A founding ordoliberal thinker condemned Western colonialism as a chain of crimes against humanity

Evidence

At the same time, Rüstow chastised the West for the epoch of discoveries, blaming avarice, addiction to power, and sadism as the strongest motivations of the early expansionism. … In Rüstow’s analysis, anything positive weighs “feather light” compared to the crimes committed under the auspices of colonial imperialism, a “seamless chain of heaviest crime against humanity” committed over half a thousand years and continuing to his days of writing (Rüstow 1957, 506). — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1298

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Mont Pèlerin historiography theme of the network’s ambivalent relationship to empire and decolonization, relevant to the reader’s broader project on neoliberal origins.