Ruling elite have think tanks, they have research institutes, they've invaded universities, they've monopolized the cultural apparatuses. Henry Giroux More Quotes by Henry Giroux More Quotes From Henry Giroux When we talk about total war, and we talk about war zones, and we talk about the breakdown of the cities, when you exclude questions of race from that discourse, something disappears that's really central to the forms of repression that we're talking about. Henry Giroux race talking war State violence operating under the guise of personal safety and security, while parading as a bulwark of democracy, actually does the opposite and cancels out democracy as the incommensurable sharing of existence that makes the political possible. Henry Giroux safety political opposites Donald Trump's slogan: "Let's make America great again." And when I hear that, that seems to suggest there was a moment in the past when America really was great, you know, when women knew their places, when we could set dogs on black people in Mississippi, when young people went and sit in at lunch counters and were assaulted by others. That's about the death of memory. That's about memory being basically suppressed in a way that doesn't allow people to understand that there were things that happened in the past that we not only have to remember, we have to prevent from happening again. Henry Giroux dog memories past The cheerleaders for neoliberalism work hard to normalize dominant institutions and relations of power through a vocabulary and public pedagogy that create market-driven subjects, modes of consciousness, and ways of understanding the world that promote accommodation, quietism and passivity. Henry Giroux vocabulary hard-work understanding As a mode of public pedagogy, a state of permanent war needs willing subjects to abide by its values, ideology, and narratives of fear and violence. Such legitimation is largely provided through a market-driven culture addicted to the production of consumerism, militarism and organized violence, largely circulated through various registers of popular culture that extend from high fashion and Hollywood movies to the creation of violent video games and music concerts sponsored by the Pentagon. Henry Giroux fashion games war The media is not about responding to the wishes of people. All you have to do in the United States is turn on the national news at six-thirty, and watch big pharma intervene between the news stories, trying to tell people what drugs they should buy. That's not a reflection of anything. That's an attempt to promote a particular kind of consumer logic that basically abuses people. Henry Giroux drug reflection people Neoliberalism is going to fail by being replaced. The system is entirely broken. Whenever you have a system that equates a market economy with a market society and claims that capitalism is democracy, you've not only got a massive lie being imposed on the people, but you've got the foundation for a form of authoritarianism and a much more intensive form of class warfare. Henry Giroux broken lying people Public problems collapse into the limited and depoliticized register of private issues. Henry Giroux register issues problem Social bonds have given way under the collapse of social protections and the attack on the welfare state. Moreover, all solutions to socially produced problems are now relegated to the mantra of individual solutions. Henry Giroux protection problem way Youth are no longer the place where society reveals its dreams. Henry Giroux youth dream If the ongoing struggles waged by young people are to matter, demonstrations and protests must give way to more sustainable organizations that develop alternative communities, autonomous forms of worker control, collective forms of health care, models of direct democracy and emancipatory modes of education. Henry Giroux organization struggle people Everyone is now a customer or client, and every relationship is ultimately judged in bottom-line, cost-effective terms. Freedom is no longer about equality, social justice, or the public welfare, but about the trade in goods, financial capital, and commodities. Henry Giroux welfare financial justice The propensity to avoid moral considerations was producing not simply a politically illiterate and authoritarian society, but one that was increasingly saturated in violence and a culture of cruelty. Needless to say, all of these forces intensified the increasing militarization and corporatization of higher education, along with the privatizing of everyday life. Henry Giroux everyday violence culture Power is global and politics is local. That must change. We need a new language for understanding new global power formations as well as new international modes of politics to fight them. Social movements must move outside of national boundaries and join with others across the globe to fight the savagery of neoliberal global politics and central to such a task is the work of intellectuals, artists, cultural workers, and others who can fashion new tools and social movements in the fight against the current anti-democratic threats being imposed all over the globe. Henry Giroux fashion fighting moving Everyone, especially minorities of race and ethnicity, now live under a surveillance panoptican. Henry Giroux ethnicity minorities race Capitalism, in my estimation, is not about democracy. I think we're beginning to see an understanding of this. We see it in the Black Lives Matter movement. We see it among black youth who are now struggling and trying to make connections internationally with other groups and trying to figure out what's going on in the world and the ways things like police violence and systemic violence all come together under neoliberalism. Henry Giroux understanding struggle thinking We're talking about the Communist Party, the Socialist worker's movement, those movements basically have been underlined. We have other movements, but they're not as powerful as the movements that we had then. Henry Giroux party powerful talking Violence, with its ever-present economy of uncertainty, fear, and terror, is no longer merely a side effect of police brutality, war, or criminal behavior. It has become fundamental to neoliberalism as a particularly savage facet of capitalism. And in doing so it has turned out to be central to legitimating those social relations in which the political and pedagogical are redefined in order to undercut possibilities for authentic democracy. Henry Giroux police political war I am certainly influenced by certain post-structuralist traditions but also a number of other theoretical archives as well - including the brilliant work of Paulo Freire, Zygmunt Bauman, Loic Wacquant, Nancy Fraser, Tony Judt, and others. Henry Giroux archives brilliant numbers There is a need for educators, young people, artists and other cultural workers to develop an educative politics in which people can address the historical, structural and ideological conditions at the core of the violence being waged by the corporate and repressive state and to make clear that government under the dictatorship of market sovereignty and power is no longer responsive to the most basic needs of young people - or most people for that matter. Henry Giroux government artist people
