One notorious incarnation of the neoliberal double truth doctrine was the participation of numerous MPS members and affiliates in the coup that toppled the elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. Milton Friedman spends a good chunk of his autobiography attempting to excuse and explain his actions away; afterward Hayek was also pilloried for his role. It was all just an unfortunate set of exceptional events, they intoned; it was not our fault. But Carl Schmitt taught that sovereignty is defined as the ability to determine the exceptions to the rule of law: “Sovereign is he who decides the state of emergency”; deploying the double truth doctrine in Chile showed that the neoliberals had arrogated sovereignty to themselves.

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 2149