Define “scam”? Who is trying to scam who in this situation? The Liberlanders feel more like a LARP group than any sort of pyramid scheme, and it’s not like there was any serious risk of them actually receiving recognition and depriving the actual nations nearby of the (as you point out) worthless land.
whenever I see LARP in any context but literal live action roleplaying (nerds doing nerd shit in the woods, and even then it can be iffy) what follows is the worst fucking take I’ve ever seen. is LARPing just how libertarian fuckheads cover for their illegal militia shit these days?
As if on cue:
I am no fan of the FBI, but there is a certain joy in how much the resident fascists at the orange site seem to hate that the jig is up
the Croatian authorities were just keeping in character
You seem to have conflated libertarianism with some other philosophy like the Ayn Rand stuff
🤨
Maybe this person is a time traveler from a century ago when libertarianism mainly meant anarchism and similar decentralist leftist ideologies.
There is something about the Balkans and libertarians – maybe it’s just that new governments are being formed so it’s a way in? Or just Russian proxy tankie shit?
When I was younger and dumber I was a card-carrying Libertarian. The last straw that made me quit my membership was their exuberance over being chosen to help form a government for Republika Srpska, a new political entity in the former Yugoslavia founded and run by Serbian war criminals. I can’t find anything online, but I vividly remember the LP paper mailers that I used to get with all kinds of libertarian plans to help craft the new government there in the early 90s. The retirement plan was going to be like the Chicago Boys’ Chile, and other such things. I figured if they were going to work with war criminals, maybe this thing wasn’t so great.
@carlitoscohones Republika Srpska is now the ethnic Serbian part of Bosnia-Herzegovina, most famous for giving the world the term “ethnic cleansing”. Interesting to hear that it was only enlightened self-interest rather than genocide.
The sheer comedy of libertarians rules-lawyering international law for their intermittently flooded microstate though. As opposed to, say, using free contracts between individuals.
Now I have another example of libertarianism for my list if I actually need to talk about libertarianism instead of just point and laugh.
You should check out the book A Libertarian Walks into a Bear for another great example, if you haven’t already!
I haven’t read the book but the article is definitely in the list.
Edit: Wait, turns out I had another article in the list. I will add this one above.
“If you’ve ever wondered about the Libertarian response to having one’s neighbours killed by bears, it’s about halfway down this article.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project
The full book is well worth the read, imho.
Also there’s this obsession with calling this folly ‘experimenting with government’ as though they aren’t always trying the exact same thing over and over again.
The libertarians do know how to write not that sympathetically [edit: but they are not the only people who suck at writing]. They seem to care more about ‘our equipment!’ than the personal property of people who used to live there (While funny here, it still sucks ass the cops wrecked so much shit, I know they pull (in various countries) the same shit with unhoused people). Wonder how this will radicalize more libertarians further right.
(Amusing they also have created a sort of ‘money pinata’ for the local Croatians, as they vow to rebuild using local resources again. Region doing badly? Just send in the cops to smash the gentrifying weird westerners so they spend more).
(Orangists doing a ‘wow from first principles countries are weird’ is also funny)
I submitted this link too but removed it as a duplicate, and it’s really a category error from the Liberland people. They are writing from their perspective - they are a sovereign state with citizens, and the raid by Croatian authorities is a literal invasion. However, from the point of view of Croatia, international law, and everyone normal, they are squatters who are illegally constructing buildings on land controlled by Croatia.
A lot of the HN commentators sympathetic to Liberland would have a fit if a group of Mexicans set up an enclave in Texas and started constructing buildings. These hypothetical Mexicans might have their own spin on the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which they spun out of reading too much Wikipedia, and their claims are just as valid as Liberland’s.
There are a lot of neocolonial echos in the Liberland post too:
Liberland has the ability to bring significant investment, jobs and tourism to this economically depressed region.
Yeah sure, you can do a lot within the framework of existing Croatian law to bring investment, there’s no need to set up a LARP country on a floodplain to do so.
To be honest, I think it would be hilarious if Texas were annexed by Mexico, even just a little bit. Texans deserve a competent government who will invest in them and conduct reasonable diplomacy, and they’re not getting that from Texas.
Isn’t it also not just a floodplain but also a highly contested border area which their intrusion has made even more complex and annoying. They are lucky Serbia isn’t also walking over the river to mess with their stuff. Wonder if that will happen to the Free Republic of Verdis. https://verdisgov.org/ (which isn’t totally a scam to trick people into forking over 300 euros to try and apply for citizenship).
(And also yeah lol them building that on a floodplain. [laughs in dutch])
