This article links late Neoliberal Financialized Capitalism (NFC) with biopolitics, identity crises, and emerging death cults. It is argued that late NFC entails spreading violence in state and society, increasing premature and violent deaths in growing subcultures. Individualistic ideologies—which lower social strata now embrace as enabling myths—suggest renewed celebration of struggle for survival and death cults. From an institutionalist perspective, the regressive institutional change increases the predominance of ceremonial values and habits, which indicates a “triumph of imbecile institutions over life and culture” (Veblen, Thorstein B., The Instinct of Workmanship). Contemporary death cults convert violent dying into a consumable merchandise and a form of entertainment. We illustrate the normalization of violent death in the popular youth culture of Mexico’s drug trafficking industry. Its musical genre, known as corridos sanguinarios, songs of blood, is analyzed. Our results show manifold ambivalences of contemporary death cults between social compliance and revolt, which may deepen our understanding of the socioeconomic, institutional, and political future under late NFC.

The implications of the long-lasting phase of Neoliberal Financial Capitalism (NFC) encompass a complex institutional regression. Excessive endgame violence, celebration of self-sacrifice, and heroic death have historically prevailed through systemic crises and wars. Violent practices are inflicted upon millions throughout the twentieth century. Despite the peaceful rhetoric that surrounds the neoliberalism of the postwar era, the contemporary violence that has come to characterize popular culture within the neoliberal context forces us to reflect on both the historical legacies and the reemergence of the unconceivable. The latter involves the heroic—or so perceived—sacrifice of soldiers as well as non-soldier youths and children, who are brought behind the front lines as werewolves when causes have been clearly lost. The cult of heroic and violent death re-emerges constantly in the twenty-first century, expressed in diverse cultural phenomena, including mental health crises, self-destructive behavior, and pervasive social violence. Recently, the death cult reappears in the narratives of geopolitical conflicts, including the Ukrainian conflictFootnote1 and the Israeli war against Hamas. Both battles gear to last until the last Ukrainian soldier is alive and the last unarmed Palestinian child remains in Gaza. According to Benjamin Netanyahu, “the Bible says that there is time for peace and a time for war. This is the time for war [and human sacrifice]” (Caroll Citation2023).

The extent of the internalization of violence and death in liberal market societies is worth studying through an evolutionary-institutional perspective to contextualize the phenomenon within the increasing domain of ceremonial values and habits. From this angle, late neoliberal regimes—in their degenerative phase (Harvey 2007; Brown Citation2019)—entail a fundamental regressive institutional change (Bush Citation1987; Elsner Citation2012). The societal balance between individual and collective dimensions, individual freedom, and social responsibility, has massively deteriorated and tilted to a hyper-individualistic and liberated social irresponsibility. Ceremonial values, warranting a race for differential status and power, have come to ever dominate previous instrumental values of collective problem-solving and of related social inquiry, experimentation, and learning.

Thorstein Veblen (Citation[1914] 1964) states that a “triumph of imbecile institutions over life and culture” (25) evolves when a ceremonial encapsulation (Bush Citation1987) of instrumental social knowledge and related habits through ceremonial values applies, overriding the problem-solving capacities and resilience of a socio-economy. The phenomenon entails a regressive institutional change in that it displaces instrumental behavior. In its extreme format, ceremonial values and habits do not only dominate instrumental ones but substitute for them by pretending instrumental efficiency. We consider that the normalization of premature and violent deaths, along with the acceptance of death cults in subcultures illustrate the contemporary institutions that triumph over life and any instrumental purpose.

The widespread normalization of the unconceivable sheds light on the degenerating phase of late Neoliberal Financialized Capitalism (NFC).Footnote2 Even so, the system ideologically advances despite its endemic incapacity to ensure social provisioning. In this work, our objective is reconsidering the social and ideological implications of late NFC by analyzing cultural narratives that incorporate systemic violence, particularly in disenfranchised sectors. In these spheres, violent death is commodified as an enabling myth. Nonetheless, the presence of death as a commodity has appeared in mainstream popular culture, primarily with a ceremonial function in the past four decades (Khapaeva Citation2019). Considering such trends, this manuscript encompasses two major analytical strands: 1) the increasing scope of the Great Transformation (Polanyi Citation[1944] 2001), as late NFC continues its commodifying path that culminates with transforming death into merchandise, and 2) the identity crises that spring up in disenfranchised social spheres as a result. The phenomenon is expressed through cults of death. These constitute dispersing narratives that glorify “dying as a way of living.”

To examine the issue, we delve into analyzing corridos sanguinarios (bloody folksongs), a popular musical genre among young Mexicans who work for the drug trafficking industry. It is argued that identity crises, mostly experienced by marginalized youth, seek a rational justification in the market doctrine—rugged individualism, invidious distinctions, and conspicuous consumption—to grant purpose to lives defined by danger and despair. The market doctrine has run out of steam as the late NFC’s mantra does not provide an ideological framework to explicate social despair. In this framework, death cults resurface and display in unusual ways a strategy to dignify the lives of those who lie at the edges of market societies.

In subsequent sections, we weave literature on Neoliberalism’s systemic violence (Marazzi Citation2009; Muniz 2013; UN Citation2020), identity crises (Wrenn Citation2014; Ramazzotti Citation2020), biopolitics (Foucault [Citation1977/78] 2009; Esposito Citation2008) or necropolitics (Mbembe Citation2019; Rajah Citation2022), and death cults (Khapaeva Citation2019). The purpose is joining the conversation already initiated by heterodox scholars on the commodification of the social sphere (Foltz Citation2007; Ramazzotti Citation2020; Waller and Wrenn Citation2021; Wrenn Citation2019) by bringing to light its most extreme excrescence with the intent of integrating ideological and psychological arguments. We intend to push the analysis into the changing dichotomy of life and death in late NFC.

The section titled “Social Implications and Long Run NFC - Isolation” discusses the expansive commodification of the social sphere in late NFC. The intrusion entails the commodification of care, civic rights, religion, and human subjectivity—to name some examples. The primary outcome of these processes is social isolation. In this course, the logics of social links are destroyed and replaced with market logics, propelling the dynamics of economics crises at the macro level by regenerating interrelated and cumulative polycrises at the micro level (EuroMemo Group Citation2023). In “NFC’s Production of Subjectivity–Necropolitics and Death Cults,” our study focuses on the production of subjectivity, along with its identity crises that serve as instruments of late NFC’s necropolitics. It explains the connectivity between the commodification of the social sphere and normalizing violence, including the loss of life, along with its real-economic and ideological dimensions. Late NFC’s production of subjectivity is insufficient to interpret material dispossession and social despair. Nonetheless, the market principles—rugged individualism, conspicuous consumption, and invidious distinction—become conduits for death cults to permeate the social fabric. “Disfranchised Youth: Violent Heroic Death and Corridos Sanguinarios” introduces our case study, corridos sanguinarios, conclusive remarks are reserved for the last section.