Simon Springer - Fuck Neoliberalism

In the dismal halls of academias precarious contracted labour, it was delightful to hear these joyful strains of fuck it, yep, fuck it to hell. Simon Springers ode to our current situation is the tantric yoga all our subjectivities need.

Bek Conroy, autonomous and precarious artist activist academic

Fuck Neoliberalism is a call to action for an abandoned generation. Simon Springer wants us to find the everyday moments, conversations, and places where we can resist the social, political, and economic violence that we increasingly face and build a new world better than the current one. A must-read for anyone trying to understand and change this world we live in!

Kean Birch, author of We Have Never Been Neoliberal: A Manifesto for a Doomed Youth (Zero Books, 2015)

In this rather brilliant essay, Springer joyfully calls time on the long night of neoliberal fuckery. By invoking a spirit of freedom, nonviolence, solidarity, and hope Fuck Neoliberalism invites us all to find ways to tramp the dirt down on the grave of neoliberalism and play our part in ensuring that all life on this beautiful planet can flourish once again.

Richard J. White, coeditor of the Anarchism, Geography and the Spirit of Revolt trilogy: The Radicalization of Pedagogy, Theories of Resistance, and The Practice of Freedom (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2016)

In Fuck Neoliberalism, Springer takes aim at more or less everyone (himself included) who continues to reproduce the power of the neoliberal cop in our heads. By thinking and saying the simple phrase fuck it, he argues, we can affirm our rejection, our critique of neoliberalism, but also crucially a desiring energy to create other ways of thinking, being, and doing beyond neoliberal logics. Not even writers of blurbs to be printed on the back of books are exempt from Springers powerful and provocative call to arms. And on that note, fuck it, Im outta here.

Anthony Ince, lecturer in Human Geography at Cardiff University

Translating Resistance

Simon Springer

Fuck Neoliberalism: Translating Resistance

Simon Springer

This edition 2021 PM Press

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ISBN: 9781629637891 (print)

ISBN: 9781629638133 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019946100

Front cover artwork by Ed Repka 2018

Cover by John Yates / www.stealworks.com

Interior design by briandesign

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For all those who have been fucked over by neoliberalism
and suffered as a result of its abhorrent violence.
Fuck it to hell.

I wondered if the author Simon Springer really existed. Thats the kind of name youd make up for a comic novel. But, yes, hes real, and hes spectacular.

Steven Hayward, Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy, Pepperdine University

Bullying. Defamation. Harassment. Threats of violence. These are the battle scars of having dared to write a paper titled Fuck Neoliberalism. In defying standard academic convention and its penchant for pompousness, theoretical detachment from reality, and a general stick-up-the-butt protocol, the paper became a lightning rod for the conservative defenders of moral righteousness who descended upon me in legion following its publication. But even before the paper was published, the first sanctimonious guardian of the academic citadel arrived on his high horse. The chair of my former department had less than kind and supportive words for me. I first delivered the paper as a conference talk in San Francisco for the annual American Association of Geographers meeting in April 2016. The week after I returned from that meeting, he cornered me in the hallway and proceeded to berate me in front of a colleague and graduate student. He informed me that I was ruining the reputation of the department, and that my work couldnt be taken seriously. I replied that my paper, like all my work, was deadly serious. He insisted my work was a joke, and that it wasnt up to scientific standards. Well Im glad to have made him laugh, but otherwise Im not a scientist. So what? He told me that I should think about how my nonsense impacts upon my colleagues, and that the paper was completely inappropriate. It was the abstract in particular that irked him (Yep, fuck it. Neoliberalism sucks. We dont need it). I told him it was my academic freedom to write whatever I wanted. He insisted that academic freedom is one thing, but that it only goes so far and shouldnt extend to cursing in academic forums. Piling on the reactionary bullshit, he claimed that my use of profanity was akin to pornography and an embarrassment for the university. He indicated that senior administrators had been informed and my job was at risk. Amazing! We are off to the races!

Things were relatively calm for a good while thereafter. I didnt get fired, but I did submit a formal complaint to my Faculty Association about threats being made to my academic freedom. The result was ongoing harassment and bullying for the next few years at the hands of various administrators and senior colleagues. In terms of Fuck Neoliberalism, the response was extremely positive from other scholars but turned sour almost two years later when Powerline, one of the most popular conservative blogs in the United States ran a story about my paper called Neoliberal Madness. He insisted to his followers, lest anyone misinterpret his actual intentions, that he was calling me a boob. I wrote to him personally to thank him again for the glowing, boobtastic endorsement.

Endorsed Defamation and Forced Resignation

Not to be outdone, Canadas favorite plagiarist and rape culture denier Margaret Wente wrote a scathingand once again ironicpiece on the supposed curbing of free speech on Canadian campuses. The Globe and Mail, Canadas national newspaper, gave her a soapbox, publishing a piece that sought to defend the dangerous and hateful right-wing speech of Rick Mehta and Jordan Peterson, while using me and my work as a scapegoat for all that is supposedly wrong with what she calls the hothouse world of todays universities. She was obviously quite twisted up about my paper, and, stripping the agency of students, she wrote that students dont need a safe space to protect them from the likes of Prof. Mehta. They need responsible adults to protect them from the likes of Prof. Springer, whose brand of rubbish is depressingly common at our institutions of higher learning.

The notoriouswhile having nothing worthwhile to sayJordan Peterson shared my response, mocking it on Twitter and his Facebook page, which shook the fragile conservative foundation once more, and a renewed avalanche of hate mail came crashing down on top of me. Good thing I grew up in northern British Columbia, so Im not really fazed by the snow. Thus, when the small-time internet troll Benjamin Boyce started receiving attention for his pathetic reading of my paper, he received a chilly cease and desist order from YouTube for violating copyright laws. While the original article is published as Creative Commons, that is for noncommercial purposes. Boyce was trying to profit off my work by using it as a platform to beg for money on Patreon. He cried foul and tried to argue that it was ironic for an anarchist to write against neoliberalism and then use copyright law to shut him down. But the only irony is the entitlement that neoliberals feel they have to the commons. He was more than happy to accumulate the fruits of my labor and claim it was his to harvest. Fortunately, his attempts to profit were frozen, but not before a new onslaught of hatred was directed at me.