One of the more fascinating books that we have indexed at Southwest Humanities this year is Quinn Slobodian’s Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right (Zone Books, 2025). In this book, Slobodian unveils how certain strands of right-wing thought didn’t emerge in opposition to neoliberalism—but rather evolved from within it. In the wake of Cold War triumphalism, some intellectuals reinterpreted Friedrich Hayek’s ideas about markets and human nature through a lens tinted by scientific racism, IQ determinism, and strict immigration controls. Rejecting Hayek’s view that culture shapes economic behavior, these thinkers emphasized biological hierarchies, advocating for “hardwired human nature,” “hard borders,” and “hard money” as defenses against progressive demands like equality, environmentalism, and racial justice. Their brand of ideology—what Slobodian calls “new fusionism”—blends classical libertarian market principles with authoritarian and ethno-nationalist beliefs, laying foundational ground for today’s far-right populist movements rather than opposing neoliberalism. Slobodian’s work reframes common narratives by showing that populist right-wing movements, such as Trumpism, are not grassroots revolts against neoliberalism—but intellectual descendants of it, born out of its “bastardized” interpretations. This revelation forces us to reckon with the ideological continuity connecting free-market liberalism to illiberal, exclusionary politics. Moreover, Slobodian’s analysis of these ideological roots equips scholars, policymakers, and concerned citizens with a sharper understanding of how economic narratives and pseudoscientific justifications are used to rationalize racism and xenophobia. By tracing the “fusion” of capitalism and pseudoscience, he sheds light on the intellectual genealogy of the alt-right—not as an aberration, but as an internal mutation of neoliberalism itself. For more information on this exciting title, please see the publisher’s website here.
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