Wow!
This article is excellent! The work of Henry Giroux is so powerful and
dangerous to the status quo and vital to our individual and collective
awakening because Henry is able to pierce beyond any surface perceptions
and instead illuminate again and again the deepest roots and most
expansive view of the toxicity in our midst.
It
also comes to me to acknowledge that it takes courage to go there - to
see more clearly our indoctrination into limiting and harmful belief
systems and
stories that are obstacles to the healing of ourselves and this
beautiful world we share. Yet, nothing could be more important.
Solutions are only possible to the extent that we understand and are
truly conscious of the problem.
Courage
is contagious, which is why I am drawn to those such as Henry Giroux.
May we each work with our resistance to knowing, with our fears, with
our judgments and all that obstructs us from our greater capacity to
conscious and to love. May we all increasingly be pulled into the
wisdom, compassion, and fierce caring that is, I believe, the essence of
our true nature. - Molly |
| Photo by Hayden Schiff |
What does the culture of cruelty look like under a neo-fascist
regime?
First, language is emptied of any sense of ethics and
compassion.
Second, a survival of the fittest discourse provides a breeding
ground for racial and social sorting.
Third, references to justice are viewed as treasonous or, as at
the present moment, labelled dismissively as “fake news.”
Fourth, the discourse of disposability extends to an increasing
number of groups.
Fifth, ignorance becomes militarized, enforced not through an
appeal to reason but through the use of the language of humiliation and eventually
through the machinery of force.
Sixth, any form of dependency is viewed as a form of weakness,
and becomes a referent and eventually a basis for social cleansing. That is,
any form of solidarity not based on market-driven values is subject to
derision and potential punishment.
Seventh, the language of borders and walls replaces the
discourse of bridges and compassion.
Eighth, violence becomes the most important method for addressing social problems and mediating all relationships,
hence, the increasing criminalization of a wide range of behaviours in the
United States.
Ninth, the word democracy disappears from officially mandated state language.
Tenth, the critical media is gradually defamed and eventually outlawed.
Eleventh, all forms of critical education present in theory, method, and institutionally are destroyed.
Twelfth,
shared fears replace shared responsibilities and everyone is reduced to
the status of a potential terrorist, watched constantly and humiliated
through body searches at border crossings.
Thirteenth, all vestiges of the welfare state disappear and millions are subject to fending for themselves.
Fourteenth,
massive inequalities in power, wealth, and income will generate a host
of Reality TV shows celebrating the financial elite.
Underlying this project is one of the most powerfully oppressive
ideologies of neoliberal neo-fascism. That is, the only unit of agency and
analysis that matters is the isolated individual. Shared trust and visions of
economic equality and political justice give way to individual terrors and
self-blame reinforced by the neoliberal notion that people are solely
responsible for their political, economic, and social misfortunes.
Consequently, a hardening of the culture is buttressed by the force of state
sanctioned cultural apparatuses that enshrine privatization in the discourse of
self-reliance, unchecked self-interest, untrammeled individualism, and deep
distrust of anything remotely called the common good. Freedom of choice becomes
code for defining responsibility solely as an individual task, reinforced by a
shameful appeal to character.
Liberal critics argue that choice absent the notion of
constraints feeds Ayn Rand’s culture of rabid individualism and unchecked
greed. What they miss in this neo-fascist moment is that the systemic evil,
cruelty, and moral irresponsibility at the heart of neoliberalism makes Ayn
Rand’s lunacy look tame. Rand’s world has been surpassed by a ruling class of
financial elites that embody not the old style greed of Gordon Gekko in the
film Wall Street, but the psychopathic personality of
Patrick Bateman in American
Psycho.
The notion that saving money by reducing the taxes of the rich
justifies eliminating health care for 24 million people is just one example of
how this culture of cruelty and hardening of the culture will play out.
Dark Times are truly upon us. There will be an acceleration of
acts of violence under the Trump administration and the conditions for
eliminating this new stage of state violence will mean not only understanding
the roots of neo-fascism in the United States, but also eliminating the
economic, political, and cultural forces that produced it.
There is more at work here than getting rid of Trump, there is a
need to eliminate a system in which democracy is equated with capitalism, a
system driven almost exclusively by financial interests, and beholden to two
political parties that are hard wired into neoliberal savagery.
Please go here for the original article: http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/17/91227/
For the work of Henry Giroux, please go here:
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