Neoliberalism has always been more than an economic project; it is a political and educational weapon designed to erode social solidarity and dismantle the foundations of democracy. It does not merely defund public institutions like healthcare, education, and welfare—it delegitimizes them, recasting them as burdens rather than essential public goods. As a pedagogical and ideological assault, neoliberalism has championed unfettered greed, unchecked self-interest, and a notion of government devoid of any sense of social responsibility. It has conditioned people to see mutual care as weakness and competition as the only natural order of society. When individuals are forced into relentless competition for survival, they lose any sense of shared responsibility, making them more susceptible to the cruelty that defines contemporary politics. Neoliberalism is a precursor to fascism, especially at a time when it can no longer defend itself as a force for improving the quality of life. In fact, its promotion of extreme inequality, the concentration of power in few hands, and its view of democracy as a poisonous vehicle for equality and inclusion creates the conditions for both extreme violence and cruelty.

Neoliberalism’s fundamental tenet—that the market is the blueprint for all social relationships—draws a direct line between capitalism and fascism. At its core, this ideology is driven by a colonizing logic that seeks racial cleansing, economic exploitation, and the eradication of social responsibility. The forces it champions—privatization, deregulation, commodification, social death, and ethical degradation—do not merely threaten democracy; they assault its very foundation, stripping away the values of justice, equity, and communal care. In this framework, democracy is not just undermined; it is actively dismantled, replaced by a cold, ruthless market that cares only for profit at any cost. Neoliberalism’s corrosive logic sets in motion a slow but inexorable erosion of democratic structures, where the retreat of social responsibility and the rise of ruthless individualism make the leap to fascism not merely possible, but almost inevitable over time.

To understand fascist politics, we must reckon with its most visceral expression—a culture of cruelty. This cruelty is not an abstraction; it is inscribed on bodies and minds, destroying lives with calculated precision. As Brad Evans reminds us, violence must never be studied in an “objective and unimpassioned way,” for it demands a reckoning that is both ethical and political. A culture of cruelty exposes not only how systemic injustice is endured but also how the machinery of power turns the so-called American Dream into a dystopian ordeal, where millions struggle simply to survive.

Since the 1980s, cultural politics has turned toxic as ruling elites have seized control of dominant cultural apparatuses, transforming them into pedagogical machines of disimagination. These instruments of ethical numbing churn out endless images of degradation and humiliation, casting the poor, immigrants, Muslims, and all deemed disposable as excess lives destined for exclusion. Meanwhile, the capitalist dream machine is back in full force, delivering obscene profits to the ultra-rich, hedge fund managers, and financial elites. In this landscape of wealth, fraud, and manufactured scarcity, a fanatical capitalism fuels a winner-take-all ethos, merging a culture of cruelty with the forces of white nationalism. It aggressively dismantles the welfare state while driving millions into precarity and despair. The moral and political decay of this order has become the guiding principle of a world governed by privatization, surveillance, and hyper-consumption, where public life is replaced by zones of social abandonment, thriving on the energies of the walking dead and avatars of cruelty and misery.

Writer Pankaj Mishra captures this shift with chilling precision, arguing that neoliberalism has so thoroughly restructured society that compassion is now treated with contempt, and empathy in a market-driven world is regarded as a pathology. He writes:

The puzzle of our age is how [compassion as an] essential foundation of civic life went missing from our public conversation, invisibly replaced by the presumed rationality of individual self-interest, market mechanisms, and democratic institutions. It may be hard to remember this today, amid the continuous explosions of anger and vengefulness in public life, but the compassionate imagination was indispensable to the political movements that emerged in the nineteenth century to address the mass suffering caused by radical social and economic shifts. …One result of mainstreaming a bleak survivalist ethic is that ‘most people, as they grow up now,’ the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips and the historian Barbara Taylor wrote in On Kindness, ‘secretly believe that kindness is a virtue of losers.’

Trumpism is not an aberration but the logical extension of a neoliberal system that thrives on hierarchy, disposability, ignorance, and fear. The destruction of public goods accelerates the emergence of what Etienne Balibar calls “the transition from the social state to the penal state“—where repression replaces care, and policing takes the place of welfare. The gutting of federal aid programs, the assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and the defunding of institutions that support the most vulnerable are not incidental; they are central to the neoliberal strategy of dispossession that has aligned with the principles of white supremacy. In the age of Trump, cruelty becomes an organizing principle of violence as is evident in homegrown notions of fascism that define citizenship in racist inclusive terms for white Christians only, sanctions genocide in Gaza, promotes mass poverty, and supports the ecological destruction of the planet. What we are witnessing as Pankaj Mishra notes is the emergence of a culture convulsed in hatred and rancor matched by an ongoing process of dehumanization and a “retreat into grandiose fantasies of omnipotence.” Trump’s presence in American politics appears as the current endpoint in which hate, bigotry, and sanctioned ruthlessness “have reached a new peak of ferocity.” It also signals an era where reason gives way to irrationality, truth is supplanted by falsehoods, and informed arguments are replaced by conspiracy theories. One consequence is a politics that blends ignorance, incompetence, and brutality.

Trump’s upcoming budget will epitomize this cruelty. There is no question it will slash funding for “health care via the Medicaid program and reduce access to food assistance via the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).” Moreover, there will be further cuts to Medicaid, low-income housing, job training, and safety net programs for children to fund $4.5 million tax breaks for billionaires and the largest military buildup since the 1980s. As Robert Reich has pointed out, this is not a question of fiscal responsibility but of priorities: the poor and working class are sacrificed on the altar of militarism and corporate welfare. The ideology of hardness, as Adam Serwer notes, runs through American culture like an electric current, ensuring that suffering is not just tolerated but celebrated. Under the grip of gangster capitalism, especially as Trump’s second administration unfolds, the essence of politics is not merely diminished but obliterated, erasing the fundamental possibility of human community and the emancipatory power of the social, public goods, and the global commons.

Trumpism and the Politicization of Cruelty

Trumpism is not simply a reaction to neoliberal decay; it is the explicit performance of cruelty as an ideological principle. Unlike past presidents who, however flawed, at least feigned a commitment to democratic ideals, Trump embraces a politics of humiliation and vengeance. In a series of actions emblematic of authoritarian retribution, Trump has systematically targeted individuals he perceives as adversaries, employing state mechanisms to exact his personal vengeance. Notably, he revoked the security clearances of former President Joe Biden, Letitia James, the New York attorney general, and Alvin L Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, both of whom prosecuted him. Further intensifying this campaign of fear, terror, and intimidation, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, under Trump’s directive, stripped retired General Mark Milley and Anthony Fauci, among others, of their security detail and clearance, actions that not only humiliate but also endanger those who have previously challenged or criticized the administration. There is no appeal to our better moral and democratic ideals here. This approach to governance thrives on retribution, weaponizing state power to instill fear, suppress dissent, and erode democratic principles, This is the ideology of fascist barbarism, with its knee-jerk contempt for “all that is reflective, critical, and pluralistic.”  

The death of moral authority in politics breeds a climate of cruelty in which the unimaginable is normalized. For instance, the alleged helping hand of the U.S. has now been turned into a brutal fist, accompanied by the sneers of billionaire techno zombies, such as Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos, who endorse an anthology of proto-Nazi sentiments. How else to explain Trump’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), leading to the suspension of essential services, including HIV treatment in Uganda and cholera prevention in Bangladesh, exacerbating global health crises? How else to explain Trump pushing for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza in order to build beachfront property along with his intensified efforts to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, planning mass deportations on a scale unprecedented in modern American history. As Fintan O’Toole observes in The New York Review, the farce of Trump’s first term has now transformed into the brutal realities of a second term. The unchecked lust for power and the disastrous consequences of war are now giving way to land grabs and dangerous imperial ambitions, as Trump seeks to realize his vision of a unified Reich.”

Trump’s efforts to eliminate USAID, and his plan to forcibly remove all Palestinians from Gaza are not unrelated. Both are central to a fascist project in which as Etienne Balibar notes particular forms of cruelty cross the lines of extremity [and] become worse than death.” In this instance, politics and violence merge in a new visibility that exists as a show of force, a spectacle of terror, rather than a representation of horror to be condemned.

The Trump-Musk administration is not saving money in cutting of foreign aid for the U.S,A.I.D. since it amounts to about 0.6% of total us annual government spending of $6.75tn. Yet, what is at risk in eliminating USAID are “H.I.V. medication for more than 20 million people; nutrition supplements for starving children; support for refugees, orphaned children and women battered by violence.” Moreover, as Ralph Nader notes, in an utter disregard for the health and spread of diseases on a global level, “Trump is also cutting monitoring for the emergence of deadly epidemics such as Ebola, drug-resistant Tuberculosis, Malaria and other lethal viruses and bacteria, which could come to the U.S. like COVID-19 did.”

The moral emptiness and cruelty of politicians whose mouths drip with the blood of their actions are starkly revealed in the Trump-Musk assault on USAID, which will inevitably lead to the deaths of countless children. As Anne Applebaum astutely observes, the deliberate effort to purge USAID employees—those who work in the world’s most perilous places, risking terrorism and violence to deliver food and medicine to the planet’s most vulnerable—will have tragic consequences. These are the workers who “provide special meals to malnourished children.” Without such meals, their lives will be lost. This is nothing less than state-sanctioned terrorism cloaked in the false guise of efficiency, a regressive and heartless ideology that masks its destruction with the rhetoric of progress.

Yet, this cruelty is not limited to public health; it extends to the horrifying spectacle of ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Trump’s tacit support for Israel’s actions, and the looming threat of forcibly removing over two million Palestinians from Gaza, exposes a deeper, genocidal logic. This isn’t just a violation of international human rights; it is a death sentence for countless Palestinian children, women, and the elderly—those who are already enduring an unrelenting cycle of violence and deprivation. This calculated disregard for the lives of nonwhite people is emblematic of a white supremacist project that views these lives as expendable, undeserving of basic human dignity or rights.

It is worth repeating that both Trump’s actions at home and abroad—whether in cutting USAID or in supporting the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians—are not isolated or coincidental. They are threads in a single, cohesive political agenda that thrives on division, cruelty, and the calculated erasure of those who do not fit into the narrow, violent vision of a fascist state. These policies, far from being budgetary decisions, are part of a larger strategy that seeks to normalize a culture of cruelty, reduce lives to disposable commodities, and manipulate violence as a spectacle of power.

In another act of extreme cruelty, the administration has aggressively targeted sanctuary cities—jurisdictions that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement—by threatening to withhold federal funding and prosecute local officials who uphold sanctuary policies. These measures not only undermine public safety and erode trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement, but they make clear a governance style deeply rooted in vindictiveness, leveraging the apparatus of the state to intimidate and punish, thereby eroding democratic norms and fostering a climate of fear.

---