Search This Blog

Showing posts with label Elon Musk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elon Musk. Show all posts

Monday, June 9, 2025

The War on Education: Reclaiming Critical Thought in an Age of Fascism (Henry Giroux)

As Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt note in How Democracies Die, authoritarianism no longer announces itself with marching boots or military coups. It now emerges through culture, through the seductive rhythms of social media, viral spectacles, and the normalization of cruelty. Today, culture is not just a backdrop to politics and historical amnesia; it is politics embedded in the erasure of historical memory. It teaches us how to see, what to remember, whom to fear, and what to forget. In this age of resurgent authoritarianism, culture functions as a powerful pedagogy of domination.

We are living through a dismal age, one where anti-intellectualism is no longer masked, but paraded as a form of virtue. A fascist monoculture thrives, dull and mechanized, overrun by wooden stuntmen, empathy-hating billionaires, and artists like Kanye West who unashamedly praise Hitler. Meanwhile, podcast ventriloquists spew algorithmic bile into the void. In the ruins of the university, too many so-called leaders and their bureaucratic accountants now lend legitimacy to what Herbert Marcuse once called “scholarshit,” a travesty of thought, dressed in the empty rituals of managerial reason, budget-cutting cruelty, and unapologetic brutality. “Scholarshit'” masquerades as intellectual discourse while stripping it of genuine engagement with critical inquiry. It thrives on jargon and pretension, prioritizing form over substance, and favoring self-congratulatory cleverness over meaningful argument. In its hollow rhetoric, the complexities of society are reduced to buzzwords and superficial analyses, its practitioners more concerned with appearing intellectually sophisticated than engaging in any real critique. This approach to scholarship fosters intellectual laziness, encouraging an atmosphere where complexity is simplified, nuance is erased, and true critical thought is marginalized in favor of what passes for cleverness but lacks depth or insight. Never has the need for critical education and a shift in mass consciousness been more urgent. Never has it been more crucial to recognize education as both a force for empowerment and a powerful mode of colonization."

In an age when instrumentalism and techno-fascism dominates the culture, reducing education to mere training and suffocating pedagogy under the weight of indoctrination, it becomes more urgent than ever to reclaim the university as a space for reflection, critique, and ethical imagination. Instrumentalism erases social responsibility, dismisses matters of justice, and detaches learning from the deeper relations of power. It exchanges depth for compliance and, in the process, robs education of its emancipatory promise.

We have witnessed this logic unfold in so-called liberal movements like "teaching to the test" and in the ongoing proliferation of Teaching and Learning Centers, which often reduce education to a toolbox of technical skills. As Ariella Aïsha Azoulay warns, these practices resemble the workings of "imperial technologies", systems designed to manage learning without nurturing an awareness of injustice, to flatten thought, and to detach education from the struggle for democratic agency and pedagogical citizenship.

Consider Elon Musk, hailed by some as a visionary for creating Tesla and fueling fantasies of colonizing Mars. Beneath this gleaming myth, however, lies a far more disturbing reality. Musk has made Nazi salutes, trafficked in dangerous conspiracy theories, and, as Michelle Goldberg noted in The New York Times, exhibits a chilling disdain for empathy, paired with "breathless cruelty." This cruelty is not abstract; it manifests in the real world, where the policies Musk champions have contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children in Africa. His power is not merely technological; it is ideological, shaping a culture that confuses megalomania with genius and elevates indifference to suffering as a mark of strength. This is more than a collapse of civic literacy, it is a toxic poison, destroying any vestige of civic consciousness, solidarity, and social responsibility.

Cruelty has become the currency of power, the measure by which dominance is asserted and human worth discarded. Bill Gates, in a moment of moral clarity, acknowledged the gravity of shuttering USAID, conceding that he “bore the responsibility of risking a resurgence of diseases such as measles, HIV, and polio.” But his warning grew even more damning when, in The Financial Times, he described Elon Musk—once heralded as a symbol of techno-utopian promise—as “the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children.” Yet even Gates understates the larger architecture of violence at work. Trump’s so-called “beautiful budget bill” is not merely a policy document—it is a blueprint for social abandonment, a death sentence rendered in the language of austerity. It slashes funding for child nutrition programs, strips health care from millions, and eviscerates what remains of the social state. In its wake rises a machinery of disposability—a punishing state that targets the poor, the vulnerable, and people of color, turning the politics of governance into a war zone where compassion is silenced and suffering normalized. This is gangster capitalism on steroids--unleashed, utterly devoid of any social responsibility and drunk on its own greed, power, corruption, and fascist principles.

This silence speaks to a deeper void in higher education, one that raises crucial questions about the burden of conscience in education. It is no longer enough to champion STEM disciplines while starving the liberal arts and humanities. It is not enough for humanities students to dwell only in critique, disconnected from the technological world around them. What we need is a fusion of literacies, a pedagogy that teaches technical competence without sacrificing moral imagination; a pedagogy that nurtures civic literacy, historical awareness, the capacity to think beyond disciplines, and the courage to cross borders of culture, identity, and thought.

The attacks facing higher education today are more than a political or economic crisis, they also speak to a cultural catastrophe, a struggle over civic consciousness, critical literacy, and the promise of higher education as a democratic public good. Higher education has become prime target because it offers the promise to students of pedagogical citizenship—a pedagogy that enables young people to attentive, critical, knowledgeable, and able to hold power accountable. That is why higher education is viewed as dangerous to the authoritarian neanderthals attacking higher education. At the core of the crackdown on higher education is a project that successfully enables society to forget how to think, to feel, and to remember, practices that provide a fertile ground for creating fascist subjects.  Under such conditions, grotesque acts become normalized,  children are starved in Gaza, immigrant families are torn apart, and the horror of state terrorism fades into the background noise of spectacle and distraction.

And yet, culture remains a vital site of possibility. José Mujica, former president of Uruguay, reminded us that real change does not begin with laws or institutions, but with the values that shape how people see the world. You cannot build a society rooted in justice with individuals trained to prize greed, selfishness, and domination. As he put it, “You can’t construct a new kind of future with people whose hearts still belong to the old one.” The struggle for radical democracy must begin in the realm of culture, where imagination is nurtured, public conscience awakened, and the seeds of transformation take root.

Language itself has been hijacked, bent to the will of a colonizing legacy steeped in hatred, disposability, genocide, and a culture of unapologetic cruelty. Neo-Nazis march without shame, white supremacists shape the conservative cultural machinery, and racist policies are no longer whispered but codified. Nazi salutes are back in fashion. Universities are increasingly transformed into sites of indoctrination and surveillance, more attuned to the logic of police precincts than places of critical learning. Students who dare to protest the genocidal assault on Palestinians in Gaza are abducted, vilified, and silenced. The most powerful white nationalist on the planet parades corruption as a political virtue and deploys state terror as a primary tool of governance. Solidarity is reconfigured into communities of hate, while resistance to fascism is rebranded as terrorism. Beneath these crimes against humanity lies a culture hollowed out by the absence of reason, moral clarity, and the capacity to hold power accountable. The ghost of fascism has not merely returned; it has taken up residence and been made ordinary.

The age of lofty visions has been cast aside, discarded like ideological refuse. Yet without such visions, rooted in the hard labor and hopeful promise of democracy and the critical function of education, we are left adrift. In their place stand administrators who act as high-powered accountants, students shaped by a culture of commodification and conformity, and a precarious academic labor force paid less than Wall-Mart greeters and clerks. Meanwhile, racism, white nationalism, and Christian fundamentalism gather momentum, extinguishing the flickering lights that once illuminated the path toward a radical democracy. When higher education no longer serves as a vessel for ethical imagination and collective hope, it becomes complicit in its own undoing, and with it, democracy itself teeters on the edge.

As educators, we must fight for a vision of higher education as both sanctuary and catalyst, a place where democracy is not only studied but enacted, where students are not trained to be efficient machines, but cultivated into thinking, feeling, and acting human beings. We need an education in which a culture of questioning is not punished but nurtured, where talking back is a civic virtue, and where the pursuit of equity and justice is central to the very purpose of teaching and learning. Such an education must be grounded in the principles of civic literacy, historical consciousness, and a systemic understanding of power—one that connects private troubles to public issues and expands the possibilities for individual and collective agency.

This is the foundation upon which a radical democracy must be built, and it is the defining pedagogical task of our time. If we fail in this responsibility, higher education will surrender its role as a vital civic sphere—one essential to producing the narratives, knowledge, and capacities that sustain the promise of equality, justice, freedom, and compassion. In abandoning that mission, it will not merely falter; it will aid in its own unraveling. And with it, democracy will edge ever closer to collapse.

Donald Trump understands this. That is why he fears critical education. That is why he wages war on it.

Friday, March 14, 2025

Monday, February 10, 2025

'Soon We're Going Into Education': Trump Previews Elon Musk's Next DOGE Targets (Forbes Breaking News)

The Higher Education Inquirer continues to document the DOGE takeover of the US Department of Education

While some Democratic officials in Congress have protested this action by DOGE, there has been little resistance otherwise. 

DOGE consists of Elon Musk and several young men who have been tasked to reduce the federal budget by at least $1 Trillion. The US Senate has oversight of the Department of Education through the HELP (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) Committee, but Republicans, who are led by President Trump, control the Senate, and appear to be supporting these aggressive measures. 

While Mr. Musk has claimed that the Department of Education no longer exists, its website is still operating. 

DOGE also promotes the buying and selling of cryptocurrency.  


Thursday, February 6, 2025

Rep. Scholten, Oversight Dems Introduce Bill to Hold Musk, DOGE Accountable to the American Taxpayer

(Press Release)

Today, U.S. Congresswoman Hillary Scholten (MI03) introduced the Consistent Legal Expectations and Access to Records (CLEAR) Act, which clarifies that temporary organizations created under 5 USC 3161, like DOGE, are subject to FOIA. Given the breadth of power these organizations wield, they should be subject to the same standard of scrutiny and public information sharing that other agencies are beholden to. 

As it currently stands, DOGE does not need to comply with FOIA requests from the American public. Scholten is joined by House Committee on Oversight and Reform Ranking Member Gerry Connolly (VA11), Dave Min (CA47), and Kweisi Mfume (MD07) as co-leads on her legislation.

“In the first two weeks of Trump’s second term, chaos has reigned and has many asking… what is happening? An unelected businessman with numerous conflicts of interest has been given unprecedented access to government data and Americans' personal information. These are taxpayer dollars he’s controlling, and the American people deserve to know what’s happening. Knowledge is power, and in America, that power belongs to the people. My bill will make sure that no president, Republican or Democrat, can hide their actions from the American people,” said Rep. Scholten.

President Trump created DOGE through an executive order using an authority that allows the president to set up "temporary organizations." Congresswoman Scholten introduced this legislation to make it clear that any organization created this way is automatically subject to FOIA. The bill would apply retroactively, meaning all of DOGE’s records since it was formed would become public if the legislation is signed into law.

[Editor's note: The Higher Education Inquirer has requested digital copies of all emails between the White House and DOGE sent or received on February 5, 2025.] 

Sunday, January 19, 2025

The Business Plots, Then and Now

In 1933, a group of American businessman planned a coup to take down the new President, Franklin Roosevelt. In this scheme, General Smedley Butler would be tasked with orchestrating the overthrow. This attempted coup was called the Business Plot.  

College students today may ask, so what's so important about this moment in history?  The point is that we have entered an era again where big business has a dominating influence over American politics. In the case of the 1933 moment, the coup was reactive. American business had failed, a Great Depression was in progress, and businessmen were fighting to maintain control, a control that they were used to having under Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. The man tasked to lead the plot, General Butler, squashed it before it happened. And the story largely faded away. 

Eight years later, in 1941, the US would be fighting a world war against global fascism and imperialism.  In the aftermath of the war, a stronger nation would arise. Today, we are also a nation facing intense competition and conflict, this time against China, Russia, India and other nations, with global climate change being a factor that wasn't apparent back then. 

In 2024, US business people, some of the richest people in the world, did something similar, but more proactive and less controversial. Today, folks, in general are OK with American businessmen pulling the strings. The most wealthy man have succeeded where big banks and big business failed before. And they have elected a friend. Today, cryptocurrency is booming. The stock market is booming for now. Unemployment is at record lows--for now. Big business has managed to gain greater control of the US government with little or no uproar. 

 

Thursday, October 31, 2024

DeVos Funnels $250k to Musk’s Pro-Trump Super PAC (David Halperin)


Billionaire Betsy DeVos, who resigned from her job as Donald Trump’s secretary of education over Trump’s incitement of the deadly January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, has donated $250,000 to America PAC, the pro-Trump super PAC created by the world’s richest man, industrialist Elon Musk.


The Independent first reported the contribution, disclosed in a Federal Election Commission filing that covers the period October 1 to 16.

DeVos sent Trump a letter of resignation dated January 7, 2021, telling the then-president, “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me. Impressionable children are watching all of this, and they are learning from us.”

DeVos told Trump her decision to resign was “in support of the oath I took to our Constitution, our people, and our freedoms.”

On January 6, after Trump encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol to fight the counting of electoral votes that would declare Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election, he sat and watched television as an armed mob violently attacked police officers and threatened the lives of Members of Congress and Trump’s own vice president, Mike Pence — who, like DeVos, has grounded his conservatism in a deep Christian faith. For hours, Trump repeatedly ignored the pleas of his staff to call off the rioters.

Now, while Pence has refused to support Trump’s 2024 election bid, DeVos has sent cash to help Trump become president again.

And it’s not as if Trump subsequently was revealed to be a Sunday school teacher.

Since leaving office, Trump has been impeached and indicted for encouraging the January 6 attack on our democracy and Constitution, for other efforts to cheat in the 2020 election, and for stealing classified documents from the White House. He was convicted in New York over the summer of 34 felonies for falsifying business records to hide his misconduct from voters in the 2016 election.

Trump’s central business enterprise, the Trump Organization, was in January 2023 fined $1.6 million by a New York state court after the company was convicted by a jury of 17 criminal felonies, including tax fraud and falsifying business records. Trump himself was found liable in February 2024 by a New York state judge for civil fraud and was ordered to pay a $355 million penalty.

And in May 2023, a New York federal jury in a civil case ordered Trump to pay E. Jean Carroll $5 million for battery and defamation after it found that Trump sexually abused Carroll in a department store dressing room in 1996.

But DeVos’s own version of morality makes her conversion back to Trumpism less than surprising.

As Trump’s Secretary of Education, DeVos hired as her top higher education advisors former executives of predatory for-profit colleges, and she trashed almost all the work done by the Obama administration to protect students against deceptive, over-priced schools. Instead of holding predatory colleges accountable, DeVos mocked broke students ripped off by these schools as people demanding “free money.”

DeVos as secretary also repeatedly attacked and demeaned public schools and criticized her own cabinet Department.

In August, DeVos appeared to revisit her view of Donald Trump, telling The Detroit News she was willing to join a new Trump administration “if it was with the goal of phasing out the Department of Education….”

DeVos and her husband’s wealthy family, which made its fortune through the troubling multi-level marketing company Amway, have been major donors to Republican candidates and right wing causes for decades. Two of DeVos’s brothers-in-law, and their two wives, gave $250,000 each to the Musk PAC.

[Editor's note: This article originally appeared on Republic Report.] 

Saturday, October 12, 2024

Rehumanization in Higher Education: An Alternative to Maximizing Panic and Profit

It's questionable whether the Earth's tech bros (e.g. Gates, Musk, Bezos, Thiel, Zuckerberg) really believe in democracy, but they do believe in enriching themselves, like the robber barons of the 19th century, or going back even further, to myths of flawed rulers and gods of ancient times. A few of these bros, believing mostly in themselves, have suggested that democracy is incompatible with progress. There are probably more of these elites (and their backers) who agree, but on the back stage. 

Today, there are apps for just about everything, and there are some good ones. But there are few signs that the most recent technological innovations have improved the overall existence of humans, the planet we live on, or the many other species with share the planet with. Life is great for some, good for many, and not as happy for many more. Folks feel anxious, alienated, and dehumanized and for good reason.

Rehumanization: An Alternative to Maximizing Panic and Profit 

Despite all this new technology, climate change is an existential threat and its consequences are looming. Wars and conflicts are raging around the world and there are threats of more war. Stock prices have risen, but American Quality of Life (QOL) has not improved significantly. Information for the masses is laced with toxic propaganda. Mental illness is rising. US life expectancy has plateaued. Debt is a normal part of middle class life. People are more sedentary and obese. 

For many in this new tech world, sh*t jobs are plentiful and good jobs are hard to find. Bitcoin is an alternative (and speculative) currency used for illegal and predatory activity. Online teachers and content creators are throwaway items. You can have prepared food, of varying quality, delivered to your door. Pornography is omnipresent. Mass surveillance is accepted and normalized. Brutality and genocide can be watched like entertainment, to be played over and over or swept away at the touch of a finger. Online robocollege education is available 24/7/365 and cheating is rampant, but for many a degree is just a ticket to be punched in a world of hypercredentialism.   

Some of us are half-conscious of the algorithms of oppression and those who dictate the code, but we have enough faith in technology and the tech bros that it will be ok if we accept certain social realities--and don't fight it or challenge it. If we just go along. However sick, pathological, or evil it is, no matter how greedy these tech bros and their enablers are, "it is what it is." 

How is this progress? And does it have to be this way? We don't think so. There are even models to bring light into the approaching darkness.

That's why we want to highlight the bright spots in higher education in a series called the Rehumanization of Higher Ed. Stay tuned.