Originally published on @Citizen Holcomb, republished with permission. See citizenholcomb.com for more information on the author.
One of the most frustrating things about the Libertarian Party is that our best principle is also one of the easiest to abuse.
We believe in free speech. We believe people should be allowed to say unpopular things. We believe the government should not be in the business of policing opinions, punishing dissent, or deciding which views are acceptable. That is not just some cute slogan we put on a campaign flyer. It is a core part of what makes libertarianism different.
But there is a problem we have to be honest about.
Some people do not come into libertarian circles because they love liberty. They come in because they got chased out of everywhere else.
They were too racist for the conservatives. Too homophobic for polite company. Too bitter, too obsessed, too cruel, too addicted to shock value. They burned every bridge in normal political spaces, then discovered that libertarians defend free speech and thought, “Perfect. I can hide here.”
And for too long, some of them did.
That does not mean libertarianism is bigotry. It is not. In fact, libertarianism at its best is one of the clearest rejections of collectivist thinking. We do not believe your rights come from your race, sexuality, religion, gender, class, or tribe. We believe your rights belong to you because you are an individual human being.
That should make bigotry impossible to square with libertarianism.
A person who actually believes in individual rights cannot honestly judge someone by the group they were born into. A person who actually believes in freedom cannot demand liberty for themselves while treating others like they are lesser. A person who actually believes in self-ownership cannot look at another peaceful person and say, “You do not deserve the same dignity, rights, or protection that I do.”
That is not liberty. That is just authoritarian trash wearing a “don’t tread on me” shirt.
The problem is not that libertarians support free speech. We should support free speech. The problem is that some people confuse opposing government censorship with giving every loud bigot a microphone, a table, a platform, and a welcome mat.
Those are not the same thing.
Free speech means the state should not throw you in jail for your opinions. It does not mean a political party has to promote you. It does not mean activists have to share your posts. It does not mean local organizers have to pretend your garbage is “just another viewpoint.” It does not mean people are obligated to tolerate you ruining their work, their events, their messaging, or their movement.
You can have the right to say something and still be an embarrassment. You can have the right to speak and still be told to leave. You can have the right to be wrong and still not be owed a place in someone else’s organization.
That distinction matters.
The Libertarian Party has spent years trying to explain to normal people that we are not Republicans who smoke weed, not Democrats who hate taxes, and not internet edgelords who discovered economics from a meme page. We are supposed to be the people saying the state should not control your body, your business, your speech, your money, your property, your relationships, or your life.
That message is powerful.
But it gets buried every time some anonymous account with a porcupine avatar uses “liberty” as cover to rant about gay people, immigrants, women, Jews, Black people, trans people, or whoever their obsession of the week happens to be.
They are not building anything. They are not winning elections. They are not recruiting serious people. They are not persuading their neighbors. They are not showing up at city council meetings, handing out literature, helping candidates, or doing the boring real work of growing a movement.
They are just poisoning the well and calling it principle.
And yes, some of this is finally starting to get pushed out. Slowly. Not perfectly. Not everywhere. But it is happening. More libertarians are willing to say, “No, this is not us.” More people are starting to understand that defending free speech does not require us to be human shields for every bitter creep online. More organizers are realizing that if we want normal people to take liberty seriously, we cannot let anonymous trolls define the brand.
That is a good thing.
But the problem still exists, especially online.
Online spaces reward the worst version of everyone. Anonymous accounts can say things they would never have the courage to say in a room full of actual people. They can hide behind fake names, fake bravado, fake intellectualism, and fake concern for “Western civilization” or “tradition” or whatever costume their prejudice is wearing that week.
And because libertarian spaces tend to be open, those people find little corners where they can survive. They learn the language. They say “free association” when they mean exclusion. They say “property rights” when they mean discrimination. They say “free speech” when they mean consequence-free cruelty. They say “individualism” while obsessing over groups.
That is not philosophy. That is a laundering operation.
They take real libertarian ideas and twist them into excuses for being awful.
We should not let them.
A serious liberty movement has to be able to say two things at the same time: the government should not censor bigots, and we do not have to build a home for bigots.
That is not hypocrisy. That is basic self-respect.
There is no contradiction between defending someone’s legal right to speak and refusing to associate with them. There is no contradiction between opposing hate crime speech laws and telling a racist to get lost. There is no contradiction between believing in free expression and refusing to make your movement a dumping ground for people who cannot behave like decent adults.
Freedom of association cuts both ways.
They have the right to say what they want. We have the right to say, “Not here.”
And we should say it more often.
Because bigotry is not just morally ugly. It is strategically stupid. It shrinks the movement. It drives away good people. It hands our opponents an easy attack. It makes every outreach table harder, every campaign harder, every coalition harder, every conversation harder.
Most people are not looking for a perfect political party. They know politics is messy. But they are looking for basic signs of sanity. If the loudest voices they see from libertarian circles are obsessed with attacking minorities, mocking people’s personal lives, or turning every issue into some culture war sewer fight, they are not going to stick around long enough to hear our argument about taxes, housing, guns, schools, privacy, or war.
And honestly, why would they?
Nobody wants to join a movement that looks like it hates their neighbors.
Libertarianism should be the opposite of that. It should be the philosophy that says your life belongs to you. Your choices belong to you. Your speech, your body, your labor, your home, your defense, your family, your future all belong to you.
That message should appeal to people who have been bossed around by the state, punished by bureaucracy, priced out by bad policy, spied on, overtaxed, overregulated, ignored, mocked, or treated like they need permission to exist.
That includes a lot of people.
It includes gun owners. It includes gay people. It includes small business owners. It includes immigrants. It includes parents. It includes renters. It includes religious people. It includes atheists. It includes people in cities, suburbs, farms, and small towns. It includes anyone tired of being managed by people who think political power gives them moral authority.
That is the movement worth building.
Not a clubhouse for rejects who confuse cruelty with courage.
The Libertarian Party does not need to become softer. It needs to become clearer.
Clearer that individual rights mean individual rights.
Clearer that free speech is not forced association.
Clearer that liberty is not a shield for collectivist hatred.
Clearer that if your politics depends on treating peaceful people like they are less than you, you are not a libertarian. You are just another control freak who has not found the state power to enforce your preferences yet.
And maybe that is what bothers me most.
A lot of these people are not anti-authoritarian. They are only anti-authority when they are not the ones holding it. Give them power, and many of them would absolutely use it to punish the people they hate. They do not oppose control. They oppose being controlled.
That is not liberty.
That is resentment.
Real libertarianism requires discipline. It requires consistency. It requires defending rights even for people you do not understand, do not agree with, and do not personally relate to. It requires saying the same rule applies to everyone: do not initiate force, do not use the state to control peaceful people, and do not demand special power over someone else’s life.
The bigots hiding in libertarian spaces fail that test.
They can keep the memes, the fake names, the edgy posts, and the persecution complex. The rest of us have actual work to do.
We are trying to build a liberty movement for real people.
And that means making one thing very clear:
Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from being told your bullshit does not belong here.