Libertarian Party of New Hampshire dumpster fire
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| Photograph of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire. Jarvis and Bishop-Henchman apparently dressed up as dozens of militarized police officers. The Mises Caucus (not pictured) is doing a grocery run to pick up marshmallows and graham crackers. Dignity is inside the dumpster, rolling a joint. // photo by Rosa Pineda |
Well, that didn't take long. I wrote that I was not interested in joining a caucus but what happened in New Hampshire had made me reconsider.
It appears that the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire social media account has been shitposting after the Mises Caucus had nearly swept the elections, which included tweets such as "John McCain's tumor saved more lives than Anthony Fauci", like an angsty teen trying to be edgy, completely unbefitting of an official Party account. There are better ways to make the point than to be a dick. But was it any worse than the Pragmatists' woke messaging and refusal to really push real libertarian messaging, opting for weak, milquetoast tweets about wokeism? I don't know that it was. Either way, it appears that Mises Caucus leadership like Heise as well as influential members like Dave Smith have already asked the LPNH to cut it out.
I wish the drama ended here, but it was only the beginning.
Jilletta Jarvis, the Pragmatist Caucus chair of the LPNH had quietly registered a new charter with the exact same name with the state, and it was approved by the National Libertarian Party Chair, Joe Bishop-Henchman. What in the hell? How is this not a hostile takeover, a fraudulent act committed on the registered dues-paying members of the New Hampshire party? This is akin to FDR trying to pack SCOTUS with his own rubber stamps. Or like Nicholas Maduro unilaterally abolishing the legislative branch that achieved opposition majority, in favor of a new parliament filled legislators ideologically congruent to himself. These are the actions of a dictator, not a libertarian.
This fired up backlash among those not affiliated with the Mises Caucus like Spike Cohen
A cornerstone of libertarian justice is the concept of due process. If we simply rule by decree, we are no better than the Republicrats.
— Spike Cohen (@RealSpikeCohen) June 15, 2021
Absent any proof of something deserving of its disaffiliation, the rightful LPNH is the one that was elected at its March convention.
and even Justin Amash.
As Libertarians, we champion due process. There’s only one legitimate executive committee of @LPNH, and that’s the one elected in March.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) June 16, 2021
Even if the charges brought by Jarvis and Bishop-Henchman that the executive committee violated the libertarian statement of principles, which I don't see that they explicitly did, there are proper channels to deal with this. This is the reason judicial committees exist, and at both state and national levels.
It actually didn't stop there.
Allegedly, after Jarvis formed a new libertarian party chapter, Jarvis, with approval from Bishop-Henchman, took physical assets from the LPNH storage unit and changed the passwords to the state party's online accounts. I'm not quite sure how this would fail to constitute theft, particularly if they were starting a new Libertarian Party of New Hampshire. If I had a startup business with two other people, and I decided to leave and build a new startup of the same name, I would be stealing from my former business partners if I raided the storage room before I left and locked them out of all their online accounts. How would this be any different?
Underhanded political maneuvers are what Democrats and Republicans do in their party. Did they really think that libertarians would keep quiet about this kind of blatant corruption and try to sweep it under the rug like Team Red and Team Blue? Even people that were buoyed by the Pragmatist Caucus like Justin Amash called them out on it. Because libertarians are overwhelmingly good, principled people, including most in the Pragmatist Caucus.
A few days later, the rightfully elected LPNH was reinstated and the social media accounts returned.
Then in a complete shocker of a move (to me, at least), Joe Bishop-Henchman resigned as state chair. In his letter, he wrote, "The lies and threats leveled at myself and many good Libertarians and friends—lies about my actions with regards to New Hampshire, and threats against any Libertarian who tries to defend the Party—have made clear to me that we are now firmly set down on a path I cannot continue to support."
However, he offers no examples of the lies or the threats. Similarly, Jarvis's comments about the attacks were not accompanied by any examples. I also saw no light shed or any kind of real defense on his involvement with the attempted disaffiliation of the LPNH.
This is extremely disappointing. During the elections for the National Party chair, he promised to avoid all of the toxicity emanating from his predecessor (in different words than that) Nicholas Sarwark, who in the past tweeted incendiary and idiotic gems such as calling the Mises Institute "the preferred choice of actual Nazis." But while Sarwark when he was the Chair, who, by the way, now resides in New Hampshire (make of that what you will; I have no proof of him doing anything here), acted like an asshole, he never actually attempted a coup on a state affiliate or to steal their assets, a rather clear violation of the non-aggression pledge that all members sign when joining the Libertarian Party. I expected better from Joe though to his credit, seemed to mostly stay neutral for most of the past year to my non-insider eyes and ears.
Several in the anti-Mises crowd such as Sasha Cohen in the Libertarian National Committee also levied allegations of bigotry against the caucus, saying, "we are a big tent party, but no tent is big enough to hold racists and people of color, transphobes and trans people, bigots and their victims." This immediately strikes me as a bogus claim, just looking around the party. When I look around in the party (meaning, I have no concrete numbers for this), in California at least, it appears that there are more minorities within the Mises Caucus than the Pragmatist Caucus. Additionally, the Mises Caucus nominated Rachel Nyx, a trans person, to state vice-chair. These are not the actions or the genetic makeup of a group of racists and transphobes. The baseless allegation precisely matches the leftist playbook for when they're down 42 points with 40 seconds left in the game.
Another shocking announcement came shortly after, as I saw in my inbox that the Pragmatist Caucus decided to dissolve itself while distributing its existing assets to the Libertarian Frontier Project. The announcement stated that "This week, given the backdrop of ongoing events within the Libertarian Party, it became clear to our entire leadership team that the best way we can work together to see “a world set free in our lifetime” is by dissolving the Libertarian Pragmatist Caucus."
I have no idea what that means or how they came to that conclusion. I have major issues with several of the key people in that caucus, like with Sarwark's malicious tossing of verbal Molotov cocktails or the Pragmatist Executive Director Alexander DiBenedetto's bizarre praise of The Squad as the most libertarian members of Congress, as well as their idea of people like Bill Weld and Lincoln Chafee being good candidates for the Libertarian Party. However, the Pragmatist Caucus has served an important function and has done good work in trying to get people elected. Marshall Burt, for example, was elected under the Libertarian banner via the Frontier Project, a program spearheaded by the Pragmatist Caucus. I hope the good people from the caucus remain and continue to fight for freedom in this country alongside the Mises Caucus. Those that prefer to slander and subvert the legitimately elected officials...I won't miss them.
