Exiles

Fausto argues that contemporary illiberalism is not a fusion of conservatism and neoliberalism but a distinct ideological project that rejects neoliberal individualism while embracing authoritarian tendencies. Tracing its roots to early anti-liberal reactions to modernity, Fausto distinguishes this new movement from both classical fascism and economic neoliberalism. He sees it as a break from the liberal-democratic consensus, revealing a novel form of authoritarian capitalism.

“Like fascisms, and unlike conservative movements that, in one way or another, dream of a return to the past, illiberalisms want to incorporate democracy into their movement. … To some extent, illiberalism already incorporates democratic individualism, insofar as the economic policies they propose, as we have seen, demonstrate certain qualities of neoliberalism (even though they are combined with elements that are foreign or opposed to it). Nonetheless, in a manner unfamiliar to fascism, they claim the democratic principle of majority rule. There is also an individualistic quality to this, and they generally have a relationship to democracy that is entirely different from what fascisms have shown. Considering how they are based on electoral victories, we have seen where they try to stake their legitimacy, a legitimacy that is in turn rendered absolute in order to block all transitions of power. In all of this, illiberalism seeks a caricatured way to take advantage of the innovations instated by democracy. It’s this demand for democratic legitimacy (even if it is illusory, though not fictitious) that lets us to distinguish current regimes from ‘derived’ fascisms.”

The sociologist C. Wright Mills foresightedly warned against the emerging “neoliberal” bureaucratization of universities in the 1950s, according to Baber, by drawing creatively on the critical tradition of Marx, Weber, and Veblen, among others, to reflect on contemporary transformations in academia.

“He critically analysed the emergence and consolidation of ‘military capitalism’, the development of the postwar American empire, the crystallization of ‘the power elite’ and the far-reaching consequences of these structural changes for the increasing alienation of the mental labourers from the means as well as the products of knowledge production. Distilling the spirit of the classical sociologists for whom critical analyses of the contradictions and conflicts of society with an eye for possible trends and trajectories of progressive social change was paramount, Mills deftly braided sociology with trenchant social critique to pointedly reject the positivist, ‘physics envy’ laden—derived from a largely imagined image of Physics— corporatist, technocratic paradigms that were already taking hold in the universities of his time.”

The new populist right suffers from a profound cultural void that is less about material factors like consumer habits than about deeper philosophical incompatibilities. While it idealizes the aesthetics and values of past imperial eras, it lacks the structural traits—worldliness, institutionalism, and vision—required to embody them. Ironically, it is liberal cosmopolitans, despite their recent loss of political direction and identity, who remain more capable of defending both progress and cultural heritage.

“The aesthetic desires of the new right lack any coherent philosophical instinct. It is mostly vibe: crusades are good, so is the Enlightenment. The historical aptitude of the ‘Tech-Right’ elite of our times, for example, is shallower than the first two paragraphs of any Wikipedia page. In a bid to defend and preserve what it claims to be ‘western civilisation’, it peppers over the centuries old deep cultural, ethnic, and philosophical divisions within the West. It is temperamentally Huntingtonian and civilisational in essence, and therefore intensely ideological and ahistoric. It charts a single continuum of Judeo-Christian ‘European’ heritage that defies any actual historic record. … The reality is different, the intra-ethnic rivalry within Europe is not in any way similar to what a dissident new right ‘online historian’ might imagine.”

Lentin discusses her new book The Racial Regime: Recalibrations of White Supremacy, which builds on Cedric Robinson’s concept to analyze how white supremacy continually restructures itself in response to resistance. She examines the global backlash against critical race theory and the ideological role of Zionism and the war on antisemitism in reasserting racial rule, especially in the wake of Israel’s actions in Gaza after October 7, 2023. Lentin argues that racial regimes are not static but persist and evolve thanks to their own confusion, constant adaptation, and the co-optation of progressive language: Their internal contradictions are a source of both fragility and renewed power.

“The racial regime is never completely new. Rather, it is renewed or restitched from, as [Cedric Robinson] puts it, old cloth and new together. That’s the power of it, because it uses things that are familiar to us and stitches them together and makes them relevant to processes in the present—and essentially confuses us.”