The Triumph of Trump, Authoritarianism and the Dis-imagination Machines by Henry Giroux

 

Donald Trump is on his way to potentially becoming the next president of the U.S. He embodies the overt, brutal, punishing symptoms of the racism, class warfare, and attacks on youth and women that have marked the U.S. since its inception.

Beneath these not-so-hidden authoritarian undercurrents lies the erosion and attacks on critical and civic education as an institution, largely destroyed by neoliberalism and its instrumental idiocy, racism, and class discrimination, along with its profoundly moronic obsession with methods, such as teaching for the test and racially and class designed zero tolerance policies.

All of these issues have been intensified and accelerated by a culture of "dis-imagination machines," in which the ruling financial elite have taken control of all major media apparatuses, relentlessly churning out commodified ignorance and a shallow notion of self-interest.

Propaganda has become the political weapon of the 21st century, corrupting every form of education and every institution associated with the production of ideas, values, and knowledge. This has undermined both the capacity for critical thinking and the concept of truth itself. The past does not simply live in the present, it has canceled out reason and justice as harbingers of a more democratic future.

The rule of dis-imagination machines and manufactured ignorance isn't confined to the morally and politically vacuous right. The liberal mainstream media rarely cross the line in attacking gangster capitalism or inviting truly informed commentators such as Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Robin Kelley, Michael Yates, Maya Schenwar, Jeffrey St. Clair, Mark Anthony Neal; Thom Hartmann, Naomi Klein, or Chris Hedges to discuss the pressing problems facing the U.S.

The punishing state now wraps itself in mindless entertainment or cruel invective parading as political theater. Americans are bombarded with the babble of liberals who are too weak to name Trump as a fascist or a racist, or who treat him as either a normal candidate or an exceptional clown rather than a symptom of a dark deeper malaise, echoing a pernicious and frightening past.

The google, Instagram, Facebook, and x culture of today is the enemy of historical consciousness. It is a place where history dies as does the power to learn from the past. It is about the culture of immediacy, a culture where informed thinking disappears in a culture of advertisements, reality TV, game shows, and a regressive avalanche of commodification and privatization.

The spectacle swallows any viable notion of agency, turning out zombies consumed with the emotional release and satisfaction that comes with the cleansing power of bigotry. MAGA hats are the new symbols of a death-culture.

 Even many on the left has neglected to recognize the centrality of education to politics for years. There jargon drowns and sabotages itself in the language of structure, and too often jargon functions as a firewall of obscurity. This is not a call to be overly simplistic, but to hold the bar of analysis high while still being able to be both rigorous and accessible so that people can recognize themselves in the language, in the rhetoric of persuasion. 

 America is now home to a significant number of utterly reactionary, ignorant people who are complicit in a society that will ultimately destroy their dignity, welfare, and agency, not to mention democracy itself. Orwell and Huxley could not have invented a scenario where the merging of power and culture today works so insidiously to usher in fascism under the banner of "free elections."

Equally insidious is the sight of Vichy-like politicians and celebrities condemning young people facing police violence while ignoring some of the most serious problems facing the globe. This is the same group that believes that Trump won the 2020 election, the thugs who beat the police and ransacked the Capitol are hostages.

To all those who supported and continue to support this shallow view of politics and education, and the indoctrination factories being produced in Florida and other places, you have nothing to be proud of. The horror depicted in the film "Zone of Interest" is no longer merely a subject of entertainment or far-right distortion. It is a stark reality that no longer hides in the shadows of history. Those who remain silent, look away, or find solace in comforting lies have become akin to the "good Germans" who looked the other way in the 1930s.

-Henry Giroux