"We are living the fascist seizure of American society" -Henry Giroux

 

The mobilizing passions of fascism are no longer a distant echo of history—they are here, surging through the United States like an electric current. We are in a period of social, ideological, and racial cleansing.

First government institutions that both protect American democracy and work in the interest of social responsibility are being dismantled. Second, we are witnessing a mass form of ideological cleansing with attacks on public and higher education, the banning of books and critical ideas along with academic fields subject to government supervision; the arts are being defunded, social media, newspapers, and other cultural apparatuses that have the power to hold power accountable are being attacked with threats and loss of funding. Third, we are witnessing savage and cruel form of racial cleansing that focuses Immigrants, Muslims and all those who don't fit into white Christian nationalist notion of citizenship.

The most powerful economic, religious, political, and ideological fundamentalisms are the cornerstone of the new fascism.  The cleansing attack on every democratic principle is now in full force. See below for the unimaginable that now dominates American society.

Venezuelan migrants are disappearing into prisons run by dictators, punished not for crimes, but for the ink on their skin. A legendary British punk band, the UK Subs, was barred from entry for daring to voice dissent. A French scientist, silenced at the border for criticizing a man who now shreds the Constitution like tissue paper.

Trump flouts court rulings with impunity. Student visas are revoked without warning—young people snatched, detained in Louisiana detention, and potentially deported under cover malignant legalities. Prestigious law firms fall in line in ways that are beyond shameful. Elite universities, once bastions of inquiry, are being transformed into armed encampments, surveillance laboratories, and ideological training grounds—Columbia among the worst, turning its campus into a police precinct.

Only now, as the full forces of politics become more visible are some journalists and left-leaning commentators waking to the authoritarian siege of higher education—a crisis many of us have been warning about for decades.

This is not the slow erosion of democracy—it is its dismemberment in broad daylight. We are living the fascist seizure of American society. Unfortunately, too many have resorted to whispers when they should be shouting and mobilizing in the streets.

-Henry Giroux