I’ve been thinking, writing, and presenting a lot lately on how the new authoritarianism seen on campuses and politics more broadly is not a reversal of neoliberalism but a vicissitude of it. Both are aimed at discrediting a politics of collective welfare. Both are de-political: offering ready-made solutions instead of the messy work of deciding together in the midst of uncertainty. Neoliberalism offers market solutions to political problems, which generates precarity and fear. Authoritarianism invents phobic objects in which to deposit one’s anxiety and deflect people from noticing the actual source of danger — It’s not rampant capitalism, it’s those Haitian immigrants that are the problem! Then the authoritarian leader promises to save everyone from this supposed danger. Here’s one piece that lays it out. More to come.