wanted
THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL
by
HENRY A. GIROUX
__________________________________________
Henry
A. Giroux currently holds the Global TV Network Chair
Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural
Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship
at Ryerson University. He is the author of more than 50 books
including The Educational Deficit and the War on Youth
and Zombie
Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism.
Many of his essays, including The Spectacle of Illiteracy, appear
on his website at www.henryagiroux.com.
His interview with Bill
Moyers is must viewing. He was recently named one of
the century's 50 most significant contributors to the debate
on education.
Print
this page
YOUR
COMMENTSThe Marxist cultural critic Walter Benjamin
once argued that every rise of fascism bears witness to a failed
revolution. Benjamin was not only addressing elements of a failed
political revolution, but also the failure of language, values,
courage, vision and a critical consciousness. In the midst of
a moment when an older social order is crumbling and a new one
is struggling to define itself, there is always a moment of
confusion and danger. We have arrived at such a moment in which
two worlds are colliding.
First,
there is the harsh and crumbling world of neoliberal globalization
and its mobilizing passions that fuel a US-style fascism. Second,
there is a counter movement with its search for a new politics
that can rethink, reclaim and invent a new understanding of
democratic socialism, untainted by capitalism. In the midst
of this struggle, a new political movement and social order
will be born, though one without guarantees. Something sinister
and horrifying is happening to liberal democracies all over
the globe. The global architecture of democracy is giving way
to authoritarian tyrannies. As alarming as the signs may be,
we cannot look away and allow the terrors of the unforeseen
to be given free rein. We cannot allow the power of dreams to
turn into nightmares.
It
is hard to imagine a more urgent moment for developing a language
of critique and possibility that would serve to awaken our critical
and imaginative senses and help free us from the tyrannical
nightmare that has descended upon the United States under the
rule of Donald Trump. In an age of social isolation, information
overflow, a culture of immediacy, consumer glut and spectacularized
violence, reading critical books and other representational
texts coupled with thinking analytically remain necessary if
we are to take seriously the notion that a democracy cannot
exist or be defended without informed and engaged citizens.
This is especially true at a time when denial has become a national
pastime matched only by the increasing normalization of one
of the most alarming administrations ever to take hold of the
US presidency.
Against
a numbing indifference, despair or withdrawal into the private
orbits of the isolated self, there is a need to create those
formative cultures that are humanizing, foster the capacity
to hear others, sustain complex thoughts and engage social problems.
We have no other choice if we are to resist the increasing destabilization
of democratic institutions, the assault on reason, the collapse
of the distinction between fact and fiction, and the taste for
brutality that now spreads across the US like a plague. Reading
critically means not only learning how to read the world, but
also learning how to think analytically while refusing to succumb
to the unthinkable. Reading is not only valuable as a form of
translation, but also, as George Steiner observes, follows language
as “the main instrument of [people’s] refusal to
accept the world as it is.”
The
pedagogical lesson here is that fascism begins with hateful
words, the demonization of others considered disposable, and
moves to an attack on ideas, the burning of books, the disappearance
of intellectuals, and the emergence of the carceral state and
the horrors of detention jails and camps. As Jon Nixon suggests,
reading as a form of critical “education provides us with
a protected space within which to think against the grain of
received opinion: a space to question and challenge, to imagine
the world from different standpoints and perspectives, to reflect
upon ourselves in relation to others and, in so doing, to understand
what it means to ‘assume responsibility’.”
Reading against the grain offers opportunities for people to
break out of their own experiences at a time when neoliberal
ideology not only constrains our imagination, but also imprisons
them in almost impenetrable orbits of self-interest and hyper-individualism.
Trump’s
presidency may only be symptomatic of the long decline of liberal
democracy in the United States, but its presence signifies one
of the gravest challenges, if not dangers, the country has faced
in over a century. A formative culture of lies, ignorance, corruption
and violence is now fuelled by a range of orthodoxies shaping
US life, including social conservatism, market fundamentalism,
apocalyptic nationalism, religious extremism and white nationalism
— all of which occupy the centers of power at the highest
levels of government. Historical memory and moral witnessing
have given way to a bankrupt nostalgia that celebrates the most
regressive moments in US history.
Fantasies
of absolute control, racial cleansing, unchecked militarism
and class warfare are at the heart of a US social order that
has turned lethal. This is a dystopian social order 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. What we are
witnessing is an abandonment of democratic institutions and
values and a full-scale attack on dissent, thoughtful reasoning
and the radical imagination. Trump has degraded the office of
the president and has elevated the ethos of political corruption,
hypermasculinity and lying to a level that leaves many people
numb and exhausted. He has normalized the unthinkable, legitimated
the inexcusable and defended the indefensible. Under such circumstances,
the United States is moving into the dark shadows of a present
that bears a horrifying resemblance to an earlier period of
fascism with its language and/or racial purification, hatred
of dissent, systemic violence, intolerance and its “glorification
of aggressive and violent solutions to complex social problems.”
Historical
memory and moral witnessing have been usurped by a bankrupt
nostalgia that celebrates the most regressive moments in US
history. The history of fascism offers an early warning system
and teaches us that language which operates in the service of
violence, desperation and the troubled landscapes of hatred
carries the potential for resurrecting the darkest moments of
history. It erodes our humanity, and makes many people numb
and silent in the face of ideologies and practices that mimic
and legitimate hideous and atrocious acts. This is a language
that eliminates the space of plurality, glorifies walls and
borders, hates differences that do not mimic a white public
sphere, and makes vulnerable populations — even young
children — superfluous as human beings. Trump’s
language, like that which characterized older fascist regimes,
mutilates contemporary politics, disdains empathy and serious
moral and political criticism, and makes it more difficult to
criticize dominant relations of power. His toxic language also
fuels the rhetoric of war, a super-charged masculinity, anti-intellectualism
and a resurgent white supremacy. But it’s not his alone.
It is the language of a nascent fascism that has been brewing
in the United States for some time. It is a language that is
comfortable viewing the world as a combat zone, a world that
exists to be plundered, one that views those deemed different
because of their race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation
as a threat to be feared, if not eliminated.
When
Trump uses the toxic rhetoric of “animals,” “infest”
and “vermin,” he is doing more than using ugly epithets;
he is also materializing such discourse into policies that rip
children from their mothers’ arms, puts young children
in cages, and forces children as young as one to appear before
immigration judges.
And
while there is no perfect mirror, it has become all the more
difficult for many people to recognize how the “crystalized
elements” of totalitarianism have emerged in new forms
in the shape of a US-style fascism. In part, this may be because
history is no longer treated seriously, especially at a time
when the need for instant pleasure and the language of tweets
overrides the necessary discipline and potential pleasure that
comes with the slowing down of time and the hard work of imaginative
contemplation. Moreover, as Leon Wieseltier observes, we live
in an era in which “words cannot wait for thoughts [and]
patience is a … liability.” In an age of instant
gratification, history has become a burden to be treated like
a discarded relic that no longer deserves respect. The past
is now either too unpleasant to contemplate or is delegated
to the abyss of willful ignorance and consigned to the memory
hole. However frightening and seemingly impossible in a liberal
democracy, neither history nor the ghost of fascism can be dismissed
because Trump has not created concentration camps or engineered
plans for genocidal acts, though he has caged children and denied
immunity to immigrants who, if forced to return to their countries,
face an almost certain death. Fascism is hardly a relic of the
past or a fixed political and ideological system.
In
an age when memory is under attack, critical reading becomes
both a source of hope and a tool of resistance.
Renowned
historian of modern Germany Richard Evans observes that the
Trump administration may not replicate all the features of Germany
and Italy in the 1930s, but the legacy of fascism is important
because it echoes a dangerous “warning from history”
that cannot be written off. Fascism is not static and the protean
elements of fascism always run the risk of crystallizing into
new forms. The ghosts of fascism should terrify us, but most
importantly, the horrors of the past should educate us and imbue
us with a spirit of civic justice and collective courage in
the fight for a substantive and inclusive democracy. Historical
consciousness is a crucial tool for unravelling the layers of
meaning, suffering, search for community, the overcoming of
despair and the momentum of dramatic change, however unpleasant
this may be at times. No act of the past can be deemed too horrible
or hideous to contemplate if we are going to enlarge the scope
of our imaginations and the reach of social justice, both of
which might prevent us from looking away, indifferent to the
suffering around us. This suggests the need for rethinking the
importance of historical memory, civic literacy and the importance
of reading as a critical act central to an informed and critical
sense of agency. Rather than dismiss the notion that the organizing
principles and fluctuating elements of fascism are still with
us, a more appropriate response to Trump’s rise to power
is to raise questions about what elements of his government
signal the emergence of a fascism suited to a contemporary and
distinctively US political, economic and cultural landscape.
In
an age when memory is under attack, critical reading becomes
both a source of hope and a tool of resistance. Reading critically
is fundamental to connecting the past to the present and to
viewing the present as a window into those horrors of the past
that must never be repeated. The US is sinking into the abyss
of fascism. The signs are all around us, and we cannot afford
to ignore them. A critical reading of history provides us with
a vital resource that helps inform the ethical ground for resistance
— an antidote to Trump’s politics of disinformation,
division, diversion and fragmentation. Memory as a form of critical
consciousness is crucial in developing a form of historical
and social responsibility to offset a willful ignorance that
reinforces the American nightmare. In the face of this nightmare,
thinking and judging must be connected to our actions.
Reading
the world critically is the precondition for intervening in
the world.
We
live at a time when the corruption of discourse has become a
defining feature of politics, reinforced largely by an administration
and a conservative media apparatus that does not simply lie,
but also works hard to eliminate the distinction between fantasy
and fact. As Hannah Arendt has argued, at issue here is the
creation of modes of agency that are complicit with fascist
modes of governance. She writes in The Origins of Totalitarianism:
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced
Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction
between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and
the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards
of thought) no longer exists.”
The
terror of the unforeseen becomes ominous when history is used
to hide rather than illuminate the past, when it becomes difficult
to translate private issues into larger systemic considerations,
and people willingly allow themselves to be both seduced and
trapped into spectacles of violence, cruelty and authoritarian
impulses. Reading the world critically is the precondition for
intervening in the world. That is why critical reading and reading
critically is so dangerous to Trump, his acolytes and those
who hate democracy. Democracy can only survive with a public
attentive to the power of language, reading and books and texts
that matter. It can only survive when we refuse to engage the
power to think otherwise in order to act otherwise.
The
crisis of neoliberalism — with its financial ruin for
millions, its elimination of the welfare state, its deregulation
of corporate power, its unchecked racism and its militarization
of society — has to be matched by a crisis of ideas, one
that embraces historical memory, rejects the normalization of
fascist principles and opens a space for imagining that alternative
worlds can be brought into being. While the long-term corrosion
of politics and the emerging fascism in the US will not end
by simply learning how to read critically, the spaces opened
by reading critically creates a bulwark against cynicism and
fosters a notion of hope that can be translated into forms of
collective resistance. That is why reading and thinking critically
is so dangerous and is so necessary. Thinking critically and
acting courageously in dark times is not an option, but a necessity.
