lolsheviks:

“In its authoritarianism, militarism and hierarchical sense of power, neo-conservatism is entriely consistent with the neo-liberal agenda of elite governance and mistrust of democracy. From this standpoint neo-conservatism appears as a mere stripping away of the veil of authoritarianism in which neo-liberalism sought to envelope itself. But neo-conservatism does propose distinctive answers to one of the central contradictions of neo-liberalism. If “there is no such thing as society but only individuals” as Thatcher intially put it, then the chaos of individual interests can easily end up previaling over order…

In the face of this, some degree of coercion appears inevitable to restore order. The neo-conservatives prefer and emphasize militarization as an antidote to the chaos of individual interests. They are therefore far more likely to highlight threats, real or imagined, both at home and abroad, to the integrity and stability of the nation. In the US this entails triggering what Hofsadter refers to as the “paranoid style of American politics” in which the nation is depicted as besieged and threatened by enemies from within and whithout. This style of politics has had a long history in the US and it rests on the cultivation of a strong sense of nationalism. Anti-communism was the central focus for this throughout the twentieth century (though anarchism and fear of China and of immigrants have also played their role in the past). Neo-conservatism is not new, therefore, and since World War II it has found a particular home in a powerful military-industrial complex that has a vested interest in permanent militarization. But the end of the Cold War posed the question of where the threat too US security was coming from. Radical Islam and China emerged as the top two candidates. The very real emergence of the threat from radical Islam during the 1990s that culminated in the events of 9/11 finally came to the fore as the central focus for the declaration of a permanent “war on terror” that demanded militarization at both home and abroad to guarantee the security of the nation…

While neo-conservatives are all too willing to exercise coercive power, they still recognize, however, that some degree of consent is necessary. Neo-conservatism therefore seeks to restore a sense of moral purpose, some higher order values that will form the stable center of the body politic. Its aim is to control thereby the blatant contradiction between authoritarianism and individual freedoms within the neo-liberal ethos and to counteract the dissolving effect of the chaos of individual interests that neo-liberalism typically produces. It in no way departs from the neo-liberal agenda of a construction or restoration of a dominant class power. But it seeks legitimacy for that power through construction of a climate of consent around central moral values…

In the US the moral values that became central to the neo-conservative movement can best be understood as a logical outcome of the particular coalition that was built in the 1970s between elite class and business interests intent on restoring their class power and an electoral base among the “moral majority” of the disaffected white working class. The moral values centered upon cultural nationalism, moral righteousness, Christianity (of a certain evangelical sort), family values and right to life issues, and on antagonism to the new social movements (feminism, gay rights, affirmative action, environmentalism, and the like)… This “moral majority” could be mobilized through coded if not blatant racism, homophobia, and anti-feminism. Not for the first, nor, it is to be feared, for the last time in history has a social group willingly voted against its material, economic and class interests for cultural, nationalist, and religious reason. From then on the unholy alliance between big business and conservative Christians steadily consolidated, eventually eradicating all liberal elements from the Republican Party and turning it into the relatively homogenous right wing electoral force of present times…

On the international stage, the trumpeting of the superiority of “American values” and ther presentation as “universal values” for all of humanity is unavoidable. This makes it appear as if the US is waging a “crusade” (which it is) for “civilized values” (which it supposesdly represents) on the world stage. The nationalism involved in US behavior on the global stage beocomes blatant and the sense of a moral crusade affects everyday diplomacy particularly with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which the Christain right in the US, with its strong belief in Armageddon, sees as fundamental to its own destiny…

What seems like an ansewer to the contradictions of neo-liberalism can all too easily turn into the problem. Indeed, the spread of neo-conservative power, albeit grounded very differently in different social formations, hightlights the dangers of descent into competing perhaps even warring nationalism, if not the clash of civilizations that someone like Huntingtion erroneously sees as inevitable on the world stage. If there is an inevitbalility it arises solely out of the turn to neo-conservatism rather than out of eternal truths concerning civilizational differences. The “inevitablility” can therefore easily be rebuffed by turning away from neo-conservative solutions and seeking out other alternatives to confront if not supplant entirely the contradictions of neo-liberalism.”

from David Harvey’s Spaces of Global Capitalism: towards a theory of uneven geographical development 

Okay, I need to this read now.