Ilana Mercer

Ilana Mercer is a paleolibertarian author, columnist, blogger and thinker. She is the author of three books, including Into the Cannibals Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa (2011) and The Trump Revolution: The Donald's Creative Destruction Deconstructed (2016), which was "the first libertarian defense" of the Donald Trump candidacy.

Early life

Ilana Mercer was born in South Africa. Her father, a rabbi and "vocal opponent of apartheid," was "harassed by the South African security forces" and, consequently, moved his family to Israel. Later returning to the country of her birth, Mercer earned degrees at the University of South Africa, before immigrating to Canada and finally settling in the United States.

Column

Mercer's weekly column began in 1999, in the now defunct Canadian North Shore News, and currently appears on WorldNetDaily.com, the Unz Review, Townhall, Quarterly Review, and American Greatness.

Books

Mercer is the author of three books. Her first, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With a Corrupt Culture (2003), is a collection of essays which cover culture and art, economics, crime, immigration, foreign policy and more through a paleolibertarian lens. In his review of Broad Sides, Nelson Hultberg, executive director of Americans for a Free Republic, commented on Mercer’s “libertarian politics and traditional values.” “Mercer brings us back to Jefferson,” Hultberg said, in that “She passes judgment,” rejects “the madness of relativism,” and champions “a natural aristocracy among men composed of virtues and talents.” Peter Brimelow of VDARE.com said, "This volume appears at a moment of peculiar crisis for libertarians in general," implying that libertarian orthodoxy tends to avoid issues of immigration.