[...] Forged in the crucible of European fascism, neoliberalism aimed at permanent inoculation of market liberal orders against the regrowth of fascistic sentiments and totalitarian powers. Eager to separate politics from markets, the original neoliberals would have loathed both the crony capitalism and international oligarchical power spawned by finance that yanks the chains of states today. Seeking to get politics out of markets and concentrated economic interests out of policy making, they would have deplored the manipulation of public policy by major industries and capital sectors and would have hated, too, the politicization of enterprise. Above all, they dreaded political mobilizations of an ignorant, aroused citizenry and looked to market and moral discipline and a severely leashed democracy to pacify and contain it. They would be horrified by the contemporary phenomenon of leaders at once authoritarian and reckless riding to power on this tide. In short, while the book will argue that the constellation of principles, policies, practices, and forms of governing reason that may be gathered under the sign of neoliberalism has importantly constituted the catastrophic present, this was not neoliberalism’s intended spawn, but its Frankensteinian creation. Fathoming how that creation came to be requires examining the imminent failures and occlusions of neoliberal principles and policy, as well as their admixture with other powers and energies, including those of racism, nihilism, fatalism, and ressentiment.