Tags
American Nightmare: Facing the Challenge of Fascism by Henry A. Giroux (2018), Authoritarianism, Fascism, Gangster capitalism, Neoliberalism, State violence
Front Cover: American Nightmare: Facing the Challenge of Fascism by Henry A Giroux
(City Lights/USA 2018)
American Nightmare: Facing the Challenge of Fascism by Henry A Giroux is a collection of essays that aim to shake up Americans to the growing threat of Trump’s authoritarianism to America’s democratic institutions. The author observes that “while the United States under Trump may not be an exact replica of Hitler’s Germany, the mobilizing ideas, policies, and ruthless social practices of fascism, wrapped in the flag and discourses of racial purity, ultra-nationalism, and militarism, are at the center of power in Trump’s United States.”
As defined by the Oxford Online Dictionary, fascism is “an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.” To examine the echoes of fascism under Trump, Giroux refers to Robert O Paxton’s nine “mobilizing passions” of fascism described in his work, The Anatomy of Fascism (2004). These include:
- sense of overwhelming crisis;
- subordination of the individual to the group;
- belief in victimization of one group to justify violence;
- dread of group’s decline;
- call for a purer community;
- authority of a natural leader;
- supremacy of leader’s instinct over reason;
- beauty of violence and efficacy of the will for group’s success; and
- right of chosen people to dominate others without restraint.