Is Illiberalism Really Opposed to Neoliberalism? Rethinking Illiberalism as the Ideology of the New Right

Abstract

This article challenges the view that contemporary illiberalism constitutes a rupture with neoliberalism. It argues instead that illiberalism and the current New Right should be understood as either a mutation or a direct heir of the original New Right, rooted in the free-market conservatism of the postwar period and consolidated during the conservative counterrevolution of the 1970s and 1980s. To this end, and in order to challenge the Polanyian readings of the illiberal moment that dominate illiberalism studies, it critically examines both the historiography and the discourses produced by the illiberal thought collective on the history of conservatism and the free market, arguing that both are misleading and unreliable.