What does a “reactionary libertarian” really believe? In this provocative and unfiltered lecture, Hans-Hermann Hoppe reflects on war, empire, the Frankfurt School, Javier Milei, and why libertarians must reject both the left and the right to defend true freedom. The Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture, sponsored by Yousif Almoayyed. The Austrian Economics Research Conference is the international, interdisciplinary meeting of the Austrian school, bringing together leading scholars doing research in this vibrant and influential intellectual tradition. For more information, visit https://Mises.org. Find free books, daily articles, podcasts, lecture series, and everything about the Austrian School of Economics, at https://Mises.org​​.

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Though I thank L. Rockwell, Tom DiLorenzo, and Joe Salerno for the invitation — and to clear up the veteran part in my lecture — I should point out that my first visit to Auburn took place in, I think, the fall of 1985 or the spring of 1986. So Auburn, for me, is my sweet home in Alabama. When I came here, the only people who were here before and are still around were Lew Rockwell, of course; Marty; Pat Barnett; Judy Thomasson; and Mark Thornton, who are still around and have a claim to be even more at home at Sweet Alabama than I have. And I think John Denson — I don’t know if he’s present — but he was there at the time too.

Now, my wife told me: when you give a speech, don’t do what you have done for the last few years — craft some carefully written article and then read from that — but instead give a lecture in a conversational style, like you did when you were still teaching. So if I’m slightly disorganised, and there are repetitions and so forth, please forgive me. All of that goes back to the order of my wife. And as you know, you cannot possibly contradict your wife, because they are the boss at home.

I will touch on three interrelated subjects. The first one concerns a topic that I chose to give at the May conference on revisionist war history. Tom invited me to give a lecture there. I couldn’t come in May — didn’t fit into my schedule — but I decided on a topic, and I will say a few words about the topic that I will cover, and that will hopefully also be included in the volume that will be produced out of that conference, which unfortunately I have to miss.

I thought it would be good to say a few words about it first, in order to whet your appetite for a conference like that. And secondly, because I wanted to force myself to then finally put on paper my at-the-moment still somewhat vague thoughts that I have on that talk, on that speech or article that I’m planning.

For this, I’m planning to contrast, in an ideal-typical way, monarchical wars on the one hand and democratic wars on the other. Monarchical wars being wars that are mostly conducted because of territorial disputes arising out of inheritance disputes. They are easily begun and they are easily concluded, because monarchs conducted their wars with their own resources. They rarely could use drafts, for instance, and they had to end the war usually rather quickly because they ran out of money — because at that time money was still real money.

Democratic wars, on the other hand, are wars that have some sort of ideological component. The entire people is involved in the war, and you must give them reasons why they fight the war. You must: one side is bad, the other side is good. And you cannot simply end them by occupying certain territories, because the bad guys have to be punished by the good guys.

So my main concern will be to show the difference between monarchical peace. I’m not so much interested in who is guilty and why the war started exactly, but to contrast monarchical peacemaking with democratic peaces. And to give you some examples: take the war — the end of the Napoleonic Wars that ended in 1815. There was a Vienna Congress. The war was a democratic war, as far as France and Napoleon were concerned. It was an ideological war. They wanted to liberate Europe, and were conducting the war with these slogans: liberty, fraternity, and so forth — you know all of this.

Now, this war was lost ultimately against the opposing monarchs from Prussia, Austria, Russia, and England. The peace was the last monarchical peace. And the war ended in such a way that Napoleon was sent into exile. France was restored to the borders that existed before the French Revolution of 1789. Some reparations had to be paid from France to the winner monarchical coalition, but that was basically it. And the peace lasted for almost a hundred years. That was a peace conducted by gentlemen.

Now, monarchical wars then were, by and large, reasonable, non-vindictive wars. Democratic wars, on the other hand, always ended with revenge — had to be taken. They were vindictive peaces. One example, for instance, was the War of Secession. It ended with the North defeating the seceding South. But it was not ending with Grant and Lee agreeing in Appomattox to lay down the weapons and leave it at that. There was a revenge taken. The South was destroyed. For more than a decade, some sort of mob rule was installed in the South. And until this day, the South is considered to be somewhat low-life people that have to apologise until the end of the day for having had the audacity of trying to secede from the Union.

But that example is not the most interesting for me. The most interesting case — and I want to spend most of the time on that subject — is the so-called “Thirty Years’ War” — many historians refer to it as a Thirty Years’ War of World War I and World War II. World War I began as some sort of monarchical war. Different monarchs all had some imperial ambitions. And the war then ended as an increasingly democratic war — especially after the Americans entered the war, and the Russian Revolution broke out, and the Russian Tsar was executed, and so forth.

Of course, a very revengeful peace ended World War I. The losing countries had to throw out their monarchies. The ruling aristocratic classes in these countries were stripped of all of their powers. Germany had to unconditionally surrender and accept sole guilt for everything that had taken place, even though these sorts of things are very complicated — lots of people were actually guilty in things. But sole responsibility was put on the German side. They lost a tremendous amount of territory and were forced to pay an enormous amount of reparations.

The vindictiveness of this peace was — of course, I should also mention that the abolition of the monarchies in Germany, and also in the Ottoman Empire, and in Austria — led, of course, to a massive rise of nationalist movements. New borders were drawn up in Europe. Countries that did not exist before came into existence. We still have plenty of problems in the Middle East, and also in Europe, that result precisely from the fact that all borders in Europe were redrawn. And it was almost predictable that this vindictive peace would lead — did lead — to the next war very quickly.

 

Though I thank L. Rockwell, Tom DiLorenzo, and Joe Salerno for the invitation — and to clear up the veteran part in my lecture — I should point out that my first visit to Auburn took place in, I think, the fall of 1985 or the spring of 1986. So Auburn, for me, is my sweet home in Alabama.

When I came here, the only people who were here before and are still around were Lew Rockwell, of course; Marty; Pat Barnett; Judy Thomasson; and Mark Thornton, who are still around and have a claim to be even more at home at Sweet Alabama than I have. And I think John Denson — I don’t know if he’s present — but he was there at the time too.

Now, my wife told me: when you give a speech, don’t do what you have done for the last few years — craft some carefully written article and then read from that — but instead give a lecture in a conversational style, like you did when you were still teaching. So if I’m slightly disorganised, and there are repetitions and so forth, please forgive me. All of that goes back to the order of my wife. And as you know, you cannot possibly contradict your wife, because they are the boss at home.

I will touch on three interrelated subjects. The first one concerns a topic that I chose to give at the May conference on revisionist war history. Tom invited me to give a lecture there. I couldn’t come in May — didn’t fit into my schedule — but I decided on a topic, and I will say a few words about the topic that I will cover, and that will hopefully also be included in the volume that will be produced out of that conference, which unfortunately I have to miss.

I thought it would be good to say a few words about it first, in order to whet your appetite for a conference like that. And secondly, because I wanted to force myself to then finally put on paper my at-the-moment still somewhat vague thoughts that I have on that talk, on that speech or article that I’m planning.

For this, I’m planning to contrast, in an ideal-typical way, monarchical wars on the one hand and democratic wars on the other. Monarchical wars being wars that are mostly conducted because of territorial disputes arising out of inheritance disputes. They are easily begun and they are easily concluded, because monarchs conducted their wars with their own resources. They rarely could use drafts, for instance, and they had to end the war usually rather quickly because they ran out of money — because at that time money was still real money.

Democratic wars, on the other hand, are wars that have some sort of ideological component. The entire people is involved in the war, and you must give them reasons why they fight the war. You must: one side is bad, the other side is good. And you cannot simply end them by occupying certain territories, because the bad guys have to be punished by the good guys.

So my main concern will be to show the difference between monarchical peace. I’m not so much interested in who is guilty and why the war started exactly, but to contrast monarchical peacemaking with democratic peaces. And to give you some examples: take the war — the end of the Napoleonic Wars that ended in 1815. There was a Vienna Congress. The war was a democratic war, as far as France and Napoleon were concerned. It was an ideological war. They wanted to liberate Europe, and were conducting the war with these slogans: liberty, fraternity, and so forth — you know all of this.

Now, this war was lost ultimately against the opposing monarchs from Prussia, Austria, Russia, and England. The peace was the last monarchical peace. And the war ended in such a way that Napoleon was sent into exile. France was restored to the borders that existed before the French Revolution of 1789. Some reparations had to be paid from France to the winner monarchical coalition, but that was basically it. And the peace lasted for almost a hundred years. That was a peace conducted by gentlemen.

Now, monarchical wars then were, by and large, reasonable, non-vindictive wars. Democratic wars, on the other hand, always ended with revenge — had to be taken. They were vindictive peaces. One example, for instance, was the War of Secession. It ended with the North defeating the seceding South. But it was not ending with Grant and Lee agreeing in Appomattox to lay down the weapons and leave it at that. There was a revenge taken. The South was destroyed. For more than a decade, some sort of mob rule was installed in the South. And until this day, the South is considered to be somewhat low-life people that have to apologise until the end of the day for having had the audacity of trying to secede from the Union.

But that example is not the most interesting for me. The most interesting case — and I want to spend most of the time on that subject — is the so-called “Thirty Years’ War” — many historians refer to it as a Thirty Years’ War of World War I and World War II.

World War I began as some sort of monarchical war. Different monarchs all had some imperial ambitions. And the war then ended as an increasingly democratic war — especially after the Americans entered the war, and the Russian Revolution broke out, and the Russian Tsar was executed, and so forth.

Of course, a very revengeful peace ended World War I. The losing countries had to throw out their monarchies. The ruling aristocratic classes in these countries were stripped of all of their powers. Germany had to unconditionally surrender and accept sole guilt for everything that had taken place, even though these sorts of things are very complicated — lots of people were actually guilty in things. But sole responsibility was put on the German side. They lost a tremendous amount of territory and were forced to pay an enormous amount of reparations.

The vindictiveness of this peace was — of course, I should also mention that the abolition of the monarchies in Germany, and also in the Ottoman Empire, and in Austria — led, of course, to a massive rise of nationalist movements. New borders were drawn up in Europe. Countries that did not exist before came into existence. We still have plenty of problems in the Middle East, and also in Europe, that result precisely from the fact that all borders in Europe were redrawn. And it was almost predictable that this vindictive peace would lead — did lead — to the next war very quickly.

The next war, then — Germany again lost, or Germany’s allies lost the Second World War. And there, the peace imposed on them was even more vindictive. There were just huge territories taken away from Germany. There were more than 10 million refugees. Enormous compensation had to be paid. The Americans, for instance, stole all the patents that German industries had.

And the most interesting thing was that this time, social engineering was used in order to re-educate the German population. Some German authors have called that — they introduced a character wash. So Germans had to relearn history — instructed by the American victors.

And here I want to add something that is quite interesting — which role the so-called Frankfurt School played in this re-education programme that was initiated in Germany with great success, up to this day.

So let me tell you a little bit about the Frankfurt School.

That was founded by, financed by two people: a German Jew, Hermann Weil, who immigrated to Argentina and became the wealthiest grain dealer in the world, and his son, Felix Weil, who was born in Argentina and studied then in Germany. He became very rich, not only because his father was the biggest grain dealer in the world, but as a teenager he inherited from his mother — his Jewish mother — a fortune of about $400 million in current terms.

During his studies, he became acquainted with all sorts of left-wing intellectuals in Germany that grew up after World War I. One of the effects of World War I in Germany was, of course, that after the aristocracy and the monarchy were abolished, socialist parties of all sorts of orientation — hardcore, not-so-hardcore, softcore — all sorts of socialist and hardcore nationalist parties emerged.

This Felix Weil, the son, became friends with leading left-wing intellectuals in Germany and set up an institute — the Institute of Social Research — that was associated with the University of Frankfurt. All of the leading figures of this institute were Jews, just as Felix Weil and his father. He built a building for them, paid the people who were employed by this institute quite well. As I mentioned, these people were enormously wealthy. They had established a network of countless socialist friends all over Europe.

They were not Bolsheviks. As a matter of fact, they disliked what they saw going on in the Soviet Union. And even though they were all Jewish — practically all of them were Jewish — they did not particularly like the Ostjuden, that is, the Eastern European Jews. They were considered to be low-life Jews, whereas those people who were influential at this Institute of Social Research all came from very wealthy families. Horkheimer, Habermas, Marcuse — you are familiar with some of these — Erich Fromm — all of them had very wealthy businessmen as their parents.

You have some sort of parallel development, as you saw with the relationship between Marx and Engels. Marx also came from a well-off family, but of course his supporter, his financier, Engels, was the son of a very rich industrialist. So here you have something very similar. Felix Weil also pursued an academic career. He also got a PhD, but he was the one who supported the more successful academics — more successful than he himself — because he also had to take care of his father’s business in Argentina. So he had to go back to Argentina, back and forth, and could not devote himself full-time to the operation of this institute.

They considered themselves all Marxists — but of different varieties of Marxism. It reminded me a little bit of what Murray Rothbard always said: when his extended family came together, the only serious question that ever arose was, “Should I become a member of the Communist Party, or should I stay on the side and be a supporter of the Communist Party?” That was the variation of the leaders of the Frankfurt School.

From the beginning, the first director — who was only for a short period the director and did not have all that great of an influence — was Carl Grünberg. Carl Grünberg, by the way, was a doctoral advisor for Ludwig von Mises when Mises was not yet an economist but an institutionalist. He was a Marxist, but not interested in high theory — just more in the history of the workers’ movement.

The next director, who then became very influential and was a theoretician, was Max Horkheimer. Again, as I said, Max Horkheimer came from a very wealthy family. But nonetheless, his parents had some little misgiving that he married the wrong girl and so forth, and he was dependent, as far as finances are concerned, on this Institute of Social Research.

They were very smart as far as their finances were concerned. Even before the Nazis came to power, they had already managed to transfer their funds to other places. The building that was given to them was taken over by Nazi organisations very quickly, but their funds had already been transferred to foreign accounts.

First they established some residency in Geneva. They had residences in Paris, and they had residences in Amsterdam. After it became clear that the Nazis would also take over the Netherlands and take over France — and Geneva also became increasingly an unsafe place — they left. They were at Geneva at the same time when Mises was in Geneva in 1934. They were even partly supported by the same organisations in Geneva that also funded the stay of Mises in Geneva.

Then they finally moved to the United States. They established contacts with Columbia University. Then they established contacts with the New School of Social Research. And in the end — because they lived a very luxurious life on the money that Felix Weil gave them — Felix Weil, I remember the numbers, though nobody knows exactly how big the funding was, it is known that in the 1930s, when they had already gone to the United States, he supplemented the funding by $40 million at that time to make sure that these guys led a luxurious life.

Now, what their idea was — the proletarians were obviously not the type of people that would bring about the socialist revolution. There was something wrong with the mentality of the people. That’s why they became also very much interested in psychoanalysis. The guy who was in charge of psychoanalysis was Erich Fromm.

They became then — after the war, after the end of the war — some of them returned to Germany, supported by the Americans. Herbert Marcuse, for instance, was working for the American Secret Service. Some of them returned to Germany; some of them stayed in the United States. Marcuse and Fromm, for instance, stayed in the United States. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, and a whole bunch of other people, went back to Germany. They were then installed by the Americans, or the occupying forces in Germany, to professorships all over Germany. That was all planned by the Americans. So this is not like a spontaneous revenge, but this was socially engineered revenge that took place.

Political science, for instance, did not exist as an established field in Germany before. Political science was a field introduced in Germany in order to teach the Germans how to be good democrats — in the sense that Americans consider to be good democrats.

 

And both of them — the American wing, Marcuse, Fromm, and various other people who stayed in the United States — and the German people, they are in a way responsible for re-educating the population. They saw the problem with Germans was that they had an authoritarian personality.

The most famous studies that they produced, also funded by Jewish organisations in the United States, were to find out what type of people are inclined to become fascists — what type of people are inclined to become authoritarian personalities. And they found, of course, a reason: the authoritarian structure of German families — that you have a father who’s a powerful father, and the mother does motherly stuff, and the kids have to listen to what the parents tell them — and all of this had to be driven out of the German public.

Now, interestingly, these people themselves — Adorno and Horkheimer and so on — were personally conservative types. I met them. I studied in Frankfurt. I’m in some ways an outgrowth of this school myself. But if you look at what the result of that was — all political correctness stuff — that was already implied in what these people taught.

That is: there was sexual liberation, destruction of families, different lifestyles, anti-authoritarian training of children, and so forth. All of that came out of it. I think these people in the end were almost disappointed themselves. That is not exactly what they wanted. Because, as I said, personally they were conservative types. But the result of their programme was precisely what we even now have in the United States — wokeness and all of this — is ultimately the outgrowth of the teaching of the Frankfurt School.

Okay, so this is the first subject that I want to cover. I should mention as a little interesting aside: Adorno, who immigrated first to England, needed a recommendation to go to England as an immigrant. And the one who wrote the recommendation that he should go to England was John Maynard Keynes. Now, John Maynard Keynes did not know Adorno personally, but Adorno’s family was a prominent family. They had joint acquaintances with some high-ranking British people, and they approached John Maynard Keynes, and John Maynard Keynes wrote then to the immigration bureaucracy: “This Adorno is a very interesting guy, and he’s a great musician, and is interested in aesthetics — so let him come to England.”

From England, he then went to the United States. As I said, they lived in the United States — at the end, in the Pacific Palisades. Max Horkheimer was, for instance, the neighbour of Thomas Mann. They had houses next to each other, and when one guy went on vacation, the other one watered the flowers and things like that. Bertolt Brecht was also involved in these circles. So very powerful German figures, who afterwards became enormously influential in the United States.

Again, you recall: Herbert Marcuse was responsible for much of the student rebellions in the United States too. So it was the Frankfurt School that educated the Americans in a way — and they educated the Germans.

 

Now let me stop with this subject and come to the next one. Coming again — staying in Argentina — the Weils: Felix Weil, who was an Argentine. The next subject is now a superstar from Argentina — Mr Milei.

Now, Mr Milei, of course, is not a Marxist. He claims that he is an anarcho-capitalist. And he is on record that he was inspired largely by Murray Rothbard and by myself. He also has written that those were the people who inspired him.

He was hailed immediately in Europe as a new superstar — as a new Jesus. No, he was — of course, he’s not Jesus, because he’s also a creation of the Jewish oligarchs in Argentina, and has toyed himself with the idea of converting to Judaism.

Now, after he was awarded all sorts of prizes — even before he even did anything — that reminded me a little bit of the award they gave to Obama, when he won the Nobel Peace Prize before he actually started killing people. And there it was that Milei got all sorts of prizes — won all sorts of prizes — before he could show anything of his skills.

After he was in power for nine months or so, I gave a little speech at my annual conference criticising him. And I felt, of course, given that he cited me as one of his inspirations, that I was perfectly entitled to also criticise him.

Now, what I criticised was — of course, I did not deny that he had to make compromises. Some people afterwards accused me: “Don’t you realise that he can’t do everything that he wants immediately? After all, there’s a parliament and all the rest of it, like in every other country.” Now, of course I was aware of that. I was also aware of the fact that you have to make compromises in such a situation. But on the other hand, the compromises that you make should not be compromises that are contrary to the goal that you ultimately have and that you claim are your goals.

And my criticism concerned only these types of things where I thought: look, this is not what libertarianism — what anarcho-capitalism — is.

So I criticised him, for instance. I said: see here — I also, of course, did not deny that some of the things that he did were improvements. But on the other hand, Argentina was in such a disastrous situation that it was difficult not to make any improvements.

So he claimed, for instance — let me just repeat here some of my criticisms that I made. He said the central bank has to be abolished, and that is — there is no debate about that. It must be abolished. So I pointed out: he didn’t abolish the central bank. Not only that, all the people that he employed in the top administration were former central bankers. That does not exactly instil great hope if you want to abolish the central bank and all the people that you put in charge of monetary affairs were former central bankers.

Then he attacked me when he heard that I had criticised: “Why didn’t you abolish it?” “You can’t do that. That is impossible to do. That would cause even higher inflation than existed before.” Now, that indicated in my mind, of course, that he doesn’t understand anything about economics. No — if you shut down the central bank, and if you even allow the central bank to cover all the demand deposits that are not covered by cash in the banks, that would not lead to any increase in the money supply. And you would get a situation where the peso would actually rise in value. There are no more pesos printed. All the banks are solvent, so to speak, because enough cash had been printed in addition to cover all the fiduciary media.

Then you would get down the inflation rate in no time — basically to zero. Now, if you look at what the inflation rate is — it used to be 200% per year or something like this. In the meantime, it is about 100%. Now, what great achievement is it if you get the inflation rate, in more than a year, down from 200%?

I thought that had to be criticised — this sort of thing. Instead of taking this advice to heart — I should mention that Christopher Hansen wrote two great articles: what would happen if the central bank were shut down. He explained quite clearly that the peso would immediately rise.

And Milei claimed that if you shut the central bank, there would be hyperinflation. So how can there be hyperinflation if you don’t print any additional pesos? I mean, I was amazed that anybody could just claim that that would be the consequence.

Then he said — so this was non-negotiable: the central bank — and he didn’t close it. Also, ex-bankers were still in charge. The money supply increased — doubled — during his period in charge. Now, more than 100% increase of the money supply. All these fans — they don’t understand anything about economics. They think that’s completely unimportant.

He took on more debt than any of his predecessors in one year. So those are the two most interesting statistics from an Austrian point of view: what does he do to the money supply, and what does he do to debt? Debt increased. Money supply increased.

 

Then he could have said: “Okay, we have plenty of foreign debt,” and he might have been able to persuade people: “Look, I cannot repudiate the debt.” This is, of course, what the Rothbardian would have done. The debt was assumed by his predecessors, and he could have said: “That’s the end of it — we don’t repay the debt.” But it was not that he tried to explain — “Yeah, maybe then they will be mad, and the Americans will send their army into Argentina, and because of that I have to do it.” No. What he said is: “To repay this debt, that is what you must do if you are an honest businessman who has to keep his contracts.”

No — but government debts are not normal private debts that have to be repaid. Future Argentinian taxpayers have to pay this foreign debt. He is now in negotiation with the International Monetary Fund to replace the old debt with some new debt.

Then he said: “There will be no taxes increased — if I do, I’d rather cut off my arm than raise any tax.” Now, he did raise several taxes — and he still runs around with two arms.

Then he shipped the gold that Argentina has to England or some place outside of Argentina. You all know what happened, for instance, to Russian assets — they were frozen. The Russians could not even access their assets in foreign countries anymore. So, given these types of dangers — that foreign countries can simply confiscate your gold if you have it stored in other places — nonetheless, he sent that out there.

Now, my reaction to all of this was — I should say that lots of people criticised me for being so audacious as to criticise this great man, because he was just walking on water, as far as German libertarians were concerned. None of these were actually anarcho-capitalists themselves. None of them were professional — almost none of them were professional economists — who could have a judgment on what he did. It was just: “He promised that he’ll cut the state down. He’ll cut the state down.” And that was sufficient to excuse everything that he did.

The worst thing, however, was that none of his defenders — he has really groupies — none of his groupies, for instance, ever commented on what he did as far as foreign policy is concerned. Now, as far as foreign policy is concerned, he was, of course, completely free to choose whatever he wanted to do. With internal policies, you could say: “Yeah, okay, there’s a parliament, there’s an opposition party, and all the rest of it.” But as far as foreign policy was concerned, he was completely free to say whatever he wanted.

Now, what is the position that Austro-libertarians have as far as foreign policy is concerned? Our position is: we are neutral. We stay out of foreign countries’ business. We do not engage in any entanglements with other countries. We are the peace party. We don’t want war. We are non-interventionists.

 

But what did Milei do? First of all, he said, “I would love to join NATO,” even though Argentina is not exactly in the North Atlantic, as you know. Then he increased the budget for the military, and also claimed that the military could also be used for internal purposes — for instance, to curtail drug dealings and this sort of thing.

He bought plenty of weapons from other countries. And then he declared who his beloved friends are. So there: Trump is, of course, the greatest.

Now, I’m not saying that Trump is the worst person in the world. I certainly prefer Trump over Kamala. But Trump is not a libertarian. Trump is a protectionist, and Trump is a war-maker. He sends huge sums of money to Israel to conduct a war. He bombs now the Houthis. He was involved in bombing Syrians. And of course, he is still involved in the Ukraine war and still sending weapons and so forth to Ukraine — up to this day. I’ll come back to this point in a moment.

The other great friend that he had was Zelensky. Now, Zelensky is the president of Ukraine. Ukraine was considered to be the most corrupt country in all of Europe — if not in the world. Zelensky — also Jewish, promoted by the Jewish oligarchs in Ukraine — they hugged each other, and he was a great defender of freedom. He is a huckster, running around trying to collect money from all countries in the attempt to ruin his own country. He grabs people off the street and sends them to the front — into the meat grinder — to be killed in the war against Russians.

I’ll come back to the Ukraine thing. And then, of course, his greatest friend of all is Netanyahu.

Now, Netanyahu — whatever you say about Netanyahu — I mean, Netanyahu is, of course, a mass killer. He is involved in genocide. I cannot understand how any libertarian would ever defend a man like Netanyahu. But Milei was dancing in the street with Netanyahu.

When I say these sorts of things, I should mention that — to say in Germany, for instance — I could never mention anything like this, because Israel, in the minds of Germans and most Europeans, can do whatever they want. And what is the excuse? The excuse is: oh, eighty years ago, there was a big Holocaust.

I don’t know why the Holocaust eighty years ago — how that could possibly be an excuse for what completely different people do to people who had nothing whatsoever to do with the Holocaust. But he is the greatest friend of Milei.

I thought: if this is what he does, that ruins the reputation of libertarians in the entire world. We will all become involved in this — “Oh, you are a friend of Milei? Then you must be a friend of Putin. Then you must be a friend of Netanyahu. Then you must be a friend of Zelensky. And then you must be a fan of Trump.”

So libertarianism all of a sudden means being a fan of Netanyahu, a fan of the clown Zelensky, and a fan of Trump.

That is not what libertarianism means. We are opposed to all of them.

 

Now, given this — that our reputation as libertarians will be ruined by these people — I think it is important (that is my third little subject that I want to touch upon) that we have to remember a few key insights of libertarianism.

The first is — and these are not laws, but tendencies — states are the result of wars. All modern states that we know, for instance, are the result of wars. A united Germany is a result of wars that took place in the 19th century. Germany consisted in the 19th century of some thirty-nine or thirty-eight different principalities. It was only as a result of war that we had a united Germany.

There were some great Germans who were opposed to this. Goethe, for instance — the most famous German poet — opposed this heavily. He said it was a stupid idea to have a united Germany, because the decentralised Germany — you had every little principality competing against the other to have the best theatre, to have the best library, to have the best artists, the best scientists, and so forth. As soon as Germany was united, culture went down in Germany.

The same applies to Italy. Italy was also only united by war — only in the 1860s. And it even applies to little countries like Switzerland. Switzerland also required a war — very similar to the War of Southern Independence in the United States. It is called the Sonderbundskrieg, between the pro-liberal Protestant cantons against the so-called reactionary Catholic ones.

Switzerland is always presented as a sort of harmonious and wonderful example of peaceful relations. No — it also required a war in Switzerland to create the central Swiss state, even as small as that is.

And then there is, of course, a tendency — again, not a law — that all states try to centralise. To centralise means you get more loot.

Libertarians — Austro-libertarians — are in favour of decentralisation. I always promoted the idea of a Europe of a thousand Liechtensteins. Liechtenstein only has about 36,000 inhabitants. It is by far the wealthiest state in Europe.

A centralised state, as you see for instance in the European Union, is economically far inferior to smaller states like Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Competition is eliminated. You can no longer vote with your feet against governmental power. The worst thing that we can possibly imagine would be a world state with a world central bank. Wherever you go, the same rules and structures apply. You can no longer vote with your feet, because the rules are everywhere exactly the same.

And then there is another insight that is of importance — I have called that the paradox of imperialism. Interestingly, it is those states that are internally most liberal that have the greatest tendency to become imperial forces. Because every war, of course, requires that you have to have resources. So your home population must be productive. A productive population at home, from which the government can then parasitically draw, allows you to be more successful in wars.

And if we now look at the current state of affairs when it comes to this, we have to say that after World War II, the United States has become the most imperialist country in the world.

 

All of Europe — all of Western Europe — became immediately vassals of the United States. They were members of NATO. In all of these countries, American troops are stationed.

And if you imagine that you had Chinese troops, or German troops, or French troops stationed in the United States — what would Americans say about that state of affairs? But in every European country, this is precisely the case. You have American troops in Germany. You have American troops in Italy. You have American troops in Spain. You have American troops in Turkey. There’s practically no country where you don’t have American troops stationed.

As a matter of fact, worldwide there are 800 military installations outside of the United States.

The Americans expanded NATO continuously. Initially, after the Soviet Union broke apart, the idea was that there’s no purpose to NATO anymore. NATO was allegedly the institution created in order to defend ourselves against the Bolshevik takeover.

After that was no longer a possibility, and the Soviet Union broke apart — the Russians withdrew their troops, for instance, from East Germany. East Germany was occupied by Russians in the same way as West Germany was occupied by the United States. The Russians withdrew. The Americans didn’t withdraw. No — they expanded their territory step by step, closer and closer to Russia.

And of course, the Russians considered that to be a threat. What would Americans have done if the Chinese had stationed troops in Mexico or Canada? I can tell you: it would have taken just a few weeks and they would have started a war against them.

So the Russians warned: don’t get too close to us. And they were specifically concerned about Ukraine. The Americans first organised a coup in Ukraine and ignored, for instance, the fact that there were the eastern provinces in Ukraine who spoke predominantly Russian — and that they wanted to have some autonomous status.

Just like South Tyrol, for instance, has an autonomous status in Italy — they speak in South Tyrol, they speak German — and the Italians then granted them some sort of autonomy, some sort of self-rule. That’s what the eastern provinces in Ukraine wanted.

But that was not permitted by the Americans and the British. They supported the Ukrainians to make war against their own eastern provinces. They bombed them from 2014 on until the Russians finally said, “You know, that’s enough,” and started attacking Ukraine. It was a provoked war that started.

And the Americans prevented any type of peace treaty — which was already underway — from being permitted. They still consider this something that is worth continuing, until there is no Ukrainian left over living.

All the rich Ukrainians, of course, left the country — went to Germany and Austria and Switzerland — all, of course, on German taxpayers’ expense, and so forth.

 

Apart from this, the Americans are also responsible for wars all over the place. There are estimates that about twenty million people were killed as a result of American adventures outside of the United States. Twenty million people: Vietnam, Iraq, Sudan, Libya — you name the countries.

What is the consequence of that for Europeans? It’s the massive immigration flows that we have coming to the European countries — they are the result of these American wars.

We have hundreds of thousands of people leaving these countries and ending up in European countries, being all on welfare. And the Germans, the Swedes, the Danes have to pay the bill for damage caused by the United States.

They are also responsible for this radicalisation of Islam, because these people — these radical groups — grew out of all of these wars that were conducted by the United States all over the world.

And of course, as I said before, the Americans are also responsible for wokism becoming more and more popular in Europe. This wokism is, as I said, largely — or at least to a large extent — a responsibility of the Frankfurt School, operating in the United States and operating also in Europe. But the United States always overdid it. It was more popular in the United States than it was in Europe. But Europe, by and large, always imitates what takes place in the United States.

To conclude — personally, I think I should mention one word about the Israel stuff too. Israel is, of course — yeah — Israel is sort of ruling the United States. The foreign policy in the United States is largely a policy…

In the older days, when America just wanted to make the world safe for democracy, my old friend Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn said, “It’s more important to make the world safe from democracy than to make the world safe for democracy.”

But the traditional attitude of Americans was: “We are an exceptional people. And because of that, we should invade the world and convert the world to our superior values.” As soon as the people who consider themselves the chosen people come together with those that already think that they are the exceptional nation, then a country really becomes a dangerous country.

And in my view, America is — so far — the most dangerous country that exists. I say this as somebody who made a career in the United States, as somebody who loves the United States. But the United States is not the government of the United States. My children have American citizenship. So I’m not an anti-American. But I am against the American government — what they do — and consider them to be a big, big danger for the world.

 

I wish that they will be defeated in the Ukraine — not because I’m a Putin fan. But one should never make the mistake to think that because you want somebody to be defeated, you are automatically a friend of the other side.

But Putin will not rule me. I will be ruled by the Americans, or the German vassals who listen to what the Americans tell them to do. And to have them suffer a defeat would be good for me.

To succeed in all of this — in these imperial ventures — that would be the true disaster. Putin will not attack Western Europe. That is just the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. The guy is simply not capable of doing this. Russia is, of course, a mighty country, but nonetheless, they are not economically capable of occupying all of Western Europe.

And sometimes it is better to give up, rather than to be killed by somebody else. It is not always good advice to say: “Rather dead than red.” If you have a family, if you have children, sometimes it is better to be alive — even if it’s red — instead of being killed for no purpose. For no purpose whatsoever.

Yeah — with these, how can I say, rather pessimistic conclusions, I will end my somewhat rambling talk. And I hope you forgive me for this. The alternative would have been to read you a very carefully crafted piece of paper. But I think that would have bored you to hell. Whereas this — this might have been a little bit more entertaining.

Thank you very much.