LESSONS FROM HOPPE: YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE

There are forms of organizations that cause society to degenerate. This is the underlying theory in much
of Hoppe’s work, from “Democracy: The God that Failed” to “Getting Libertarianism Right”, and there are
lessons to be taken here for any right-winger, even those who reject the Austro-libertarian approach of
a property-rights rooted self-ownership.

Hoppe’s private law societies are a model that can guide any traditional society that seeks to reject modern progressive political theories.

Hoppe’s covenant communities were an appeal primarily to anarchocapitalists seeking to reconcile social values and cohesion with the non-aggression principle. But a more thorough analysis of Hoppe
reveals some of his inspirations, including the traditional European social orders that prevailed before
the Enlightenment and the modern nation-state.

You Are Not Welcome Here

Modern democratic societies claim to be all-inclusive. Their actions against political minorities contradict this claim, but they fulfil the definition in the worst possible ways.

Membership in a modern nation-state is typically irrevocable without great expense on behalf of the
individual. This is because the productive individual takes on the role of provider to the state in any
social democratic order. Those who would seek to renounce their membership are those who deem the
costs of the state they inhabit greater than the benefits they receive from the state. As I will explore further later in this piece, this is the exception, not the norm.

The First Lesson: Physically Remove Undesirables

A society based on any hierarchy of merit must enforce that hierarchy or cease to exist. Hoppe’s own preference is for the removal of communists, fascists, syndicalists, and democrats, for reasons that he outlines in greater detail within “Democracy: The God that Failed” and “Getting Libertarianism Right” along with some of his other works and speeches.

This is not a call for outright violence. Rather, those who refuse to comply with the social order of a
community are trespassers. If they leave when asked, there is no problem. If they are a minor nuisance,
they face stony silence and ostracism. Anyone who deals with them joins the unwelcome individual in
ignominy. If they aggress against a person or property, force of arms may repel them.

This is at odds with the modern concept of democracy. The system implicitly disenfranchises fringe
minorities, but it also tolerates them. No political idea is too toxic, so long as it is compatible with the
ruling elite’s vision for society, even if it is nothing more than a criminal conspiracy against the
propertied or the traditionally religious.

By comparison, a libertarian social order or other right-wing social order must explicitly disenfranchise
those who pose a threat to the social order and exclude them from public participation.

The Second Lesson: Rediscover The Concept Of People Outside The State

Modern society has a curious issue with the non-citizen resident. They are ultimately a necessity
because no social order has ever isolated itself totally. Even a “closed border” social order may have
people from outside its territorial borders who come and go for economic reasons.

From the perspective of political organization, these people are essentially non-entities. But the modern
social democratic order seeks to register and track these people for taxation and monitoring. It is
presumed that if they remain for a long enough time, they will either gain citizenship or an ersatz
equivalent of social recognition, especially in the anglophone world.

Historically, the vast majority of people are political non-entities. They are not voters. Other than
taxation, which was more focused on economic actions than economic actors before the income tax.
It is only necessary for these people to be held accountable to the rules that maintain and establish the
prevailing social order. They do not need to become part of the community in any tangible or
meaningful way as part of their interactions with those who live in the community, which is what the
current social democratic order mandates.

Further, the social-democratic order insists that all who come under its protection are equals under the
law.

People are not equal.

The outsider has no claim to lands or property of those in the community, which the social-democratic
order gives away with each visa issued and citizenship granted.

Insider And Outsider

The first lesson that anyone seeking to revolt against the modern social order should understand is that
the conception of enfranchising anyone born within or residing within a nation’s borders is recent in
human history.

Throughout history, most people were disenfranchised from the political process. Even in Rome, which
was a historical anomaly in the breadth of its citizenship, voting was a privilege reserved for those
citizens who lived in proximity to Rome. Other benefits extended to Roman citizens abroad, but there
was no myth of the franchise to bind them to Rome.

Further, the primary identification for individuals in the West has always been with either a local
community or an overarching ecclesiastical structure. At the time that Europeans discovered America,
one would not have found a Spain, a France, a Germany, or an Italy that resembled their modern
counterparts. England as an island always had a more coherent identity, but only as an accident.

Universally, the commoners would have identified themselves regionally. They would have known that
their community was the domain of a particular monarch, but this was a distant and fluid connection.
Barring the occasional peasant petition, intermediaries handled affairs between commoners and
regents.

The Third Lesson: Not All Friends Make Good Neighbors

Large societies are inimical to both freedom and tradition. They limit both to the least common denominator because social orders detest those who fall outside their bounds.

Those of us who would establish a very different social order than the present social order must understand that the fundamental goal of the progressive era was to recreate man in the state’s image.

Perhaps it would be better to say that the attempt was rather to recreate man in the state’s chosen
image, but there is an important lesson here. An average individual’s psychological self-concept stems
from social democracy.

This is at odds with both the right-wing hierarchal and libertarian individualist schools of thought.
A monolithic universe is unnecessary. It is possible to tolerate disagreement on major social issues and
decisions, but not within a social order.

The solution to this is two-fold. Secession is the practical political path to establishing a social order
more amenable to our goals. It reduces the opposition we face because we are not seeking to impose
our demands on others so much as simply demand to be left alone.

This is not a demand that will be freely granted. It will certainly require us to send signals that it is in the power elite’s interest to tolerate our absence. This will require some analysis, but even a social
democratic order will find that people who oppose it operating within its borders as, at the very least, vocal opponents of the regime, are more of a liability than an asset.

This was how the United States of America became an independent political entity, though a different approach needs to be pursued as one cannot simply step outside the physical boundaries of the ruling
order and begin living independent de facto without risking an immediate response from those who still
serve the existing social order.

The second element of this is the formation of what Hoppe would describe as “ten thousand Lichtensteins.” This involves ostracism and “gatekeeping,” to use the term which is currently in vogue.
Our ideal social orders are stronger without mass membership. The boundaries of the community
extend only to those who agree to comply and subordinate themselves to the community, even in the
libertarian private law societies of Hoppe.

Anyone who does not agree to do so may still exist outside our social orders, and may even be defensive or trading partners, but would never be an official member of our societies.

The Fourth Lesson: Law Applies To Those Who Abide It

The abominable failure of democracy is its inability to denounce the criminal.
Both by its consensus-based ethics, which turn a blind eye to universal and unchanging moral truths and
lead it to consequentialism and debauchery, and by its desire to contain all people within the cancerous
mass of the progressive nation-state, democracy insists that the criminal is merely a malfunctioning cog
in the machine that makes up society.
This is at odds with the proper concept.

The criminal, in the true deontological sense and not the bastardized modern sense of the violator of
statutes are one who rejects the hierarchies and agreements that make up society.

Those who violate basic laws of human behaviour, say by engaging in wanton theft or injuring others
deliberately, are criminals and are not part of society. Those who deliberately violate contracts are also
criminals, though they may not lose all protections under the law depending on the verdict of their
community and the nature of the contract. A mutual agreement can always limit such liabilities at the
time of the contract’s signing.

The proper response to this is outlawry. By violating the law, the outlaw at the very least makes himself
the valid target of social ostracism. He cannot enforce contracts assigned to the jurisdiction of
arbitrators he has defied. If his crimes are great, then vengeance is the permitted restitution for anyone
who seeks it.

Only by making restitution to victims (but not to the power elite’s financial interests) can the outlaw
rejoin society.

Conclusion

A lesson that everyone on the dissident right can learn from Hoppe is that it is necessary to create a
“you are not welcome here” culture in order to preserve it from the degeneration brought on by
deviants and enemies of society.

This does not require the pursuit of racial purity, a universal world order, or even religious alignment
(though there are practical reasons for a community to draw upon a shared religious tradition). In fact, a
libertarian or right-wing social order could be entirely open to any person regardless of background.

The one requirement is adherence to the ethical and behavioural codes that guide a community. Those who refuse to recognize the proper hierarchy of authority, whether to a fixed deontological
structure (religious or philosophical) or to the community’s ruling elite (or both), have no place in
society.