Against Empire. Matthew T. Eggemeier
“a self-contradictory form of regulation-in-denial.” Peck, Constructions of Neoliberal Reason, xiii.
67. Brown, “Apocalyptic Populism.”
68. Bessner and Sparke, “Don’t Let His Trade Policy Fool You.”
69. See Fraser, “The End of Progressive Neoliberalism.”
70. Brown, Undoing the Demos, 40.
71. MacLean, Democracy in Chains, and Slobodian, Globalists.
72. Harvey concludes that it is the “profoundly anti-democratic nature of neoliberalism backed by the authoritarianism of the neoconservatives that should surely be the main focus of political struggle” (Brief History of Neoliberalism, 205).
73. Brown, Undoing the Demos, 17.
74. Brown, Undoing the Demos, 201–2.
75. Brown, Undoing the Demos, 67. Emphasis original.
76. Brown, Undoing the Demos, 68.
77. Brown, Undoing the Demos, 213.
78. Brown, Undoing the Demos, 83, and Brown, “Sacrificial Citizenship,” 9.
79. Slavoj Žižek, for instance, argues that slum-dwellers constitute the “systematically generated ‘living dead’ of global capitalism.” Žižek, Parallax View, 425. See also Žižek, Living in the End Times, 456.
80. Brown, Undoing the Demos, 64 and 38.
81. This argument is developed at length by Wendy Brown in In the Ruins of Neoliberalism.
82. Brown, “Interview: Where the Fires Are.” As we noted above, a number of authors have explored the link between neoliberalism and political commitments that are antidemocratic (MacLean, Democracy in Chains; Slobodian, Globalists). Additionally, there have been a number of important studies published on the relationship between neoliberalism and neofascism—see Connolly, Aspirational Fascism; Brown, “Apocalyptic Populism”; Brown, “Neoliberalism’s Frankenstein”; and Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism.
83. Brown, “Apocalyptic Populism.”
84. Rosen, Empire and Dissent, 1.
85. Ferguson, Colossus, and Kagan, Of Paradise and Power.
86. Bacevich, American Empire, and Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival.
87. Vaïsse, Neoconservatism, 4.
88. See Brown, “American Nightmare.”
89. Drolet, American Neoconservatism, 3.
90. Kirkpatrick, “Neoconservatism as a Response to the Counter-Culture,” 239.
91. Podhoretz, Present Danger, 86–89.
92. On this, see Cooper, Family Values.
93. MacDonald, Overreach, 101.
94. Bacevich, New American Militarism, 73–79.
95. Grandin, Kissinger’s Shadow, 191. Others, like Tony Smith and Samuel Moyn, maintain that liberal internationalism veers dangerously close to the imperialism of neoconservatism. See Smith, A Pact with the Devil, and Moyn, “Beyond Liberal Internationalism.”
96. Kagan, “Neocon Nation: Neoconservatism, c. 1776.”
97. Bacevich, American Empire, 3.
98. Moyn and Wertheim, “The Infinity War.”
99. Grandin, Kissinger’s Shadow, 15.
100. Jon Sobrino characterizes this feature of American foreign policy as a metaphysical commitment, observing of the United States, “The empire decides where and when time is something real, what dates should be recognized as benchmarks in human history. It says: ‘Time is real when we say it is.’ And the reason for this is ultimately metaphysical: ‘Reality is us.’” Sobrino, Where Is God?, xi. See also Sobrino, No Salvation, 18.
101. Quoted in the preface to Bacevich, American Empire.
102. In the name of democratization neoconservatives have invoked states of “exception” that override democratic protections and procedures and have created both “spaces of exception” geographically (Guantanamo Bay; Iraq) as well as “practices of exception” (coercive interrogation, torture, and now drones). More broadly on this contradiction in American foreign policy, see Niebuhr, The Irony of American History, and Bacevich, The Limits of Power. Both Drolet and Maria Ryan make this argument: neoconservatism employs an idealist cover to legitimate its desire for American hegemony in a unipolar world. See Drolet, American Neoconservatism, and Ryan, Neoconservatism and the New American Century.
103. Crozier, Huntington, and Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy.
104. This is not to mention the countless other military interventions, covert operations, and clandestine coup d’états—Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, and now the broader Middle East. On this point, see Kinzer, Overthrow.
105. Quoted in Williams, Understanding U.S.-Latin America Relations, 222.
106. Grandin, Empire’s Workshop.