Episode Details

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, neoliberalism, with its belief in the virtues of markets and competition, seemed to have triumphed. But in the decades that followed, neoliberalism had a problem: the rise of social movements, from civil rights and feminism to environmentalism, were now proving roadblocks in the road to freedom, nurturing a culture of government dependency, public spending, political correctness and special pleading.  Neoliberals needed an antidote.

They found it in nature. Historian Quinn Slobodian explains how neoliberal thinkers drew on the language of science to embed the idea of ‘competition’ ever deeper into social life, to reinstate a hierarchy of gender, race and cultural difference, and to advocate cultural homogeneity as essential for markets to truly work.

Reading and misreading the writings of their sages, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, they forged alliances with racial psychologists, neoconfederates, ethnonationalists that would become known as the alt-right.

Insightful, provocative and expertly-researched, this conversation provides a timely and essential understanding of modern geopolitics.

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