Political libertarianism has quite a foothold in Australia. Thanks to @ColinKinner for the tip-off on this…

Political libertarianism has quite a foothold in Australia. Thanks to @ColinKinner for the tip-off on this one. This set of ideas is toxic to civilisation itself. And also laughably illogical and self-contradictory. These ideas must be opposed. /1 https://t.co/3Ar9IodK5d

Libertarianism creates a binary between individual and collective action that simply doesn’t exist. Those aren’t two separate things. It’s only by acting collectively, that we have individual freedom. /2

In everything we do *individually*, we’re acting collectively, at the same time. Even the language we use is a collective tool, that we shape individually. People who oppose individual freedom and collective action are usually aiming to just replace existing hierarchies. /3

With a new hierarchy, with themselves at the apex. You can see it right now. Trumpians for example have zero interest in letting us all individually do as we please. Much of their platform is ‘coercive control’. Just not of themselves. /4

They’ll rig Supreme Courts just to be sure that their view prevails. The freedom stuff is a sham. Often libertarians are opposed by people praising collective action, as an alternative. /5

My advice is not to fall into that libertarian framing. There’s NO binary here. And for Covid, this particular think tank’s obsession? /6

I and many others felt a shit-tonne more free when we were using the apparent ‘coercive control’ of basic public health practice. When public health action, and the pandemic itself, weren’t privatised. /7

Lockdowns never ended. We privatised them. People like my elderly parents have been sheltering in their homes for over 4 years, to stay alive. By libertarian philosophy, they’re much freer now. But that’s just offensive bullshit. /8

Like me they’re much less free to live the lives they had pre-Covid, unless they’re prepared to swallow repeated infections with a lethal vascular disease. They wouldn’t survive that. I might, at first. /9

Libertarianism is a con. And junkyard philosophy. It’s destroying the UK and US as we speak. We still have the chance to avoid that fate. /end