{"id":9251,"date":"2020-08-19T09:53:09","date_gmt":"2020-08-19T08:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=9251"},"modified":"2020-08-19T09:53:09","modified_gmt":"2020-08-19T08:53:09","slug":"gradations-of-evil-neoliberalism-and-neoconservatism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2020\/08\/19\/gradations-of-evil-neoliberalism-and-neoconservatism\/","title":{"rendered":"Gradations of Evil: Neoliberalism and Neoconservatism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the 1970s, the consistent presence of neoliberalism in politics alongside short, sharp bursts of neoconservatism have shaped our planet to a greater extent than any other ideologies. This has been to the detriment of all but a shrinking cast of billionaires that profit in periods of crisis, even during the pandemic<\/a><\/span>. The prognosis is not good, even if the pandemic provides a porthole<\/a><\/span> for the possibility of a realignment.<\/p>\n

Distinct Ideologies<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

At one level, neoliberalism is extreme libertarianism, purged of its earlier socialist or anarchist underpinnings that were ultimately communitarian. Neoliberalism has had a tremendous influence on conservative thinking in recent times. Yet it is not conservatism in a traditional Burkean<\/span> sense of conserving and preserving that which is good. Neoliberals do not advocate moderation, restraint, anti-extremism, perspective, nuance or that ill-defined word \u2018balance,\u2019 save in terms of conventional political rights such as liberty, privacy and freedom of movement.<\/p>\n

Contemporary neoliberals are not supporters of little people, and in effect operate against the interests of the ordinary working person in the name of economies of scale or other workplace rationalisations. It is unbridled free market extremism, engendering a tragedy of the commons.<\/p>\n

It did not begin this way. In its first iteration, the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek warned against the excesses of socialism in The Road to Serfdom <\/em>(1944). This was witnessed in Britain of the 1970\u2019s with the three day working week, refuse on the streets, and the stranglehold of government by the unions. Many of Hayek\u2019s points were valid, and I suspect he would be horrified at the political trajectory his ideas have taken. Similarly, Karly Marx was not responsible for and would have been horrified by Stalin.<\/p>\n

The initial idea behind libertarianism was for a combination of unregulated laissez faire<\/em> economics, and the legitimation of a hedonistic lifestyle through laws and social policies. I see nothing wrong with hedonism per se<\/em> \u2013 or for tolerance of human frailties more generally \u2013 and indeed have spent much of my professional career as a barrister upholding the rights of an accused to due process.<\/p>\n

Neoconservatism, on the other hand, is hardly even capitalist in outlook. It is really an offshoot of a more authoritarian leftism combined with a fundamentalist, morally self-righteous neocolonialism<\/a><\/span> informed by \u2018Christian\u2019 values. It is associated in particular with the administrations of George W. Bush, with Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle its most prominent ideologues.<\/p>\n

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Left to right: Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Many neoconservatives made an ideological journey from the anti-Stalinist left to the camp of American conservatism during the 1960s and 1970s, with its intellectual roots in the magazine Commentary<\/a><\/span>, edited by Norman Podhoretz. But anti-Stalinist does not imply a respect for human rights or the rule of law; its followers\u2019 ambitions were simply global rather than limited to a particular country, as was the case with Stalin\u2019s approach.<\/p>\n

Neoconservatism adopts the unregulated free market, but not libertarian permissiveness or due process or a respect for international law: the ends would justify any means. That is what makes it distinctly evil. It attracted money from Christian fundamentalist and the rapture movement<\/a><\/span> and cohabited with authoritarian academics.<\/p>\n

Thus, there is a world of difference between former Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption<\/span>, a defender of human rights and free markets, and Tony Blair, the UK\u2019s foremost neoconservatives. Blair is a fundamentalist Christian, a self-deluding mediocrity, who exported a destabilising jihadist war based on an absurd world view and sold it as a humanitarian intervention. He cannot really be described as a socialist \u2013 although state bureaucracies expanded massively under his New Labour \u2013 but nor is he a genuine conservative. He is simply a telegenic opportunist who became drunk on power.<\/p>\n

His neocon influencers were Bush and Irish-American pseudo intellectuals like Daniel Moynihan, who fused Christian jihadism with racist fundamentalism and veneration of a deregulated market. The worst of all possible worlds.<\/p>\n