The Thieves of the Impossible: Austerity, Freedom, and Fascism in the Interregnum

Abstract

This essay examines the political and social conditions that enable the contemporary far right to present itself as a force of rupture and claim the language of freedom while preserving economic hierarchies and expanding authoritarian forms of power. Drawing on critical political economy, theories of hegemony, and Latin American social thought, it investigates the prolonged neoliberal interregnum following the 2008 financial crisis. It argues that austerity turns distributive conflicts into seemingly technical constraints and that its adoption by progressive governments contributes to a political pedagogy of democratic powerlessness. Within this context, melhorismo—understood as the pursuit of social improvements without corresponding structural transformations in power relations—proves insufficient to restore an emancipatory horizon. The essay contends that the far right exploits this opening by articulating resentments, alliances with dominant class fractions, and selective promises of autonomy, thereby symbolically appropriating rebellion and freedom. The analysis incorporates the historical experience of peripheral societies, where coloniality, slavery, violence, and unequal citizenship long predate neoliberalism. It concludes that confronting contemporary processes of fascistization requires democratizing economic power, rebuilding collective forms of organization, and reclaiming freedom as the effective capacity to shape the conditions of individual and collective existence.