And on the other end of the political spectrum....
The Libertarian Utopia That’s Just a Bunch of White Guys on a Tiny Island
The women of Liberland may be free, but they most certainly will not be equal. "Equality rights—don't be alarmed," Kacper Zajac, Liberland's Minister of Justice and the author of its constitution, says by way of introduction of this contentious topic. "It’s equality before the law and before the law only." A PowerPoint presentation drives this home with the word "ONLY!" in all caps. "No other equality is acceptable, obviously."
It’s a vague introduction to a theme that hangs heavy in the air, a reminder that women are not men, blacks are not whites, refugees aren’t citizens, and the poor aren’t rich. Zajac just wants to cut the crap. Political correctness has no place in Liberland, everyone—all five dozen white men—can agree.
We are in Novi Sad, Serbia, just a short trip from Liberland, the unrecognized, unpopulated Libertarian microstate and the subject of this three-day conference. We won't actually get to Liberland, which was the original plan, and we won't take a boat along the Danube and see it in the distance, which was the backup plan. We will eat fried fish near a patch of land that the President of Liberland will assure us looks a lot like Liberland, and those of us who fly home via Air Liberland will ooh and aah at Liberland from above. But Liberland is going through a couple of legal issues, and its neighbors are pretty pissed, so we're not actually going to set foot in the freest country in the world, which aside from not actually being a country is also beginning to seem not all that free.
On April 13 of last year, Vít Jedlička, a Libertarian politician from the Czech Republic's Free Citizens Party, ventured into some unclaimed swampland he discovered on Wikipedia, planted a flag, and called it Liberland. He, his girlfriend, and another friend unanimously voted him president of the muddy patch of land and alerted the media to the birth of a nation. Since then, Jedlička and his friends and followers have failed to make a definitive legal claim on the territory, which Croatia, in particular, is reluctant to concede (border disputes are kind of a "thing" in this part of the world, you may recall), and much of the media attention Jedlička received has written the whole thing off as a lark, a fantasy.
But Liberland is only a fantasy for Vít Jedlička inasmuch as an immigrant-free Hungary is a fantasy for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, both nations nestled in the belly of a right-leaning Central Europe. It's only an impossibility as much as a win for UKIP's Brexiteers was an impossibility: once a fringe movement, later an (inter)national nightmare. And it's only as unfeasible as a Trump presidency—funny how that worked out—fueled by “straight talk” in the service of white men of means, and just about no one else.
The actuality of a country of Liberland—with residents and infrastructure and global recognition—hardly even matters. Over 103,000 fully registered citizens are willing to suspend their disbelief that the overgrown, three-square-mile land mass could become Libertarian utopia. Liberland has distended beyond the realm of fantasy into a living, growing, big-spending movement, with a massive following and a few off-brand splinter groups. And for an organization driven by xenophobic, Eurosceptic, tax-avoidant white men, the timing couldn’t be better.
The Libertarian Utopia That’s Just a Bunch of White Guys on a Tiny Island | GQ
The Libertarian Utopia That’s Just a Bunch of White Guys on a Tiny Island
The women of Liberland may be free, but they most certainly will not be equal. "Equality rights—don't be alarmed," Kacper Zajac, Liberland's Minister of Justice and the author of its constitution, says by way of introduction of this contentious topic. "It’s equality before the law and before the law only." A PowerPoint presentation drives this home with the word "ONLY!" in all caps. "No other equality is acceptable, obviously."
It’s a vague introduction to a theme that hangs heavy in the air, a reminder that women are not men, blacks are not whites, refugees aren’t citizens, and the poor aren’t rich. Zajac just wants to cut the crap. Political correctness has no place in Liberland, everyone—all five dozen white men—can agree.
We are in Novi Sad, Serbia, just a short trip from Liberland, the unrecognized, unpopulated Libertarian microstate and the subject of this three-day conference. We won't actually get to Liberland, which was the original plan, and we won't take a boat along the Danube and see it in the distance, which was the backup plan. We will eat fried fish near a patch of land that the President of Liberland will assure us looks a lot like Liberland, and those of us who fly home via Air Liberland will ooh and aah at Liberland from above. But Liberland is going through a couple of legal issues, and its neighbors are pretty pissed, so we're not actually going to set foot in the freest country in the world, which aside from not actually being a country is also beginning to seem not all that free.
On April 13 of last year, Vít Jedlička, a Libertarian politician from the Czech Republic's Free Citizens Party, ventured into some unclaimed swampland he discovered on Wikipedia, planted a flag, and called it Liberland. He, his girlfriend, and another friend unanimously voted him president of the muddy patch of land and alerted the media to the birth of a nation. Since then, Jedlička and his friends and followers have failed to make a definitive legal claim on the territory, which Croatia, in particular, is reluctant to concede (border disputes are kind of a "thing" in this part of the world, you may recall), and much of the media attention Jedlička received has written the whole thing off as a lark, a fantasy.
But Liberland is only a fantasy for Vít Jedlička inasmuch as an immigrant-free Hungary is a fantasy for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, both nations nestled in the belly of a right-leaning Central Europe. It's only an impossibility as much as a win for UKIP's Brexiteers was an impossibility: once a fringe movement, later an (inter)national nightmare. And it's only as unfeasible as a Trump presidency—funny how that worked out—fueled by “straight talk” in the service of white men of means, and just about no one else.
The actuality of a country of Liberland—with residents and infrastructure and global recognition—hardly even matters. Over 103,000 fully registered citizens are willing to suspend their disbelief that the overgrown, three-square-mile land mass could become Libertarian utopia. Liberland has distended beyond the realm of fantasy into a living, growing, big-spending movement, with a massive following and a few off-brand splinter groups. And for an organization driven by xenophobic, Eurosceptic, tax-avoidant white men, the timing couldn’t be better.
The Libertarian Utopia That’s Just a Bunch of White Guys on a Tiny Island | GQ
