Hayeks Bastards

The book argues that contemporary right-wing authoritarianism and the Far Right (including figures like Donald Trump and Javier Milei) did not emerge in opposition to neoliberalism, but rather from within it. Following the Cold War, neoliberal thinkers grew concerned that social movements like civil rights and feminism were undermining their agenda of pure market freedom. To counter this, they forged alliances with racial psychologists, neoconfederates, and ethnonationalists—the forerunners of the alt-right—by drawing on biological and scientific language (genetics, cognitive psychology) to embed the idea of competition and advocate for a hierarchy of race, gender, and cultural homogeneity as necessary for true market function. These “disruptors,” therefore, are presented as the latest, albeit repellent, evolution of the neoliberal project