There has been a growing number of books about the ideological ties between liberalism and fascism. Ishay Landa's "The Apprentice's Sorcerer" needs to be named here as well as David Golumbia’s "Cyberlibertarianism". But while Landa focusses on the early history of liberalism in the 1920 and 1930 as well as historic fascism in Nazi-Germany and Golumbia focusses on the specific ideologies of digital tech discourse, Slobodian focusses on the rising "Alt-Right" in todays USA and EU. He shows how the idea of supposedly genetically coded traits like „IQ“ in certain ethnic-groups (caucasian males) that - supposedly - enable them to form superior economic communities became a stand-in for a new form of market-liberal racism. He then explains how these ideas influenced liberal think tanks like the Mont Pelerin Society and found its way into mainstream liberal market debates. Today this new form of racism is weaponized against the supposed threat of migration of genetically and culturally inferior groups into superior communities. This idea is very visible e.g. in Thilo Sarazin's „Deutschland schafft sich ab“ and - of course - the German fascist party, the AfD.

Slobodian covers the rise of a new form of race theory in the 1970 in the form of IQ racism and how the idea of biologically coded superior competitiveness lead to what he calls ethno-capitalism or "Volk-capitalism". This quote sums it up perfectly:

"We cannot understand the Far Right without seeing their vision of capitalism".

The book is much shorter than it appears, nearly a third is references. It is very accessible written and - to me - is the new reference work I will recommend to anyone who wants to understand why Horkheimers famous quote is so relevant still: „If you aren't willing to talk about capitalism, you better keep quiet about fascism.“

PS: In the US the book has a different title („Hayek's Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right“) but seems identical in content.