The 2008 crisis strengthened rather than weakened the political right

Evidence

Yet, as the year grew to a close, it slowly dawned upon most of us that the natural presumption that we were capable of rousting ourselves from the gasping nightmare, that we might proceed to learn from the mistakes and fallacies of the era of Neoliberal Follies, was itself just one more insidious hallucination. A dark slumber cloaked the land. Not only had the sense of crisis passed without any serious attempts to rectify the flaws that had nearly caused the economy to grind to a halt, but unaccountably, the political right had emerged from the tumult stronger, unapologetic, and even less restrained in its rapacity and credulity than prior to the crash. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 8

Categorization

• QUESTION: The core mystery of the whole book: why did the crisis produce no leftward reckoning and a stronger right? This frames the research question the entire volume sets out to answer.
• SEED: Could seed an essay framing how a catastrophic failure of an economic paradigm paradoxically consolidated it, using the ‘nightmare within a nightmare’ structure.
• XREF: connects to: The 2008 crisis was widely read as ending the free-market era. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 538; The 2008 crisis replaced triumphalist free-market rhetoric with open-ended austerity — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 158; The 2008 crisis disoriented the left instead of vindicating its economic worldview — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 46 (+16 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism survived the 2008 crisis relatively unscathed. #corroborates (0.90) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 249
• The 2008 crisis was expected to falsify neoliberal doctrine but did not #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 80
• The 2008 crisis disoriented the left instead of vindicating its economic worldview #corroborates (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 46
• Radical-right ideological themes predated and outran the economic crisis itself #expands (0.80) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1101
• The Right gains ground partly because of what the Left does within limits. #expands (0.80) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1130
• Right-wing ideology enables the recession rather than merely reflecting it #expands (0.80) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1094
• Left economists’ voluntary adherence to orthodoxy explains the left’s failure post-2008. #complicates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 58
• Crisis commentary from 2008-10 shared one syllogism, that failure proves neoliberalism dying #corroborates (0.70) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 93
• The 2008 crisis was fundamentally a crisis of economic ideas #qualifies (0.70) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 132