One consequence is that democratic institutions and public spheres are being downsized, if not altogether disappearing, along with educated citizens, without which the fate of democracy is doomed.Īgainst a fascism that draws much of its energy from a dark and horrific past, there is a need for progressives, workers, educators, and others to reclaim and advance the imperatives of a socialist democracy defined by visions, ideals, institutions, social relations, and pedagogies of resistance. Market mentalities, a politics of racial cleansing, and a politics of social and historical amnesia increasingly tighten their grip on all aspects of society. Under such circumstances, the ghosts of fascism are once again on the march. It boldly embraces white Christian nationalism, violence as a crucial element of politics, and uses state power to crush dissent and all forms of critical education, especially those pedagogical practices related to sexual orientation, critical race theory, and a critical rendering of history. As an educational project, it trades in moral blindness, historical amnesia, and racial and class hatred. It is a politics of subjugation and denial, relentlessly aiming for a public that internalizes its own oppression as second nature. ![]() Gangster capitalism thrives on the silence of the oppressed and the complicity of those seduced by its power. The American public lives in an age of fragmentation, psychic numbing, declining critical functions, and the loss of historical memory, all of which allow for the domestication of the unimaginable. The flattening of culture, elevated to new extremes through the social media and the normalization of manufactured ignorance, has become a major educational weapon in the annihilation of the civic imagination, politics, and any sense of shared citizenship. As an unapologetic form of gangster capitalism, violence is wielded as an honourable political discourse and education as a cultural politics has become both divisive and injurious. Īs Prabhat Patnaik, observes, the most radical fix to the potential collapse of neoliberalism “came in the form of neofascism.” Neoliberalism’s failure has resulted in its aligning itself with appeals to overt racism, white supremacy, white Christian nationalism, a politics of disposability, and a hatred of those deemed other. No longer able to defend an agenda that has produced staggering levels of inequality, decimated labour rights, provided massive tax breaks to the financial elite, bailouts to big capital, and waged an incessant war on the welfare state, neoliberalism needed a new ideology to sustain itself politically. No longer able to live up to its promises of equality, improved social conditions, and rising social mobility, it now suffers from a legitimation crisis. Driven by a ruthless emphasis on privatization, deregulation, commodification, a sclerotic individualism and ruthless model of competition-neoliberal capitalism has morphed into a machinery of death-an unabashed form of gangster capitalism. ![]() Matters of ethics, social responsibility, the welfare state, and the social contract are viewed as enemies of the market, thus legitimating the subordination of human needs to a relentless drive for accumulating profits at the expense of vital social needs and the larger public. Wedded to a political and economic system that consolidates power in the hands of a financial, cultural social elite, it construes profit making as the essence of democracy and consuming as the only obligation of citizenship. Bragging rights to the first person who figures out what episode and scene it came from.Capitalism has always been constructed on the basis of organized violence. The title comes from an episode of Schitt’s Creek. Schitt’s Creek is a small town on the water in this story, and NOTHING about the experience or treatment of amnesia in this is remotely accurate. ![]() ![]() The story is barely recognizable beyond the basic premise. This is loosely based on the movie Overboard, but if you read All the Songs I Sing Are About You, you already know I have a tendency to stray pretty far from the source material. David Rose falls off his cute huge yacht, loses his memory, and washes up in Schitt’s Creek, where he learns how to love.
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