Manufactured ignorance buys time for neoliberals to stymie post-crash reform.

Evidence

From this perspective, the crisis is, in the first instance, an epistemological phenomenon. The beauty of the manufacture of ignorance is that it has proven an ideal short-term response to unanticipated surprises: when disaster hits, and reformers propose to strike while the iron is hot with their nostrums and antidotes, the Neoliberal Thought Collective can stymie them and can buy time by filling the public sphere with fog. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 942

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the ‘manufacture of ignorance’ literature (Oreskes & Conway) and to Mirowski’s broader argument that denialism is a deliberate strategy, not mere confusion. — connects to: Neoliberals weaponize performative ignorance to paralyze post-crisis response — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 40; Feigned ignorance of outcomes is structurally required for neoliberal order — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 276; The Great Recession triggered a redoubling of deliberate ignorance production in economics — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 629 (+2 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The collapse of the epistemic and the political into a temporal strategy — fog as a way to weaponize delay against reform windows — is the kind of mechanism that rewards revisiting.

Broader Connections

• The Great Recession triggered a redoubling of deliberate ignorance production in economics #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 629
• The economics profession’s failed self-reform serves the neoliberal project by generating noise #expands (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 835
• Neoliberals actively engineered their post-crisis survival rather than winning by default #expands (0.72) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 23