Henry Giroux: The Invisible Plague

Henry Giroux has long been among the great truth-tellers and public intellectuals of our time. He is a professor and a prolific author, and I have read several of his excellent books. It is hard for me to express the depths of my gratitude, respect, and appreciation for Henry Giroux — and to all those who are courageous enough to see and know and consistently make accessible to us the truth of larger pictures. Without this essential understanding, we become vulnerable to being unwitting participants in the epidemic of disempowerment, disinformation, polarization, and propaganda. Some might say that it is too painful to go there and to take a good deep look at what's happening within our world and ourselves. I say that it is more painful to remain in the dark and, therefore, be unknowingly complicit with the forces which have brought us Trump and which have long been destroying our nation and the planet. The truth has the potential to set us all free. May we seek it. — Molly

The current coronoavirus pandemic is more than a medical crisis. It is also a political crisis deeply rooted in years of neglect by neoliberal governments that denied the importance of public health and the public good while defunding the institutions and materials that allowed them to work. 

At the same time, this crisis cannot be separated from the crisis of social atomization, massive inequality in wealth, income, and power. It cannot be separated from a crisis of democratic values, a crisis of education, the climate crisis, and a crisis of politics and civic courage. Nor can it be separated from the spectacle of fear mongering, racism, and bigotry that has dominated the national zeitgeist as a means of promoting shared fears rather than shared responsibilities. 

In a society in which individual responsibility is viewed as the only way to address social problems, there is no need to address broader systemic issues, hold power accountable, or embrace matters of collective responsibility. Under such circumstances, the social sphere and its interconnections becomes an object of either financial exploitation or utter disdain, or both. 

Capitalism is a death dealing machine and is the ultimate plague that incessantly defines the flight from any vestige of social, ethical, and political responsibility. Of course, the wider plague in which the coronavirus pandemic operates, and until recently, the invisible plague, is neoliberal fascism.

 —Henry Giroux

https://www.henryagiroux.com/