Sunday, October 06, 2024

Fascism on Trial: Education and the Possibility of Democracy

BOOK REVIEW
October 3, 2024






Henry A. Giroux and Anthony R. DiMaggio (2024) Fascism on Trial: Education and the Possibility of Democracy, Bloomsbury, London and New York: Bloomsbury.

This is an important book for a pivotal time. Not only because of the run up to the presidential election in the United States in November 2024 but also because of the growth of the far right around the world, and the consequent threat of fascism. It is a must read for anyone wanting to understand the current state of American politics, and the many levels and multiple institutional frameworks that are displaying fascist tendencies, beyond the personality of Trump alone. Although the book is a reflection on the United States (US), and as such mainly targets an American audience, it is of relevance to a global readership as educators the world over stand to gain from understanding how the continued growth of extreme politics further weakens democracy and risks sliding into all out fascism.

Henry Giroux is one of the most important critical educators and cultural theorists of our time. His work has repeatedly shown the power of education to shape the future and the crucial need for education to be at the centre of politics. At a time when many academics are shying away from addressing controversial counter-hegemonic discourses, resultant from the infiltration of neoliberal logics into third level education, Giroux has for decades now been willing to place his head above the parapet. For this most recent publication, Fascism on Trial: Education and the Possibility of Democracy, Giroux has teamed up with the political scientist Anthony R. DiMaggio whose Rising Fascism in America: It Can Happen Here (2022) explored how fascism infiltrated American politics.

Although there is little need to add to the accumulated evidence presented in the book to support the premise that the US is in real danger of descending into fascism, there have been many worrying developments since the publication of the text that provide further support to the authors’ stance. With a long list to choose from, some of the most disturbing examples are threats of civil war in the event of a loss for Trump proclaimed at the Republican national convention (Tait, 2024), renewed calls of election fraud despite no evidence to support such claims, and Trump’s declaration to Christian nationalist supporters that they won’t have to vote again in the future as ‘It’ll be fixed’ (Vargas, 2024). Perhaps the most frightening development was the ruling by the Supreme Court on presidential immunity, providing freedom to presidents to commit crimes provided they act within their ‘constitutional authority’ (Serwer, 2024). A move that Giroux himself described as permission to Trump to ‘become a domestic terrorist’ (Giroux, 2024a).

Fascism is an emotive term that is not always used consistently and transparently in political discourse, despite the use of the term by all sides of the political spectrum. Writing in 2018 on Trump’s presidential term in office, Fintan O’Toole cautioned that we need to be careful of casually using the term fascism but that we also must not hide from it ‘when it is so clearly on the horizon’ (O’Toole, 2018). The authors of this text provide a helpful sketch of their understanding of fascism in relation to the present context in the US, listing features such as authoritarianism, nativism, white supremacy, anti-intellectualism and a politics of disposability, resentment and victimhood (Giroux and DiMaggio, 2024). Throughout the text they engage with an array of literature, and close analysis of contemporary empirical examples, to further expand on their understanding of fascism and help the reader locate such tendencies in the contemporary moment.

Writing in relation to contemporary times, several authors have moved away from providing a set definition of fascism that may confine our understanding to particular historical moments and precise mechanisms of a monolithic authoritarian state (Stanley, 2018; Toscano, 2023; Giroux and DiMaggio, 2024). A more fluid approach can help us to understand how fascist tendencies are alive and thriving without necessarily having to emulate the classical fascism of Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany and Franco’s Spain. This approach presents fascism as a political, social and ideological process that can take different forms in different contexts. Giroux and DiMaggio see fascism as a ‘recurrent and infinitely flexible phenomenon’ (Giroux and DiMaggio, 2024: 103).

Giroux and DiMaggio show the importance of culture as an educational force, and how the right-wing polarisation of the media in America has supported the growth of fascism. Taking advantage of a void in critical historical consciousness, the mainstream media facilitates the growth of false memory that mourns a fabricated past that in truth served only the privileged few and criminalised or annihilated many other ways of life. This point is echoed in the work of Stanley (2018), who similarly reasoned that fascists call for a return to a mythic and glorious past. This is why the preservation of memory is one of the antidotes to fascism (Giroux and DiMaggio, 2024; Stanley, 2018). However, protection of memories, particularly those of the oppressed and the marginalised, relies on a culture of critical education and historical conscientisation.

It is no accident that the contemporary far right in the US are so consumed by education, schooling and curriculum (Giroux and DiMaggio, 2024). They understand its power. It is imperative that both schooling and wider education, through cultural and civic modes of pedagogy, create an environment that supports critical reflection, fosters the development of civic virtues and increases the capacity to question hegemonic discourse, identify bias and bigotry and situate the current moment in the long arc of history. The authors point out that critical education is indispensable in countering the rise of the far right. However, drawing from the work of Zembylas (2021), I would add that an engagement with pedagogies of emotion and affect complement this in the cultivation of non-fascist communities and publics.

Although the Trumpification of the Republican Party is central to the analysis in the book, the authors importantly avoid the risk of attributing the rise of fascism in the US too closely to the spectacle of Trump. At various points throughout the text the vital connection between fascism and the trajectory of American history is excellently foregrounded. As the authors rightly claim, ‘the roots of such violence and the politics that inform it lie deep in American history and its machinery of elimination and terminal exclusion’ (Giroux and DiMaggio, 2024: 138). An additional resource to help to further understand the intimate connection between colonialism, white supremacy and capitalism is Alberto Toscano’s (2023) Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis. Toscano supports the authors’ assessment of the current political climate in the US, summarising the situation as ‘a continuation of a sort of white settler, patriarchal form of privilege and violence that has a lot of historical continuity’ (Tyson, Krabbe and Toscano, 2024: 7). Giroux and DiMaggio constantly remind us that the failure of American schooling, and wider cultural pedagogies, to adequately address the long dark history of mass slavery, white supremacy, and the genocide of the indigenous population at the foundation of the US, greatly reduces the capacity of the public to understand systemic racism and critique dominant white Christian nationalist discourses, cultural myths and conspiracy theories. The lack of historical memory is particularly important in the American context given this history.

One of the most important features of the book is the analysis of how colonial capitalism, currently neoliberalism, intersects with and enables the growth of fascism. The authors use the term ‘neoliberal fascism’ to describe our increasingly authoritarian present (Giroux and DiMaggio, 2024: 114). The authors show how through increasing inequality and precarity, capitalism, suffering from a legitimation crisis, ‘needed a new ideology to sustain itself’ (Ibid.: 209). ‘Neoliberalism capitalism, even as it is going through a major crisis, has morphed into a fascist politics that is embraced and proclaimed openly through a language and set of policies that are rooted in U.S. history and culture’ (Ibid.: 81). Far from seeing liberal democracy as the antithesis of fascism, Toscano too argues that anti-fascism is not compatible with liberal democracy. He demonstrates that ‘to speak of fascism is to speak of capitalism, and that anti-fascism should necessarily be anti-capitalist’ (Gordillo, 2024). The authors importantly stress that the Democrats are just as much bastions of neoliberalism as the Republicans (Giroux and DiMaggio, 2024).

Back in 2018, O’Toole characterised Trump’s presidency as pre-fascism, a trial run for what was to come through the normalising of unspeakable cruelty, in particular against racialised and minoritised communities (O’Toole, 2018). Extending his analysis to the actions of the wider far right in Europe, O’Toole wrote that ‘millions and millions of Europeans and Americans are learning to think the unthinkable’ and accept the unacceptable. Who would have imagined at that time that the normalisation of extreme violence could go as far as reaching genocide fatigue? The ongoing annihilation of the Palestinian people in Gaza shows the connection between colonial capitalism, white supremacy and the fascistic normalisation of obscene levels of death and destruction. Giroux recently wrote, ‘[t]he morally reprehensible killing of children in Gaza is part of a larger problem that haunts the modern period: the merging of colonialism and neoliberal capitalism’ (Giroux, 2024b: 123). It is important to remember that the illegal occupation of Palestine, continued apartheid, and now ongoing genocide has been, and continues to be, facilitated and supported by both the Democratic and Republican administrations, alongside liberal leaders of Canada and Europe. As tempting as it may be to singularly focus on the emergence of Trump, and other authoritarian leaders like him the world over, we need to remember that business as usual is deeply problematic and itself reveals fascistic drives for power.

The Democratic Party have long sought to subdue progressive power within the party. A win for the Democrats in November 2024 will not bring about a fairer, more just, egalitarian society, as the US will continue to be plagued by long standing white supremacy, militarisation, gun violence, mass incarceration, and gross inequality. However, defeating Trump is a necessary step in the right direction. If the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 (Leingang, 2024) is any indication as to what a second Trump presidency would entail, certainly a win for Trump would turn the tides further in the direction of fascism, and given the unfortunate global reach of US power, make the long road to a better future for all further out of sight.

But we ought not to settle for a lesser evil and be radical in our commitment to the belief in a better world for all. This important text stresses that need and provides hope in that possibility, pointing to the types of solutions that are needed to counter the rise of fascism. The authors mention social movements that offer us hope, such as the Black Lives Matter movement. We could add to this the recent historic pro-Palestine student protests across university campuses in the US. There have also been important moments of hope internationally, like the recent success of the strategic alliance of the political left in France through the formation of the New Popular Front in opposition to the rising popularity of the far right National Rally. Let us all hope, as the authors do, for the prioritisation of critical education as a public good in combating fascist politics and ideology and a ground swell of grassroots activism that mobilises communities in the fight for a radical anti-capitalist future.

References

DiMaggio, A R (2022) Rising Fascism in America: It Can Happen Here, Routledge: New York.

Giroux, H A and DiMaggio, A R (2024) Fascism on Trial: Education and the Possibility of Democracy, Bloomsbury, London and New York: Bloomsbury.

Giroux, H (2024a) ‘The Dismantling of Democracy: A Grim Projection of America’s Future Under Trump’, LA Progressive, 2 July, available: https://www.laprogressive.com/law-and-justice/dismantling-of-democracy (accessed 26 July 2024)

Giroux, H (2024b) ‘Genocide in Gaza and the Politics of False Equivalences’, Policy and Practice, A Developmental Education Review, Vol. 38, Spring, pp. 120-125

Gordillo, G (2024) ‘The Fascist Disposition’, Verso Books blog post, 18 July, available: https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/the-fascist-disposition (accessed 27 July 2024)

Leingang, R (2024) ‘What is Project 2025 and what is Trump’s involvement?’, The Guardian, 24 July, available: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/26/what-is-project-2025-trump (accessed 26 July 2024)

O’Toole, F (2018) ‘Trial runs for fascism are in full flow: Babies in cages were no “mistake” by Trump but test-marketing for barbarism’, The Irish Times, 26 January, available: https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-trial-runs-for-fascism-are-in-full-flow-1.3543375 (accessed 26 July 2024).

Serwer, A (2024) ‘The Trumpification of the Supreme Court’, The Atlantic, 26 April, available: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/04/trump-presidential-inmunity-supreme-court/678193/ (accessed 26 July 2024).

Stanley, J (2018) How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, New York: Random House.

Tait, R (2024) ‘Republican apologizes for threatening civil war if Trump loses 2024 election’, The Guardian, 23 July, available: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/23/ohio-republican-trump-civil-war (accessed 24 July 2024).

Toscano, A (2023) Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis, London: Verso.

Tyson E L, Krabbe S C and Toscano, A (2024) ‘Late fascism and education: An interview with Alberto Toscano’, Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, Vol. 46, No. 3, pp. 526-536.

Vargas, R A (2024) ‘Trump tells supporters they won’t have to vote in the future: “It’ll be fixed!”’, The Guardian, 27 July, available: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/27/trump-speech-no-need-to-vote-future (accessed 28 July 2024).

Zembylas, M (2021) Affect and the Rise of Right-Wing Populism: Pedagogies for the Renewal of Democratic Education, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Elizabeth Meade lectures in Global Citizenship Education, Social Justice and Philosophy of Education in the Department of Education in Maynooth University. She is also a member of the Centre for Public Education and Pedagogy in Maynooth University. Her main research interests are in democracy and education, critical GCE, and the community of philosophical inquiry as public pedagogy.
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Trump, The Purge, Black Nazis and the Language of Apocalyptic Lies and Violence


Henry Giroux
 October 4, 2024
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Photo by Bianca Berg

LONG READ


At a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, Trump invoked a chilling convergence of law, order, and violence—a cornerstone of what can only be described as his politics of disposability. By referencing The Purge, a dystopian film where the government legalizes all forms of violence, including murder, for 12 hours, Trump escalates his rhetoric to a dangerous metaphor. In his hands, “the purge” becomes more than just a narrative device; it embodies a vision in which state-sanctioned violence reaches its grotesque climax. This is not just careless talk. Trump’s invocation of The Purge reveals a willingness to use governmental power as a tool of extermination, targeting those he deems undesirable—immigrants, Black people, journalists, educators, and anyone daring to challenge his white Christian nationalist, neoliberal, and white supremacist agenda. Trump’s language is more than rhetoric—it is an incitement to harm, a prelude to atrocities.

Trump’s reference to The Purge signals a deeper embrace of militarized, fascist rhetoric that frames politics as war, with no limits on legality, morality, or humanity. It is a language soaked in the blood of history, recalling genocidal campaigns against Native Americans, Blacks, Jews, and countless others deemed disposable by authoritarian regimes. It is a dead language, a violent lexicon that gives birth to politicians with blood in their mouths, who weaponize fear, bigotry, and hatred, cloaking their destruction in the false promises of patriotism and security. Trump’s words are crafted to shatter the civic contract, arm citizens against one another, create the conditions for a civil war, and pave the way for a society ruled by fear, enforced by a police state. This language does more than shelter fascists; it silences dissent, normalizes torture, and echoes the horrors of death camps and crematoriums. It is the language of the unspeakable and the unimaginable, a terror that blinds us to the terrors of the unforeseen.

For the far right politicians like Trump, J.D. Vance, and others, fascist rhetoric and politics are now displayed and enacted as a badge of honor. There is more at work here than an echo of former authoritarian regimes. The ensuing threats from Trump and his warrior-soldier types lead directly to the Gulags and camps in a former age of authoritarianism. The spirit of the Confederacy along with an upgraded and Americanized version of fascism is back. The corpse-like orthodoxies of militarism, racial cleansing, and neoliberal fascism point to the bankruptcy of conscience, an instance in which language fails and morality collapses into barbarism, and a politics where any vestige of democracy is both mocked and attacked.

What is clear is that there is a massive rebellion against democracy taking place in the United States and across the globe. And it is not simply being imposed from above through military dictatorships or the morbid charisma of alleged circus performers. People now vote for fascist politics and politicians such as Trump, Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbot, and others of their anti-democratic ilk. MAGA Republicans openly celebrate politicians who not only proudly dismiss democracy but also make racist remarks. CNN reported that Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for Governor of North Carolina, once referred to himself as a “black Nazi” and “expressed support for reinstating slavery” on a pornography website’s message board over a decade ago.[1]  Hannah Knowles, writing in The Washinton Post, offered the following deluge of offensive comments Robinson made before winning the GOP nomination for governor. She provides the following summary:

There was the time he called school shooting survivors “media prosti-tots” for advocating for gun-control policies. The meme mocking a Harvey Weinstein accuser, and the other meme mocking actresses for wearing “whore dresses to protest sexual harassment.” The prediction that rising acceptance of homosexuality would lead to pedophilia and “the END of civilization as we know it”; the talk of arresting transgender people for their bathroom choice; the use of antisemitic tropes; the Facebook posts calling Hillary Clinton a “heifer” and Michelle Obama a man.[2]

Despite the fact that Robinson has a long history of making misogynist, racist and anti-transgender comments, Trump has enthusiastically endorsed him, absurdly calling Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids.”[3] The latter comment made in spite of the fact that Robinson once accused King Jr. “of being a white supremacist.”[4] This shocking alignment with unapologetic racists and would-be fascists underscores how far the party has strayed from democratic and moral principles. This is a party for whom The Purge is less a dystopian film than a model for how American society should be organized.

That such shocking comments are left largely uncriticized by the American public is largely the result of disimagination machines such as the mainstream media and far-right online platforms, many of which have become platforms for billionaires spreading conspiracy theories, that have become powerful ideological fictions—pedagogical machineries of political illiteracy inflicting upon the American people an astonishing vacancy that amounts to a moral and political coma.  As one writer for New York Magazine succinctly summarized, powerful social media platforms are now home to dangerous, illiterate fictions. He writes:

Bill Ackman, a wealthy hedge fund manager turned Trump supporter began posting uncontrollably about a right-wing theory that there is (or was) a whistleblower at ABC News, claims the network gave its questions to Harris in advance of the presidential debate, and then perished in a car crash. [He adds that] Elon Musk, one of the world’s wealthiest people and a large financial supporter of Trump’s ground operation, predicted on his social media platform that Harris’s first act if elected will be to ban X and arrest Musk.[5]

The rapid spread of such unfounded conspiracies highlights the dangerous intersection of wealth, political influence, and misinformation. Stacked atop the ever-growing mountain of lies and relentless conspiracy theories are the ceaseless media stories peddling the absurd and grotesque falsehoods that sacrifice the truth and social responsibility for mindless and often cruel political theater. Trump and his supine backers have ushered in an age of fabricated narratives that become clickbait for an ethically spineless media landscape, where both centrist and right-wing outlets spectacularize eye-popping stories for profit. Let’s be clear, this ploy goes beyond a politics of mere distraction.

The merging of lies, ignorance, and violence was on full display when Trump in a presidential debate with Vice-President Kamala Harris falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. These racist lies did more than spurn endless memes and jokes on social media and late night comedy shows, they also produced a familiar pattern in which the city was subject “to bomb threats that shut down the elementary schools…swatting attacks meant to intimidate community members, [and a series] of high-speed-networked harassment that over the last few years has largely focused on community events for queer and trans people.”[6]  Such lies give Trump’s merry band of white supremacists and proto-Nazis the opportunity to smear immigrants, people of color, and anyone else considered disposable. In this instance, such language is more than a vehicle for spreading lies and misinformation. As Toni Morrison reminds us, “this systemic looting of language…does more than represent violence; it is violence.”[7]

What is often overlooked in mainstream media discussions of attacks on immigrants, Black people, and other marginalized groups is the driving force behind these assaults: white nationalism. Trump’s attacks on Haitian immigrants, for example, are frequently dismissed as mere racism when, in reality, they are part of a larger, insidious white nationalist agenda. These attacks are about more than just racism; they are a key aspect of white nationalism, which targets anyone who is not a white, wealthy, straight, Christian male. Under the guise of white replacement theory, a wide range of people—beyond just people of color—are “othered.”

This same white nationalist logic underpins the far-right assault on women’s reproductive rights, which seeks to control women’s bodies in the name of preserving white dominance. This exclusionary agenda extends beyond moral failings within the corporate-controlled media, representing a broader and more dangerous convergence of power, technology, and language that defends the unthinkable, unforgivable, and indefensible. This indiscriminate destruction invades daily life without restraint, ushering in a new era of “pedestrian warfare” where Palestinians are reduced to subjects in a morbid experiment.[8]   Joelle M. Abi-Rached, Associate Professor of Medicine at the American University of Beirut, describes this devastation as the “literal weaponization of electronic devices,” underscoring the immense suffering and death inflicted by this strategy.[9]

These intertwined projects—rooted in white nationalism, patriarchal control, and the militarization of everyday life—are glaringly evident in the assault on women’s reproductive rights, which seeks to control women’s bodies, particularly encouraging white women to have more children out of fear that people of color are increasing in number. By focusing on reproductive control, white nationalism seeks to preserve and expand its dominance through the fear of a growing population of people of color. Together, these strategies reflect a broader agenda of racial and gendered control, where domination extends from the battlefield into the most intimate aspects of life. What we are witnessing is a calculated and deliberate assault on the very foundations of democracy, undermining the fabric of society with each repeated lie. This death dealing agenda and the conditions that produce it remain largely invisible in a “21st-century media ecosystem” that spews out language that merged corruption, lies, profits, and clouds of vagueness.

Under such circumstances, the underlying causes of poverty, dispossession, exploitation, misery, and massive suffering disappear in a spectacularized culture of silence, commodification, and cult-like mystifications. As civic culture collapses, the distinction between truth and falsehoods dissolves, and with it a public consciousness able to discern the difference between good and evil. Too many Americans have internalized what Paulo Freire once called the tools of the oppressor. They not only accept the shift in American politics towards authoritarianism, but they also support the idea itself.[10] Trump’s enduring public support is a chilling reflection of his overt embrace of fascist politics. He openly calls for revoking the Constitution, boasts of wanting to be a “dictator for a day,” and threatens to weaponize the presidency to imprison political opponents like Liz Cheney if he regains power.[11]

Trump’s rhetoric of violence and hatred is not mere political theater—it is a calculated assault on the very foundations of democratic life. His words are designed to dismantle all vestiges of social responsibility and the social state, erode democratic institutions, and pave the way for authoritarian rule. Far from alienating his base, this dangerous rhetoric galvanizes it, exposing a deep and unsettling readiness among many to forsake democratic principles in favor of tyranny. In a just society, language is the lifeblood of justice, equality, and democracy. Yet, under Trump, language has become a weapon of division, driven by white nationalism, white supremacy, and fear. His apocalyptic vision is the canary in the coal mine, a stark warning of the perils that lie ahead if we fail to act. As the United States teeters on the brink of fascism, the corruption of language into a tool of violence and exclusion signals an urgent crisis. The stakes are nothing less than the survival of democracy itself.

Notes.

[1] Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck, “‘I’m a black NAZI!’: NC GOP nominee for governor made dozens of disturbing comments on porn forum,” CNN Politics (September 19, 2024). Online: https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/19/politics/kfile-mark-robinson-black-nazi-pro-slavery-porn-forum/index.html

[2] Hannah Knowles, “Offensive comments by N.C. Republican stand out even in Trump’s party,” The Washington Post(March 2, 2024). Online: https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/03/02/mark-robinson-governor-candidate-north-carolina-offensive-comments/

[3] Eric Bradner, “Harris campaign highlights Trump’s past praise for Mark Robinson as CNN report roils battleground North Carolina,” CNN Politics (September 19, 2024). Online: https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/19/politics/north-carolina-governor-mark-robinson/index.html

[4] Ibid. [4] Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck.

[5] Jonathan Chait, “Mark Robinson and the Republican Wackjob Problem What happens when you stop trying to keep out the kooks,” New York (September 19, 2024). Online: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/mark-robinson-and-the-republican-whackjob-problem.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20National%20Interest%20-%20Column%20Alert%20-%20Thu%20Sep%2019%202024&utm_term=Subscription%20List%20-%20The%20National%20Interest

[6]  Melissa Gira Grant, “How Lies About Pet Eating Turned Into Bomb Threats,” The New Republic (September 18, 2024). Online: https://newrepublic.com/article/186149/trump-springfield-haitian-immigrants-pets-origin

[7] Toni Morrison, “Nobel Lecture” Nobel Prize [December 7, 1993]. Online: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/morrison/lecture/

[8]   Joelle M. Abi-Rached, “The View from Besieged Beirut,” Boston Review (October 2, 2024). Online: https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-view-from-besieged-beirut/?utm_source=Boston+Review+Email+Subscribers&utm_campaign=6de983bcbc-ourlatest_10_2_24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cb428c5ad-6de983bcbc-41183853&mc_cid=6de983bcbc&mc_eid=2d6289191d

[9] Ibid.

[10] Philip Bump, “A lot of Americans embrace Trump’s authoritarianism,” The Washington Post (November 10, 2023). Online: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/10/lot-americans-embrace-trumps-authoritarianism/

[11] Martin Pengelly, “Donald Trump vows to lock up political enemies if he returns to White House,” The Guardian(August 30, 2023). Online: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/30/trump-interview-jail-political-opponents-glenn-beck

Henry A. 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. His most recent books include: The Terror of the Unforeseen (Los Angeles Review of books, 2019), On Critical Pedagogy, 2nd edition (Bloomsbury, 2020); Race, Politics, and Pandemic Pedagogy: Education in a Time of Crisis (Bloomsbury 2021); Pedagogy of Resistance: Against Manufactured Ignorance (Bloomsbury 2022) and Insurrections: Education in the Age of Counter-Revolutionary Politics (Bloomsbury, 2023), and coauthored with Anthony DiMaggio, Fascism on Trial: Education and the Possibility of Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2025). Giroux is also a member of Truthout’s board of directors.

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Monarchs, a Dragonfly and Defending Life on Earth

By Ted Glick
October 4, 2024
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.



About a month ago I was watering plants in our family garden when a dragonfly landed on a plant just a few feet away from me. I watched it for a bit, expecting it to fly away, but when it didn’t I began talking to it in a quiet voice. As it continued to sit there, I got the idea of offering my finger for it to walk onto, but when I made the offer there was no response, though it didn’t fly away.

My next step was to pick up a small stick and offer that to this tiny creature of the universe which seemed to have some interest in me. When it immediately stepped onto that stick I slowly raised it so that we were literally face to face, about a foot apart. I was struck by the beautiful red and green colors on its triangular face. I continued talking in a low voice for a minute or so, then slowly moved the stick back to where the dragonfly had been sitting. It stepped off and stayed there until, a couple minutes later, I left.

I’ve never had an experience like this before with an insect. Every time I think about it I am amazed that it happened. But my and my wife’s work over the last 10 or so years in support of the monarch butterfly population definitely prepared me for this. Over all those years, every summer, we do what we can to help this amazing insect species survive.

How do we do this? We do so by finding monarch eggs–and rarely a caterpillar–on the underside of milkweed leaves, of which there are many on our property. We bring them inside and, over the course of a month, raise them as they keep eating milkweed leaves that we provide them. After 10 or so days they become a beautiful yellow, black and white caterpillar, then a chrysalis and finally a butterfly, at which point we release them.

While protecting them from their natural predators, we raise them as similarly as we can to the conditions they would experience if outside. We don’t turn on the lights when it gets dark in the room where we keep them. We don’t air condition the room. We place them close to a window where they can experience natural light. And they are always released the next day once they emerge as a beautiful butterfly from their chrysalis.

We were inspired to do this by a nearby friend, Trina Paulus, who explained to us that about 90% of all monarch eggs are eaten by other insects or birds, but if brought inside and raised correctly about 90% of those eggs will become butterflies. Given the very real risk of extinction of this species, it seemed, and continues to seem, like the right thing to do.

This was not a good summer for the monarchs in our small little place in the world. Despite a lot of searching for eggs not just on our property but in areas nearby where there are milkweed plants, we ended up raising and releasing just 35 butterflies. Last year the number was 52; the year before 83; the year before 151. The most we’ve ever raised, in 2019, was 160.

We wish our situation was an aberration, but it really isn’t. An article published two weeks ago on Discover + Share, a Missouri Botanical Garden blog, reported that, “If you look at the trends in the data over the last 30 years it is pretty alarming,” says [Tad] Yankoski. “For the first 10 years the size of the overwintering monarch population [in Mexico] was measured, it averaged 21 acres. For the last 10 years the size is a bit under 7 acres, a decline of two thirds, which is cause for alarm.” The reasons include climate disruption, habitat loss and pesticide abuse.

There’s a lot to be depressed about these days in addition to this reality for the monarch population. There’s Israel’s blatantly regressive, destructive and war-loving government and the continuing, US military support of it. There’s the climate emergency and ecological devastation throughout the world, Hurricane Helene being the latest example for us in the US. There is the denial in many states of women’s fundamental right to make decisions for themselves about their bodies. And, of course, there is the reality of mass, though not majority, support of Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans.

It is significant that the MAGA forces do not have majority support on a national level, though they’re close. It provides grounds for hope that Trump and others running for office will be defeated on November 5th. That result, the election of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, will in no way mean we can all just sit back, take it easy and let their administration do what they decide to do. Indeed, given the political strength of the MAGA forces, it is clear that the broad progressive movement must hit the streets, be visible, be more united, do more outreach into the MAGA constituencies, especially white working-class men, and step up our game as we push for solutions at the scale of the problems.

Don’t mourn, organize! If ever these words were appropriate, it’s right now, this month, this year, this decade. We must draw strength from one another and from the natural world and keep at it. If we do, history shows, without question, that there is hope we really can change the world.


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Ted Glick has devoted his life to the progressive social change movement. After a year of student activism as a sophomore at Grinnell College in Iowa, he left college in 1969 to work full time against the Vietnam War. As a Selective Service draft resister, he spent 11 months in prison. In 1973, he co-founded the National Committee to Impeach Nixon and worked as a national coordinator on grassroots street actions around the country, keeping the heat on Nixon until his August 1974 resignation. Since late 2003, Ted has played a national leadership role in the effort to stabilize our climate and for a renewable energy revolution. He was a co-founder in 2004 of the Climate Crisis Coalition and in 2005 coordinated the USA Join the World effort leading up to December actions during the United Nations Climate Change conference in Montreal. In May 2006, he began working with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and was CCAN National Campaign Coordinator until his retirement in October 2015. He is a co-founder (2014) and one of the leaders of the group Beyond Extreme Energy. He is President of the group 350NJ/Rockland, on the steering committee of the DivestNJ Coalition and on the leadership group of the Climate Reality Check network.
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Corporate Entitlement Towards The Global South: Filing Claims Against Honduras Worth 40% Of Its GDP

October 4, 2024
Source: Green Left


Human rights defenders gather at an encampment to demand justice for Honduran land defender Berta Cáceres, who was assassinated in 2016. Photo: peacebrigades.org.uk

Human rights defenders gather at an encampment to demand justice for Honduran land defender Berta Cáceres, who was assassinated in 2016. Photo: peacebrigades.org.uk

Recently, during a period of just 18 months, investors and corporations brought 14 arbitration claims against Honduras to the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), which is part of the World Bank. The claims included a 15th ongoing suit begun in 2018. Honduras now faces at least US$14 billion in claims, with United States law firm White & Case defending nine of them.

These figures come from a report released today about Honduras, but the country isn’t alone. The trend of corporations, usually multinationals headquartered in the US or Europe — making claims against whole countries to protect their profits at the expense of locals and the environment — applies across Latin America. In Honduras’ case, US$11.5 billion, or 80% of the claims, are being made by European investors, and the total of the claims against the country amounts to roughly 40% of the country’s 2023 gross domestic product.

The report, The Corporate Assault on Honduras, was written by the Institute for Policy Studies, the Honduras Solidarity Network, the Transnational Institute and Terra Justa, with participation from various movements and organisations, including the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras (COPINH) and the Common Front against ZEDEs (Economic Development and Employment Zones).

The 14 claims against Honduras were filed last year and this year, through to August. They were filed through the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system that enables companies to effectively sue whole countries when those countries’ laws or policies affect their profits, or could affect them in the future.

The process is facilitated by clauses in free trade agreements, bilateral treaties and other investment laws and contracts, and companies are able to use these to ignore national laws and sue governments through international investment arbitration tribunals.

In Honduras specifically, the report notes that there are eight bilateral investment treaties, 12 free trade agreements, a 2011 Law for the Promotion and Protection of Investments and contracts between the government and foreign and domestic investors that facilitate such corporate privilege.

There has been a spate of claims recently in Honduras, as the newer, left-leaning government of Xiomara Castro confronts some of the neoliberal policies made by the US-backed coup government from 2009. Businesses that benefited from the Porfirio Lobo Sosa presidency (2010‒14) and the Juan Hernández presidency (2014‒22) “opening Honduras up for business” are now fighting back against losing some of that privilege.

“Most of the lawsuits now holding the country hostage stem from investments made during the narco-state period after 2009. Seven lawsuits have been filed against the current Honduran government’s attempts to renegotiate electricity cost contracts and its efforts to rescue the ENEE [the national electricity company],” the report notes. The Lobo and Hernández governments awarded massive contracts to energy companies and monthly electricity bills rose enormously.
Corporate tantrums

Of course, the situation extends beyond Honduras. In Mexico, in July, Canadian mining company Almaden Minerals announced that it would demand damages of at least US$200 million for “financial losses” after its mining concessions were cancelled. Indigenous and local people near the mines had protested for years against the environmental damage and illegalities committed by the company.

Almaden is seeking arbitration via a free trade agreement. Other free trade agreements like the USMCA (the new NAFTA) have also been regularly used to force Mexico to allow transnationals to pollute, land grab or mine at their leisure.

Odyssey Marine Exploration, a US deep-sea mining company, took Mexico to arbitration through an ISDS for violating the NAFTA and rejecting its permits, and won $37.1 million last month.

As the US’s “backyard” — as then-Secretary of State John Kerry called Latin America— it’s no surprise that 85% of land defenders murdered last year were from this region. Corporate entitlement, backed by free trade and bilateral agreements made under duress from the powerful US, is at odds with the needs of farmers, Indigenous communities, the environment and other residents, and resisting activists are often repressed, criminalised and killed.

More than US$100 billion of public money globally has been awarded to private investors in ISDS courts. Of that, US$80.2 billion has gone to fossil fuel companies, since 1998.

“The injustice is glaringly obvious: countries in the global south are the main victims of ISDS, while corporations from Europe and North America benefit. It transfers public money into the hands of a few corporations and their shareholders,” Fabian Flues, from the NGO PowerShift, told the Guardian.
Long term consequences of corporate privilege

The Corporate Assault on Honduras report notes that the most expensive claim against Honduras was filed in an attempt to contain the current government’s efforts to peel back laws that enabled corporate towns, or ZEDEs, after the coup. The ZEDEs are self-contained areas within Honduras that are run by corporations, for corporations, with their own laws and regulations, in violation of national sovereignty. US investors, represented by Honduras Prospera Inc and others, are demanding US$10.8 billion.

Another case involves two investors who have brought US$190 million in claims regarding public-private partnerships that were plagued with irregularities and protests. A highway maintenance deal involving JP Morgan Chase Bank and two Goldman Sachs funds saw affected residents camped out on the highway for 421 days to protest having to pay tolls for a road that was built with public money — that is, with their taxes.

The impact of lawsuits like these goes beyond their initial monetary value. Ultimately, they limit the scope of local authorities’ decisions and policies. They generate fear and put movements, communities and authorities off from challenging corporate projects. They give more power to corporations than to whole countries, overruling sovereignty and self determination, and are thereby very undemocratic.

In Honduras, the report notes, such lawsuits function to slow down efforts to dismantle the ZEDE framework, to rescue the public electricity company and to retake control of airport infrastructure.

“It is unfair that the Honduran people must now pay more money to ‘compensate’ transnational corporations for their relentless need for profit. These investors are the ones who really owe a debt to the people, not the other way around,” the report stated, concluding that should the lawsuits succeed, “the economic burden will only deepen the displacement crisis driving Hondurans to migrate”.

It’s time to “end extreme corporate privileges in US trade agreements,” said Jen Moore, associate fellow of the Trade and Mining Program at the Institute for Policy Studies and a lead author of the report.

But as the US holds presidential elections in a month, both candidates are poised to continue protecting corporate interests and US hegemony. Democratic Party candidate Kamala Harris has claimed she would have voted against the USMCA free trade agreement that Republican Party candidate Donald Trump negotiated when he was president. However, she has also avidly promoted foreign direct investment in Central America as a way to somehow prevent the causes of migration




Tamara Pearson is a writer, journalist, activist, and teacher living in Mexico. She is currently working as a freelance journalist, finishing her second novel, and working with Central American migrants and refugees, as well as other activism.

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