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The Craziest Schemes that the Government Ever Tried to Push on the Masses

Khalid Elhassan August 13, 2022 39 min

21. That Time When Libertarians Hooked Up With White Supremacists to Try and Bring an Ayn Rand Fantasy to Life

Plan - Radical libertarians tried to split Abaco from the Bahamas — Radical libertarians tried to split Abaco from the Bahamas. Pinterest

The following year, Michael Oliver and his associates once again tried to realize their plan for a libertarian tropical island paradise, this time closer to home: in the Bahamas. In 1973, as the then-British colony neared its independence, some white Bahamians did not want to live in a majority black country ruled by blacks. So they decided to secede, laid claim to the Bahamas’ Abaco islands as the nucleus for a white majority country, and formed the Abaco Independence Movement. That attracted the libertarians as swiftly as garbage on a hot summer day attracts flies.

Oliver and pals passed the plate to buy weapons and explosives for the secessionists. In exchange, they were promised that the white-ruled island would be run on principles that would make Ayn Rand proud. However, the plan backfired when the libertarians’ chosen gunrunner double-crossed them. Rather than smuggle the machineguns they had paid for to the secessionists, he tried to sell them in Costa Rica. He was caught. In the resultant scandal and legal mess, Oliver got deported from the Bahamas, and the plan for a libertarian Caribbean country was abandoned.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.