Can these Gen Z and millennial wonks make neoliberalism cool again?
If you've heard the word "neoliberal" in American political discourse in recent years, it probably hasn't sounded like a compliment. Left-wing populists say neoliberals in the Democratic Party sold out to Wall Street. Right-wing populists say neoliberals in the conservative establishment abetted the rise of so-called woke capitalism. Political scientists talk about neoliberalism in yet another way - as a bipartisan political consensus around free markets, which has been blamed for inequality, the escalating climate crisis and other social ills.
But one night last month, over Blue Moons at a downtown Washington, D.C., pub, I talked with a group of millennial and Gen Z political wonks who are proud to call themselves neoliberals - embracing the term as a rebuke to populists of the left and right. Two dozen of these guys - and they were almost all guys on this occasion - had just attended a meeting of the DC New Liberals at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), a moderate-left think tank whose Center for New Liberalism has established more than 80 chapters claiming over 10,000 members around the world. (The D.C. chapter has nearly 500 members.) With its "Neoliberal Podcast," which has more than a million downloads, and a Twitter account (@ne0liberal) that has more than 79,000 followers, the institute is on a quest to bring market-friendly moderation into the age of internet-meme politics - making a new appeal to young Americans who've largely rallied behind an invigorated progressive left.
Whereas democratic socialists might put a red rose emoji in their Twitter bios and advocate for Medicare-for-all, these neoliberals often identify themselves with a blue globe emoji - since they're proud to reclaim "globalism" from its detractors - and support free trade, liberalized immigration and the rising "YIMBY" ("Yes, in My Backyard") movement, which favors dense, more affordable housing in cities. They also clearly have a lot of fun - posting playfully about their belief that overregulation of food carts is denying us a cosmopolitan utopia with "taco trucks on every corner."
Karl Nielsen, a 24-year-old aerospace engineer who leads the D.C. chapter, told me his brother turned him on to this neoliberal community a few years ago, and he was immediately smitten: "I was like, 'Dude, this is it. This is where we belong.' The memes were fantastic. They were doing a 'Neoliberal Shill Bracket,' which is a Twitter tournament where you vote to determine who's the 'Chief Neoliberal Shill.' That was really easy to get excited about, so I jumped right in."
This subculture may sound like it was born in a conference room at PPI, which was founded as an intellectual home for moderate Democrats in 1989, but it actually began with a bunch of economics aficionados posting on Reddit following the 2016 election - a moment when "neoliberal" had reemerged as a disparaging term for those on the center-left.
"Bernie Sanders had run in the primary against Hillary Clinton and, for the first time in a while, the Democratic Party had been divided between the left and the center-left," recalls Colin Mortimer, the 25-year-old director of the Center for New Liberalism, who was a college student at the time. "It wasn't like there were rational Republicans to ally with - Donald Trump had won the presidency. People on the center-left felt adrift and were looking to coalesce and create community."
Mortimer and others like him - including Jeremiah Johnson, 35, now the Center for New Liberalism's policy director - ended up creating community on the subreddit page r/Neoliberal. As Johnson would later recall, many of their fellow posters wanted to joke about the sexiness of economist Paul Krugman or how former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and his successor Janet Yellen were "god-emperors of the universe." Still, politics was never far off, and Mortimer and Johnson ultimately founded the Neoliberal Project, which included @ne0liberal, their podcast, a newsletter, a magazine and a meetup network. PPI invited the Neoliberal Project to join the think tank, which they did in 2020.
Neoliberals are well aware that their centrist politics aren't for everyone. Markose Butler, the Center for New Liberalism's 30-year-old organizing director, told me his views put him at odds with his classmates and teachers in college and graduate school. "It wouldn't surprise my professors that I'm working for an openly neoliberal organization, but it might disappoint them," he said with a smile. "I was the class conservative, even though I'm very much a Democrat."
Lily Geismer, an associate professor of history at Claremont McKenna College and the author of "Left Behind: The Democrats' Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality," told me this new generation of neoliberals will have to account for the failures of the now-defunct Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) - the influential group that started PPI, broke with the redistributionist liberalism of the New Deal and Great Society, and advanced Bill Clinton's brand of centrism in the 1990s. Geismer argues that PPI's focus on economic growth led to "intensive inequality" and low-income Americans being more vulnerable. "There's been a remarkable generational shift, and there's a desire [among young Americans] for much more robust forms of social welfare and government assistance," she said.
PPI's president and founder, Will Marshall, has made clear that the institute isn't advocating a return to the Clintonite policies of the DLC - but it is hoping that Mortimer, Johnson and their network of young people can help generate new ideas and create new influence for today's Democratic moderates.
As Mortimer explained it to me, his cohort of neoliberals is enthusiastic about "deregulation to achieve progressive goals," but also committed to a strong social safety net. These neoliberals are generally supportive of President Biden, even if PPI has taken issue with some of his more left-leaning policies. They also admire leaders like Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who has a globe emoji in his Twitter bio, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg - although Nielsen and Butler said they were devastated when Buttigieg talked about the "failure" of neoliberalism during the 2020 campaign.
Recently, PPI has decided that formally using the "neoliberal" label may not actually serve its goals. The think tank created its Center for New Liberalism in 2020 to house the Neoliberal Project and other intellectual work, but ultimately announced that having "two names and two websites was cumbersome and confusing." In September, the Center said it would continue "The Neoliberal Podcast" and the Twitter account but phase out the broader branding of the Neoliberal Project, arguing that the mission of promoting and defending liberalism was "too important to be distracted by arguments over nomenclature."
Nomenclature was certainly part of what grew the Neoliberal Project - a self-conscious effort to make "neoliberal" an identity. Then again, maybe a little rhetorical concession is fitting for this group - the politics of pragmatism, applied even to themselves.
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Graham Vyse is an associate editor at the Signal.
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