Fuck Neoliberalism

The academic world experienced a minor stir last week with the publication of the text of a paper given at an AAG meeting in San Francisco, by Dr Simon Springer of the University of Victoria, Canada. Published on the academic website academia.edu, the paper entitled, Fuck Neoliberalism, has been viewed more than 14,000 times which has put Dr Springer in the top 0.1% of scholars using the website.

The author is a serious academic with a long history of publishing on the subject of Neoliberalism, viewing it as an inherently violent ideology. The paper is unrepentantly vernacular in tone while still being rooted in the discipline. This quote gives a flavour of the former:

"Fuck the hold that it has on our political imaginations. Fuck the violence it engenders. Fuck the inequality it extols as a virtue. Fuck the way it has ravaged the environment. Fuck the endless cycle of accumulation and the cult of growth. Fuck the Mont Pelerin society and all the think tanks that continue to prop it up and promote it. Fuck Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman for saddling us with their ideas. Fuck the Thatchers, the Reagans, and all the cowardly, self-interested politicians who seek only to scratch the back of avarice. Fuck the fear-mongering exclusion that sees "others" as worthy of cleaning our toilets and mopping our floors, but not as members of our communities. Fuck the ever-intensifying move towards metrics and the failure to appreciate that not everything that counts can be counted. Fuck the desire for profit over the needs of community. Fuck absolutely everything neoliberalism stands for, and fuck the Trojan horse that it rode in on!"

Dr Springer sums up, in both his words and his attitude, so much of what I think and feel about the current situation in the world. I'm grateful for his articulation of the problem in this manner. It is calculated to offend a system which routinely offends those it feeds off. Neoliberalism itself is offensive, it is violent, and ultimately Dr Springer believes that it necessary to act against it, to resist Neoliberalism:

We must start to become enactive in our politics and begin embracing a more relational sense of solidarity that recognizes that the subjugation and suffering of one is in fact indicative of the oppression of all (Shannon and Rouge 2009; Springer 2014). 

He also suggested using the hashtag #fuckneoliberalism though this has not really taken off. I'm using it however.

There is a video of the talk on YouTube. The sound quality is not very good, but it is interesting to hear the author of the paper speaking the words in this context.