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