I kind of want to ask him to expand more on his ideas about authoritarianism and what he specifically sees it manifesting as if things develop this way. For me it seems like the opposite to what he describes is happening. In China it’s specifically because you have strong controls against neoliberalism that it hasn’t had to resort to the type of authoritarian measures you see in the US where the militarized police handles the fallout from failures in economic policy and then the national guard handles the failures of the police.

It’s also hard not to see the shift from Larry Summers to Janet Yellen as an explicit rejection of the path Zizek is describing. As much as Biden saber rattles against China the US seems to be learning from it and rejecting a lot of neoliberal norms to the extent the huge austerity push people expected is not happening. Instead of social authoritarianism we’re seeing Biden for the most part acquiesce to whatever social project people want to try. I don’t think we converted anyone high up into socialist, but it’s clear there are people with power who consider Obama’s economic policy a failure and will not return to it.