A lot of those mid-2000s “cyber-radicals” were, at best, Ron Paul libertarians; which meant, as usually does, that their takes on foreign policy could occasionally be decent, but that in everything else they were highly questionable. What sort of leavened them was that libertarianism used to be more of a big-tent movement, since, to gain some relevancy, the libertarians accepted all kinds of people who were disaffected with the mainstream American parties. (The Republicans purged their more populist elements after the 1964 election and the defeat of Barry Goldwater, the Democrats during the Clinton years). So if you had actual fascists in the libertarian ranks, you also had people who professed some vague type of socialism.
Now, of course, the old consensus has broken down. Serious leftists have either become MLs, or stopped caring about politics altogether. Most right-wing populists have become MAGA. Those on the fence have tended to join some sort of religious tendency unaligned with either left or right, such as Iran-type Shia Islam, or Christian socialism. This leaves the libertarians with less political relevancy than they ever possessed, and to stay relevant, they have been moving towards the Democrats. As a strategy, this is somewhat opaque, since even the Trump wing of the Republican Party is more amenable to libertarianism than the Democrats; but the libertarians have a personal grudge against MAGA (for “stealing our members”), and they can always fool themselves into thinking that in aligning with the Democrats, they are fighting against true enemies of freedom like Putin and Xi. Thus you are starting to see many of the elements who once opposed the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and who called any form of trans-national law or alliance “fascism,” suddenly cheerleading for NATO.
A lot of those mid-2000s “cyber-radicals” were, at best, Ron Paul libertarians; which meant, as usually does, that their takes on foreign policy could occasionally be decent, but that in everything else they were highly questionable. What sort of leavened them was that libertarianism used to be more of a big-tent movement, since, to gain some relevancy, the libertarians accepted all kinds of people who were disaffected with the mainstream American parties. (The Republicans purged their more populist elements after the 1964 election and the defeat of Barry Goldwater, the Democrats during the Clinton years). So if you had actual fascists in the libertarian ranks, you also had people who professed some vague type of socialism.
Now, of course, the old consensus has broken down. Serious leftists have either become MLs, or stopped caring about politics altogether. Most right-wing populists have become MAGA. Those on the fence have tended to join some sort of religious tendency unaligned with either left or right, such as Iran-type Shia Islam, or Christian socialism. This leaves the libertarians with less political relevancy than they ever possessed, and to stay relevant, they have been moving towards the Democrats. As a strategy, this is somewhat opaque, since even the Trump wing of the Republican Party is more amenable to libertarianism than the Democrats; but the libertarians have a personal grudge against MAGA (for “stealing our members”), and they can always fool themselves into thinking that in aligning with the Democrats, they are fighting against true enemies of freedom like Putin and Xi. Thus you are starting to see many of the elements who once opposed the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and who called any form of trans-national law or alliance “fascism,” suddenly cheerleading for NATO.
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