Would it surprise you to know that choosing between left and right is not a real choice when you vote? Many people instinctively, or through experience, come to this realisation. Comedian Russell Brand made headlines during a previous UK General Election by vocalising the pointlessness of voting and many ordinary people have simply given up voting saying ‘it makes no difference’. The tiny support for Labour in 2024, with the tinier support for Conservatives, showed how people seem to be giving up on business-as-usual politics.

Perhaps if we understood why our vote seems to do so little we might choose differently and could change politics wholesale. Your vote could make a difference, but only if you get beyond rhetoric and look instead at what is actually happening.

In his now removed video “The Collectivist Conspiracy” G. Edward Griffin, author of The Creature From Jekyll Island, explains how and why your choice between left and right is a false choice and makes no more than superficial difference, along with exposing other tricks we fall for. Awareness of the trick is the first step to avoiding the trick.

“I think first of all it’s important to talk about and understand this left-right paradigm – what is this all about?

“Most of us including myself, for certain in my younger years, was brought up thinking you had to choose, if you were smart at least, you would have to choose politically between being on the right or the left. You had to have a political view and I thought, in those days I thought that the extreme right would be something like Fascism or Nazism and on the extreme left, of course, you would have Communism or Socialism just a little bit short of that.

“So that was the paradigm I was taught and it seemed to make sense at the time. But as I became more involved in these issues and learned more about them I began to realise that the basic philosophy between the so-called extreme left people, Communists and Socialists, and the so-called philosophy on the right, of the Fascists and the Nazis was really the same. How can this be? They’re supposed to be opposites of each other. Then I began to realise that there is something common to all these philosophies that was left out of my training and education, and that was the ideology of collectivism.

“I began to realise that the thing that was common to them all was something called Collectivism. That’s a word that is not very well used. It’s not very entrenched in the vocabulary of most people today but I found out that it was a very commonly used word about a century ago. People wrote a lot about Collectivism and the opposite of that would be Individualism. Those are two words that are, sort of, abandoned today but in my view I think they need to be recaptured and understood and used more.

“I realised that Communism and Fascism, the so called opposites, are merely variants of Collectivism. They are the same thing and they believe that the group is more important than the individual, for example, and the individual must be sacrificed if necessary for the greater good of the greater number. They believe that the state should be all powerful and that the people should obey the state for the greater good of the greater number and all of that sort of thing. They believe that rights are granted by the state, they are not part of a human being, they are not God given, they are not entrenched in his body and soul, they have to be granted by the state.

“All of these things, you look at them one by one, Communists and Fascists and Nazis and Socialists, they all believe that. So wherein lies the conflict you see in them? I began to question that and I realised that it’s partly a trick. In fact I think it’s a huge trick, it’s a great scam because people even today are thinking that they have to choose between the right and the left not realising that no matter which way they go they have accepted basically the same ideology underneath.

“Now it’s true that the leaders of these groups, like the Stalins of the world and the Adolf Hitlers and the Mao Tse Tungs of the world and so forth, the leaders of these groups on left and right will fight each other and they will go to war with each other and there will be tremendous battles as we saw in World War Two, for example. But what are they fighting over? Ideology? Not at all, because they agree on ideology. What they are fighting over is dominance – who is going to rule – that’s all they’re fighting over. And once you get that picture historically it’s not too difficult to see that that’s the same thing going on even today.”

With the core collectivist ideologies the same, what then is the main difference between the far left and far right? Why do we even refer to there being a left and a right?

From my observations and learning over the years, I suggest this theory: the left are globalist socialists, the right are national socialists.

I believe this is significant to understanding modern media portrayals of left and right. Unfortunately for libertarians, neither group is particularly helpful to our cause. The reality seems to be that socialism, in whatever form, is quite popular at the moment. The far-right anti-immigration protesters aren’t interested in smaller government, they just want to use government authoritarianism to put their vision of national sovereignty first (expanding individual sovereignty and shrinking the state isn’t particularly part of it). The far-left climate/antifa/etc protesters aren’t interested in smaller government either, they want to use government authoritarianism to put their vision of global utopia first (expanding individual sovereignty isn’t part of their agenda either). When media or government voices condemn the far-right, while winking a the far-left, it’s not the authoritarianism or the socialism they are criticising, it’s the nationalist vision for it.

National sovereignty, however, is an important principle for defense of the kind of non-authoritarian individual liberty that libertarians really want. It’s far easier to push back against big intrusive government and totalitarianism at a national level, than it would be under a global despotism. This must not be confused with support for national socialism which libertarians absolutely reject, but which is sadly where much popular support seems to be.

A libertarian’s cause is helped by a robust defense of the role of small government, national sovereignty, under a constitution that protects individual natural rights. Unfortunately, since the media have made such a thorough job of associating defense of national sovereignty for even legitimate reasons, with far-right national socialist authoritarianism, racism and xenophobia (which sadly is a real thing), it’s a tough job trying to separate the two. But it’s a case that needs making.

There is nothing about a nation standing in its sovereignty that by default implies racism or xenophobia. Any accusations of xenophobia for such a defensive state, apply equally to any nation that applies laws and restrictions on who may cross its borders. However it should be noted that a nation’s policies regarding border defense are rarely imposed collectively against peoples of other nations (except in times of conflict), but rather individually based on merit, duration and purpose of stay, and other much more nuanced factors. Is this truly xenophobia? No. In fact it’s individualism.

Individual states represent diversity. Global domination represents homogeneity. Individual states permit cultures and individuals to be themselves, and the whole world benefits from the variety of lessons learned from different approaches to life, law or standards, suited to the needs of different places and peoples. Globalism leads to uniformity, where poor decisions or standards have negative impact on the whole world before being caught and corrected (if they ever are corrected). Individual states place democratic accountability in a more reachable position by the people. Globalism keeps the people and the rulers far apart, with little democratic recourse, and little acknowledgement of diverse wants and needs. I could go on.

One thing seems clear to me, individual freedom is more able to be protected within a smaller defined polity, than under a global government. There may be exceptions to this rule somewhere in the galaxy, but knowing human nature, on this planet, we can’t expect flawed rulers and psychopaths to never abuse authority. For that reason, retaining national sovereignty is merely a first defense for individual liberty.

The next steps matter too, such as a written constitution limiting the state, and protecting individual rights. That would also go a long way towards quashing the racism of authoritarian nationalists, and should put people at ease about national sovereignty. The protection of a truly liberating constitution won’t be mentioned by the far-right, because they want their authoritarianism. It won’t be mentioned by the far-left authoritarians either, they’re not actually interested in ditching racism or authoritarianism, only in using the nastiness of far-right nationalist authoritarians  to steer people towards their nasty globalist authoritarianism instead.

As you can see, it really does matter whether you vote left or right. My advice. Vote neither. Vote for your individual freedom in a sovereign state… if you can find a candidate willing to offer it.