The year 2024 was termed a “global election super cycle,” as over 70 countries held general or national elections. While the outcomes varied, what emerged as the defining feature of the elections was an accentuated form of demagoguery and corporatism. Efficiency, productivity, optimization, trade wars, and climate denialism – all for the sake of a select few – continue to be celebrated and institutionalized.
Apparently, the cult of messianism, stoked with the collapse of social assets and demarcated racial identities are the new norms of our neoliberal age politics. A disabled and deformed democracy surviving on the crutches of corporatism is the signature style of brutalism, an ideology that energizes the extractive regime of the deep-state. In the functioning of brutalism, the moral high ground is not just debunked but conveniently replaced by the lure of promising deals. These are also times when bureaucracy seems to have lost its social provenance, hell-bent invariably as it is to enact destruction and explore unplumbed avenues for corruption.
The coalescing of neoliberal ideology into brutalism should not be seen as a shock. When human lives and social assets are seen from the lens of statistics and resources, when the biosphere is being sacrificed for the technosphere, or for that matter when the Earth’s present habitability is exacerbated to find life on another planet, this brutal manifestation of democracy was always a lurking presence. The narrative of brutalism is the narrative of each breath being monetized and commodified. We have reached that stage where corporatism has been infused into democratic ethos. No wonder, Elon Musk, the most trusted aide of the world’s most powerful President, Donald Trump can critique “globalism” while choosing to be silent on the benefits he continues to generate through his global corporate setup. Globalism is not only selective but also exclusive rights of the powerful echelons.
Indeed, it is a paradox. For a nation like America, the most globalized country in the world and the largest beneficiary of global labour and global capital, its President can hijack and distort the very meaning of what it means to be global. How else does one see his orders against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programmes? The selective amnesia about the multicultural diversity of America and the sacrifices of people coming from outside and yet contributing to building America smacks of an acute level of exceptionality. Likewise, Trump’s Vice-President, JD Vance, has a similar iteration of globalism. In his desperation to provide impunity to Musk’s X, he has warned European governments of severe actions if they try to regulate or disseminate information that does not reflect American values.
Following Achille Mbembe’s work on “brutalism” (2024), I define it as an ideology that blurs the distinction between democracy and autocracy, where fascism is ingrained within the codes of corporatism, and where life forms and social assets are surrendered to the highest bidder. Brutalism has thus provided us with a world in which states only align with profit-seeking financial actors, who are constantly evaluating worldmaking with statistical data or the data jargon. It is also an ideology that divorces empathy while pretending that the same is available to the whole of humanity. It is indeed a farce that one can fire thousands of people at one go, jeopardize the planet, and digitize humans, while still imposing as the saviour of the world, singing the song of humanity. Exactly, what Elon Musk asserted in one of his latest podcast interviews. “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit,” Musk said. “There it’s they’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.”
That is why, one can claim that the neoliberal pathway has led to that brutal stage where states are converted into companies and companies are converting into states. Entrepreneurs are the new visionaries in such a setup; they are both heroes and convicts driving the mission of colonizing life on this planet. Trump echoed the same when he praised Musk for the DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) initiative to reduce the cost involved in running the government, “He’s a leader. He really is; he gets it done.” Essentially, this sums up the ideology of brutalism. Driven by the rhetorics of profit and hyper-nationalism, the idea of states as the organizing principle of life and human dignity is no longer viable since humans are being treated as ‘wasted lives’ to protect and promote the interest of state-corporate nexus. Therefore, it should not shock us to see Trump mulling over the possibility of imposing the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to ensure mass deportation of migrants who have been living in America for years now. It is another matter that they could not get recognized by the nation that boasts to be the epitome of human mercy.
As advocates of entrepreneurship, authoritarian freedom is prioritized over social relations, thus ensuring that the notion of common safety and collective futures are locked within a limited network. The sheer magnitude of unchecked savagery of brutalism is brilliantly captured by Tabish Khair in his latest novel, The Body By the Shore: “[O]nly massive destruction carries so much money. Only millions of deaths interest governments and corporations”. In a world shaped by a balance sheet of profit and exclusion, it takes little common sense to understand that vulnerability is central to the gaze of brutalism. Exactly, why it can be argued that brutalism is an advanced form of imperialism, a new norm in international relations through which bigger players can control and dictate smaller countries.
What is needed at this critical juncture is the pedagogical inventiveness of democracy. The transactional nature of democracy is never going to be a sustainable option. How do we renew this week tie between social relations and brutal rendition of democracy? This question should be at centre of our discussions provided we are willing to engage with it.