Neoliberal economism paradoxically enables neoconservative moral politics.

Evidence

For Brown, who is more attentive to the impact of neoliberalism on politics, the rise of neoliberal economism is a fundamental threat to democracy and rights. Neoliberalism constitutes subjects who are indifferent to democratic political values and positively antagonistic to egalitarianism, she argues. Consequently, political problems are transformed into individual ones with market solutions, while civil liberties, the rule of law and fair elections are ‘wholly desacralized’. Paradoxically, she argues, this provides fertile ground for neoconservative attempts to bolster the foundations of family, religion and state, partly through a civilisational discourse that moralises ‘a certain imaginary of the West and its values’. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 17

Categorization

• XREF: The economism/neoconservatism paradox connects directly to the reader’s work on human-rights discourse and political economic policy. — connects to: Neoliberal core ideas mutate to fuse with both left and right worldviews. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 31; Neoliberalism’s weakening of democratic values enables neoconservative moralism and authoritarianism — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 169; Neoliberalism operates through systematic contradiction and disavowal of its own practices — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 81 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism’s weakening of democratic values enables neoconservative moralism and authoritarianism #corroborates (0.95) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 169
• Neoliberalism operates through systematic contradiction and disavowal of its own practices #expands (0.80) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 81
• Neoliberalism redefined liberty as economic rather than political. #expands (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 380
• Neoliberal rationality makes inequality normal and normative in democracy #expands (0.72) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 63