Thread by @AgathoniaMedia

"Today, when the left’s political timidity and #authoritarianism has stripped it of all credibility as a democratic political force, it is more significant that the right also finds it very difficult to resist the lure of #vulnerability claims."

braveneweurope.com/peter-ramsay-v…

"The old imperial myth of Britain standing up to foreign tyrants is once again being wheeled out in respect of Ukraine, but the context has changed. The critical point ... is that the fear-mongering style of politics developed during the Cold War...is all conservatives have left"

"All the old commitments, once proclaimed by conservatives, to traditional virtues, such as faith, family, sacrifice, duty, deference to hierarchy, have decayed in practice into a fear-driven politics in which liberals, socialists and foreigners are constructed as threats ..."

"In making her (ineffective) call for a return to earlier traditions, Thatcher was a dutiful disciple of the founder of #neoliberalism, Friedrich Hayek. Throughout his work #Hayek recognised the necessity for religion and tradition as complements to the rule of the market...

... in a market society, individuals are vulnerable to forces beyond their control, or even their understanding; and #Hayek thought that superstition would be required to reconcile them to that vulnerability: 'The crucial point is that it is infinitely more difficult ...

... rationally to comprehend the necessity of submitting to forces whose operation we cannot follow in detail, than to do so out of the humble awe which religion… did inspire.'"

"... from within the intersectionalist worldview, the working class reappears as just another of the intersecting vulnerable identities, and this in itself precludes the possibility of anything approaching the old welfare state, let alone a more radical #socialism"

"Workers are now understood merely as one group among ‘the many’ victims of capitalism. This representation of the working class as a vulnerable identity group serves the narrow material interests of a section of the professional-managerial class: ...

... the aspirant public sector managers and NGO leaders whose careers depend on large welfare budgets that require management."

"The #ideology of #vulnerability, with its permanent emergency and politics of culture war, is the necessary ruling ideology of a market system after the demise of democratic politics in its liberal-democratic and social-democratic varieties."
braveneweurope.com/peter-ramsay-v…