Atlas / Claim checks / Neoliberalism is far-right.
Is neoliberalism far right? The claim, measured
“Neoliberalism is far-right.”
Measured against Neoliberalism and National Socialism
Distance is measured across six independent axes, each running from −10 to +10, out of a maximum separation of 49.0. How the scoring works →
Strongest case for the claim
Market liberalisation programmes have been imposed by authoritarian regimes, most notoriously in Chile, and have coincided with rising inequality and the weakening of organised labour. Critics argue that insulating economic policy from majority decision is anti-democratic in effect.
Strongest case against
On the economic axis it sits at +09, which is indeed the far right end of that axis. But the historical far right did not: fascist regimes sat near the economic centre, at +01 and +02, because corporatism subordinates the market to the nation. Neoliberalism is therefore seven points to the economic right of Nazism, not aligned with it, and 23.9 units away overall. Its leading exponents supported immigration, free movement and supranational institutions, which the actual far right defines itself against.
What the coordinates show. True as a description of one axis, false as a description of the map, and false even about the economics of the movements it is being equated with. This is the mirror image of the "Nazis were socialists" error: a single-axis reading reported as a whole-map verdict. The word has also become almost purely pejorative and is almost never used as a self-description, which is a reliable sign that it has stopped functioning as a measurement.
Axis by axis
A single distance figure is a headline. Which axes carry the gap is the story, and it is usually what the claim is really about.
| Axis | Mont Pèlerin, Chicago | NSDAP | Gap | Reading | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC · Economic organisation | +09 | +02 | 7 | Differs | Real difference, but not the dividing line. |
| CU · Social and cultural order | +01 | +09 | 8 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| AU · Organisation of power | −02 | +10 | 12 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| SC · Scale of decision | +02 | +09 | 7 | Differs | Real difference, but not the dividing line. |
| ID · Rule of membership | −02 | +10 | 12 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| CH · Method and tempo | −02 | +09 | 11 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
The evidence, so you need not take our word for it
Every score above carries a rationale and at least one artefact a third party can check. These are the cells that matter most to this claim.
Mont Pèlerin, Chicago · CU +01
Coded near neutral: the tradition is deliberately agnostic on social questions and its exponents divided sharply.
- ScholarshipHayek and Friedman opposed conscription and drug prohibition; other Mont Pèlerin members were social conservatives.
NSDAP · CU +09
Social order was to be reconstituted on racial hierarchy, with women's role restricted by policy and all autonomous civil association dissolved.
- Documented act or statuteMarried women were pushed out of the professions from 1933 and awarded the Mother's Cross for childbearing from 1938.
- Documented act or statuteYouth, professional and leisure organisations were merged into party bodies under the Gleichschaltung laws of 1933–34.
Mont Pèlerin, Chicago · AU −02
Coded slightly negative: the doctrine constrains majorities through rules and independent bodies, which disperses rather than concentrates authority.
- ScholarshipCentral bank independence, fiscal rules and treaty commitments remove decisions from ordinary majority revision.
- ScholarshipThis is delegation, not concentration; the entry for technocratic centrism is coded positive on the same reasoning and separates the two.
NSDAP · AU +10
Every independent institution was either abolished or absorbed within eighteen months of taking office. There is no lower-scoring case available.
- Documented act or statuteThe Enabling Act of March 1933 transferred legislative power to the cabinet.
- Documented act or statuteAll parties other than the NSDAP were banned by July 1933.
What this does not settle
Where the disagreement is about which features define a word, no coordinate system resolves it. Two people with these figures in front of them can disagree indefinitely and both be reasoning correctly. What the measurement does is narrow the argument to what the word should mean, which is smaller than settling it and more than nothing.
This page states both cases because the atlas is not in the business of settling arguments by assertion. Where the underlying dispute is conceptual rather than factual, that is said plainly rather than resolved.
Full comparisonLearn the method behind this
These checks all use the same procedure, and it runs on paper without any dataset.
Check it yourself
The interactive atlas holds 319 organisations on six independent axes with the evidence for every score. Paste any claim that equates two political things and it will find them and report the measurement.