Fake Apologies, or Race Pimping – Which is Worse?

By Christopher Cantwell

One thing you almost never see me do is apologize. That’s because I’m almost never sorry about what I say or do, and I tend to reserve apologies for when I’m actually sorry. This is sort of a rare feature in humanity, as you may have noticed in life. Most people will throw out an apology whenever it suits their purposes, and this makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit every time.

Yesterday I published a screenshot of tweets from Cathy Reisenwitz accusing “American libertarians” of being “super racist”. If that seems a little bit too collectivist for your taste, don’t worry, she later specifically named Lew Rockwell, Murray Rothbard, Ron Paul, Walter Block, and Hoppe as being racists. This isn’t actually all that unusual, except for the fact that she named names that people actually care about. Cathy has been calling libertarians and libertarianism itself racist for a long time, with her implication that not caring about race, is

racist. You know, like bitcoin.

Now, baselessly throwing around ill defined ad hominems like “racist” is bad enough. Those of us who participated in State politics grew rather sick of having this done to us by Democrats, and probably didn’t think we’d have to deal with it from other “libertarians”. But as I’ve said before, anything that isn’t explicitly hostile to the left wing ideological contagion, will become infected by it, and as libertarianism grows we can expect more and more of it. This is to be expected as we become a force to be reckoned with. Since liberal ideas cannot stand up to logical scrutiny, leftists throw out logical fallacies and try to distract from issues with name calling.

When that backfires, we can also expect fake apologies and backpedaling. Apparently, the irony of Cathy working with Jeffrey Tucker while calling all these thought leaders racist, was just too much for the interwebs to ignore, as Tom Woods pointed out. Cathy got smashed on Twitter, and elsewhere for these smears, and when the pressure became too much to deal with, she issued this luke warm “apology”.

Cathy Reisenwitz Backpedaling

I’m really not sure which is worse. The race pimping, or fake apology?

Race Pimping

On the one hand, race pimping is obviously bad news. It distracts from issues by tapping into nerves that really don’t have a great deal of relevance in modern day America. I mean, at this point if you wanted to discuss institutionalized racism in the United States, you really would have to be standing up for whites, and if you did that, you would be labeled as racist by people like Cathy. Affirmative Action is actively causing white people to miss out on jobs and promotions, and aside from that, I can’t think of too many race specific laws in this country. That being the case, any movement concerned with State violence, really doesn’t have much to say about race, and so bringing it up only tends to distract from the goals of that movement.

Race pimping is primarily used by Democrats in State politics, and as much as I despise the Republican Party, I don’t see any benefit for libertarianism in repeating Democrat talking points. Quite the contrary. Since libertarianism doesn’t care about race, and people like Cathy consider that to be racist, promoting this kind of thing actively works to liberty’s detriment. I have a hard time believing there are people in this world who take a woman seriously, when she simultaneously claims to be a libertarian attempting to promote libertarianism, and calls libertarians and libertarianism racist.

Think this doesn’t matter?

As tough a time as I have believing it, people do take Cathy seriously. A lot of people have said to me “Don’t draw attention to her” or “I never heard of her until you mentioned her”, but I assure you this woman is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. Cathy Reisenwitz is not just some obscure nobody, she has been a contributor to Reason Magazine, Forbes, FEE, Bitcoin Magazine, Center for a Stateless Society, and other noteworthy publications. She has a Klout score of 73, which puts her in the upper 5% of all social networking users on planet Earth. She has been featured on John Stossel. Just last weekend she was a featured speaker at LibertyFest NYC IV, a yearly event that used to host speakers like myself, Tom Woods, Adam Kokesh, and Stefan Molyneux. She’s regularly featured as a speaker at numerous other events, especially anything hosted by Students for Liberty. She’s also at the heart of Jeffrey Tucker’s recent backflips.

If you think drawing attention to her is bad, then ignoring her is worse. She’s out there convincing thousands of people that libertarianism is egalitarianism, right along with McCobin of SFL, Buehler of the Peaceful Streets Project, Bleeding Heart Libertarians and all the rest. If these people are not stopped, then their assault on language will continue just like it did on the term “liberalism”, and in 5 years, Barack Obama will comfortably call himself a libertarian without having changed any of his policies.

This is a serious problem, and I’m absolutely terrified by the number of people unwilling to take it seriously.

Fake Apologies

If that isn’t bad enough, the fake apology makes matters worse. It shows a fundamental disregard for any sort of intellectual integrity, because Cathy hasn’t changed her views. Cathy is not sorry for thinking Lew Rockwell, Ron Paul, and Murray Rothbard are racists, she’s sorry she said it out loud, because the public backlash damaged her reputation. She knows that she has to keep her reputation intact if she is to accomplish her goal of ruining libertarians and libertarianism.

Cathy only calls herself a libertarian so that libertarians will listen to her. She has said before, that she doesn’t think libertarianism is all that great.

Why Fake Being a Libertarian?

In fact, she fully endorsed Will Moyer’s article “The Limits of Libertarianism” where he said he is no longer a libertarian because it doesn’t abolish private property or give rights to animals.

Cathy Reisenwitz Endorses Anti-Libertarian Propaganda

Cathy hates libertarianism, as it stands. She thinks it is racist and sexist, because it doesn’t care about race or sex. So she is making a concerted effort to destroy it and replace it with something else. She can only do that if you take her seriously as a libertarian, and so when she exposes herself as the hateful race baiting scum that she is, she makes a fake apology to regain your trust.

Do not give it to her. She is your enemy, and she is already inside the gates

The above originally appeared at ChristopherCantwell.com and is reprinted with permission.