Neoliberals exploited their own policy-induced crisis to revive the very program that caused it
Evidence
Capitalist realism everywhere… On television yesterday morning, the relentless message coming from pundits and vox pops — even from most of those who reject the particular form that the cuts have taken — was that “something had to be done”. The Great Bullingdon Club Swindle is larceny and deception on such a grand scale that one almost has to admire its breathtaking audacity. The Bullingdon Club has pushed Doublethink to new limits with its mantric repetition of the ludicrous claim that it was New Labour policy, rather than the bank bailouts, that was responsible for the massive deficit. The strategy seems to be to employ the illocutionary power of repetition — if they keep saying it, then it will have been true. The Bullingdon boys are working a mass hypnosis trick, forcing through shock doctrine measures while the population are still in a kind of postcrash trance. But where, previously, neoliberals had used the crises in other political systems (state socialism, social democracy) as an opportunity to helicopter in their “reforms”, on this occasion they are using a crisis brought about by neoliberal policy itself to try to electro-shock the neoliberal programme back into life. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1466
Categorization
- XREF: The ‘shock doctrine’ and electro-shock framing links directly to Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine and to the earlier capitalist-realism theme Fisher develops throughout this book. — connects to: Neoliberalism uses crises it itself caused as opportunities to deepen its agenda — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1466; State interventionism itself was deployed to rescue and deepen the neoliberal model — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1605; Leading neoliberals blamed regulation and inaction rather than their own policy failures — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 22 (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- Neoliberalism uses crises it itself caused as opportunities to deepen its agenda
#corroborates(1.00) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1466 - Neoliberals actively engineered their post-crisis survival rather than winning by default
#corroborates(0.88) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 23 - State interventionism itself was deployed to rescue and deepen the neoliberal model
#complicates(0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1605 - Leading neoliberals blamed regulation and inaction rather than their own policy failures
#complicates(0.82) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 22 - The crisis-as-government-fault narrative was engineered to justify austerity
#expands(0.82) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 950 - Neoliberal policies produced experiments whose results fed yet more neoliberal projects
#corroborates(0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1983 - Victims of failed neoliberal policy are forced to pay its costs
#expands(0.78) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1466 - Neoliberalism’s crisis strategy redirected blame from banks onto state debt
#expands(0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 475 - Neoliberalism survives crises through deliberate policy adaptability, not fixed doctrine.
#complicates(0.72) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 206