Journalist, historical analyst, and conspiracy theorist Mathew Erhet joined Whitney Webb’s Unlimited Hangout podcast titled “Fabians and Fascists”. Erhet made several extraordinary claims, many of which I found intriguing and planned to verify later. I was impressed with Erhet as he was quite articulate and pulled “facts” from a seemingly endless memory bank. However, the following comment caused me to reassess my initial impression:
Even Friedrich von Hayek, who’s a big Austrian school Libertarian known for protecting individual liberty and freedom, in the end of his Road to Serfdom he even says, ‘We need to have a world government police to make sure that all the local regions of the world all play by the same rules of the game.’ So it’s like there’s something fishy going on regarding how these guys are talking about local freedom or personal liberty and stuff. There’s a sleight of hand happening here.
Ehret is suggesting that Hayek is a double agent secretly working to further the Fabian Society agenda of establishing a global authoritative technocracy with eugenics and depopulation aims. Have I been duped? Were Hayek’s many works and thoughtfully crafted ideas on the fundamental importance of civil liberties all part of an elaborate ploy? By arming millions of readers with persuasive arguments against State power, was he secretly building the framework for a worldwide police state?
The idea that a renowned literary work could be propaganda is not inherently absurd. There’s a theory that Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Papers were just that, and it’s a compelling theory when you consider Hamilton’s abusive, corrupt, and borderline tyrannical actions once he came into power thereafter as these actions were in direct contradiction with values espoused in the Papers. For specifics on this, I recommend Patrick Newman’s book Cronyism. Unlike Hamilton, however, Hayek’s beliefs and his activism in pursuit of them remained consistent until his death.
This characterization of Hayek is frivolous to say the least. Ehret’s claim that Hayek supported a “world government police” is contradicted in the very chapter which he’s misquoting. In these excerpts, Hayek states the only practical way to implement an international body would be through “federation” - the old definition of which means “union by agreement” meaning membership is voluntary. He then outwardly critiques the League of Nations for its attempt to govern the entire world (opposed to neighboring blocs):
The form of international government under which certain strictly defined powers are transferred to an international authority, while in all other respects the individual countries remain responsible for their internal affairs, is, of course, that of federation. (Pg. 232)
There will probably exist a strong tendency to make any new international organization all-comprehensive and world-wide… such ambitions were at the root of the weakness of the League of Nations. (Pg. 235)
Ehret’s implication that Hayek is in cahoots with the Fabians and his claim that Hayek wanted “to make sure that all the local regions of the world all play by the same rules” are both contradicted (in the same chapter), where he criticizes Fabians specifically for their treatment of small countries:
It is significant that the most passionate advocates of a centrally directed economic New Order for Europe should display, like their Fabian and German prototypes, the most complete disregard of the individuality and of the rights of small nations. (Pg. 231)
Hayek critiques Fabians for their socialist tendencies throughout the book as well
Painting Hayek as some sort of technocrat - advocate for government by an elite class of technical experts - is also directly contradicted (you guessed it… in the same chapter). Here Hayek claims the fundamental justification for technocracy rests on a fallacy:
The belief that this is a practical solution rests on the fallacy that economic planning is merely a technical task, which can be solved in a strictly objective manner by experts, and that the really vital things would still be left in the hands of the political authorities. (Pg. 229)
I messaged Matthew on LinkedIn in hopes to reason with him but was met with a few more incorrect claims about Hayek:
Those two quotes which call for abolishing economic planning on national or international levels is absurd considering he had no excuse to support international standard making and enforcing organisations like the League of Nations which many living statesmen at the time understood as an oligarchical operation to destroy the nation state system. Additionally his entire worldview that all planning =totalitarian fascism is incompetent and is rooted in basic British Hobbesian liberalism that denies principles of truth and locks in the definition of humanity into beastial selfish creatures in our fundamental essence.
As noted above, Hayek was explicit in his opposition to the League of Nations, so to say he supports its enforcement is blatantly false.
Hayek does not claim that “all planning = totalitarian fascism”. Hayek himself stated in 1976, “It has frequently been alleged that I have contended that any movement in the direction of socialism is bound to lead to totalitarianism. Even though this danger exists, this is not what the book says.”
I’ll let the reader decide whether Libertarianism is “incompetent” and if it “denies principles of truth”. Given that it was the dominant philosophy leading up to the American Revolution and industrial boom of the 19th century… I’m not sold on this claim.
I recommend that everyone read The Road to Serfdom and decide for themselves. The teachings of Hayek have the potential to bring enormous benefit to humanity. It pains me to think of the hundreds of thousands of Whitney Webb followers who may now approach Hayek’s work with a preconceived cynicism. I’m all for exposing historical figures who are wrongfully celebrated - Hamilton (war debt insider trading), Lincoln (suspending habeas corpus) , FDR (potential prior knowledge of Pearl Harbor)- but one needs more than paranoid machinations to accomplish this. Advice for Matthew Erhet: be prepared to back extraordinary claims with extraordinary evidence.
