An analysis of a phenomenon and personal experiences where most paleolibertarians are often young people frustrated with life for various reasons (a phenomenon that also applies to other ideologies).
The older I get, the more I realize how many libertarians are actually losers. Sure, there are successful paleolibertarians like Dave Smith, Clint Russell, Jeremy Kauffman, and Lew Rockwell, but there seems to be a trend: the younger they are, the more likely they are to be losers.
X is a fascinating platform where you can see people you’ll never meet in real life—for many reasons. It’s a social media site full of feds larping as average users and ideological adopters from across the political spectrum. You’ll find people full of life disappointments, anger, mental illness, and those clearly in need of help.
And among all these strange and untrustworthy individuals, there are many helpless teenagers and young adults frustrated by situations in their lives or by something that happened recently. Sadly, political ideology often becomes an escape from their reality.
I’m talking about X, but you could replace it with any social media platform or image board like 4chan (which, by the way, I find pretty funny and entertaining). What concerns me is the rise of incels—though I think it’s more a case of voluntary celibacy driven by a lack of self-esteem. It’s not truly ‘impossible’ for them to talk to women; it’s possible, but they need to trust themselves and stop acting weird in public.
I remember a story about a right-wing radio host in Quebec City who was looking for guests to co-host segments on his show. He ended up picking a super fanboy. The problem was that the guy only did one segment because he was very bad—probably one of the worst I’ve ever heard. He was fired after his first try, and he didn’t take it well at all.
He ended up becoming a communist, and you can now see pictures of him in an ex-USSR country (Russia, I guess) standing in front of a statue of Lenin. I know he used to send a lot of complaints to the CRTC because he couldn’t accept that co-hosting a radio show just wasn’t for him.
He was also involved in running a fake online organization that existed only to encourage people to file complaints and spread disinformation about what was said on air. Eventually, the group was disbanded after the same frustrated guy—still angry that he was a bad commentator—posted a meme calling for violent action against private property.
It’s funny because this guy recently replied to a comment I made under a post from a good friend on X. I completely owned him. He even threatened me with some ridiculous stuff (lol). Clearly, he’s not getting any better with time.
This is an example of a left-wing person escaping reality by changing their political views. (We could talk for hours about people who became leftists after being denied something by a private company, but that’s not the point of this article right now.)
But it’s a good example of how politics can be a mask and a way to escape reality. Maybe there was something else before he was fired from the co-hosting role — I don’t know the details of his life — but I can see a chain of problems that led to me being threatened with bad stuff by him months ago.
And I think many people who call themselves paleolibertarians aren’t really paleos — they just like the aesthetic and the edginess of it. I see nothing wrong with that; the internet was partly designed for fun and laughter. But many young people — teenagers and young adults — adopt ideologies like paleolibertarianism, neoreactionaryism/classical reactionaryism, or objectivism/anarcho-objectivism mainly as a way to express their frustrations about school, family, life changes, and the “bad things” that come with those. I see it as a way of avoiding reality — the reality that we can be wrong, or not as good as we imagined ourselves to be, or that our goals and expectations sometimes never materialize in the short or long term.
I think many young people will eventually grow out of these ideas and adopt a more moderate stance toward libertarianism or paleolibertarianism—without necessarily changing their core beliefs, but by being less, or not at all, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, or any other ‘-ism’ coined by woke people (not that I’m part of that crowd—I just find those behaviors lame and predictable) to shame others.
The worst that can happen is someone who never truly evolves into a better person. It happens—just look at how many conservatives around us are still losers, stuck in a childish mindset, believing a fully traditional society is still possible. They fail to understand that the conservative–progressive divide isn’t really a spectrum, but more of an evolutionary mechanism we’ve developed over time to adapt, organize, innovate, and preserve certain aspects of society.
It’s like objectivists who don’t understand that egoism and altruism are complementary in society—evolutionary mechanisms that humans developed through who we are today in order to grow, reproduce, and survive. Thinking about oneself selfishly and thinking about others by helping them are both necessary. We would never have reached where we are today without these psychological mechanisms we developed.
Coping with your miserable life when you’re young by adopting political ideologies to escape reality is common — eventually, you’ll likely become less hardline and more moderate, unless you’re still mentally stuck at 12 years old.
And sadly, social justice isn’t based on reality—just like reactionary ideology isn’t. It’s just a hobby you mistake for reality. Once you have sex, start having fun, and live a happy life aligned with your goals, you’ll drop it and become more moderate—without necessarily changing entirely.
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