I just submitted this proposal for a panel at the upcoming ISPP meeting. They better accept it. Can’t wait.

Panel Title: From Neoliberal to Authoritarian: The USA’s Fascist Tide

Panel Abstract: After fifty-plus years of neoliberalism, the United States is witnessing a bewildering right-angle turn from a politics that is laissez-faire, globalized, and individualistic to an authoritarian and increasingly fascist one that is chauvinistic, statist, and moralistic. While it might be tempting to say that we are in a post-neoliberal era, the papers in this panel argue that the rising tide of fascism in the USA — along with the terror and violence that might ensue from it — continues the neoliberal project. Each paper also investigates the psychological processes the new authoritarians employ to assuage the anxiety produced by neoliberalism while still continuing the neoliberal project. These processes are generally fascistic with a strong father figure promising protection from imagined enemies and forces. Noëlle McAfee argues that, rather than being a reversal of neoliberalism, the new authoritarianism is a vicissitude of it. The elements of its playbook feed on phobia and assuage the precariat’s anxieties while still shoring up the elite’s power. Catarina Kinnvall argues that the new authoritarians capitalize on precarity, making electoral promises they have no intention of delivering, increasing rather than decreasing insecurity among their constituencies. Pasko Kisić-Merino and Antonia Stanojević focus on how the new authoritarians employ genderphobic narratives to bemoan how ‘feminised’ liberal modernity robbed America and how American wholeness and enjoyment could be recaptured. Paul Nesbitt-Larking turns to how the rise of authoritarianism in the United States affects its northern neighbor’s capacity and willingness to assert political independence. In the asymmetrical relationship between the two countries, the American force field is seductive and attractive. While Canada’s dominant political communities have historically asserted their independence in various ways, the question arises as to how much the US’s mode of dividing communities and demonizing subaltern peoples might seep into Canada’s own political culture. To conclude, discussant James McAuley will offer reflections.