human shield analogy, which was meant to illustrate a moral dilemma) and then attacking Block for not drawing the “logical” conclusion they demand (i.e. that Israel do nothing because it cannot perfectly avoid harm to all civilians). The Libertarian Institute piece by its staff explicitly frames Block as outside libertarianism and takes the side that “the libertarian position” is to oppose Israel’s war full-stop. Another example: various Twitter (X) accounts of individuals in the broader Mises/Rothbard orbit cheered when Block was removed from the Mises Institute, saying this was justice since Block had “gone statist.” These are real people, though often pseudonymous online, essentially misusing Block’s brand of contrarianism to defend the likes of Hamas or Putin. They might cite Block’s Defending the Undefendable as inspiration – claiming “Block said we should defend the bad guys, so I’m defending [insert authoritarian].” This is a profound misunderstanding, which leads directly into the next point.

3. “Not a Misreading—Just Performative Radicalism?”

The most important point made by David, in my opinion, questioned whether the radical libertarian tendency to side with terrorists and oppressive regimes truly stems from a misreading of Defending the Undefendable, or whether it is better explained as an attempt to shock conservatives or ingratiate oneself with radical leftists. This is a fair challenge. But it assumes a strict either/or, when the evidence suggests a combined dynamic: the provocative style and radical structure of Block’s book provided a template—both rhetorical and philosophical—that some later figures adopted without grasping its limits. Block’s text invited readers to question moral conventions and defend reviled figures in the market—but always under the condition of voluntary exchange and non-aggression. The core mistake of his intellectual descendants was to retain the contrarian form (defend the reviled) while discarding the moral function (evaluate whether the reviled violate rights). This pattern can be seen in examples such as Jeremy R. Hammond’s attack on Block as a “Zionist extremist,” where Block’s analogy of a human shield is rejected not on philosophical grounds, but because it defies a populist narrative. Hammond positions himself as a true “defender of the undefendable”—not in Block’s principled sense, but in a tribal, binary fashion where all anti-Western actors are presumed victims regardless of their actions.

Moreover, if Block’s book were not influential in this dynamic, we would not find its title or logic so frequently invoked in defense of positions Block himself rejects. Libertarian figures sympathetic to groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, or Assad often cite Defending the Undefendable as intellectual justification for their stances, framing themselves as “true radicals” who aren’t afraid to side with the damned. These actors rarely cite Mises, Hayek, or even Friedman, whose more measured tone doesn’t lend itself to such stylized contrarianism. Block’s work—accessible, bold, framed around moral inversion—offered a rhetorical license that some readers misunderstood as carte blanche to defend any pariah. That’s not Block’s fault, but it does trace back to a specific misreading of his work. The intention may be to shock; the tool they use is often a distorted reading of Block. Their arguments collapse if one reintroduces his actual criteria: voluntary behavior, absence of coercion, and fidelity to the non-aggression principle. In that light, Friedman’s “obvious alternative” is not so much a refutation as a description of how the distortion spread—through aesthetics, not principle—and why it found fertile ground in the shape, if not the substance, of Block’s own provocations.

Essentially, the core argument boils down to this: Libertarianism’s ethical framework doesn’t depend on whether an actor is a state or a non-state. It requires us to judge actions based on who initiates force and who defends against it. Sometimes states act justly; sometimes non-state actors commit clear aggression. The core principle is to defend innocent life and liberty against coercion—regardless of who the aggressor is.
Walter Block’s misfortune was that a faction lost sight of this, twisting “defend the undefendable” into “defend the indefensible”. By reasserting that initiation of force is the red line, we rebut Hammond’s possible concern that Block’s stance was a betrayal of anti-statism. No – it was a defense of the most important anti-coercive principle of all: the right not to be victim of violence. Rothbard and Hoppe, for all their contributions, got trapped in a conceptual blind alley on this point. Block (much like David Friedman, interestingly) saw more clearly that you cannot oppose all force without effectively empowering aggressors. A strictly pacifist libertarianism is a self-immolating one; it would allow violent illiberals to walk all over peaceful people. Therefore, in defending Block, we are in truth defending a coherent libertarianism against an internally incoherent offshoot.

Historical Parallels and Distorted Legacies

Block’s travails echo a recurring theme in intellectual history: thinkers whose ideas were misinterpreted or weaponized in ways that contradicted their original intent. Block is far from the first to have followers take an idea beyond its ethical bounds. To put the issue in perspective – and underscore the secondary thesis that many great minds saw their ideas distorted, often to their own detriment – consider the following historical examples. Each case involves an original idea or principle, its later distortion by others (sometimes to justify oppression or folly), and a consideration of whether the originator would have agreed with what became of their idea. These parallels, drawn from different eras and schools of thought, highlight how no ideology is immune to misinterpretation:

1. Louis de Bonald: Centralization as Oppression
   Original Idea: Louis de Bonald was a conservative French philosopher in the early 19th century who advocated for a strong, centralized authority to maintain social order and stability. Writing in the chaotic aftermath of the French Revolution, de Bonald believed that only a powerful, unified government – anchored by throne and altar – could prevent society from descending into anarchy. His ideal was a paternalistic state that would uphold tradition, religion, and hierarchy as bulwarks against revolutionary chaos.
   Distortion: Later in the 19th and 20th centuries, totalitarian regimes co-opted ideas of centralization to legitimize unbridled state power. Rulers from Napoleon III to authoritarian monarchs cited the need for “order and stability” as a pretext to crush liberties. In the extreme, 20th-century dictators (both fascist and communist) similarly claimed that a centralized state was essential to prevent chaos, thus justifying surveillance, censorship, and terror. De Bonald’s emphasis on unity was perverted into a rationale for totalitarian control – something far beyond the ordered liberty he envisaged.
   Would de Bonald Agree? Almost certainly not. De Bonald’s vision of centralization was tied to a moral order (grounded in Catholic values) and a stable society, not a police state or mass repression. He envisioned central authority as a means of fostering social peace, not as a tool for unchecked domination. He would likely have been horrified to see “order” turned into brutal oppression in his name.
   
   

2. Friedrich Nietzsche: Übermensch into Tyrant
   Original Idea: Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th-century German philosopher, introduced the concept of the Übermensch (Overman or Superman) in works like Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The Übermensch represented an individual who creates his own values, transcending the conventional moral norms of society. Nietzsche, a radical individualist, urged exceptional people to rise above herd mentality and nihilism by affirming life and forging new meaning through personal excellence and creativity. His philosophy celebrated personal empowerment, self-overcoming, and the rejection of conformity and ressentiment (resentful morality).
   Distortion: In the 20th century, the Nazi regime grotesquely twisted Nietzsche’s ideas to promote their ideology of Aryan racial supremacy. Selectively quoting him (and aided by Nietzsche’s sister’s manipulations of his notes), they recast the Übermensch as the biologically “superior” Aryan, and will to power as a justification for subjugating or exterminating “inferior” races. Nietzsche’s nuanced critique of Christian slave morality was simplified into a crude master-race doctrine, and his call for individual excellence was replaced with fanatical nationalism and racial myth. Hitler’s propagandists used Nietzschean rhetoric to lend an intellectual veneer to Nazi atrocities, including genocide.
   Would Nietzsche Agree? Absolutely not. Nietzsche was explicitly disdainful of German nationalism, anti-Semitism, and herd-like mass movements. He famously wrote, “Everything the State says is a lie, everything it has it has stolen.” He valued the individual genius, not any collective racial identity. The Nazis’ actions—militarism, anti-Semitism, the crushing of individual dissent—were the antithesis of Nietzsche’s vision of free-spirited, self-creating individuals. In fact, Nietzsche would likely have viewed the Nazis as embodying the very decadence and ressentiment he decried (resentful mediocrities finding scapegoats, rather than overcoming themselves).
   
   

3. John Maynard Keynes: Temporary Intervention to Permanent Spendthrift
   Original Idea: John Maynard Keynes, the British economist, revolutionized economic thought with The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936). In it, he argued that during severe economic downturns, government intervention is necessary to boost aggregate demand. Keynes advocated for temporary fiscal stimulus (deficit spending) in recessions and depressions to reduce unemployment and jump-start growth. Crucially, he envisioned that in good times, governments would scale back deficits or run surpluses (“the boom, not the slump, is the time for austerity”). Keynes’s theory was a pragmatic fix: use state tools to stabilize the inherently volatile business cycle, then return to normal.
   Distortion: Many governments enthusiastically adopted “Keynesian” policies in the post-WWII era, but misinterpreted Keynesianism as a blank check for perpetual deficit spending. Politicians found it much easier to run deficits in bad times and good, rather than make the hard choices of cutting back during booms. As a result, by the 1970s and onward, a number of countries ran chronic budget deficits and built up massive public debts even in prosperity. Keynes’s call for disciplined, counter-cyclical policy degenerated into a general justification for big government and continuous intervention, even when not needed. The idea of fiscal stimulus was stretched to mean any government spending was good for the economy – a clear distortion.
   Would Keynes Agree? Likely not. Keynes was a liberal economist, not a socialist; he believed markets usually work but occasionally need help. He specifically warned against long-term deficit financing and inflation. Keynes famously noted that deficit spending is for the short term, quipping “in the long run we are all dead” to emphasize focusing on immediate issues – not to suggest ignoring long-run fiscal health. He would have disapproved of how his nuanced policy tools were turned into an excuse for fiscal profligacy and the abandonment of prudence in good economic times.
   
   

4. Karl Marx: Liberation Theory into Totalitarian Practice
   Original Idea: Karl Marx, the 19th-century philosopher and economist, envisioned a revolutionary overthrow of capitalist systems to usher in a classless, stateless society (communism). Marx’s theory of history (historical materialism) posited that the working class (proletariat) would eventually become conscious of its exploitation under capitalism, revolt, and abolish private property in the means of production. The end goal was collective ownership and the withering away of the state – a society where goods are distributed “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Marx saw this as the liberation of humanity from exploitation, a world with no oppressors or oppressed.
   Distortion: In the 20th century, regimes claiming Marx’s legacy – notably the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin – created some of the most oppressive states in history. Marx’s call for revolution was used to justify one-party dictatorships, gulags, purges, and total economic control by the state. Under Stalin, the USSR did not “wither away” the state; instead it built a police state where the Communist Party elite wielded absolute power. Marx’s idea of a temporary “dictatorship of the proletariat” (meant to be a brief phase after revolution to suppress bourgeois resistance) was perverted into a permanent totalitarian dictatorship over the proletariat. Dissenters, including many Marxist true believers, were imprisoned or executed as “enemies of the people.” Rather than a classless society, a new ruling class (the party bureaucracy) emerged. In short, Marx’s name was invoked to legitimize mass repression and the opposite of the freedom he ostensibly sought.
   Would Marx Agree? Certainly not. Marx would have been aghast at the cult of personality and extreme statism of Stalinism. Marx’s whole theory predicted the state would dissolve after capitalism; to see an ostensibly “Marxist” state become more tyrannical than any capitalist monarchy would be a betrayal of his vision. Indeed, Marx once said “If that is Marxism, then I am not a Marxist,” distancing himself from dogmatic followers even in his lifetime. He might have applied that quote to the Soviet experiment. Marx desired human liberation; Stalin delivered its antithesis: a nightmare of state domination.
   
   

5. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: General Will to Reign of Terror
   Original Idea: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Enlightenment philosopher, introduced the idea of the “general will” of the people in The Social Contract (1762). He posited that a just society is one where laws reflect the general will – the collective interest of the citizenry – as opposed to the particular wills of individuals or factions. Each individual, by entering the social contract, agrees to be guided by this general will, which promotes freedom through obedience to self-imposed law. Rousseau imagined a direct democracy in a small, virtuous republic where citizens actively participate and subordinate personal desires to the common good. The goal was liberty and equality under a morally guided body politic.
   Distortion: During the French Revolution, leaders like Maximilien Robespierre drew on Rousseau’s concepts to justify extreme measures. Robespierre’s Committee of Public Safety claimed to represent the “general will” of the French people, and on that basis, instituted the Reign of Terror (1793–94) – executing thousands suspected of opposing the Revolution. The notion was that true patriots acting for the general will must purge the Republic of traitors (whose very existence was deemed contrary to the general will). In practice, this devolved into a murderous campaign against perceived “enemies” (often merely political rivals or moderates). Rousseau’s ideals of civic virtue and popular sovereignty were contorted into a totalitarian demand for ideological purity, where disagreement meant death. The general will became not the thoughtful consensus of citizens, but whatever the revolutionary Tribunal declared it to be on any given day.
   Would Rousseau Agree? Likely not. Rousseau did say people might need to be “forced to be free” in the sense of obeying the general will, which is an ambiguous phrase often criticized. However, it’s hard to imagine Rousseau endorsing mass guillotining and a climate of fear. He envisioned small communities, not a huge nation in turmoil. Rousseau’s emphasis on virtue and deliberation is incompatible with the summary executions and show trials of the Terror. He would probably view the Terror as a tragic perversion of republican virtue – a case where amour-propre (inflamed egos and factionalism) overtook genuine common interest.
   
   

6. Sigmund Freud: Depth Psychology to Pop Psychology
   Original Idea: Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, developed a complex theory of the human psyche in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He introduced the idea of the unconscious mind influencing behavior, and techniques like free association and dream interpretation to uncover repressed thoughts and traumas. Freud’s model of the psyche (id, ego, superego) and his theories of psychosexual development (Oedipus complex, etc.) were meant to explain the profound complexities of human motivation, neurosis, and personality formation. Freud saw sexuality in a broad sense as a key driver, but his work encompassed a wide range of emotions and experiences.
   Distortion: By the mid-20th century, especially in American pop culture, Freud’s rich and nuanced theories were often dumbed down to a crude sexual reductionism. “Freudian” analysis in the popular mind became a joke about everything being related to sex or a person’s mother. The richness of the unconscious was reduced to a handful of catchy but oversimplified ideas – e.g., calling anyone with a dominant mother figure “Oedipal,” or labeling every slip of the tongue a revelation of secret sexual desire. In therapeutic practice, some Freudian disciples indeed became obsessively focused on sexual interpretations of almost all patient behavior, alienating many. Complex issues like existential anxiety, social context, or cognitive patterns were sidelined. Freud’s reputation in some circles suffered because “Freudian psychology” was seen as pansexual sophistry, not the deep exploration of the mind he intended.
   Would Freud Agree? Probably not. Freud lamented toward the end of his life that American psychologists had made a “kind of cure-all” out of psychoanalysis that ignored its depth. While Freud did place heavy emphasis on sexuality (to a degree many modern psychologists find excessive), he certainly did not claim every single human action boils down to a hidden sexual motive. He intended psychoanalysis to explore all realms of the unconscious – fear, love, death wishes, childhood memories, etc. He would bristle at the caricature that his work was all about interpreting phallic symbols in dreams. Freud once compared the mind to an iceberg, with the majority hidden below the surface; he would be dismayed if people thought the only thing under the surface was a fixation on sex.
   
   

7. Herbert Marcuse: Nonviolence Turned Violent
   Original Idea: Herbert Marcuse, a mid-20th century critical theorist of the Frankfurt School, was an advocate for radical social change but through largely intellectual and cultural resistance. In works like One-Dimensional Man (1964) and the essay “Repressive Tolerance” (1965), Marcuse critiqued advanced industrial society for creating false needs and stifling genuine opposition. He championed the “Great Refusal” – a withdrawal of consent and a cultural rebellion against oppressive systems. Marcuse was associated with the New Left and inspired student movements in the 1960s. Importantly, though highly critical of capitalism and imperialism, Marcuse did not call for violent revolution; he believed in subversive thinking, civil disobedience, and grassroots organizing to raise consciousness.
   Distortion: In the late 1960s and early ’70s, some radical factions (like the Weather Underground in the U.S. or the Red Army Faction in Germany) took Marcuse’s critiques as a license to engage in violent rebellion. Frustrated by the slow pace of change and inspired by more militant revolutionary rhetoric (e.g., Frantz Fanon’s endorsement of anti-colonial violence), these groups planted bombs, committed arson, and plotted assassinations in hopes of sparking an upheaval. They cited the injustices Marcuse decried – Vietnam War, racial oppression, bureaucratic capitalism – but abandoned his essentially non-violent, discursive strategy. Even some mainstream protests turned into riots. The notion of “By any means necessary,” popular in that era, overshadowed Marcuse’s idea that the means must involve rejecting the system’s brutality, not reproducing it.
   Would Marcuse Agree? Likely not. Marcuse explicitly warned that violent tactics by a minority could backfire and lead to more repression – which indeed happened as governments cracked down on extremists. Marcuse advocated “moderate, selective tolerance” for radical ideas, not terrorism. He valued the moral high ground of fighting domination without becoming a dominator. Marcuse would have disapproved of setting bombs in campus buildings or kidnapping businessmen as tactics. He envisioned a mass awakening, not a vanguard of armed revolutionaries imposing change. His own correspondence in later years shows disappointment at how some followers misread him as endorsing violence.
   
   

8. Hugo Grotius: Law of Nations to Imperial Conquest
   Original Idea: Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), a Dutch jurist, laid foundational work for international law. In On the Law of War and Peace (1625), Grotius argued that nations are bound by natural law just as individuals are. He promoted ideas like freedom of the seas, rules for just war, and respect for ambassadors. Grotius’s intent was to civilize relations between states – to restrain war through law and to enable peaceful coexistence via treaties and mutual obligations. He is often called the “father of international law” and envisioned his ideas fostering peace and justice among sovereign nations.
   Distortion: In the age of European imperialism (18th–19th centuries), colonial powers sometimes twisted Grotius’s principles to justify their expansion. For example, Great Britain invoked “freedom of the seas” (a Grotian idea) as it built its naval empire – but interpreted it to mean freedom for British ships, even as they encroached on others. Similarly, treaties imposed on colonized peoples were given a veneer of legality, suggesting the imperial conquests were legitimate contractual arrangements under international law. The concept of terra nullius (nobody’s land) – used to justify seizing indigenous lands – claimed basis in natural law reasoning somewhat traceable to Grotius’s discussions of property (though he never advocated what was done). Essentially, the emergent European-dominated international law system was used to sanctify colonial holdings and divide the world among empires, arguably perverting Grotius’s aim of equity among nations into a legalistic cover for domination.
   Would Grotius Agree? Certainly not. Grotius served a government (the Dutch Republic) but strongly believed in fair agreements and the sovereignty of even small nations. He wrote a treatise defending the rights of the Indonesian Sultanate of Johor against Portuguese aggression (De Jure Praedae). He would have abhorred the cynical use of “law” to excuse colonial exploitation. Grotius wanted international law to check power, not dress it up. Seeing the concept of legal equality twisted into an imperial tool would violate the spirit of his life’s work.
   
   

9. Leon Trotsky: Permanent Revolution to Permanent Repression
   Original Idea: Leon Trotsky, a leading figure in the Russian Revolution of 1917, developed the theory of “permanent revolution.” He argued that in some countries (like Tsarist Russia), the bourgeois democratic revolution and the socialist revolution would merge in one continuous process – the proletariat, once in power, must not stop at bourgeois democracy but push on to socialism, and the revolution should spread internationally (“permanent” in extension as well). Trotsky believed in a global perspective: true socialism couldn’t survive isolated; workers of all countries must eventually unite to prevent encirclement. Trotsky’s goal was the emancipation of the working class worldwide and the avoidance of a stagnant bureaucratism at home.
   Distortion: After Trotsky’s fall from power and exile, Stalin branded “Trotskyism” as a heresy and used it to justify purges. Ironically, Stalin’s ideology of “Socialism in One Country” was the opposite of permanent revolution, but he accused Trotsky and his followers of plotting against the Soviet Union. In the late 1930s, Stalin’s regime carried out the Great Purge, during which the mere accusation of Trotskyism was enough to warrant execution or gulag for countless Communist Party members. Trotsky’s name became synonymous with traitor in Soviet propaganda. Furthermore, regimes like Maoist China later co-opted the notion of “permanent revolution” to mean constant internal campaigns (like the Cultural Revolution) to uproot “bourgeois” elements – campaigns which devolved into chaos and persecution rather than liberation. In short, Trotsky’s vision of an ever-expanding, internationalist revolution was twisted by his rivals into a justification for internal repression and paranoid witch-hunts.
   Would Trotsky Agree? Absolutely not. Trotsky himself fell victim to this distortion – assassinated in 1940 by a Stalinist agent in Mexico. Trotsky stood for workers’ democracy (though he had his own blind spots, he opposed Stalin’s tyranny). He would have been appalled that “Trotskyist” came to mean enemy of the people in the USSR. The permanent revolution for Trotsky meant empowering the masses, not permanent purges. He did advocate necessary ruthlessness during civil war, but he valued truth and open debate within the communist movement. The show trials and fabrications under Stalin would have disgusted Trotsky as a betrayal of the revolution. In a sense, Trotsky was one of the first and most famous victims of the distortion of Trotskyism.
   
   

10. Martin Heidegger: Existential Philosophy and Its Dark Shadow
    Original Idea: Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher, explored the nature of Being in his magnum opus Being and Time (1927). He emphasized authenticity, individual existence, and a deep engagement with the question of what it means to be. Heidegger critiqued the alienation of modern life and urged a return to more primordial understanding. His philosophy is dense and poetic, dealing with concepts like Dasein (being-there), thrownness, and being-toward-death. In essence, Heidegger wanted humans to confront the fundamental questions of existence, free from conformist social norms – an intellectual spiritual quest for meaning.
    Distortion: Heidegger notoriously became involved with the Nazi Party briefly in the early 1930s, hoping (naively or opportunistically) that the new regime might herald a national rebirth aligned with his philosophical vision. This association tarnished his legacy permanently. During the Nazi period, some tried to align his obscure ideas with Nazi ideology – for instance, interpreting Dasein as the German Volk and authenticity as loyalty to one’s blood and soil. After the war, critics labeled Heidegger’s philosophy as inherently obscurantist or even implicitly fascist, arguing his disdain for modern society and democratic “they-self” thinking had reactionary implications. While Heidegger’s own Nazi sympathies were real yet philosophically thin, later far-right thinkers cherry-picked from his work (and that of his follower Carl Schmitt) to give intellectual heft to authoritarian and ethnonationalist ideas. Thus Heidegger’s name became somewhat tainted, sometimes used to justify authoritarian ultranationalism or anti-humanist politics that he himself did not explicitly advocate in his major works.
    Would Heidegger Agree? This is complex. Heidegger did join the Nazi party and never strongly recanted or apologized, which suggests a level of agreement or at least complicity at the time. However, his later work and silence on politics indicate he distanced himself from Nazi ideology after the fact. If one isolates his philosophy from his politics, there’s nothing inherently Nazi in Being and Time – indeed, Heidegger even had a concept of Mitsein (being-with) that recognizes empathy and community beyond narrow tribalism. It’s likely Heidegger would reject crude Nazi interpretations of his thought, yet his own moral failure gives pause. In a way, Heidegger partly distorted his own legacy by his actions. We might surmise he would say his philosophy was misused and that the true “thinking of Being” has nothing to do with racist dogma – but critics will forever suspect an undercurrent. This example shows that sometimes the thinker’s own life can cast a shadow on his ideas, allowing others to misuse them with a hint of legitimacy.

    ---

These examples, spanning political theory, philosophy, economics, and psychology, reinforce a sobering message: great ideas are malleable and can be turned to purposes far from those intended. In nearly every case, the originator’s name was invoked to lend authority to something they would fundamentally oppose. Louis de Bonald wanted order, not oppression. Nietzsche wanted individual transcendence, not racial genocide. Keynes wanted prudent macro-management, not endless debt. Marx dreamt of liberation, not gulags. Rousseau sought civic freedom, not mass murder. Freud aimed at depth, not triviality. Marcuse preached liberation, not terror. Grotius promoted law to avoid war, not to excuse conquest. Trotsky fought for the proletariat, not a paranoid tyrant. Heidegger quested for meaning, not jackboots (despite a lapse in judgment).

In each distortion, there is a common thread: followers (or opportunists) taking a piece of the idea and running wild with it, ignoring the checks, balances, or context that the original thinker emphasized. It is usually accompanied by factionalism – a wing of people who claim to be the “true disciples” and denounce others (often including the originator or their close associates) as traitors to the cause. This is exactly what happened with Walter Block. The “Blockians” clung to the iconoclasm of Defending the Undefendable but discarded its moral limits. They treated Block’s contrarian stance as an abstract formula: “whatever society condemns, we defend,” rather than a tool to reevaluate voluntary interactions.

My Conclusion

Walter Block’s expulsion from Mises serves as a powerful and troubling case study in the distortion of intellectual ideas. Block – a steadfast defender of liberty, voluntary exchange, and the non-aggression principle – became a victim of the very misinterpretations that plague ideological movements. His nuanced arguments, crafted to illuminate the complexities of market interactions and personal freedom, were co-opted and weaponized by extremists within the libertarian movement. These factions abandoned the ethical core of libertarianism, using its rhetoric to justify coercion, violence, and even the defense of oppressive regimes. Ultimately, this culminated in Block’s ostracization by those who claimed to champion his philosophy.

Block’s story is not unique. As we have seen, it parallels the experiences of other intellectual figures across history whose ideas were twisted into forms that contradicted their original intent. Marx’s vision of a classless society became the justification for totalitarian communist states. Nietzsche’s Übermensch was mangled into the Nazi Übermensch. Rousseau’s general will was invoked to rationalize the guillotine’s work. In each case, the originators’ names and theories were invoked to lend credence to actions and beliefs utterly against their spirit. Often, the thinkers themselves suffered for it: Socrates (long before our list) was executed ostensibly for the subversive thinking he inspired; Trotsky was assassinated as a “heretic” of a revolution he co-led; even in mild forms, reputations like Freud’s were cheapened by shallow popularization.

These historical examples illustrate a recurring pattern: the susceptibility of intellectual legacies to distortion when ideas are removed from their ethical and philosophical context. Libertarianism, being a complex and nuanced philosophy, is particularly vulnerable to such distortions if its adherents lose sight of first principles. In Walter Block’s case, the distortion of his work highlights a specific danger within libertarianism: the conflation of anti-statism with moral relativism. By refusing to distinguish between coercive and defensive uses of force – by treating all state actions as evil and any opponent of the state as good – certain factions undermined the very principles of liberty and non-aggression that define libertarianism. Block’s expulsion underscores how fragile those principles can become in the face of ideological purity tests and factional zeal.

This phenomenon raises broader questions about the nature of intellectual legacies. Ideas are inherently dynamic; they are shaped and reshaped by the contexts in which they are interpreted and applied (There's No Escaping the Enlightenment – Kim R. Holmes). This evolution can lead to growth, adaptation, and positive innovation – but it also creates opportunities for misunderstanding and misuse. As ideas drift away from their source, they risk being co-opted by actors who might use the prestigious banner of an idea to justify actions that betray its foundational values. The tension between the evolution of ideas and the preservation of their integrity is a central challenge for any intellectual community.

For libertarianism to remain vibrant and true to its mission, it must confront this challenge head-on. The movement needs to cultivate a culture of critical engagement that both respects its foundational principles and recognizes the complexities of contemporary issues. This means being vigilant in identifying and correcting distortions. It means encouraging open dialogue and even internal dissent to guard against calcified dogma. And it means resisting the allure of what is easy – simplistic anti-authority posturing – in favor of what is right – consistent application of ethics even when it leads to uncomfortable or non-intuitive positions.

Walter Block’s expulsion is a stark reminder of what is at stake. Libertarians seek to uphold the highest ideals of liberty, justice, and individual dignity. If they allow those ideals to be overshadowed by opportunistic reinterpretations or by an echo-chamber radicalism, they risk losing the very essence of their philosophy. But Block’s story is also an opportunity. It has sparked introspection within the movement and a reassertion by many of first principles. There is a growing recognition that hating the state is not enough – one must also love and defend liberty, which includes protecting the innocent and condemning aggressors even if those aggressors are also enemies of one’s enemy.

The lesson is clear: ideas must be nurtured in both intellectual rigor and ethical integrity. To avoid the fate of so many distorted legacies, libertarians (and indeed all who carry forward powerful ideas) must remember why those ideas mattered in the first place. Principles like the non-aggression norm were not enshrined to win academic debates or score contrarian points; they were meant to ensure a society where each individual can live free from violence and coercion. That vision should never be lost. Only by keeping ethical foundations front and center can a movement remain both true to itself and relevant in guiding those who seek freedom in an increasingly complex and divided world.

(In my opinion, Block’s experience, in the end, may strengthen libertarianism – not by glorifying martyrdom or fueling factional resentment, but by reminding all involved that liberty and responsibility are two sides of the same coin. Defending the undefendable was always meant to be about defending peaceful choices; it was never a license to defend the indefensible acts of aggression. In remembering that, libertarians can reclaim the clarity of purpose needed to genuinely advance the cause of freedom.)

Bibliography

1. Block, Walter. Defending the Undefendable. New York: Fleet Press, 1976.

2. Hayek, Friedrich A. Letter to Walter Block, cited in the Preface to the 2nd edition of Defending the Undefendable.

3. Rothbard, Murray N. For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto. New York: Macmillan, 1973.

4. Rothbard, Murray N. “War Guilt in the Middle East.” Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought 3, no. 3 (1967).

5. Hoppe, Hans-Hermann. Democracy: The God That Failed. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001.

6. Gordon, David. “Orwellian Libertarianism: The Topsy-Turvy World of Walter Block.” Mises Institute, November 30, 2024.

7. Hammond, Jeremy R. “Walter Block Is a Zionist Extremist, Not a Libertarian.” Libertarian Institute, 2024.

8. Block, Walter, and Alan Futerman. “Rejoinder to Hoppe on Israel vs. Hamas.” Journal of Libertarian Studies, 2024.

9. Friedman, David D. The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1973.

10. Block, Walter. “Defending Absolutist Libertarianism.” 2023. Accessed at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370145370_Defending_Absolutist_Libertarianism.

11. Huemer, Michael. “Risk Refutes Absolutism.” Fake Noûs, 2023. Accessed at

12. Caplan, Bryan. “Huemer’s Common-Sense Libertarianism.” EconLog, January 25, 2013. https://www.econlib.org/archives/2013/01/huemers_common.html.

13. Keynes, John Maynard. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. London: Macmillan, 1936.

14. Marcuse, Herbert. “Repressive Tolerance.” In A Critique of Pure Tolerance, edited by Robert Paul Wolff et al. Boston: Beacon Press, 1965.

15. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Viking Penguin, 1954.

16. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract. Translated by Maurice Cranston. London: Penguin Books, 1968.

17. Marx, Karl. Critique of the Gotha Program. 1875.

18. Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Translated by James Strachey. New York: Avon Books, 1965.

19. Grotius, Hugo. On the Law of War and Peace. Translated by Francis W. Kelsey. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925.

20. Trotsky, Leon. The Permanent Revolution. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1930.

21. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.

22. “Libertarians Against the American World: A Critical Assessment of Rothbard and Hoppe’s Foreign Policy Thought.” PDF document. Accessed 2024.

23. “Are Libertarians Suffering from Israel Derangement Syndrome?” Savvy Street, 2024.

24. “Hans-Hermann Hoppe.” Wikipedia. Accessed 2024.

I’m in Malta right now. Beautiful skies, turquoise water, limestone buildings glowing gold at sunset. You’d expect the culture to shine just as bright. But here’s the twist: it doesn’t.

Walk into a café and you’ll likely hear the whirr of an Italian espresso machine, a playlist full of British pop, and a menu offering croissants and cappuccin. But no sign of Maltese tea in a glass, or te fit-tazza. And that sums up the vibe here: ancient island, modern identity confusion.

Pride and Disappearance

Malta has thousands of years of history. A unique language. A rich blend of Mediterranean traditions. And yet, many Maltese today seem more comfortable imitating the English, the Italians, or the French than leaning into their own story.

The stats tell a part of the tale:

• 96% of Maltese speak English. Many switch languages mid-sentence. Some families speak English exclusively at home. (Languages of Malta - Wikipedia)

• 86% still say they prefer Maltese, but that doesn’t mean they actually use it in daily life. In work, school, and on social media, English dominates. (Malta - Wikipedia)

Even the national language is getting... streamlined. Dialects are fading. A more anglicized Maltese is emerging.

Meanwhile, Catholicism is still a strong cultural anchor. Over 93% identify as Catholic. Churches are full on Sundays, especially with the older crowd. Religious processions and feast days still pack the streets. This, perhaps, is the one area where Malta expresses identity with confidence. (MaltaToday)

What’s Disappearing?

• Folk music like għana (a kind of poetic, improvised singing) is rarely heard outside traditional events.

• Crafts like lace-making and silver filigree are now mostly souvenir items made by aging artisans.

• Traditional weddings with the old għonnella cloak and village customs? Almost extinct. Western-style receptions have taken over.

• Maltese food—rabbit stew, hobż biż-żejt, Kinnie is still here, but often overshadowed by fast food and international chains.

The culture isn’t gone. But it’s hidden. It’s the quiet voice in a room full of louder, glossier influences.

A Small Island in a Loud World

What makes this even more interesting is comparing Malta to other places.

Japan, for instance, is deeply modern yet fiercely protective of its traditions. People still learn calligraphy, wear kimonos, celebrate tea ceremonies. The government honors master artisans as national treasures. You can eat a McDonald’s burger in Tokyo, but you’ll probably sit next to someone quietly reading a manga and sipping green tea. (Culture of Japan - Wikipedia)

Greece is all-in on being Greek. From national parades to schoolkids learning traditional dances to grandmothers reciting folk tales. Even during economic collapse, Greeks doubled down on their culture: cooking more at home, embracing village life, rediscovering the past.

Ireland took things even further. After independence, it revived Gaelic, preserved native sports, and exported its culture worldwide. You can hear Irish fiddle music in New York, Melbourne, or Tokyo. St. Patrick’s Day is global. Ireland made its heritage cool.

Now think of Malta. It has Neolithic temples older than the Pyramids. A language that mixes Arabic structure with Romance vocabulary. And yet… it’s easier to find pizza than fenkata. Easier to hear Italian than traditional Maltese proverbs.

Pride, Shame, and Something in Between

Part of this comes from Malta’s colonial past. British rule, Italian media, EU integration; each layer added a new influence. And while multilingualism and cosmopolitanism are strengths, they can also blur identity.

Some Maltese joke about how “small” or “loud” their country is. Some praise foreign systems and roll their eyes at local ones. This self-deprecating humor isn’t unique, but it hints at something deeper. A quiet insecurity? A cultural cringe?

Still, national shame can be a powerful motivator. In Ireland, it fueled revival. In Japan, post-war humility helped reinvent a global identity. Malta might be next.

Where Malta Could Go

There are signs of hope. Cultural organizations are reintroducing folk music to young people. UNESCO recently recognized Maltese ftira as intangible cultural heritage. People are talking about preservation.

The real challenge is this: can Malta reclaim its voice? not by rejecting the global, but by proudly owning the local. Can it celebrate għana and pastizzi with the same confidence it has for Starbucks and Netflix?

If yes, then maybe the curious case of the Maltese identity crisis won’t be a crisis at all.

Just a turning point.

[The beauty of St. Julian, Malta. Photographer: Yours truly.]

Sources

1. MaltaToday Survey | Maltese identity still very much rooted in Catholicism — MaltaToday

2. Malta - Wikipedia — Malta

3. Languages of Malta - Wikipedia — Languages of Malta

4. Culture of Japan - Wikipedia — Culture of Japan