How the Neoliberal Thought Collective uses "feminist" language to defend misogyny

Lisbeth Latham

Other the past months federal politics has seen the airing of a series of allegations of inappropriate behaviour and outright sexual assault against Morrison government ministers and staffers. These allegations have caused understandable anger amongst wide sections of society, most particularly women - highlighted by the Marchs 4 Justice on March 14 and 15 in numerous cities and towns. In response government ministers and their supporters and defenders in the media have relied on dubious legalistic arguments based on spurious legalism and denials of misogyny. Much of the responses to these defences have tended to see these arguments as reflecting a lack of understanding of concerns and/or poor leadership on the part of Morrison. However, these interpretations tend to make the mistake of seeing the statements and arguments coming from the government and its support networks as being genuine, if ill informed or mistaken. I would argue that instead these arguments are not at all genuine, but are instead of a conscious destablisation and misinformation campaign being conducted by sections of the neoliberal thought collective within Australia to buttress and defend the government and if we are to respond effectively to the current crisis we must accept this reality that significant sections of the media are not good faith actors.

Capitalism as a system is a highly unstable system, it has a tendency toward crisis and contains within it a significant number of contradictions which further this instability. At the same time, despite predictions of inevitable limits and the possibility of collapse, it has demonstrated itself to be an remarkably resilient and flexible system that has been able to adapt to, absorb, neutralise, and eliminate potential threats. Central aspect to this resilience has been the capacity of capitalism and its supporters/beneficiaries to construct a cultural hegemony in support of the system which works to normalise and integrate, and where necessary, smash threats to the system. Within late capitalism, as neoliberalism has become the hegemonic response to capitalist crisis and contradiction this hegemony, particularly amongst ordinary people, has been increasingly been buttressed by the neoliberal thought collective(s).

The concept of a neoliberal thought collective, developed by a range of theorists of neoliberalism such as Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe, refers to the networks of neoliberal idealogues and promoters that exist within and move between academia, think tanks, and media. During the early period of neoliberal thought, when it represented a marginal approach seeking to overturn the dominant social democratic and liberal responses to capitalist crisis, served to help spread ideas and promote the legitimacy of neoliberalism as a response to capitalist response - however has it has emerged as the dominant system the NTC not only promotes neoliberal responses to crisis within its own networks and more broadly, but seeks to defend it’s system by destabilising and undermining alternative approaches - most succinctly articulated in Thatcher’s maxim “There Is No Alternative” in this way demonstrating, as Steven Lukes has suggested, that an important aspect power is the ability to limit possible policy options which are available. Central to the approach of the NTC is to deligitimise alternative perspectives and approaches by co-opting and misusing the language and ideas of its opponents, effectively neutralising by creating confusion as to what these positions actually represent and are arguing.

As mass anger at the allegations against Christian Porter and Liberal staffers - and the acts by the government to protect them rather than hold them to account has increased we have seen a new wave of defences being articulated based a superficially feminist basis - which appears as an apparent break from the attempts at rape apologism and victim initially mobilised by the government and its supporters - most notably Peter van Onselen. This is best reflected in a number of opinion pieces by fairfax columnist Parnell Palme McGuinness titled “Boomer feminism is not what we need at this transformational moment” and “Scott Morrison is not a misogynist, what lacks is a female inner circle” which follow an November 2020 piece “Please, not in the name of feminism:Expose of ministers’ private lives”. In these pieces McGuinness attempts to exploit and mobilise existing divisions within the Australian feminist movement, most notably between older second wave feminists and feminists who have emerged and been influenced by feminisms third and fourth wave.

The significance of these articles is not the actual arguments contained within them, which are dubious and disingenuous, but they way they have sought to mobilise feminist language in justifying a defence of Porter and Morrison. Whilst these articles have been widely seen as bad articles with weak arguments, in drawing responses and shifting debate onto the their spurious arguments the articles work in both shifting the debate away from what to do about an attorney general who is faces credible allegations of rape and a governmetn which defends him to the validity of McGuinness’s argument and adds to the general divisions which exist within the current movement.

It is necessary to simply reject outright any attempt to distract from the seriousness of sexual assault within our community and the failures of institutions to address this violence. At the same time it is vital that we recognise that the only way to move the movement forward and achieve real change is to support the mobilisation of survivors and their supporters with the aim of making attempts to ignore the movement and continue as normal are simply impossible.

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