If you have followed him som years back now (2+), you will have noticed a markedly change in his "philosophy" towards the state. This change has coincided with the presidential run of Donald Trump, and there can be no doubt in my mind that the change has come because of him.
Now, before Trump, he was by any standard considered as anarchic a philosopher as can possibly exist. The state is wielding power, in the form of a threat of violence for non-conformity to rules, called "laws". There were never, ever, any exceptions to this acceptance of reality from Molyneux. Initiation of force is immoral, and since the state is nothing but a threat of force, the state is immoral. Basic Aristotelean logic.
Period, that´s it ... freedom means anarchism, philosophically .. off course, what else.
Freedom, is freedom from force.. not a "right" to choose who will rule with violent power over you, your time, your resources and your children. Electing a ruler is like caring about the shape of the hood-ornament of a car battering towards you on the street. You do not stand there evaluating the ornament, YOU GET OUT OF THE WAY !! (Molyneux's own metaphor, for electing a president)
So what happened? Slowly videos informing about the presidential race and specifically about Trump appeared a year ago or so, just as discussions between him and his studio mate Mike, who apparently already is a libertarian-statist. Mike was clearly pro Trump, since he was not a politician (in the usual sense), he knows about the (free) market, he can make deals with both politicians and market people etc etc..
I don't remember any exceptions in his statements about the state ... like if he had said: "We do not need a state because it is the initiation of force ... EXCEPT IF THE ELECTED PRESIDENT IS THIS OR THAT OR THE OTHER WAY"
... no, never.
The biggest step for anyone to take is that last step from "just a little" to "nothing" ... going from minarchist to anarchist is the biggest step (for most). Reducing smoking from 10 to 1 cigarettes a day, is not as hard as going from 1 to 0 cigarettes a day. That´s why you went to 1 and not 0 in the first place.
I can overlook a politician who becomes corrupted by power (it happens all the time), I can handle people in my everyday life who are not rigid philosophers becoming corrupted (it happens all the time)... but the most prolific and listened to philosophers, outside academia, if not more importantly ... THE ONLY ONE ... !!!
So how can he so easily take a step back to "smoking" again??? And arguing that "this one cigarette a day is just perfect for everybody" (metaphorically off course)
He is (... or rather was) the man who brought philosophy to the masses (paraphrazing a remark from Sid Vicious to Freddy Mercury about him "bringing ballet to the masses") and therefore I find it of the UTMOST importance for anyone remotely interested in philosophy, politics, economics, truth and reality, to come to some understanding about what is happening with this man, who runs, what he himself calls "The biggest philosophy show in the world".
First of all. If you are not listening to him (yet), be warned that podcasts from lately must be taken with extra skepticism (you must always be skeptical, but if you are new to Molyneux, or inexperienced in philosophy, be aware). If you are listening to him and have done so for about 2 years, I strongly urge you to reconsider what you have learned. If you are excited about the ideas of anarchism (not the leftists riot imposter-version seen at the moment, but the philosophical one), I recommend that you stop listening to Molyneux and switch to other sources, like Larken Rose (@larkenrose) or Jeff Berwick (@dollarvigilante), depending on your "taste". You can off course listen to Molyneux's earlier podcasts and books, which are not infested, and very good in my opinion.
As a philosopher myself (good or bad as I may be), I always try to figure out why.
We are probably dealing with something that Molyneux himself would call "Not an argument" ... since it is my ideas about what is going on in his head and not something that can be measured in "the real world".
But still, an opinion may just be the first step towards a truth, if this opinion is based on objective observation but not made it to a final argument. Let me try and evaluate my thoughts about the possible reason(s) why he has turned against freedom and anarchism.
He never really were and anarchist
He has himself stated several times, and have spent at least one full podcast on stating that it took him 20 years (!) to figure out that he was an anarchist, and not a minarchist. Now I can understand that it takes a bit of getting used to accepting no government at all if you heard about ,minarchism, libertarianism and anarchism for the first time a few weeks ago. But Molyneux have been doing philosophy by himself for 20 years before he started the show (starting with Ayn Rands objectivism as a teenager), then studying and getting a university degree in history with focus on the history of philosophy. Then going through defoo'ing and therapy and everything ... all things that surely must have sparked a few thoughts about the direction of his philosophy .. and being a minarchist for so many years ... and either not arguing for himself about anarchism and reaching that conclusion or even arguing with himself and rejecting it ... just to finally accepting it after 20 years, seems very unlikely. And it has sounded very unlikely to me ever since i heard it. A philosopher becoming an anarchist after 20 years of ore or less minarchist??? Apparently he uses his wife´s insights as a reason for taking the "plunge" but I don't buy that. And if this is the reason for seeing the true nature of the state ... support from his wife? I do not buy that he is really an anarchist. And if it is the way it came about, he is open for "manipulation " in a certain way, that he will only go a certain place if he feels accepted.Daddy issues or the lack thereof
Trump is just about the ultimate alpha-male, patriarch. Molyneux never had a father, in a way it makes any sense using the term. His parents separated (?) when he was very young (less than a year old i think) and he never had a close relation to a grown man in his childhood or teens or maybe for his whole life). So when this powerful man comes along, that reaches into his longing for the father figure he never had and never will have, it fills a hole in his "soul" that sucks in Trump like a vacuum.Raising a child into non-conformity is not easy
Molyneux has a daughter. And she is about the same age as my own daughter, so I know first hand what it is like to have a child at that age. It may not have turned out for him to be as easy to hang on to anarchism in child upbringing as he thought before his daughter grew to a certain age. How do you explain that you "freely" send money to some unknown people who says they need your money. How do you explain the rhetoric used by those people on the telly calling themselves presidents, politicians, experts, journalists .. etc.. and how does it all fit together with her ability to get along with her playmates and friends, who are not anarchists or live in a statist, religious or foo mentality. A tough nut to crack for a child in that early age. There is a fear of isolating her when she needs to get out among other people and understand how to build relations. And telling her more or less directly that .. basically 98% of the people around her prefer her get shot when she turns 18, rather than admitting that the state is evil. There also may be some considerations about her homeschooling. Maybe two busy parents, even working from home, is not sufficient for her or the parents are being drained from too much work, and they have to ship her off to a school or some statist minded guvernante to take care of her schooling.Taking FDR to a "new" level - inside the paradigm (and the fear of loosing out when the libertarian bus comes to town)
You can only go so far, appealing only to "anarchists". You are confined "outside" the left-right paradigm .. and by most people considered weird for not "participating" in "politics". FDR (Freedomain Radio, as his show is called) is a business. He gets revenue from donations and that is good and fine. But it is still a business. A business has to be taken care of. And most of his listeners are either long time anarchists or newly converted ones (like I was). The convertits are probably a large majority and that is good and fine. But they were either classical liberal, statist libertarian or minarchist to start with, and could probably easily fall back in the saddle - if an extremely strong and anti-government type president came along. And out of fear that those converted anarchists may run with politics, he places himself ahead of this potential trend and becomes the hood-ornament of such a movement. He jumps from the anarchists, those who stay behind, and is grabbed by ten times more small-gov libertarians asskissing their way to getting more people into their fold. And a skillful orator like Molyneux is just what they need. And 10 times more libertarians will easily shut up those anarchists being critical of this new turn of direction.Echo chamber effect & buddy consensus
Living in your own mind and your own show for 10 years without any real outside rigorous scrutiny, may finally have sent him to looney-ville. Not long ago it was the "THIS IS MY SHOW, I DECIDE HOW IT IS RUN.." like mentality during a call-in show. Ususally it is "Please donate, we cannot do this without you", but if a caller is not to his taste it is basically "FUCK OFF". Also if his partner Mike is completely brown-nosing Trump, it is hard to carry on a meaningful work-relation with such a difference in attitude towards politics.
These are some of my thoughts. Are you listening to Stefan Molyneux? Let me hear your thoughts :-)
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Thank you, Mandibil, I enjoyed your critiques of Stefan very much.
I listened to him for several years & then stopped, mostly because of his incendiary misogyny .. also because science has reached a point where it is eminently possible to explain & understand everything here in our Universe including 'love' ... making philosophy obsolete.
We now know enough about our Universe to establish a science of everything. But, unfortunately, not about anything or any one 'outside' our Universe, presumably where the creator of it all (if there was one) along with its Machiaveli reasons for so doing, resides !! There just simply is no information pertaining to this outside realm. No information on any first & final causes exists.
As maudlin as it sounds 'love' is 'the answer' & we all know this :- If we all loved one another as we could & should - along with also loving our once glorious Planetary Home as we could & should - there would be no problems - we would not cause or inflict any pain or injury on one another - nor on our once glorious Planetary Home.
We'd not only take good care of one another & our Home, we'd experience great delight in so doing, as, of course, 'love' makes the duty of care we all have for one another & our Planetary Home, an irresistible delight.
Love turns duty into delight.
We now know enough about 'love' - its creation, maintenance & how to fix it when it goes wrong to establish a good, true & full science of the phenomenon, making philosophy obsolete.
I am planning to post the full science of love on Steemit in the near future.
Steemit is a truly wonderful social platform .... Thank you again, M
Great article mandibil! I always wondered if the Government gave him cancer or threatened his family. You made good points though I could see it being a natural progression. Glad I'm not alone in seeing the 180 degree change!
I am glad that there are other people eith integrity like you :-)
Him and Alex Jones were gatekeepers from the very beginning.Its not surprising at all once you look at his actual agenda which would be the Globalist funded idea of "MGTOW" and his rise to fame was due to his opposition to the equally Globalist funded "3rd Wave Feminism".He has always only cared about money while philosophy and politics was merely a means to an end.
To Stefan, Trump is a stopgap, not a solution, particularly since we were staring at the very real possibility of a Hillary Clinton Presidency. shudder
The fact of the matter is that there WILL be a President of the United States, at least in the short term, and it's in your best interest to work to elect the politician you believe will initiate force on the people less than his opponent. Advocating such an approach doesn't mean you've sold out all your principles; it means you're living in the real world.
They're both puppets / mouthpieces of the special interest groups.
I think Stefan Molyneux might be following the new trend that is call libertarian realism.
Here is channel on YouTube trying to explain it in a somewhat coherent matter:
I listen to his FDR (thought you were talking about Franklin Delano Roosevelt in comparison with Trump at first glance) on and off and my impression of him is that first and foremost he is an adherent to the idea of scientism. A partisan of Aristotelianism rather than of Platonism. His habit of using statistics (as if they are reality themselves) in order to establish his ''truths'', combined with his apparent urge to often explain how the religious frame of mind is some kind of defect in reasoning, are clues to me that his approach to atheism is one of faith in the sense of a belief system.
To understand my perspective on the idea that atheism is also a religion, my French culture background in which secularism has permeated the whole of society (French Revolution in France followed long after by the Quiet Revolution in Quebec province, Canada) compared with what I perceive as remaining traces of influential christianism in anglo-saxon culture, has to be taken into account.
That is why I kind of cringe when I hear our government representatives talking about making the whole of the public body of governance an officially secularist one. As if they wanted laïcité (there seems to be no litteral equivalent in english other than secularity) to be the new official religion of the state, when in fact, why should there be a state religion when dressing codes and all are already in place?
Sorry if I seem like I went off on an unrelated tangent, but I feel it was relevant in order to get the full picture of my vision of who Stefan Molyneux is.
or maybe the explanation is easier and what Marxists have always said: it's the capitalist class that requires and creates the state in order to protect their property and their privileges.
Red herring !
I do see your point, however I do think Stefan is still a genuine anarchist. It is true that Democrats want to import a lot of 3rd world immigrants who vote for large government. If Hillary Clinton was going to import a bunch of people who want big government then how is a stateless society more likely to evolve out of that? Donald Trump is far from a libertarian (anarchist, minararchist, whatever), but he is preventing millions of people who want big government from coming into America during his presidency.