Extremism as a symptom: for an alternative to therapeutic neoliberalism from Italian Theory

The rise of right-wingers, especially in the West, must be interpreted within the neoliberal art of government. It is the precariousness caused by the competitive market regime and the constant exposure of individuals to evaluation in every sphere of life that produces in the population an ever more widespread demand for security and control. The right-wingers take it upon themselves to provide a conservative response to this very demand, a response that serves above all to balance and compensate for the out-of-control drifts of neoliberalism, being functional to its preservation rather than representing an alternative to its crisis. On the crisis as an art of government, Italian thought has provided fundamental interpretations, starting with that of Antonio Gramsci, which is useful for understanding the current conjuncture, in which “extremisms” are a symptom of the crisis of neoliberal hegemony. On the level of a counter-hegemony stands Roberto Esposito’s immuno-politics as a possible alternative to the immunization inherent in the current therapeutic neoliberalism.