Cultural politics and public intellectuals in the age of emerging fascism*

ABSTRACT

.Giroux argues that an upgraded form of fascism with its rabid nativism and hatred of racial mixing is at the center of United States politics. Traditional liberal values of equality, social justice, dissent, and freedom are now considered a threat to a Republican Party supportive of staggering levels of inequality, white Christian nationalism, and racial purity. Giroux examines America’s slide into a fascist politics and argues for academics to develop a revitalized understanding of the historical moment in which we find ourselves, along with a systemic critical analysis of the new political formations that mark this period.

KEYWORDS:

• Culture
• politics
• public intellectuals
• fascism
• cultural studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Radhika Sainath, “The Free Speech Exception.” Boston Review (October 30, 2023). Online: https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-free-speech-exception/; Adam Tooze, Samuel Moyn, Amia Srinivasan, et al. “The principle of human dignity must apply to all people,” The Guardian (November 22, 2023). Online: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/22/the-principle-of-human-dignity-must-apply-to-all-people; Judith Butler, “The Compass of Mourning.” London Review of Books (October 19, 2023). Online: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n20/judith-butler/the-compass-of-mourning.

2 Alberto Toscano, “The Long Shadow of Racial Fascism,” Boston Review. (October 27, 2020). Online http://bostonreview.net/race-politics/alberto-toscano-long-shadow-racial-fascism.

3 Henry A. Giroux, Pedagogy of Resistance (London: Bloomsbury, 2022).

4 Anthony DiMaggio, “Fascism Denial American Style: Exceptionalism in the Ivory Tower,” Counterpunch (April 5, 2023). Online: https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/04/05/fascism-denial-american-style-exceptionalism-in-the-ivory-tower/.

5 Henry A. Giroux, Insurrections: Education in an Age of Counter-Revolutionary Politics (London: Bloomsbury, 2023).

6 Jon Queally, “When 3 Men Richer Than 165 Million People, Sanders Says Working Class Must 'Come Together',” CommonDreams (June 4, 2023). Online: https://www.commondreams.org/news/immoral-inequality-bernie-sanders.

7 Judd Legum, “Banning Book Bans,” Popular Information (May 31, 2023). Online: https://popular.info/p/banning-book-bans?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1664&post_id=124913640&isFreemail=false&utm_medium=email.

8 Martin Pengelly, “Ron DeSantis says he will ‘destroy leftism’ in US if elected president,” The Guardian (May 30, 2023). Online: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/30/ron-desantis-fox-news-interview-destroy-leftism.

9 Gloria Oladipo, “Texas teacher fired for showing Anne Frank graphic novel to eighth-graders,” The Guardian (September 20, 2023). Online: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/20/texas-teacher-fired-anne-frank-book-ban.

10 Richard Whiddington, “The Florida Principal Fired for Allowing a Lesson on Michelangelo’s ‘David’ Went to Italy to See the Sculpture Herself—and Was Rather Impressed,” ArtNews (April 28, 2023). Online: https://news.artnet.com/news/fired-florida-principal-visited-michelangelo-david-2292636#:~:text=Museums-,The%20Florida%20Principal%20Fired%20for%20Allowing%20a%20Lesson%20on%20Michelangelo's,way%2C%22%20Hope%20Carrasquilla%20said.

11 Charisma Madarang, “Publisher Deletes Race From Rosa Parks Story for Florida,” Rolling Stone (March 16, 2023). Online: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/race-deleted-rosa-parks-history-florida-textbooks-1234698582/.

12 Jedd Legum, “Right-wing activists seek to ban "Arthur's Birthday" from Florida school libraries,” Popular Information (July 20, 2023). Online: https://popular.info/p/right-wing-activists-seek-to-ban.

13 Tom Mockaitis, “Attacks on academic freedom undermine the quality of US education,” The Hill (April 21, 2023). Online: https://thehill.com/opinion/education/3962012-attacks-on-academic-freedom-undermine-the-quality-of-us-education/.

14 Elizabeth Gyori, “Idaho Wants to Jail Professors for Teaching About Abortion,” ACLU (August 9, 2023). Online: https://www.aclu.org/news/reproductive-freedom/idaho-wants-to-jail-professors-for-teaching-about-abortion.

15 Primo Levi, “Primo Levi's Heartbreaking, Heroic Answers to the Most Common Questions He Was Asked About ‘Survival in Auschwitz’,” The New Republic (February 17, 1986). Online: https://newrepublic.com/article/119959/interview-primo-levi-survival-auschwitz.

16 Thom Hartmann, “Trump Town Hall: Is CNN Normalizing Fascism Next Week?” The Hartmann Report (May 3, 2023). Online: https://hartmannreport.com/p/trump-town-hall-is-cnn-normalizing.

17 Federico Finchelstein, A Brief History of Fascist Lies (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020), 1.

18 Frank B. Wilderson III, “Introduction: Unspeakable Ethics,” in Red, White, & Black, (London, UK: Duke University Press, 2012), 1–32.

19 See especially, Jonathan Crary, Scorched Earth: Beyond The Digital Age To A Post-capitalist World. (London: Verso Books, 2022).

20 Robin D. G. Kelley, “The Long War on Black Studies,” The New York Review of Books (June 17, 2023). Online: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/06/17/the-long-war-on-black-studies/.

21 See, for example, Jane Mayer, “The Making of the Fox News White House,” The New Yorker (March 4, 2019). Online: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/11/the-making-of-the-fox-news-white-house.

22 Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Trade Publishers, New Edition, 2001).

23 Cited in Ruth Ben-Ghiat, “What Is Fascism?” Lucid Substack (December 7, 2022). Online: https://lucid.substack.com/p/what-is-fascism.

24 Paul Gilroy, “The 2019 Holberg Lecture, by Laureate Paul Gilroy: Never Again: refusing race and salvaging the human,” Holbergprisen, (November 11, 2019). Online: https://holbergprisen.no/en/news/holberg-prize/2019-holberg-lecture-laureate-paul-gilroy.

25 See, Chauncey Devega, “Americans are sleepwalking into a Trump dictatorship,” Salon (December 5, 2023). Online: https://www.salon.com/2023/12/05/americans-are-sleepwalking-into-a-dictatorship/; even neo-conservatives are raising the alarm about Trump’s fascism, see, for instance, Robert Kagan, “ A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.,” The Washington Post (November 30, 2023). Online: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/30/trump-dictator-2024-election-robert-kagan/.

26 Cited in Toni Morrison, ed. James Baldwin, Collected Essays: No Name in the Street (New York: Library of America, 1998), 437.

27 Joshua Sperling cited in Lisa Appignanesi, “Berger’s Ways of Being,” The New York Review of Books (May 9, 2019). Online: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/05/09/john-berger-ways-of-being/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR%20Tintoretto%20Berger%20Mueller&utm_content=NYR%20Tintoretto%20Berger%20Mueller+CID_22999ee4b377a478a5ed6d4ef5021162&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=John%20Bergers%20Ways%20of%20Being.

28 Hannah Arendt, “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,” in Jerome Kohn, ed., Responsibility and Judgement, (NY: Schocken Books, 2003). Online: https://grattoncourses.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/responsibility-under-a-dictatorship-arendt.pdf.

29 Mark Vallen, “Goya and the Sleep of Reason,” Art for Change (March 31, 2023). Online: Francisco Goya warned “the sleep of reason produces monsters”.

30 Henry A. Giroux, The Terror of the Unforeseen (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Review of Books, 2019).

31 David L. Clark, “What is Democracy?,” NFB Blog (March 27, 2023). Online: https://blog.nfb.ca/blog/2023/05/04/edu-higher-learning-what-is-democracy/.