The popular reputation of Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) is captured in a famous anecdote about Margaret Thatcher. Before becoming Britain’s Prime Minister, Thatcher attended a presentation by a Conservative Party researcher that struck her as too left-wing. She opened her purse and extracted a copy of The Constitution of Liberty (1960), one of Hayek’s central works, then slammed it onto a table and announced, “this is what we believe.”
The story (which comes in different versions) is likely a legend. Even so, it illustrates the widespread view of Hayek as a thinker whose chief legacy has been to provide intellectual cover to political enemies of the welfare state. This image of the Austrian economist and philosopher only gains support from Hayek’s flights of hyperbole. His remark that Social Security could lead to “concentration camps for the aged unable to maintain themselves” is only one of many unfortunate examples.
This may seem bad enough. But in a recently published book, Boston University history professor Quinn Slobodian argues that Hayek’s influence has been even more sinister. In Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ and the Capitalism of the Far Right, he presents Hayek as an inspiration to contemporary members of the extreme right. Prominent examples he cites include American neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, who infamously proclaimed “Hail Victory!,” the English translation of Sieg Heil!, in response to Donald Trump’s first election victory (an event that Spencer celebrated as white Americans “awakening to their own identity”).
Slobodian is careful to characterise Hayek’s influence on Spencer and other white supremacists as the result of misreading, since Hayek’s philosophy ascribed no significance to race. According to Slobodian, however, Hayek often wrote about culture in an undisciplined manner, and this encouraged members of what later came to be called the alt-right to go further, and make irresponsible claims about race. In this way, Slobodian argues, Hayek’s ideas about culture were readily “instrumentalized, adapted, and weaponized” by right-wing extremists.
