So many of us do not understand what neoliberalism is, and certainly this once included me. And yet this is something that is so essential, so vital for us all to grasp and work together to dismantle.
It is my belief that patriarchy is something that impacts everyone. Like caste, which Isabel Wilkerson wrote brilliantly about in her book by the same title, it is my belief that patriarchy has seeped into our bones, into the air we breathe, into the unconscious belief systems that we have all absorbed. And yet many of us are not aware of this.
The same can be said about neoliberalism. There are compelling reasons why I so often combine the connecting threads of patriarchy and neoliberalism when describing our capitalist system. Patriarchal neoliberal late stage predatory capitalism — it is all connected. It is this entire system that must be dismantled — it cannot be fixed!
This neoliberal capitalist system that has been normalized over the past four decades must be completely dismantled if we are to transform ourselves nationally and globally. It is my belief that this is our only chance of ending the rise of right wing fascist extremism, the obscene pathological redistribution of wealth upwards, the insanity of endless wars and the abhorrent funding of the military industrial complex, the crushing poverty and suffering and despair and death that is epidemic in our country and across the world, the catastrophic warming of the Earth and any possibility of preserving a habitable planet. And on and on...
For many Americans it is hard to not see the other political party as being responsible for everything that is causing so much harm. And, yes, the Republican Party has gone off the cliff with its endorsement of a sociopathic malignant narcissistic fascist wannabe dictator. There are real differences between the political parties. That is absolutely true.
What too many of us don’t realize, however, is the role that both political parties have played in bringing us to the precipice of where we find ourselves today.
And this is what I believe is so crucial for us to research, to understand, to unearth the roots of our national and planetary distress, and to spread the truth about. There can be no solution for that which is denied, distracted from, not seen. And as Emma Goldman said so many years ago, “The most violent element in society is ignorance.”
All this said, I fully own that I have been deeply ignorant about so much. Of course. I've grown up immersed in a society whose dark side is hidden under the pervasive propagandized cloak of exceptionalism, patriotism, and blind nationalism. For me, it took 9-11 to begin to shake me awake and propel me on this journey of deep research and discovery and transformation. And what I have been discovering, which continues to this day, are layer upon layer of indoctrination, illusion, and ignorance. There is no blame, no shame in this. It is what it is.
AND now that I am long engaged in emerging from the deep fog I'd unknowingly been in, I am accountable. I am responsible for not turning away, for being courageous and inspired to continue this deep and passionate dive into truth, and for acting in any way I can to be a vessel of help and healing rather than harm. Because I know that truth allied with grace and love holds the potential to set us all free from the shadows of our suffering and spiral into greater and greater darkness.
The truth-tellers, wisdom-holders, visionaries, authors and activists, artists and poets, and more empower me and gift us all with a path forward and through and out of the peril we are in today. We can all increasingly commit to joining hands and working together as part of the great universal struggle to transform and heal ourselves and our world.
And as my latest bumper sticker says: Our Decedents Are Counting On Us
Neoliberalism is an economic ideology that exists within the framework of capitalism. Over four decades ago, neoliberalism became the dominant economic paradigm of global society. In this series, we'll trace the history of neoliberalism, starting with a survey of neoliberal philosophy and research, a historical reconstruction of the movement pushing for neoliberal policy solutions, witnessing the damage that neoliberalism did to its first victims in the developing world, and then charting neoliberalism's infiltration of the political systems of the United States and the United Kingdom. Learn how neoliberalism is generating crises for humanity at an unprecedented rate.
Neoliberalism was a reaction. It was an effort to disassemble a previous vision of society that once held sway over most of the world. In order to understand neoliberalism, it’s important to first understand the world before neoliberalism; the world which neoliberalism considered unacceptable, and in need of urgent reconfiguration. In part two, learn about the world of embedded liberalism.
Part 3: Hayek and the Mont Pelerin Society I: 1918 - 1939 (April 2019, 40min)
The story of neoliberalism is a story about the power of ideas. Embedded liberalism was in power, but it was not without resistance. Academics and businessmen who opposed the New Deal and British social democracy were only begrudgingly accepting of the situation at best, or on the warpath against government intervention in the economy at worst. These two factions allied with one another to create an idea so powerful that it would covertly undo their losses to embedded liberalism by supplanting it entirely. This is where the story of neoliberalism begins.
In 1939, a fragile world which had just begun to climb out of the depths of global economic depression, and ended the first truly global war in recorded history only 21 years earlier, peered downward into an abyss blacker than any it had ever glimpsed before. By the close of the 1940’s, global civilization was sitting on one of the most profound inflection points in all of human history. Much, but not all of the world, was about to experience unprecedented prosperity under embedded liberalism, and the ideals of social democracy had never been more ascendant. However, the truth was that the post-war consensus was far from safe. It was within this tension, between the magnificent gains of social democracy and the hostile road laid before it, that Hayek and the Mont Pelerin Society were poised to begin dissolving the ground beneath all opponents of neoliberalism.
Part 5: The Chicago School (October 2020, 47min)
The world we live in today was born the moment World War II ended. But though it may be accurate to say that the modern world lives in the shadow of World War II, the more precise answer is that the modern world lives in the shadow of the decades immediately following World War II. These three decades - the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s - were the critical years that would determine the fate of Keynes’ evolution of liberalism, and the path leading away from a conflict whose devastation still remains unsurpassed to this day. In order to understand how neoliberalism supplanted the Postwar Consensus in the three decades immediately following World War II, we must investigate the evolution of neoliberal thought during the postwar period, which would one day achieve a neoliberal revolution in approximately 1981.
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YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/c/BarakalypseNow
For the original, please go here: https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/this-is-neoliberalism/
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