You
should not honour men more than truth.
Plato
Neoliberalism
has always been more than an economic project; it is
a political and educational weapon designed to erode
social solidarity and dismantle the foundations of democracy.
It does not merely defund public institutions like healthcare,
education, and welfare—it delegitimizes them,
recasting them as burdens rather than essential public
goods. As a pedagogical and ideological assault, neoliberalism
has championed unfettered greed, unchecked self-interest,
and a notion of government devoid of any sense of social
responsibility. It has conditioned people to see mutual
care as weakness and competition as the only natural
order of society. When individuals are forced into relentless
competition for survival, they lose any sense of shared
responsibility, making them more susceptible to the
cruelty that defines contemporary politics. Neoliberalism
is a precursor to fascism, especially at a time when
it can no longer defend itself as a force for improving
the quality of life. In fact, its promotion of extreme
inequality, the concentration of power in few hands,
and its view of democracy as a poisonous vehicle for
equality and inclusion creates the conditions for both
extreme violence and cruelty.
To understand
fascist politics, we must reckon with its most visceral
expression—a culture of cruelty. This cruelty
is not an abstraction; it is inscribed on bodies and
minds, destroying lives with calculated precision. As
Brad Evansreminds us, violence must never be studied
in an “objective and unimpassioned way,”
for it demands a reckoning that is both ethical and
political. A culture of cruelty exposes not only how
systemic injustice is endured but also how the machinery
of power turns the so-called American Dream into a dystopian
ordeal, where millions struggle simply to survive.
At its
core, this culture strips working people, the poor,
Black and Brown communities, and the marginalized of
dignity, hope, and the right to a decent life. Though
cruelty has long been woven into the fabric of American
history, Trump’s second administration will wield
it as an instrument of governance—hollowing out
social bonds, eroding moral compassion, and suffocating
collective resistance. In its place, it will stage an
endless array of brutal spectacles, a politics of suffering
in which fear and violence are both the means and the
message.
Trumpism
is not an aberration but the logical extension of a
neoliberal system that thrives on hierarchy, disposability,
and fear. The destruction of public goods accelerates
the emergence of what Etienne Balibar calls “the
transition from the social state to the penal state”—where
repression replaces care, and policing takes the place
of welfare. The gutting of federal aid programs, the
assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives,
and the defunding of institutions that support the most
vulnerable are not incidental; they are central to the
neoliberal strategy of dispossession. In the age of
Trump, cruelty becomes an organizing principle of violence
as is evident in homegrown notions of fascism that define
citizenship in racist inclusive terms for white Christians
only, sanctions genocide in Gaza, promotes mass poverty,
and supports the ecological destruction of the planet.
What we are witnessing as Pankaj Mishra notes is the
emergence of a culture convulsed in hatred and rancor
matched by an ongoing process of dehumanization and
a “retreat into grandiose fantasies of omnipotence.”
Trump’s presence in American politics appears
as the current endpoint in which hate, bigotry, and
sanctioned ruthlessness “have reached a new peak
of ferocity.”
Trump’s
upcoming budget will epitomize this cruelty. There is
no question it will slash funding for “health
care via the Medicaid program and reduce access to food
assistance via the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program (SNAP).” Moreover, there will be further
cuts to Medicaid, low-income housing, job training,
and safety net programs for children to fund $4.5 million
tax breaks for billionaires and the largest military
buildup since the 1980s. As Robert Reich has pointed
out, this is not a question of fiscal responsibility
but of priorities: the poor and working class are sacrificed
on the altar of militarism and corporate welfare. The
ideology of hardness, as Adam Serwer notes, runs through
American culture like an electric current, ensuring
that suffering is not just tolerated but celebrated.
Under the grip of gangster capitalism, especially as
Trump’s second administration unfolds, the essence
of politics is not merely diminished but obliterated,
erasing the fundamental possibility of human community
and the emancipatory power of the social, public goods,
and the global commons.
TRUMPISM
AND THE POLITICIZATION OF CRUELTY
Trumpism
is not simply a reaction to neoliberal decay; it is
the explicit performance of cruelty as an ideological
principle. Unlike past presidents who, however flawed,
at least feigned a commitment to democratic ideals,
Trump embraces a politics of humiliation and vengeance.
In a series of actions emblematic of authoritarian retribution,
Trump has systematically targeted individuals he perceives
as adversaries, employing state mechanisms to exact
his personal vengeance. Notably, he revoked the security
clearances of former President Joe Biden, Letitia James,
the New York attorney general, and Alvin L Bragg, the
Manhattan district attorney, both of whom prosecuted
him. Further intensifying this campaign of fear, terror,
and intimidation, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, under
Trump’s directive, stripped retired General Mark
Milley and Anthony Fauci, among others, of their security
detail and clearance, actions that not only humiliate
but also endanger those who have previously challenged
or criticized the administration. There is no appeal
to our better moral and democratic ideals here. Such
measures reflect a governance style deeply rooted in
vindictiveness, leveraging the apparatus of the state
to intimidate and punish, thereby eroding democratic
norms and fostering a climate of fear. This is the ideology
of fascist barbarism, with its knee-jerk contempt for
“all that is reflective, critical, and pluralistic.”
The death
of moral authority in politics breeds a climate of cruelty
in which the unimaginable is normalized. For instance,
the alleged helping hand of the U.S. has now been turned
into a brutal fist, accompanied by the sneers of billionaire
techno zombies, such as Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk,
and Jeff Bezos, who endorse an anthology of proto-Nazi
sentiments. How else to explain Trump’s dismantling
of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID),
leading to the suspension of essential services, including
HIV treatment in Uganda and cholera prevention in Bangladesh,
exacerbating global health crises? How else to explain
Trump pushing for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians
in Gaza in order to build beachfront property along
with his intensified efforts to deport millions of undocumented
immigrants, planning mass deportations on a scale unprecedented
in modern American history.
Furthermore,
the administration has aggressively targeted sanctuary
cities—jurisdictions that limit cooperation with
federal immigration enforcement—by threatening
to withhold federal funding and prosecute local officials
who uphold sanctuary policies. These measures not only
undermine public safety and erode trust between immigrant
communities and law enforcement, but they make clear
a governance style deeply rooted in vindictiveness,
leveraging the apparatus of the state to intimidate
and punish, thereby eroding democratic norms and fostering
a climate of fear.
For Trump,
governance has never been about serving the public but
about wielding power as a cudgel against the weak, His
rallies have always embodied a theater of cruelty and
spectacle that encouraged his supporters to find joy
in the suffering of others. His celebration of violence
as a legitimate tool of political power is thoroughly
documented. Whether mocking a disabled reporter, humiliating
women, referring to undocumented immigrants as vermin,
or encouraging police brutality, Trump has a long history
of cultivating cruelty not as an unfortunate byproduct
but as the very glue that held his movement together.
In this worldview, empathy is weakness, and domination
is strength.
Trump has
fully embraced the logic of state-sponsored violence
and weaponized governance, ensuring that social abandonment
and the politics of disposability and extermination
is not just a byproduct of neoliberal policy but a core
feature of state ideology. This orchestrated form of
domestic terrorism targets marginalized communities
and those courageous enough to hold power accountable,
waging an unrelenting war against advocates of justice,
equality, and freedom. America is at war with itself.
THE WEAPONIZATION
OF RESENTMENT
The devastation
wrought by neoliberal fascism creates widespread precarity,
forcing people into conditions of perpetual insecurity.
When social safety nets are dismantled and economic
mobility is stalled, individuals become more desperate
for stability, making them prime targets for right-wing
demagogues who offer scapegoats rather than solutions.
Trumpism exploits this desperation by redirecting economic
anxiety toward manufactured enemies—immigrants,
welfare recipients, transgender individuals, Black and
Brown people, and marginalized communities—rather
than toward the corporate and political elites responsible
for social decline.
Central
to the weaponization of resentment is the takeover of
those old and new cultural apparatuses that shape mass
consciousness, individual and collective agency, and
social values. Citizens are increasingly constructed
through a mass produced language of contempt for the
vulnerable, poor, and others considered unworthy. A
constant torrent of hate and bigotry now spreads with
tsunami force through podcasts, corporate controlled
media, and right wing platforms, all of which legitimate
an ideology of hardness, cruelty, and lies, sapping
the strength of social relations and individual character,
moral compassion and collective action. As I have said
elsewhere, “Algorithmic authoritarianism and neoliberalism’s
‘disimagination machines’ have gutted the
public sphere, eroding critical thought with conformity
and turning truth into the enemy of politics and everyday
life. Historical consciousness is now deemed as dangerous,
and dissent is branded as treason.” Matters of
life, death, and politics now converge in a MAGA party
shaped by asocial and ocular order marked by a militaristic
and misogynistic notion of masculinity, the celebration
of profit over human needs, and an addiction to violence.
Shared values and truths have given way to political
corruption and the allure of escape from moral responsibility.
Trump and
his corporate sycophants are erecting a vast cultural
machinery designed to mold individuals into subjects
fit for authoritarian rule. This is a subject governed
by fear, stripped of agency, and molded into the shape
of blind devotion—a body surrendered to the iron
grip of the strongman; a mind seduced by the narcotic
pull of certainty.
Ensnared
in a culture of ignorance, they drift in the fog of
anti-intellectualism, where thinking is neither required
nor desired. Difference becomes anathema—the Other—an
enemy, a poison to be eliminated. They are prisoners
of language, trapped within what Zadie Smith calls auto
imprisonment, where words do not liberate but constrict,
where thought itself is reduced to the blinding poison
of manufactured ignorance and consent. Their world flattens
into crude binaries—good and evil, us and them,
purity and contamination. Complexity is the first casualty,
sacrificed on the altar of simplicity, where nuance
is a threat and history is rewritten to serve power.
This is not merely a political issue; it is existential.
It is the slow, methodical erasure of the ability to
question, to dissent, to see beyond the walls built
around them. It is fascism’s most insidious triumph:
not just the crushing of resistance, but the engineering
of subjects who no longer know they should resist at
all.
Trump’s
“rancid and irredeemable character” now
washes over America in pandemic-like fashion, weakening
the body politic and degrading the substance of language
itself. His ruthless attack on transgender athletes,
his claim that the collision of an Army helicopter with
a commercial airliner was the result of “the Federal
Aviation Authority . . . hiring disabled people as air
traffic controllers—saying they suffered from
‘intellectual disability, psychiatric disability,
and dwarfism” and his false claim that government
agencies were funding “transgender comic books”
and “sex changes” in foreign countries do
more than legitimate toxic policy changes. What is in
fact at work here is an ideological crusade designed
to reinforce white supremacist and patriarchal hierarchies.
Balibar describes this as the “preventive counterrevolution”—a
strategy where extreme violence and mass insecurity
are systematically used to prevent collective movements
of emancipation.
FROM NEOLIBERAL
DECAY TO FASCIST RESTORATION
Neoliberalism
does not simply fail; it creates the conditions for
authoritarian restoration. As public goods are gutted
and civic life is eroded, the only function left for
the state is repression. This is why the rise of Trumpism
has coincided with an expansion of the police state,
the criminalization of protest, and the increasing use
of the judiciary as a tool for political warfare. The
collapse of the social leaves a vacuum, and that vacuum
is filled by the authoritarian impulse to restore order
through force.
One of
the defining features of authoritarian rule is the alignment
of the state with extralegal violence. Under the first
Trump administration, we saw the embrace of white supremacist
militias, the incitement of political violence, and
the normalization of attacks on journalists, educators,
and activists. These tactics are not aberrations; they
are hallmarks of a system in transition—from neoliberal
disorder to fascist consolidation. Balibar’s warning
that globalization has divided the world into “life
zones and death zones” is evident in Trump’s
policies, which privileged corporate elites while criminalizing
the poor, dispossessed, and marginalized.
The fight
against this culture of cruelty cannot be waged solely
through electoral politics; it demands a radical reimagining
of public goods as the bedrock of democracy. The call
for universal healthcare, free public education, living
wages, and strong labor protections is not merely about
economic policy—it is a direct act of resistance
against an authoritarian logic that reduces human life
to mere survival. More pointedly, it is a rejection
of the false equation of democracy with capitalism–a
system driven almost exclusively by financial interests
and beholden to two political parties that are hard-wired
to produce and reproduce neoliberal violence . Resistance
begins with language, with exposing power, and in this
era of resurgent fascism, the most urgent task is to
make clear that neoliberal capitalism is not a pillar
of democracy but its betrayal—a gateway to fascism,
not freedom.
Balibar
argues that democracy requires an “insurrectional
element”—a constant struggle against the
forces that seek to exclude and dehumanize. The political
order is always fragile, always in need of radical renewal.
Rebuilding the social is not merely about reversing
neoliberal policies but about reclaiming politics from
those who have weaponized it as a tool of domination.
Democracy
cannot survive in a society where people are forced
into constant competition for dwindling resources. Without
public goods, civic life collapses, and despair takes
its place. Hope, in this context, is not naïve
optimism but a call to organized resistance—a
refusal to accept the conditions of cruelty as inevitable.
The challenge ahead is not only to expose the logic
of neoliberal destruction but to fight for a future
in which public life is not dictated by profit, and
social solidarity is not dismissed as a relic of the
past.
With Trump’s
second term looming, the stakes could not be higher.
Fascism is no longer a distant threat but an unfolding
reality, accelerating the collapse of democratic institutions
and the expansion of state violence. What is particularly
dangerous in this new world order is that Trump and
his rich Vichy tech stooges are not simply out to get
more tax cuts. The threat they pose is much larger.
It is about the resurgence of a totalitarian instrumentalism
which, as Mike Brock notes in a recent essay, "The
Plot Against America," “is not about efficiency.
It is about erasure. Democracy is being deleted in slow
motion, replaced by proprietary technology and AI models.
This is a coup—not with guns, but with backend
migrations and erased databases, a digital purge designed
to rewrite history and consolidate power.” Under
the Trump administration, this erasure will accelerate
alongside acts of overt violence. Countering this new
stage of state brutality requires not only understanding
the deep roots of neo-fascism in the United States but
dismantling the economic, political, and cultural forces
that sustain it.
Writing
in The New European, Suzanne Schneider delivers
a sharp critique of far-right ideologue Curtis Yarvin’s
embrace of “turbocapitalism.” She notes
that “the engineers . . . represent the triumph
of instrumental reason in our new century. They fetishize
efficiency and understand the democratic state as an
impediment to the sort of ‘progress’ they
desire.” This is not just about controlling information
systems; it is a clear indication that education itself
has become a political battleground. In this framework,
knowledge is no longer a means of enlightenment but
a tool for reinforcing authoritarian power.
Only through
a massive educational and political struggle can we
dismantle the culture of cruelty and its underlying
form of “turbocapitalism,” which has taken
root in the United States. The aim of which was stated
by Peter Thiel, who wrote in 2009 that “I no longer
believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
Yarvin, a much celebrated fixture of the right-wing
media landscape goes further and argues “that
American democracy should be replaced by what he calls
a “monarchy” run by what he has called a
“C.E.O.” — basically his friendlier
term for a dictator.” The fusion of gangster capitalism
and MAGA techno-fascism has deepened the crisis of democracy,
but it has not yet crushed the possibility of renewal.
That possibility endures—but only if we refuse
to surrender and fight to reclaim the future.
The question
Americans face is: Will we surrender to the forces of
disposability and repression—or whether we will
reclaim a sense of collective agency, opposition, political
imagination, and the renewed struggle for a world where
democracy is not just a hollow promise, but a lived
and collective reality. We live in a time too urgent
to abandon hope for a more just and radical future.
We face an immense task in recognizing that hope is
wounded but not lost and as Alain Badiou states, what
we now face is “showing how the space of the possible
is larger than the one assigned—that something
else is possible, but not everything is possible.”
The task before us is not just to resist, but to widen
the horizon of the possible—to refuse the suffocating
limits imposed by neoliberal fatalism and authoritarian
rule, and instead, to fight for a future where justice
is not a dream deferred but a struggle embraced, where
democracy is not a relic of the past but the foundation
of what must come next.
By
Henry Giroux:
Education
in Dark Times
Childcide
in Fascist Theocracies
The Corporate Firewall Against Truth
Assassins of Memory
Not Joe's But Our Collective Memory Issues
The
Politics of Emergency Time
Hijacking
Freedoms
America
at the Crossroads
Gangster
Capitalism
Historical
Amnesia in Age of Capitalist Apocalypse
The
Inequality of Freedom
The
Nazification of Education
Killing
Fields in Age of Mass Shootings
The
Pedagogy of Resistance
The
Death of Ethics
Banning
Books
Homage
to Paulo Freire
Plague
of Manufactured Ignorance
Racial
Cleansing and Erasing History
Plague
of Historical Amnesia
Recovering
from Trumpism
Tribute
to Noam Chomsky
The
Ouster of Trump
White
Supremacy in the Offal Office
The
Plague of Inequity
Covid
and our Embattled Society
Trump
and the Corona Death Waltz
Neoliberal
Fascism
The
Terror Unforseen
Interview
of H.A.Giroux
The
Normalization of Fascism
The
Public Intellectual II
Bertrand
Russell: Public Intellectual
Thinking
Dangerously in Dark Times
Democracy
in Exile
Authoritarianism
in America
Violence:
US Favourite Pastime
Losing
in Trump's America
In
Dark Times Teachers Matter
The
Age of Civic Illiteracy
Exile
and Disruption in the Academy
What
Society Produces a Donald Trump
From
School to the Prison Pipeline
Orwell
& Huxely
American
Sniper and Hollywood Heroism
Selfie Culture
The
Age of Disposability
In
the Shadow of the Atomic Bomb
Killing
Machines and the Madness of the Military
The
Age of Neoliberal Cruelty
The
Politics of the Deep State
Challenging
Casino Capitalism
Crisis
in Democracy
America's
Descent into Madness
