neoliberalism and
THE AGE OF PEDAGOGICAL TERRORISM
by
HENRY A. GIROUX
__________________________________________
Henry
A. Giroux currently holds the Global TV Network Chair
Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural
Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship
at Ryerson University. He is the author of more than 50 books
including The Educational Deficit and the War on Youth
and Zombie
Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism.
Many of his essays, including The Spectacle of Illiteracy, appear
on his website at www.henryagiroux.com.
His interview with Bill
Moyers is must viewing. He was recently named one of
the century's 50 most significant contributors to the debate
on education.
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YOUR
COMMENTSMarx was certainly right in arguing that the
point is not to understand the world but to change it, but what
he underemphasized was that the world cannot be transformed
if one does not understand what is to be changed. As Terry Eagleton
rightly notes “Nobody can change a world they didn’t
understand.” Moreover, the lack of mass resistance to
oppression signals more than apathy or indifference, it also
suggests that we don’t have an informed and energizing
vision of the world for which we want to struggle. Political
struggle is dependent on the political will to change, which
is central to any notion of informed agency willing to address
the radical and pragmatic issues of our time. In addition to
understanding the world, an informed public must connect what
they know and learn to the central task of bringing their ideas
to bear on society as a whole. This means that a critical consciousness
must be matched by a fervent willingness to take risks, and
challenge the destructive narratives that are seeping into the
public realm and becoming normalized.
Any
dissatisfaction with injustice necessitates combining the demands
of moral witnessing with the pedagogical power of persuasion
and the call to address the tasks of emancipation. We need individuals
and social movements willing to disturb the normalization of
a fascist politics, oppose racist, sexist, and neoliberal orthodoxy.
As
Robin D. G. Kelley observes we cannot confuse catharsis and
momentary outrage for revolution. In a time of increasing tyranny,
resistance in many quarters appears to have lost its usefulness
as a call to action. At the same time, the pedagogical force
of civic ignorance and illiteracy has morphed into a national
ideal. Tyranny and ignorance feed each other in a theater of
corporate controlled media ecosystems and function more as a
tool of domination than as a pedagogical outlet in pursuit of
justice and the practice of freedom. Under such circumstances,
when education is not viewed as central to politics itself,
resistance withers in the faux language of privatized struggles
and fashionable slogans.
For
instance the novelist Teju Cole has argued that “‘resistance’
is back in vogue, and it describes something rather different
now. The holy word has become unexceptional. Faced with a vulgar,
manic and cruel regime, birds of many different feathers are
eager to proclaim themselves members of the Resistance. It is
the most popular game in town.” Cole’s critique
appears to be born out by the fact that the most unscrupulous
of liberal and conservative politicians such as Madeline Albright,
Hilary Clinton, and even James Clapper, the former director
of national intelligence, are now claiming that they have joined
the resistance against Trump’s fascist politics. Even
Michael Hayden, the former NSA chief and CIA director under
George W. Bush, has joined the ranks of Albright and Clinton
in condemning Trump as a proto-fascist. Writing in the New
York Times, Hayden, ironically, chastised Trump as a serial
liar and in doing so quoted the renowned historian Timothy Snyder,
who stated in reference to the Trump regime that “Post-Truth
is pre-fascism.” The irony here is hard to miss. Not only
did Hayden head Bush’s illegal National Security Agency
warrantless wiretapping program while the head of the NSA, he
also lied repeatedly about his role in Bush’s sanction
and implementation of state torture in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This
tsunami of banal resistance and its pedagogical architecture
was on full display when an anonymous member of the Trump’s
inner circle published an op-ed in the New York Times
claiming that he/she and other senior officials were part of
“the resistance within the Trump administration.”
The author was quick to qualify the statement by insisting such
resistance had nothing to do with “the popular ‘resistance’
of the left.” To prove the point, it was noted by the
author that the members of this insider resistance liked some
of Trump’s policies such as “effective deregulation,
historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.”
Combining resistance with the endorsements of such reactionary
policies reads like fodder for late-night comics.
The
Democratic Party now defines itself as the most powerful political
force opposing Trump’s fascist politics. What it has forgotten
is the role it has played under the Clinton and Obama presidencies
in creating the economic, political, and social conditions for
Trump’s election in 2016. Such historical and political
amnesia allows them to make the specious claim that they are
now the party of resistance. Resistance in these instances has
little to do with civic courage, a defense of human dignity,
and the willingness to not just bear witness to the current
injustices but to struggle to overcome them. Of course, the
issue is not to disavow resistance as much as to redefine it
as inseparable from fundamental change that calls for the overthrow
of capitalism itself. Neoliberalism has now adopted unapologetically
the language of racial cleansing, white supremacy, white nationalism,
and fascist politics. Unapologetic for the widespread horrors,
gaping inequality, destruction of public goods, and re-energizing
of the discourse of hate and culture of cruelty, neoliberalism
has joined hands with a toxic fascist politics painted in the
hyper-patriotic colors of red, white, and blue. As I have noted
elsewhere:
Neoliberalism’s
hatred of democracy, the common good, and the social contract
has unleashed generic elements of a fascist past in which white
supremacy, ultra-nationalism, rabid misogyny and immigrant fervor
come together in a toxic mix of militarism, state violence,
and a politics of disposability. Modes of fascist expression
adapt variously to different political historical contexts assuring
racial apartheid-like forms in the post-bellum U.S. and overt
encampments and extermination in Nazi Germany. Fascism with
its unquestioning belief in obedience to a powerful strongman,
violence as a form of political purification, hatred as an act
of patriotism, racial and ethnic cleansing, and the superiority
of a select ethnic or national group has resurfaced in the United
States. In this mix of economic barbarism, political nihilism,
racial purity, economic orthodoxy, and ethical somnambulance
a distinctive economic-political formation has been produced
that I term neoliberal fascism.
While
the call to resist neoliberal fascism is to be welcomed, it
has to be interrogated rather than aligned with individuals
and ideological forces that helped put in place the racist,
economic, religious, and educational forces that helped produce
it. What many liberals and conservative calls to resistance
have in common is an opposition to Trump rather than to the
conditions that created him. In some cases, liberal critics
such as Christopher R. Browning, Yascha Mounk, and Cass R. Sunstein
document insightfully America’s descent into fascism but
are too cautious in refusing to conclude that we are living
under a fascist political regime. This is more than a retreat
from political courage, it is a refusal to name how liberalism
itself with its addiction to the financial elite has helped
create the conditions that make a fascist politics possible.
Trump’s
election and the Kavanaugh affair make clear that what is needed
is not only a resistance to the established order of neoliberal
capitalism but a radical restructuring of society itself. That
is not about resisting oppression in its diverse forms but overcoming
it — in short, changing it. The Kavanaugh hearings and
the liberal response was a telling example of what might be
called a politics of disconnection.
While
it is crucial to condemn the Kavanaugh hearings for its blatant
disregard for the Constitution, expressed hatred of women, and
its symbolic expression and embrace of white privilege and power,
it is necessary to enlarge our criticism to include the system
that made the Kavanaugh appointment possible. Kavanaugh represents
not only the deep seated rot of misogyny but also as Grace Lee
Boggs, has stated “a government of, by, and for corporate
power.” We need to see beyond the white nationalists and
neo-Nazis demonstrating in the streets in order to recognize
the terror of the unforeseen, the terror that is state sanctioned,
and hides in the shadows of power. Such a struggle means more
than engaging material relations of power or the economic architecture
of neoliberal fascism, it also means taking on the challenge
producing the tools and tactics necessary to rethink and create
the conditions for a new kind of subjectivity as the basis for
a new kind of democratic socialist politics. We need a comprehensive
politics that brings together various single interest movements
so that the threads that connect them become equally as important
as the particular forms of oppression that define their singularity.
In addition, we need intellectuals willing to combine intellectual
complexity with clarity and accessibility, embrace the high
stakes investment in persuasion, and cross disciplinary borders
in order to theorize and speak with what Rob Nixon calls the
“cunning of lightness” and a “methodological
promiscuity” that keeps language attuned to the pressing
the claims for justice.
Outside
of those intellectuals who write for CounterPunch, Truthout,
Truthdig, Rise Up Times, Salon, and a number of other critical
media outlets, there are too few intellectuals, artists, journalists
willing to challenge the rise of an American version of neoliberal
fascism. It is not enough to report in an alleged “balanced
fashion” on Trump’s endorsement of violence against
journalists, the massive levels of inequality produced under
neoliberalism, the enactment by the Trump administration of
savage policies of racial cleansing aimed at undocumented immigrants,
and the emergence of a police state armed terrifying new technologies
aimed at predictive policing. The real challenge is to tie these
elements of oppression together and to recognize the threads
of state violence, white supremacy, and fascist politics that
suggest the emergence of a distinctive new political order.
Shock
and outrage in the midst of a fascist politics is now undermined
by the mainstream press which is always on the hunt for higher
ratings and increasing their bottom line. Rather than talk about
fascism, they focus on the threat to liberal institutions. Rather
than talk about the mounting state violence and the increased
violence of neo-fascist thugs such as the Proud Boys, they talk
about violence coming from the left and right. Rather than raise
questions about the conditions and a society in which more and
more people seem to prefer authoritarian rule over democracy,
they talk about Trump’s eccentric behavior or keep tabs
on his endless lying. This is not unhelpful, but it misses the
nature of the true threat, its genesis, and the power of a corporate
elite who are now comfortable with the fascist politics that
Trump embodies.
An
iPsos poll found that “a surprising 26 percent of all
Americans, and 43 percent of Republicans, agree with the statement
that the president “should have the authority to close
news outlets engaged in bad behavior.” In addition, a
majority of Americans across the ideological spectrum —
72 percent — think “it should be easier to sue reporters
who knowingly publish false information.” Couple this
with the fact that Trump has recently stated privately to his
aids that he regrets reversing his policy of separating children
from their parents at the border and you have a mix of fascist
principles coupled with a dangerous demagogue who cannot bring
the country fast enough to the fascist abyss. While it is true
that the United States under Trump is not Hitler’s Germany,
Trump has tapped into America’s worst impulses and as
Jason Stanley and others remind us his ultra-nationalism, white
supremacist views, and racist diatribes coupled with his attack
on immigrants, the media, African-Americans, and Muslims are
indicative of a politics right out the fascist playbook. If
the public and media keep denying this reality, the endpoint
is too horrible to imagine. If we are to understand the current
resurgence of right-wing populist movements across the globe,
economic factors alone do not account for the current mobilizations
of fascist passions.
As
Pierre Bourdieu once put it, it is crucial to recognize that
“the most important forms of domination are not only economic
but also intellectual and pedagogical, and lie on the side of
belief and persuasion.” He goes on to state that left
intellectuals have underestimated the symbolic and pedagogical
dimensions of struggle and have not always forged appropriate
weapons to fight on this front.” In part, this means that
the left and others must make matters of culture and pedagogy
central to politics in order to address people’s needs
and struggles. And they should do so in a language that is both
rigorous and accessible. Matters of culture and consciousness
in the Gramscian sense are central to politics and only when
the left can address that issue will there be any hope for massive
collective resistance in the form of a broad-based movement.
Trump
has emboldened and legitimated the dire anti-democratic threats
that have been expanding under an economic system stripped of
any political, social, and ethical responsibility. This is a
form of neoliberal fascism that has redrawn and expanded the
parameters of the genocidal practices and hate filled politics
of the 1930s and 40s in Europe in which it was once thought
impossible to happen again. The threat has returned and is now
on our doorsteps, and it needs to be named, exposed, and overcome
by those who believe that the stakes are much too high to look
away and not engage in organized political and pedagogical struggles
against a fascist state and an omniscient fascist politics.
We live in an age when the horrors of the past are providing
the language and politics of illiberal democracies all over
the globe. This is a world where dystopian versions of a catastrophic,
misery producing neoliberalism merge with unapologetic death
dealing visions of a fascist politics. We live in an era that
testifies to the horrors of a past struggling to reinvent itself
in the present, and which should place more than a sense of
ethical and political responsibility on those of us bearing
witness to it. As my friend, Brad Evans, notes under such circumstances,
we live in a time “that asks us all to continually question
our own shameful compromises with power,” and to act with
others to overcome our differences in order to dismantle this
assault on human rights, human dignity, economic justice, equality,
and democracy itself.
