Neoliberals have always bemoaned big government, and the neoliberal promise has been that governments would shrink and markets would rule. But under Donald Trump we have seen the most sweeping expansion of federal power since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Trump's regime may well be marked by populist language of freedom and small government but has actually involved an unapologetic use of state authority. The president has sent federal soldiers into cities over their objections. The regime has bullied universities, intimidated television news outlets, and turned law firms into instruments of political intimidation. Above all, it has asserted claims of the state in the private sphere — aggressively taking a stake in the semiconductor company Intel, to cite one example.
The irony is of course that the same conservatives who had long threatened "intrusive control" from Washington now occupy the wheel of control. The modern right is now using state intervention not to expand welfare or equality, but to police culture, punish heresy, and direct economic power towards nationalist ends.
A New Form of Authoritarian Intervention
This right-wing statism isn’t about helping the poor or redistributing wealth. It’s about reshaping society in the image of a particular ideology — using the levers of the state to reward allies, punish enemies, and enforce loyalty.
The Thatcher-Reagan "small state" ideal is gone. In its place is a government that aims to expand intervention. This is statecraft that appropriates the tools of the left and turns them upside down....
It almost makes me RESPECT Thatcher!