A Notable Omission

On an episode of The Jason Stapleton Program today, Tom Woods explains why he declined to sign Liberty Against Fascism's "open letter" from libertarians who wanted to clearly distinguish themselves from the Charlottesville thugs:

When it comes to this whole, I have to get on the Internet and tell everybody how much I'm against the Nazis thing, I just, I don't go for that. ... The whole thing is so ridiculous, it's an insult to ask libertarians in effect to sign a petition saying "we're against fascism." Obviously we're against fascism, and if you're dealing with people who are so vacant that they can't see that, then get away from those people, there's no helping those people.

What he doesn't mention is that he's a founding member of one of the groups marching for fascism in Charlottesville. He was one of the few people known as libertarians who would really have benefited from a chance to disassociate himself from that shit. But it turns out that those of us who signed it were, in part, disassociating ourselves from him.

He obviously doesn't want to openly own his associations, but neither does he want to openly repudiate those associations. There's a word for that kind of thing. No, the word isn't "principle." It's "cowardice."

Update: The paleos, as they usually do when confronted with inconvenient facts, immediately start whining about how anyone who criticizes any of them for anything is engaged in "character assassination" (or, better, a "smear"). @AfroLibertarian links to this piece by Woods from 12 years ago, presumably by way of proving ... well, something. Summary: "It's not fair to mention anything I wrote in the past or to assume that my associations actually mean anything."