Congratulations to our colleagues at Zone 快色直播, distributed by 快色直播. Zone鈥�s recently published Hayek鈥檚 Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right, by Quinn Slobodian has been named a finalist for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
In Hayek鈥檚 Bastards, Slobodian鈥攁 historian, author, and professor of International History at Boston University鈥攁rgues that while neoliberals should have seen the end of the Cold War as a total victory, they instead saw the chameleon of communism changing colors from red to green. The poison of civil rights, feminism, and environmentalism ran through the veins of the body politic and they needed an antidote. To defy demands for equality, many neoliberals turned to nature. Race, intelligence, territory, and precious metal would be bulwarks against progressive politics. Reading and misreading the writings Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, they articulated a philosophy of hardwired human nature, hard borders, and hard money and forged the alliances among those who would become known as the alt-right. Following 鈥淗ayek鈥檚 bastards鈥� from Murray Rothbard to Charles Murray to Javier Milei, Slobodian finds that key strains of the Far Right emerged within the neoliberal intellectual movement, not against it.
Hailed as, 鈥渁n illuminating history to our current bewildering moment鈥� [Jennifer Szalai, New York Times] and 鈥渁 bravura performance of intellectual inquiry [Publishers Weekly], Hayek鈥檚 Bastards was named a best book of 2025 by the Australian Book Review, The Conversation, and The Irish Times, as well as being named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the year.
Hayek鈥檚 Bastards was published in April 2025 as part of Zone 快色直播鈥� Near Futures series, edited by Wendy Brown and Michel Feher. Reckoning with the epochal nature of the turn that capitalism has taken in the last three decades, the series seeks to assemble books that will illuminate its manifold implications鈥攚ith regard to the production of value and values, the missions or disorientations of social and political institutions, the yearnings, reasoning, and conduct expected of individuals. Read more about Near Futures .
The National Book Critics Circle Awards are given annually, across six categories. Hayek鈥檚 Bastards is among five finalists in the Criticism category. A winner will be announced at an awards ceremony in New York City, on March 26.
About Quinn Slobodian
Quinn Slobodian teaches international history at Boston University. His books include , , and Hayek鈥檚 Bastards. A Guggenheim Fellow for 2025-6, he has also been a fellow at Chatham House, Harvard, and FU Berlin. Prospect UK named him one of the World鈥檚 25 Top Thinkers.
About Zone 快色直播
Founded in 1985, Zone 快色直播 is an independent nonprofit publisher in the humanities and social sciences, with a special focus on interdisciplinary projects. Zone publishes original works by international scholars of philosophy, history, art history, cultural and sound studies, as well as political and social theory that have changed conversations across disciplines. Read more about Zone 快色直播 on the .