![]() ![]() Political operators have exploited all of these aspects of the discourse for strategic purposes, most famously during the Russian social media influence campaign during the 2016 Presidential election in the United States and current, similar efforts targeting the U.S. Political discourse on social media is seen by many as polarized, vitriolic and permeated by falsehoods and misinformation. In closing the article reflects on the influence of neoliberal Euroscepticism on the current Conservative government. It then documents how several neoliberal think tanks came increasingly to support and spread this neoliberal form of Euroscepticism. In building this argument, the article maps and analyses the key theoretical elements of neoliberal Euroscepticism, focusing in turn on the neoliberals' interpretation of the European project, their critique of European Monetary Union, and their approach to the question of national sovereignty. The article contends that from the 1990s onwards, many prominent neoliberal thinkers came to see the European Union as a threat to free trade and individual liberty, prompting them to support Brexit as a means of subverting the growing influence of European federalism. It proposes to move beyond simplified explanations that see in Brexit a 'populist' revolt against the neoliberal status quo by drawing attention to neoliberal ideas surrounding Europe and the free market. This article examines the complex relationship between neoliberalism and the Brexit campaign. After clarifying my core argument about neoliberalism and the far right, I end by reflecting on how the figure of the social justice warrior has also been a site of intra-left antagonisms. I ground the argument by examining how the notion of social justice has been articulated in two distinct contexts: in disparaging representations of “social justice warriors” that originally circulated in “alt-right” sub-cultures, but which have since been increasingly mainstreamed, and in the critique of social justice formulated by the neoliberal theorist Friedrich Hayek. Instead of simply assuming the “end” of neoliberalism, I explore the potential ideological and communicative affinities between neoliberal political rationality and online media practices that exemplify the emboldening of racist, misogynistic, and authoritarian discourses. This paper examines the cultural politics of a conjunctural moment where the terms of neoliberal hegemony have been destabilized and the far right has been reinvigorated. ![]()
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