The chess genius the US government tried to jail has died in his adopted homeland of Iceland. His crime? He played a chess match in Yugoslavia, which was then hated by the US for playing a Lincolnesque role against its secessionist states. Was Fischer thereby endorsing the Yugo Union? No, he was putting private life ahead of US orders, and good for him. Good also for Japan, which resisted extraditing him to a US cage, and for Iceland, which granted him asylum and citizenship.
UPDATE from Richard Wall: “It is sad indeed to hear about Bobby Fischer. I think my 2004 article on him and of course Murray Rothbard’s piece on him, reproduced in The Irrepressible Rothbard, still hold up pretty well. Fischer has indeed died young, exactly like his predecessor Paul Morphy, as I hinted might happen.
“USG, vindictive to the last, ‘still regarded him as a fugitive from justice,’ as the horrible BBC obituary states while repeating all the old slurs.”
9:12 am on January 18, 2008 Email Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
