The claims you hear from these Christian fascist libertarian types as you mention are often:
#1 Marx had a secret love child with his housekeeper
#2 Marx was bad with money
#3 Marx was a devil worshipper
For #1, all we know is Marx’s housekeeper had a child. There is zero evidence Karl was the father, other than some extremely spurious claims by a descendant made a century later during the height of the Cold War.
For #2, no Marx was never rich but that was largely due to being a political exile and radical who for obvious reasons, no capitalist wanted to hire. No reason to think he was actually blowing through a lot of money.
Now when talking to these Christian fascist libertarian types, I have asked them who their political hero is; and invariably they always say “Thomas Jefferson”. And when they do, I will say something like “ok, let’s say #1 and #2 are true. Marx had an affair and had a hard time making ends meet. But JEFFERSON, that guy, we know for a fact he forced himself on his slaves and was almost comically bad with money (he would blow money on wine and books to the point of bankruptcy despite living on the free slave labor of others)”. So if we’re going to judge the political thoughts of people based on their marital fidelity and ability to manage money - even assuming the worst about Marx - your hero really fails that test way worse than Marx. Even bringing up morality in general, Jefferson owned human beings as property, that kind of overshadows anything Marx did anyway.
And while #3 isn’t really relevant, Marx wrote some horny letters to Jenny when he was a teen that invoked satanic imagery, which was apparently kind of a fad at the time. Reading literally anything else Marx has written clearly shows his atheism. But then again, lots of Christians think atheistic Satanists actually believe in a real Satan, so…
The claims you hear from these Christian fascist libertarian types as you mention are often:
#1 Marx had a secret love child with his housekeeper
#2 Marx was bad with money
#3 Marx was a devil worshipper
For #1, all we know is Marx’s housekeeper had a child. There is zero evidence Karl was the father, other than some extremely spurious claims by a descendant made a century later during the height of the Cold War.
For #2, no Marx was never rich but that was largely due to being a political exile and radical who for obvious reasons, no capitalist wanted to hire. No reason to think he was actually blowing through a lot of money.
Now when talking to these Christian fascist libertarian types, I have asked them who their political hero is; and invariably they always say “Thomas Jefferson”. And when they do, I will say something like “ok, let’s say #1 and #2 are true. Marx had an affair and had a hard time making ends meet. But JEFFERSON, that guy, we know for a fact he forced himself on his slaves and was almost comically bad with money (he would blow money on wine and books to the point of bankruptcy despite living on the free slave labor of others)”. So if we’re going to judge the political thoughts of people based on their marital fidelity and ability to manage money - even assuming the worst about Marx - your hero really fails that test way worse than Marx. Even bringing up morality in general, Jefferson owned human beings as property, that kind of overshadows anything Marx did anyway.
And while #3 isn’t really relevant, Marx wrote some horny letters to Jenny when he was a teen that invoked satanic imagery, which was apparently kind of a fad at the time. Reading literally anything else Marx has written clearly shows his atheism. But then again, lots of Christians think atheistic Satanists actually believe in a real Satan, so…
My brainwormed coworker says Milton Friedman or some shit, like an actual libertarian ideologue. Which is a fun alternative to hearing Tommy J.