A very long time ago (in 1949, in fact), a wise old man, Frank Chodorov, wrote an essay, "How to Curb the Commies."
(He published it in his one-man broadsheet,
analysis, as the Smith Act trials got underway; the essay was
republished posthumously in
Fugitive Essays: Selected Writings of Frank Chodorov, in 1980. The book remains
in print from
Liberty Fund.)
If you substitute "alt-right" for "Commies," what he said remains quite relevant. I do so here in the particularly relevant
passages without surrendering my belief that the alt-right, who have as much right to express their (nefarious) views
as do those who disagree with them have to reject them, ought not to become the face of the right right:
If there is anything characteristic of America, and for which Americans can be thankful, it is that it is an area
in which thought has been permitted to run riot. To be sure, our history is not free of political efforts to put limits on
what people may think. Men have been legally punished for holding theological concepts at variance with the ruling
group; for being atheists; for objecting to war; for believing that they have a right to buy and sell in the open
market; for condemning slavery; for advocating birth control; for teaching the theory of evolution; for harbouring art
values that in the eyes of the law constituted obscenity. In every case, the authorities sought to get at ideas by
inflicting punishment on those who held them; in every case, freedom of thought was the issue. It is to the credit
of the American genius for freedom that ultimately the right to think as one wishes prevailed, even though too often
some were made to suffer for it. Somehow the citadel of thought has held firm, and the right to be wrong has added
something to human dignity.
. . . t will be asserted, a primary tenet of [the alt-right] is [the] very denial of free thought; if its advocates come
into power they would do harm to all who entertain ideas contrary to their "line." That is true. On that point, too,
the [alt-right has] been explicit; their insistence on the "absolute truth" of their doctrine puts any divergence from
it in the category of sinful and dangerous error, not to be tolerated . . . The danger, to those who hold freedom as
the highest good, is not the ideas the [alt-right] espouses but the power they aspire to. Let them rant their heads
off---that is their right, which we cannot afford to infringe---but let us keep from them the political means of
depriving everybody else of the same right.[/b]
Just so. And if only Chodorov's counsel had been known, never mind heeded by (to name one rather nefarious
example) academia, who are too much in need of a reminder about the right to be wrong and the punishment
of the heterodox.
