Credits: econlib.org
Neoliberalism poses as the sole legitimate system and stigmatizes everything outside of its narrow conditions as “authoritarian” or “totalitarian”. This is more than a political position; it is a cultural act.
From Islamic societies that refuse to privatize religion, to states such as China, Iran, or even Hungary, all political entities that assert their own sovereignty are placed in the same basket. There is no differentiation made between reactionary ideologies and alternative systems, and all that is embraced by neoliberalism must be gutless and therefore a threat.
This is all reductionist, ideologically speaking. Liberal democracies excuse their own violence as “mistakes" but label others as evil in a natural sense. Protests in the West are sometimes “minor unrest” but are instead “heroic revolutions” elsewhere. Civilian deaths at the hand of NATO forces are described as collateral damage, while civilian deaths from somewhere else are war crimes.
By claiming to be the last universally legitimate form of freedom, liberalism instead inhabits a position which is as absolutist standing it claims to reject, one that aspires to impose itself in all places and circumstances into an unquestionable regime.
This is not simply hypocrisy. This is projection, to charge others with authoritarianism and squash dissent and alternatives.
In contemporary circumstances, it is not totalitarianism that exists outside of liberalism but rather, totalitarianism develops within liberalism.
This post has been shared on Reddit by @davideownzall through the HivePosh initiative.