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foreword
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is the barometer of our current political, cultural, and social
climate. He defies the analyses of the so-called liberal pundits who either sound the alarm, insisting that Trump is dangerous and needs to be stopped, or dismiss him as the latest
clown in the two-ring circus we call American politics. What
we are facing is not a crisis of Republican implosion or political deform; this is not your MSNBC smug defense of the
Democratic Partys sanity in the face of Republican insanity. Giroux harbors no such illusions: The spirit of authoritarianism cuts across both political parties. But as Giroux
also notes, these same pundits sounding the alarm to Stop
Trump do not insist that racism has to stop, foreign and domestic wars have to stop, the crimes of finance capital have to
stop, policies that render most Americansespecially those
of darker hueprecarious or disposable, have to stop.
Giroux is not interested in Trump the clown, Trump
the narcissist, Trump the racist, or even Trump the con artist. Instead, he turns his critical sights on the society that
produced and legitimized him. From his rabid and rapidly
growing right-wing following to the channel surfers seeking
a good chuckle to the liberal elite quick to dismiss The Donald with smug indifference, our country and its democracy is
in steep decline. After all, this is the same society that holds
2.5 million in cages, most of whom are black and brown and
poor; whose military budget is larger than that of China,
Saudi Arabia, Russia, the U.K., India, and Japan combined;
where the killing of unarmed Black people by police, security
guards, or vigilantes has become almost a daily occurrence;
where the toxic mix of privatization, free-market ideology,
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and a punitive state has turned our schools into high-stakes
testing grounds and human warehouses in which the administration of discipline has shifted from teachers and principals to the criminal justice system; where the War on Drugs,
with zero tolerance policing, turns some neighborhoods
into open-air prisons, strips vulnerable residents of equal
protection, habeas corpus, freedom of movement, even protection from torture; and where, in states such as Michigan,
local governance has been replaced by so-called Emergency
Financial Managers whose primary objective is to privatize
public resources and basic needs (e.g., water). And the band
plays on . . . or, as Giroux so aptly puts it, we move from a
culture of questioning to a culture of shouting.
America at War With Itself demolishes the pedestrian
(and dangerous) argument that Trump appeals to legitimate
working-class populism driven by class anger. The claim
that Trump followers are simply working-class whites expressing class resentment ignores both the historical link
between whiteness, citizenship, and humanity, and also the
American dream of wealth accumulation built on private
property. Trumps people are not Levelers! (Nor are they
universally working-classtheir annual median income
clocks in at about $72,000.) They strongly believe in private
property and the right to bear arms to protect that property.
They dont just ignore Trumps wealth; they are enamored
with it. They embrace the dream that if only America can
be restored to its mythic greatnesswhich is to say, to return to its status as a white MANs country (as if it is not
now)they, too, can become a Trump. But their racism, re-
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inforced by civic illiteracy, has convinced them that it is the
descendants of unfree labor or the colonized, or those who
are currently unfree, who are blocking their ascent to the
world of Trump and the billionare Koch brothers.
Giroux understands just how racist resentment feeds
authoritarianism, and how this dialectic is nourished by reactionary pedagogies. While many of us are fully familiar
with neoliberal policies that have redistributed wealth upward, ripped away any real safety net for the poor, and promoted capital flight, outsourcing, and free trade policies that
destroy the environment and reduce much of the worlds labor force to semi-slavery, we are less familiar with policies
and practices that cultivate popular ignorance, that reduce
the body politic to civic illiterates, and that privatize what
ought to be an open and vibrant public sphere. With his
inimitable insight, intellectual dexterity, and political acuity,
Giroux exposes these policies and their consequences.
These are indeed dark times; the storm clouds of fascism
linger overhead. But Giroux is the intellectual descendant of
Antonio Gramsci, a visionary thinker who lived by his own
dictum that revolutionaries should possess pessimism of
the intellect and optimism of the will. Whereas the forces
of neoliberalism hypocritically scream, Stop Trump, Giroux calls on us to wage an anti-fascist struggle that is not
simply about remaking economic structures, but also about
refashioning identities, values, and social relations as part of
a democratic project that reconfigures what it means to desire a better and more democratic future. He sees this future in the struggles against state-sanctioned racial violence,
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in the queer and transgender movement, in the immigrant
rights movements, in the ongoing struggles against U.S.
militarism, and in the pitched battles over the future of our
schools. Critical pedagogy and insurrection go hand in hand.
And in those hands, our hands, we hold the future.
Robin D. G. Kelley
May 12, 2016
I.
Political Geographies
of the New Authoritarianism
one
INTRODUCTION:
THE SAND STORM