I think it’s important to realize that different names serve different purposes at different points in time.
If the initial subreddit had called itself the very sober sounding ”/r/NewLiberal” from the beginning, I firmly believe that what we are doing right now would not exist. The subreddit would never have gotten the attention it got, and would never have grown as fast as it did. Reclaiming the term neoliberal was delightfully subversive and grabbed people’s attention—people who loved it and people who hated it. Before the Neoliberal Project had even been conceived and we were just a loose collection of social media spaces, we had already been profiled in Vice, Gawker, NPR, and many other places. We had mainstream media attention because the name was controversial. The attention brought in both supporters and attackers, and the inevitable tribal battles that happened forged a sense of community that attracted people further. We’ve grown pretty fast, all things considered.
So I think there were very strong reasons to lean heavily into the neoliberalism branding early in our existence. And once you lean heavily into a brand, it’s hard to divorce yourself from that brand—path dependency is a thing. A lot of our members identify with the neoliberal brand. I also continue to think there’s a benefit to being controversial and iconoclastic. Think about the DSA’s rise in popularity, and how the left has successfully redefined ‘socialism’ from ‘the scary communist USSR with a brutal dictatorship and absolute total state control over every part of the economy’ to ‘socialism is when free college and healthcare’. (which may be a slight exaggeration of how many GenZ socialists understand themselves, but only a slight one)
With that said! I do think it’s likely that as we move further into serious advocacy within the political establishment, we’ll move more towards a different branding. We already have the Center for New Liberalism which is essentially just a new wrapper on the same ideas, and is helpful to use in instances when ‘neoliberal’ might scare people off. Clearly it does restrict some things for us and isn’t the best branding in all situations. Right now we’re letting our chapters choose whichever name is best for them in their local context. I’m ultimately a pragmatist and am willing to use different names in different contexts.
I think it’s important to realize that different names serve different purposes at different points in time.
If the initial subreddit had called itself the very sober sounding ”/r/NewLiberal” from the beginning, I firmly believe that what we are doing right now would not exist. The subreddit would never have gotten the attention it got, and would never have grown as fast as it did. Reclaiming the term neoliberal was delightfully subversive and grabbed people’s attention—people who loved it and people who hated it. Before the Neoliberal Project had even been conceived and we were just a loose collection of social media spaces, we had already been profiled in Vice, Gawker, NPR, and many other places. We had mainstream media attention because the name was controversial. The attention brought in both supporters and attackers, and the inevitable tribal battles that happened forged a sense of community that attracted people further. We’ve grown pretty fast, all things considered.
So I think there were very strong reasons to lean heavily into the neoliberalism branding early in our existence. And once you lean heavily into a brand, it’s hard to divorce yourself from that brand—path dependency is a thing. A lot of our members identify with the neoliberal brand. I also continue to think there’s a benefit to being controversial and iconoclastic. Think about the DSA’s rise in popularity, and how the left has successfully redefined ‘socialism’ from ‘the scary communist USSR with a brutal dictatorship and absolute total state control over every part of the economy’ to ‘socialism is when free college and healthcare’. (which may be a slight exaggeration of how many GenZ socialists understand themselves, but only a slight one)
With that said! I do think it’s likely that as we move further into serious advocacy within the political establishment, we’ll move more towards a different branding. We already have the Center for New Liberalism which is essentially just a new wrapper on the same ideas, and is helpful to use in instances when ‘neoliberal’ might scare people off. Clearly it does restrict some things for us and isn’t the best branding in all situations. Right now we’re letting our chapters choose whichever name is best for them in their local context. I’m ultimately a pragmatist and am willing to use different names in different contexts.