Extended book review: Hayek’s Bastards: The Neoliberal Roots of the Populist Right by Quinn Slobodian

new book, Hayek's Bastards, undertakes to unearth the Neoliberal Roots of the Populist Right.Shovelling his way to these roots, Slobodian offers a genealogy of the ideas of contemporary populism.Populism is a set of political movements associated with figures as diverse as Argentina's Milei, Turkey's Erdogan, India's Modi, Hungary's Orban and America's Trump.What seems to unite these movements is a selfprofessed anti-elitism, typically expressed in opposition to the pluralism of democratic institutions.Slobodian wants to show that, if we dig deep enough, then we will discover populism not to be a mere fascist or fascisant movement.It is, rather, a product of the 'new fusionism' between traditional hard-right and neoliberal ideas.So the origin of populism must be sought in the inbreeding between the ideas of Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, on the one hand, and traditional hard-right ideas about intelligence, race and ethnicity, on the other.Admittedly, not a pretty image.But Slobodian unearths compelling evidence that it applies not only to ruling populists (in Argentina, Turkey, Hungary, India, the United States), but also to aspiring populists (the German AfD, the French RN, the Spanish Vox).All of them are, one way or the other, intellectually rooted in neoliberalism.Hayek's Bastards is fascinating and often illuminating.Slobodian is at his best when he weaves together seemingly distinct threads of the populist narrative into a single theme.These threads are the obsession of the populists with gold and non-state currencies; their emphasis on IQ and innate capacity; and their concomitant pseudo-scientific racism and ethnic nationalism.What connects all of these threads, Slobodian argues, is 'Volk capital':We could call [the fusion between Volk and capital] Volk capital.New fusionists assign intelligence averages to countries in a way that collectivizes and renders innate the concept of 'human capital'.They add overtones of values and traditions that cannot be captured statistically, shading into a language of national essences and national character.(p.23)