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A comprehensive analysis, covering aspects of our current geopolitical and domestic landscape. I'm struck by Richard's observation that the U.S. is becoming more isolated.  Evidence of the American empire failing.  Figures like President Elon Musk embody a desperation through unconventional approaches and divisive and abrasive personas.  Hail-Mary passes of desperation as Richard says.

Myopic leaders are detached from critical issues as things deteriorate.  American corruption becomes more efficient than ever before thanks to DOGE.  Elon leads the way to a new digital feeding trough.  Long established internationalist relationships are destroyed as capitalism takes full control of America and seizes the national purse.

If Tesla came out with a new model, anybody who would buy one would be a fool.  The day Tesla releases a new model.
  Sledgehammer sales will spike.

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Economic Update with Richard Wolff

Interview with Professor Henry Giroux (In the second half of the show.)

Richard Wolff: Welcome back friends to the second half of today's Economic Update. I am very pleased, proud and honored to have with us today Professor Henry Giroux. He is at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. There he is the chair for scholarship in the public interest in the English and cultural studies department and the Paulo Freire distinguished scholar in critical pedagogy. I have been reading his articles and writings for many years hoping to bring him onto the program and I am really pleased that he's doing that. His recent books include Fascism on Trial: Education and the Possibility of Democracy which he co-authored with Anthony DiMaggio and also The Burden of Conscience: Educating Beyond the Veil of Silence. So, first of all, Henry, welcome very much to Economic Update. Thank you very much for sharing your time with us.

Henry Giroux: Oh, it's a pleasure to be on. Thank you for inviting me.

Richard Wolff: All right, let's jump right in. What is - in what sense would you say, given all the work you have done over the years, is there a cultural crisis in capitalism today?

Henry Giroux: Well, I think the crisis in capitalism probably began with capitalism. It's not a system that in any way addresses human needs, nor is it concerned about questions of equality or social justice. But I think that what we have seen particularly since Reagan is a crisis in which the market has become so powerful that it's indifferent to questions of human needs, indifferent to questions of social values, indifferent to the questions of the commons of the public good.

And it's created a crisis in which it can't legitimate itself anymore. It's beyond legitimation. It no longer says, "Well, we'll lift everybody up." That economic prosperity is just around the corner, that as long as the rich do whatever they want, democracy will prevail. That's now an obvious lie. But what's so important about that is that since it can't legitimate itself anymore, it doesn't make any promises. It now says, well, the problems that we now have are due to blacks. They're due to minorities. They're due to people who are undocumented immigrants. And so it has aligned itself essentially with the culture of fascism. And it has aligned itself in a way in which it's an unbridled fascism.

And I think that what we are seeing is we are seeing a culture that offers no sense of trust, offers no sense of community, a culture that in many ways is driven by greed and corruption. And it does it in a way in which it showcases itself. There's no guilt here anymore. We've seen not only a collapse of conscience but a collapse of social responsibility. But even worse in some ways is that you can't have a democracy without informed citizens. And I think that what we endlessly see in this culture today under capitalism under what I call neoliberal fascism - which is a different stage of capitalism - what we now see is we see an attack on the truth. We see an attack on solidarity. We see an attack on political rights, an attack on critical thinking, and we see an attack on all the institutions that make that possible. And that's created a culture of despair. It's created a culture where shared fears replace shared values. It's created a culture basically of death. And I think that that's more than a crisis. It speaks to a moment in an historical formation in which the need for resistance and the need to understand how that culture gets legitimated and gets embraced is as necessary as ever.

Richard Wolff: Would you say that fascism brought us Trump or that Trump brought us fascism?

Henry Giroux: No, I think that Trump is just simply the end point of a fascist logic that's been going on in the United States for centuries. I mean, look, we had slavery. We had the elimination of indigenous populations. We had Jim Crow. We've had the internment of the Japanese during World War II. We've had all kinds of incidents in which we see a mounting of the police state and the death of the social state. But what we have really seen in ways that we have never seen before is we now have white supremacists basically in power. And I think that people often fail to realize that at the heart of the logic of fascism in its updated American forms is a politics of disposability, a politics of racial cleansing and a politics of the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of people unlike anything we have ever seen before, except maybe for the Gilded Age.

Richard Wolff: And do you think there is a reaction building? In other words, this what you've just described could be expected, I think, unless it's gone beyond that to provoke or to generate social forces that see that and want to push back against it.

Henry Giroux: Well, I think it's gone beyond what we have seen traditionally because I think now the nature of brutality of the capitalist state, the scope and depth of the misery that it produces, the fear that is generating given questions of deportation, questions of abduction - I mean, basically the police state is in full power mode. And I think in many ways what we are now seeing is we're seeing particularly the level of inequality is so overwhelming that it now touches people's lives in a way and in a with a scope and an expansiveness that we haven't seen in a long time and it's going to get much worse.

So I think that to the degree that human needs are being denied on a massive scale with the collapse of the social state and the rise of the punishing state - and people hear about the fact that they're going to lose maybe elements of their social security, Medicaid is collapsing, the social political and social rights are being eliminated - I think we're seeing an outburst at a local level all across the country in which people are protesting in some way what they not maybe not quite identify as the logics of fascism and certainly are looking for ways to develop anti-capitalist values that could translate into something more productive.

What we see is the emergence of a counterrevolutionary pedagogical force in the form of multiple protests that now need to come together in a more national form of unity with a more sustaining narrative and that narrative has to be radical democracy in my mind.

Richard Wolff: Do you see such a coming together? Is it do you see the seeds or the beginnings or whatever word you would like that this is happening?

Henry Giroux: I think that the resistance that we're seeing takes different forms. I mean there are grassroots movements that are fighting institutional resistance that are operating on a level of institutional resistance. I mean teachers are coming together. Academics, you know, are under siege in a way like we've never seen before. Hospitals are being underfunded. All the basic elements of human needs that people need to sustain a democracy are under attack.

And I think that what we have seen in the past is that the crisis of politics has not been matched by the crisis of ideas. And I think for the first time in a long time, the crisis of ideas are emerging in a way that is in some way compatible with the crisis of politics. And whether we're talking about the Black Lives Movement or whether we're talking about the movements among young people or whether we're talking about the Tesla anti-Tesla movement or whether we're talking about the push back - I mean, look, people are organizing against ICE. People are in the streets preventing these these Gestapo thugs from basically abducting people. People are shocked about what's happening to higher and public education. Public education is being defunded because it's dangerous. Higher education is dangerous. Critical thinking is dangerous. And this culture of death dominated by oligarchs doesn't speak to that issue. It just reproduces them.

And I think we're seeing a massive implosion and expansion of alternative media forms like your program which are becoming far more important in raising a massive consciousness. And I say this in a very profound way. Without that mass consciousness, without making education central to politics, we're doomed. We're doomed. We can't simply point to economic structures and say, "Oh, they're oppressive and they're terrible." And they are. But we also have to be serious about what it means to speak to people in a language in which they can recognize themselves. We need to take seriously the fact that education is not only central to politics, it's absolutely fundamental to politics. Culture is where the war is being waged and I think if we move into that terrain wage that war on that level and the next step towards organized resistance will be a lot easier.

Richard Wolff: Where does the university as it now exists - you and I and many of the people that watch and listen to this program are products of the American or the Canadian universities. A good number are active in them now as students or now as faculty. What in your judgment given the context you've just specified? What's happening to the universities?

Henry Giroux: Well, look, since the 1980s or even much earlier actually, you can talk about Reagan and his attack on public universities as dangerous hotbeds of communism. I'm sure you and I in our long academic period have met many been in many universities dominated by communist and Marxist.

Richard Wolff: Yes. I keep wondering where all are why have I missed them?

Henry Giroux: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean if you find five, you're lucky. But I think that the notion that the university is a public good is considered dangerous and fundamentally at odds with neoliberal philosophy has been going on for a long time. But I think that since the 1980s we have seen a neoliberalization of the university, the corporatization of the university unlike anything we have seen before and actually most evident in the shift in control away from faculty to basically neoliberal managers and administrators. And I think that what that has done is so emptied the university of any fundamental ability in its workings to basically be a democratic public good and to take seriously its role not only as an enabler a defender but an enabler of democracy.

The university today is a factory just like Mario Savio said in the 1960s but I'll make something clear. It's worse. If the university was basically about providing dumb workers for the global elite that now has basically been superseded - that's important - but under people like Musk, DeSantis in Florida and of course the cult leader, what we have now is universities being turned into centers of indoctrination. I mean the attack on Harvard, the attack on the Ivy League schools, this is very serious. When the government steps in and says we will organize the curriculum, we will hire faculty, we will hire admissions. These are not institutions for education. These are institutions for indoctrination.

And I think that there are two things to remember here. One is that the attack on universities is really central to the attack on democracy because the last thing that they want - they want being this partly group of fascist idiots - what they really want is basically to eliminate any possibility for critical thought. Critical thinking is dangerous in an age when the president of the United States says he loves the uneducated. Of course, he loves the uneducated and he hates the institutions that make them educated.

So, I think that faculty have to basically do everything they can to unite, shut down these universities with direct action and reimagine what the mission of the university might be in a democracy. Secondly, it has to be made clear to people who aren't concerned about universities because maybe their children don't go to them, that if you don't have public education and universities that support the public good, support the commons, and support matters of equality and justice and racial equality, you don't have a democracy. So, we're not just talking about education and credentials. We're not just talking about education and critical thinking. We're talking about the possibility of a democracy to thrive with institutions that support the public good. That is absolutely essential.

Richard Wolff: Henry, you are wonderful. Well, if I had known that you could condense so much of your work this beautifully, I really would have had you on many, many more times. Can I bring you back?

Henry Giroux: You bet. Anytime.

Richard Wolff: All right. I wish we had more time. We are often out of it. But really, you've been very eloquent and you've gotten it across. And I'm asking my audience now, let me know what you think. But I would like very much to continue this conversation with you and again in the autumn when we can reconvene.

Henry Giroux: Yes.

Richard Wolff: Okay. Thank you again.

Henry Giroux: Thank you again.

Richard Wolff: And to all of you, I look forward as always to speaking with you again next week.