Exiling Block: What the Mises Institute Split Reveals About Libertarian Fragility
How Radical ‘Blockianism’ Expelled Walter Block from the Mises Institute
[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.
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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:
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.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).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.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.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.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.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.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.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.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
Block, Walter. Defending the Undefendable. New York: Fleet Press, 1976.
Hayek, Friedrich A. Letter to Walter Block, cited in the Preface to the 2nd edition of Defending the Undefendable.
Rothbard, Murray N. For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto. New York: Macmillan, 1973.
Rothbard, Murray N. “War Guilt in the Middle East.” Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought 3, no. 3 (1967).
Hoppe, Hans-Hermann. Democracy: The God That Failed. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001.
Gordon, David. “Orwellian Libertarianism: The Topsy-Turvy World of Walter Block.” Mises Institute, November 30, 2024.
Hammond, Jeremy R. “Walter Block Is a Zionist Extremist, Not a Libertarian.” Libertarian Institute, 2024.
Block, Walter, and Alan Futerman. “Rejoinder to Hoppe on Israel vs. Hamas.” Journal of Libertarian Studies, 2024.
Friedman, David D. The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1973.
Block, Walter. “Defending Absolutist Libertarianism.” 2023. Accessed at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370145370_Defending_Absolutist_Libertarianism.
Huemer, Michael. “Risk Refutes Absolutism.” Fake Noûs, 2023. Accessed at
Caplan, Bryan. “Huemer’s Common-Sense Libertarianism.” EconLog, January 25, 2013. https://www.econlib.org/archives/2013/01/huemers_common.html.
Keynes, John Maynard. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. London: Macmillan, 1936.
Marcuse, Herbert. “Repressive Tolerance.” In A Critique of Pure Tolerance, edited by Robert Paul Wolff et al. Boston: Beacon Press, 1965.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Viking Penguin, 1954.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract. Translated by Maurice Cranston. London: Penguin Books, 1968.
Marx, Karl. Critique of the Gotha Program. 1875.
Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Translated by James Strachey. New York: Avon Books, 1965.
Grotius, Hugo. On the Law of War and Peace. Translated by Francis W. Kelsey. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925.
Trotsky, Leon. The Permanent Revolution. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1930.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.
“Libertarians Against the American World: A Critical Assessment of Rothbard and Hoppe’s Foreign Policy Thought.” PDF document. Accessed 2024.
“Are Libertarians Suffering from Israel Derangement Syndrome?” Savvy Street, 2024.
“Hans-Hermann Hoppe.” Wikipedia. Accessed 2024.
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Quite the tour de force! In its discussion comparing and contrasting Rothbard, Hoppe and Block, the article clarifies not only each thinker’s ideas but also how they have been carried forward and/or taken to extremes or even caricatures of their original meanings. The article correctly observes how Block has made a life’s work of trying carefully to hew to the essentials of the libertarian fundamentals: (1) the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP); and, (2) respect for voluntary exchange. I appreciate especially how the article traces the title of “Defending the Undefendable” from book cover to extreme applications that stray far from the two fundamentals when, arguably, Block’s book did not.
The article states eloquently an issue that I and more importantly, Marc Victor, founder of the Live and Let Live Movement, observed: “libertarianism” has morphed to become “anti-government” to the exclusion of most any other value. That, by the way, is why I don’t identify as a libertarian anymore. I’m a classical liberal, meaning I grant that there must be third-party institution that renders judgments, protects life and liberty by using force against aggressors, and does not permit each individual human to define the laws and be the judge in his own case.
The story of Block’s eviction from the Mises Institute informed me of details that I didn’t previously know. I did observe many communications about that action, and found the attacks on Block weak, disingenuous and sometimes hysterical.
The article nicely articulates Block’s logic, with which I agree: A society, such as Israel, is wholly within its rights and legitimate powers to respond to combat aggression and to eliminate the aggressive threat. Indeed, the government of Israel would abdicate its chief reason for existing if it failed to protect the citizenry from a repeat of October 7.
The only portion that marred the article was the latter sections that summarize the views of Marx, Nietzsche, Marcuse, Trotsky, etc., in a paragraph or two, describe the “distortion” of these thinkers’ ideas by ostensible followers, and then attempt to rehabilitate each of these thinkers by asking a hypothetical question, e.g., “Would Marx Agree?” Setting aside the uncertainty in the hypothetical, I don’t actually care if these fellows would agree with how their ideas were later deployed or distorted. Take the mindsets, the bodies of work, the ideas as they distilled, and see where they lead – that’s the test. Limited in length, of course, the article could not do that kind of wholesale analysis.
I still recall a law school friend of mine who suggested, “Marxism wasn’t bad in theory, it was just bad in practice.” He was surprised by my non-acquiescence to the platitude, which was: “No, Marxism was bad in theory.” And in a few sentences, I sketched its defects in theory. The article here had so powerfully made its point, I think the added portion wasn’t needed and in some ways weakened the piece.
On the whole, this article very nicely describes the schism in what some of us thought libertarianism was supposed to be – and how Dr. Block was a victim of a pernicious mindset that couldn’t survive thoughtful debate. Well done!
Good read. Thank you!