29. The Would-Be Libertarian Founding Fathers Next Turned to Run Guns to a White Secessionist Movement in the Bahamas
The following year, Michael Oliver and his associates tried to create another 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 objected to living 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 chum attracts sharks.
So they 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. Instead of smuggling the machine guns they had paid for to the secessionists, he tried to sell them in Costa Rica. He was caught, and in the ensuing scandal and legal mess, Oliver got deported from the Bahamas, and the plan for a libertarian Caribbean country was abandoned.