Mainstream Libertarians and ancaps are just Latent Fascists. The Nazis promised the German people lower taxes and increased personal liberties. Interviews with Germans who supported Hitler indicate they did so because they believed he would liberate then from Jews and communists who were out to take away their guns and free speech.
In speeches, Hitler frequently talked about how the government was too big and taxes were out of control. He promised to balance the budget and lower taxes. Hitler used the province of Thuringia as an example of a place where the Libertarian Values of small government and lower taxes were being neglected.
Libertarians always counter this by saying "you believe the Nazi propaganda that they wanted to make gubmint smaller and save taxes" because they are in a stage of violent cognitive Dissonance at this point. Their minds just shut off.
> demonstrably so.
Well in the absence of you demonstrating it, I’ll direct you to some relevant reading on the topic so you can educate yourself
I'm a history teacher - and I am telling you 1st as a history teacher that you are literally towing the moderate line the Germans clung to in the 30's.
Another book you should read: https://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-They-Were-Free-audiobook/dp/B071L6WGLG/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1MC2NULP28JHF&dchild=1&keywords=they+thought+they+were+free&qid=1595381646&s=books&sprefix=they+thought+%2Cstripbooks%2C133&sr=1-2
To wit:
"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’
"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
Right libertarians simply privatize tyranny. There is a good reason current billionaires such as the Koch brothers fund right-libertarian think tanks such as the Cato institute, ALG, Atlas network, etc. Exxon Mobil and other corporate giants fund many more. Right-libertarianism benefits the “corporatists” you claim to oppose.
While calling those that identify as right-libertarians fascists is not always accurate as it is mostly just the “an”caps and paleolibertarians who lead to fascism, Right libertarians and conservatives do play far closer to the fascist playbook than you think.
Both Italian fascists and the Nazis pushed for privatization during an era where every other developed nation was doing the opposite.
The Nazis didn't start with genocide, they started with mass privatization of public services.
Ludwig von Mises was economic adviser to Austrofascist Engelbert Dollfuss. Von Mises got his rent policies from Italian fascist Alberto de Stefani.
They called it "Job creation" and they called business men "job creators"
The following is if you oppose minimum wage, anti-trust, regulations on the pricing of goods with inelastic demand (such as healthcare) and protections on collective bargaining. If you do not oppose these regulations and are not an “an”cap, then disregard the following.
The holders of massive capital would effectively become our new state. Depending on how far you want to go with stripping away protections and regulations, we could see these plutocrats directly suppress unionization as they did in the past with private police. You would see trusts form to eliminate competition. You would continue to see price gouging on goods with inelastic demand such as life saving medication. Without minimum wage, the return of vouchers to the company store is a very real possibility. We already have the Resnick’s lobbying for both trade and literal war with Iran over pistachio competition. Imagine what they would do if left unchecked.
I think I know how you feel, and where you're coming from. I used consider myself staunchly conservative, and I was proudly and openly a supporter of the Republican Party.
That has not be the case for quite some time... And the thing that pushed me out more than anything was behavior that I could not accept as being American.
I may now disagree with fiscal conservativism, but I championed it for a long time, and I thought I understood it fairly well. And at the time, I thought that the majority of the Republican Party was a lot like me.
Cautious, Traditional, and Practical.
That may have been the case for a great number of Republicans for a time... But there have been other forces at work within the party for longer than I have been alive. What you are seeing today is the culmination of decades of effort to build a voting block that will without question, follow any order given them, so long as it's given by the correct people.
I suspect you've probably noticed how few Republicans are willing to discuss detailed Economic Policies? Now consider how few Conservative voters that you know, actually care to engage in that sort of discussion?
This isn't really a Democrats vs Republican thing. America has become lazy and would rather rely on faith in leadership than be bothered with the hassle of persistent civic engagement.
I'm going to commit a social Taboo, and I know you'll flinch when I do this. I am sorry, but we are Americans, and we must face this...
The people who are changing the Republican Party away from what you remember and respect, are literal and actual American Fascists.
I know, I know, fascism is a dirty word just like communism, that has long since been beaten to a pulp culturally, to the point that most Americans don't even know what the ideology behind the word stands for, or how such movements can even take root in a Society.
To help with this, I'm going to post a link to two separate resources that I found to be helpful when I was first delving into this. I will link them both below:
https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071L6WGLG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_402MJYYQMAQN8H84G05M
The first of these is a short essay by a man named Umberto Eco, who grew up in fascist Italy, and spend much of his life trying to explain what defined Fascism, so one could identify it and counter it.
The second is the book, "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45", written by Milton Mayor.
The audiobook for this work is so well done, that if you DM asking for a copy, I will personally purchase and send you the book through Audible/E-mail.
If you read these two works, I think you'll see where the Anti-American push is coming from. And how as a political movement, fascists in America have been coopting Conservative platforms and driving Republicans like yourself out of power, while simultaneously conditioning the Conservative Voter to make decisions based solely on reactionary political theatre.
They do this because they derive power from making a nation feel weaker than it is, while promising strength that only they and their leadership can provide.
For the record, you don't have to suddenly become a Super Liberal or Progressive Activist to fight against these people. Some of us did, but that is not a requirement.
You just need to know who the fascists are, what they are doing, and then push back continuously.
I wish you luck and stubborn, unyeilding patience. You're in for an uphill battle to regain the political representation of Conservatives who cannot support what the party has become.
Remember this. You are an American, and Americans can do pretty much anything, when we put our minds to it and work together.