Neoliberalism: The Ideology That has no Future

The following is from an interview transcript

You are not alone in asking the question: How is it possible that we can be so antagonistic towards conservative traditional Christianity and yet so accepting of Islam?

I think we have to understand that there has been a revolution in the US and the West in general. An ideological revolution for neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism is dedicated to scientific rationalism, the neoliberal conception of life: science, biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, that’s it. Everything else is the matter of your own personal opinion.

When that began to make its way into our culture and policy, in the 1960’s in particular, it gave rights to something called "emancipatory politics". The emancipation has to be freedom or liberation.

Emancipatory politics basically says that traditions are bad and that customs discriminate people. Emancipation dictates that If a person want to be Islamic, he can be Islamic, if he wants to be homosexual, he can be homosexual, if he wants to change gender, he can change it. And any tradition that stands against that has to be pushed aside because it is considered to be discriminatory.

Over the last several decades we’ve seen a redefinition of the American Public Square. The American Public Square used to be very Christian. It was guided by primarily Anglo-Protestant traditional norms. Now it is being governed much more by these emancipatory-politics norms. Therefore, if you are considered to be a part of the group that was not allowed into the Public Square because of Christianity, now you are going to get special treatment. They are going to make laws for you and, as a part of those laws, they have to cast out the Christianity that was impeding you from coming into the Public Square.

Traditional morality and customs are now considered as evil and discriminatory. Neoliberalism is actually much more accommodating to Islam than to Christianity. Why? Because Islam was considered to be discriminated as well as feminists, LGBT, African-Americans, and other national minorities. Any group that was once pushed out from public participation will now be allowed in.

Neoliberalism basically makes culture  a personal choice. You are free to choose whatever culture you want. Freedom is the ability to do whatever you want to do and no one can stand in your way. But that doesn't work if you are a Christian.

Remember, neoliberalism says science is the only way we can know. So, if science is the only way we can know, what is culture?

In neoliberal ideology, culture is something that humanity added to the world. Culture doesn’t reflect any reality out there. There is no purpose. There is no God. It’s just biology, chemistry, physics, what they call “natural laws”.

So, in that way, culture is how we impose meanings and purposes on a meaningless and purposeless world.  Who am I to tell you that your way of imposing meanings is bad and the way how I impose it is good? The problem is culture itself. One cannot think about biology, chemistry, physics without culture. Those things are culture. So culture is inescapable.

But what are neoliberals trying to do? They are trying to impose a multicultural culture. That’s the problem. A multicultural culture is impossible, It’s a contradiction. On one side, they talk about women`s rights and on the other side they support radical islamists who want legalization of Sharia law in the US. It's just insane! There is no way of making sense of it. And that’s why I think they don’t have any future.