Friday, November 4, 2022

Henry Giroux: On the Rise of Celebrity Fascism

 Chilling and spot on.

(Shay Horse/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
ON THE RISE OF CELEBRITY FASCISM--
ANOTHER REGISTER IN THE NEW BARBARISM
 

Kanye West and Kyrie Irving have become the celebrity mouth pieces for anti-Semitism, which should be understood as another toxic element of the rhetoric of historical amnesia, hate, bigotry, and politics of disposability now fueling the neo fascism embraced by most of the Republican Party. 

What must not be forgotten is that they are not rogue deviants spewing racialized hatred, they are symptoms of a much wider culture of fascism that condones and normalizes their hatred and encouragement of violence. They are the new face of a fascist politics haunting America. 

Fascist rhetoric is no longer underground in the US, it has been awakened and is embraced without apology with the emergence of a new form of barbarity. West and Irving share the collapse of conscience reinforced by a form of historical amnesia that forgets that their language echoes a history when 6 million Jews died in the camps, more recently the same rhetoric contributed to the murder of Jews at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA. 

This rhetoric exceeds its target and is now part of a broader language of disposability aimed at migrants, people of color, refugees, and others. What should be condemned here is not only their actions but a society that has allowed this fascism to once again become normalized.

 

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