At first, this seems completely improbable. If you take them at their word, these people stand for individual liberty, and freedom above all else. Wouldn’t fascism be the polar opposite of that belief? How does a “classic liberal” end up defending Nazis? How does a self-proclaimed rational skeptic end up promoting disproven racist eugenics?

There are deeper connections and affinities between online libertarianism and fascism that makes such a drift less improbable, and maybe even inevitable.

Part 1 – Private Power

The proliferation of the “political compass” also has something to do with this line of thought. It obscures the potential difficulties of political choices, and makes it seem like one axis – the authority vs. anarchy one – is the be all end all of political ideas of freedom. The very words “free market”, combined with the allure of the political compass, draws people towards that bottom right square. Who wouldn’t want to be pro-freedom? It’s got sex appeal.

That authority-anarchy axis makes it seem like anywhere at the bottom takes a strong stance on individual rights, but the left-right axis changes what those rights mean. In a society where individuals are allowed to accumulate wealth and, unconstrained by regulations, are free to influence the direction of society, that means that the political power of an individual is diminished, dwarfed by the power of the rich. The freedom promised by the classic liberals came during a time when the power of the aristocracy was waning – now, some individuals have so much wealth that “classic liberals” are arguing for something more akin to Nietzche’s defense of the rights of the aristocracy. Check out Corey Robin’s piece on Hayek and Nietzche for further examination of this point – the idea that the rich deserve to steer the direction of culture and society is deeply engrained in free market evangelism. And in a world where so much is privatized, and so much power is surrendered to the free market, this amounts to private control over just about everything.

The libertarian worldview then, is one where individual rights exist only in a technical sense. The actual ability that person has to exercise their rights depends entirely on their economic standing. The libertarian world is one of hierarchy – of righteous hierarchy. These people are not classic liberals but corporate nietzcheans.

Part 2 – When The Market Fails

But what happens when the promises of the market fail? What happens when certain minority groups are still way behind? What happens when the wage gap lingers even as decades pass? What happens when an entire generation of their peers loses faith in the free market?

Instead of losing faith in the market, the internet libertarians lose faith in their peers. And women. And minorities.

Look at the latest controversy – if you actually read that google employees memo, he basically claims that the lack of women in tech is due to essentialist differences in biology between the sexes. The market could not possibly have failed – the market is pure, it does not see race or gender. Ideas of oppression, which might suggest fixes that go against the libertarian ethos of nonintervention in the market, must be wrong. He lays this out almost word for word:

The lack of discussion fosters the most extreme and authoritarian elements of this ideology.

Extreme: all disparities in representation are due to oppression

Authoritarian: we should discriminate to correct for this oppression

Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.

But what about everything else that goes on in the world? How do you explain those things that the left points to, the endless stream of current events that seem to portray a world where market forces have only brought instability and absurdity?

This is when the rational™ mind goes fully irrational. They turn to conspiracies, or flirt with them, to explain the way the world is. Remember, it can’t be the market. So all those bad things that happen, they can’t possibly be symptoms of capitalism, they must be caused by sinister forces behind the scenes. Drawing direct cause and effect relationships between current events and capitalism can't be allowed, so instead they depart on conspiratorial "flight of ideas", as Adorno describes:

It does not employ discursive logic but is rather, particularly in oratorical exhibitions, what might be called an organized flight of ideas. The relation between premises and inferences is replaced by a linking-up of ideas resting on mere similarity, often through association by employing the same characteristic word in two propositions which are logically quite unrelated. This method not only evades the control mechanisms of rational examination, but also makes it psychologically easier for the listener to follow’. He has no exacting thinking to do, but can give himself up passively to a stream of words in which he swims.

Part 3 – Reaction

But to really push them over the edge, to the violent embrace of the far right, it takes a little bit more.

The current pushing them down the lazy river of hate is reaction. Literal reaction. Reactions to videos of “SJWs”. Reaction to the growing left. Reaction to day after day of this being blasted into their brain for hours and hours by social media and youtube personalities that cater to their young male anger. This is what primes them to accept the arguments about degeneracy, and eventually accept the notion that certain groups must be removed from society. It starts as a joke, as a video they watch for a laugh. Maybe they enjoy “punching down”, maybe it feels transgressive, maybe they like the memes. Day after day they watch these videos, videos specifically cherrypicked and curated to make them feel the most disgusted and insulted and outraged.