Recently published, Hayek’s Bastards is Quinn Slobodian’s seventh book, which argues that while the rise of the populist Right in today’s society is often described as a backlash against neoliberalism, it is in fact more of a frontlash.
In his talk, Quinn Slobodian read from the introduction of his book, “Volk Capital”, explaining how neoliberalism has been adopted by the populist Right. Neoliberalism emerged in the mid-20th century, advocating for deregulated markets and minimal state intervention. Influenced by thinkers like Friedrich Hayek, this ideology argued that free markets produce the most efficient outcomes and that government poses a threat to individual freedom.
Hayek’s Bastards delves into the ways in which these ideologies, made extremely popular in the 20th century, laid the groundwork for contemporary populist movements. The populist Right, Quinn Slobodian argues, adopted this neoliberal rhetoric to further its own goals. Its focus on individual achievement and national identity often intertwines with neoliberal ideals of personal freedom and market success. Many of the core thinkers of the recent Far Right from Charles Murray to Javier Milei seek to deepen the social Darwinist dynamics of capitalist competition, while also intertwining discussions of race, capitalism, and societal hierarchies.
Following the fall of the Soviet Union, neoliberals began to wonder whether they had really “won” and refocused their fight against new progressive targets, such as the green movement. Egalitarianism thus became the successor to communism as the common enemy for neoliberals in the late 20th century, thereby laying the groundwork for the emerging popular Right to adopt gender, race, and other components of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) as their common enemy in the early 21st century, with scientific rhetoric being used to “prove” their arguments.
Following his reading, Quinn Slobodian and Marie-Laure Salles further discussed the continuities between the two ideologies, delving deeper into the significance of social Darwinism, as well as the dovetailing of the neoliberal love of scientific rhetoric and populist Right’s use of religion as part of its agenda.
The discussion was followed by a Q&A, during which Quinn Slobodian delved into the close ties between race, history, and white nationalism.
In addition to Hayek’s Bastards, Quinn Slobodian is author and editor of seven books translated into ten languages, including Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism. He contributes regularly to the New York Times, Guardian, and New York Review of Books. In 2024, Prospect UK named him one of the World’s 25 Top Thinkers.
Quinn Slobodian is a specialist in the history of the “Geneva School” and participated in a second event at the Geneva Graduate Institute on 21 May, “The Institut de hautes études internationales and Neoliberalism: Historical Perspectives”, which considered the role of the Institute in the making of neoliberalism, from the 1930s and the emergence of the “Geneva School” to the post-World War II road to Mont-Pélerin, with the goal of better understanding the connection between the globalism of the League of Nations and the birth of neoliberalism.