A deeply important article by Henry Giroux. — Molly
In the age of Trump, history neither informs the present nor
haunts it with repressed memories of the past. It simply disappears. Memory has
been hijacked. This is especially troubling when the "mobilizing passions"
of a fascist past now emerge in the unceasing stream of hate, bigotry, lies and
militarism that are endlessly circulated and reproduced at the highest levels
of government and in powerful conservative media, such as Fox News,
Breitbart News, conservative talk radio stations and alt-right social
media. Power, culture, politics, finance and everyday life now merge in
ways that are unprecedented and pose a threat to democracies all over the
world. This mix of old media and new digitally driven systems of production and
consumption are not merely systems, but ecologies that produce, shape and
sustain ideas, desires and modes of agency with unprecedented power and
influence. Informal educational apparatuses, particularly the
corporate-controlled media, appear increasingly to be on the side of tyranny.
In fact, it would be difficult to overly stress the growing pedagogical
importance of the old and new media and the power they now have on the
political imaginations of countless Americans. This is particularly true of
right-wing media empires, such as those owned by Rupert Murdoch, as well as
powerful corporate entities such as Clear Channel, which dominates the radio
airwaves with its ownership of over 1,250 stations. In the sphere of television
ownership and control, powerful corporate entities have emerged, such
as Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns the largest number of TV stations
in the United States. In addition, right-wing hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh
and Sean Hannity have an audience in the millions. Right-wing educational
apparatuses shape much of what Americans watch and listen to, and appear to influence
all of what Trump watches and hears. The impact of conservative media has had a
dangerous effect on American culture and politics, and has played the most
prominent role in channeling populist anger and electing Trump to the
presidency. We are now witnessing the effects of this media machine. The
first casualty of the Trump era is truth, the second is moral responsibility,
the third is any vestige of justice, and the fourth is a massive increase in
human misery and suffering for millions.
Instead of refusing to cooperate with evil, Americans
increasingly find themselves in a society in which those in commanding
positions of power and influence exhibit a tacit approval of the emerging
authoritarian strains and acute social problems undermining democratic
institutions and rules of law. As such, they remain silent and therefore,
complicit in the face of such assaults on American democracy. Ideological
extremism and a stark indifference to the lies and ruthless polices of the
Trump administration have turned the Republican Party into a party of
collaborators, not unlike the Vichy government that
collaborated with the Nazis in the 1940s. Both groups bought into the script of
ultra-nationalism, encouraged anti-Semitic mobs, embraced a militant
masculinity, demonized racial and ethnic others, supported an unchecked
militarism and fantasies of empire, and sanctioned state violence at home and
abroad.
This is not to propose that those who support Trump are all
Nazis in suits. On the contrary, it is meant to suggest a more updated danger
in which people with power have turned their backs on the cautionary
histories of the fascist and Nazi regimes, and in doing so, have willingly
embraced authoritarian messages and tropes. Rather than Nazis in suits, we have
a growing culture of social and historical amnesia that enables those who are
responsible for the misery, anger and pain that has accompanied the long reign
of casino capitalism to remain silent for their role and complicity in the
comeback of fascism in the United States. This normalization of fascism can be
seen in the way in which language that was once an object of critique in
liberal democracies loses its negative connotation and becomes the opposite in
the Trump administration. Politics, power and human suffering are now framed
outside of the realm of historical memory. What is forgotten is that history
teaches us something about the transformation and mobilization of language into
an instrument of war and violence. As Richard J. Evans observes in his The
Third Reich in Power:
"Words that in a normal, civilized society had a negative
connotation acquired the opposite sense under Nazism ... so that 'fanatical',
'brutal', 'ruthless', 'uncompromising', 'hard' all became words of praise
instead of disapproval... In the hands of the Nazi propaganda apparatus,
the German language became strident, aggressive and militaristic. Commonplace
matters were described in terms more suited to the battlefield. The language
itself began to be mobilized for war."
Fantasies of absolute control, racial cleansing, unchecked
militarism and class warfare are at the heart of much of the American
imagination. This is a dystopian imagination marked by hollow words, an
imagination pillaged of any substantive meaning, cleansed of compassion and
used to legitimate the notion that alternative worlds are impossible to
entertain. There is more at work here than shrinking political horizons. What
we are witnessing is a closing of the political and a full-scale attack on
moral outrage, thoughtful reasoning, collective resistance and radical
imagination. Trump has normalized the unthinkable, legitimated the inexcusable
and defended the indefensible.
Of course, Trump is only a symptom of the
economic, political and ideological rot at the heart of casino capitalism, with
its growing authoritarianism and social and political injustices that have been
festering in the United States with great intensity since the late 1970s. It
was at that point in US history when both political parties decided that
matters of community, the public good, the general welfare and democracy itself
were a threat to the fundamental beliefs of the financial elite and the
institutions driving casino capitalism. As Ronald Reagan made clear, government
was the problem. Consequently, it was framed as the enemy of freedom and purged
for assuming any responsibility for a range of basic social needs. Individual
responsibility took the place of the welfare state, compassion gave way to
self-interest, manufacturing was replaced by the toxic power of
financialization, and a rampaging inequality left the bottom half of the US
population without jobs, a future of meaningful work or a life of dignity.
Please continue this article here: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/43529-the-ghost-of-fascism-in-the-age-of-trump
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