Anti-New Deal business propaganda and Cold War totalitarianism fears jointly reshaped US regulatory policy

Evidence

The first source was in the US business community’s opposition to New Deal reforms, which, not unlike the propaganda of the Gilded Age millionaires, cast resistance to regulation as a “righteous fight to defend democracy from dictatorship.” A second source was the dread of totalitarianism and collectivism incited by World War II and the cold war, a direct inheritance from Hayek. These defensive themes infiltrated and reshaped US political thought, and they gradually transformed policy makers’ assumptions about the regulatory role of the state. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 346

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the reader’s Complaints About Immodesty piece — moral/political panic language deployed for class/identity signaling, here in the regulatory sphere. — connects to: Neoliberal fears of regulatory coercion outweighed cost-benefit arguments in shaping US regulatory policy — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 345; Business opponents rhetorically equated the New Deal with totalitarianism — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1444; Neoliberal anti-regulation ideology and the war on terror jointly sheltered surveillance capitalism from scrutiny — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1079 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Business opponents rhetorically equated the New Deal with totalitarianism #expands (0.95) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1444
• Anti-New Deal businessmen funded and networked early neoliberalism, contradicting the marginality myth #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1439
• US Cold War anti-communism reshaped the drafting of social and economic rights #corroborates (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 190
• Neoliberal anti-regulation ideology and the war on terror jointly sheltered surveillance capitalism from scrutiny #complicates (0.72) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1079
• Totalitarian susceptibility persisted from technological and economic developments #corroborates (0.70) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2029