It wasn't long after Barack Obama entered the White House in 2009 that I first heard the word "neoliberalism." There were people who I was connected with on Facebook and elsewhere through independent media resources who began calling out Obama's betrayals of the promises that he had made to We the People. I didn't want to believe it. For me, up until then, I had absorbed the polarities that Republicans are bad, Democrats are good. Everything was all the republicans fault. And I was one of the good ones. Right?
And now here it was several years after 9-11 — which had served to plunge me into a passionate seeking for what I did not know and understand. Because one thing I did know on that horrifying day in September of 2001 was that George W. Bush lied when he said that "we were attacked for our freedoms." I felt with all my being that this was not true and that there was a larger picture here, one which I did not understand. And I embarked on this journey of truth-seeking and peeling back layer after layer of ignorance, illusions, and indoctrination. I simply had to know what I did not know. I had to seek the truth, no matter where it led.
And now, finally, I thought I had it right. Obama and the democrats good, Bush and the "neocons" bad. Until that world, too, also began falling out from under me. Damn. Growth opportunities are hard. And painful. Yet, what I have learned again and again is that disillusionment is one doorway into shedding the illusions that we all carry. And there have been so many to recognize and dismantle within the belief systems I have absorbed in our deeply unhealthy culture. Today I understand that this is a lifelong process. There will always be another vista beyond the one I am currently conscious of. And that is the direction I must seek. Again and again.
One quote that really stuck with me in the This is Neoliberalism series was that living in America and not knowing what neoliberalism is is like living in Russia and not knowing what communism is. Wow. And up until 2009 I had never even heard the word "neoliberal" before. Since then, what I have come to recognize is that these are the waters in which we have for decades been swimming in. And these are the waters which are drowning us. And which have brought us Trump. Twice. And now which have inevitably preceded this fascist era that we have now entered.
As Chris Hedges has wisely stated, "We cannot change the world if we do not understand it." And we cannot truly embrace these inner and outer, personal and collective changes without embodying what Chris has also described as "a profound commitment to truth." And that takes courage. And intention and integrity, persistence and passion, support and inspiration, discernment and trust-worthy resources, resilience and deep, deep caring for the well-being of all of life. We have to truly want to alleviate the suffering we carry and that of all beings. At least this has certainly been true for me.
It is my belief that understanding neoliberalism is one piece of vital awareness which empowers us to understand where we are today and how we got here. And this moves me to share these resources. If you only watch one of the videos, please watch Part 1 in this series on neoliberalism. So many of the dots are connected when we can see how it is that the Clintons, Obama, Biden, and others in prominent and powerful politicians within the Democrat Party have played major roles in ushering us into the horrors we are facing today with Trump and his administration and the ever growing fascist agenda overtaking our government and impacting the world. It isn't just the Republicans!
For those of us who have identities wrapped around democrats are good, republicans are bad — this will be painful. And disillusioning. And this is where courage and a profound commitment to truth come in and matter. Deeply. May courage and truth be contagious! — Molly
This Is Neoliberalism | 5 Part Series (2020)
If you've ever wanted to understand what neoliberalism is, this is the video series for you.
Part 1: Introducing the Invisible Ideology (March 2018, 27min)
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.
Part 2: Keynesian Embedded Liberalism (September 2018, 36min)
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.
Part 4: Hayek and the Mont Pelerin Society II: 1939 - 1950 (December 2019, 43min)
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
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