One thing that confuses me about neoliberalism in the 2010s sense is how different it is from neoliberalism in the 1980s sense. Globe Twitter is pro-market, but not really Reaganite or Thatcherite, definitely not when it comes to the conservative parts of those ideologies. I’ve had friends on the left who say they like the ideas of 21st century neoliberalism but think the name is too misleading or offputting – people read it as something quite different from “progressive cosmopolitanism plus free markets plus generous welfare state”. I’m hesitant to use it in front of left audiences for that reason.
So why ‘neoliberalism’ as a name, given the baggage it has?
Initially the name came from wonkish Hillary Clinton supporters getting called ‘****ing neoliberals’ or other angry denunciations by Bernie Sanders supporters in the 2016 Dem primary. We kind of ran with it—if being a Clinton supporter is being a neoliberal, fine, I’m a neoliberal.
Once the name was there, it attracted attention like a lightning rod and the community grew very fast. At the beginning nobody was trying to make this into anything, it was just a bunch of people memeing about central bankers, globalism and woke capitalism. There wasn’t a conscious decision about how This Is The Name That Will Eventually Win Suburban Moms And Create Our Political Moment, it was just a small community having fun that turned into a much larger community. By that point the name was the name.
Moving forward, we have some soft-rebranding where some of our chapters choose to go by ‘New Liberals’ instead of Neoliberal. We are moving into using different names in different contexts.
Thanks for doing the podcast and everything else!
One thing that confuses me about neoliberalism in the 2010s sense is how different it is from neoliberalism in the 1980s sense. Globe Twitter is pro-market, but not really Reaganite or Thatcherite, definitely not when it comes to the conservative parts of those ideologies. I’ve had friends on the left who say they like the ideas of 21st century neoliberalism but think the name is too misleading or offputting – people read it as something quite different from “progressive cosmopolitanism plus free markets plus generous welfare state”. I’m hesitant to use it in front of left audiences for that reason.
So why ‘neoliberalism’ as a name, given the baggage it has?
Initially the name came from wonkish Hillary Clinton supporters getting called ‘****ing neoliberals’ or other angry denunciations by Bernie Sanders supporters in the 2016 Dem primary. We kind of ran with it—if being a Clinton supporter is being a neoliberal, fine, I’m a neoliberal.
Once the name was there, it attracted attention like a lightning rod and the community grew very fast. At the beginning nobody was trying to make this into anything, it was just a bunch of people memeing about central bankers, globalism and woke capitalism. There wasn’t a conscious decision about how This Is The Name That Will Eventually Win Suburban Moms And Create Our Political Moment, it was just a small community having fun that turned into a much larger community. By that point the name was the name.
Moving forward, we have some soft-rebranding where some of our chapters choose to go by ‘New Liberals’ instead of Neoliberal. We are moving into using different names in different contexts.