We, The People, call Henry Giroux to offer testimony on the Far Right threat of fascism. Testimony is excerpts from Giroux’s ”American Nightmare Facing the Challenge of Fascism,” ”Staring Into The Authoritarian Abyss”:
Giroux: ”..America has descended..into a drama styled after theater of the absurd. Unbridled anti-intellectualism, Deception, and “vindictive chaos” have created conditions for repeating elements of a morally reprehensible past in the guise of “Making America Great Again.” Advancing an alarmist agenda bolstered by “alternative facts,” the Trump presidency has unleashed a type of anti-politics that unburdens people of any responsibility to challenge – let alone change – the fundamental precepts of a society torn asunder by open bigotry, blatant misogyny, massive inequality, an violence…………….. America now mimics a failing state as the credibility of its democratic institutions and the trustworthiness of its leadership openly depreciate on the global stage.”……
Giroux: ”Trump’s ascendency has revealed the degree to which acute political illiteracy, corruption, and contempt for reason have become defining features of present-day U.S. culture. His rise has involved using threats of violence and intimidation to shock and incite everyday people, and is preceded by a serious decline of American public life. Taken with relentless lying and targeted attacks on dissent, the result is a political climate that recalls those of past pre-fascit societies…..
”Trumpism is symptomatic of the decline of the United States into a new, commercially integrated, American-style fascism.
”The danger signs are not just in the United states…Unemployment, wage stagnation, vision-less futures, a growing sense of precarity and insecurity for working and lower middle classes, and an increasing sense of atomization and alienation – all of it fueled by austerity measures, a growing worldwide culture of fear, and a permanent war culture – are undermining not only the foundations of democracy, b ut a belief in the value of democracy itself.”…
”Not only have many millennials lost their faith in democracy, but many are less willing to oppose military coups and no longer view civil rights as absolutely essential; more than a quarter dismiss the importance of free elections to democracy.”
Giroux: “The world is now witnessing how the conditions that have been undermining U.S. democracy over the last forty years have brought us to a place where resurgent forms of nativism, racism, and misogyny, have consolidated and aligned as a social base for an authoritarian, corporate, political-economic order.”…
”Trump is ,ore than an opportunistic clown who leveraged his reality-show celebrity for political gain; he has been a vehicle for right-wing populism by rousing uneducated white fear and committing it to a pro-corporate economic agenda.”…
”As is evident in the rise of numerous modes of fascism since the 1920s, authoritarianism takes many forms, and aligns itself with the worst dimensions of the historical contexts in which it gains political and ideological currency. Trump is the endpoint of a social order that values self-interest over compassion, profit over basic human needs, and corruption over justice.”
Giroux: ”I think the artist Sable Elyse Smith is right in arguing that ignorance is more than the absence of knowledge or the refusal to know, it is also a form of violence that is woven into the fabric of everyday life by powerful disimagination machines, and its ultimate goal is to enable us to not only consume pain and to propagate it, but also to relish in it as a form of entertainment and emotional uplift. This is a culture of social abandonment and terminal exclusion. Justice in this discourse is disposable, along with the institutions that make it possible.”
Giroux: ”Trump…is the overt and unapologetic symbol of a feral capitalism that has been decades in the making. He is the theatrical postmodern self-absorbed Frankenstein monster that embodies and makes clear a history of savagery, greed, and predatory cruelty that has reached its endpoint – a poisonous form of American authoritarianism.”…
”Authoritarians live in fear of criticism, dissent, community, solidarity, and the social imagination. Brad Evans captures it well in his comment on the importance of language and books: ’If you don’t provide people with the intellectual tools to empower critically minded subjects, you end up with incarcerated minds. A world without books is a world foreclosed. Every great tyranny begins by declaring a war upon the imagination and the appropriation or imprisonment of those deemed to be its most creative.”
”And it is precisely in the recognition and struggle against the imagination, the war on truth, and the attack on democratic public spheres that the power and horror of authoritarian rule becomes visible and therefore vulnerable.”
Giroux: ”Many Americans seem to display a growing fondness for misinformation, an attitude that reinforces the disintegration of the civic culture and even the communicative function of language…falsehood and deception no longer appear marginal to political debate; they now seem to shape much of what is spoken in the public sphere..”
Giroux: ”Trumpism, as a form of nascent fascism, is being built around aggression, hatred, and violence, while coddling white supremacy as an acceptable form of historical national heritage.”
Giroux: ”Leaders of..mass totalitarian movements do not need to believe in the truth of their lies and ideological cliches. The point of their fabrications is not to establish facts, but to create a coherent fictional reality. What a movement demands of its leaders is the articulation of a consistent narrative combined with the ability to abolish the capacity for distinguishing between truth and falsehood, between realty and fiction.”
Giroux: ”Every day that Donald Trump remains employed as a public servant5 is a day he takes us closer to fascism.”
Giroux: ”Trump’s reign will continue to usher in an extreme version of pro-corporate capitalism in which all human activities, practices, and institutions will be subject to market principles and commercialization.”…
Giroux: ”American are witnessing the emergence of new forms of authoritarianism and fascism that are challenging the very ability for society to function as a civilian democracy.”
Giroux: ”..the more serious issue ignored by mainstream media should be a focus on what kind of political and economic system produces demagogues like Trump, the people who support him, and a gangster capitalism with its organized culture of violence.”
Giroux: ”..what I argue..is that resisting the whitewashing of history is a core issue. History unexpurgated provides us with a vital resource that helps inform the ethical ground for resistance, an antidote to Trump’s politics of disinformation, diversion, division, and fragmentation..history reminds us that in the face of emerging forms of authoritarianism, solidarity is essential. People need to network and organize..”
Giroux: ”Trumpism offers fascist purification rituals motivated by social intolerance and the attempt to re-create a system of white privilege that extends from and perpetuates founding narratives of Anglo settler-colonialism.”
Giroux: ”Trumpism openly legitimizes armed white supremacy and social intolerance. Those considered flawed and disposable due to race, residency status, political affiliation, gender, sexual preference, and religious practice are subjected to increased suspicion, surveillance, exclusion, and increased vulnerability to hate crimes.”
Giroux: ”As Hannah Arendt once predicted, totalitarianism’s curse is upon us once again, and it has emerged in forms unique to the tyranny of the times in which we live. Trump has brought the terrors of the past into full view..In response, we must create a new language for politics, resistance, and hope. This must be a language that exposes and counters the drift toward fascism that Trumpism clearly accelerates.”
With Justice For All 