Podcast Interview
Host: Peter McCormack
Guest: Alias
McCormack: Alias, people often frame you as a libertarian. You advocate for financial autonomy, critique central banking, and champion decentralized systems. You’ve written extensively about emancipation from institutional control. That sounds like libertarianism, no?
Alias: I understand why people make that assumption, but I don’t identify as a libertarian. Not because I disagree with everything libertarians say, but because I don't think in ideological terms. Ideology is a prison. It leads you to defend positions out of allegiance rather than analysis.
McCormack: But your work—your essays and articles—surely aligns with a lot of libertarian principles doesn't it?
Alias: Sure, but alignment is not the same as identification. A broken clock aligns with the time twice a day, but that doesn’t mean it works.
Look, take someone like John McAfee. A brilliant man, someone I deeply sympathize with. He understood the system for what it was—a rigged game designed to extract obedience, not cooperation. He was fundamentally right in many of his observations about power, surveillance, and control. But even when you’re morally certain of something, you have to assume the possibility that you could be wrong.
That’s where McAfee fell short. He was so certain—so utterly convinced—that it consumed him. His radicalism wasn’t just something the majority of people weren’t open to; it became self-destructive. He isolated himself, made enemies everywhere, and spiraled into paranoia. When you become the lone prophet in the desert, shouting that everyone else is blind, you might be right—but you’re also making sure no one listens.
McCormack: So, you're saying radicalism—even if it’s correct—can be counterproductive?
Alias: Exactly. Most people hold different opinions in different circumstances. Beliefs aren’t binary switches; they’re fluid, shaped by context. When you push an extreme view—especially one that demands an absolute break from the status quo—you don’t win converts. You scare people off.
That’s why I refuse to wear ideological labels. The moment you declare yourself a libertarian, a socialist, an anarchist—whatever—you’re limiting the conversation. You’re telling people, “I have a fixed position, and I will defend it no matter what.” I prefer to remain unaligned. That way, I can think.
