I think, relative to >>24510230 , OP is not quite right. Deneen DOES want Liberalism to fail, but on his terms, and he wants to replace it with a system of his choosing. Think of the flavor of Deneen's specific illiberalism. He's a Catholic who has reverted to the Faith in a serious way. The Church has ALWAYS been an enemy of Liberalism because Liberalism gets in its way. For the Church to return to prominence in a way that once again holds sway in the lives of billions, especially in the West, Liberalism is going to have to go.

This, to me, is transparently Deneen's motivation. He dislikes Liberalism because he's Catholic and has realized the two cannot coexist. The system Deneen would prefer to replace Liberalism with is basically a Catholic sociopolitical order, perhaps like Maritain's Catholic Social Democracy but in reality probably something more like a 21st century update of the old aristocracies. And those weren't fascism and weren't totalitarianism, not really. Deneen doesn't want to put the boot on anyone's neck because, frankly, that's not the Christian thing to do. But he does want to do away with political liberalism and neoliberal capitalism.

Pic related. Peter Thiel isn't the ONLY one who's been trying to groom JD Vance.