The United States has a new president, Donald Trump, whose inauguration takes place this Monday, January 20. Behind the scenes of this electoral revenge, the influence of Elon Musk played a preponderant role. With propaganda focused on the denunciation of the State and its “inefficiency”, a celebration of a certain freedom of expression and individual and economic freedoms, Elon Musk has, it seems, espoused the libertarian doctrine. A thought that he is now spreading, by publicly supporting European far-right parties like the Afd in Germany.
To try to understand this groundswell in the radical right now in power in Argentina, in the United States, and in the process of gaining access to it in Canada, even in Germany and France, 20 Minutes spoke with Sébastien Caré, lecturer at the University of Rennes and specialist in libertarian thought.
Denunciation of the welfare state, defense of individual and economic freedoms, celebration of a certain freedom of expression… Is the American libertarian current of thought gaining ground among radical rights elsewhere in the world?
I believe so. But first, it is important to remember that the ancestor of libertarianism is the old right American, who dominated the Republican Party during the period of New deal (the 1930s). A right that is both isolationist, anti-welfare state, which defends economic freedoms and has a conservative sensitivity on values and morals. So the first libertarians were already rather conservative.
The libertarian movement emerged in the 1960s. It came from a break with conservatives, who were less and less isolationist, more and more imperialist during the Cold War, and cared less and less about defending economic freedoms. . It was from there that the libertarians founded their own party and think tanks.
Then, at the beginning of the 1990s, a version of libertarianism was established which was paleo-libertarianism. A version compatible with a conservative vision and theorized in particular by Murray Rothbard. And it is this alliance, prepared since the beginning of the 1990s, which is expressed today in several ways.
Is it on this alliance that Donald Trump’s victory in the American presidential election was built?
Trump’s first victory (in 20116) was based first of all on this conservative – paleo-libertarian alliance, but also on a supremacist, virilist, racist, often anti-Semitic American right. This alliance – the alt-right – enabled the election of Trump. But she didn’t last. Because we see, for example, that someone like Richard Spencer, the leader of thealt-right, now dissociates itself from both libertarians and Trump.
So the 2024 election relies on a slightly different coalition, from which these supremacist groups – those who were particularly active in the assault on the Capitol – were exfiltrated.
Elon Musk, very active in the dialogue of the extreme right, is often described as a libertarian. Is this the case?
Elon Musk has not always been a libertarian, he goes where his interests are first. Remember that his companies received subsidies, and that he financed the Democratic Party for a time. And I won’t go so far as to say that Elon Musk is a representative of paleo-libertarianism either.
But it is this conservative – paleo-libertarian alliance that he is building, as during his meeting and his discussions with the head of the AfD. He makes her say that Hitler was not good because he was a communist, and that the AfD is not that at all, and she says “We are libertarians and conservatives”.
This is an example of what is being structured and what Elon Musk is doing: the right, the extreme right, should be both conservative and libertarian. And roll back what is, for example, the RN program in France, a little more redistributive at the social level. We are only at the beginning of this reorientation of the far right by Elon Musk around paleo-libertarian principles. She can take libertarian ideas, out of interest, one of the points of division being immigration or LGBTQI+ rights.
In this new map of radical rights, what place does Javier Milei, the Argentine president, occupy?
Javier Milei is a special case, because he is a pure paleo-libertarian. There is nothing more faithful to Rothbard’s thinking and strategy of right-wing populism. Milei is an academic, and he must be distinguished from Trump and Bolsonaro.
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Because in Argentina, there is indeed a coalition with the conservative right, but it is really led by a paleo-libertarian. Milei is a doctrinaire. He does not make hostile speeches on immigration and does not call into question the rights of LGBTQI+ people. Aside from Milei, there is no pure libertarian, or someone who is not an opportunistic libertarian like the AfD leader or Elon Musk, to some extent.
Donald Trump, however, may seem imbued with a certain libertarian culture…
He is as ideologically unstructured as Elon Musk. That’s what’s difficult with politicians in the United States. They assemble ideas without any real ideological structure. Donald Trump had been at the Libertarian Party convention and had been booed.
Most libertarians are not paleo-libertarians, even if the latter have taken over the leadership of the party. Many find him too authoritarian. He pursued trade protectionism, passed anti-immigration laws, imposed customs duties, and increased public spending during his first mandate… So many things that libertarians are generally opposed to.
When you began your research on libertarianism in the United States almost twenty years ago, did you expect to see it grow to this extent?
Never. At least not for its paleo-libertarian version, which is currently successful and which is not that of the most progressive libertarians.
In France, we should start to measure the effects. Either on the political line of the RN, or even its overthrow by what Zemmour and Marion Maréchal embody.
