Fascist Surge

The terror of the unforeseen becomes ominous when history is used to hide rather than to illuminate the past, when it becomes difficult to translate private issues into larger systemic considerations, and people allow themselves to be both seduced and trapped into spectacles of violence, cruelty and authoritarian impulses. Reading the world critically and developing a historical consciousness are two important preconditions for intervening in the world. That is why critical reading and reading critically are so dangerous to Trump, his acolytes and those who hate democracy. Democracy as both an ideal and site of struggle can only survive with a public attentiveness to the power of history, politics and the rigor of informed judgments and thoughtful actions. It can only survive when we are willing to engage the power to think otherwise in order to act otherwise.--HG

If you cannot connect the dots between Nancy Pelosi's rhetoric around "the squad" (she bitched them out in private and public spaces) and Trump's full-on overt racism, you've missed the point, i.e., you haven't comprehended how totally consumptive the drift to fascism is in our current polity.

Henry Giroux goes into the depths.

The setup.


TS