@Elessar Kiiiiiinda. Neo-Liberalism is kinda like Libertarianism in that it's left-wing on social issues, but right-wing on economics. Though when forced to choose between Democracy and Autocracy, Neo-Liberals generally side with the former, Libertarianism generally choose the latter.
@BohemianBoo Not necessarily, no. Liberals at the time were pretty fine with fascists, to the point of siding together (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_List_(Italy)), they've changed their mind only after things spiraled out of control, their parties got dissoluted and they essentially became part of the outgroup too. Neo-liberalism is essentially the modern re-implementation of that political area, and I'm not sure they differ too much:
Neither libertarians nor neo/liberals are progressive : they mostly don't care about social issues - I'd say they're neutral in the social axis. They don't like fascists too much because they're extremely conservative, they don't like the left because they perceive it as extremely progressive; however, between the two, they'll choose the former because they're on the same half of the economic axis.
@Elessar That's why I said "generally." Neo-Liberals are more likely to side with Fascists if the alternative is anti-capitalist. But overall, they want to keep Democracy.
When it comes to ordinary people, not politicians, I think Neo-Liberals and Libertarians are pretty socially progressive. A lot of them honestly believe that Capitalism is just the only way to maintain freedom. But Neo-Liberals are more realistic, they're more likely to support welfare programs, though not nearly as much as Social Democracy.
@BohemianBoo Which ultimately sounds a lot like "they only care about democracy so long as it means keeping the capitalist status quo".
"Ordinary" libertarians seem to vote red for the most part, which tells you how really progressive they are - personally I have yet to know a single libertarian who isn't ultimately a closet far-righter or far-right sympathizer. They seem to unironically reason like "we need a brief period of far-right authoritarianism to eliminate the left, and then the fascists will step down and we'll magically transition to the smallest government ever".
"Ordinary" neoliberals as I said are mixed, and you notice it especially in non-FPTP countries such as mine, where they have multiple parties scattered all around. Some being a minority in the far-right group, some in their own block, some in the centre-left coalitions and even these will vote against their own group's proposals on social issues under the claim that "too progressive = extremism".
Tbh if we want to be precise, neoliberals are the real conservatives: their core point is conserving the capitalist status quo with whichever mean is necessary. Those that are improperly called "conservatives" are actually regressives, or even reactionaries - their core point is rolling back society to a (fictional) golden era that is collocated decades or centuries behind in the past. Neither of these are really "progressive", by definition.
Which ultimately sounds a lot like "they only care about democracy so long as it means keeping the capitalist status quo".
That's basically what modern Liberalism is. I can't blame them, they think what we have is the best possible society. Though lots of Liberals do think we can do better, which is why they tend to support mild improvements to current social programs. Whereas Neo-Liberals want to move backwards, they want to be more capitalist.
@BohemianBoo Correct me if I'm wrong but neoliberalism is simply the modern reimplementation of old school liberalism. The "neo-" (= new) prefix is just to distinguish them from their predecessors, e.g. the ones here who were in Mussolini's list. You can use the two terms interchangeably in a modern context, when not discussing historic positions.
"Liberalism" intended as the umbrella term for all the ideologies present in the modern Democrat party (from neoliberalism to social democracy) is purely an American distorted term coming from the fact that in the dual-party system the leading ideology in one party gets to name the population of that whole party. However, a social democrat however isn't really a liberal, the same way as a liberal isn't really a left-winger, even if in the common language it's typical to refer to them like that.
Neo/liberals not being really aligned on the social axis means that you'll have some that are more or less sympathetic to progressive causes, yes. But they aren't necessarily progressive, most of them don't care or sympathize with actual progressives just because they know they need to come to an agreement since they need each other to secure an election.
