My dear old friend Jeff Riggenbach died today.
Jeff was a brilliant writer who penned two pieces on Randolph Bourne, the namesake of Antiwar.com’s parent foundation, The Randolph Bourne Institute.
As a teenager, I was a news junkie. (That never changed.) I listened regularly to KFWB News radio in Los Angeles. One of their anchormen, Jeff Riggenbach, had a distinctive baritone voice. When I was 19, I was doing a bit of selling marijuana. A friend came to tell me of someone who wanted to buy a pound. I told him to bring his friend by. When the friend arrived and started talking, I said “You’re Jeff Riggenbach!” “I’m aware of that,” he replied.
Over the years I met Jeff over and over at events and homes of friends. In 1978 we were working in the same offices, Jeff at Libertarian Review and me at Students for a Libertarian Society. We became fast friends.
The Mises Institute says this about Jeff:
Jeff Riggenbach is a journalist, author, editor, broadcaster, and educator. A member of the Organization of American Historians and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute, he has written for such newspapers as the New York Times, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle; such magazines as Reason, Inquiry, and Liberty; and such websites as LewRockwell.com, AntiWar.com, and RationalReview.com. His books include In Praise of Decadence (1998), Why American History Is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism (2009), and Persuaded by Reason: Joan Kennedy Taylor & the Rebirth of American Individualism (2014). Drawing on vocal skills he honed in classical and all-news radio in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Houston, Riggenbach has also narrated the audiobook versions of numerous libertarian works, many of them available on Mises.org.
Jeff was a brilliant and creative man. He died at 74 after a long illness. He made the world better and his passage is a great loss. I will miss him very much.
I listened to “Man, Economy, and State” narrated by him in that wonderful baritone on a cross-country drive last March. Requiescat in Pace.
He certainly did have a wonderful voice. And he was a wonderful guy.
R.I.P. Jeff Riggenbach!
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” Mark Twain
Speaking purely in praise of decadence, ordering cheeba by the pound is a total baller move. RIP.
I Listened to “For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto” among others narrated by him. Jeff’s contribution to the Mises institute changed my life. https://mises.org/library/new-liberty-libertarian-manifesto-0
As a revisionist he refused (or failed) to touch one particular thing: the Holocaust.
It wasn’t because he was Jewish (he wasn’t), either. It was just a shrewd career move. He had a long and successful career, unlike Joe Sobran, David Irving, Norman Finkelstein, Philip Giraldi, Nick Kollerstrom and many others you never got to hear of in the first place.
I’ve heard of all of them except Kollerstrom.
Maybe the reason he didn’t “touch” the Holocaust as a “revisionist” was because he cared about fact, truth, and reality.
I am sorry to hear of his passing, I wish there were more journalists like him and not like the ones in the tabloid MSM. Most of the Media distorts the truth or tells outright lies.