Book Forum on Quinn Slobodian's Hayek's Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right

In this forum, Valentina Ausserladscheider, Béla Greskovits, and Daniel Šitera discuss Quinn Slobodian’s Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right (Zone Books, 2025), which examines the relationship between neoliberalism and the contemporary far right. Slobodian challenges the dominant view that right-wing populism represents a bottom-up revolt of globalization’s “losers” and instead argues that today’s far right emerged from within neoliberal thought itself. Through an intellectual genealogy, he traces how segments of neoliberalism evolved to incorporate racism, xenophobia, and male chauvinism as natural components of the market order, producing a far-right neoliberal vision of free markets fortified by borders and hierarchy. The contributors to this forum discuss both the book’s key insights and its limitations. While Ausserladscheider explores its conceptual implications for understanding the state and nationalism, Greskovits and Šitera test Slobodian’s argument against the post-socialist contexts of Hungary and Czechia. Slobodian concludes the forum with a polemical response to their critiques.