Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Hans-Hermann Hoppe (born 2 September 1949) is a German-American academic associated with Austrian School economics, anarcho-capitalism, right-wing libertarianism, and opposition to democracy.

He is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), senior fellow of the Mises Institute think tank, and the founder and president of the Property and Freedom Society.

He was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, from 1976 to 1978 and earned his habilitation in Foundations of Sociology and Economics from the University of Frankfurt in 1981.

Afterward he taught in West Germany and Italy.

The Mises Institute was founded in 1982 by Lew Rockwell, Burton Blumert, and Murray Rothbard, following a split between the Cato Institute and Rothbard, who had been one of the founders of the Cato Institute.

Hoppe said he was "working and living side-by-side with him, in constant and immediate personal contact," and said that from 1985 until Rothbard's 1995 death, he considered Rothbard his "dearest fatherly friend".

Hoppe was also intimate friends with Ludwig von Mises.

Hoppe resides in Turkey with his wife Gülçin Imre Hoppe, an Austrian school economist and hotelier.

Hoppe was a protege of Murray Rothbard, who established him at UNLV, where Hoppe taught from 1986 to 2008.

From 1986 until his retirement in 2008, Hoppe was a professor in the School of Business at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank that is publisher of much of his work, and was editor of various Mises Institute periodicals.

Hoppe has said that Murray Rothbard was his "principal teacher, mentor and master".

Hoppe came to the United States through Rothbard on a scholarship from the Center for Libertarian Studies, and Rothbard also established Hoppe at UNLV.

The club was known for promoting secessionist and neo-Confederate views in the 1990s.

After Rothbard's death in 1996, Hoppe was a leading anarcho-capitalist figure at the Mises Institute.

Hoppe was active in the John Randolph Club, a far-right alliance of paleolibertarians and paleoconservatives that was organized by Rothbard and associated with the Rockford Institute.

Hoppe has written extensively in opposition to democracy, notably in his 2001 book Democracy: The God That Failed.

The book favors exclusionary "covenant communities" that are "founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin".

A section of the book favoring expulsions of democrats and homosexuals from society helped popularize Hoppe on the far-right.

Hoppe's book Democracy: The God That Failed, published in 2001, argues that democracy is a cause of civilizational decline.

Passages in the book oppose universal suffrage and favor "natural elites".

In the book, Hoppe blames democratic forms of government for various social and economic problems, and attributes democracy's failures to pressure groups which seek to increase government expenditures and regulations.

Hoppe proposes alternatives and remedies, including secession, decentralization of government, and "complete freedom of contract, occupation, trade and migration".

Hoppe argues that monarchy would preserve individual liberty more effectively than democracy.

The book helped popularize Hoppe in the far-right, particularly a section of the book that called for the expulsion of political rivals.

Janek Wasserman writes that Hoppe "reimagined the Austrian legacy as one of authoritarianism, conservatism, antidemocracy, and anti-Enlightenment".

In 2004, a student's complaint about Hoppe's lecture comments regarding homosexuals and time preference led to an investigation and non-disciplinary letter to Hoppe by UNLV, which was subsequently withdrawn after a controversy over academic freedom.

Hoppe founded the Property and Freedom Society in 2006, and he has included white nationalists among speakers at the organization's conferences in Turkey.

Hoppe was born in Peine, West Germany.

He completed his undergraduate studies at Saarland University and received his MA and PhD degrees from Goethe University Frankfurt.

He studied under Jürgen Habermas, a leading German intellectual of the post-WWII era, but came to reject Habermas's ideas and European leftism generally.

In 2006, Hoppe founded The Property and Freedom Society (PFS), with annual conferences in Bodrum, Turkey.

It and the Mises Institute represent a paleolibertarian challenge to the Mont Pelerin Society and Atlas Network of think tanks.

Figures of the European New Right and the American alt-right have attended PFS conferences.

Quinn Slobodian and Dieter Plehwe describe Hoppe as a "racialist right-wing libertarian", and Slobodian writes that the conferences have included members of the former John Randolph Club along with "new advocates of stateless libertarianism and racial secession".

On the fifth anniversary of PFS, Hoppe reflected on its goals: "On the one hand, positively, it was to explain and elucidate the legal, economic, cognitive and cultural requirements and features of a free, state-less natural order. On the other hand, negatively, it was to unmask the State and showcase it for what it really is: an institution run by gangs of murderers, plunderers and thieves, surrounded by willing executioners, propagandists, sycophants, crooks, liars, clowns, charlatans, dupes and useful idiots – an institution that dirties and taints everything it touches."

Hoppe was criticized for inviting white nationalist speakers such as Jared Taylor and neo-Nazi Richard B. Spencer to speak at the PFS.

Describing the PFS, the Southern Poverty Law Center said in 2016 that "in Hoppe one can see the connection between the ultra-Libertarians and white nationalists".

Intelligencer in 2017 described the annual PFS meeting as "Davos, but for racists".

Slobodian wrote in 2023 that "prophets of racial and social breakdown share the stage with investment advisors and financial consultants" at the conferences.