From Democracy Now! transcript of this interview:
In his new book, scholar Henry Giroux
examines "America at War with Itself." From poisoned water in Flint
and other cities to the police deaths of African Americans to hatemongering on
the presidential campaign trail, Henry Giroux critiques what he believes is a
slide toward authoritarianism and other failings that led to the current
political climate and rise of Donald Trump. Giroux is the McMaster University
professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We end today’s show with a look at a new book that
argues America is at war with itself. From poisoned water in Flint and other
cities to the police deaths of African Americans, including Keith Lamont Scott,
Eric Garner and Sandra Bland, to hatemongering on the presidential campaign
trail, Henry Giroux critiques what he believes is a slide toward
authoritarianism and other failings that led to the current political climate.
AMY GOODMAN: Noted scholar Robin D.G. Kelley writes in the
book’s foreword, quote, "These are indeed dark times, but they are dark
not merely because we are living in an era of vast inequality, mass
incarceration, and crass materialism, or that we face an increasingly
precarious future. They are dark because most Americans are living under a
cloak of ignorance, a cultivated and imposed state of civic illiteracy that has
opened the gates for what Giroux correctly sees as an authoritarian turn in the
United States. These are dark times because the very fate of democracy is at
stake—a democracy fragile from its birth, always battered on the shoals of
racism, patriarchy, and class rule. The rise of Donald J. Trump is a sign of
the times," he writes.
Well, for more, we’re joined by the author
of America at War with Itself, Henry Giroux, MccMaster University
professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest. He joins in New York City.
We welcome you. It’s great to have you
with us.
HENRY GIROUX: Well, I’m honored.
AMY GOODMAN: How is America at war with itself?
HENRY GIROUX: It’s at war with itself because it’s basically
declared war not only on any sense of democratic idealism, but it’s declared
war on all the institutions that make democracy possible. And we see it with
the war on public schools. We see it with the war on education. We see it with
the war on the healthcare system. We see it, as you said earlier, with the war
on dissent, on the First Amendment. We see it in the war on women’s
reproductive rights.
But we especially see it with the war on
youth. I mean, it seems to me that you can measure any degree—any society’s
insistence on how it takes democracy seriously can, in fact, be measured by the
way it treats its children. And if we take that index as a measure of the
United States, it’s utterly failing. You have young people basically who—in
schools that are increasingly modeled after prisons. You have their behavior
being increasingly criminalized. And one of the most atrocious of all acts, you
have the rise of debtors’ prisons for children. Kids who basically are truant
from school are being fined, and if they can’t—their parents can’t pay the
fine, they’re being put in jail. You have kids whose every behavior is being
criminalized. I mean, what does it mean to be in a public school, and all of a
sudden you are engaged in a dress code violation, and the police come in, and
they handcuff you? They take you out, they put you in a police car, put you in
the criminal justice system, and all of a sudden you find yourself, as Tess was
saying earlier, marked for life. Entire families are being destroyed around
this.
So, but it seems to me the real question
here is: How do you understand these isolated incidents within a larger set of
categories that tell us exactly what’s happening? And what’s happening is the
social state is being destroyed, and the punishing state is taking its place.
So violence now becomes the only tool by which we can actually mediate social
problems that should be dealt with in very different ways.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, you devote an entire chapter to Donald Trump’s
America.
HENRY GIROUX: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you specifically talk about the—how the media
coverage of Trump has sort of divorced him from any past history of the
country, in terms of the development of right-wing demagogues and authoritarian
figures.
HENRY GIROUX: That’s an important question. I mean, you live in
a country marked by the culture of the immediate. You live in a country that’s
marked by celebrity culture, you know, that basically infantilizes people,
paralyzes them, eliminates all notions of civic literacy, turns the school into
bastions of ignorance. They completely kill the radical imagination in any
fundamental way.
And I think that what often happens with
Trump is that you see something utterly symptomatic of the decline of a formative
culture that makes democracy possible. Juan, you have to have informed citizens
to have a democracy. You don’t have an informed citizenry. You don’t have
people who can think. Remember what Hannah Arendt said when she was talking
about fascism and totalitarianism. She said thoughtlessness is the essence of
totalitarianism. So all of a sudden emotion becomes more important than reason.
Ignorance becomes more important than justice. Injustice is looked over as
simply something that happens on television. The spectacle of violence takes
over everything.
I mean, so it seems to me that we make a
terrible mistake in talking about Trump as some kind of essence of evil. Trump
is symptomatic of something much deeper in the culture, whether we’re talking
about the militarization of everyday life, whether we’re talking about the
criminalization of social problems, or whether we’re talking about the way in
which money has absolutely corrupted politics. This is a country that is
sliding into authoritarianism. I mean, it is not a—you cannot call this a
democracy anymore. And we make a terrible mistake when we equate capitalism
with democracy.
To continue the transcript or to watch the
full interview, please go here: https://www.democracynow.org/2016/10/14/is_trumps_rise_a_result_of
No comments:
Post a Comment