Overcoming Neoliberalism: Jared Yates Sexton
January 26th, 2023
“We have to start talking about how power has actually been wielded and how it takes shape.”
Jared Yates Sexton is a self-described Hoosier, a Political Analyst, and host of the Muckrake Podcast. His latest book is The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis. We discuss our current era of neo-liberalism and what may be in store in the future.
One of the most dangerous things that Reagan and Thatcher did on behalf of neoliberalism was convince people that government is impotent. This has eaten away at the authority of the state and reduced confidence in government regulation. Further, neoliberalism has reduced citizens into consumers who are left talking about consumer preferences as opposed to real politics. Jared predicts that the end of neoliberalism is nigh.
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Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Jared Yates Sexton
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producers: Zack Travis and Sara Burningham
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Jared Yates Sexton Transcript
Mila Atmos: [00:00:04] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos. Sometimes the scale of the challenges we collectively face has me lying in bed late at night, mind racing, and the following two questions go around in my head over and over: How did we get here? And what are we going to do about it? It feels as though today's guest may have spent some similarly sleepless nights, but then it seems he got out of bed and went in search of some of the answers. Jared Yates Sexton's new book is called The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis. Jared is a self-described Hoosier, a political analyst, and host of the Maverick podcast. Thank you for joining us.
Jared Yates Sexton: [00:01:02] Thank you for having me. I'm actually kind of shocked at how apt of a description that is, getting up at like three and four in the morning and doing the work. That's pretty accurate.
Mila Atmos: [00:01:13] So I really enjoyed your book and I thought we would start with neoliberalism. And I'm going to ask you to tell us a story. It's a love story that you mentioned in your book about Friedrich Hayek and Margaret Thatcher.
Jared Yates Sexton: [00:01:28] Yeah. So, you know, neoliberalism is one of the least understood and most consequential ideologies, especially of the modern moment. It sort of has its beginnings in the 1930s as there are a lot of populist movements that are coming together. We're talking about socialism and communism. We're talking about Nazism, fascism. A group of people got together to discuss possible alternatives. They looked at all these mass movements and they saw dangerous things. They thought that, you know, big groups of people making decisions are being swayed, was really going to throw a wrench into the works of larger ideas and plans and global orders, particularly economics. And they looked at it and they said, you know, economics are way too important to be left to voting and to democracies and such. And there needed to be a rebirth of original liberalism, which was the idea that property was the founding principle of the modern world. That's what governments were supposed to do, protect your property and basically nothing else. The idea that governments were going to invest in projects, social safety nets, any of that was absurd. They needed only to take care of
law enforcement, the care of property and such, and move forward. This idea began to take hold in the public imagination after World War II and started to butt up against the New Deal idea, which of course, is Keynesianism. The idea that you're going to invest in these types of things and work programs. And eventually we looked at a thing called stagflation, which was a very novel economic, political phenomenon. And that old idea of Keynesian politics didn't seem like it was going to work anymore. And neoliberals started to really advocate for their ideology. And what's more, it really found purchase. And Friedrich Hayek, who was one of the main neoliberals and main sort of prophets of neoliberalism, he he saw his opportunity in Margaret Thatcher and he met with Thatcher and he talked to her. He gave her his ideas. He gave her his advice on how she should handle her possible future administration. And by the time that she left, Friedrich Hayek was absolutely head over heels in love with her. The idea that she was going to be the person, the public figure who brought neoliberalism into the popular imagination. And what's more, he was right. Margaret Thatcher as prime Minister of Great Britain and Ronald Reagan as President of the United States, were the two main public champions of neoliberalism and delivered us into a new age that I believe we are living in the final throes of, which leaves us dealing with the consequences of neoliberalism as a world- defining order and also trying to figure out what comes next.
Mila Atmos: [00:04:16] Yeah, well put. Thank you. I wanted to just point out to the listeners who really want to dive into that background, they can listen to our episode with Andrew Koppelman on the appeal of libertarianism, which we had late in 2022. So that era of Thatcher and Reagan and Hayek feels like such a historical pivot point. Like you said, we are really living in that era still, and it's a moment where so much changed, but you actually start the book much further back in time. Where do you begin and why? And we're going to skip over a lot here because it's a 300-page book, but I suppose I'm asking for a really brief table set of that historical background.
Jared Yates Sexton: [00:04:56] Yeah. So this book is basically a retelling or re- envisioning of the history of quote unquote Western civilization. And the reason is because whenever we have these moments of crisis, like the one that we're living in now, you'll notice that you have a lot of right wing authoritarians who are talking about defending Western civilization. Every time a statue gets pulled down, every time there's a protest, you have to defend Western civilization. So I needed to understand it. And I went back to the so-called beginnings of it, which is the Roman Empire. And I started
the Midnight Kingdom at the moment where Christianity merged with state power. And what I did from there is by by looking at these different eras, these moments where one world defining order turned into another, I kept finding these very, very definable, predictable, understandable cycles, which made it apparent very quickly, to both my astonishment and also -- I'll be honest with you -- a little bit of terror that we are living in another one of those moments.
Mila Atmos: [00:05:56] Well, you really want us to look at the big picture and you said that there were some obvious events that foreshadowed the upcoming turn of civilization, let's call it. So are we talking about a conspiracy? You know, the way that people talk about it today, for example? Or more of a case of coinciding interests?
Jared Yates Sexton: [00:06:17] It's all of the above. I mean, you know, in different turns and I want to go ahead and talk about what a conspiracy theory is. Right. It's the idea that somewhere out there, there is a room. Right. And there are very powerful people in that room who are having a conversation about what they're going to do and how they're going to do it. Now, sometimes that's farcical. Sometimes it's the idea that all of the Jewish people in the world are on the same page and they're making football, you know, less manly, as a way to destroy masculinity and erode Western civilization. That's farcical. But we do need to take a look at the fact that at many points in history we do have people meeting in these rooms discussing how they're going to not only regain control, but also to expand control. So what we find is this. There has been, over the course of history, several important moments where things start looking a little shaky. I'll just say that. Things start seeing a little more malleable, which is the important thing to remember here. Sometimes it seems like the world couldn't change. Everything's set to too much in stone. And then there are other times where all of a sudden it feels like one thing could move and everything's going to come crumbling down. It feels very malleable. And what we find is that there are a lot of people in a lot of rooms who use things like Christianity, like religious mythologies and/or conspiracy theories. It's a very potent weapon to use these very, very specifically tailored and focused stories that more or less say, "hey, we're not in a room, we're not talking about things, right? We're not coming up with minds. It's those people." And you'll notice that whenever it happens, it's very obvious it's never the wealthy and the powerful who are meeting in these rooms, right? It's always Jewish puppet masters, it's women, it's gay and trans people. You know, it's every vulnerable community that you can imagine on the face of the
earth. And what it does is, it takes the focus off of the people who are actually talking about what needs to happen and when it needs to happen. And it moves it more or less to their political enemies, which is what we're watching again today, unfortunately, in our current circumstances.
Mila Atmos: [00:08:31] Right, Right. Well, those malleable moments are really fascinating. And as you point out, they are ripe for manipulation. So let's talk about what's at stake with the entrenched interests.
Jared Yates Sexton: [00:08:44] Yeah. So let's go ahead and let's talk for a second. I'll use a recent conspiracy theory and we can start to drill down a little bit into it. One of the most potent and powerful conspiracy theories over the last few years. Some people would call it QAnon, right? This idea that the government has been overtaken by satanic pedophiles right. They're all over society. And for anybody who isn't keeping track of QAnon, it is just a lightly painted over anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish conspiracy theory. It's the New World Order made new. All of this is the exact same story. Now, this goes ahead and tells people that there are forces that are operating behind the scenes. And if you're not careful, they're going to come for you. They're going to come for your children. It's going to be the apocalypse, Right. Which goes ahead and makes it a life or death struggle. Every conversation. And by the way, recently the biggest conversation for a couple of days was whether or not we should have gas stoves, you know, and like gas stove suddenly became an apocalyptic conversation. Government jackbooted thugs are going to break into your house and steal your gas stove before you can make dinner, Right? We're not talking about "are gas stove safe?" You know, should we move forward? Should we have electric stoves instead? We're talking about the apocalypse. But a better example of this is the recent CRT critical race theory and or groomer conspiracy theory, which is the idea that our schools have been overrun by evil liberal teachers and administrators who want to indoctrinate and brainwash your children. And as a result, what has happened around the country, parents and communities have risen up. They've overtaken their school boards. They've terrified their local teachers, in some cases physically harassed them. And they've gone ahead and they've gotten elected to positions of power. Now, that would be something if that was a grassroots movement. It is not. It has been paid for in millions, if not billions of dollars by people like the Koch brothers, the Bradleys, the Devoses. This has been an incredible wedge that they have used. And they give all this money to institutes, think tanks, all these
groups to carry these operations out. But on the surface, the people think that they are defending their families from an apocalyptic scenario, and it's incredibly powerful.
Mila Atmos: [00:11:04] Yeah, totally. I totally see that. I mean, we all see it all around us. QAnon is a very convenient, apocalyptic cult that does not advance the daily needs of most of its adherents. Right. Like you've just said, we talk about gas stoves as something that's being taken away from us, but we don't actually talk about the safety of them in in our own homes. So it's hard to see how it empowers them. Anyway, that's an important thread in your book. It's about how much of our discourse and culture is disempowering us, right? So can you outline some of the ways we're disempowered?
Jared Yates Sexton: [00:11:39] Sure. Absolutely. First of all, we are in a constant cultural war at this point. Some of the things that we're talking about in the United States are are embarrassing. We're talking about Dr. Seuss, for God's sakes. You know, we're talking about what sneaker company represents your political beliefs and to go ahead and bring part of what we've talked about so far forward. That is what neoliberals wanted. Again, they didn't trust people to vote on issues. There's been a vast technocratic push. And by the way, people hearing me talk about this, I know the words that are flashing through your mind. It's deep state, right? It's the idea that the government and a lot of our operations are taken care of by people who have not been elected. It doesn't matter who's elected president. They're still at their desks. They're still doing their jobs. That's exactly right. That is a technocratic administration that has been in place now for over a century, and that largely has been pushed forward by neoliberalism. We can't vote on those things. As a result, we're making choices with our money. We're making consumer choices. Right. So to go ahead and talk about the sneaker companies, take a look at a company like Nike. Colin Kaepernick was protesting police violence and unequal systems of justice. Right? So Nike, which by the way, has exploited people around the world with sweatshops and has gone around taking up resources, paying people virtually nothing. Nike goes ahead and pays a person like Colin Kaepernick, I think it was 6 to $8 million. Right. All of a sudden now the conversation isn't like, what does Nike do? Nike all of a sudden is a woke corporation, which means that if I am a person who has the ideology that I look at someone like a Colin Kaepernick as a hero, I'll go out and I'll buy Nikes. And what will the people on the other side do? They'll buy New Balances or they'll burn their Nikes. And as a result, what we're actually doing is we're not talking about politics. We're not
talking about how to move forward. We're not addressing any of the major conversations because representative government now is not about taking care of those problems. It's about ensuring that the market continues forward. The only time that the government more or less has the power to do anything is when the market's in trouble and there's not enough money circulating in order to keep the machine rolling. Instead, we're having arguments about what gender and race Velma from Scooby Doo is, in the new cartoon. We are literally left talking about consumer preferences as opposed to anything that even approaches like actual real politics.
Mila Atmos: [00:14:18] Yeah, Well, so glad you brought that up and explained how we have been rebranded from full fledged citizens with rights and interests in the way that the government works to consumers making consumer choices; what sneakers to buy or what movie to watch, or what to think about the movies that we watch. But can you tell us why that's so significant?
Jared Yates Sexton: [00:14:43] Yeah, So a lot of what's happening at this point is we have been turned into sort of faux pundits. Whenever you watch cable news and they're talking about politics, they're actually talking about strategies. And you look at something like the Republican Party here in America, which is just absolutely gotten more and more radicalized and dangerous because its branding is a white supremacist, paranoid branding. It's constant new world order, white replacement theory, deep state, QAnon lite, whatever we want to call it, instead of actually having a discussion about the fact that people are being radicalized, that candidates are going out and shooting up the homes of election officials. There are assassination attempts against the Speaker of the House recently. Instead of having discussions about what all of this is, we're actually having conversations about, "oh, that was a pretty good political move, right?" It's almost like we're we're at 30,000 feet looking down on this as if like it's something that we can just opinionated on as opposed to engage in. Because in the past, when democracy was healthy, when democratic movements were on the move, which again, is what neoliberalism wants to get rid of. Right. That means that we have to be out there fighting the fights instead of watching on television. It's been turned into a sport, something to consume passively. Now, a lot of people, they watch this and it's full of heroes and villains, saviors and devils, right? Like look at somebody like Donald Trump, obviously the villain of a modern era. We keep hoping that there's like somebody who's going to ride in on a white horse. Robert Mueller's got him dead to rights. You know,
James Comey is going to... This one's going to get him. Nancy Pelosi has a secret plan to take out Donald Trump. Merrick Garland is going to make it all go away. It's literally a television show that we are consuming passively, which keeps us from engaging in the Democratic actions that we need to. It keeps us from being out there, creating coalitions, getting involved in politics ourselves. And as a result, it has basically shut us out completely. We have an absolute lack of politicians who represent our interest. Most of them are millionaires. A few of them are billionaires. They are not particularly interested in betraying their classes and/or representing their constituents. So it has more or less turned our entire political system on its head.
Mila Atmos: [00:17:08] Well, you are speaking Future Hindsight's love language. We'll take engaging over opining every single time. I think another thing that your book really brought into focus for me and you just kind of flicked at is the way in which this neoliberal frame strips us of our humanity, the sum of the parts of individual consumers being so much less than the possibilities of mutual care and community, which is a lot of words for: What about the commons?
Jared Yates Sexton: [00:17:39] Yeah, and I got to tell you, the more that I take a look at neoliberalism and this is, I think truly why we're in such a bad situation right now, is because it has moved to this point where everything is about increasing profits. And by the way, part of the issue, there is no possibility to always increase your profits. That's absolute madness. You think about something like a McDonald's. You know, the preeminent fast food chain is always trying to top its last quarter. And so what happens when they reach record profits? Well, you're either going to increase your profits again or you're going to cut the people that you're paying and you're going to pay them less. You're going to create lessening conditions. So what has happened? It has turned people into cogs in a machine. It has basically said we're not worried about how people feel. We're not worried about what happens on the ground. Somebody like Larry Summers, who is a neoliberal, who is always opining about the economy, you know, he comes out and he talks about we might need a recession in order to make the economy work. Well, guess what? You say recession. I say people at home cutting their pills in half and worrying what's going to happen. I see people getting depressed. I see lives shortening and being more miserable. I see domestic violence. I see drug use. I see the actual humanity at stake instead of like numbers on a page. Neoliberalism has sucked the humanity and meaning out of life. It has left us alone. It has left us feeling
powerless, which, by the way, are perfect conditions for authoritarianism to build. Right? Oh, you feel powerless. Guess what? Join our movement and we'll goose step down the street and take over the country. Right? In the midst of all of this, it's left people feeling apathetic. It's left people feeling like the world is not getting better because it's not. It is an ideology of anti ideology. It is bloodless and you cannot defend it. It is absolutely a world order that is hollow and destructive. And I think right now the situation that we're in is a reflection of the damage that neoliberalism has done.
Mila Atmos: [00:19:51] We're taking a quick break. And when we come back, more on the neoliberals who believe recessions and layoffs are a price worth paying for the sake of the markets. But first, I want to share about a fellow democracy group podcast called Democracy Matters. Democracy faces a wide range of pressing challenges, from systemic racism to persistent inequities in access, voice and participation in public institutions and decision-making processes, divisive politics, and from civil unrest to institutions that aren't responsive to public needs. It's not enough to just identify problems. We also have to locate solutions and work collectively to address them. Democracy Matters hosts conversations to inspire informed action with a wide range of scholars, experts and practitioners dedicated to creating a more just and inclusive democracy. Join the conversation by subscribing to Democracy matters wherever you get your podcasts.
And now let's return to my conversation with Jared Yates Sexton.
You know, it's interesting, you mentioned Larry Summers saying that maybe we need a recession. I was recently talking to a friend of mine. I used to work on Wall Street on a trading desk, and we were talking about the economy. And she said, well, maybe we need a recession. And you know that everyday people have to pay for it. And I and I said for the first time, I said, but why? Why do everyday people have to pay for it? That literally makes no sense. You know, CEOs are making record income and the pandemic has seen so much hardship already. Why do everyday people have to suffer for the failings of the market? You know, one of the things you also mentioned in the book is about Greenspan saying that maybe we need boom and bust cycles. But why? We don't need boom and bust cycles. You know, that's not, that's not a requirement.
Jared Yates Sexton: [00:21:40] And, you know, when you actually take a look at the economy, whether it's the stock market or otherwise, it shows us that it has never been stable. It's the most amazing thing. You know, somebody like a Larry Summers or a Greenspan will say, oh, this is a beautiful system. It's the best made system ever. But don't spook it, don't scare it. It'll fall apart tomorrow, you know, and it will melt down in like this cataclysm. The truth is that we saw and this was part, of course, of the New Deal era, we saw it needs regulated. You cannot trust these people to regulate themselves. The government has to play a role in that. We have the tools to make this work. The problem is that all of these mythologies have ruined our ability to think that. I mean, one of the most dangerous things that Reagan and Thatcher did on behalf of neoliberalism was convince people that government can't do anything. The only thing you can do is get out of the way. And it ruined our confidence in the ability of the government to regulate the markets. And then on top of it, it created a religion of wealth, which is the idea -- and this is consistent with capitalism since the beginning -- that if you are wealthy, God has rewarded you. You are the most confident, capable person, and that's what that wealth represents. Well, I have to say Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, these whole groups of people are doing us an invaluable service, which shows us you can be successful and not altogether competent, and that wealth only denotes that you're good at having wealth or you come from wealth. And this idea of the meritocracy, it's been a lie from the very beginning, and it's a weaponized lie that has been repeated over and over. And if we're going to move forward and if we're going to make this thing better, we have to disabuse ourselves of those lies.
Mila Atmos: [00:23:28] Well, you just mentioned how neoliberalism has really rendered the state almost impotent. Corporations are eating away at the authority of the state, and it seems inescapable. So what makes it so hard to escape the system of neoliberalism that we live in today?
Jared Yates Sexton: [00:23:48] When I was researching for the Midnight Kingdom, I found the first era of corporations. And if you go back to the first era of corporations, they were created to carry out colonialism and the slave trade. That's what they were there for. And so it was an extension of state power. The state would birth the corporation and the corporation would go out and do the work of the state. Well, inevitably, what always happened, whether it was like the Dutch East India Company or whatever, any of these groups, they would go out; they would make an incredible
amount of money and wealth carrying out these operations. They would come back to their parent country and they would buy off the government. They had so much wealth that then they just bought off the government and then they controlled the government. And what ended up happening every time was that the corporation soon became more powerful than the nation that birthed it in the first place. Now, you and I are having a conversation. I have to assume we both still believe in nations. We still believe in the possibility of elections doing things. I have to tell you, the powerful people in the world right now do not see it that way. They do not think that, like the central idea of the world is our nations. Global capitalism got rid of that idea. It opened up the borders. It made it, of course, where corporations could go produce things over in this country, pay people for nothing, after paying nothing for the resources of another country, and then bring it back here. The corporation has outgrown the nation state. And if you take a look at any of these meetings like the G7 conference, basically it's world leaders talking amongst each other and saying, what are we doing? These people, we can't even tax them anymore. We can't even, like, fill our coffers. We've been reduced to PR fronts for corporations and meanwhile they have eaten away. And every part of representative government. Federal governments have more or less been rendered obsolete. In America, we have state governments. That's the only place where actual power basically resides anymore, where governors like Ron DeSantis basically rules over the state of Florida like a warlord. And meanwhile, you have a president that goes out and says, Oh, I'm really sorry about that latest shooting. I wish I could do something about it. Right. They have so co-opted the systems and it's predictable every time that this happens. But I will say history also shows us that every time this happens and it has happened multiple times, that eventually the people push back, they get tired of it. Humanity does not care for this state of living, and eventually they push back. They absolutely demand better lives, and eventually the government brings these people under control. Unfortunately, it sometimes happens after the stock market completely collapses and you have to go through a recession or a depression. But I do remain hopeful. I think we actually can change this thing.
Mila Atmos: [00:26:31] Yeah, well, you know, I think you make it sound in the book that the trajectory of neoliberalism is such that we are nearing the end. Is that inevitable? That we are closing in here towards the end days?
Jared Yates Sexton: [00:26:46] History is littered with what I call end of history moments. You know, this is a very famous saying that Francis Fukuyama came about, you know, as the Soviet Union was starting to fall apart. The idea is always we have reached the final moment of human perfection, of government and systems of order. Well, I'll tell you what, Clemens Von Metternich believed that, too, in the post Napoleon era, right? They always create these systems. They're like, oh, this could never be perfected on. It's going to be perfect forever. And then what happens eventually? Some country or people on the low end of the totem pole -- see Germany. They say, I don't like this order anymore. I'm going to push against it. It leads to a war. That's what happened with Russia and Ukraine. Russia was at the bottom of the global order of global neoliberal capitalism, didn't want it, wanted more land, more resources and power, and then decided to go out and start a war. Neoliberalism, by the way, loves authoritarianism. It was birthed primarily in Chile by the help of Augusto Pinochet. The idea was that, you know, this discipline against labor unions, the left and wage control and all of that, that it could best be served under an authoritarian dictator. And by the way, America, like built its global empire on the backs of authoritarian dictators. And by the way, it's growing in America, Canada, Great Britain, France. Italy, you know, has a neo-fascist leader now. Either that is going to square the circle, that authoritarian, particularly a white supremacist evangelical authoritarianism. Either that is going to take power and make the changes that neoliberalism requires to continue or eventually it's going to fall by the wayside and we're going to have something different. I personally would love to go back to the era where the government provides social safety nets and regulates markets and businesses. Call me crazy. I think it kind of worked for a while, but whatever happens, this current status quo is not long for this world. The right wing particularly understood that before everybody else, and they've been working really, really hard to deliver this new order on their own terms. And it's time for the rest of us to wake up, smell the coffee, and get working to create the new world.
Mila Atmos: [00:28:58] Right. Well, I want to backtrack a little bit here. You just mentioned that authoritarianism as an ideology makes it conducive to practice neoliberalism. So explain a little bit more about how that would work, because you do a really good job in the book. So, we should share with the listeners.
Jared Yates Sexton: [00:29:13] You know, I always hate to break up the mythology of America, except for it's my favorite thing in the world. So as we get out of World War II,
we immediately betray our partner, the Soviet Union. You know, we team up with Great Britain and we start creating these orders around the world. We start partnering with former fascists, former Nazis, basically, to murder and assassinate every leftist that we can find in Europe and around the world. And we start working with some really, really awful people, including Augusto Pinochet, who is a general in Chile now. Real fast on Chile: you have Salvador Allende, who wins the presidency, who is a democratic socialist, has some, you know, larger ideas about nationalizing this, or regulations there. The United States decides they can't trust him. And so what do they do? They pay incredible amounts of money and use political pressures to go ahead, undermine his administration, and then eventually to help a coup. What they discover is that this environment in Chile, underneath this military dictatorship, is a perfect breeding ground for neoliberalism, because what does neoliberalism require? It requires people to work for decreased wages. Right. Because what's most important, it's not that people have a living wage. It's that employers can pump out as many goods as they can for the world market. On top of that, as you're destroying labor unions, you're also unrolling austerity. And austerity is when you pull all of the money out from existing programs that you possibly can. You're not going to help people. Basically, people will live or die based on circumstances beyond their control, and the government is simply there to assist with business. This is done, by the way, by the help of a group of people called the Chicago Boys, who are Chilean economists who got educated in Chicago underneath neoliberals. They come in, they create this entire thing, and the world looks at it -- the most powerful people, such in the United States, Great Britain -- they love it. Because all of a sudden, Chile, they're getting cheap labor, they're getting cheap goods, they're not having to pay anything. And it's consistent because there aren't going to be elections, there aren't going to be popular uprisings, there aren't going to be labor stoppages. It is an absolute dream for this production. And so what happens is, the rest of the world when this stagflation hits, that we talk about, there's like, "Yeah, we're doing that, let's go for it." And it gets sold popularly again by Reagan and Thatcher. And it then, when the Soviet Union falls, it becomes the operating system of the modern world. And I will actually go ahead and say, and it's important, I pointed out that the United States, Great Britain and their partners assassinated leftist individuals. There is almost no leftist movements left in the world, so there hasn't been much room for a leftist critique of the modern era. And I know that most people know this, but just to state it in case people think things like The New York Times and The Washington Post and CNN are leftist institutions. No! They are centrist, corporatist liberal institutions. There is a
difference. So as a result, leftist have been telling people for years this is a bad situation, it's a bad global order, and it's going to lead to tragedy. Well, they don't have much of a soap box. They don't have much of a platform. The right has done an incredible job of having that critique. The right has said this thing is not long for this world. They've been creating their faux populist movements with things like Trumpism and, of course, with Bolsonaro down in Brazil. Meanwhile, it's the same stories, the same conspiracy theories, whether it's Putin, it's Orban, Trump, Bannon. All these people tell the same stories, right? Because the idea is a neo-fascistic and authoritarian worldview, that there are these groups of people that we have to destroy. And I am the only person who can do it. And as a result, democracy needs to go away. So what they are peddling is illiberalism. Orban, of course, coined this term. They're trying to push forward this worldview, much like Mussolini did, which you had brought up earlier, that liberal democracy doesn't work. Liberal democracy is a weakness. It's being used against us. We need a patriarchal, male-led, militaristic, nationalistic... It's always going to involve evangelicalism, and those elements need to come together to put the world right again. And this is a story again, whenever we reach these crossroads, it gets told over and over and over again. It's the same song and dance.
Mila Atmos: [00:33:39] Right. So what's different this time? Meaning, like, how is neoliberalism really going to end? I earlier asked you about the ways that we are disempowered, but now I want to turn to the future. First, I'd love to hear your kind of short range forecasts for the demise of neoliberalism.
Jared Yates Sexton: [00:33:58] Unfortunately, a new Cold War. You know, one of the things that we've seen in the last year or so is that tensions between the United States and China, you know, as China has become the main economic rival, has threatened its status as a superpower. All of a sudden, you're seeing neoliberalism roll backwards. The investment in semiconductor chips recently, billions of dollars spent to create these new industrial centers around America to build these chips instead of China. That is anti globalism. And that's where we're at now. And as this new Cold War starts to take shape, you're going to notice the countries start to come into their own. They're going to find some countries that they can trust. The United States, by the way, is putting some manufacturing in Mexico. Right. So it's going to turn into spheres of influence. Now, here's the really frightening thing about it very quickly: that is exactly what Vladimir Putin and the people who have advised him, the ideologues that he has behind the scenes,
that's what they have wanted all along. They want spheres of influence to be created, nationalistic movements within them, isolationism, and then eventually come together and sort of tear down neoliberalism and/or co-opt it into their own type of new global structure. That is what's happening right now. That's the frightening thing. It has been working along the lines that they've prescribed. But I will say this. I'm seeing a lot of people's movements spring up, you know, whether it's Iran, China, down in Brazil, here in America, in terms of like wildcat labor strikes. I mean, they're taking on the biggest corporations in the history of the world. They're defeating Amazon. They're defeating Starbucks. They're defeating Apple. I think that the tide is turning. But we have gone pretty far down what I think is a really ugly road.
Mila Atmos: [00:35:40] Hmm. Yeah. Well, you argue that there is a lot of room for democratic participation, especially in this country, Right? So how can we rebuild power aside from the labor movement, the burgeoning labor movement, that we're seeing now? What else do you see happening that could guide us looking into the future?
Jared Yates Sexton: [00:35:56] I think it's twofold. I think it's both personal, but it's also communal. One of the problems of neoliberalism is it has changed us. One of the terms that gets thrown around quite often is homo economicus. It's the idea that humanity has been changed by capitalism, and particularly hyper capitalism. And one of the aspects of that is that we believe a worldview that is really disgusting. And the best way to describe it is through reality television. I love to bring up the TV show, Survivor. Right. And if anybody hasn't seen it, they're on this island, these contestants. They're building a society together and then they're talking to the camera, you, the audience, and telling you how they're screwing over everybody else. Right. How they're lying to them and manipulating them. We've come to see the world like that. We've come to believe that everybody is out to get us. They will all screw us over. We can't trust anybody except for ourselves. And we are engaging in what is classified as psychopathic behavior, manipulating other people. We have to heal from that. We have to really have a spiritual sea change in which we start to unburden ourselves of the traumas of neoliberalism, because that's what it has done. It has literally traumatized us into seeing the world as being very limited and being very brutal. And then the next thing that we need to do probably concurrently is start to rebuild our social bonds. This atomization that has taken place during neoliberalism through that mindset has left us alone. It has left us depressed. It has left us unable to build these structures that are going to defeat
neoliberalism. The good news is, once you do that, it gains its own momentum. It becomes addictive working with other people, trusting other people, winning these victories. But I have to tell you, it is a spiritual healing journey to get over the trauma that neoliberalism has inflicted on us.
Mila Atmos: [00:37:44] Hmm. Well, so here at Future Hindsight, we love to talk about how we build our Civic Action toolkit. So what are two things an everyday person can do towards that healing and towards building community and rebuilding power?
Jared Yates Sexton: [00:37:58] Well, I think one thing that we need to do is we need to start talking about politics without talking about politics. We need to stop talking about blue versus red, Democrat versus Republican, Biden versus Trump. We need to change our language and our vocabulary. We need to talk about power. And that's it. Like, because I'll be honest with you, like power is behind both the Democratic and the Republican Party. They share so many of the same donors. They have the same sort of ideology. The Republican Party represents the authoritarian nature of neoliberalism. And the Democratic Party, they portray the smiling, happy face of authoritarianism. They say the right things. They don't engage in homophobia or misogyny. They're the happy, you know, human resource person. We have to start talking about power and we have to start talking about how power has actually been wielded in how it takes shape. That's number one. Number two, I would make the argument that as we're doing that, we need to start small. If you actually take a look at revolutionary movements, they usually find one small thing to win. And you hear it all the time, like these political action groups, they start with like getting a bike path built because what happens? It's in the struggle. And as you are gaining in a struggle, whether it's, I don't know, getting a stop sign put in. Right. What happens is you learn that you can trust each other, you learn who you can trust, and you learn who your leaders are, who are the people who destroy community, and who are the people who build it. I think that's how you end up looking up, and all of a sudden you've, I don't know, pressured a political party into changing its bearings. And part of the problem, by the way, is that the Democratic Party doesn't feel any pressure anymore. They moved away from their traditional base in the 1980s, 1990s. They take all of those votes for granted. I think it's time for something like the Tea Party, which put pressure on the Republican Party to now put pressure on the Democratic Party and basically say, "hey, you're either going to come to us or you're
losing us." And I think that as you build from those small victories up, I think momentum starts to build as well.
Mila Atmos: [00:39:58] So looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Jared Yates Sexton: [00:40:02] I was an educator in higher education for ten years and young people were constantly surprising me. They're so strong and resilient, despite whatever you read, you know, in these New York Times op eds. They care about justice and they don't trust these old, tired ideas. One of the reasons I left higher education, academia, was because we were being forced to go through austerity. We were having our funds taken away, our programs destroyed, and there was sort of a learned helplessness. At some point we looked around, we said, well, what are you going to do? All the power is up there. There's nothing we can do. And you sort of fracture into self interested constituencies. As long as I get mine, right, as opposed to everybody else. That learned helplessness, I think some of these young people don't have it. Like, why would you go to Starbucks and not get your raise? Or why would you work extra hours? It's like, how dare you ask me to do that? I think that that mindset, which doesn't have in the the mythologies of power that we've been talking about, if you can go ahead and get out from underneath it or heal yourself from it, I think the world can change in huge ways. That's what revolutionary movements do. They unburden themselves of whatever they have or they get out from around it before it crushes them. And I think that we're looking at that building now, people who are simply not going to accept this anymore. And I think the energy is on that side.
Mila Atmos: [00:41:22] Mm hmm. Yeah. Hear, hear. Well, I hope that whatever revolution comes or whatever comes at the end of neoliberalism will really be good for us because the jury is out on that. But anyway, thank you very much for joining us on Future Hindsight. I really enjoyed having you on.
Jared Yates Sexton: [00:41:38] Thank you. This was an absolute joy. I love everything you do. And so real, real pleasure.
Mila Atmos: [00:41:43] Thank you. Jared Yates Sexton is a political analyst, host of the Maverick podcast and the author of The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis.
Next week on Future Hindsight, we are joined by Ruth Milkman. She's distinguished professor of sociology and history at the CUNY Graduate Center and at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, where she chairs the Labor Studies Department.
Ruth Milkman: [00:42:14] I would just want to point out that it's a particular group of workers who are especially trying to unionize, and they're not the usual suspects of who's unionized historically. They're mostly college educated, not in, you know, blue collar manufacturing or construction kind of jobs or delivering merchandise, for that matter. There's a gap between their labor market expectations and the job quality and pay that's out there.
Mila Atmos: [00:42:41] That's next time on Future Hindsight.
And before I go, first of all, thanks for listening. You must really like the show if you're still here. We have an ask of you. Could you rate us or leave a review on Apple Podcasts? It seems like a small thing, but it can make a huge difference for an independent show like ours. It's the main way other people can find out about the show. We really appreciate your help. Thank you.
This episode was produced by Zack Travis and Sara Burningham. Until next time, stay engaged.
The Democracy Group: [00:43:24] This podcast is part of the democracy group.