“One of the great tragedies in the rise of hegemonic ideology since the 1980s has been disconnecting private issues from larger systemic considerations. That mode of privatization is a form of depoliticization. And it seems to me that the question of depoliticizations as crucial as any notion of politicization. You can’t unhook one from the other.
“In an age when it seems to me all problems are seen as individual problems and there is no understanding of how to basically conceptualize the social; that has to be one of the most powerful ideologies for domination that has come along for 400 years because it isolates people, it removes them from larger social context, it leads them to believe they are responsible for every issue that they face, and it produces enormous forms of resentment in which easy answers seem appealing– it’s about race, it’s about immigrants, we need a strong man.
“It’s basically the building block for fascism, it is really one of the most powerful building blocks for fascism because it doesn’t really create a space for creative thinking, for intellectual engagement and social engagement. You have to make these discourses visible.”
Collective Intellectualities
An internationally renowned writer and cultural critic, Henry Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy.
He has authored or co-authored over 67 books, written several hundred scholarly articles, delivered more than 250 public lectures, been a regular contributor to print, television, and radio news media outlets, and is one of the most cited Canadian academics working in any area of Humanities research. His latest book is Race, Politics, and Pandemic Pedagogy: Education in a Time of Crisis out on Bloomsbury Publishing. Visit his website at https://www.henryagiroux.com/.
Check the link: Race, Politics, and Pandemic Pedagogy: Education in a Time of Crisis (2021). Bloomsbury Publishing https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/race-po…
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VIDEO: Militarism, Climate Chaos, and the Environment
BLACK LIVES MATTER
The GOP senate/congressional reps must still be enraged by Trump’s defeat by the supposedly ‘socialist’ Biden (which he definitely is not); due to Trump’s democratically decided election loss, they’re restricting democracy. (Mind you, the First Past The Post electoral system, or at least that used in America [and here in Canada], just barely qualifies as democratic rule within the democracy spectrum, though it seems to serve corporate interests well. I believe it is basically why powerful money interests generally resist attempts at changing from FPTP to proportional representation electoral systems of governance, the latter which dilutes corporate lobbyist influence.) They consciously/subconsciously believe he had/has to remain in office for some perceived greater good (e.g., to ‘save the nation’, etcetera). The end justifies the means. The most frightful example of that philosophical justification is/was the pogrom, the primary implementers of which know they’re committing mass murder yet still genuinely perceive it all as part of an ultimately greater good.
Although matters would be worse for the poor with the Republicans in full control of the public purse, I still doubt that, at day’s end, the current administration will/can make a notably practical improvement in poor and low-income Americans’ quality of life, however much Biden may want or try to deliver such greatly needed assistance. I believe that the DNC refuses to allow a Bernie Sanders presidential candidacy, regardless of what voters want. For example, every county in West Virginia voted for Sanders in 2016, yet the Democratic National Committee declared them as wins for Clinton, the latter candidate’s neo-liberalism, unlike Sanders’ fiscal-progressiveness, already known for not rubbing against any big business grain.
Fiscal conservative ideology/politics, big business interests and most of the corporate news-media resist progressive policies (i.e. they see the $$$, not the humanity). I believe that Republicans are attempting to coerce the Democratic Party hierarchy into making their fiscal politics/policies even more conservative. …
Also, I can vividly recall the previous Democratic president, Barack Obama, capitulating — like so many other neo-liberal presidents before him and likely after him — to big money politics by drinking (at least what supposedly was) a glass of health-hazardously lead-laden Flint, Michigan water. This signified that the water was safe to drink, which he must have known really was not. As a then-admirer of Obama, I muttered ‘Say it isn’t so’. I henceforth saw U.S. presidents, along with Canadian prime ministers, mostly as large corporate and power interest puppets.