Overview

How neoliberals turned to nature to defend inequality after the end of the Cold War Neoliberals should have seen the end of the Cold War as a total victory—but they didn’t. Instead, they saw the chameleon of communism changing colors from red to green. The poison of civil rights, feminism, and environmentalism ran through the veins of the body politic and they needed an antidote. To defy demands for equality, many neoliberals turned to nature. Race, intelligence, territory, and precious metal would be bulwarks against progressive politics. Reading and misreading the writings of their sages, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, they articulated a philosophy of three hards—hardwired human nature, hard borders, and hard money—and forged the alliances with racial psychologists, neoconfederates, ethnonationalists, and goldbugs that would become known as the alt-right. Following Hayek’s bastards from Murray Rothbard to Charles Murray to Javier Milei, we find that key strains of the Far Right emerged within the neoliberal intellectual movement not against it. What has been reported as an ideological backlash against neoliberal globalization in recent years is often more of a frontlash. This history of ideas shows us that the reported clash of opposites is more like a family feud.

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Reviews

""An Australian Book Review Best Book of the Year"" ""A Conversation Best Book of the Year"" ""An Irish Times Best Book of the Year"" ""Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism"" ""Bracingly original. . . . Hayek’s Bastards demonstrates how a history of ideas can be riveting. Slobodian grounds intellectual abstractions in the lives of the people who espoused them. . . . Slobodian’s book offers an illuminating history to our current bewildering moment.""---Jennifer Szalai, New York Times ""Indispensable. . . . Entertaining. Slobodian’s wry commentary offers welcome respite from both the difficulty and the moral odiousness of his subject.""---Becca Rothfeld, Washington Post ""As Quinn Slobodian makes clear in his bracing history of the intellectual origins of the alt-right, the conventional story misses out big part of the picture. ""---David Runciman, London Review of Books ""With real empirical depth and analytical subtlety, Hayek’s Bastards traces the origins of today’s far-right to a split within neoliberalism, and a ‘new fusionism’ of liberal economy and hard-hereditarian ‘race science’ — and all is made clear. One of the sharpest guides to the new reaction, it also casts light on the seemingly contradictory formation of libertarian-authoritarianism, of free trade and closed borders, and of an extreme monetary populism that is also extremely deferential to the wealthy.""---Richard Seymour ""Quinn Slobodian has established himself as one of the sharpest intellectual historians of neoliberalism.""---Bartolomeo Sala, Jacobin ""A bravura performance of intellectual inquiry."" * Publishers Weekly, starred review * ""Fascinating. . . . Slobodian’s book draws our attention to what might appear an astonishing fact. . . that it has proven very easy to support capitalism while being hostile to other fundamental liberal liberties.""---Matt McManus, Illiberalism ""Slobodian’s thesis is novel: he suggests that what is unfolding in Washington is the culmination of a strategic shift by neoliberal planners to achieve more populist support for their particular cause. . . . One of Slobodian’s key achievements. . . is in showing that the entire weight of the extraordinarily successful neoliberal project rests on a foundation of pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo.""---Dave Vetter, The Climate Laundry ""Slobodian marshals impressive archival research. . . . dazzling.""---Aris Roussinos, Unherd ""A rousing relitigation of the 1990s’ ideological scorecard.""---Jon Skolnik, Vanity Fair ""As always Slobodian takes us on a fascinating tour of the right-wing mind. But what I find truly compelling about his analysis [in Hayek’s Bastards] is the broader question that frames it: What happened to neoliberalism after the West’s victory in the Cold War with the Soviet Union in the 1990s and 2000s? ""---Adam Tooze, Chartbook ""I loved Hayek’s Bastards. With rare richness, it coveys how, in every instance, the abiding principle in right-wing politics is always hierarchy and domination, never any particular idea or policy position. Wonderful Stuff. ""---Rick Perlstein, author of Reaganland: America's Right Turn, 1976–1980 ""Quinn Slobodian’s amazing Hayek’s Bastards [is] a closely researched history of the merger of the neoliberal wing of the conservative movement with its white nationalist faction, producing a conservativism obsessed with ‘hard borders, hard-wired human difference, and hard money’.""---Cory Doctorow, author of Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It ""Slobodian helpfully, and often brilliantly, traces the neoliberal threads at work.""---Gareth Dale, Commonweal Magazine ""Slobodian charts clearly how today’s far right is simply a further degeneration from neoliberalism’s celebration of economic inequality and the primacy of economics as the measure of man. We are all living in a world being plundered by Hayek’s bastards now.""---Ian Hughes, Irish Times ""Hayek’s Bastards is an important book. . . . As with Slobodian’s previous books, Hayek’s Bastards shows remarkable thoroughness in terms of research and in pursuing the connections among the thicket of figures populating the netherworld of the new fusionist right. Slobodian has provided his readers with nothing less than a counter-history of the nexus of politics, economics, and ideology in our world. The results are breathtaking but also terrifying.""---John Foster, The Battleground ""Excellent. . . . A painstakingly detailed account of the origins of the modern alt-right, Slobodian examines what he calls a 'frontlash' against neoliberal globalization originating in the immediate aftermath of the end of the Cold War. ""---Kristen R. Ghodsee, Los Angeles Review of Books ""A welcome contribution to the genre of far-right explainers, all too many of which, as Slobodian rightfully notes, neglect to even mention the word capitalism in accounting for the rise of this political force.""---Suzanne Schneider, New York Review of Books

""Bracingly original. . . . Hayek’s Bastards demonstrates how a history of ideas can be riveting. Slobodian grounds intellectual abstractions in the lives of the people who espoused them. . . . Slobodian’s book offers an illuminating history to our current bewildering moment.""---Jennifer Szalai, New York Times ""Indispensable. . . . Entertaining. Slobodian’s wry commentary offers welcome respite from both the difficulty and the moral odiousness of his subject.""---Becca Rothfeld, Washington Post ""With real empirical depth and analytical subtlety, Hayek’s Bastards traces the origins of today’s far-right to a split within neoliberalism, and a ‘new fusionism’ of liberal economy and hard-hereditarian ‘race science’ — and all is made clear. One of the sharpest guides to the new reaction, it also casts light on the seemingly contradictory formation of libertarian-authoritarianism, of free trade and closed borders, and of an extreme monetary populism that is also extremely deferential to the wealthy. "" * Richard Seymour * ""Quinn Slobodian has established himself as one of the sharpest intellectual historians of neoliberalism.""---Bartolomeo Sala, Jacobin ""Fascinating. . . . Slobodian’s book draws our attention to what might appear an astonishing fact. . . that it has proven very easy to support capitalism while being hostile to other fundamental liberal liberties.""---Matt McManus, Illiberalism ""Slobodian’s thesis is novel: he suggests that what is unfolding in Washington is the culmination of a strategic shift by neoliberal planners to achieve more populist support for their particular cause. . . . One of Slobodian’s key achievements. . . is in showing that the entire weight of the extraordinarily successful neoliberal project rests on a foundation of pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo.""---Dave Vetter, The Climate Laundry ""Slobodian marshals impressive archival research. . . . dazzling. ""---Aris Roussinos, Unherd

Author Information

Quinn Slobodian is Professor of International History at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. His most recent books are Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy, Market Civilizations: Neoliberals East and South, and Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism.

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