Contemporary Political Theory

https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-023-00657-x

ARTICLE

Neoliberal fascism? Fascist trends in early neoliberal

thought and echoes in the present

Henry Maher1

Accepted: 19 July 2023

© The Author(s) 2023

Abstract
This article theorises the contemporary convergence of neoliberal and fascist prin-
ciples by examining the thought of political actors in the 1930s and 1940s who
were active in both neoliberal and fascist organisations. I suggest that a sympathy
for fascism formed a minor but significant strand of early neoliberal thought, and
that unpacking the logics that led particular thinkers and political actors to believe
that fascism was compatible with neoliberalism can shed light on the contemporary
political moment. Based on my reading of early ‘neoliberal fascists’, I theorise three
points of convergence. The first was a belief that socialism had to be opposed by all
possible means, including violence and the repression of popular democracy. The
second was a racialized understanding of the underpinnings of the market economy,
leading to an acceptance of the necessity of racial exclusion. Thirdly, both fascist
and neoliberal thinkers believed that patriarchy was a necessary feature for the repro-
duction of capitalism, and hence that traditional gender roles had to be preserved
against pressures for social change. In theorising this convergence, I also gesture to
how the overlap of neoliberalism and fascism can be witnessed in the contemporary
milieu, with a focus on the libertarian Mises Institute.

Keywords Neoliberalism · Fascism · Race · Gender · Alt-right

The policies and rhetoric of the Trump administration have in many ways con-
founded traditional categories of political analysis. Foremost among the many the-
oretical debates is the problem of how to reconcile Trump’s apparently neoliberal
economic outlook with the illiberal, racist and even fascistic elements of his admin-
istration that were most evident in the failed 6 January 2021 insurrection. Within
the neoliberalism literature, many authors initially believed that Trump’s election
in 2016 signalled the ‘end of neoliberalism’ (Bazian & Leung, 2018), and predicted
a turn towards economic nationalism or corporatism (see for instance Fraser, 2016;

* Henry Maher
henry.maher@sydney.edu.au
1
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW 2050, Australia

Vol.:(0123456789)
 H. Maher

Gusterson, 2017; Streeck, 2017). However, given Trump’s policies of tax cuts for the
wealthiest and attempts to further marketize healthcare, the consensus now seems to
be that Trump represented not the end of neoliberalism but rather ‘a nationalist and
protectionist inflection and intensification of it’ (Dean, 2017, p. 24), or a ‘hyperreac-
tionary neoliberalism’ according to Nancy Fraser (2019, p. 26; see also Slobodian &
Plehwe, 2020). Similar debates have emerged in the fascism literature surrounding
the question of whether Trump can properly be called a fascist. While noting impor-
tant differences from the fascism of the 1930s, authors such as William Connolly
(2017) and Jason Stanley (2018) have suggested that Trump nevertheless constitutes
a new form of fascism which must be named and opposed as such. Others, particu-
larly historians of fascism, point to significant discrepancies between Trump and his-
torical fascism, and conclude that the fascist label trails semantic connotations that
conceal more than they reveal (Griffin, 2020).1 The aftermath of 6 6 January has led
some to a reconsideration, with leading historian of fascism Robert Paxton (2021)
noting that ‘Trump’s incitement of the invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2021
removes my objection to the fascist label...The label now seems not just acceptable
but necessary’.2 If the consensus now seems to be that the Trump administration
represented an intensification of neoliberalism, whilst at the same time exhibiting at
the very least ‘fascist creep’ (see Reid Ross, 2017), how should we reconcile these
competing tendencies?
To make sense of the many contradictions evident in the Trump administra-
tion, recent scholarship has begun to ‘revise the prevalent scholarly perception of
the incompatibility of neoliberalism and fascism’ (Gambetti, 2020, p. 20; see also
Traverso, 2019). In The Terror of the Unforeseen, sociologist Henry Giroux argues
that the economically neoliberal approach of the Trump administration is not in
conflict with Trump’s racialized and socially conservative vision for America, and
hence that in the Trump era, ‘America has reached a distinctive crossroads in which
the principles and practices of a fascist past and neoliberal present have merged’
(Giroux, 2019, p. 74; see also Giroux, 2021). Similarly, Éric Fassin (2018) suggests
that ‘there is nothing incompatible between neoliberal policies and far right politics’,
pointing to French President Emmanuel Macron’s punitive border policies as ‘the
perfect embodiment of what can be called “neoliberal illiberalism”’. In The Fascist
Nature of Neoliberalism, Andrea Micocci and Flavia Di Mario’s (2018) highlight
what they believe to be significant common ground between neoliberal and fascist
political logics, joining other academic accounts that are increasingly open to the
concept of ‘neoliberal fascism’ to explain ‘the racist, hierarchical and violent core
of a form of politics that is devoted at all costs to the market mechanism’ (Martel,
2019, p. 6; see also Coles, 2018, p. 261; Dean, 2019, p. 17).
The authors I note in the previous paragraph all treat the convergence of neolib-
eralism and fascism as an essentially novel phenomenon confined to the present. To

1
In a survey carried out by Dylan Matthews (2020), eight out of eight scholars of fascism rejected
applying the label to Trump; see also Bale and Bar-On (2022).
2
See also the recent debate in Fascism, in which the majority of participants find at least some relation-
ship between the Trump administration and fascism; Jackson (2021).
Neoliberal fascism? Fascist trends in early neoliberal thought…

help theorise the contemporary conjunction between neoliberal and fascist princi-
ples, my contribution here is to return to political actors and thinkers in the 1930s
and 1940s who maintained active membership of both fascist and neoliberal organi-
sations, and who therefore represent the first instance of the convergence of neo-
liberal and fascist logics. The fascist sympathies of certain key actors involved in
founding neoliberalism as a political and intellectual movement have been noted but
largely disregarded in the extensive literature on the origins of neoliberalism (for
exceptions, see Knegt, 2017; Innset, 2020, pp. 137–138). My argument here is that
a sympathy and even appreciation of fascism formed a minor but significant strand
of early neoliberal thought, and that unpacking the logics that led particular think-
ers and political actors to believe that fascism was compatible with neoliberalism
can shed light on the contemporary political moment. Whilst the most widely read
neoliberal thinkers such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman rejected fascism,
treating socialism and fascism as different variations of totalitarianism (Maher,
2023, pp. 6–7), for a small minority of early neoliberal thinkers fascism offered the
means to accomplish their goals of a renewed market liberalism, particularly in the
years prior to the Second World War. As Tony Judt (2005, p. 61) has noted, post-war
Europe was characterised by ‘the search for serviceable myths of anti-fascism’, and
hence the founders of the neoliberal Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) were anxious to
both obscure prior fascist sympathies and to highlight (in some cases genuine) anti-
fascist credentials. Against this ‘collective amnesia’ (Judt, 2005, p. 61), this article
documents the fascist sympathies and collaboration of certain early neoliberal fig-
ures, demonstrating how fascist principles continued to guide their thought in the
post-war era.
In particular, I examine the writings of the following four thinkers who were both
active in neoliberal organisations and adjacent to fascist movements or ideas in the
1930s and 1940s. I note first Bertrand de Jouvenel, the French political theorist and
journalist who was both a leading member of the fascist Parti Populaire Français and
founding member of the MPS. Secondly, I highlight French philosopher Louis Rou-
gier, the convenor of the Walter Lippmann Colloquium which is generally consid-
ered a foundational event in the birth of neoliberalism (Reinhoudt & Audier, 2018).
Rougier was initially excluded from the MPS because of his collaboration with the
Vichy government during WWII, but was later allowed to join, whilst also main-
taining ties with key figures in the European New Right such as Alain de Benoist.
Thirdly I examine Ludwig von Mises, a leading neoliberal figure who in the early
1930s worked as economic advisor to Engelbert Dollfuss’ Austro-fascist regime and
was a member of the fascist Patriotic Front (Hülsmann, 2007, p. 677). Mises saw
in Austro-fascism a bulwark against both communism and the more extreme racial
policies of the German Nazis he would later flee as a Jewish refugee. Finally, I also
note the political thought of Wilhelm Röpke, who in his strong support for apartheid
in South Africa, illustrates the influence of fascist racial ideas even in those who
opposed fascist governments in Europe.
Based on my reading of the political thought of the previously noted figures, I
theorise three points of convergence between neoliberal and fascist political ration-
alities. The first was an opposition to socialism at all costs, which led neoliberal and
fascist thinkers alike to justify violence and other antidemocratic illiberal measures
 H. Maher

in the name of combatting the threat of socialism. The second point of convergence
was a racialized understanding of the underpinnings of liberalism and the mar-
ket economy. For both neoliberal and fascist thinkers, the economic development
of European economies was the unique achievement of the white race, sometimes
coded post-racially as ‘western civilisation’. Accordingly, for both neoliberals and
fascists, other races threatened to undermine the cultural and racial settlement nec-
essary for the market economy, and had to be excluded. Finally, I demonstrate that
both neoliberal and fascist thinkers believed that a patriarchal social order was a
necessary feature of capitalism, and hence that traditional gender roles had to be
maintained against pressures for change.
In concluding the article, I examine the relevance of the convergence of neolib-
eral and fascist ideas for the contemporary political moment, focusing on the lib-
ertarian thinktank the Mises Institute and its political offshoot the Mises Caucus.
Concerns about the potential fascist sympathies of the Mises Institute were raised
recently when Mises Institute President Jeff Deist made a speech openly extolling
a politics of ‘blood and soil’ (Deist, 2017). I suggest that the same three logics I
located in historical neoliberal thinkers can account for the contemporary recurrence
of the convergence of neoliberalism and fascism. Though members of the Mises
Institute clearly admire the politics of Trump, and see in Trumpism a likely vehi-
cle for the advancement of their political vision, I do not suggest that the combina-
tion of neoliberalism and fascism is a complete explanation for Trumpism. Trump
is after all a bricolage of many competing influences, from neoliberalism and fas-
cism to nativism, American exceptionalism, paleo-conservatism, Christian national-
ism, WWE wrestling and reality TV. Rather, my focus here is on showing that two
of those influences—neoliberalism and fascism—are far more compatible than we
might otherwise have presumed, and that the convergence of these two logics have
clear historical antecedents.

The relationship between neoliberalism and fascism

At first glance, neoliberal fascism might appear an ‘absurd conceptual bricolage’

(Maher, 2022, p. 75), and the attempt to theorise the intersection of neoliberalism
and fascism an ‘exercise in political swear words’ (Knegt, 2017, p. 259). There are
after all significant discrepancies between neoliberalism and fascism that suggest
significant caution should be taken before conflating the two ideological frame-
works. Most notably, fascism historically adopted a corporatist economic approach
largely anathema to the neoliberal market economy, and accordingly fascist eco-
nomic policies have been an object of significant critique by neoliberal thinkers
(see for instance Lippmann, 1937, pp. 54-65). Moreover, neoliberalism is gener-
ally understood as rejecting the biological racism characteristic of fascist regimes,
instead favouring the alleged racial blindness of the market mechanism.3 Finally,
3
Of course, nominally ‘racially blind’ policies have played a significant role in preserving racial and
colonial systems of inequality; see Goldberg (2009); Bhattacharyya (2013). The point here is that the
concept of race in neoliberalism is generally understood to function very differently from the essential-
ised and explicitly hierarchical conception of race characteristic of fascism.
Neoliberal fascism? Fascist trends in early neoliberal thought…

neoliberal thinkers also typically support a minimum set of civil and political
rights compatible with the framework of ‘negative liberty’, again marking a sharp
divergence from fascism which, in the words of Mussolini (2018 [1932], p. 314),
stands ‘for the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the State and of the indi-
vidual within the State’. Accordingly, most academic and popular accounts frame
the contemporary rise of nationalist-populist politics embodied in Trump as a reac-
tion against, rather than feature of, neoliberalism. For instance, Wendy Brown’s
In the Ruins of Neoliberalism argues that the contemporary success of hard-right
populist politicians is an unintended consequence of forty years of neoliberalism,
with Brown (2019, pp. 9-10) suggesting that although neoliberalism ‘constituted the
catastrophic present, this was not neoliberalism’s intended spawn, but its Franken-
steinian creation’ (see also Brown, 2018). Brown’s (2019, p. 9) reading of neoliberal
thinkers emphasises that historically ‘neoliberalism aimed at permanent inoculation
of market liberal orders against the regrowth of fascistic sentiments and totalitar-
ian powers’, but that neoliberalism in practice has ‘produced a monster its founders
would abhor’ (Brown, 2019, p. 17; for similar arguments that neoliberalism led to
neo-fascism, see West, 2016; Connolly, 2017; Patnaik, 2020; Cayla, 2021; Cox &
Skidmore-Hess, 2022).
Whilst Brown (2019, p. 9) is correct to argue that the neoliberalism of Hayek
and Friedman was incompatible with fascism, for other neoliberal thinkers the rela-
tionship between fascism and the market economy was far more ambiguous. Recent
literature on the racialization of markets has highlighted the racial hierarchies inher-
ent in neoliberal constructions of the market, thereby challenging more narrows
accounts of neoliberalism as a body of thought concerned merely with the spread
of market principles. For example, in The Morals of the Market, Jessica Whyte
(2019, p. 61) argues that ‘the [neoliberal] subject of social and economic rights was
emphatically not an abstract, universal subject. Rather, race and gender marked the
borders of entitlement, and designated this subject as a white, male, heterosexual’.
Looking back to the early Austrian neoliberal thinkers, Cornelissen (2020, 2021)
has noted the importance of racialized civilisational hierarchies in the Austrian
construction of the marketplace, whilst Cooper (2021) similarly demonstrates the
importance of race to the worldview of later Austrian neoliberal thinker Murray
Rothbard (see also Slobodian, 2018, 2019a, 2019b; Eastland-Underwood, 2022).
Cooper’s Family Values also highlights the importance of patriarchy within neo-
liberal thought, suggesting that the neoliberal account of gender shares many sim-
ilarities with social conservative approaches to gender (see also Salzinger, 2020).
However, though these different authors have demonstrated that racial and gender
hierarchies are essential features of neoliberalism, most stop short of recognising a
compatibility between neoliberalism and the extreme racial and gender hierarchies
contained within fascism.
Building on the insights in these literatures, my contribution here is to more
explicitly theorise the connection between neoliberalism and fascism by exploring
the fascist sympathies evident in certain early neoliberal thinkers. That these neo-
liberal thinkers were attracted to fascist movements suggests that we need to recon-
sider the relationship between these two bodies of political thought. My argument
is not that neoliberalism and fascism can be collapsed together into a totalising new
 H. Maher

ideology. Rather, I suggest that in their approach to democracy, race, and patriar-
chy, fascism and neoliberalism share sufficient commonalities such that they can be
deployed together to construct a coherent account of the political. In a similar intel-
lectual exercise during the Bush administration, Brown (2006) theorised the conver-
gence of the apparently contradictory rationalities of neoliberalism and neo-conserv-
atism. Like Brown then, my aim:
is not to understand the project of the American right tout court, as if there
were such a unified endeavor or entity behind it, but to apprehend how these
two rationalities, themselves composite, inadvertently converge at crucial
points to extend a cannibalism of liberal democracy (Brown, 2006, p. 691).

Opposition to socialism at all costs

The first point of convergence between neoliberal and fascist rationalities was the
belief that socialism represented an existential threat that needed to be opposed by
all possible means, including violence and the suppression of popular democracy.
Historians have long emphasised violent anti-communism as a core principle of fas-
cism (see Payne, 1996; Passmore, 2014). In their attempts to eliminate socialism,
fascist parties sought to abolish parliamentary democracy, claiming it was a distor-
tion of the will of the people, and that only the fascist leader could truly understand
and act in the interests of the people (Paxton, 2004, pp. 218–220; Stanley, 2018, pp.
182–183). Though the open celebration of violence is generally viewed as anathema
to neoliberalism, critical scholars of neoliberalism have highlighted anti-democratic
and authoritarian tendencies in neoliberal thought. Most noted is Friedrich Hayek’s
engagement with the thought of Nazi jurist Carl Schmidt (Scheuerman 1997; Irving,
2018), and Hayek’s subsequent support for authoritarian regimes including Pinochet
in Chile and Salazar in Portugal (Farrant et al., 2012). Also noted is Milton Fried-
man’s antipathy for popular democracy (Biebricher, 2018, pp. 91–101), and the pub-
lic choice-orientated constitutionalism of James Buchanan which seeks to strictly
limit the scope of popular democracy (MacLean, 2017; Biebricher, 2020). However,
though the existing literature has clearly identified neoliberal impulses seeking to
circumscribe the scope of democratic governance, the neoliberal thinkers considered
in the existing literature are careful to distance themselves from open violence and
authoritarianism, often leaving critical scholarship to draw out authoritarian tenden-
cies from silences, euphemisms and asides in interviews (see, for instance, Fischer,
2009; Whyte, 2019, p. 117).
In contrast, the thinkers I examine here are explicit not just in their opposition to
democracy, but also in their recognition of the necessity of using violence to sup-
press the rise of socialism. For instance, writing in 1927 Mises offers unqualified
support for the fascist use of violence in opposition to communism:
The only way one can offer effective resistance to violent assaults is by vio-
lence. Against the weapons of the Bolsheviks, weapons must be used in
reprisal, and it would be a mistake to display weakness before murderers
(Mises, 1985 [1927], pp. 49–50).
Neoliberal fascism? Fascist trends in early neoliberal thought…

For Mises, fascist violence was justified by the severity of the communist threat,
as ‘the deeds of the Fascists and of other parties corresponding to them were emo-
tional reflex actions evoked by indignation at the deeds of the Bolsheviks and Com-
munists’ (Mises, 1985 [1927], p. 49). Accordingly, Mises (1985, p. 51) noted that
fascist parties were ‘full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the
moment, saved European civilization’. Mises’ (1985 [1927], p. 51) praise for fas-
cism was tempered by the caveat that fascism was only ‘an emergency makeshift’,
necessary to prevent the spread of communism. Nevertheless, Mises (1985 [1927],
p. 49) also expressed optimism, because after the first waves of anti-communist vio-
lence in Italy and Germany, the fascist parties ‘took a more moderate course and
will probably become even more so with the passage of time’. Mises (1985 [1927],
p. 51) concluded that ‘the merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on
eternally in history’.
The electoral success of socialist and social democratic parties in the pre-war
years also led early neoliberal thinkers to argue for the repression of democratic
rule. In his pre-war writings, Rougier (1929) argued that liberal democracy was too
vulnerable to the mass appeal of socialism, and hence had to be replaced by a more
authoritarian ‘elitist’ democracy. For Rougier (1929, p. 13; my translation), univer-
sal democracy was ‘based on the idea of the “natural equality” of all men, by virtue
of which they would have the same rights and same competences, which leads to
collectivism and, as collectivism is impracticable, to its substitute practices, state
socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat’. Rougier is here prefiguring Hayek’s
famous argument in The Road to Serfdom, suggesting that government interventions
attempting to create greater equality must inevitably lead to totalitarianism, and
hence even milder forms of social democracy must be repressed to prevent socialism
gaining a foothold.
In Les Mystiques économiques, Rougier (1938, p. 22; my translation) claimed
that the failings of liberal democracy were responsible for the spread of totalitarian
regimes, because liberal democracy was based on ‘two contradictory principles…
the liberal idea of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man…[and] the idea of
popular sovereignty expressing itself by way of the majority’. Displaying the aris-
tocratic sensibilities that are also evident in Bertrand de Jouvenal’s thought, Rou-
gier warned that popular democracy would ultimately destroy liberalism—‘If the
peasant is the majority, he can throw down, in one great evening, all this [liberal]
superstructure which was the work of the aristocratic classes’ (1938, p. 22; my trans-
lation). Warning that the combination of compulsory education and universal suf-
frage would allow the masses to ‘take hold of the power of the state’ leading only to
‘impoverishment and anarchy’ (Rougier, 2018 [1938], p. 173), Rougier insisted that
‘the exercise of public affairs belonged to qualified minorities…governing is, there-
fore, an eminently aristocratic thing, which can only be exercised by elites’ (1938,
pp. 23–24; my translation). Instead of democratic suffrage, Rougier claimed that the
marketplace was the proper site for democratic deliberation of the masses, an argu-
ment also developed by Mises (Rougier, 2018 [1938], p. 99; see also Mises, 1977a
[1947], pp. 25–26).
Though both Mises and Rougier initially supported the anti-communist violence
of fascism and recognised the need for authoritarian governance to repress the mass
 H. Maher

appeal of socialism, by the time of the Walter Lippmann Colloquium in 1938 both
thinkers had recognised that the fascist regimes in Germany and Italy also posed
a threat to the liberal order. In contrast, Jouvenel remained a strong supporter of
fascism throughout the 1930s. The aftermath of the 6 Février 1934 parliamentary
riots in Paris convinced Jouvenel that parliamentary democracy was doomed to fail,4
and that France required an authoritarian leader similar to Hitler who could lead
‘a regime in which all particular interests are mercilessly subjected to the general
interest’ (Jouvenel in Knegt, 2017, p. 77).5 Demonstrating the sense of palingenetic
ultranationalism that historian Roger Griffin (1991) emphasises as a core feature of
fascism, Jouvenel (1934) argued that the youth of France needed to overthrow the
calcified aging parliamentary regime to defend France from the spread of commu-
nism. As Knegt (2017, p. 92) notes, Jouvenel developed an explicitly racialized form
of anti-communism, in which the working class was presented as an inferior race,
in need of strict discipline from their superiors. Observing a communist rally in
1937, Jouvenel (in Knegt, 2017, p. 92) described ‘a pale, dwarf-like race, with soft
mouths and red eyelids’, adding that the poorer outer suburbs of Paris had become
‘a melting pot where, under the influence of blood mixing and the conditions of the
environment, a particular race is constituted. This race is now invading Paris’. Like
Rougier, then, Jouvenel viewed the working classes as eminently unfit for participa-
tion in democratic governance, reinforcing the need for aristocratic or authoritarian
leadership.
France’s swift defeat in WWII confirmed for Jouvenel the supremacy of fascist
forms of government, with Jouvenel’s Apres Les Defaits (1941) suggesting that the
tiring French establishment had been entirely unable to resist the youth and vitality
of Hitler’s fascist regime, and hence that France should now take its place in Hitler’s
fascist new European order. Further, even after the war when most were keen to dis-
tance themselves from fascism and collaboration, Jouvenel continued to claim that
communism was the most significant threat to the liberal order, and that the anti-
fascist resistance and the fascist collaborators needed to put aside their differences
and work together to prevent the spread of communism (Knegt, 2017, p. 253). Thus
in both the political thought and activism of early neoliberal thinkers in the 1930s
and 1940s, we can locate the first intersection of fascism and neoliberalism in the
shared support for violence and anti-democratic measures in pursuit of the suppres-
sion of socialism.

4
The similarities between the 6 Février 1934 riots and the failed 6 January 2021 insurrection was noted
by Paxton as a decisive factor in applying the label of fascist to Trump; Paxton (2021).
5
See also Jouvenel’s sympathetic 1936 interview with Hitler, in which Jouvenel allows Hitler to present
himself as committed to peace in Europe; Jouvenel (1936).
Neoliberal fascism? Fascist trends in early neoliberal thought…

Racial hierarchies and market logic

The category of race has traditionally been understood as a key point of difference
between neoliberalism and fascism. A hierarchical and biologically essentialised
conception of race is a core feature of fascism (Passmore, 2014, pp. 108–120;
Kershaw, 2015, pp. 233, 286–288). From Mussolini’s Manifesto of Race, which
declared ‘it is time that Italians proclaim themselves to be openly racist’, to the
Nazi politics of ‘blood and soil’, the need to preserve the racial purity of the
nation against racial enemies both internal and external defined the fascist move-
ments of the 1930s (Weiss-Wendt & Yeomans, 2013). In contrast, most scholars
have treated neoliberalism as a nominally ‘racially blind’ ideology. For instance,
Brown (2019, p. 13) suggests that though ‘white and male superordination are
easily tucked into the neoliberal markets-and-morals project...the founding texts
rarely mentioned it’. In a similarly critical account of neoliberal ‘racial blindness’,
Roberts and Mahtani (2010) suggest that neoliberalism ignores the category of
race as a means of overlooking the historical and contemporary racial injustices
created by capitalism.
Though the ‘racially blind’ trope may be evident in the works of Hayek and
Friedman, more recent scholarship has unearthed an essentialist and biological
approach to race as a prominent theme in early neoliberal thought (see Slobo-
dian, 2018, 2019a; Whyte, 2019; Cornelissen, 2020, 2021), particularly preva-
lent among the thinkers I consider here. In the works of Mises for example, the
world is starkly divided into different races, with the ‘civilising’ achievements of
each race dependent on its particular biological characteristics. As Mises (in Cor-
nelissen, 2020, p. 354) put it, ‘the prevailing differences between the various bio-
logical strains of men are reflected in the civilizatory achievements of the group
members’. Of the different races or civilisations, the western or white civilisation
was clearly viewed as superior, with Mises (1977b [1962], p. 98) claiming that
‘The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the
arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom
from the state’. In contrast, other races or civilisations were viewed as necessarily
stunted because of their racial inferiority. According to Mises (1998 [1949], p.
37), ‘in Africa and Polynesia primitive man stops short at his earliest perception
of things and never reasons if he can in any way avoid it’, with Jouvenel (1962
[1945], p. 64) concurring that ‘primitive societies are in some degree retarded
witnesses of our own processes of evolution’.
Racial differentialism became an important theme for early neoliberal thinkers
because it responded to a crucial theoretical problem regarding how to ensure the
necessary structures and conventions of a market society were preserved with-
out the coercive interventions of a central governing authority. At the inaugu-
ral meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947, much discussion focused on
the need to redefine ‘the functions of the state so as to distinguish more clearly
between the totalitarian and the liberal order’ (Mont Pelerin Society, 1947), with
early neoliberal thinkers struggling to account for how the market society could
be created and maintained without the impermissible interventions of the state.
 H. Maher

One solution, favoured by the thinkers I consider here, was to claim that the con-
ventions of the market society were the natural habits and characteristics of the
white race, and hence that the state only needed to defend the liberal market order
from external threats to western civilisation. As Mises (1998 [1949], p. 281) put
it, ‘What gave to the West its eminence was precisely its concern about liberty,
a social ideal foreign to the oriental peoples’. Here, the apparent racially blind
neutrality of the market society gives way to an explicit orientalism and the need
to preserve a racial or cultural homogeneity, with Mises (in Slobodian, 2019a, p.
152) warning that ‘there are few white men who would not shudder at the picture
of many millions of black or yellow people living in their own countries’.
Wilhelm Röpke demonstrates a similarly racialized understanding of the foun-
dations of the market economy, most evident in his defence of apartheid in South
Africa. In 1964 Röpke published ‘an attempt at a positive appraisal’ of South Afri-
can apartheid, praising ‘the extraordinary qualities of its white population’, and
arguing that ongoing white rule was necessary because ‘the South African Negro
is not only a man of an utterly different race but, at the same time, stems from a
completely different type and level of civilization’ (Röpke in Slobodian, 2018, p.
152). For Röpke, allowing universal democracy in South Africa would destroy the
delicate balance of the market society, and bring to power the non-white masses he
believed to be biologically incapable of maintaining a functioning liberal society.
Röpke’s defence of apartheid was widely disseminated not only by the South Afri-
can government, but also among New Right figures in the United States, who found
in Röpke’s racialized understanding of capitalism arguments that could be applied to
oppose desegregation in the American south (Slobodian, 2018, pp. 153–154).
In contrast to Mises and Röpke, later neoliberal accounts would discursively pivot
away from the explicit biological racism noted above, instead constructing west-
ern civilisation as a cultural grouping in line with broader trends in the European
New Right. Rougier in particular worked closely with leading European New Right
figure Alain de Benoist, developing a purportedly ‘post-racial’ account of a world
divided into distinct and immutable cultures, which needed to be saved from the
decay of multiculturalism and mass immigration.6 In The Genius of the West, Rou-
gier argued that western civilisation ‘is a notion which is neither solely geographic
nor specifically ethnic, but essentially cultural’ (1969, p. 9; my translation), and that
what marked out western civilisation as superior to its rivals was a mentality based
on reason, progress and freedom. Tracing the origins of the west back to the Ancient
Greeks, Rougier (1969, p. 18; my translation) claimed:
The contribution of the Greeks to Western civilization consists in having given
content to the word ‘reason’. Unlike the Oriental, who bows without question
before the commandments of the gods and the dictates of kings, the Greek
seeks to understand by reasoning the world in which he lives and to obey only
the laws he himself voted for, after deliberation.

6
For an overview of the relationship between differentialism, western civilisationism and the European
New Right, see Maher et al. (2022, pp. 5–6); see also Bar-On (2008).
Neoliberal fascism? Fascist trends in early neoliberal thought…

Despite the denial of explicitly racial content, we can see here the same oriental-
ism evident in Mises, which grounds a division of the world into a civilised, liberal
west and an implicitly uncivilised, illiberal east (Said, 1994; see also Mills, 1997, p.
21; Brubaker, 2017). Rougier’s liberalism is therefore implicitly grounded in race,
with Rougier arguing the respect for reason and freedom that is the hallmark of
western civilisation was founded in Ancient Greece, and is perfected in the contem-
porary principles of liberalism, the rule of law and the market economy. Contrasting
the supposed stagnation of the rest of the world with the economic supremacy of the
west, Rougier argues that western success is derived from ‘respect to the law, [as]
everyone is free to live as they please, to run his own business as he sees fit. It is one
of the greatest innovations in the history of human societies’ (Rougier, 1969, p. 44,
my translation).
Though the structuring role of race in later neoliberal thought was more euphe-
mistic, an implicitly racialized understanding of the foundations of the market soci-
ety thus remained deeply embedded in neoliberal social ontology. The account of
race I have identified here is very different from the ‘racially blind’ trope developed
in other strands of neoliberal thought. Instead, race is understood as either a fixed
biological category or as a broader cultural grouping that must be preserved from
outside interference. Notably, the use of ‘western civilisation’ as a racial euphemism
is now widespread among contemporary far right and white supremacist groups
(Brubaker, 2017; McSwiney et al., 2023, p. 221), demonstrating the ongoing reso-
nance of Rougier’s account of cultural differentialism (Froio, 2018; Zúquete, 2018).
A racialized understanding of the world which emphasises the necessity of preserv-
ing racial or cultural homogeneity is therefore the second point of convergence for
neoliberal and fascist political rationalities.

The patriarchal basis of the market society

The final point of convergence between neoliberalism and fascism is a patriarchal

conception of the ideal society. Fascism is characterised by a traditional understand-
ing of gender roles, in which women are primarily expected to be child-bearers and
homemakers responsible for reproducing the white race (Griffin, 1991, p. 73; Pax-
ton, 2004, pp. 134–135; Carney, 2013). As Passmore (2014, pp. 124–132) notes,
fascist approaches to gender were influenced by the high rates of male casualties in
WWI and the resulting entry of more women into the workforce, with fascist leaders
demanding a return to traditional gender roles, and strongly foregrounding the need
to increase birth-rates to restore the health of the nation (see also Kershaw, 2015, p.
185). For example, in Italy promoting birth-control was considered a crime against
the state (Passmore, 2014, p. 132), with fascist movements strongly opposing the
emergence of feminism (Pozzi, 2020). In contrast, neoliberalism is generally under-
stood as accepting the limited tenets of a liberal feminism in which women are free
to enter the marketplace as actors with nominally equal political and civil rights (for
an instructive discussion of neoliberal feminism, see Banet-Weiser et al., 2020). In a
similar manner to the trope of racial blindness, neoliberal thinkers are critiqued for
 H. Maher

adopting a ‘gender blind’ perspective which means they ignore the realities of gen-
der oppression under a market system (see for instance Szczepanska, 2022).
However, the strand of neoliberal thought I examine here adopts an understand-
ing of gender roles far closer to fascism than liberal feminism, claiming that patri-
archy is the basis of the market society and must therefore be preserved. Accord-
ing to neoliberal thinkers I survey here, women are biologically adapted to the role
of homemakers, and need to perform that role to allow the successful functioning
and reproduction of the market society. Foregrounding the patriarchal basis of capi-
talism, Mises critiqued feminist attempts to challenge the established social order,
calling feminism ‘the spiritual child of socialism’ because ‘it is a characteristic of
Socialism to discover in social institutions the origin of unalterable facts of nature,
and to endeavor, by reforming these institutions, to reform nature’ (Mises, 1962
[1922], p. 101). Linking feminism to the anti-communism I discussed earlier, Mises
(1962 [1922], p. 100) claimed feminism was doomed to fail because of the immu-
table differences between men and women, and that attempts to ignore these differ-
ences, or undermine the institution of marriage, would only harm women, because
‘in suppressing her urge towards motherhood she does herself an injury that reacts
through all other functions of her being’. For Mises (1962 [1922], p. 99), marriage
was a crucial institution for the ‘adjustment of the individual to the social order’, and
hence ‘by ‘abolishing’ marriage one would not make woman any freer and happier;
one would merely take from her the essential content of her life, and one could offer
nothing to replace it’ (Mises, 1962 [1922], p. 105).
Mises’ biological conception of gender led him to the conclusion that women
by their very nature were incapable of being full participants in the market society,
‘because the functions of sex have the first claim upon women, genius and the great-
est achievements have been denied her’ (Mises 1962 [1922], p. 101). Accordingly,
Mises suggested that the legal barriers to women that were the object of critique by
both liberal and more radical feminists were not problematic, as:
The right to occupy public office is denied women less by the legal limita-
tions of their rights than by the peculiarities of their sexual character...neither
women nor the community are deeply injured by the slights to women’s legal
position which still remain in the legislation of civilized states (Mises, 1962
[1922], p. 104).
Here Mises again invokes an essentialised and biological understanding of gen-
der, and a social order in which women are denied advancement not by unjust laws
or social norms, but by their own nature.
Röpke’s (1950, p. 15) writings also feature repeated attacks on the ‘disintegra-
tion of the family’, with Röpke claiming that processes of proletarianization had
encouraged the spread of socialism and ‘created economic and social conditions
under which the family—which is the natural sphere of the woman, the proper
environment for raising children and indeed the parent cell of the community—
must needs wither and finally degenerate’. In his 1937 work Economics of the Free
Society, Röpke bemoaned the spread of ‘techniques which permit the separation of
sexuality and procreation’ (Röpke, 1963 [1937], p. 53), labelling the use of birth
control by women ‘deliberate selfishness...[that will] drag down both the birth rate
Neoliberal fascism? Fascist trends in early neoliberal thought…

and the moral health of the nation’ (Röpke, 1963 [1937], p. 55). Röpke also linked
his defence of the patriarchal social order to a civilisationist worldview, claiming
that communism was gaining a following because of the social dislocation caused
by the decline of the western Christian order. For Röpke (1960 [1937], p. 55), the
rise of communism signalled a deep-rooted ‘cultural crisis’ in which the ‘Western
world’s Christian civilization’ was at stake. Communism was succeeding wherever
men ‘have been pried loose from the social fabric of the family’ (Röpke, 1960, p.
110), and especially when ‘these processes of social disintegration are associated
with religious decline’ (Röpke, 1960, p. 111). Thus, despite his political opposi-
tion to fascism in Germany, Röpke’s social views are here very similar to the fascist
defence of the family and traditional social order.
Finally, we can locate similar views on the importance of patriarchy and the gen-
eral crisis of birth-rates in Rougier and Jouvenel. For Rougier, the rise of social-
ism was responsible for disrupting the previous stability of the family, and therefore
ultimately to blame for declining birth rates. As Rougier puts it, with the advent of
the welfare state, ‘initiative disappears, the wealth decreases, the women themselves
give birth little. So the threatened State, to meet its own needs, strengthens its appa-
ratus’ (1938, pp. 30–31; my translation). Jouvenel offers a similar account of the
role of patriarchy in On Power, suggesting that the civilisational advancement of
the west is due to its patriarchal organisation of society. Linking to the civilisation-
ist theme I discussed in the previous section, Jouvenel (1962 [1945], p. 77) claimed
that ‘it is certain that the patriarchal way of life favours social development’, and that
those societies that ‘were the first to be organized patriarchally...come before us as
the real founders of states and as the truly historical societies’. In arguing that the
taxation system needed to be reformed to favour the interests of families, Jouvenel
(1952, p. 62) even compares the figure of the father to a dog breeder, claiming:
It is quite incomprehensible that a breeder of dogs for the racetrack should be
allowed his costs, depreciation, etc., while the father of the family is not. It is
as if the lawmakers sympathized more with the purpose of the former, which is
to sell dogs for the track, than with the purpose of the latter, which gives men
to society.
Here the role of women in social reproduction is entirely excluded, with the anal-
ogous comparison of women to dogs indicative of the centrality of patriarchy to Jou-
venal’s account of the social. The resonance with a fascist view of gender and repro-
duction, both in this quote and across the different thinkers I have examined, should
by now abundantly clear.

Echoes in the present? The Mises Institute and the Mises Caucus

This article has surveyed the historical intersection of neoliberalism and fascism. In
contrast to accounts which treat neoliberalism and fascism as diametrically opposed,
I have highlighted the compatibility of these two rationalities, particularly around
the axes of anti-socialism, race and patriarchy. In concluding, I want to highlight the
 H. Maher

emergence of the same convergence of neoliberalism and fascism in contemporary

politics, focusing on the Mises Institute and related Mises Caucus.
The Mises Institute is an American libertarian thinktank founded by Llewellyn
Rockwell in 1982 to promote the thought of Ludwig von Mises and Austrian eco-
nomics more broadly. The Institute combines a defence of small-state libertarian-
ism with an extreme social conservativism that has led fellow libertarian Steve Hor-
witz (2011) to describe the centre as ‘a fascist fist in a libertarian glove’. In a 2017
speech current President of the Institute Jeff Deist explicitly invoked the slogan of
‘blood and soil’—two weeks before white nationalist groups chanted the same slo-
gan at the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally—with Deist offering a vision of an
ethno-nationalist libertarianism that closely mirrors the themes I have identified in
his intellectual forebearers. Deist (2017) claimed that ‘while libertarians enthusiasti-
cally embrace markets, they have for decades made the disastrous mistake of appear-
ing hostile to family, to religion, to tradition, to culture, and to civic or social institu-
tions’. Echoing Mises’ belief that state intervention destroys the patriarchal basis of
the market society, Deist (2017) claimed that the state:
attempts to break down families by taking kids away from them as early as
possible, indoctrinating them in state schools, using welfare as a wedge, using
the tax code as a wedge, discouraging marriage and large families, in fact dis-
couraging any kind of intimacy not subject to public scrutiny, encouraging
divorce, etc. etc.
Accordingly, in the most striking iteration of the contemporary convergence of
market and racial logic, Deist (2017) concluded that ‘blood and soil and God and
nation still matter to people. Libertarians ignore this at the risk of irrelevance’.
Members of the Mises Institute have also embraced the anti-democratic and rac-
ist logic inherent in the Great Replacement thesis, a far-right conspiracy theory
which claims that governments are encouraging mass migration to create electoral
constituencies for the growth of the state and the ultimate destruction of the white
race (see Feola, 2021). For example, Rockwell (2015), who remains chairman of the
Institute, has claimed that mass immigration is a deliberate act of ‘cultural destruc-
tionism’, introduced by government elites seeking ‘to make the constituencies for
continued government growth so large as to be practically unstoppable’. Echoing
Rougier’s view on the cultural foundations of western supremacy, Rockwell (2015)
claims that ‘politically enforced multiculturalism’ must be resisted to preserve the
cultural homogeneity of the liberal society. Other libertarian fellow-travellers, such
as Peter Brimelow,7 make the same argument in more explicitly white supremacist
language. Brimelow’s infamous anti-immigration manifesto Alien Nation claimed
that ‘the free market necessarily exists within a societal framework. And it can func-
tion only if the institutions in that framework are appropriate…some degree of eth-
nics and cultural coherence may be among these preconditions’ (1995, p. 176). Like
Mises, Brimelow uses explicitly biological language to discuss birth-rates and racial

7
Though not formally affiliated with the Institute, Brimelow’s books are sympathetically reviewed on
the Mises Institute website and his articles featured on Rockwell’s personnel website.
Neoliberal fascism? Fascist trends in early neoliberal thought…

purity. For example, in 2019 Brimelow described the Christchurch massacre as an

inevitable response to increased immigration and ‘western elites…repressing the
white host nations’, suggesting that Muslim immigration to both New Zealand and
the United States was part of a ‘great replacement’, and that ‘until the conditions
that provoke [the Christchurch killer] are redressed, they [i.e. mass shootings] will
keep coming’.
The convergence of ideas I have examined here now also has an explicitly named
political movement in the United States, with the Mises Caucus—a group of liber-
tarians with close connections to the Mises Institute—having recently taken control
of the Libertarian Party (Doherty, 2022). Combining support for free markets with a
rejection of diversity and a ‘level of racist edgelording’ that deliberately mimics the
online presence of the alt-rigt (Doherty, 2022), the Mises Caucus typifies what Her-
mansson et al., (2020, p. 57) describe as ‘the libertarian to alt-right pipeline’ (see
also Slobodian, 2019b; Cooper, 2021). According to the Southern Poverty Law Cen-
tre (Newton, 2022), ‘high-profile Mises Caucus members espouse hateful rhetoric
and collaborate with white supremacists’ such as Steve Bannon and Nick Fuentes.
The Mises Caucus is also closely aligned with Trump’s vision of America, with
some Libertarian Party members hostile to the Mises Caucus takeover even sug-
gesting that the real purpose of the Caucus is ‘to sabotage the Libertarian Party and
sideline it over the next few years for Donald Trump’ (Newton, 2022). Regardless of
whether these claims are true or not, in Trump members of the Mises Caucus clearly
see a standard bearer aligned with their political movement (Newton, 2022).8
Looking beyond the Mises Institute and Caucus, the series of recent Supreme
Court decisions entrenching patriarchal norms, the increasing openness of white
nationalist and Great Replacement themes in cable news, and the proliferating oppo-
sition to feminism and trans-gender rights, all point to the ongoing prominence of
the convergence between neoliberal and fascist ideas I have outlined here. When
Trump (2023) promises to ‘keep foreign, Christian-hating communists, Marxists
and socialists out of America’ and to develop ‘new laws’ to deal with ‘the ones that
are already here’, he invokes the same anti-democratic opposition to socialism I have
traced here. Likewise, the violence and cruelty on the US southern border—from
Presidential candidate Ron DeSantis’ proposal to shoot people crossing the border to
recent reports of Texas border agents instructed to push injured migrants back into
the Rio Grande River (Wermund, 2023)—is justified by narratives of a white Amer-
ica under attack by an external racialized other. Finally, the recent moral panic tar-
geting transgender rights, and the broader attacks on the LGBTI community (Peele,
2023), reflect the belief that a patriarchal rendering of traditional family values is
essential to the preservation of American society. As Nancy Fraser (2019) notes,
the collapsing hegemony of ‘third way’ neoliberalism associated with Obama and
the Clintons has created space for new articulations of the political. With Biden still

8
Members of the Mises Caucus have also spread misinformation about alleged electoral fraud at the
2020 US Presidential election. For example, Daryl Brooks, the Mises Caucus and Libertarian Party can-
didate for Pennsylvania Governor, was the first witness alleging electoral fraud at Rudy Giuliani’s Four
Seasons Total Landscaping press conference in 2020; Newton (2022).
 H. Maher

struggling to formulate a compelling alternative, the combination of fascist and neo-

liberal ideas remains particularly dangerous. Understanding the key points at which
neoliberal and fascist political rationalities are converging is thus crucial to combat-
ting the resurgence of a racist and violent form of market politics, the historical ante-
cedents of which I have located in the 1930s.
Acknowledgements For helpful comments on the manuscript, the author would like to thank Anna
Boucher, Brendon O’Connor, Eda Gunaydin, Benjamin Manning, Jordan McSwiney and the two review-
ers from Contemporary Political Theory.

Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,
which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long
as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative
Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this
article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line
to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended
use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permis-
sion directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/.

References
Bale, J. and Bar-On, T. (2022) Fighting the last war: Confusion, partisanship, and alarmism in the litera-
ture on the radical right. Lexington Books.
Banet-Weiser, S., Gill, R. and Rottenberg, C. (2020) Postfeminism, popular feminism and neoliberal
feminism? Sarah Banet-Weiser, Rosalind Gill and Catherine Rottenberg in conversation. Feminist
Theory 21(1): 3–24.
Bar-On, T. (2008) Fascism to the Nouvelle Droite: The dream of pan-European empire. Journal of Con-
temporary European Studies 16(3): 327–345.
Bazian, H. and Leung, M. (2018) Trump and the collapse of neoliberal economic order!. Islamophobia
Studies Journal 4(2): 155–158.
Bhattacharyya, G. (2013) Racial neoliberal Britain? In N. Kapoor, V. Kalra and J. Rhodes (eds.) The state
of race. Palgrave Macmillan.
Biebricher, T. (2018) The political theory of neoliberalism. Stanford University Press.
Biebricher, T. (2020) Democracy, neoliberalism and James Buchanan. Journal of Australian Political
Economy 86: 37–60.
Brimelow, P. (1995) Alien nation: Common sense about America’s immigration disaster. Harper
Perennial.
Brimelow, P. (2019). Christchurch massacre: Yes, it’s terrorism, yes, it’s tragic—And yes, elites could
halt it, by halting immigration. But they won’t. VDare. Retrieved 17 March, 2019 from https://​
vdare.​com/​artic​les/​chris​tchur​ch-​massa​cre-​yes-​it-s-​terro​rism-​yes-​it-s-​tragic-​and-​yes-​elites-​could-​
halt-​it-​by-​halti​ng-​immig​ration-​but-​they-​won-t.
Brown, W. (2006) American nightmare: Neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and de-democratization. Politi-
cal Theory 34(6): 690–714.
Brown, W. (2018) Neoliberalism’s frankenstein: Authoritarian freedom in twenty-first century ‘democra-
cies’. Critical times 1(1): 60–79.
Brown, W. (2019) In the ruins of neoliberalism: The rise of antidemocratic politics in the west. Colombia
University Press.
Brubaker, R. (2017) Between nationalism and civilizationism: The European populist moment in com-
parative perspective. Ethnic and Racial Studies 40(8): 1191–1226.
Neoliberal fascism? Fascist trends in early neoliberal thought…

Carney, A. (2013) Preserving the “master race” SS reproductive and family policies during the second
world war. In A. Weiss-Wendt and R. Yeomans (eds.) Racial science in Hitler’s new Europe. Lin-
coln, pp. 1938–1945.
Cayla, D. (2021) Populism and neoliberalism. Routledge.
Coles, R. (2018) Critical exchange the pragmatic vision of visionary pragmatism: The challenge of radi-
cal democracy in a neoliberal world order. Contemporary Political Theory 17: 250–262.
Connolly, W. (2017) Aspirational fascism the struggle for multifaceted democracy under Trumpism. Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press.
Cooper, M. (2017) Family values: Between neoliberalism and the new social conservatism. Zone Books.
Cooper, M. (2021) The alt-right: Neoliberalism, libertarianism and the fascist temptation. Theory, Cul-
ture and Society 38(6): 29–50.
Cornelissen, L. (2020) Neoliberalism and the racialized critique of democracy. Constellations 27(3):
348–360.
Cornelissen, L. (2021) Savage economics: Race, futurity, and civilizational hierarchy in early Austrian
neoliberalism. Global Perspectives 2(1): 23667.
Cox, R. and Skidmore-Hess, D. (2022) How neofascism emerges from neoliberal capitalism. New Politi-
cal Science 44(4): 590–606.
de Jouvenel, B. (1934) La Crise du Capitalisme et la Fin des Démocraties. La Lutte des Jeunes.
de Jouvenel, B. (1936) The great interviews of the century: Adolf Hitler. Paris-Midi.
de Jouvenel, B. (1952) The ethics of redistribution. Cambridge University Press.
de Jouvenel, B. (1962) On power. Beacon Press.
Dean, J. (2019) Anti-communism is all around us. Praktyka Teoretyczna 31(1): 15–24.
Dean, M. (2017) The secret life of neoliberal subjectivity. In S. Schram and M. Pavlovskaya (eds.)
Rethinking neoliberalism: Resisting the disciplinary regime. Routledge.
Deist, J. “For a new libertarian,” speech, transcript published on Mises Wire [blog]. Retrieved 28 July,
2017 from https://​mises.​org/​wire/​new-​liber​tarian.
Doherty, B. Mises caucus takes control of libertarian party. Reason.com. Retrieved 29 May, 2022 from
https://​reason.​com/​2022/​05/​29/​mises-​caucus-​takes-​contr​ol-​of-​liber​tarian-​party/.
Eastland-Underwood, J. (2022) The whiteness of Markets: Anglo-American colonialism, white suprem-
acy and free market rhetoric. New Political Economy 28: 1–15.
Farrant, A., Mcphail, E. and Berger, S. (2012) Preventing the ‘abuses’ of democracy: Hayek, the ‘mili-
tary usurper’ and transitional dictatorship in Chile? American Journal of Economics and Sociology
71(3): 513–538.
Fassin, É. The neo-fascist moment of neoliberalism. Open Democracy. Retrieved 10 August, 2018 from
https://​www.​opend​emocr​acy.​net/​en/​can-​europe-​make-​it/​neo-​fasci​st-​moment-​of-​neoli​beral​ism/.
Feola, M. (2021) ‘You will not replace us’: The melancholic nationalism of whiteness. Political Theory
49(4): 528–553.
Fischer, K. (2009) The influence of neoliberals in Chile before, during, and after Pinochet. In P. Mirowski
and D. Plehwe (eds.) The road from Mont Pelerin: The making of the neoliberal thought collective.
Harvard University Press.
Fraser, N. (2016) Progressive neoliberalism versus reactionary populism: A choice that feminists should
refuse. Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research 24(4): 281–284.
Fraser, N. (2019) The Old Is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born. Verso.
Froio, C. (2018) Race, religion, or culture? Framing Islam between racism and neo-racism in the online
network of the French far right. Perspectives on Politics 16(3): 696–709.
Gambetti, Z. (2020) Exploratory notes on the origins of new fascisms. Critical times 3(1): 1–32.
Giroux, H. (2019) The terror of the unforeseen. LARB Provocations.
Giroux, H. (2021) Rethinking neoliberal fascism, racist violence, and the plague of inequality. Communi-
cation Teacher 35(3): 171–177.
Goldberg, D.T. (2009) The threat of race: Reflections on racial neoliberalism. Wiley.
Griffin, R. (1991) The nature of fascism. Routledge.
Griffin, R. Why Joe Biden does not need to prioritise fighting fascism. The Independent, November 19,
2020.
Gusterson, H. (2017) From Brexit to trump: Anthropology and the rise of nationalist populism. American
Ethnologist 44(2): 209–214.
Hermansson, P., Lawrence, D., Mulhall, J. and Murdoch, S. (2020) The international alt-right fascism for
the 21st century?. Routledge.
 H. Maher

Horwitz, S. (2011). How did we get here? Or, why do 20 year old newsletters matter so damn much?
Bleeding Heart Libertarians. Retrieved 23 December, 2011 from https://​bleed​inghe​artli​berta​rians.​
com/​2011/​12/​how-​did-​we-​get-​here-​or-​why-​do-​20-​year-​old-​newsl​etters-​matter-​so-​damn-​much/.
Hülsmann, J.G. (2007) Mises: The last knight of liberalism. Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Innset, O. (2020) Reinventing liberalism: The politics, philosophy and economics of early neoliberalism.
Springer.
Irving, S. (2018) Limiting democracy and framing the economy: Hayek, Schmitt and ordoliberalism. His-
tory of European Ideas 44(1): 113–127.
Jackson, P.N. (2021) Debate: Donald Trump and fascism studies. Fascism 10(1): 1–15.
Judt, T. (2005) Postwar: A history of Europe since 1945. Penguin.
Kershaw, I. (2015) To hell and back. Viking.
Knegt, D. (2017) Fascism, liberalism and Europeanism in the political thought of Bertrand de Jouvenel
and Alfred Fabre-Luce. Amsterdam University Press.
Lippmann, W. (1937) The good society. Little, Brown and Company.
MacLean, N. (2018) Democracy in chains: The deep history of the radical right’s stealth plan for Amer-
ica. Viking.
Maher, H. (2022) Foucault against the Foucauldians? On the problem of the neoliberal state. Thesis
Eleven 168(1): 72–87.
Maher, H. (2023) The free market as fantasy: A Lacanian approach to the problem of neoliberal resil-
ience. International Studies Quarterly. https://​doi.​org/​10.​1093/​isq/​sqad0​50.
Maher, H., McSwiney, J. and Günaydin, E. (2022) Western civilisationism and white supremacy: The
Ramsay Centre for western civilisation. Patterns of Prejudice 55(4): 309–330.
Martel, J. (2019) Are we out of time? Thinking about neoliberalism and fascism in an age of radical tran-
sition. Law, Culture and the Humanities 15(1): 6–13.
Matthews, D. (2020). Is Trump a fascist? Vox. Retrieved 23 October, 2020 from https://​www.​vox.​com/​
policy-​and-​polit​ics/​21521​958/​what-​is-​fasci​sm-​signs-​donald-​trump.
McSwiney, J., Gunaydin, E. and Maher, H. (2023) Discourses of western civilisation in the Australian
Federal Parliament. In E. Smith, J. Persian and V.J. Fox (eds.) Histories of fascism and anti-fascism
in Australia. Routledge.
Micocci, A. and Di Mario, F. (2018) The fascist nature of neoliberalism. Routledge.
Mills, C. (1997) The racial contract. Cornell University Press.
Mont Pelerin Society. (1947). Statement of aims. Retrieved from https://​www.​montp​elerin.​org/​state​
ment-​of-​aims/.
Mussolini, B. (2018) The doctrine of fascism. In D. Simonelli (ed.) Nationalism & populism (320 BCE-
2017 CE). Salem Press.
Newton, C. (2022). Mises Caucus: Could it sway the libertarian party to the hard right? Southern Poverty
Law Centre. Retrieved 25 May, 2022 from https://​www.​splce​nter.​org/​hatew​atch/​2022/​05/​25/​mises-​
caucus-​could-​it-​sway-​liber​tarian-​party-​hard-​right.
Passmore, K. (2014) Fascism: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.
Patnaik, P. (2020) Neoliberalism and fascism. Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy 9(1): 33–49.
Paxton, R. (2004) The anatomy of fascism. Knopf.
Paxton, R. (2021). I’ve hesitated to call Donald Trump a fascist. Until now. Newsweek, January 11, 2021.
Payne, S. (1996) A history of fascism, 1914–1945. University of Wisconsin Press.
Peele, C. (2023). Roundup of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation advancing in states across the country. Press
release, Human Rights Campaign. Retrieved 23 May, 2023 from https://​www.​hrc.​org/​press-​relea​
ses/​round​up-​of-​anti-​lgbtq-​legis​lation-​advan​cing-​in-​states-​across-​the-​count​ry.
Pozzi, L. (2020) The regulation of public morality and eugenics: A productive alliance between the Cath-
olic Church and Italian Fascism. Modern Italy: Journal of the Association for the Study of Modern
Italy 25(3): 317–331.
Reinhoudt, J. and Audier, S. (2018) The Walter Lippmann Colloquium: The birth of neo-liberalism. Pal-
grave Macmillan.
Roberts, D. and Mahtani, M. (2010) Neoliberalizing race, racing neoliberalism: Placing “race” in neolib-
eral discourses. Antipode 42(2): 248–257.
Rockwell Jr, L. (2015). Open borders are an assault on private property. Retrieved 16 November, 2015
from https://​mises.​org/​libra​ry/​open-​borde​rs-​are-​assau​lt-​priva​te-​prope​rty.
Röpke, W. (1950) The social crisis of our times. University of Chicago Press.
Röpke, W. (1960) A humane economy: The social framework of the free market. Henry Regnery.
Röpke, W. (1963) Economics of the free society. Henry Regnery.
Neoliberal fascism? Fascist trends in early neoliberal thought…

Reid Ross, A. (2017) Against the Fascist Creep. AK Press.

Rougier, L. (1929) The democratic mystique: Its origins, its illusions. Flammarion.
Rougier, L. (1938) Les Mystiques Éconmiques: Comment L’on Passe Des Démocraties Libérales Aux
États Totalitaires. Librairie de Médicis.
Rougier, L. (1969) Le Génie de l’Occident: essai sur la formation d’une mentalité. Laffont.
Rougier, L. (2018) Comments at the Walter Lippmann Colloquium. In J. Reinhoudt and S. Audier (eds.)
The Walter Lippmann Colloquium: The birth of neo-liberalism. Palgrave Macmillan.
Said, E.W. (1994) Culture and imperialism. Random House.
Salzinger, L. (2020) Sexing Homo Œconomicus: Finding masculinity at work. In W. Callison and Z.
Manfredi (eds.) Mutant neoliberalism: Market rule and political rupture. Fordham University
Press.
Scheuerman, W. (1997) The unholy alliance of Carl Schmitt and Friedrich Hayek. Constellations 4(2):
172–188.
Slobodian, Q. (2018) Globalists: The end of empire and the birth of neoliberalism. Harvard University
Press.
Slobodian, Q. (2019a) Perfect capitalism, imperfect humans: Race, migration and the limits of Ludwig
von Mises’s globalism. Contemporary European History 28(2): 143–155.
Slobodian, Q. (2019b) Anti-’68ers and the racist-libertarian alliance. Cultural Politics 15(3): 372–386.
Slobodian, Q. and Plehwe, D. (2020) Introduction. In D. Plehwe, Q. Slobodian and P. Mirowski (eds.)
Nine lives of neoliberalism. Verso.
Stanley, J. (2018) How fascism works: The politics of us and them. Random House.
Streeck, W. (2017) The return of the repressed. New Left Review 104: 5–18.
Szczepanska, A.M. (2022) Women’s inclusion and neoliberal governmentality in the Swedish digital
game industry: An analysis of discursive positions and recruitment strategies. Gender, Work, and
Organization 30(3): 842–861.
Traverso, E. (2019) The new faces of fascism: Populism and the far right. Verso.
Trump, D. (2023). Speech at faith and freedom coalition gala, 24 June. Retrieved from https://​www.​youtu​
be.​com/​watch?v=​9pTBX​rndZHI.
von Mises, L. (1962) Socialism. Yale University Press.
von Mises, L. (1977a) Planned chaos. Foundation for Economic Education.
von Mises, L. (1977b) The ultimate foundation of economic science. Sheed Andrews and McMeel.
von Mises, L. (1985) Liberalism. Foundation for Economic Education.
von Mises, L. (1998) Human action. Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Weiss-Wendt, A. and Yeomans, R. (eds.) (2013) Racial science in Hitler’s new Europe, 1938–1945.
Lincoln.
Wermund, B. (2023). Texas troopers told to push children into Rio Grande, deny water to migrants,
records say. Houston Chronicle, 17 July. Retrieved from https://​www.​houst​onchr​onicle.​com/​polit​
ics/​texas/​artic​le/​border-​troop​er-​migra​nts-​wire-​18205​076.​php.
West, C. Goodbye, American neoliberalism. A new era is here. The Guardian, 17 November, 2016.
Whyte, J. (2019) The morals of the market: Human rights and the rise of neoliberalism. Verso.
Zúquete, J.P. (2018) The identitarians: The movement against globalism and Islam in Europe. University
of Notre Dame Press.

Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.

Henry Maher is a politics lecturer in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney.
His main body of research concerns the survival of neoliberal forms of governance during periods of
crisis, and the history of neoliberal thought. His work is published in International Studies Quarterly,
Patterns of Prejudice and The Australian Journal of Political Science.